oooo warns me for "triggering bots"

[kthx]

Being silenced three times by the same douchebag in a week while having only been banned maybe.. one time and never being silenced in the last 10+ years in TW by a staffer who has no right to be handling anything related to the TW community tends to get my blood boiling a tad.

[Supreme]

[Vatican Assassin]

Well Kthx is critical of many things but now that I think about it I have to agree with him. Out of this should come a new rule, a paradigm shift that I am pitching to staff right now and if you like it maybe you could say how awesome an idea it is.

Here it is:

Dearest staff: Please get rid of your stupid fucking nigger bots! If someone is offended and reports it, look into it! Not before hand! The most important thing you can possibly do is ensure that this game is fun for everyone. If someone is saying nigger in a public arena that will lower quality of the game for everyone and he ought to be silenced. If three people are in arena alone and say the word chink, no one is offended and no one's experience is lessened. The experience of the three people chatting IS lessened when you interrupt them. THAT act has upset 3 people and helped 0. Your first oath as a new staff member should be to do no harm. If no one is offended and there is no chance that anyone would be offended then mind your own business! Players do not like to be reminded that they are being monitored.

If oO.Oo had not silenced kthx in this instance, not a single person would have had their TW experience hindered or interfered with. They hurt no one. You sir in this instance are the offender. You upset 3 players who have been playing much longer than yourself for no good reason. You increased the level of dissatisfied players from 0 to 3. How does that help the zone in any way?

You know, for a decade roughly, there were no big brother bots checking every empty arena to make sure certain words were ever uttered. And once in a while someone crossed a line and had to be dealt with. But I firmly believe that the number of instances of a racist player needing to be silenced in any given month was LOWER than the number of times someone said something not offensive nor intending to be offensive who was silenced or banned. You are hurting players love for the game more than helping it and the sole reason is the fucking nigger bots.

What a horrible idea they truly are. Were there just so many players leaving the game because of offensive words being thrown around that the idea for bots came forth? I think not. I think bot programmers get bored and consider additional features to be good, staff gets lazy, and what follows is a disconnection between staff and players. Do staffers need to silence people in order to fill quotas? When I really think about how incredibly detached a staffer can be to just see someone say chink, send out a silence and feel like he did something to help anyone but himself is beyond me. This is not active engagement, this shows no real love for the game, and it is a great way to show that you have nothing in common with the players or even care about them much. If you cared about them, you would wait until someone got hit in the head and complained before you order everyone to stop playing Frisbee on the beach.

Before, staffers were players first and they were league and event organizers second. Today's staff are administrators and police first, and I don't know how many staffers consider themselves to be players or event organizers at all. Does oO.Oo play and enjoy TW? Does he run events? Does he realize that this community is getting smaller and as it does it should get tighter and more closely knitted? It is time to simply stop it with the bot alerts and instant silences.

In short: TALK TO THE PLAYERS. ENTER THE ARENA. SAY, "HEY WHAT'S UP GUYS. THE BOT TOLD ME YOU SAID THE WORD CHINK! IS THIS TRUE! OH SHIT, YOU ARE IN AN EMPTY ARENA WITH ABSOLUTELY NO POSSIBILITY OF OFFENDING ANYONE EVEN IF YOU HAD BEEN TRYING TO BE RACIST WHICH YOU OBVIOUSLY WEREN'T! WELL, HOW IS THE BOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW, IT CAN'T! OH WELL, FORTUNATELY I AM A REAL PERSON, A FELLOW GAMER IF YOU WILL, AND HEY LOOK, OUT OF ALL THE GAMES IN THE WORLD WE BOTH LIKE THE SAME ONE: TRENCH WARS! WE MUST HAVE A LOT IN COMMON AND SHOULD PROBABLY BE REAL WITH EACH OTHER. IF YOU WOULDN'T MIND, CAN YOU NOT USE THE WORD CHINK CUZ THE BOT KEEPS BOTHERING ME, AND WHO KNOWS, MAYBE SOME CHINK WILL WALK IN HERE AND GET OFFENDED AND TELL THEIR MOM OR SOMETHING. OH WELL I'M BACK TO PUB 0 CUZ I LOVE PLAYING THIS GAME AND RACISM IS REALLY THE LEAST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT IT FOR ME. I ACTUALLY BECAME STAFF TO PLAY AND HELP PEOPLE PLAY, NOT FIND WAYS TO MAKE THEM STOP. CARRY ON GENTLEMEN!

I capped all that because you should really read it like someone is yelling it at you because it has so much common sense and has been so overlooked by you, yes you, the staffer who sees a racist word, gives out a silence and thinks he did more good than harm. And by the way, the ESPN guy who made that title, it was really easy for all my friends to yell that he should be fired right away for making such a mistake. Am I the only one who thought maybe we should all just buck the fuck up and stop pretending to be offended by fucking words from strangers? Buck the fuck up America and staff.

