User blog comment:Natalie Renderra/Bullying in our Community/@comment-5523905-20121108165545

I think you guys might be misunderstanding the blog. I don't think Kisin is saying, "OMG we have bullies we need to get rid of them halp," because it's obviously an unrealistic extreme to expect them to all be gone forever in any circumstance. Talking about how they'll never be gone isn't really accomplishing anything. Being fatalistic, making excuses like, "It'll never be cured so there's nothing we can do about it," is just enabling the problem. I mean, I don't think he means stop it altogether by, "How should we try to stop it?" but more like, "What should we do to discourage it/stop it when we see it?"

My impression is that what he's trying to do is bring attention to its presence among us so that we're actively talking about it and paying attention to it. If we do that, the odds are higher that we'll be thinking about it and recognize it when it happens around us. And like... talk about it, talk about when we've seen it and what we think is bullying and what the best ways are to deal with it as a spectator or victim or even as an accidental bully.

The other day I saw a sad situation happen outside of Falador. A player who has a lot of respect/recognition in the community was approached by a newbie. He was playing a werewolf, transformed, and attacked the recognized player's character without warning. Idk what the newbie was thinking, but the older player's response was, "Wtf? Werewolves can't change that fast, L2Lore." Which isn't entirely true, since there's not actually any lore I know of that dictates the transformation time of were's. Plus it was a rude way to word it. The newbie, naturally, protested - the werewolves in-game transform at the drop of a hat, which for a new person is a sound argument. Rather than stop and explain the rationale behind a using slow transformation and how it makes rp more fair, the older player effectively called the newbie an idiot for not knowing the right way to do things and for not taking his (antagonizing) instruction to do things differently, and ended up ignoring the (understandably) defensive newbie.

Retrospectively, I kind of wish that I had stepped in before it got mean, since I saw picked up on was happening pretty early on. It would have been good if someone (I) had interjected something like, "Hold on, I think I can explain," and given a reasonable explanation to the new guy as to what the older player was trying to tell him, but with nicer words. I just watched, but I should have stuck in before it escalated to a flaming contest of the newbie being defensive and the other player being condescendingly offensive (effectively, a bully).

It's not the first time I'd seen something like this, either. I can't help but think I, and everybody, would benefit from being more attentive to those things.