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Moderation to Reduce the "Hate Breeding Pool"


Alan
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98 members have voted

  1. 1. Should P&W discord servers be seen as an "Extension" of the community for moderation?

    • Yes
      29
    • No
      54
    • This is not an issue that affects me
      5


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16 minutes ago, Lossi said:

Edit with one additional note: OOC is Out of Character, not Out of Context, as in referring to the person behind the keyboard, not the character they play in the game.

Thanks. It's currently 6 am and I've spent the past 3 hours trying to format this guy.

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A game dies without a community.
Don't hate on the communities trying to grow.
Eat them instead.

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If any of this were to be implemented, more than 1/3 of the PnW would have to be striken or banned for one reason or another, there is so much shit talking in PnW, everyone is guilty of it, trying to move the moderation of the game to Discord as well, just makes the community less likely to interact with each other, for fear of being reported for making an edgy joke, or having an opinion that is against the norm. If someone has an issue with what is said in a discord server, just leave the server and block the person, doesn't need to be taken any further than that. 

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So I think rule 1 is interesting but, it's hard and needs to be done with care. 

There are things in this game that don't allign with community guidelines that do happen in discord servers. 

What happens if a sever has an NSFW channel. It would go straight agaisnt all pnw guidelines. 

What if a member says [leader of generic alliance] is retarded. Because he thinks this person is a bad leader. 

What if someone makes a suicide joke and thinks it should be reported. 

In short I think this is a tool that allows a lot of power, and it will be used by potty people for generic strikes that Noo-ne wants and there will be so many gray areas it's not even funny. 

 

Point three is interesting and generally not bad. Once again I would be carefull though. Would for example an alliance of only 18+ people be allowed or do you not want this? 

I personally do not know a single alliance in this game that officially has this rule, but I have seen alliances in other games that do. Is this bad or not, would 5his constitute an ooc attack. 

Edited by BelgiumFury
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I have very mixed feelings on this matter.

On the one hand I think there are issues of toxicity in the gaming community that do need resolving. I can't say that I've always been blameless in this regard, Cobalt and Duat did some things/said some things that undoubtedly caused hurt and offence to others. We made comments that were unhelpful to a mutual flourishing of the community as a whole, this I regret. We became Toxic and we hated what we became.

I think the culture of shit-posting/trolling that has been prevalent in the past encourages a race to the bottom, in terms of civility.

What can also be an issue is the demand of acceptance of my views and opinions, without accepting the views and opinions of other people - I wonder if part of the problem here is the mix of age groups, cultural norms and viewpoints. A healthy community is one that can discuss contentious issues, without resorting to insults and petty behaviour. Due to the mix of age groups there is also a range of maturity in the community and that also causes issues, how you deal with that I am not sure - I would suggest maybe a mentoring program, but how you decide who is suitable and who is not would cause a major headache.
 

That said, I am opposed to "policing" of Discord servers. I think it would impinge too much on freedom of expression and such - I am not a fan of censorship. That said, if bad behaviour is occurring, I think there should be a method for anonymous reporting of abuse and such.

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Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

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Yeah, no. This just adds room for more controversial moderation decisions.

I don't have an issue with the third rule, but policing discords makes no sense.

For one, it's practically impossible to achieve without a massive moderation team considering the number of discord servers there are for this game, and for two quite frankly neither PnW moderators or Alex have a right (nor do I trust their impartiality) to police other discords simply because their main purpose is related to PnW.

Alex shouldn't have any sort of jurisdiction over private servers made by other people, not to mention that since the man struggles with ingame moderation already, it'd have to be handed over to some form of discord moderators, and unless Alex's willing to shell out more dosh to pay them, they'll probably be from the community, and thus carry the biases that entails and I'm sure everyone can guess just how well that might go.

Toxicity is a community problem, if someone's being a shithead then it's up to the community to call them out on their frickery or if it's an individual issue, to block them. It's not up to Alex or moderators to go 'no toxicity pls' and hand out warnings based on that. There's already far too many tongue-in-cheek reports of people reporting someone based on sarcastic remarks or comments.

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I for 1 understand the game goes to the extreme in terms of toxic and in many many ways tries to destroy people's willpower to continue to play 

Ive been at the end of countless OOC attacks and drama personally I try to avoid such by limiting what servers im on and refraining from reaching out a lot like i used to enjoy to

Their is somethings that im certain will be considered false moderation and is strictly harmful towards communities privacy 

 

I've seen how easy it is to edit someones words and I've seen how easy it is to give half the story instead of the full context of a screenshot 

This will end in bad moderation towards places that people are meant to feel safe in and it invades the entire point behind private discords however I feel less salty about this being a thing in news servers or actual none alliance affiliated servers however not everyone will agree with such 

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So i have tought a bit more.
I think proposal one should only be used in very explicit circumstances.

Let's say I doxx someone, i think that should deserve a moderation strike. 
But if we do rule nr.1, we need to make absolutly sure that it is very limited in scope to a few very specific issues.

