MafiaUniverse replaced the word ‘lynch’ with eliminate

[Ganelon]

LMAOOOO imagine being so triggered by ‘lynch’ that you have to replace it with eliminate... because of racial implications
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/26243-Official-ruling-regarding-the-usage-of-Lynch-on-MU

[MartinGG99]

LMAOOOO imagine being so triggered by ‘lynch’ that you have to replace it with eliminate... because of racial implications
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/threads/26243-Official-ruling-regarding-the-usage-of-Lynch-on-MU

tbh info yeet > info lynch imo. Some peeps are using "yeet" instead of "elimination". Actually, there is no rule as to which to use, its only the modbot and site stuff that will use "eliminate".

From a personal perspective, I would agree with what Thingyman wrote about the majority of the cases of "lynch" have no negative intent. I have only used the term "lynch" because its what other players have used to describe a mechanic of the game.

However, as StealthBomber16 has recently pointed out (in instant mafia), Mafia is a game that often includes discovering the author's intent in many messages. Coming from that mindset in the game, I can only imagine that at least some people may mistakenly apply the idea that the usage of "lynch" in a message or messages might contain negative intentions or connotations simply because of the historical significance, and believe that to be the author's intent (and therefore be uncomfortable or offended).

I do think, though, misinterpretation on the author's intent isn't always the reader's fault. In extreme examples, if you were to communicate a message with nothing but a vast majority of swear words, and use that in trying to create a positive message, then the "misinterpretation" (that you had ill intent or non-positive intent) actually isn't the reader's fault there -- its most definitely yours for failing to consider how your intent might be read as. So, I do think there's some level of responsibility on authors of messages in general. And if they use the word "lynch" too carelessly, and someone misinterprets that and gets offended, that COULD be the author's fault, given that there are alternatives such as "execute" (Which was suggested in the original thread that brought the issue up!) that could be used.

Though given the popularity of "lynch" on this website, and that in many cases "lynch" often times has no negatively intended meaning form the author, I'm not going to really hold it against them others and I will just not use it much myself.

Oh and FYI they're currently debating a change in the MU logo image because, well, it contains a noose among other reasons.
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums...-MU-Logo-Ideas

[MartinGG99]

Official ruling regarding the usage of "Lynch" on MU

Summary: Lynch has been replaced by Eliminate

Spurred on by this thread, the moderation and admin team have discussed and come to a conclusion on the matter of how to treat the word "lynch" on Mafia Universe.

As the staff sees it, this matter is very simple.

The word "lynch" is uncomfortable to a significant amount of users on MU, for understandable and valid reasons. Changing that one word to another word isn't gonna change how we play the game, and we're all ultimately here to play a game, and I hope that we also all want everyone to be happy whilst playing it.

So we will change the official usage from "lynch" to something else. I.e. the Modbot, OP's and threadmarks will use a different word going forward. What this word will be has not yet been determined, that's the next step for us to discuss.

The word "lynch" will not be banned. I.e. users may still use that terminology.

There are several reasons for this. One, this is an international site (and now we also have Partnered Communities) and for a majority of the world the word "lynch" does not have the same connotations as it does for Americans. Two, we frankly feel that the amount of users using the word intending it to carry negative racial connotations is so very low that this is not something we wish to moderate. Instead, we feel it's much more valuable for this to be something that the community can self-moderate, so to say.

In other words, we are making another word the site standard, and then the rest is up to the community.

This also means that we will NOT introduce the ability to customize the word for "lynch". We will find a common, standard term and use that for some time, to allow the community time to settle on that as the new common terminology, before introducing the option to customize. If we customize from the get-go, it will be more difficult and confusing for players - especially new players joining the site - to work out which terms to use.

The changes haven't been made yet, but they will be. We ask that you please be patient with us on this.

We will also be looking into changing the site logo. If you think you're the person for this job, please contact us.

Here's Thingyman's post btw, for refrence.

[Ganelon]

lynching has been around for literally thousands of years
witches were lynched in the middle ages
hell lynching will always prop up when vigilante justice emerges. it’s not strictly racial, people have been taking justice into their own hands since forever
in my 3 years of playing forum mafia and my ~6 years of playing the mod not ONCE have I seen people using the word lynch in a racist manner

which is besides the point anyways, it’s not racist and there’s no need for it to be.

