[DEPRECATED] Community-Driven Silence Program (!report)

[skyforger]

Sounds like Rab needs to ?lines=0 and everything will be golden in tw land again

[Rab]

?lines=0 doesn't work because you need to interact with bots.

[kthx]

?lines=0 doesn't work because you need to interact with bots.

Have you tried not being a thin skinned faggot and letting people know that it works when they fuck with you?

[Rab]

reported

[hellmouth]

Censorship is for faggots.

[Sir BattyCrease]

noted rab has changed his avatar from the emblem of gryfindor to a rabbit. happy belated 13th birthday rab! why didn't you tell us? faggot

[Falconeer]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but there is absolutely no objective standard being applied here for what is offensive. It just needs to be several people reporting the person for speech they find disruptive or offensive. The likelihood that many people will issue reports for the things you've mentioned is minimal (though still possible). So far that has shown itself to be the case.

And again, moderators play a very small role in this process. The whole point of this system is to place all the bias on the part of the players, and as little as possible on moderators.



Trolling, sexism, homophobia, etc., are generally not considered against the rules in TW, except in a very loose way under the catch-all "game disruption" clause that is generally not enforced.

The problem with enforcing rules against that kind of speech is you need clearly defined standards of what constitutes each. We've tried to do this for almost two decades, and never succeeded. It's not an easy problem. What is considered offensive or not changes too often. And moderator bias absolutely would play into this if mods were told to punish for something as ambiguous as sexism or particularly "trolling". I think we could find a way to ban half the playerbase for "trolling". (The term has become almost meaningless these days. It simply means "undesirable person stirring up discussion who I don't agree with".)

That sort of speech, however, can be enforced with this reporting system, without the need for defining what constitutes a violation. It becomes an issue of whether or not many members of the community find the speech disruptive or offensive. I'm not sure how this is being perceived as allowing mods a freer hand to silence people they don't agree with, or how it will introduce moderator bias into the picture, aside from the very rare case where someone who has been reported by many players is seen as actually not disruptive by the mod.

In fact, asking mods to enforce a rule against "trolling" would result in incredible bias, proportional to the level that it can not be clearly and objectively defined. Far more than this player-centric model.


Finally, here's an updated "silences issued" count as of this post: 0

It's basically a more balanced system of the ?vote ban you find in many multiplayer games, especially FPS games like insurgency and counter strike.

The difference is it's a ?vote silence system, where the number of reports being issued within a certain time span equals the number of votes. The people who decide if the votes are legitimate will be staff, which means that hopefully more objective and more level heads are making the final decision, so it's less of a mob rule.

I basically agree with any vote decided system, and i can give staff the benefit of the doubt for now on how well it's setup. I also like that it's a flat gag value and not additive or history based.

I disagree that you can't explain and write rules on what racism is. Racism is any type of stereotyping. Any use of racist words or replacement of those words to deliver the same derogatory meaning. Any broad generalizations of a race of people. I can even get into more detail with examples. It's absolutely not hard to define racism and sexism. It's not hard to thank people who find loop holes, expand the rules to include those loop holes, and then upon any future breaking of the rules to punish those people. First offense of finding something not written in the rules is basically a thank you and they get away with it because they are helping.

To punish for all forms of racism would be incredibly easy. It would be easy to write rules and point out those rules and to literally catch 100% of people you silence breaking those rules where there is absolutely no deniability. The actual issue is that no one wants to ban racism outright. I think the problem is that we want "some" freedoms in speech and leniency toward racist speech and performing racism. So it's been hard to define where to "draw" the line. This is what happens when you don't have a zero racism policy. With a zero racism policy most would get silenced at one point or another, just because at some point or another someone is going to spew some BS they don't even really mean, but actually does perform racism... even if they are not actually racist.

I think the reason people want some freedoms in racist speech or performing racism, is because they don't always see it as racist. Saying "All chinese can't drive" is seen as a stereotype, not necessarily racism. But if you actually define what racism is this is it, stereotyping and generalizing large groups of people based on societal misconceptions. "Black people are all rapists" is incredibly racist, and historically many slaves where called rapists when they never actually did the crime and then they were lynched and hanged.

People in this game are probably generally good, most just want a place where they don't have to worry and where they can get away with joking or being stupid... but imo there are better ways to do that, trolling is not about being racist or sexist, and you should stop and take a bigger look at the culture of hate you are inadvertently promoting.

If you did a zero racism/sexism policy you would need full time moderators, first offense is a warning, second offense, 10 minute gag, third offense 1 hour gag, and then 1 day. For people who reach a 1 day gag 3 times, they will always get a 1 day gag. For everyone else it resets at a warning each day. Something like that, if someone has a long period of no 1 day gags they reset to a warning. etc.

[Dabram]

You can't be too surprised, really? Forgive me for repeating the same thing over and over, but there is just no direction to Pub. It's free for any player to do whatever they want. Combine that with a certain demographic of players, the huge amount of downtime during gaming, and severe mechanical limitations of the game itself, and you will have people spouting nonsense. So I've made a list of changes that could be done to get players more focused on gaming, rather than chatting about Trump, Jesus, or drugs;

• Remove private frequencies - Players can still duel, leviterr or base on either of the main area frequencies
• Reduce the respawn timer from 5 to 3 or 4
• Blueout from spectator mode
• Condense the size of the map so the gaming is more intense
• Remove safe zones

So my thoughts are, if you want to decrease the shit talking, it may be better to try to make the gaming more intense, rather enforce such a rule.

This sums it up. There was never a point to playing in pub, but it used to be run by (pub) squads, with bragging rights etc. When you started as a new player, it was a good enough place to begin in. That's all long gone. Now after 20+ years, those who are left in that arena, well are special people...

