Warframe Chat Moderation: Assessment and Renovation

[(PSN)the-creeperman]

Wow, all the threads got merged.. and not locked! 7 pages.. holy beejezus that was a read...

This is very awesome. See? We can actually have a good discussion.. together.

 

 

I just wanted throw my 2 cents in and say that i support the suggestions made by Fallen_Echo. I think if these ideas were implemented, it would clear up alot of bs in chat and on the forums. 

I feel warm and fuzzy.. I love all of you right now..

Edited September 18, 2018 by (PS4)the-creeperman

[Fallen_Echo]

Some minor additions, updates amd clarifications were added to the OP.

[Ryme]

I haven't been banned. But do I see a lot of threads asking and complaining about them. A lot of it seems to stem from lack of or misinformation, originating from banned people not knowing how long they have been banned for.

Maybe add a specified duration to the chat ban notifications?

[Felis_de_Vil]

I have adapted to the profanity filter is always a mystery since years back when I tried to name my character with the ID where I use in most of the multiplayer games (and apparently it didn't get passed by the filter) as I understand strict regulation on this aspect would help with building a healthy community.

 

Until recently I got auto-banned for misusing a term to describe transgender while I totally didn't mean it when discussing Nezha in regional for the first time since U13. 

My point is, I am not an English native and there are a lot of players who are not that sophisticated in this language neither and we all make stupid mistakes from time to time. Plus, there is already a built-in profanity filter and I see no necessity to include those words into the bot's happy trigger.

I would suggest employing a warning system- instead of an instant ban, code the bot to kick the offender from the channel and send a pm as a warning. I have been with DE for all these years and I know it is a lift of finger's work to implicate this. Also, I strongly protest against the filter content as I was later informed "transgender" is also forbidden - this is almost fascism. Please do revise the filtering dictionary and fix it.

I really appreciate the efforts on profanity restriction but I genuinely feel as if my power of discourse is somewhat suppressed and I trust whoever believes in democracy would want his/her/its favourite game to be this way. Thanks for reading.

[Neuerwinter]

Hello, I've seen many threads about this on the forum and while some are rants for getting banned for obvious legit reasons, some are very controversial to me. Today I happened to see one myself, of a guy typing "hello gays i need help" and while he did correct himself in the next message, he was kicked off anyway (very sure not by a kickbot , it wasn't an instaban). And another guy who saw it and expressed his dissent without using insults got shut off too. So I am askin, if something is wrong with mods having the happy trigger and abuse of their duty and you are concerned about it, how do you actually report it? and with which proof if it gets deleted right away? 

[Gremlin]

U and a is nowhere near each other on the keyboard though so the mistake looks to be intentional. 

[SnakeGoddess]

Honestly I agree, chat moderation desperately needs a warning system, and that's coming from someone who's NEVER been chat banned. I also pretty much never use region chat, primarily for fear of being banned from any and all chats for the slightest of infractions. That's..... not a good thing. There should be a middle ground between "avoiding region chat due to over toxicity" (like Black Desert) and "Avoiding region chat because of hair-trigger bans" (like Warframe). It's gotten to the point where their campaign against racism, while noble at heart, has become racist in and of itself by virtue of alienating anyone who didn't grow up in the ol' US of A.

I really hope DE starts to see the numerous recent threads on chat bans as a rallying cry for desperately needed reform.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Snakeattack54
Removed line made erroneous due to thread merge

[(XBOX)Shodian]

I have no fear of being banned from chat because I don't talk about things that shouldn't be talked about in region chat. It's not hard either. Just stick to talking about Warframe and/or games in general and you won't have to worry about being banned.

[Artekkor]

Только что, (XB1)Shodian сказал:

I have no fear of being banned from chat because I don't talk about things that shouldn't be talked about in region chat. It's not hard either. Just stick to talking about Warframe and/or games in general and you won't have to worry about being banned.

