Support.

We used to have volunteer moderators, I was one of them, and as a group we tried to come up with and enforce clear guidelines for forum conduct. Then GGG got more successful and hired their own team and - personally - I believe that group hasn't done a good job of it. Things seem totally arbitrary.

However, the idea that consistent infractions (even minor ones) should not warrant severe punishment is false. Most folks who try to derail threads and act as a general nuisance do so consistently in small ways.

That said, it is almost impossible for any moderation to be successful on a site that requires no investment from the user. Ban one name and they'll make another and another and another. Its just a wack-a-mole.

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

However, the idea that consistent infractions (even minor ones) should not warrant severe punishment is false. Most folks who try to derail threads and act as a general nuisance do so consistently in small ways.

Hey old moderator.

I don't know if i was not clear enough. Probably. If you read my last comment you would understand that i could support the idea of : "consistent infractions => leads to severe punishment"


ONLY IF we are talking about the same infraction. Only.
I am against what follows:

1. user has random prior infractions.
2. user come back a day/week/month/months later and make a DIFFERENT infractions.
3. User gets severe punishment.


No no no and no!


I think i have to sum up all the ideas and an analysis of what is wrong. (With the help of binarygod maybe). Another thing i have already said here : Prior infractions should be deleted when time passes.

I do not see why you would be against that. If I invited you into my home and you kicked my dog, I'd throw you out. If, later, I let you return and you instead call my sister a whore... I shouldn't punish you as if you've both kicked my dog and insulted my sister? I would have to disagree.

Also, if we followed the rule that only a repeated series of similar infractions warrant increasing punishment, then we'll just make smarter trolls who try to bog down the moderators in a quagmire of argument over how infraction 1 really isn't the same as infraction 2.

This isn't rocket science. If you act like a dick, all the time, you get treated like one - even if you're a really creative dick and like to act like a dick in different ways consistently.

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

If you act like a dick, all the time, you get treated like one - even if you're a really creative dick and like to act like a dick in different ways consistently.

I think there was something like this in the Tractatus. XD

All joking aside, your prior post was dead-on-balls-accurate: 'as long as there is no necessary investment from the end user there is no real way to have meaningful consequences'.

This, I firmly believe, is because without the presence of meaningful societal sanctions people will act according to their truest beliefs and this goes in both directions. Positively, there is no meaningful societal sanction for being remarkably generous in-game because of the way game mechanics work in any number of games and, therefore, allow people who want to be generous out-of-game but cannot afford to act this way to now act according to their truest believes. Negatively, of course, people can act as maliciously as they desire because nothing is directly happening to them out-of-game even though their actions can have modest to drastic actions for others out-of-game.

It's important to note that games that either allow for or encourage real anonymity (e.g. F2P games like Path of Exile and League of Legends) do not see a meaningful enough increase in negative behaviour over games that do not allow for or encourage real anonymity (e.g. P2P games like World of Warcraft).

In all of this, though, the only real sanction is a potential fiscal sanction which is solely the loss of game account and whatever money was put into it.* This sort of sanction does not work because it doesn't have a sufficient enough impact, all things considered, and it seems to me that if a major credit card or bank card was required due to the presence of meaningful financial sanctions for negative behaviour we would see some real change in player behaviour.

Culture and education need to see real improvement, following the late Lord Russell that's the only real way things will get better. Until that happens we need sanctions for negative behaviour that have teeth. Given the international nature of digital environments it's not helpful to have region-specific, non-financial sanctions that discourage negative behaviour disproportionately. Financial sanctions with teeth, whatever they are deemed to be, are going to be what we're after until culture and education improves and this means the allowance of anonymity on the front end but total accountability on the back-end, viz. the controlling, developing parties.**


_____
*It needs to be immediately accepted that people do not consider lost time to be a sanction. This demonstrates an incoherent set of beliefs, of course, believing A and not-A to obtain in the same exact set of circumstances, but this is what ultimately parses out when looking at their various responses.

