When we cross chat filter, just give us a warning before banning and a short "why".

[rune_me]

2 minutes ago, Marthrym said:

The fact that you could even think there is room for debate over whether Freedom of speech should be protected worries me greatly.

 

[Gandergear]

29 minutes ago, Sikreci said:

I'm legitimately interested to know now how you're able to draw a connection between "man's capacity for evil" and "videogame chat moderation policies." This is fascinating.

I think his points rather obvious, he whom has power will abuse it, no matter how little he actually is given. The ring of Gyges if you will.

36 minutes ago, rune_me said:

Yes. That is almost certainly what is needed. Not sure it will happen, but that would make a big difference I feel.

I'd like to expand with a more concise breakdown of both parties major arguments and points, if i misconstrue either party please let me know so i can correct. This is meant to be a 'course correction' so that both parties have their ideals and ideas cemented. The ideas of @Tonks-Prime and @rune_me will be the basis of both arguments (more could be added but it'd just confuse me). Please note that if one party is stated as having a viewpoint that doesn't exclude the other from sharing it, it just hasn't been clear what their thoughts are on that issue.

Both parties recognize a problem with the automated bot system and that the best solution is to have higher standards for moderators.

@Tonks-Prime is a proponent for minimal moderation due to the ideals of free speech (moderation available through the report player function), although WF is not a public forum and therefore DE has final say, he believes that players still have a right to say what they believe is too much censorship and that moderation abuse should be acted on swiftly and publicly. First infractions should carry light punishments however if a player continues to abuse the system of course heavier punishment should be alotted. Players should also have the power to filter all of their chats using a system similar to trade chat.

@rune_me is a proponent for changing the automated bot to flag inappropriate posts so that they can be reviewed by a human.  He also believes that there should be more moderators to improve the quality of the chat overall. The bot shouldn't be allowed to ban players from the chat, but if no moderators are on then the bot should have the maximum power of only removing inappropriate posts. He also believes that since WF is not a public form DE is not beholden to change what is/isn't acceptable based on community feedback.

 

The major discontent between both parties is the questions of

1. Is DE beholden to change moderation based on community feedback/outrage/etc?

2. What is too much moderation, if trolls are just going to find new ways to skirt them, creating new false positives?

3. Is it correct for a moderator to attempt to use personal politics to influence moderation?

 

Hopefully my analysis was correct, if not I'll correct it since the discussion has gotten a bit muddled, it'd be good for all parties to reassess their main talking points.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Gandergear
Corrected for both parties

[ShiraHagane]

yes

[peterc3]

15 minutes ago, Demoniii said:

I want to be able to use almost any word I want

Too bad?

16 minutes ago, Demoniii said:

That's why democracy exists, and moderators shouldn't be dictators.

This ain't a democracy.

17 minutes ago, Demoniii said:

If you are offended by something, just go away

If you are offended by their chat restrictions, just go away.

[notlamprey]

1 minute ago, Sikreci said:

I'm legitimately interested to know now how you're able to draw a connection between "man's capacity for evil" and "videogame chat moderation policies." This is fascinating.

Oh, sure. It might take a bit of wandering to find the right angle to work in from, but I can at least make a start.

People are motivated actors. We have goals, and work to reach them. Not every goal is for the benefit of self and others, though.

Sometimes we hold grudges, or let pain direct our energy towards goals that wouldn't generate positive effects for ourselves or other people. One easy, and I hope you'll forgive the fact that it's easy, example would be the vengeful act of vandalizing a cheating SO's vehicle.

That act doesn't actually improve anything, even though it might feel good in the moment. When someone does such a thing, they weren't motivated to improve anything. They just wanted someone else to hurt as a kind of compensation for their own pain.

This is where we can pick up the topic of things like "videogame chat moderation policies." People come into these positions of power and influence with some sort of goal in mind. As with all other things, not every goal is constructive. Some people are bringing personal baggage to the table, and may use their moderation position as a means of acting towards a destructive goal. People who have felt historically trodden on, bullied, or otherwise mistreated by the world may be unable to responsibly handle this newfound power.

