On the Topic of "Bullying on CODZ"

[ThunderGlove142]

Huh, didn't notice any bullying going on. 

Then again I hardly ever come on here, just to ask stuff XD which is promptly answered btw. Really appreciate that!

But bullying on Call of Duty is nothing new I'm sure. I hear it all the time when playing multiplayer. People really don't like each other lol. 

[S1ippery Jim]

Great post.,

 

I'd just like to say my experience on the codzombies forum here has always been pleasant, considering how toxic the COD community has become.

 

I have been a member of various other zombies community forums one in particular I ended up quitting for good due to the hostile way the mods and site admins treated new or infrequent visitors combined with their unprofessional and offensive behaviour and comments relating to the death of someone in the community however this place has remained a pretty laid back friendly place to come and talk about zombies.

 

Keep up the good work guys

[Electric Jesus]

It's not just the CoD community. It's any online community, aside from social media. People use their relative anonymity to do / say things seemingly without consequence. Of course they don't realize (or maybe they do realize) that the person reading it is just that: a person sitting at a computer with hurt feelings, not just a frowny emoticon on a screen. CoDz in particular is pretty good about that though. We have a high ratio of mods to active users, and they do their job pretty well. Also, nobody ever just blatantly insults each other. It's mostly just disagreements that escalate. I think we're a civilized bunch by anybody's standards.

[S1ippery Jim]

It's not just the CoD community. It's any online community

Your experience might be different but being involved with a few different gaming communites eg warframe, elder scrolls online etc and I can tell you that they have a completely different feel to the COD community, both in game and in related forums.

[Undead]

okay

 

I'm dying. 

 

One word has never summarized a whole thread in a nutshell any better. 

 

"Don't be a douche"

 

"Okay"

[Wooodd]

CODZ is an oasis in a desert of cruel internet forums.

 

This is why I love this forum, although I don't post much I've always felt welcomed and that my opinions matter. Sure discussing topics that people are so passionate about can get heated, but despite this I have always felt a sense of decorum amongst the CoDZ members.

 

Being a lurker by nature (and not in a creepy way) I don't often post and on most other sites I've encountered this in itself can lead to confrontation. On other sites members would lambaste any post I made on the premise that because I don't post every two minutes my opinion is less valid, or due to the fact that I'm not part of the clique I can go f*ck myself.

[Mr. Jay]

"I need to bully because I'm smarter than everyone else."

"I can say what I want because I'm special."

"Why can't you understand my point?"

Bullying is the product of over confidence and sense of achievement. We all do it at some point, intentionally or not. There is also a fine line between horsing around, and bullying your friends. It is often unavoidable from the bully's point of view until someone mentions it. Its also subjective to the person being bullied. Friends can take name calling from one another, until it goes too far in the receiver's acceptance. Its mostly how you view it, and how others view it.

New members, don't let the seniors bully you. Just because he or she has a shiny medal or affiliations with the site, doesn't mean you should bend over for them. But don't start a debate if you don't have the means to defend your ground, as you will likely be stampeded.

If all else fails just tell everyone your dad works for Activision and your brother is a world class hacker.

[Covert Gunman]

I am actually very glad that this thread has recieved the response it has. I've written and posted several similar themed threads in the past but it's always good to consistently bring up the topic. Bullying and any sort of tangent branch off of bullying is a continuous and ever looming presence in the world today and something we all need to be aware of. It's also something we all need to be actively involved in in order slow it's overwhelming preference.

Now, I'm going to get religious on you all here real quick, but bear with me. The bible teaches that we are all brothers and sisters, literal spirit children of our Heavenly Father. As such, should we not treat each other as such? Something that a group of friends and I came up with while I was on my mission was something called The Platinum Rule. This is in reference to The Golden Rule, which is "treat others as you would want to be treated." We decided to take it a steep further and create The Platinum Rule which is stated as "treat others the way you think they feel they should be treated." This is something very similar to the way Christ was when he was here on Earth in the fact that his character was an outward facing one rather than inward. In other words he focused on bettering those out around him rather than solely focusing inward on bettering himself.