**Some may contend that encouraging positive behaviour is the better way to go and I'd gesture to League of Legends to disprove that. Whatever metrics Riot used simply does not take into consideration that (1) the IP for participating in the Tribunal was removed, (2) players do not regularly and are not reminded regularly by some game feature to send positive player reports (i.e. badges) and (3) players do not report positive or negative behaviour with any regularity.

I do not believe that encouraging positive behaviour is without merit, only that it needs to be significantly bigger than the consequences for negative behaviour. This puts an undue strain on the developing parties and is particularly problematic but, all things considered, if the rewards are big enough and the negative consequences are big enough this can work. It cannot work on its own or without the presence of meaningful consequences for negative behaviour.

As another ex-mod, I feel like I ought to put in some words here.

"

TheBitterness wrote:

It needs to be immediately accepted that people do not consider lost time to be a sanction. This demonstrates an incoherent set of beliefs, of course, believing A and not-A to obtain in the same exact set of circumstances, but this is what ultimately parses out when looking at their various responses.

I agree that it's an unaccounted cost currently.

If GGG were to require that an account get a character up to level 20 to post on the non-tech support boards, then there would be a very real time loss per banned account. That may be too extreme, but there should be a number in there somewhere that means that the asshole is wasting far more time than the moderation of the asshole, which turns into a force multiplier for the support staff.

Similarly (sticking on the sanctions/subsidies concept) in the positive direction, possibly adding something to "long lived in good standing" accounts would deter bad behaviour. It would have to be forum-only bonuses, but something like tokens that can be spent to earmark suggestions/issues for immediate dev viewing would be reasonable.

---

There's another worrying topic that I haven't seen discussed too much. By GGG's dictum, being punished on the forum should in no way affect in-game behaviour (except in very rare circumstances). This means that any reward/punishment given should be a forum-only reward/punishment. However, the trade section of the forum is a quasi-in-game area due to 3rd party trading tools. Being unable to make shop threads is a huge in-game penalty due to the game's reliance on a strong economy.

I'm not quite sure how GGG plans to work around this ("banned except for trade subforum"?), but they'll have to address it sooner or later. Or just revert their stance on forum->in-game punishment.

"

pneuma wrote:

As another ex-mod, I feel like I ought to put in some words here.

[1] Similarly (sticking on the sanctions/subsidies concept) in the positive direction, possibly adding something to "long lived in good standing" accounts would deter bad behaviour. It would have to be forum-only bonuses, but something like tokens that can be spent to earmark suggestions/issues for immediate dev viewing would be reasonable.

[...]

[2] There's another worrying topic that I haven't seen discussed too much. By GGG's dictum, being punished on the forum should in no way affect in-game behaviour (except in very rare circumstances). This means that any reward/punishment given should be a forum-only reward/punishment. However, the trade section of the forum is a quasi-in-game area due to 3rd party trading tools. Being unable to make shop threads is a huge in-game penalty due to the game's reliance on a strong economy.

The financial success of GGG based solely on cosmetic effects/additions and other non-gameplay related benefits like the ability to help create content cannot be understated. People in general like being a part of a community, even small communities, and this is how some supporter packs with exclusive items sold so well. Exclusive supporter pack cosmetics aside, any number of effects/additions like weapon effects and mini-pets sell well by themselves. The creation of some sort of metric and tiers of Account-In-Good-Standing cosmetic effects/additions would be helpful in this particular community.

Further, following the idea I offered above, this would do well partnered with financial sanctions with teeth in order to mitigate negative behaviour. This has several benefits beyond the most obvious, two of which being the linking of multiple accounts to one holder in order to more easily organise those who, for whatever reasons, want to have more than one account and will prevent the dilution of the value of these Account-In-Good-Standing cosmetics by them not appearing 'everywhere'. I have no doubt that GGG can work out such a system.

The only thing preventing this from coming to fruition is the unspoken dirty-dirty, viz. do not prevent one's business from making as much money as possible by saying who can and can't give it money. That the developing parties of any online multi-player game silently consider this is a sad reality and one we cannot overlook. Still, there is a particular problem: without first parsing out whether or not assholes give a disproportionately greater amount of money or 'enough money', whatever that value may be, there's no way to be sure if meaningful financial sanctions will be considered a 'smart business move'. Since there is no forced connexion of players to accounts (i.e. with a major credit card or bank card) there is no way to actually take such a survey and, unfortunately, any number of people may pull back at the notion given the game being 'F2P' and notions of freedom, privacy, et al.

