We need to draw a line

[Falconeer]

what i see: ephemeral, mootland, and space want the bs to stop. if anyone's say can be respected in this zone is it not them? please listen to what spacehiker said. he's right priitk would be ashamed of what he sees in pub. connection used to tell me he understands what i am doing but the rest of staff was unwilling to go with the way it used to be...left_eye used to say the same... if this was stopped years ago (which again, i was mocked for and literally harassed IRL for), then we wouldve retained more players than we lost. no idea if it's too late at this point...

not reading a damn thing falconeer says, as no one else should. he's one of the problem players of TW.

I'm more intelligent than all of you combined and trying to get you to avoid the cycle you're so eager to perpetuate for another ten years. trolls don't care about time, otherwise they wouldn't waste their lives on the computer and would get jobs irl, or the things you do to try and police them. moderating politics or religion won't stop controversial topics in the game. people can make controversial anything. I can go in any topic on this forum and have all of you raging at me to forum ban me in 1 week.

these guys in the game will circumvent any moderation you have, they will write down the schedules of your mods and troll during times no one is online, they will PM you, squad chat you, follow you to other zones, if you ignore them they will troll your friends so your friends complain to you thus trolling you. they will sit down 10 hours a day thinking of new material and new topics to make controversial, they will all come to the forums and use the forums more often. if you ban them they will find ways to unban, and if you banned me i would be sure to start a propaganda war (including but not limited to making and spreading a website around) showing how this zone went bat shit crazy with moderation, when there were other alternatives to moderation; like... actually moderating racism instead of doing nothing. this is a way better idea than moderating 6 schools of thought.

You're also failing to see that while some people like Sulla would quit the game, other people would rise up against such heavy handed moderation. You would be creating more trolls, and banning/moderating people you actually like and didn't even have a problem with before. solutions in life can't just be reduced to ban/kill/beat that guy and yet you talk about the real world...

i would also argue banning political conversation is what these people want... because they know going down that road is going to cause more problems.. it's a lose lose situation no matter what you do, but especially if you overreact. none of the so called trolls are here caring what you decide because ultimately it doesn't matter to extremists what you do they will always find ways to cause problems. a majority of trolling isn't even political or religious in nature, you would be ending what manco does and not much else. so better to just moderate sexism and crack down on manco individually than subject a whole population to your tyranny. you want to moderate extremists not moderates.

guaranteed the last thing any troll in game wants is for you guys to listen to me, because my suggestions make everything way harder for them.

[Falconeer]

You would have been beat to within an inch of your life as well. You have absolutely no idea of what you'd be dealing with in real life. And that's the difference.

You can hold a gun to my head and i will say whatever i want to say still. That's called integrity. I could care less what anyone will, can or wants to do me in retaliation. I would say whatever I want to say even if i was in a Vietnamese concentration camp at the risk of torture and death, they would end up having to cut out my tongue, and my last words would be "the mind is free". in the real world you have people who don't bend like cowards to avoid pain.

the difference is you can do violence to make the world a better place? good job moron, we can see where you're coming from.

the only peer pressure that's bad right now is qan bending to all of you, and about to do the wrong thing as a result instead of thinking for himself. i'm a fucking troll and i'm telling you how to moderate trolls, i provided you with solutions, but nobody here wants solutions they want dictatorships and retaliation. in our societies we don't ban political, religious thought and discourse, there is no reason to do so here either. someone who really thought the chat should be separate from the game would do ?lines=0 and never see the chat and play. freespirit is a good example, i never see him in here complaining about what people type, he's too busy actually playing.

what i see: ephemeral, mootland, and space want the bs to stop. if anyone's say can be respected in this zone is it not them? please listen to what spacehiker said. he's right priitk would be ashamed of what he sees in pub. connection used to tell me he understands what i am doing but the rest of staff was unwilling to go with the way it used to be...left_eye used to say the same... if this was stopped years ago (which again, i was mocked for and literally harassed IRL for), then we wouldve retained more players than we lost. no idea if it's too late at this point...

not reading a damn thing falconeer says, as no one else should. he's one of the problem players of TW.