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52 minutes ago, Thalmor said:

Hard disagree. Doxxing is such an egregious move that the community should band together across political lines to drive that person from the game. A moderation strike is nowhere near enough.

I agree with you, a ban would be more in place.
But I indeed hope that the community would also band togheter yes. That wouldhowever be against the game rules 😛

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21 minutes ago, emi said:

nаzis spend way too much money on pnw for alex to even consider moderating them properly lmao

And this is where the issue lies smh.

This topic did not mention politics at all. You just had to bring it up.

@Young Guilo This sounds amazing in theory, but in practice mods are going to be weaponized against people. A similar thing happened in NationStates.

I think a moderation of a discord server lies with the moderators present in said discord server.

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To whom it may concern, I do not represent The Immortals unless explicitly stated (ergo, never.)
<--- I hardly use the forums anymore, add me on discord.

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2 hours ago, BelgiumFury said:

So i have tought a bit more.
I think proposal one should only be used in very explicit circumstances.

Let's say I doxx someone, i think that should deserve a moderation strike. 
But if we do rule nr.1, we need to make absolutly sure that it is very limited in scope to a few very specific issues.

If you doxx someone you should be outright banned, in terms of OOC that's an immediate and direct risk to their safety. That's not a slap on the wrist kinda thing, that's a smite with hellfire kinda thing 

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Thats gonna be a no from me dawg. I get slapped with a point here for pointing out someones logic in relevance to their opinion on the uses of modern medicine meanwhile there are multiple threads spewing way more toxicity that go hundreds of comments with no closing of the thread. Discord is discord, pnmw forum is the forum. While I understand moderation being stronger on those who are dog piling a certain individual who IMO reaps what they sow, it should be individual discord server moderators to do their job. If a server isnt run right that isnt Alex's fault. There is an in game communication system if you dont like discord.

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I feel like its moreso that the current rules have to be enforced a lot more, though the idea of a more active moderation hand isn't the worst.

Hate speech is already against the rules, but we have nations able to drop homophobic and transphobic insults and only walk away with a warn.  Stuff like that is only going to drive away minority groups from the game, and likely make this even more a 4chan cesspit without community and moderative intervention

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5 hours ago, Thalmor said:

I guess it could be better but this suggestion of letting Alex judge if my 'are traps gay?' question violates game rules is silly. 

Well said. Well said.

The answer is, btw: Not if you are both wearing socks 😛 

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signature_1609462526.png.014e1286830a99c3d7652fe75198c389.png
To whom it may concern, I do not represent The Immortals unless explicitly stated (ergo, never.)
<--- I hardly use the forums anymore, add me on discord.

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7 hours ago, Young Guilo said:

As many of you know one of the most difficult things in Politics & War is not the game itself, but rather what the game brings with it. I've been playing this game for going on 6 years. For years I've been seeing the forums fill up with issues and problems of "OOC" (Out of Character) attacks on people, alliances and even relatives of players.

The P&W community has been historically plagued by issues where players will take their grievances to discord, harassing others, starting slander campaigns even going so far as to make bot farms to target alliances and players. P&W doesn't have a million member player base where we're bound to get a few bad apples. It seems that we have bad trees that are producing these negative, hate-filled players. 

Before I go into the proposed change here is some background.

I've played RuneScape for over 10 years. JAGEX, the moderating body of RuneScape announced that they would crack down on botting, and account hijacking by giving out bans based on "alternate evidence". Whether this means by collecting information from the stores selling stolen accounts, tracking RuneScape account activity by Google+ log-in times (to verify if the account is being shared across the globe) and even by collecting information sent in by players from discord servers. According to Mod Weath during a "Bot Busting" live-stream they received over 110,000 player reports leading to nearly 300,000 accounts being banned, locked or even returned to their rightful owners. Even more so some players have actually been arrested for activity that was flagged by both JAGEX employees and players.


Botting, account hijacking and selling of Gold is down in the RuneScape community by 70% since 2018 with the new measures taken by JAGEX.

 

The recent issue that has occurred is OOC attacks on United Ummah. For those that are unaware, United Ummah had several discord accounts message their gov and members in discord, harassing them by posting anti-Islamic messages and images. While these accounts are barred from the UU discord sever they are still in the main P&W discord server where they're preying on United Ummah members.

I believe change needs to occur to better the community and make it more inviting to new players (noobs). This change goes something like this:

Proposal: Open up a "Community Reports" section on the forums to handle issues that aren't game related but that extend to the whole of the community.

1.) Discord servers that are only for the use of P&W should be seen as an extension of the Politics & War community outreach (like the forums, blogs, chat rooms, etc.)

This is because players that use discord to harass, manipulate (pretending to be staff or Alex) and abuse others are doing so to circumvent the in-game chat system as to not be "caught" and have moderation strikes

2.) These players should have game consequences, strikes or bans for the harassment provided that sufficient video proof or photo proof is given on the initial report.