And in all of this we must recognise that the forums and the game take place online, the environment this behaviour takes place in is similar enough to warrant the same sort of sanctions and potential boons. You're right to point out the game outside of the game in trading forums. Banned needs to be banned and, again, in order for this to matter there needs to be a forced connexion of players to accounts.* Players of all stripes recognise this and even if it is on only a sub-conscious level because verbal abuse is verbal abuse, whether it takes place through in-game chat channels or on the forums. Verbal abuse is verbal abuse, game accounts are game accounts, there is no grey area to debate.

A group of developing parties needs to step up and take responsibility for player behaviour in the games and communities that would not have existed were it not for their particular creation by said developing parties. Player behaviour isn't their ultimate responsibility, of course, that's on the people that choose to act as fucking clown shoes, but a lack of meaningful sanctions/rewards means a passive enabling/assent to the behaviour and nevermind whatever is said. Importantly, this reminds me of the toothless 'open letter' that I'll just gesture to at that. That letter has no teeth and is disgusting in that it meekly asks the admittedly toxic communities to do better policing themselves and undue 'white knighting' while the undersigned developing parties mention no steps they will take as authority figures and leaders in the meta-community and individual communities.

Again, verbal abuse is verbal abuse, game accounts are game accounts, there is no grey area to debate. People will act according to their truest beliefs in the absence of meaningful societal sanctions...and there are none to be had.
_____
*This information, of course, should not be available to the other players or public but solely internally. Those concerned with potential hacking would do well to look into video game data breaches to see whether or not this is a major or marginal concern and, then, if it's considered a major concern, choose to not play and respect the decision of the developing parties in order to reduce toxicity in their online environments. As authority figures and the creators of these environments they ultimately have more responsibility for the community than any given player or players, though in this digital age I dare say there is no example of developing parties acting accordingly.

An interesting quote i read the other day when i was watching something on screen :

Url : http://s18.postimg.org/w3f4m4vxl/screenshot_804.png


__

It's interesting because i have made an example about fire and being burnt over time on a previous page.
I also think that some people will not stop a misdeed no watter what the punishement is. On the other hand, a 'new' 'different' and 'small' misdeed being treated as a new repeated misdeed => Extra long probation, leads some forum users into getting angry and encourage them to start becoming much worse, in my opinion. And that's not what GGG whats for its community right?



Riot as seen on the first video shared on first page would punish this :

"

I just told a guy who was running a lottery (for me running a lottery is scam noobs, and laugh at the face of noobs) i wish his mother die in a bomb and i got INSTANTLY muted for 10 mins.

i deserved it obviously but what the fuck? did i get overwatched or smthing?

(I will not give the source of this quote cuz this thread stays general)


With far more than 10 mins probation/mute!

Someone wrote "Fuck off" last month and got 1-month probation and this one wishes someone death and get 10 mins?

Isn't your system... wrong?

He got the 1 month probation for ban evasion. It was more something like 10 days for "Fuck off" and 10 days for evasion.


GGG uses a poorly written trap to catch htmlproxy evaders but only noobs fall for it.

"

Hilbert wrote:

He got the 1 month probation for ban evasion. It was more something like 10 days for "Fuck off" and 10 days for evasion.


GGG uses a poorly written trap to catch htmlproxy evaders but only noobs fall for it.

that was probably me.

I got 10 days probation for responding to an ad-hominem post with something along the lines of "get the fuck out of the thread". needless to say he probably didn't even get as much as a warning.

I then wrote a first impression feedback about Forsaken Masters - which turned out to be false, now that I think about it - without even trying their "proxy trap": my alt-account deliberately had almost the exact same name :)
well that got me another 20, so yeah around one month of probation.

Wouldn't be surprised if OP is mad because he has a record with GGG.