[Rab]

qan I agree with your wording and arena idea

[SpaceHiker]

You also need to reverse your situation. If you were on a bus and twenty trolls were harassing and yelling at you to get off for being a decent person. Would you get off the bus? When people think they are correct that is even more of a reason they won't get off the bus. i would never get off the bus because of peer pressure, social norms, or violence. i go where i damn well please.

You would have been beat to within an inch of your life as well. You have absolutely no idea of what you'd be dealing with in real life. And that's the difference.

[Falconeer]

Rab, what do you think about this wording? I prefer to have "in your opinion" to make it clear that it's an opinion poll. I also think it would be appropriate to list potential punishments, even if it's not decided what the exact punishment would be. Some people might be in favor of making chewing bubble gum illegal in public places -- but not if the punishment is the death penalty.

Finally, rather than saying "no X" I think it's clearer to say "X are not allowed."

Reversioning:

"In your opinion, should Trench Wars introduce the following new rule: Discussions of politics, race, gender, sexuality, and religion are not allowed. (Punishment for violations of this rule would be decided at a later time, but might include warnings, silencing or zone bans.)"

Rather than using a TWD-locked vote, which can easily be circumvented, I thought it might work to allow votes only if the player is in a ship in a special arena, and then require entrance into the arena to be based on having X number of hours played. With X being something significant beyond what someone would be able to accomplish with a new alias for the amount of the time a poll runs. For example, if it runs for 1 week (168 hours), it could require 200 hours to vote. 250 might be a comfortable cushion that would also rule out gaming the system via lesser-used aliases. Aliasing would still be punished with a hefty ban. If this system works, it could be used for more standardized decision-making in the future.


You're not the only one. But I would have to respect that this is the direction TW wants to move in, if that's what the majority of the community wants. (I don't personally have interest in maintaining a game with a highly restrictive policy on speech, but others may.)

qan why are you even entertaining this? if the majority of people wanted to ban muslims from this game would you do it? no because we don't do wrong things even if its a majority opinion dumb ass. just moderate for racism, sexism, hate, and clearly define it, and make the moderation systems more automated, as well as proportional to the offense. if you can't code in new things to make auto-gag possible, and you can't automate some sort of spam system because it's too much work for a dying game, then don't moderate anything and wait for one of the new clients to finish. you won't "win" by becoming tyrants. i will devote 20 hours a day to making sure i tarnish subspace/continuums name based on your decisions here as i've done in the past: http://deathstarbattle.blogspot.com/

the chat system in the game is not some lobby before you get into the game. if that was the case it makes perfect sense to disallow discussions of politics, race, gender, sexuality and religion because you could argue and maintain that the lobby of subspace/continuum is for finding players, requesting help, and asking questions about the game. and people can talk about more personal matters within the game itself... as it's done on table top simulator. but this isn't the case, the chat is integrated into the game, it's the actual place where discussions are allowed ... the opposite of a lobby.. censorship of this level is wrong.

zone owners always fall into the trap of treating symptoms instead of causes. i already said the causes of your problems.
1. dehumanizing people (in which case you are no better than trolls) ie. judging and being mad at people for being low lives thus showing a personal bias that implies you should never be a mod.
2. aliases
3. policing people
4. lack of automated systems
5. lack of clearly defined rules
6. club house mentality that this should be a place filled with only people you like
7. no new players to offset the few trolls that exist and drown them out
8. lack of a game-play that leaves people too busy playing to sit in spec trolling.

[Falconeer]

SpaceHiker, that won't work. But i understand the idea behind it. Ultima Online was one of the first MMOs back in 1997 and there were no safety nets for people to be protected from other people. You could be killed and looted of your possessions, you could be alive and have things stolen from your backpack, and you could have your house or castle looted after years of storing wealth and items in it, all those items gone in 1 day. It was a harsh online world with no rules and the freedom to do anything. But it worked because the community would band together to protect each other from player killers. You would have whole guilds of 200 people devoted to keeping other players safe. In Ultima online your actions had social repercussions that were felt and affected how you played the game. Still there were always griefers, trolls and PKs; people who wouldn't hesitate to kill you and loot all your things and those people formed groups of their own too.. like KWS - Killing with Style. Ultimately you sort of create a war.. especially in online communities, and maybe that was part of the fun in an MMO, the good guys vs the bad guys.