But who defined which things are and are not to be talked about in region chat? Words do not have power on their own, context in which they are said does. And machines are bad at seeing context.

I always assumed that such public chats are there just for whatever, including S#&$posting and memeing.

I already suggested this once on steam forums and now will suggest it here: maybe its time for separate "Off-Topic" chat channel in warframe? The one that wont be under kickbots's tyrany.

Well, aside from common sense things such as no 10 messages per second and caps-only.

[(PSN)abbacephas]

14 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

I always assumed that such public chats are there just for whatever, including S#&$posting and memeing.

Why would you assume that?

[(XBOX)Shodian]

24 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

I already suggested this once on steam forums and now will suggest it here: maybe its time for separate "Off-Topic" chat channel in warframe? The one that wont be under kickbots's tyrany.

If you want that you can go to Discord. 

[Fallen_Echo]

3 hours ago, (XB1)Shodian said:

I have no fear of being banned from chat because I don't talk about things that shouldn't be talked about in region chat. It's not hard either. Just stick to talking about Warframe and/or games in general and you won't have to worry about being banned.

Okay, heres an example:

Good<- just replace the last letter with a k and you get banned.

Trolls, chat trickers, accidents, not enough dictionary knowledge of all existing slurs can get you banned easily. Last years laugh was linking frames together with the kinetic trap item from simaris, could get newbies banned easily.

The point of this thread is to suggest a system what both gets harsher for offenders while at the same time lets people learn from their mistakes.

[Soki01]

On 2018-09-04 at 2:52 AM, TheGrimCorsair said:

If new players are running around spouting transphobic garbage like you, they can either buck up and not do it again, or walk.

Unless they are tricked in one way or another or they say something that is on the Kickbots list, out of context which happens

[Artekkor]

3 часа назад, (PS4)abbacephas сказал:

Why would you assume that?

Because region chat (and similiar chats from my anecdotal experience) have no defined purpose. They are basically in-game public squares. Same applies to relay / cetus / incoming fortuna chat. Where else one is supposed to peacefully fool around? Trading?

3 часа назад, (XB1)Shodian сказал:

If you want that you can go to Discord. 

Something tells if same thing ("Go and build your own thing with blackjack and ~...") was told to preachers of safe-space chat they wouldn't accept it. Why should i?
Not to mention that it would require to have a pinned thread on both steam and local forums reminding people (because there will be a lot of such people) that such place exists.
And i am 100% sure that someone will complain about it too and ask to remove said PSA thread and never mention them again.
So, no deal.

My point is... As long as this excesive and ridiculous (and i do mean it) chat moderation goes on, and as new people keep coming into the game - threads that criticize it will keep appearing again and again.
Here's an interesting thought: if there was just basic chat moderation (no super-fast spam, no excesive caps lock) threads that would call and advocate for MORE moderation either wouldn't exist or they would be way more rare than anti-moderation ones. By a long shot.

So, why not just go for a compromise and just give them a separate chat?
People that don't like memes and insanity that comes with wild internet people can just stay away from it, while the others will stay away from region (because kickbot is still there).

Everyone's have a place to be and everyone's happy. And if someone's not...
The only type of person that could dislike such a compromise is the type that hates when somebody does something they dont like so much - they want to have absolute power of controling everything everyone around them does so nobody could ever do something that offends / upsets said person, lest the offender faces a presecution.
In other words: a rather radicaly-extreme individual of PC mentality.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Artek94

[(PSN)abbacephas]

14 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

Because region chat (and similiar chats from my anecdotal experience) have no defined purpose. 

Therein lies the rub.

 

14 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

They are basically in-game public squares.

Here's the thing about public squares though, they aren't free-for-alls. Even in the real world, people can't do or say whatever they want in a public square without any sort of repercussions.

 

15 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

Where else one is supposed to peacefully fool around? 

In Discord, on Facebook, on Twitter, in clan chat, in alliance chat...etc. There are plenty of other places for one to "peacefully fool around". It doesn't have to be in the "in-game public square" as you put it.