[MartinGG99]

which is besides the point anyways, it’s not racist and there’s no need for it to be.

I don't think its inherently racist -- like many things in language and life context matters. And I do not imply that the vast majority of the use "lynch" has been racist (especially in the game of Mafia).

However, when there are alternatives to a word that can (or often do) mean the same thing, then it is not necessary to use that exact word and there is no need for it.

Like I said though, I'm not really going to hold it against anyone else on that point, but for me personally I am going to hold it against myself as a matter of holding myself to a disproportionate standard than I do for others.

I'm going to train myself to use words like "yeet" or "eliminate" or "execute" from now on. If someone gets confused by what I say, I can bring it up and explain or clarify very easily what I meant.

[SuperJack]

The term "Exterminate" would be better.

[BananaCucho]

Imagine getting your panties in a bunch over another site choosing to use one word instead of another word

[oops_ur_dead]

Imagine getting your panties in a bunch over another site choosing to use one word instead of another word

This tbh. Who the fuck cares.

[rumox]

petition to change lynch to yeet

[BananaCucho]

petition to change lynch to yeet

TRIGGERED

[rumox]

its a silly thing to do but at the same time i dont really care. never heard of anyone being uncomfortable with it before, and it never meant what people are conflating it with. just part of the hysteria reactions because of the tension overload currently going on tbh. it may be just some website choosing a different word sure, but it does raise an interesting thought on a more reaching aspect on it if it were to be done from a more powerful body.

but yeah like martin said its only the modbot that wont use the word lynch anymore, pretty sure everyone else can still say "yo lets lynch this dood"

[Ganelon]

Oh my fucking god MafiaScum did that too
MS is following suit?
have we all gone insane?

[Ganelon]

Like seriously...

[BananaCucho]

lmao imagine raging over something so silly

[Ganelon]

you think it stops there?
this shit is disgusting and reprehensible
we need to stop looking for racism everywhere

[BananaCucho]

So much outrage over other sites changing a word

A word that doesnt even have any special meaning. Change that word to any other word and 0 mafia games are changed as a result. It bears no weight on the content of the games

Who cares

[BananaCucho]

lmao snowflake

[Voss]

why is this in serious discussion

[BananaCucho]

why is this in serious discussion

Cause 1 person is angry at a word being replaced on other websites in a niche corner of the internet

imo I propose that we create a separate "right wing circlejerk" subforum for ranty posts like this one

[Ganelon]

it bears weight on social attitudes. that’s why it’s ikportant. and can you imagine what sort of shit admins would agree to if they start pandering to snowflakes (at whom BS like this is primarily targeted)?

[oops_ur_dead]

can you imagine what sort of shit admins would agree to if they start pandering to snowflakes (at whom BS like this is primarily targeted)?

yeah I can, the bot would say "lynch" instead of "eliminate".

[BananaCucho]

yeah I can, the bot would say "lynch" instead of "eliminate".

THE HORROR

SNOWFLAKES RUINING MAFIA AHHHHH

[BananaCucho]

Muh muh muh word that holds a special place in my heart!

[Voss]

i've also removed the word "lynch" from the narrator. i was embarrassed when my coworkers voted out the only black woman in our group, and it said "so and so was lynched by these people".

the inconvenience of me changing my language slightly is ok because I get to continue playing with people. My narcissism over misplaced sense of freedom of speech is trumped by my love of playing mafia with as many people as possible.

[Voss]

i've also removed the word "lynch" from the narrator. i was embarrassed when my coworkers voted out the only black woman in our group, and it said "so and so was lynched by these people".

the inconvenience of me changing my language slightly is ok because I get to continue playing with people. My narcissism over misplaced sense of freedom of speech is trumped by my love of playing mafia with as many people as possible.

this actually happened and my boss's boss was in on that game. i apologized to everyone involved. i didn't get mad because my freedom of speech was being trampled. i was sad to have caused another fellow human being discomfort in a game where we were all supposed to be having fun.

