Excessive Power Given to Chat Bans

[TenDen]

"Thank you for your feedback. To make our development team aware of this, please post your request on the Warframe Feedback sub-forum."

This is the response support gave. Do you really expect support to be able to unlock private chatrooms themselves and modify the actual game?

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

18 minutes ago, TenDen said:

That's is a bad example in many ways.

In a real world comparison a house would be a clan not public chatroom. And if the 'child'/player does not like it they could chat privately similar to /w or discord.

An example I would try to give is going in front of the president's house and saying you'll blow it up. In response they'll obviously through you in jail or put you under house arrest. Either way you still get the right to talk to family members and possibly friends.

I disagree with you on the merit of the example, point out that your suggestion on how to chat privately already works just fine as I'm sure you knew, and it hasn't really worked that way for the folks in Gitmo has it? 

When you're thrown in jail in most places, your ability to communicate, even with your family and friends is severely curtailed. How, when, how long, how often, how many at a time, all can be affected. It's all part of the whole punishment thing. 

25 minutes ago, TenDen said:

"Thank you for your feedback. To make our development team aware of this, please post your request on the Warframe Feedback sub-forum."

This is the response support gave. Do you really expect support to be able to unlock private chatrooms themselves and modify the actual game?

Yeah I've seen similar. You can search for the million and one threads where people say support told them to come over and post here. 

Realistically I don't see much reason to decouple the "private chats" when the obvious (and common response) is often "you wouldn't have had this problem if people just behaved themselves in a reasonable way". 

 

Personally I have deep sympathy for the newbs who don't realise that the person they're responding to is a troll. I have deep sympathy for people who use words that they do not realise may also have negative connotations in North America. I have sympathy for the people who have said something game related and manage to innocently combine phrases that triggers a false positive. 

I don't have sympathy for people who thought that it would be funny to say something "naughty/offensive". I don't sympathise with people who were informed that certain things would get them banned and decided to test it out. I don't have sympathy for people who managed to get themselves banned, and then want to not be banned as much, because it's taking too long, and they're not really enjoying it. 

[TenDen]

Then at the very least would you agree that DE could allow for clan and friend only chatrooms as opposed to cutting off all communication.

Edited July 8, 2019 by TenDen

[Basalto]

7 hours ago, (XB1)Shodian said:

I mean, you can criticize it. But it's still Mesopotamia's rules. So you better be careful. Lol

Plus all this is is probably a week or two chat ban. It's nothing as serious as an eye for an eye. Lmao

I intentionally brought up an absurd example to make it easier to see why rules occasionally need to be criticized and possibly changed, as I believe most people would agree that "an eye for an eye" is just too much in 2019.

[(PSN)AmberPhoenix42]

Why are you people defending an obviously way to strict ban bot? 

Think about it. As I take it from the posts I've read so far on this forum, right now everyone who the bot bans, regardless of how big of a rulebreak they have supposedly committed, they all get the same amount of time out. 

A week long ban is still ridiculous. I'm not gonna stand back on my opinion about that. 

This is a video game, not the real world, but even in there, a silly joke won't cause the same type of punishment as a bank robbery. At best you get some weird glances and nobody laughs, but you won't get your mouth taped over so you can't talk to anybody. 

And just imagine, you are not even told what you did wrong. So obviously you aren't gonna know what not to do next time. 

I'm still not saying the ban itself is what I'm a bit mad about, no. The way it is done is what's a bit strange to me. 

I can assume we are all adults here. So why are you all trying to treat eachother like children. I can certainly see nobody in this thread acts like one. Including me. 

Being annoyed by getting an unfair punishment is not equivalent to acting like a child. 

[(XBOX)R3d P01nt]

12 hours ago, TenDen said:

What I say by freedom of speech is that it is fine if punishment is given that restricts our PUBLIC speech rights. However, our private speech rights should not be included in that punishment as it does not apply to freedom of speech. Squad, whisper, clan, alliance chats are NOT public chatrooms, they are private chatrooms and therefore should not be restricted during bans. Only the other parties in said chatrooms should have the right to mute or ban members from that chatroom.

DE owns the servers that all chat is conducted on, including clan/alliance/squad/PMs.  It is still not completely private and using those chats is not a right, but rather a privilege.  Abuse of chatting privileges can get one's privilege to chat revoked on all DE servers.