[Ganon-Knight]

[Vatican Assassin]

Both? Was hoping to see posts about how awesome I am but that will do.

[Demonic]

When i changed the racism rules to silence instead of banning, it was to keep people in the zone rather then making them disappear. If its being used to punish people who genuinely are having normal conversations.

FFS guys, all i am going to say is, with all this whinging not one of you did a damn screenshot so i can actually see the context you were talking when the warning came in, and just like players where nothing is evidenced i will make sure they are not punished its the same for staff, ie. get some damn screenshots of it. IF it is the case, that you were warned unfairly, then i will deal with it and the staffer involved as over zealous bang op's is a receipe for disaster. As for volcs, i have known volcs for about 11yrs and not once have i known her to be racist, so this would be a first if it has happened.

Send any screenshots you get to twbans@gmail.com and i will sort it out.

[Jason]

vatican assassin, you are so awesome!!!

for real though, your post is the solution. and i'm not being sarcastic.

every single time i've spent any length of time on staff (there have been quite a few stints over the years) i have "raged against the machine" with respect to this very issue. "staff" as a whole (or a body if you will) is governed by such a ridiculously rigid set of rules and protocols that it ends up shooting itself in the foot again and again and again which sends a terrible message to the public. due to the rigidity, there is no room for personality. there is no room for contextual interpretation. i have lost track of the number of times i've gotten into heated arguments on staff chat (or witnessed them) because protocol x wasn't followed to the letter.

stop being so fascist with the discipline and thinking you have to police every last little thing. it's unnecessary. it took me a long while to settle in and learn to do the very same here at the forums, but look how few disruptions we tend to have compared to the in-game bullshit that's blowing up every other day. no matter what you do, you're always gonna have a few shitheads that truly deserve punishment. as for the rest, most of them will behave just fine if you simply adopt a "go along and get along" mentality.

this rash of forum posts about silences and racism and what have you is a direct result of people being utterly fed up with this situation. we need to get with the times already and be just a tiny bit more progressive. this isn't bible school or "the young conservatives of america" summer camp. it's the internet, ffs.

[Downfall]

Logged in just to say VA's post was the TRUTH. Gr8 post, good sir.

[Downfall]

And Kthx and Vatican are on some similar ground with this point:

They both agree that there should be better communication between staff and the community.

[Dean]

who the fuck is this random newbie lOL???

he warned me yesterday saying reconnect to which i replied ?help someone teach this noob how to *kill people then after reconnecting he instantly banned me for 2 months

then when i asked some <ER> why i was banned he said they wouldnt tell him and today i asked aura to tell me why im banned:-

:aura:HELLO
(Aura)>HELLO
:Aura:can you do me a favour
(Aura)>?
:Aura:can you plz tell me why im banned
:Aura:LOl
(Aura)>You refused to reconnect, and then threatened to hack the server.
:Aura:LOL WHAT
(Aura)>Which you've also done in the past.
:Aura:i didnt do anything
:Aura:i reconnected then i got banned
:Aura:made no sense
(RoboHelp)>This message has been sent by Aura:
(RoboHelp)>E-mail twbans@gmail.com for legitimate ban disputes. You must include your BanID # and user name(s)
(RoboHelp)>in the E-mail subject to avoid being filtered as spam.
(RoboHelp)>If you have any other questions regarding this issue, please use :Aura:<Message>.

took you all that time to come up with the idea to pretend i said i would hack the server lolololol good 1

be bak for u in 2 months oo.oo, cant wait

xoxoxoxox

[Downfall]

^-LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

[kthx]

I didn't figure a screenshot was needed honestly considering how many people (including those who usually aren't exactly my super friends (Creature)) saw the conversation and were participating in the conversation. I am pretty sure the word of 4-5 players who have about 40 years combined experience in TW means much more to the zone than the word of some guy who transferred over to TW a few months ago because his zone died.

I mean I can basically tell you what happened. It was QS vs Penetrate last night and both of our squads were the only ones in the arena, after the dd we talked shit to each other for a few minutes before laughing together about the ESPN article titled A chink in the armor about Jeremy Lin, a few people got moderator warnings because oooo was mad that the bot on staff chat was spamming them with reports. That basically set off this whole ordeal due to the fact that nobody liked some faggot dsber on a power trip trying to warn and silence people for bullshit reasons/using an actual phrase in the proper manner. I mean that isn't all the details but basically like 7-10 people were warned and silenced for something so fucking stupid that it just ruined everyones good time when we were just playing around and talking.

It made the zone worse, not better by the way it was handled by OOOO, and then having Aura automatically take oooo's side on the matter just because he is a fellow staffer didn't make anything better either.

[Mobey]

hakuna matata

[Crescent Seal]

looooooooooooooooooooooooool

pathetic staff

i agree with vatican (guy finally took his head out of his ass), improve staff-player relations and problems are solved

[Major Crisis]

Solution: Quit the game.