I can tell you, I've had whole communities attacking me, it never phased me and I would argue that communities of 200 people couldn't take my trolling while i could sit here ALL day and take countless endless insults from them and harassment. Ultimately that lead to me being banned for text that wasn't even hate speech, including on subspace. Like I said I've been trolling online since 1997, I grew up in games like UO, and other communities that make subspace look like carebear land. Public pressure isn't the right approach, neither is mob rule with vote kicks and vote silences. You will be ensuring the cycle of hate never ends that way. I'm a troll, so why don't people ever listen to a troll on how to handle trolls? Never understood that.

You also need to reverse your situation. If you were on a bus and twenty trolls were harassing and yelling at you to get off for being a decent person. Would you get off the bus? When people think they are correct that is even more of a reason they won't get off the bus. i would never get off the bus because of peer pressure, social norms, or violence. i go where i damn well please.

[SpaceHiker]

I can tell you this, if Priit ever had a chance to log in anymore, and he saw 1 minute of the verbal abuse that takes place today in tw and eg, both zones would be shut down immediately.

There's been some research on the issue of hate speech on the Internet, and I think some of the early findings are interesting, and certainly apply here. Sparing the details, just think about it like this:

You're playing a few rounds in pub, and you notice some blue type...

Player X mentions something about his life.

Player Y seizes the opportunity to say something hateful and dramatic about Player X.

X and Y get into a heated discussion, while the rest of pub remains silent on the issue.

The argument intensifies into pure hatred, with ideas and talk that would never be accepted in real life public.

Now imagine if we were all in a big room, like a bus, and this went down in real life. How would it be different?

Of course in real life, first of all, the Internet trolls are pathetic nerds who live in their Mom's basement. So most likely Player Y would be too cowardly to have ever said anything. But if he did say something, such as if he was in a drug induced rage, and the conversation escalated, the public would respond and confront the guy as a team. When you have 20 people in your face shouting at you that you're garbage and get your a$$ off the bus, you tend to take the next stop. I use the bus as an example as I was recently a participant in one of these forced ejections, against a drug addict that was tormenting a kid.

So, it's the lack of public outrage that allows the hate to proliferate. It's true on the bus, in a restaurant, in an online chat, as well as facebook, twitter, and other social sites (including and especially NextDoor). When we all sit back and watch, WE become the problem.

TW and EG staff are both insanely lenient on hate speech, to the point that they're jeopardizing the game's survival. But so are the players. We all need to accept some responsibility, and let the garbage know what you think of them. Trolls lack the knowledge and ability to use their computers in a constructive way, so this is their outlet, and they feed on it, so it escalates. We all have to tell them to STFU and get off the bus personally, not with a bot command. A troll can torment 1 player, but it's not as easy when 30 players are tormenting him at the same time.

[Mootland Farmer]

Make Public more competitive and intense, and players will not find the time to spam mindless crap, they will be too focused on the game itself. I'm not such how to do this, because the mechanics of the games itself are actually very limiting. As it is though, players can join a private frequency, sit in the safe zone or outer ring and spam / talk shit and detract from the game itself.

[qan]

Rab, what do you think about this wording? I prefer to have "in your opinion" to make it clear that it's an opinion poll. I also think it would be appropriate to list potential punishments, even if it's not decided what the exact punishment would be. Some people might be in favor of making chewing bubble gum illegal in public places -- but not if the punishment is the death penalty.

Finally, rather than saying "no X" I think it's clearer to say "X are not allowed."

Reversioning:

"In your opinion, should Trench Wars introduce the following new rule: Discussions of politics, race, gender, sexuality, and religion are not allowed. (Punishment for violations of this rule would be decided at a later time, but might include warnings, silencing or zone bans.)"

Rather than using a TWD-locked vote, which can easily be circumvented, I thought it might work to allow votes only if the player is in a ship in a special arena, and then require entrance into the arena to be based on having X number of hours played. With X being something significant beyond what someone would be able to accomplish with a new alias for the amount of the time a poll runs. For example, if it runs for 1 week (168 hours), it could require 200 hours to vote. 250 might be a comfortable cushion that would also rule out gaming the system via lesser-used aliases. Aliasing would still be punished with a hefty ban. If this system works, it could be used for more standardized decision-making in the future.

i would for sure uninstall after it

You're not the only one. But I would have to respect that this is the direction TW wants to move in, if that's what the majority of the community wants. (I don't personally have interest in maintaining a game with a highly restrictive policy on speech, but others may.)