[BananaCucho]

i've also removed the word "lynch" from the narrator. i was embarrassed when my coworkers voted out the only black woman in our group, and it said "so and so was lynched by these people".

the inconvenience of me changing my language slightly is ok because I get to continue playing with people. My narcissism over misplaced sense of freedom of speech is trumped by my love of playing mafia with as many people as possible.

Hol up

So you made a change that has no bearing on the actual game, in an attempt to be more inclusive to others, under no social pressure to do so?

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE imma go to a niche website that hardly anybody visits and RAGE

[S-FM Lembird Oshay]

Hol up

So you made a change that has no bearing on the actual game, in an attempt to be more inclusive to others, under no social pressure to do so?

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE imma go to a niche website that hardly anybody visits and RAGE

Lol!

[deathworlds]

Lol!

In all seriousness, what Voss said 100%
This change has no meaning whatsoever, the ingame bot says 1 word differently than before, and they aren't moderating people using the word "lynch" as opposed to anything else.
It's really something pointless to get upset about imo

[oops_ur_dead]

The master vs main thing was definitely a bit iffier than "lynch", for sure. The connection to racism was dubious (not so for master/slave, which made much more sense to change). It was also clearly corporate virtue signalling, made much more glaring by the fact that Github has contracts with ICE.

But I still don't really care because it's such a tiny change. Also if the migration causes you a less than insignificant amount of headache to change then your code was probably garbage anyway and you need to sort that out more than anything.

[Ganelon]

i've also removed the word "lynch" from the narrator. i was embarrassed when my coworkers voted out the only black woman in our group, and it said "so and so was lynched by these people".

the inconvenience of me changing my language slightly is ok because I get to continue playing with people. My narcissism over misplaced sense of freedom of speech is trumped by my love of playing mafia with as many people as possible.

Freedom of speech is not narcisstic and I don’t know why you’d label it as such. Freedom of speech is the most fundamental freedom there is. If people can’t speak freely, they can’t think freely. Also, there is virtually no relationship between lynching in mafia and the historical practice of lynching black oriole. I would not feel the slightest bit offended if I as a black person got lynched in the game of mafia. People attack far too great an importance to innocuous words such as this one. You literally have to distort its meaning and context to get to racial phrases.

I’ll repeat this once again, if people are offended by the word lynch in the context of mafia (which denotes angry townfolks coming together to lynch traitors/scoundrels in their midst), they either don’t understand the context or they need to sort themselves out.

[Voss]

first a little context. in the game that I hosted, there were 16 people. we had two asian men (one of which was my boss), 1 white woman (my boss's boss's boss), and a black woman. that leaves 12 white men.

let's break this down.

Freedom of speech is not narcissistic and I don’t know why you’d label it as such.

It's narcissistic to take it to the point of making a big stink over things that don't really matter. A more appropriate violation of freedom of speech is something like a government jailing it's citizens for talking about the holocaust, because the government wants to deny it happen. Or a government censoring newspapers because the newspaper is exposing dirt on authorities. Not over not being allowed to use some word.

Sure, I could have asserted my right to freedom of speech to my boss's boss's boss started to look uncomfortable when everyone's phones started narrating at loud volume: "ANGELA WAS LYNCHED BY BRIAN, RYAN, JEFFREY, GREG, KEVIN, AND KEVIN." It's my right to say what I want in a game. I could have even said afterward too: "Yes!!! we LYNCHED angela! good job team!" It would not have gone over well and that would have probably been the last time I would have played mafia with my coworkers.

So yes, I swallowed what would have been self centeredness and gave up my right to force my word choice to instead choose promote a better community.

Freedom of speech is the most fundamental freedom there is. If people can’t speak freely, they can’t think freely.

Your thread here would have generated a lot more sympathy if you had been banned for using the word "lynch" on their site. That would actually be a freedom of speech violation because you're expressing yourself and they are stifling it.

That's not what happened on MU.

The community leaders wish to express their bot code differently. They have the utmost freedom to decide what their bot says. And, in that opening post, they specifically say they won't moderate others from using the word "lynch" because they recognize the world doesn't revolve around America. And if you're offended by these facts on MU, you can leave, which you did. Everyone's free in this free freedom space of free.

This is some backwards irony here.

Also, there is virtually no relationship between lynching in mafia and the historical practice of lynching black oriole.

