First of all, as I said: in real life, witnesses are sometimes used to corroborate a story. That isn't needed in a plurk, because hard evidence can be easily obtained through a screencap or pastebin. Everything that is said is recorded by definition because it's being written down.
Second of all, you weren't acting as witnesses. If you were witnesses, you would have been silent during the discussion, and then maybe after it happened you would have offered your view on what happened. You and the other 'witnesses' were not watching silently. You were actively participating in the discussion, and at least one of you (apparently the person not in the game) was getting pointlessly aggressive.
And finally: Batty is an adult, and this was, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively minor disagreement about a plot in an RP game. The idea that she is not capable of 'handling' a discussion of that nature or that she does not 'feel safe' is ridiculous. A requirement of being a player in an RP game is having the emotional maturity to deal with problems in a way that does not needlessly escalate a situation. I don't really think any rational observer can look at what happened and argue that bringing in 'witnesses' did not escalate the situation. To be honest, had I been a mod in that situation, I would have been pretty annoyed myself to have been bitched at by someone who isn't even in the game. Did Olga overreact horribly? Obviously, but she wouldn't have had anything to overreact to in the first place if Batty had just put on her big girl panties and realized that she was not actually 'unsafe' going in alone in a discussion about RP games on the internet. If the discussion had still gone sour and Olga rudely blew her off, she could have taken screencaps of the plurk and made them public -- you know, exactly like what ended up actually happening anyway.
And look, obviously everyone slips up and makes stupid decisions sometimes, and that's fine. It was a tense situation. And I would absolutely accept Batty or anyone else saying, it was a tense situation due to the initial mod misconduct and the choices made were not ideal or something of that nature. But if you're arguing that bringing those people in was actually the optimal choice after all, that is frankly pretty worrying, and does not bode well for future conflicts you all may be involved in.
no subject
Second of all, you weren't acting as witnesses. If you were witnesses, you would have been silent during the discussion, and then maybe after it happened you would have offered your view on what happened. You and the other 'witnesses' were not watching silently. You were actively participating in the discussion, and at least one of you (apparently the person not in the game) was getting pointlessly aggressive.
And finally: Batty is an adult, and this was, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively minor disagreement about a plot in an RP game. The idea that she is not capable of 'handling' a discussion of that nature or that she does not 'feel safe' is ridiculous. A requirement of being a player in an RP game is having the emotional maturity to deal with problems in a way that does not needlessly escalate a situation. I don't really think any rational observer can look at what happened and argue that bringing in 'witnesses' did not escalate the situation. To be honest, had I been a mod in that situation, I would have been pretty annoyed myself to have been bitched at by someone who isn't even in the game. Did Olga overreact horribly? Obviously, but she wouldn't have had anything to overreact to in the first place if Batty had just put on her big girl panties and realized that she was not actually 'unsafe' going in alone in a discussion about RP games on the internet. If the discussion had still gone sour and Olga rudely blew her off, she could have taken screencaps of the plurk and made them public -- you know, exactly like what ended up actually happening anyway.
And look, obviously everyone slips up and makes stupid decisions sometimes, and that's fine. It was a tense situation. And I would absolutely accept Batty or anyone else saying, it was a tense situation due to the initial mod misconduct and the choices made were not ideal or something of that nature. But if you're arguing that bringing those people in was actually the optimal choice after all, that is frankly pretty worrying, and does not bode well for future conflicts you all may be involved in.