Rules bend for the people on the inside

Two people do the same thing. One gets a friendly warning and the other gets a punishment. The good plot, the one next to the centre, goes to someone who'd been around for two weeks when there were people who'd been waiting for months. An argument gets settled by believing one side's version, and it turns out to be the one who plays every night with a moderator.

Nobody ever wrote down that staff's friends get an advantage. And everyone knows they do.

It usually isn't corruption, and that makes it worse

The word used for this is abuse, and it almost never fits. Abuse implies someone who decides to break the rule knowing they're breaking it.

What really happens is softer and harder to attack. You believe people you know sooner. Their version sounds more plausible to you because you know their character. Their slip seems more forgivable because you assume good intentions, and you've earned that assumption from playing a hundred hours with them.

Nobody decides to give their friends an advantage. They simply apply the same rules more generously to the people whose intentions they take for granted. The result is indistinguishable from special treatment, and the person applying it can swear in good faith that they were fair.

That's why favouritism shows up sooner in teams that get on well than in ones whose members barely know each other.

A currency that doesn't look like money

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu proposed a way of looking at this that clears it up quite a bit. As well as economic capital, he said, there is social capital: the resources a person gets from the simple fact of belonging to a network of relationships.

He treated it as real capital, not as a metaphor. It accumulates over time. It circulates. It's passed down within the group — a veteran's friend arrives with credit already. And, above all, it turns into concrete advantages without anyone having to ask for anything, because the connection already tilts whoever is deciding before there's a decision on the table.

That last part explains why it's so slippery. There's no favour. There's no request. There's no moment you can point to when someone did something improper. There's a tendency that only becomes visible when you add up many cases, and each case on its own has a reasonable explanation.

Why the person on the receiving end can never prove it

From that comes the most unfair part of the whole thing, which isn't the advantage itself.

Whoever is on the outside perceives the pattern long before they can document it. They notice that things always fall on the same side, but if they say so they have to lean on a specific case, and that case allows an innocent explanation: it was proportionality, it was coincidence, it was judgement.

Then the predictable happens. The person pointing it out comes across as bitter. They're told they're taking it personally. And since complaining is costly and does no good, most people stop complaining and simply start logging in less.

A place with favouritism rarely blows up. It empties from the edges, and from the inside it looks as though people left of their own accord.

The principle: closeness to whoever decides is a scarce resource

Step outside the server, because this is as old as human groups.

The colleague who has lunch with the boss every day. The town where the paperwork depends on whether you know someone. The club where places are handed out before the call for applications goes up. In all of them there are written rules that are followed, and on top of them an informal layer where things are really decided.

What does harm isn't that friendships exist: it's that friendship operates as a resource not everyone can compete for. You can get better by building better, trying harder or helping others. You can't decide to be liked by whoever is in charge.

From that comes a criterion for judging almost any community: look at how much is decided in private. The bigger that area, the more weight the connection carries, however honest the people deciding may be.

What can be done

Reduce that area, which is the only thing within anyone's reach.

Rules written before the case comes up, not after. Decisions that leave a record, even if it's a single line. Scarce resources handed out by a procedure and not by private conversation. And, the most effective and the most uncomfortable, that whoever settles a matter isn't friends with the people involved.

If there were a place where the sharing out of what's scarce followed a public order, and where nobody settled a conflict involving their own crowd, I'd like it to be called KobiiCraft.

Now the honest part. This can't be eliminated. Nobody can stop people liking their own crowd better, and a community where the people holding it together weren't friends with one another would be a worse place, not a better one. What's more, moderators usually do it for free and in their spare time: demanding the neutrality of a court from them is a form of ingratitude.

What can be demanded is more modest: that the rule is written before the case, and that a trace is left. It doesn't make anyone impartial. It only makes the deviation visible.

The ones who left without saying so

The cost of favouritism isn't paid by the person who complains. They at least speak up.

It's paid by the ones who did the maths in silence, decided it wasn't going to change, and logged in less and less until they disappeared. A place where effort pays off less than closeness teaches that lesson very quickly, and hardly anyone bothers to explain that they've learnt it.

Frequently asked questions

Why does favouritism appear even on well-meaning servers? Because it doesn't usually come from corruption but from affection, and affection can't be switched off by decree. You believe people you know sooner, their version seems more plausible to you and their mistake seems more forgivable. Nobody consciously decides to give their friends an advantage: they simply apply the rules more generously to the people whose intentions they take for granted. That's why favouritism shows up sooner in teams that get on well than in ones whose members barely know each other.

What is social capital according to Bourdieu? It's the set of resources a person obtains by belonging to a more or less lasting network of relationships. Pierre Bourdieu framed it as a form of capital comparable to economic capital: it accumulates, circulates, is passed down within the group and can turn into concrete advantages. The uncomfortable part is that it works without anyone needing to ask for anything explicitly, because the connection already disposes whoever is deciding, and that's why it's very hard to point to as a one-off abuse.

Why can't the person on the receiving end of favouritism prove it? Because each isolated case allows a reasonable explanation and only the whole reveals the pattern. A warning instead of a punishment can be proportionality; a plot granted quickly can be coincidence; one version believed over another can be judgement. None of them proves anything on its own. Whoever lives through it perceives the trend long before they can document it, and when they raise it without evidence they come across as bitter, which ends up discouraging the complaint.

Can favouritism be eliminated in a community? Eliminated, no; contained, yes. Nobody can stop people liking their own crowd better, and banning affection would be absurd as well as impossible. What does work is reducing the area where the connection decides: rules written before the case comes up, decisions that leave a record, scarce resources handed out by a procedure rather than a private conversation, and different people handling matters that involve their own friends.