Here are some examples of americans lynching black people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catego...in_Mississippi

These were gruesome executions carried out by a majority in a community. Hmm, that sounds a lot like how we do lynchings here on sc2mafia in the forums. A majority lynches someone they suspect of some alleged wrong doing.

With the mod, it's worse. You have depictions of someone being gassed (if i recall correctly "jew" used to trigger that, but was removed), someone being burned alive, and someone being shot by firing squad. I forget if hanging is coded in there too. Here's an example of people being burned alive in Mississippi, just to really connect people lynched by fire in the mod to historical practices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynchi...bert_McDaniels.

There is a relationship between the word "lynch" and historical practices of lynching black people. A more defensible argument would be that it's not the only example in the world. There were and are other lynchings that have taken place around the world, at different times. But in significant communities in America, "lynch" is a scary throwback to darker historical violence. These people don't need to be reminded of this in a just for fun game.

I would not feel the slightest bit offended if I as a black person got lynched in the game of mafia. People attack far too great an importance to innocuous words such as this one. You literally have to distort its meaning and context to get to racial phrases.

You're not black, nor do you live in the deep American South, so you have literally no clue whether you'd feel offended or not. If anything, this looks more like you (i think a white man) dictating how a black man ought to feel; the optics of which is funny, to say the least.

I could say here, if I was pretending to be Ganelon pretending to be black, I would get offended by this community's insistence on using the word lynch. But that's equally as ridiculous.

I’ll repeat this once again, if people are offended by the word lynch in the context of mafia (which denotes angry townfolks coming together to lynch traitors/scoundrels(or black people if you're in the historical american south) in their midst), they either don’t understand the context or they need to sort themselves out.

Personally, I'd rather not be the authority on whether people need to sort themselves out, and look to see if there are easy things that I can do to get more people into playing mafia. I will gladly trade one word during a 2.5 hours for 2.5 hours of fun in my favorite fucking game in the world.

Sorry. What that last sentence should read is:

I will gladly edit one word in my code for hours and hours of fun on a mafia app with a greater selection of people, knowing that these people (who might have some problems) aren't being "triggered" by something I wrote.

[Ganelon]

i would not play mafia with someone who felt offended by the word lynch

[Voss]

i would not play mafia with someone who felt offended by the word lynch

My goal here isn't to get anyone to stop using the word lynch in their own language. My problem here is that freedom of speech is being perverted to belittle and attack another site's right to express themselves the way they want, for whatever reason they want. And there are assumptions that are being made about that staff's intentions that are pure speculation.

If anything, this thread(and specifically this post) has shown that Sc2mafia would rather make a point to be less inclusive than to have a meaningful conversation on the pros and cons of their decision.

We will never know how many people we turn away because of our word lynch. However, a legitimate devil's advocate to this would be that the number is not significant, and there are other areas that we can improve to make sc2mafia a more inclusive community. That number is almost certainly not zero though.

[Ganelon]

My goal here isn't to get anyone to stop using the word lynch in their own language. My problem here is that freedom of speech is being perverted to belittle and attack another site's right to express themselves the way they want, for whatever reason they want. And there are assumptions that are being made about that staff's intentions that are pure speculation.

If anything, this thread(and specifically this post) has shown that Sc2mafia would rather make a point to be less inclusive than to have a meaningful conversation on the pros and cons of their decision.

We will never know how many people we turn away because of our word lynch. However, a legitimate devil's advocate to this would be that the number is not significant, and there are other areas that we can improve to make sc2mafia a more inclusive community. That number is almost certainly not zero though.

This community is inclusive as fuck. It’s an online community and nobody gives a hoot about anyone else’s skin colour, group allegiance or any other charactetistic. SC2Mafia does not need to be more inclusive than it already is. And if people get turned away because of an innocuous word, that’s on them, not on us.
Nobody is being belittled or attacked here. Everyone is acting like I want their freedom of speech stifled; I don’t give a shit what word they use; again, the issue is the attitude that led to the change in the first place, not the action. The action itself is meaningless.

[Voss]

i'd actually like to explore, probably in some other thread and in a more constructive manner what examples i could agree with mag here that "go too far". while not using the word lynch isn't something i'd agree, there's gotta be things we do agree on.