[Sulla]

i would for sure uninstall after it

[Rab]

Next, if you go with a rule system, the rules cannot just be in the moderator text. The rules have to clearly be defined and written out on the website, and possibly references to the rule list have to be within the game as well.

I'd expect it to be added to the rules list at A1. Other forms of raising awareness of the change would be good too - arena message, zone welcome txt, forum post, etc.

[Sulla]

this !buy stfu is awful thing.. remove it

[Falconeer]

I'm not even going to bother to read this thread in it's entirety, as I don't need to. I've dealt with abusive moderators, rule systems, harmful people, hackers, trolls, and basically the scum of the internet for over two decades. As a troll god I am best qualified to explain the error in all your thinking, to explain how to deal with trolls, and to explain how not to deal with them.

For starters, all punishments should be in accordance with the rule being violated. That is to say for arguments sake only (because i don't agree with this) that if someone is a troll they would be silenced, a hacker/cheater would get banned, a griefer (someone who uses actions to disrupt the game, different from a troll who uses text) would be specced (example team killing). When punishments use excessive force given the violation, when they are additive based on someone's past violations treating them like a criminal, then you create a vicious cycle and you escalate a situation.

Next, if you go with a rule system, the rules cannot just be in the moderator text. The rules have to clearly be defined and written out on the website, and possibly references to the rule list have to be within the game as well.

Now this is where we get into the problem with online communities. Often times, those who use rule systems are hypocrites, they make up "rules" on the spot, they don't clearly define them, they have preferences and biases toward certain people, and more often then not people don't even use rule systems as most communities are literal dictatorships. In some sense it's good when you're direct about being a dictator - that is to say someone who openly states "whatever i say goes and you will be banned", at least everything is out in the open and there is no shit facade called "rules" covering up how much of a tyrant asshole you really are. It's worse when there are rules but they are totally disregarded by those in staff with no checks and balances for those in power, and really it's just one guys shit show.

Let's assume you guys don't want to be a dictatorship zone, that in fact you want to be an example of how much you appreciate the freedoms and rights that you enjoy within your societies. That you value some degree of fairness and some good will directed toward your player base. If this is the case then I have news for you. This is not your personal club house. Nor should it ever be. The zone, the game, any place online, should not be someone's safe space where they go to only meet and talk to people they like. The motto of subspace was "meet people from all around the world, then kill them" in honor of that statement, you will meet people from all over the world here. People you won't like.. people with different views from your own. And you know what? If it's too much for you, there are solutions. There is ?ignore playername, there is ?ignore.txt and there is ?lines=0.

Now as a troll I find it hypocritical oftentimes, that people would rather rage quit discord servers, get angry and tell mods to ban me (for non racist text), and otherwise try to do actual harm beyond text to me, because of the things i write WHEN there are other options like ?ignore. Why don't these people just ?ignore me and be done with it? This is the very reason, the principle you could say behind my trolling. One could argue these people secretly like my text, they can't wait for more of it, they like to versus me, they like having a sort of enemy. They like feeling like they have power and like using mods to satisfy their personal preferences of who should exist in their community and who should not. Really, don't fall for this trap and flawed way of thinking otherwise you risk becoming the greater bully here, more so than the guy saying distasteful things.

Moderators should really moderate for actions, not for words. But you are right there is a line, and that line has always been racism, and violent threats on life, as well as any other extremes (like extreme and obvious sexism). These are the only times text should be moderated, and even then it would not constitute a ban because of what i said earlier - the response to a text violation is a text silence. A few good reason for this is 1) it reduces retaliatory behaviours, 2) if there is mod abuse the damage done is minimal and a person is not exiled, but rather given a chance to still be apart of the community.

