I believe everyone reading this thread have seen their fair share of instances when people doesn’t keep the chat family friendly.
Keeping an open mind
Different people sees the same thing differently due to many factors such as culture, believes, past-experiences, the list goes on. Being such a big group of international family, our members are really diversified, therefore one of our line of defense is probably to keep an open mind when people says stuff that *Might* sound offending (minus off those words that are obviously rude across all nations). Of course, this should also NOT be the reason or justification that a person go all “tommy gun” on offensive terms – we wouldn’t want our younglings to learn new questionable vocabularies, especially through our family’s communication channels.
Quoting Fog in one of the Club Gaiscioch Nights: “Guys, keep it PG, it’s not that hard”.
Tackling offenders
Different people deal with this differently. For me, when people start saying offensive or non-family friendly stuff in guild/group chat during family events, for the first time I will usually keep quiet unless it is downright offensive, I also believe that the elders are the only ones that are empowered to give out warnings. If the situation continues, and no one says anything, then I’ll do a “Language please people” and normally things will end there - of course if the situation intensify and no elder are present, I’m always prepared to do a screenie and bring it up.
In my humble opinion, we who have been in Gaiscioch long enough should be supporting the elders, but not enforcing stuff that elders who are empowered to do so.
Private Msg
It is a good way to communicate to the offender, but it might be a double edged sword. Personally I’ll do it only if I know the person, or have chatted with the person enough times to “know” he/she is a family member.
Why? Because imagine you are in a heated argument, and out of nowhere 4-5 strangers who you don’t know messages you and says “Mind your language”. This is just my opinion, but, I think it is best to let the elders online handle on the means to “engage” the “mob”.
Credos
I think this is one of the most important thing in our family. Without it, many of us will lose our direction as time pass. Personally I have re-read it a few times. Even at the beginning when I first joined Gaiscioch with my S/O, even though I was the one helping her to fill up registrations and help her claim participations on events that she had participated in, I had her read the Credo and she was the one who clicked the agree button. Because to me it is not just a “terms and agreement wall of text” that we so often see in our daily lives now, it is a binding agreement we have between our inner selves and the family, a guide on how we should act at the bare minimum as a member of Gaiscioch, with our sword out, not in.
Re-linking the Gaiscioch Credo link: http://www.gaiscioch.com/about/credos.html
Family Friendly
Yes it means a lot more than censoring languages, but censoring languages is definitely the bare minimum that need to be done. We have the enforcers (elders), we have the people who knows what is or what isn’t family friendly on 24/7 out there (the rest of us who isn’t elders), hence it is more of a culture that need to be built rather than something that need to be enforced. Keep it simple, support the elders, don’t treb, ballista, catapult down the offenders with fire/meatbags/lightnings, guide the ones who doesn’t know how the Gaiscioch family roll, let them SEE instead of tell them what and what not to do. Be the example that you want to see.
Just sharing my two cents. Cheers all.