[SnakeGoddess]

Here's something I would like the "Dont like it? Leave. DE makes the rules" crowd to consider:

Let's go back to elementary school, when we're all still trying to make friends and figure out who we interact with well and who we don't. Back then, it was common to make new friends and hang out with people you've never hung out with before because the cliques hadn't really formed yet like they will in middle/high school. At almost every school, there's at least ONE kid with the suuuuper strict mom who has a gazillion rules for her kid and the kids that come over. It doesn't take long for all the other kids to realize that they don't want to hang out there because they're always getting barked at for one thing or another. As a consequence, that kid often doesn't have very many, if any, friends at all. They got driven away by the kid's overbearing mother.

That's basically the situation we're running into here. Yes, DE makes the rules. I'm not disputing that fact. But when the rules themselves are driving more people away than a lack of them would, one has to stop and consider their effectiveness. There MUST be a middle ground between total anarchy and what we have now. Too many people are afraid to come over to DE's house because of overbearing moderation.

[Artekkor]

24 минуты назад, (PS4)abbacephas сказал:

Here's the thing about public squares though, they aren't free-for-alls. Even in the real world, people can't do or say whatever they want in a public square without any sort of repercussions.

In Discord, on Facebook, on Twitter, in clan chat, in alliance chat...etc. There are plenty of other places for one to "peacefully fool around". It doesn't have to be in the "in-game public square" as you put it.

Yeah. Ignoring the obvious illegal extremes (openly inciting violence / defaming someone) - we are talking about SOCIAL repercussions, which is - people voicing their opinion about how they dont like you / your words / your ideas. That's fine.
The police coming you and taking you away because someone's offended - now that's a dangerous extreme, concidering that anything can offend anyone.

The alternatives you mentioned are not helpful, especially since Facebook and Twitter are already pretty tyranical too (the only reason im still on twitter is because i need to follow some people's tweets for my own curiocity. I barely tweet at all).
And Discord implies that first i must intentionally find and invite people who are interested in some fooling. Which is quiet frankly too muchwork to just fool around and ruins the fun.

Now, i did heard that the reason a lot of memes are kickboted like that is to avoid spam. An argument that i understand and can get behind. Yet the solution was... To just nuke it.

Here's the thing: i don't like the extremes. "Any idea pushed to its' logical conclusion is an absurd one". Leaving everything unregulated is equally bad as just nuking everything.
Hence why i keep reciting the "basic moderation" elements. The reason why i dislike current moderation system is because its way too much on the "nuking" side of things. Which hurts especially when you consider that:
A) I saw moderators giving away suspensions based on ASSUMPTIONS that what was said was meant / can be hurtful.
B) The suspended never get a reason or a basic warning that they were suspended and most importantly - why. There was once a time when kickbot would give you a private message with "why", but somehow its gone save for few exceptions.

Its quiet annoying to post a completely legit, not-offensive (from my point view), well-thought message only to notice after about 10-15 seconds that suddenly the chat has gone unnaturally quiet. To say that it upsets me is an understatement. Even considering that i can fix it with a simple relog.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Artek94

[Takkov]

Just start by assuming that all people are equal. That means that people dont have emotions, just like me. So people cant be offended, because that requires emotions. Problem solved.

[Fallen_Echo]

Guys please for the love of the void, stay on topic. We want to improve the chat moderation with suggestions and such.

On 2018-07-20 at 9:30 PM, Fallen_Echo said:

Im pretty sure most people already know the problems of the region chats moderation but if not im happy to list them.

When kicks happen whenever the user feels they are justified or not theres no information given, the chat just goes silent and the user may only notice it because the lively chats suddenly became abadoned.

The same course happens for bans the offenders may or may not get a message (thought this might be fixed now), the offfenders after the initial message doesnt get any information what they done wrong, how long they are banned which causes further confusion.