Honestly, if everyone were to always think in these terms and consider how others feel and how they want to be treated and focusing on uplifting one another, this forum could improve a hundred fold on its already top notch performance. Please, consider what I've said and if there are changes to be made in your behavior or actions, I encourage you to make those changes. Consider everything that has and that will be posted in this thread and make a concerted effort to apply the advice given within.

[Rissole25]

What if this happens on Skype?

I rarely go on Skype anymore, but when I was more active, there were a few groups where talking about others occurred. There were times where I joined in and times I didn't, but I always felt rubbed the wrong way with what was said. I left most of the groups anyhow.

Anyhow, is Skype covered with this? Or is it broader grey area?

[Chopper]

This is a really tough one in relation to skype.

 

There isn't an official skype moderated group.  If I knew that a user on here was really bullying another one via skype, I'd like to discuss it within the staff.

 

Personally, my first instinct would be to at a minimum have a little chat with the users.  

What goes on after that, is anyone's guess.  The issue would be that I can't imagine anyone would agree on the right thing to do.

 

Whilst I believe you could argue that we can discipline another user for stuff that goes on outside the site, people could argue that we couldn't.

It's a little draconian moderating like that, even if the best intentions are involved.

If a user felt forced to leave the site because of it, that might change my mind on the issue.

 

I'm not a fan of bullying nor are most people.  It would certainly upset myself and the staff if we knew about it, but whether we can do something about it or not if it happens is very difficult to answer.

[Guest]

I think that if you have two members who are on the forums and one member is being bullied on skype by another member a mod should address it and try to resolve it, if not some sort of ban should occur as they need to know bullies arent accepted in the forum.

[InfestLithium]

If it is brought to our attention, we will try to deal with it.

 

But from what I recall, there is a large, already-existing Skype chat labeled as "CoDz Members Chat" or something like that from when I used to be in it. That was created by the members, for the members. As staff, we have no validation nor control over that group since it technically is not officiated by us.

 

Should someone from CoDz be bullying another CoDz member in that chat relating to what was said/done in CoDz at all, then please bring it up with us. Just bear in mind we have very, very minimal involvement with Skype.

[Black Hand Smith]

What if you get a youtube channel Banned from youtube and his/her channel shut down for misleading the masses.

Would Codz be responsible for moderating that? Or would that be a let it fly due to it not being related to the forums.

I mean with E3 slowly approaching the situation is bound to happen.

Example: like that time we got city of Z banned for like a week

Edited February 26, 2015 by Black Hand Smith

[InfestLithium]

@Black Hand Smith

 

An ambiguous situation no doubt, but if our own community went to their videos, called it out for being false info and flagged the vid(s), then yes we are responsible. At the same time, however, that's more of a service to the overall Zombies community than attacking a channel.

[Hells Warrrior]

What if you get a youtube channel Banned from youtube and his/her channel shut down for misleading the masses.

Would Codz be responsible for moderating that? Or would that be a let it fly due to it not being related to the forums.

I mean with E3 slowly approaching the situation is bound to happen.

Example: like that time we got city of Z banned for like a week

 

No.

 

The bottom line is this, we are responsible for what takes place on these forums, we are not responsible for anything else outwith these forum apart from our Facebook page, Twitter page, YouTube channel. As a responsible site, we will do our best to make sure that this community is a peaceful and a pleasant place to be (as much as we can anyway).

 

So to summarise, we are NOT responsible for your Skype chats, we are not responsible for your Twitter, Facebook, YouTube channels and so forth, we are responsible for what takes place here.

 

What takes places on these forums is our responsibility, what takes place outwith these forums and outwith our social media pages has nothing to do with us. However, if it came to our attention that someone from this site was being bullied outwith these forums and on other media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and it was from other members of this website and putting the CoDz name into disrepute. Then we could not do a lot, what we could do is take action against your account here (if it is deemed necessary) amongst a few other things (such as reporting that person to the relevant site for example).

 

If someone wants to have a YouTube channel shut down for misleading the masses, then for sure it has nothing to do with us or this forum, unless it was directly reported by CoDz.

[Lenne]

It saddens me that something like this even needs to be brought up.

 

I personally have never encountered any bullying on here, at least not from the regulars.