Now let me address a small subsection of text issues. Spam. If you want to have a spam rule, you have to clearly define what spam is. You can't declare something spam without even defining what spam is and using the reason because you are the supreme ruler with powers, lest we go back to being a dictator who doesn't really care for fairness. I've often had mods tell me, "what you write is spam" well who the fuck are you to decide that? I'm writing coherent ideas, if you don't care about it? tune it out? or you know? for once in your life use ?ignore. TO ME, spam is when someone copy and pastes (macros) the same exact thing more than 3 times within 5 seconds. And in fact the subspace server/client declares that spam too and boots you from the game. If i am *typing* something that seems repetitive or similar, as long as their are changes it is not spam, it doesn't matter how "frequent" it is. I suggest you adopt this definition of spam and tell others to use ?ignore if they have a problem.

Lastly, I've said for many years zones should have a gag or silence system that is automatic. Meaning the bot/module can recall who was silenced, it can see all their alias info and re-gag or maintain a gag on that person. This way if they change their name, if they even change their ip (supposedly there are other mechanism like machine id/mac id) they will still remain silenced. This ENTIRELY removes the need for bans, and it entirely removes the need for the mod to continually have to silence someone trying to evade the gag. The issue i think that should be focused on, is not what you do about the troublemakers in the zone, but rather that if this 'auto-gag' system is currently not possible we should focus all our attention on making it a reality instead, thereby solving most our problems.

This is a perfect segue into the next bit i have to address here, which is the reason i've always wanted this type of silence system to be in place (keep in mind i'm a "notorious" troll and yet i've always advocated for this). the reasons are two-fold. a) because bans are excessive for text violations and b) because automated systems are more impersonal than some dick head mod being a dictator toward me (granted this is not a fully automated system). A key element/reason subspace has declined is because people spent more time policing others than they did developing their zones. So the more automated a system can be the less personal it becomes, nobody is going to get revenge on a bot.. the less personal you make every situation the better. This circles back to spam. You don't like spam, don't moderate it either, make the server have a limiter on how soon you can press enter on the next line of text. ALL PROBLEMS, solved. If it's too much work or can't be done, then you really should leave the spam moderating to a variation of my definition only, lest you create a shit show of problems.

Now there are two other realities you all need to consider. One is that the game is not seeing an influx of new players, and two is that you already have a spec to pub chat text block feature which is great. The main problem with trench wars is not the "trolls" it's not the lack of dev in trench wars case (and only in trench wars case), it's the fact that you don't have an influx of players to offset the minority of trolls that exist. People you won't like will always exist, get used to that fact because you eventually have to get off subspace and live in the real world. The solution isn't to single them out as a minority and put them in concentration camps. The solution is to increase the good in the zone, let the bad sort itself out on it's own. As soon as the zone gets more productive, more populated, these people will eventually normalize overall, some will become less extreme on their own (there will be exceptions), most won't be heard or won't be relevant anymore because an overwhelming majority of people are good, voice good things, and drown them out.

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

so i say again, the problem in this game isn't the trolls and if you think so then you've just created a versus attitude that will perpetuate this same bullshit for another two decades. the problem in the game is that you don't treat people like people, and therefore you actually fall into the same category as the troll. You are dehumanizer, especially if you go down some of the paths in this thread. You want to fix the game, then fix your humanity. It starts with you since you are "not the troll", and you are in a position to make and enforce changes. that being said i was trolling the other day, a mod comes on and starts flaunting his ban hammer, being a dick with an obvious bias toward me. He did nothing at all except escalate the situation. You need people in power with "people skills" not just ban ability and nerd rage. POID messages me and starts an actual conversation with me, and suddenly I am relatively harmless by the end of that. Yeah this shit takes time, and everyone wants the easy way out. Easy way outs should never be mods. Another good example of how to deal with people is Jovan from Infantry. Why don't you stop by the infantry discord server sometimes and see a relatively friendly people place where everyone co-exists.

the problem isn't trolls, i would make the premise that the real problem is the aliases; which results in evading gags/ignores and acting out on people without social repercussions. part of the reason i don't change names often if at all as a "troll god" is two fold. I greatly dislike smurfs (anons), if it were up to me alias check would be a feature on the bot that anyone could use which discloses everyone's nick names (ip's can remain private), and i personally feel harassment can be a moderated offense. if someone ?ignores me in real life by walking away. I'm not going to stalk them and force them to hear what i'm saying, similarly i won't evade ignores. Only people desperate for attention do that. My rule is generally that if someone knows they are ?ignored, and immediately changes names, they can be pursued with auto-gag as a punishment. If they change names the NEXT DAY, then it's fair game. But altogether aliasing is a big issue and the main cause of these problems. I don't alias because i don't need to hide from social repercussions. Other people don't want a 10 year negative reputation.