This becomes infuriating if the offender fell for a trolls trick or accidentally typed in a word what is somewhere in a faraway place is considered as an insult, a slur.

My goal here is to improve the system in a way what creates an enviroment where someone can make a mistake and learn from it while also punishes repeat offenders harshly.

Here it goes:

 

 

1.) Instead of banning for minor mistakes like typing into the wrong chat the bot from now on posts your message in the proper chat and sends out a warning that these kind of messages should be posted in X chat window.

 You can make 3 errors per day and the bot warns you to use the proper chat before it bans you. The duration of the ban is 1 day.

 

2.) Instead of banning the bot now simply deletes your messages if it deemes it as spam. You will get a warning and can make 2 mistakes per day of joining in a spam line before you get banned. The duration of the ban is 1 day.

 

3.) When someone tries to use an insult or slur whats currently prohibited the bot simply deletes the message and warns the user that this kind of thing is not welcome here.

• You get 1 warning and the next one is the ban.

• One warning is universal in this case and its active for 240 hours, if the user uses another word whats prohibited the minimum ban is 2 days.

• Each new warning from the initial increases the ban lenght by 2 days while also resets the hour counter on them.

• If an user accumulates 10 warnings the bot sends a report to an avaible moderator who can decide if the user is worthy of having chat access, if the mod decides that the user is unworthy of it hes banned from the chat system completely for atleast half year.

• For the whole duration of banning and warning cooldown the users who crossed the line are marked so everyone can decide whenever they want to talk with them.

 

4.) The bans only affect the main chats and never the squadchat and the clan chat. Those are private areas. The pm system usage is limited to friends only.

Clan chat gets its own chat filter system what can be edited by the leader and the highest ranking officers of the clan, they also can set the duration of the punishment they give out there.

 

5.) Thought the users while still can use the squad, clan and pm chats their names are marked with a small message next to their username [banned for X] for the duration of the ban.

Users can also see whats going on the other chats but cannot write in them.

Users while can only message their friends in the pm system they are kept open for those who want to communicate privately. The only limit in how to talk to someone who is not a friend in a ban period is that the other side must start the conversation.

 

6.) The warnings given by the bot or a moderator in all case have the following information:

• What you typed in, soo you can see your error.

• What warning is this. If you get warned for spamming the message will clearly says "You have been warned for spamming"

• Incase of insults and slurs a message claiming why is this prohibited and what else similar is prohibited thought no clear examples are given

• What will happen if you continue the prohibited behaviour, kick, 1 day ban, etc..

 

 

7.) The bans given by the bot or moderators in all cases have the following information and message:

• A simply start what makes the message appear more personal."Hello anotherbannedone ......."

• A copy of the text what has banned you " you have been banned for typing [you sausage people make me sick] "

• A reason why that text is banned " ,this and the similar insults were deemed unrespectful and hurtful for the community "

• Information on how long is the ban is " for this you have been banned and marked for 48 hours "

• And finally a system message what tells you how much warnings or marks you accumulated for this "This is your 2nd warning in this period"

 

8.) The bot should have no downtime to avoid the mess what can be seen at early and late hours.

9.) The bot no longer has the ability to kick from the chat it only reacts in the above described ways and bans accordingly.

 

10.) A new report function is added named chat report. This report send a copy of the message X user posted to the bot who attaches any info on the users current warnings to it and forwards it to any active moderator to check if it tried to avoid a bot ban.

This function is avaible on all chats with the adddition that you can select "mute and report" in squad chat if you think someone crossed the lines too much.

 

11.) Additionally the chat suspension should be alwaly negotiable like when your message gets removed here.

When you get the warning and you dont agree with it you can forward it to another random moderator for overruling.

If that fails you stay in the ban/keep your warning or in some cases you get a longer ban depending on behaviour, IF its successfull you lose the warning or get out of the ban while you also get tagged as [justified] for mods what makes sure that the original banner/warning giver cant reban you as vengeance or pettyness.