[Voss]

maybe this hypothetical lends some perspective:

if every "x period of time" someone would get outraged over the new replacement for the word lynch, I'd probably get peeved too. Once a lifetime's good with me. Once a day is ridiculous. Somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot.

And this doesn't just apply to the word lynch in mafia. There's a movement to change the word "master" in github to some other word like "main". If i had to say one is more ridiculous than the other, I'd say the github change is more ridiculous. But it still doesn't bother me and the company i work for to change it. But it'd probably start costing us resources if we had to change it every couple of months.

[deathworlds]

maybe this hypothetical lends some perspective:

if every "x period of time" someone would get outraged over the new replacement for the word lynch, I'd probably get peeved too. Once a lifetime's good with me. Once a day is ridiculous. Somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot.

And this doesn't just apply to the word lynch in mafia. There's a movement to change the word "master" in github to some other word like "main". If i had to say one is more ridiculous than the other, I'd say the github change is more ridiculous. But it still doesn't bother me and the company i work for to change it. But it'd probably start costing us resources if we had to change it every couple of months.

Now the githib one I heard about and it's something I disagree with strictly because master is used in a completely functional sense,
like how do we know it isn't referring to bdsm? /s

[BananaCucho]

maybe this hypothetical lends some perspective:

if every "x period of time" someone would get outraged over the new replacement for the word lynch, I'd probably get peeved too. Once a lifetime's good with me. Once a day is ridiculous. Somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot.

And this doesn't just apply to the word lynch in mafia. There's a movement to change the word "master" in github to some other word like "main". If i had to say one is more ridiculous than the other, I'd say the github change is more ridiculous. But it still doesn't bother me and the company i work for to change it. But it'd probably start costing us resources if we had to change it every couple of months.

Okay I'm glad you brought up the github thing. From what I've seen, there hasn't really been a movement, but rather github announcing that they want to use "racially neutral terms" and are therefore replacing "master". Was there actually a movement and social pressure to change this? I want to see examples if that's the case. And I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people being outraged.

If a company decides that they want to make a change while under no social pressure to do so, I don't see how people can get mad at "outrage culture" over that. Companies rebrand all the time.

[Voss]

Okay I'm glad you brought up the github thing. From what I've seen, there hasn't really been a movement, but rather github announcing that they want to use "racially neutral terms" and are therefore replacing "master". Was there actually a movement and social pressure to change this? I want to see examples if that's the case. And I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people being outraged.

If a company decides that they want to make a change while under no social pressure to do so, I don't see how people can get mad at "outrage culture" over that. Companies rebrand all the time.

it might have been a response from internal employee pressure, given the current events over george floyd. and i also bring this up because my company is pledging to change the name of this branch to whatever github decides it to be.

[BananaCucho]

it might have been a response from internal employee pressure, given the current events over george floyd. and i also bring this up because my company is pledging to change the name of this branch to whatever github decides it to be.

Might have been. Do we have any evidence for this? (I actually don't know and welcome it if there is) Otherwise its just speculation

[Voss]

Might have been. Do we have any evidence for this? (I actually don't know and welcome it if there is) Otherwise its just speculation

for me, it's extrapolation because that's what happened in my workplace.

[Voss]

it might have been a response from internal employee pressure, given the current events over george floyd. and i also bring this up because my company is pledging to change the name of this branch to whatever github decides it to be.

i meant that it was internal employee pressure, given the current events over george floyd, but i wouldn't classify it as outrage.

not sure if this distinction matters though.

[BananaCucho]

Okay I'm glad you brought up the github thing. From what I've seen, there hasn't really been a movement, but rather github announcing that they want to use "racially neutral terms" and are therefore replacing "master". Was there actually a movement and social pressure to change this? I want to see examples if that's the case. And I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people being outraged.

If a company decides that they want to make a change while under no social pressure to do so, I don't see how people can get mad at "outrage culture" over that. Companies rebrand all the time.

This is why its silly to rage over 2 websites in a very niche thing like forum mafia making this change. 99% of people aren't even aware of forum mafia existing. There's been no public outcry over using the word "lynch"

Yet these 2 websites make a change that is essentially a rebrand in an attempt to retain users that may be uncomfortable with the term. Was there any movement? It seems like 99% of users on these websites don't care either way.