 

I hope it stays that way, because quite frankly I could not deal with some real bullying on here and nobody should put up with that. After all CoDz is a place where we can escape from reality, theorize about zombies, strategize and talk nonsense 24/7.

 

No one of us, old or new, should have to worry about being bullied.

 

Now let's share the chicken sandwiches and get excited for the next game, okay? 

 

<3

[GRILL]

I kind of want to just delete everything after @Lenne's initial comment, would that be okay? I'd like to have this thread be about the subject and not be about someone making a mistake, and him then being chewed out. I'll give it until tomorrow.

[superstudmuffin]

I kind of want to just delete everything after @Lenne's initial comment, would that be okay? I'd like to have this thread be about the subject and not be about someone making a mistake, and him then being chewed out. I'll give it until tomorrow.

I think so, clean up the thread to be read as it's intended purpose. Feel free to delete this post aswell GRILL as it's not related to the topic. Others may not agree but i'm happy with your proposal.

[Chopper]

I completely agree Grill. I don't know why but it seems an awful lot of threads get derailed recently. You can certainly delete my responses no problem. Edit - I hid everything from Lenne down. If you really have an issue with what Grill suggested, or what I have done please report this post with your feelings. I'd prefer to give users a chance to respond, rather than mass deleting.

[Hells Warrrior]

Within this topic, it's about keeping things on track and not getting side tracked from the inital post.

 

Lets keep it that way please.

[James Dean]

The sad thing is, Is that when someone who appears to "know it all", the rest of the members don't speak out on them because they want to "kiss butt and save face". It's not cool to think that you are better than someone else just because you've been playing longer, delved into the storyline more, etc… We are all a family here, or at least should be! We all share a love for the mode and that is what should matter. We should come together and play together and discuss together without fear of someone going to bash our thoughts. I've had run-ins with certain people on this site and have had confrontations because I hate people who think that they are God's gift of zombies, when they are not. They got bent out of shape because I disagreed with them and tried to add my tidbits, in a positive and respectable way mind you. Difference of opinion marks the beauty of life. Don't like it? I don't care. It's time to grow up. COD Zombies are supposed to be theorized. We are not Treyarch. We don't know anything. We only can assume what is going on. Everyone needs to have their opinion valued, no matter how small or how big. 

[NaBrZHunter]

Thank you, @Grill for addressing this so very sincerely.

As a new member, myself, I have noticed some terse and rarely condescending comments here and there; but ever so rarely. I appreciate the way y'all work so hard to foster a positive community here-and y'all do a great job.

 

In the same vein, though, let's be positive. Guys, we should be able to take a hit and brush it off-hey, we play zombies, folks. There have been plenty of times that Max Ammo got snagged before you were reloaded; plenty of times your kills got stolen; plenty of times we've bled out at a crucial point in the game. We're tough. We know how to take a hit, but keep playing for the team. So like Grill pointed out as well, there's the other side as well. A comment may have been made thoughtlessly; someone's passion may get the better of them, and while it is their job to practice self control, it is also important for us as a community to practice patience and forgiveness. Let's not jump the gun, either, for presumed bullying. Live the moral of team-survival. Many times, a hurtful action is taken, not in maliciousness, but in thoughtlessness, which, though not justified, can be forgiven as quickly as it was dealt. It's what they call 'heaping hot coals.' :-)

 

I'll stop ranting. This wasn't my thread. Thanks again, Mods, for giving us a such a model forum.

[MysteryMachineX]

To be honest, I was kinda confused when I was required to read this thread when I returned. Apparently something has happened while I was gone, I thought to myself. I read over it (probably a bit faster than I should have), but I now just took the time to re-read it. I'm sure this thread has helped disperse the negativity resulting from this incident, so good job on making it GRILL. And considering it is staying up months after it occurred, hopefully it shall not repeat itself, whatever that may be. I find it admirable the standards to which you are holding yourselves, alongside others. Shall be a fairer CoDz. : D

[Black Hand Smith]

To be Honest, I've never actually read the original post. I've only read the comments.....but I still understand by reading the title alone. I agree though. You should be redirected as a new member. Just a formality 

[Guest]

Yeah but some people thought they were being accused of bullying so it would have to be done right...