 - a small aside to illustrate how such a thing can work in animals: sometimes animals are sadly subjected to periods of prolonged starvation, either by mere tragedy or human cruelty. when these animals regain access to plentiful food, they very often become aggressive in the presence of food. prolonged exposure to stress and threat has caused physiological changes in the brain, and these aggressive habits have to be slowly extinguished before the animal can coexist peacefully with others again.-

Things get worse when people who have the opportunity to act out their vengeful or angry feelings don't know themselves well enough to know that this is a danger. They can very quickly travel down an angry and harmful road so quickly that before they realize what's happened, they are almost beyond the reach of anyone's ability to help bring them back into a socially equilibrated mode.

I hope I was able to stay close enough to the topic at hand with all that discursive rambling. I've sometimes been called the Andre Agassi of talking, and it's not always a good thing 😛

 

 

[SpicyDinosaur]

Freeze peach?

 

Actually, this isn't a democracy at all. It's a company, and you agree to follow it's rules, as well as the forums when you sign in, register, etc.

 

You can thank capitalism for that.

 

But I suppose the advantage is hate speech is crushed. No one can stop you from using any word you want really, you just have to suffer the consequences. Or melt?

 

That's actually the way free speech, this particular democratic republic works etc. I suggest more reading on constitutional law. Or at least questioning a better expert than I on why an internet forum and FTP mmo aren't the same as the federal govt.

[rune_me]

11 minutes ago, Gandergear said:

@rune_me is a proponent for smarter automated moderation and that while maybe some players fall through the cracks for a false positive, ultimately the bot does its job well of removing troublesome players. He believes that the current punishment alotted (typically a 1 week ban) is appropriate for most infractions (barring of course false positives).

I believe first and foremost that more moderators is the best solution. Human moderators will always be able to see through stuff like the Niger-dilemma (as in, they can see right away is someone is trying to cheat the system or actually referring to a city called Niger). The bot can censor out words it don't like fine, but the more responsbility is taken away from the bot and passed to actual moderators, the better.

But that would require many more moderators than we currently have. There are obvious "off-hours" in region chat, where only the bot is on duty.

So my suggestion is: Get more moderators, if possible, and let them do the actual banning, suspension, etc. Let the bot deal with just filtering out the words DE don't want. That would be an ideal scenario.

As for banning time. I am neither for or against. I don't actually care how long. I could easily survive being banned from chat for a week, so it doesn't bother me, but I wouldn't scream bloody murder if it was cut down. I'd leave that debate for someone else. I have no stakes in it.

Edited May 23, 2018 by rune_me

[rune_me]

6 hours ago, SoupBread said:

In regards to the Moderator who misused his Authority to make a completely unbiased change to the Chat Bot.

Moderators can not change the chat bot. This was confirmed by staff and moderators in the thread linked to above.

[rune_me]

1 hour ago, Navarchus said:

My loadout "Assorted" just got censored a few days ago for having "ass" in it.

This was unintentional and has been fixed. There is no filter on loadouts that only you can see anyway.

[BansheePrime]

It's pretty obvious it should be fixed, not even a debate. Will it be fixed though? Hell if I know.

[Gandergear]

@Tonks-Prime @rune_me

allright first round of edits complete, hopefully this lets us see where we're at in the debate. 

 

I find points in both arguments compelling. I for one am of the belief that DE should be beholden to community opinion on what is/isn't acceptable for region chat, but I still believe that having more moderators and less bot as per rune's argument. Certainly moderators need to be held to a higher standard than what appears to be the case now, and I'm also in agreement of rune's assessment the ideal moderation case. Ban-time in my opinion should be done semi-exponentionally, kick/hour/day/week/week/sit down with bobby and tell him what he's doin wrong cuz that boy ain't right. The game is too dependent on chat for it to be removed from players for any reason for an extended period of time.

Most of my talking points would be directed at transparency, go ahead and let the players know what is expected of them in game, with human moderators the question answers itself because they're capable of answering, but the bot responds with extending your ban time. Having a non-comprehensive list of things that are/aren't ok (Cursing, too many caps, words that are very close to being slurs not being allowed) should be clearly accessible through the game's UI or at worst a better guidelines post. Any moderation action should have to have a reason attached to why the action was taken and that should be clearly seen and easily understandable to the player. (For example, EULA VIOLATION is not an acceptable response to suspending an account for a suspicious login, and yes, that exact situation happened to me, though since it happened almost a year ago, maybe they had time to process that feedback).