• Blueout from spec and no safe zones would be first things to add. Rest Moot says seems good too.
• I'd go way harsher though: No chat in spec. (Redirect those people to an arena called "TOXIC' where they're free to do exactly what they now do in pub.)

Gamewise, to give pub some point to play in: (I cannot code, so I don't know what's possible).

• As a regular league TSL fell somewhat short, but it would be perfect as an automated game in pub.
• TSL-bot runs an automated dueling match alternating wbs, javs every hour. 10 min advance arena announcement that you can sign up to bot -> if enough sign up (6 - 10 for dueling) you get placed randomly together and match begins. Have a ranking like in elim + pubbucks for winning/mvp etc.
• Optional 1): TSL-bot for semi-automated basing game (if enough sign up (12 - 16) / if we figure out how to have caps to set ships. Might not work so well, trolling is a bitch.)
• Optional 2): TSL-bot for tourny, winner of duel moves on, the more sign up the bigger the prize for the winner. (might need a lot of new coding so not high on the list)
• Option to place bets on the games (ppl seem to care about their pubbucks)
• Map: way smaller 'free for all/prac' arena, a base with good flagroom / lowerbase more suited for javs + some open dueling spots outside base. Rest of map: dueling boxes (like now), 1 box for 5v5 wbs, 5v5 javs and a base for basing games. (Arena size is our limit, but now 50% is unused easily)
• If pub becomes toxicfree, might even move elim / ?go base entirely over to pub. (Arena-size + coding of Robo Ref becomes an issue..?) If games are run alternate it could work. Mostly depended on some '!signup' function to get placed on right freqs / spawnzones? Difficult to have no spec-talk then though.

Right now some people have clearly put in a lot of time to have automated dueling, automated flagroom-games etc. going in pub. And I applaud them for this, the coding is better than ever. Yet most players are hardly ever playing in pub because of how pointless and toxic the arena feels like. Real changes should've and could've helped maybe 10+ years ago, now pub might've become too toxic to bother touching it.
If someone really wants to change things, don't do it with half-assed 'democratic silencing' solutions like this, just have everyone who wants to sit in spec and chat go to a special arena tailored just for them. Having them sit into the first arena every (new!) player enters and spew their insanities 24/7 is asking for our (inevitable) downfall to speeden up. Just think of being a new player player, entering this game, thinking you're about to play some old online throwback game, but instead of seeing any action going on, you realise you just entered a chatroom full of weirdos. The first and only command you'll be glad to learn is ESC+Q.

Making a better map would be the least difficult thing to do. Just having someone dare to take charge in a way that actually does something; which is no need to tailor to people who'll never be nice to you / or care for the game you try to keep alive.

My 2 cents from a happy arena called elim.

[Falconeer]

What Dabram has said is obviously true, the more interesting the gameplay is the less people would sit in spec and type. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to make trench wars interesting after people have played it for so many years and it would probably take some drastic changes.

Hockey zone has no speech rules at all but i never see rampant racism or sexism there, maybe because the few people who engage in those topics decided to do those things in TW? but i have a feeling if they tried to do it in hockey zone they would just lose interest pretty fast because people are actually too busy playing the game in HZ to pay attention to blue chat. So hockey zone probably does have a type of gameplay that keeps players more engaged. Even in spec people are watching others play rather than typing conversations.

The only idea i came up with was to have a system where the more you play the more typing points you earn. Each typing point allows you to type once the max length. And every 2 minutes you play you get like 1 typing point. If you sign up for league you can get 50 or something. This way you have to earn the right to type bullshit. People might actually think twice before wasting their typing. This might seem extreme but not really. I was always a player who typed while playing the game, so it would barely affect me. People who spec all day would essentially be self muted.

I've always wanted to redirect people who spec to another arena, or remove the spec freq entirely. If you are AFK doesn't matter if you are in another arena. If you are there and just in spec typing, it doesn't matter if you're auto removed to another arena. Anyone who is in spec longer than 5 minutes should be moved. There should be systems in place to encourage playing the game minimally. If you play then you can type whatever you want.

[Ephemeral]

Too bad this was not implemented 15-18 years ago.

Free speech has nothing to do with shit in the zone; playing this zone was always a privilege, not a ‘right’. Staff common sense could have easily managed Pub chat. The Pub chat rules could have simply been no politics, no religion, no personal attacks backed up by staff monitoring by someone with an IQ over 75. If people wanted to talk shit they could PM or go into another arena.
Over the years Pub became a self-fulfilling prophecy, the majority of people who tolerated learning the zone where typically shit talkers themselves.
Eph

[Rab]

Well I'm back to ignore.txt again because this initiative has made zero impact.

The abuse I get in the game is unreal, and that you do nothing about it is pathetic.

[the_paul]

Well I'm back to ignore.txt again because this initiative has made zero impact.

The abuse I get in the game is unreal, and that you do nothing about it is pathetic.

I've been in pub on and off all week, both in spec and actually playing, and haven't seen anything even close to what you claim happens to you regularly. I haven't even seen any abuse outside of normal trash talk, and of course religion and political rabble. Are you sure that you aren't part of the problem?

[Mootland Farmer]

I was about to say the same thing...

[Rab]

Well I wasn't in pub this week, so you wouldn't have. Quick to judge aren't we.

[kthx]

Too bad this was not implemented 15-18 years ago.

Free speech has nothing to do with shit in the zone; playing this zone was always a privilege, not a ‘right’. Staff common sense could have easily managed Pub chat. The Pub chat rules could have simply been no politics, no religion, no personal attacks backed up by staff monitoring by someone with an IQ over 75. If people wanted to talk shit they could PM or go into another arena.
Over the years Pub became a self-fulfilling prophecy, the majority of people who tolerated learning the zone where typically shit talkers themselves.
Eph