[oops_ur_dead]

This is why its silly to rage over 2 websites in a very niche thing like forum mafia making this change. 99% of people aren't even aware of forum mafia existing. There's been no public outcry over using the word "lynch"

Yet these 2 websites make a change that is essentially a rebrand in an attempt to retain users that may be uncomfortable with the term. Was there any movement? It seems like 99% of users on these websites don't care either way.

Yeah with the vast majority of these types of changes I always hear about them solely from right-wingers freaking the FUCK out over muh freeze peach. Liberals and leftists don't particularly care about this shit for the most part.

[deathworlds]

Yeah with the vast majority of these types of changes I always hear about them solely from right-wingers freaking the FUCK out over muh freeze peach. Liberals and leftists don't particularly care about this shit for the most part.

Yeah I'd hardly consider a few dozen to a hundred people on twitter a movement

[BananaCucho]

Yeah with the vast majority of these types of changes I always hear about them solely from right-wingers freaking the FUCK out over muh freeze peach. Liberals and leftists don't particularly care about this shit for the most part.

Exactly, I dont really give a fuck about changing the word here. It never crossed my mind

But posting "should we change this word on sc2mafia" is so so tempting just to see certain people rage about it

[Marshmallow Marshall]

1: Making this a reality causes inevitable judgement towards people who use the word "lynch" and puts them in a bad light for using the word in a perfectly correct way.

2: Making this a reality sets a dangerous precedent, a precedent that is "whatever may offend someone for unreasonable reasons in a certain context [because it's wrong, will explain in point 3] will become officially frowned upon by the moderators". It's not really over the one word, but over the principle that will apply to more words (and eventually to ideas, for words are the reflexion of ideas).

3: The point is logically wrong. It's like saying that all games about World War 2 should remove all references to nazis or to their acts because they were abominable. In Mafia, people KILL people, literally say as a group that someone should DIE, whatever you want to call it, and those things are also rather horrible in real life... but it's part of the game. And again, opening the door to the point against the word "lynch" opens the door against the principle of usage of words referring to horrible things. But we need those words to talk about realities.


Now, I don't blame Voss for having done that on Narrator after pressure from people at his work, because hey, it's his work lol... but it doesn't make the move right and it doesn't make it good to apply to a larger-scale organization such as Sc2 Mafia.

P.S. stop using hellions when you play against zergs in sc2, it's a genocide

Is it really alright to just call them "dark" templar

[BananaCucho]

1: Making this a reality causes inevitable judgement towards people who use the word "lynch" and puts them in a bad light for using the word in a perfectly correct way.

2: Making this a reality sets a dangerous precedent, a precedent that is "whatever may offend someone for unreasonable reasons in a certain context [because it's wrong, will explain in point 3] will become officially frowned upon by the moderators". It's not really over the one word, but over the principle that will apply to more words (and eventually to ideas, for words are the reflexion of ideas).

3: The point is logically wrong. It's like saying that all games about World War 2 should remove all references to nazis or to their acts because they were abominable. In Mafia, people KILL people, literally say as a group that someone should DIE, whatever you want to call it, and those things are also rather horrible in real life... but it's part of the game. And again, opening the door to the point against the word "lynch" opens the door against the principle of usage of words referring to horrible things. But we need those words to talk about realities.


Now, I don't blame Voss for having done that on Narrator after pressure from people at his work, because hey, it's his work lol... but it doesn't make the move right and it doesn't make it good to apply to a larger-scale organization such as Sc2 Mafia.

P.S. stop using hellions when you play against zergs in sc2, it's a genocide

Nobody has requested this to even happen at sc2mafia

OP is literally ranting over something happening at other sites lol

[Marshmallow Marshall]

Nobody has requested this to even happen at sc2mafia

OP is literally ranting over something happening at other sites lol

Some people were saying that it basically "wasn't that bad", and I'm saying actually is rather bad. If you think it just doesn't matter, well uh, do what you want I guess? :P

[BananaCucho]

Some people were saying that it basically "wasn't that bad", and I'm saying actually is rather bad. If you think it just doesn't matter, well uh, do what you want I guess? :P

I'm really confused right now, and the fact that I'm a little tipsy may have something to do with that