 

[Firthiros]

yup,

I am hearing more and more stories about moderators (not only chatbots) abusing their status and banning people because they, personally, dont like a certain statement or opinion. This is something that should be dealt with. I am not sure what moderaters do this, though I have been reading several articles on other websites of people abusing their status and it even mentioned names. It's a shame that people have to deal with this amateurish attitude, but I think DE can't monitor every single moderater every minute of the day, so it's hard to filter out the bad apples in a growing game like this

[Trentiel]

1 hour ago, Navarchus said:

I'm just curious, what's the reason for telling people your sexual preference? It seems like a personal & irrelevant thing but everyone hangs out in different circles so maybe I just can't relate. I've only been asked about my sexuality about 3 times by people in this community and I don't think any of them were in-game.
Also, DE can't possibly make a system that lets people who identify as something use words that are linked with hate speech and to derogate.  People who would use these words as slurs to try to upset and harass people would just tick every box claiming to be everything in order to get access to these words and escape chatbots suspension even if DE were to make such a solution. I just don't see a solution where slurs & hate speech is filtered + people can use the words they feel belong to them.
 That includes the word "gay". Your country/culture may not use it that way but many do, just 2 days ago someone tried to insult me by calling me gay, it's very petty and ineffective but it's still ill intent.

The filters in WF are not flawless by any means, I can't say Frosts ball anymore, got to use Sphere or Globe or else people with filter on won't see it. My loadout "Assorted" just got censored a few days ago for having "ass" in it. But I think overall they're doing what they're supposed to just a bit excessively at times.

A week suspension instantly is a bit much. I think first time offenders should get a whisper warning from the bot explaining what they said that was wrong & continuing to break what has been made clear to be against DEs rules leads to chat suspension. 

I'm very curious about this last part  I don't really understand what it's referring to so I can't really say if I agree with it if I don't understand it, would you elaborate? Even in a PM if it's not something you think should be posted.

Thanks for asking politely. It just comes up, sometimes people are discussing gay things in region, if I feel like talking about my own experiences I chime in. It doesn't come up often. I don't mind talking about it one way or another. It's not my whole world. It does come up a lot more in private, where the filters and mods can't reach. Where honestly it's no one's business but the people I'm talking to anyway. That's where I think a lot of this personal content should stay, sharing personal vulnerabilities in public just isn't wise. However, "gay" is not a slur. It's how gay people self-identify. It's the official term when discussing homosexuality in public, in the news, it's entirely normal. It doesn't matter if the person using it is or isn't gay. It's the word. It has an agreed meaning. If someone wants to put a connotative spin on it. Fine. Let them. But banning it says "these children are right about what it means, it's bad."

Honestly this community is great already. I think aggressive policing is a little too strong for what we're dealing with. Automatic word replacement filters would do more than bans and severe punishments. Minimal moderation is needed.

The last thing is about the moderator previously named "FriendzoningMisandrist" who was renamed to -Misan-. Hardly a change. I am completely against this person in particular having any role of authority over others. There's this idea that this "misandry" is fine because their bigotry is aimed at people who they believe are "advantaged." But I can and will write an entire essay on why I think this is bologna. But as a subject it needs its own topic of discussion.

[OniDax]

I think the mod is female, not male. And there are already threads discussing this.

[Marthrym]

44 minutes ago, rune_me said:

 

You do know where and when this comes from... right? What it represents? Just asking. Because it doesn't really shine a positive light on you or your convictions, or lack thereof, but hey, you're free to express your double think and standards. Wouldn't want that taken away now, would we? At least I know where you stand now, so this wasn't for nothing.

[txteclipse]

3 minutes ago, Marthrym said:

You do know where and when this comes from... right? What it represents? Just asking. Because it doesn't really shine a positive light on you or your convictions, or lack thereof, but hey, you're free to express your double think and standards. Wouldn't want that taken away now, would we? At least I know where you stand now, so this wasn't for nothing.

Where do you think this comes from?