[(XBOX)R3d P01nt]

2 hours ago, (PS4)AmberPhoenix42 said:

I can assume we are all adults here. So why are you all trying to treat eachother like children. I can certainly see nobody in this thread acts like one. Including me.

And DE treats us that way by expecting that we will act like adults in chat and use our chat privileges in a mature way.  Telling "jokes" that violate the chat rules is not acting in a mature way.

[(PSN)AmberPhoenix42]

45 minutes ago, (XB1)R3d P01nt said:

And DE treats us that way by expecting that we will act like adults in chat and use our chat privileges in a mature way.  Telling "jokes" that violate the chat rules is not acting in a mature way.

Oh yes, because if you're an adult you can't joke around. This is a more serious conversation. That situation was not. It was just a fun, silly exchange between users, that the BOT deemed offensive in some way. It was not. Stop trying to force it down my throat that I'm a horrible, immature idiot for something as insignificant as this.

[(XBOX)Shodian]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)AmberPhoenix42 said:

Oh yes, because if you're an adult you can't joke around. This is a more serious conversation. That situation was not. It was just a fun, silly exchange between users, that the BOT deemed offensive in some way. It was not. Stop trying to force it down my throat that I'm a horrible, immature idiot for something as insignificant as this.

It was not to you. That doesn't mean that it wasn't to somebody else. Look, I get it, I tell a lot of immature jokes myself, but that doesn't mean I can tell them everywhere I want. There's a time and place for them and in the chat is clearly neither. Next time I suggest making a voice chat or use Discord if you want to tell immature jokes. 

[GuiJay]

51 minutes ago, (XB1)R3d P01nt said:

And DE treats us that way by expecting that we will act like adults in chat and use our chat privileges in a mature way.  Telling "jokes" that violate the chat rules is not acting in a mature way.

And what about not-jokes that simply contain an auto-ban word that's taken entirely out of context by the Kickbot? I was banned for a (I presume) a week for saying death threats are not acceptable and I have no recourse. Meanwhile, people can tell other people to "commit death" simply because it avoids the word list. Who's at fault here?

End result is that the auto-ban system WILL have false positives and nothing but a human being can properly judge if a line of text is a punishable offense or not - but we have NO recourse. If we get auto-banned for whatever reason the auto-ban is enforced. It's maddeningly infuriating.

Keep the auto-kick in order to enforce some form of sanity in public chat, but allow us to appeal the robot-given verdict at the very least.

[Faceguy]

11 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

And then your child says, "well that's ok, he can just hang with me upstairs in my room until his punishment is over you can't punish him if he's hanging out with me in the 'private' space, which is really just a part of the space that you own that I'm allowed to call my own. And I will justify this because Jimmy here once bought gum from the store you own, and I will give you hints of vague threats about a loss of customers and income if you don't allow this."......

Very well said.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

10 hours ago, TenDen said:

Then at the very least would you agree that DE could allow for clan and friend only chatrooms as opposed to cutting off all communication.

Could? Yes, probably. 

Should? LOL, no. They should however give a warning, and increase the length of the bans based on recent ban history. They should also enforce their own policies and ensure that actions taken include informative reasons. 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

3 hours ago, (PS4)AmberPhoenix42 said:

Why are you people defending an obviously way to strict ban bot? 

Because the alternative is supporting people who are trying to see how low they can stoop and get away with it, kind of like what you did? 

 

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Think about it. As I take it from the posts I've read so far on this forum, right now everyone who the bot bans, regardless of how big of a rulebreak they have supposedly committed, they all get the same amount of time out. 

That's why I support incremental bans. That way you can keep doing what you think is funny, and be put in time out for longer and longer periods. Everybody wins. 

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A week long ban is still ridiculous. I'm not gonna stand back on my opinion about that. 

Says the person who has problems telling what is appropriate behaviour? 

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This is a video game, not the real world, but even in there, a silly joke won't cause the same type of punishment as a bank robbery. At best you get some weird glances and nobody laughs, but you won't get your mouth taped over so you can't talk to anybody. 

You wanna try yelling "I got a bomb.... Kidding it's just a joke bro" the next time you're in the airport? Tape on your mouth will be the least of your worries. 

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And just imagine, you are not even told what you did wrong. So obviously you aren't gonna know what not to do next time. 

Somehow I figure you know exactly what you did. 

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I'm still not saying the ban itself is what I'm a bit mad about, no. The way it is done is what's a bit strange to me. 