in most modern games today you can only have one account, and it's associated with a billing address and real world money too, the margin for acting like a dick is small. but also most games don't moderate text either... some would argue even moderating for racism and threats of violence shouldn't happen, even if it only resulted in a gag instead of a ban. Hockey zone doesn't moderate text for example. But arguably hockey zone has a whole different dynamic, with less speccers and people more into the game as playing requires more focus, it also has a different community presumably. i think in terms of racism, it comes down to the values you want to uphold and represent, it goes beyond protecting people from being offended and into the realm of what is more intrinsically right and wrong with the world. if our game was paint ball instead of an online game, presumably we wouldn't let players physically assault other players, we would moderate physical assault and prevent it, not just because it offends someone, in this case "offense" becomes "physical harm" instead of emotional, but we would moderate physical violence because we are morally against it. as such i am morally against racism and the propagation and normalization of racism, so i agree with moderating it. besides only weak trolls resort to racism to cause trouble... a troll god would make offensive the most inoffensive thing. you can claim you are morally against toxic people who tell everyone off. sure, most of us don't get an erection when we're insulted, it's a negative experience. but i am more morally against the oppression of someone's feelings/ideas especially when there exists other options (in my hands to use) to end a more minimal offense that only affects me as an individual. fuck you falconeer is individually directed. racist word falconeer, is something that has social repercussions beyond the individual. it's not dangerous for someone who fails to ignore the person who said fuck you falconeer, to think you know that guy is right, fuck falconeer that falconeer isn't a great guy. But it is very dangerous for someone who fails to ?ignore the person who said racist word falconeer, to start adopting racism... this is why it can't really be treated like economics would be with a "free market"... certain ideas are very dangerous and that was shown in world war 2... they are also flawed.. but even if it wasn't they are based in a more deeply rooted hate that generalizes whole populations... it goes beyond the individual. so this could be an argument for moderating racism, but not some guy going off with swear words towards someone else.

[Rab]

Sure, sounds good on trying to get feedback about this issue. Let's run a poll with the votebot. Here's some preliminary wording, from what I understand of your proposal. Feel free to rephrase how you see fit. Once it's set to your liking we can run it:

"In your opinion, should any mention of politics, religion, gender, race, sexual orientation or sexuality be moderated by silencing the speaker?"

My issues with this wording:
- It needs to be clear that we're only talking about trench wars, not life in general.
- We need to find out if people agree on the problem. Whether the action is silencing or banning shouldn't change someone's vote.

Proposed wording which addresses these points:
"Should TW introduce the following new rule: No discussions of politics, race, gender, sexuality, religion."

You claim that we all know who the problem players are. But I think everyone has a different idea of who they are, unfortunately. Some things bother people more than others. For example, Eph was moved to leave because someone expressed a foolish opinion about curing cancer through diet. Yet in all likelihood, few people other than him would quit because of this, or agree that this person should be banned forever from the game. It's also worth noting that under Rab's proposed rule, his talk would be considered acceptable and not worthy of even a silence. (Correct me if I'm wrong on this, Rab.)

I reckon there are very few people, if any, that everyone can agree are a net negative for the zone. If there are, perhaps it would be easy enough to be rid of them via the equivalent of a public lynching in the town square: vote on it, and they're gone.

See: https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...-s-tw-pub-list

I have been building a list of these players for use in ignore.txt. I try to make this list as narrow as possible, to give people the maximum improvement from ignoring the minimum number of people. This is specifically the people who constantly violate the new rule if we were to introduce it. That means it is the list of players staff would be taking action against if the new rule applied (unless they decided to obey the rule). There are two types of player in the list - those who instigate, and those who get triggered. So I could do some sort of ranking if you're genuinely willing to action it.

I structured the sample ignore.txt in a way that respects that people will always have their own individual personality clashes. So none of this gets around people using ignore.txt for those reasons. Eph's guy would not be covered by any of this. There might be scope for a "no medical advice" rule, which I've seen prohibited without opposition on other sites, but I don't want to get derailled so I'm not proposing that.