Forums » Suggestions

[100] moderation

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Jan 08, 2015 Keller link
That wouldn't work VR. Any more than the new players know they're not supposed to have conversations across both ch 1 and 100 simultaneous but still do.

Back when I used to play Warbirds (WWII combat flight sim), when we had problems with players having potty mouths, all the vets would set aside the war for a few minutes to grief the sucker into rage quitting. To be honest, we can ignore, cajole, remind, browbeat all we want, but unless there's some kind of punishment these newer players understand (e.g. banishment, or they're not going to have much fun as long as they have a potty mouth), it's not going to stop.
Jan 08, 2015 vanatteveldt link
+1 OP

I'm sure that there are a number of people that would make good moderators. If we (1) make clear what is and what is not allowed, and (2) make all moderator action public, it should be easy to name and shame moderators that don't behave themselves and paste a chat log on the forums. I would suggest something like:

<moderator> decided to punish <offender> for hate speech or spam. <offender> cannot talk on 1 or 100 anymore. If you need to contact <offender>, you can continue the conversation on channel 69 by typing /join 69, or you can send him a private message using /send msg <offender> <message>

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That said, I think we should be quite liberal in what we do allow. This is a combat and role playing game, and I don't think a serco nationalist would normally say "My dear Sir, I utterly deprecate your line of action". So, I think any real life offenses are straight out, including race, gender, religion, orientation etc., but a bit of swearing is not too bad.

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A remaining problem is that of chattiness. Some people are dominating the channels with talk that would be better in private or in a group. But that is not something for moderator action I think?

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Finally, I think the /vote mute is good, but I think most of the new players don't get it. Maybe it could display something like:

"3 people voted to mute <offender>. If you agree that <offender> should be muted for X hours, type: /vote mute <offender>"

So (a) everybody knows what's going on, (b) newbs know how to participate, and (c) the norms are reinforced even if the vote is not succesful. Maybe the first player to vote should be named publicly:

"<player> calls for a vote to mute <offender> for 2 hours[, with as reason: "<reason>"]. This vote requires N players to agree. If you think <offender> should be muted, type: /vote mute <offender>"

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Sorry for the long post!
Jan 08, 2015 Darth Nihilus link
Haven't touch a bottle of alcohol in about 5 years, but nice try. And you really are clueless if you think 5 people can agree on "obvious". Maybe my last post was a little defensive though. I'll try again.

I've played VO about a year now and one thing I've always noticed is that new players hate the dominance that veteran players and veteran guilds have. This is something that I have actually always liked about VO. Having said that, if there are player moderators in-game and new players hear about it, I think the vast majority of them will believe that they are at some disadvantage because they dont have the same abilities as everyone else.

-1 to any additional powers in-game
Jan 08, 2015 shlimazel link
this seems like one barrel of monkeys better left unopened. moderation sounds good in theory, but I doubt it'd work so smoothly in practice.
Jan 08, 2015 greenwall link
It is in practice and it is working smootly. We just need more of it. Just today Niki and Elder were listing of many names of guides on ch100 who never play anymore.

Why haven't those old guides been replaced by new ones is the question.
Jan 08, 2015 Niki link
Because those players would then stop playing too ;)
Jan 08, 2015 greenwall link
Well perhaps guides had too much responsibility and expectations. All we really need them for now is muting chat spammers and RoC violators.

How hard would it be to create a class of guides for chat moderation solely?
Jan 08, 2015 Savet link
I agree that active guides are not a bad thing, and excuse myself from the list of candidates because I don't want to have to filter myself as an active for Guild Software.

But I also still maintain that lowering the threshold for vote mute is needed, and the time-frame should be reduced as well. Muting someone for a few hours by community vote is probably enough to reign in the offenders and reduce repeat behavior.
Jan 08, 2015 DeathSpores link
heh i could be a misguide :p
Jan 08, 2015 draugath link
I think the big problem with the Guide program in VO is that Guides were/are given increased privileges on their main characters. This can make it difficult to have proper character separation and can lead to a lot of the concerns that have already been expressed in this thread.

Guides should be given a special account that is only for work as a guide, and who they are should be kept secret, or at least as secret as is humanly possible.
Jan 09, 2015 Whistler link
Guide abilities are highlighted in the dev logs, and are also automagically emailed to Incarnate, so misuse would be noted rather quickly.

I did once maintain a special account only for guide use, and I kept my identity secret. Paranoia was rampant and people imagined all sorts of biases and attributed all sorts of happenings to the guide (who had nothing to do with it). The last I heard the thought was that guides would become much less powerful and there could be more of them since the potential for damage would be far less. Obviously this is not a high priority.

For what it's worth, 100 is pretty tame when I'm on late at night.
Jan 10, 2015 Ore link
According to Pizzasgood, there is no spamming. Hell even incarnate backed him up on this and then promptly shut the thread down. I guess all the yammering on in 100 helps the illusion.

+1 for vindicating my earlier alt thread Sieger.
Jan 10, 2015 bojansplash link
@ Whistler - Murphy works in mysterious ways, whenever I am online there seems to be a lot of profanity and trolling on 100.
It's easy for older players to just put someone on ignore or leave 100 but new players are not familiar with ignore and mute commands, they barely know how to switch channels....

However, 2 times when RelayeR was online at the same time - some 'silent' warnings were issued and 100 returned to normal pretty quickly.

Savets suggestion for lowering the threshold for /vote mute is very good but, in my opinion, guides can very effectively nip it in the bud before situation gets out of hand and /vote mute is actually initiated.

Usually when silent majority decides to initiate /vote mute.... the damage has already been done.
Jan 11, 2015 Yuutuu1 link
+1

Its great to have RelayeR back in game hopefully he can do some more moderating. More moderators is something this game needs. All other games have it and it solves a lot of problems and maintains a healthier environment overall. Its such a small but important step to making the game run better. I think the problem is the devs have no clue who to give mod access to without upsetting various people. Perhaps the players of VO could nominate a couple of people and Inc and crew could start a small pilot program for getting more moderators ingame, testing it out, working out bugs, and implementing more moderators later if they like the results.
Jan 11, 2015 Darth Nihilus link
I think moderators need to be limited to muting powers only. As it stands now the current guides can do FAR more than that, which is wrong.
Jan 11, 2015 VikingRanger link
+1 to moderators. The game is growing and so are the less than acceptable comments on 100. Also +1 to making moderator actions public.
Jan 11, 2015 draugath link
Darth, and everyone else quite frankly, we don't just need people who are capable of moderating chat. Problems don't only exist in chat, and some people who are muted may decide to retaliate in other ways. We need more Guides, and preferably secret Guides, so that they can continue to play on their mains with less concern about being bothered or persecuted.
Jan 11, 2015 Whistler link
One person says the guide account should be secret, another another says that guide actions should be public, another says guides can do too much, another says they need to be able to do more than just moderate chat. These perspectives are not wrong, they just illustrate how far apart people are in what they want from a moderator. It's not a pleasant job as a result.
Jan 11, 2015 tarenty link
Nice to see Relayer, Whistler, and Phaser all online today.
Jan 12, 2015 vanatteveldt link
@Whistler: So maybe there should be two guide levels: chat moderator, with only the ability to temporarily kick people off 1 and 100, and guide or senior moderator, who can help with events, help fix things, etc.

(Personally, I think moderators should be public, it is best to be transparent about these things and otherwise it will probably become public secrets (or at least public guesswork) anyway, but that is not extremely important)