This will cut down on hate-speech and provide people targeted by these attacks a true method to have the abusers adequately punished for their actions. By increasing the consequences to game moderation most players will avoid others they have an issue with, rather than start attacking one another because nobody can tell them otherwise.

3.) Finally add this rule: "Personal (OOC) attacks on another player based on age, gender, race, religion or creed is against Community Rules."

This would mean that all the slander of people being pedophiles, rapists and worse has the potential to have strikes against your nation or banned! No more toxicity and hate spewing. It's time we as a community acted to cut down on this systemic issue.
 

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE READ THIS

Over this Christmas I talked to Alex about implementing this rule. I am by no ways trying to make this game "PG" or even "PC". As some alliance leaders know you've probably had an applicant at some point say something to the extent of "Yeah I tried playing with (XYZ) alliance and they were too toxic." If you yourself are tired of the OOC attacks on players and alliances please vote in the poll. While we try to make our own slices of the game a friendly environment I see it as a duty to this game to try and make the community as a whole a welcoming place for new members.

This is an unrealistic and inappropriate approach to dealing with these issues...

  • Screenshots/videos of user comments can be easily edited in multiple ways to falsify evidence.
    JMGLwvq.png

    IdC4hyQ.png
    If I released this under different circumstances, would this be enough to cause confusion to less informed players? Maybe an accomplice could produce a similar screenshot to corroborate the claim and further cause havoc to Alex's reputation? "Zephyr did report Rose for violating game rules, maybe he has it in for them, and maybe Alex would do that for a hundred bucks on the side". Maybe you'd think such suspicions 'make sense', but it would not actually prove the screenshot legitimate or accusations drawn from it true.

    The only way to prove to another user the legitimacy of a comment is to directly show them the actual comment itself, which means they need access to the server, channel, group chat, or direct message in which it appears. Screenshots are only useful at communicating information between trusted parties that would be certain a deception is not occurring. We should obviously hope that Alex's burden of proof is greater than taking the word of some random player waving a potentially doctored screenshot in front of him.
     
  • Many P&W Discords actually are, or become, social hubs for their members.
    Once a Discord evolves into a social hub beyond just P&W related coordination, is it beyond Alex's reach? Does this mean we now also have to debate exactly what qualifies as a P&W Discord that Alex is permitted to infiltrate and moderate? Does this just mean alliances will race to step outside this definition to regain privacy and independence from Alex's moderation? Will this really yield the desired results?
     
  • Alex is not entitled to regulate a player's behaviour in their own domain, or access their personal information therein.
    It's invasive and violates the privacy and independence of individuals to socialise in their own privately organised groups. There is no reasonable argument that Alex should have access to information shared in these spaces, let alone moderate behaviour within them. He does not own these Discords, these are not his spaces to moderate.
     
  • Alex is not capable of effectively moderating hundreds of Discords, channels, group chats and direct messages.
    Alex is one man already having difficulty keeping up moderating the game, he would have to recruit help and unless he's willing to pay for it that means players and the potential abuse that comes with that. Furthermore, will players simply forgo associating their Discord account with their nation to avoid Discord moderation and punitive action against their nation?
     
  • Users can delete their comments to evade Alex's judgement.
    If the standard of proof is (necessarily) direct observation of offending content, how responsive can Alex possibly be? I imagine the easy workaround for offenders would simply become deleting their comments before Alex can investigate.
     
  • Users and Discord admins already have tools to limit exposure to abuse.
    Discord allows users to block users, and server admins can kick and ban abusive users, as well as use bots to help moderate their Discord's content. Through sensible decision making, users and Discord admins do have options to largely limit exposure to abuse on Discord.
     
  • Discord has Community Guidelines and a Trust & Safety Team that handle inappropriate user behaviour and content on their platform.
    Discord already has robust Community Guidelines and a reporting process that already address a lot of the types of abuse mentioned. Discord's staff are more capable of accessing reported content than Alex, who would presumably have a lot of difficulty infiltrating every P&W related Discord, channel, group chat and direct message. Additionally Discord's staffing is more sizeable and faster at responding to moderation requests.
Edited by Zephyr
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11 minutes ago, Zephyr said:

[snip]

This just in, Alex accepts bribes!

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signature_1609462526.png.014e1286830a99c3d7652fe75198c389.png
To whom it may concern, I do not represent The Immortals unless explicitly stated (ergo, never.)
<--- I hardly use the forums anymore, add me on discord.

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There should be a crossover between the game, the official Discord, and the official forum in some capacity. If someone is banned from any platform for OOC, hate speech, basically any extreme violation of that sort, so should they be banned from the other platforms to root it from the game as much as reasonably possible, since moderating other unofficial servers is too delicate. The punishments for these violations, would also need to be revisited, because a 1/9 warn on the forums for hate speech is frankly not enough.

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Look up to the sky above~

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