[rune_me]

13 minutes ago, Marthrym said:

You do know where and when this comes from... right? What it represents? Just asking. Because it doesn't really shine a positive light on you or your convictions, or lack thereof, but hey, you're free to express your double think and standards. Wouldn't want that taken away now, would we? At least I know where you stand now, so this wasn't for nothing.

It's XKCD. It's a webcomic. A really good one at that.

Also, it's accurate. Freedom of Speech really do mean the right to say what you want without being arrested or persecuted by your government. That's all it means. That's all it is.

Edited May 23, 2018 by rune_me

[OniDax]

10 minutes ago, Marthrym said:

You do know where and when this comes from... right? What it represents? Just asking. Because it doesn't really shine a positive light on you or your convictions, or lack thereof, but hey, you're free to express your double think and standards. Wouldn't want that taken away now, would we? At least I know where you stand now, so this wasn't for nothing.

It's not wrong, though. Sure, that's not how a dev should treat its community, but it is correct regarding what is and isn't "freedom of speech". ALL of the Bill of Rights are merely there to protect you from the US government. And most other countries' laws regarding freedom of speech are the same. The problem here isn't that you don't have freedom to speak. You shouldn't be allowed to insult people using derogatory terms. The problem is that the punishment for intentionally or accidentally using banned words is too extreme, especially since the list of ban-triggering words is kept hidden from the player base. There is also the issue of moderators and DE staff abusing their authority and punishing people for questioning their moderation and suggesting improvements.

Whether DE bans certain words and phrases or not is not my main issue. My main issue is that the player base doesn't know which words and phrases those are. They reserve the right to restrict whatever words and phrases they want, but they should at least tell us what those are, especially since many of them are common words whose true meaning has existed long before they were used as slurs. We should know what those words and phrases are.

[MagPrime]

16 minutes ago, Marthrym said:

You do know where and when this comes from... right? What it represents? Just asking. Because it doesn't really shine a positive light on you or your convictions, or lack thereof, but hey, you're free to express your double think and standards. Wouldn't want that taken away now, would we? At least I know where you stand now, so this wasn't for nothing.

I'm interested to know where you think this comes from and what it represents.

[Sikreci]

1 hour ago, notlamprey said:

I've sometimes been called the Andre Agassi of talking, and it's not always a good thing

😛

 

 

I feel you. As someone who gets called the Novak Djokovic of burping the alphabet, I can definitely relate.

[TheRealBacon]

i think instead of suspending why dont u just censor the inapropriate message instead of leaving people confused about what they said for the next 3 days

[rune_me]

2 minutes ago, Daster95 said:

IF you have something to add do it in a proper manner, don't just question and disregard people's points simply because you don't like them and cannot argue against them.

I've added plenty, thank you. See @Gandergear's summary post earlier about our discussion. This is called constructive criticism. Pointing fingers at individual people, breaking the naming and shaming rules of the forum, even after it has been made clear that what goes on between DE and their moderators will be kept private and not shared with the public, is not constructive. The only thing at all it will achieve, is to get this thread closed, just as the other one.

Which is a shame, because we actually have brought up good points.

[Daster95]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb rune_me:

I've added plenty, thank you. See @Gandergear's summary post earlier about our discussion. This is called constructive criticism. Pointing fingers at individual people, breaking the naming and shaming rules of the forum, even after it has been made clear that what goes on between DE and their moderators will be kept private and not shared with the public, is not constructive. The only thing at all it will achieve, is to get this thread closed, just as the other one.

Which is a shame, because we actually have brought up good points.

Well all the community will have to follow up on this then is to do the same as the other thread and just get closed, goodbye, no community no game no Warframe anymore and nothing of value was lost good night.

[rune_me]

Just now, Daster95 said:

Well all the community will have to follow up on this then is to do the same as the other thread and just get closed, goodbye, no community no game no Warframe anymore and nothing of value was lost good night.

The community doesn't care either way. Most of the community isn't even active on the forums and will never hear of this. They are busy playing the game.

[Tonksie]

4 minutes ago, rune_me said:

The community doesn't care either way. Most of the community isn't even active on the forums and will never hear of this. They are busy playing the game.

Until they try to talk in region chat and say something that's completely innocent, only for them to suffer an upwards of 3 day chat ban for talking. With no explanation, with no idea how long they are banned for...

Yeah, they'll be busy playing the game after that...