Obviously a change like this needs big upgrades on the whole system such as additional capacity upgrade for keeping warnings and more server power to avoid downtimes, but i believe an update like this can go in great ways to reduce toxicity, trolling and overall unwanted behaviours.

 

1 hour ago, Artek94 said:

So, why not just go for a compromise and just give them a separate chat?
People that don't like memes and insanity that comes with wild internet people can just stay away from it, while the others will stay away from region (because kickbot is still there).

You know this somehow makes sense. This suggestion fits perfectly the "if you dont like it go to x" mentality what always appear in other suggestions.

A separate chat where no bans or kicks happen you can post whatever you want, thought i would like to put in a compromise here. If you activate this chat you cannot go back to region for atleast a month. You know to enforce, the everyone to their own mindset.

[she3py]

The following is an example of <topic>:

translations are simplified

Player A: where can a beginner get nano spores?

Player B: maybe from alerts
Player B: or Saturn if i'm not wrong

me: or you ask if someone drags you with him you for farming

Moderator (automated, judging from reaction speed): you were kicked for recruiting. Only use recruitment chat for this.

 

Since Player A was only MR3 and it was obvious, that he has no access to Saturn, it should be possible to at least mention the possibility of him asking for help from higher level players.

 

This thread is meant to outline, that DEs automated chat filtering needs improvement (at least the german version).
Is chat filter adaption in other languages just as lackluster?

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

6 hours ago, Artek94 said:

maybe its time for separate "Off-Topic" chat channel in warframe? The one that wont be under kickbots's tyrany.

That's what Region Chat already is. 9/10 times nobody is talking about Warframe, and that's perfectly okay. Kickbot operates for slurs and curse words, and an Off-Topic channel shouldn't be free of that moderation. 

[Fallen_Echo]

7 hours ago, she3py said:

This thread is meant to outline, that DEs automated chat filtering needs improvement (at least the german version).
Is chat filter adaption in other languages just as lackluster?

This thread was made for the standard english regional chat so yes, all of them is similarly problematic.

If you check the first page i attempted to create a ruleset for the bot what would only redirect your above message and not kick you for it.

[Fallen_Echo]

11 hours ago, Artek94 said:

-Snip-

Please do not discuss what should and what should not be banable.

The main objective of the thread is to improve bot and moderator behaviour and not to fiddle with the words what can ban you.

[Artekkor]

5 часов назад, Fallen_Echo сказал:

Please do not discuss what should and what should not be banable.

The main objective of the thread is to improve bot and moderator behaviour and not to fiddle with the words what can ban you.

Well, that's what the thread i was a part of was discussing.
It got merged unfortunately. Or maybe it was?... I don't remember.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 hour ago, Artek94 said:

Well, that's what the thread i was a part of was discussing.
It got merged unfortunately. Or maybe it was?... I don't remember.

And that's probably why it's not around anymore. Look, let's face it, there have been countless people who come on after being banned to argue about why they should be able to use slurs and not be punished. Those will never lead to anything useful. Some people come on complaining about things that weren't offensive but got picked up by the bot for a ban. Those may lead to a refined list, but if the bot is as simple as I think, that's not an easy thing to fix. 

This thread is a request for a different system, based on the ones we already have. One that is made in recognition that new people are being trolled, and that makes up the vast majority of bot interventions. One that recognises that not everyone uses the same obscure slurs and we can't realistically expect everyone to know what is on the list. One that recognises that repeat offenders and trolls deserve harsher penalties. One that recognises that sometimes people type in the wrong channel. One that recognises that you don't actually need to be out of the chat if you just can't send any messages, so there are multiple ways to skin a cat. One that ensures that we are told what we did wrong, so we can avoid doing that again in the future. 

 

If you can help us think about all of what's in the first post of the thread, find the flaws and strengths, then maybe we can get to something they can adopt for the benefit of all of us.