I can assume we are all adults here. So why are you all trying to treat eachother like children. I can certainly see nobody in this thread acts like one. Including me. 

Again you've already proven that you are not a particularly good judge of that. 

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Being annoyed by getting an unfair punishment is not equivalent to acting like a child. 

No, but it's something that someone who is prone to act like a child would do, especially since the ban was fair, and you're just unhappy that you have been punished. 

Take a look at a misbehaved child who is told that they're being punished. "THAT'S NOT FAIR, I DON'T DESERVE THIS" is a common refrain. 

 

 

 

39 minutes ago, GuiJay said:

Keep the auto-kick in order to enforce some form of sanity in public chat, but allow us to appeal the robot-given verdict at the very least.

This part is not so bad in my eyes. But the sheer number of bans and complaints means that you are unlikely to get a quick investigation and response. 

[TenDen]

So, those who are against are saying a 17+ age game should have stricter chatroom policies and punishments than most countries have for public speaking?

Edited July 8, 2019 by TenDen

[(XBOX)R3d P01nt]

4 minutes ago, TenDen said:

So, those who are against are saying a 17+ age game should have stricter chatroom policies and punishments than most countries have for public speaking?

I'm saying that people who are 17+ should know how to act in a mature way and follow the chat rules.

1 hour ago, GuiJay said:

And what about not-jokes that simply contain an auto-ban word that's taken entirely out of context by the Kickbot? I was banned for a (I presume) a week for saying death threats are not acceptable and I have no recourse. Meanwhile, people can tell other people to "commit death" simply because it avoids the word list. Who's at fault here?

Without knowing what was said in chat, I can't really say much about your specific case.  When you see people behaving badly in chat and no moderators are around to deal with it, take screenshots and send them to support.  They are better equipped to deal with people in chat than you.

[(PSN)AmberPhoenix42]

I see, I'm not taken seriously here. I won't continue a conversation where anything I say is degraded and dismissed because I happened act a little bit silly one time.

Also. Excuse me?! Did you just assume I was purposefully trying to push my luck with the kickbot? I was never kicked before from anywhere and if I knew what caused me to be kicked I wouldn't be here looking for answers. So far all I found was people telling me I'm an idiot child who should accept everything that happenens, because I'm dumb and don't know better. 

Good day! 

Edited July 8, 2019 by (PS4)AmberPhoenix42

[GuiJay]

2 hours ago, (PS4)AmberPhoenix42 said:

Also. Excuse me?! Did you just assume I was purposefully trying to push my luck with the kickbot?

Unfortunately, that seems to be the default stance that many of the more prolific forum-poster adopt whenever a discussion about chat ban occurs. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty, eh?

[TenDen]

5 hours ago, (XB1)R3d P01nt said:

I'm saying that people who are 17+ should know how to act in a mature way and follow the chat rules.

You can still have mature conversation and still get banned. Heck tons of people act mature these days and drop casual swear words and all sorts of offensive language but still conduct themselved in a mature manner.

What rules? Until they post a list of banned words, they will not have rules that people can easily abide by.

[(XBOX)R3d P01nt]

1 minute ago, TenDen said:

What rules?

https://www.warframe.com/terms

https://www.warframe.com/eula

You're welcome.

 

[TenDen]

Neither of those links have specific lists of banned words. Without that clarity they cannot be followed. There is too much leeway in saying 'offensive' content is subject to punishment/ban as people's idea of 'offensive' greatly varies from person to person. Also if 'offensive' language is used against something other than a human, you cannot consider it such as no one is actually being offended on the other end, yet they would still get banned. This is why DE would need an actual list of banned words to enforce chatroom rules.

Edited July 8, 2019 by TenDen

[GuiJay]

Here's a thought - how hard would it be to have the chat system highlight "bannable" words as you type?

[TenDen]

perfect

[Letter13]

If a user demonstrates that they are unable to act responsibly in the in-game chat, then their privileges to use the in-game chat will be impacted. Depending on the violation, the punishment may only be for a specific channel (i.e. a suspension from region chat, a suspension from trade chat, etc), or for the chat system as a whole.

9 times out of 10, a chat suspension is the result of the chat bot acting. While I do agree that some punishments are a bit disproportionate to certain offenses and that there are probably ways the system can be improved, ultimately DE controls the chat bot--this includes the words that cause the chat bot to act, as well as the punishments to be issued for violations. If DE feels as though the punishments fit the rule violations, then that's what they will be.