IRC CHAT AND NEW RULES or why I was kicked from chat

[ridik_ulass]

not sure where to post this so here i post it.

You have been kicked by resba (bye.)

resba had warned me fairly that I was breaking rule #9

9. No advertising.

Advertising of any form of monetary service is completely prohibited. This will result in an immediate clean up of your posts and possible banning from the community.


what was I advertising? and IRC chan free from admin and moderator abuse. because we have all had issues with admin and moderator abuses. so apparently that is a form of monetary service?


EDIT: I was kicked not banned.

EDIT BY STAFF (resba): Changed topic name based on discussion with OP http://puu.sh/7WorS.png

 

[Mowa2]

I actually have to agree with resba, your "not advertising" was slightly annoying, and it would have only been a matter of hours before 50% of chat turns into "not advertising"

 

[ridik_ulass]

I actually have to agree with resba, your "not advertising" was slightly annoying, and it would have only been a matter of hours before 50% of chat turns into "not advertising"

do you not think that would pass when channels and such for the factions and alliances were established?

 

[tn44]

I'm going to have to say that I'm entirely against this sort of attitude. We always -always- had the option to form group chats on the old website. That is essentially what this is. I had to leave the main chat in absolute disgust upon seeing an unfamiliar name such as 'resba' starting trouble for people going about their normal business, asserting an unnecessary and excessive display of authority, and essentially putting up the idea that now he's a mod, and he can do as he likes.

And, as Ridik says, there should be no issues with people establishing channels on IRC for their factions/groups. This will help organize the community a bit, since we're all stuck in one chat right now, and apparently are not allowed to change that situation. I am calling gross abuse of power on this situation, and hope to see it resolved in a satisfactory manner.

 

[resba]

ridik_ulass tn44 I'm fine with being wrong.

I apologize for my behavior, however based on the situation that was arose during that incident it was the course of action I decided to take, whether or not you agree with it is beyond my control and I don't intend to change it.

Let's do this then for IRC. We'll create additional channels for faction discussion and support like the old chat system.

Does this seem fair to all parties? Anyone on for additional comment?

EDIT: You also were not banned from chat, just kicked.

 

[Winterhome]

I approve of having an official, professional website geared towards a professional game style community. However, this requires a "no free interpretation" clause on rule sets. If it's not written, then how does the community know to not do it? This specifically means that if an action does not break every single letter of a rule, there is no mute, no kick, no ban. Warnings perhaps, but official action should not be taken under the premise of "I don't like it."

If there is a problem, amend the existing rules, but do not force nonexistent rules upon a community, or significant resistance to any form of change, updates, etc. will occur.
I am fairly certain that today we had the very first instance of the chat being completely silenced, except for moderator posting. This should not need to happen - and could have been prevented if the community knew exactly what it was being handed beforehand, rather than suddenly finding that what was in the rule book didn't necessarily line up with enforcement protocol.

 

[resba]

I approve of having an official, professional website geared towards a professional game style community. However, this requires a "no free interpretation" clause on rule sets. If it's not written, then how does the community know to not do it? This specifically means that if an action does not break every single letter of a rule, there is no mute, no kick, no ban. Warnings perhaps, but official action should not be taken under the premise of "I don't like it."

If there is a problem, amend the existing rules, but do not force nonexistent rules upon a community, or significant resistance to any form of change, updates, etc. will occur.
I am fairly certain that today we had the very first instance of the chat being completely silenced, except for moderator posting. This should not need to happen - and could have been prevented if the community knew exactly what it was being handed beforehand, rather than suddenly finding that what was in the rule book didn't necessarily line up with enforcement protocol.

To be honest I agree with you. In this scenario it would appear that we're going to need a ridged set of rules that everyone knows how to interpret similarly so there's no abuse of power or misinterpretation. I really hate seeing people upset at one another and want to minimize that as much as possible.

 

[Morphix]

In my experience, having a clear, organized set of rules on a dedicated page is extremely usefull. Wording the rules is an entirely different issue. If you don't get it right, you'll end up with people finding loopholes and prancing around saying they aren't breaking any rules (which they *technically* aren't, but it's still ridiculous). My favourite instance of this was on a forum I moderated, we had a maximum signature size of 500x120, but the admin never specified height/width so everyone started using vertical signatures in protest. Eventually it degraded into "Well anything that has the same total pixel count as 500x120 should be within the rules!!1!" and people started using 3x20000 signatures and such... people love to test the system :P

 

[rik.yan]

First, a little consolation for resba, some people are just very vocal on how they feel about things say the IRC moderation. please dont take it negatively though we are all in new waters atm. its really not a good time to force people to know anybody because radical changes are still fresh (i.e. new website) thats why people are so rash about things right now.

secondly, i think nobody should be deprived of the right to form new group chats. The official IRC will never ever run out of chatters anyways and will flourish when theres actually something interesting being talked about in it.

 

[tn44]

A separate place to discuss faction and server related things as well as faction channels or server channels would be acceptable. It would probably benefit the community greatly to have a sort of support chat in the interim until the new chat arrives. Hopefully, the new chat will solve these issues in a more reasonable way than having 3 IRC channels, but people should not be discouraged from creating/maintaining fansites/chats or anything of that sort in any case. What if Minecraft had told people they were not allowed to make fan sites? The Minecraft forum itself started as a fan site.

We, as a community, should also not have to be afraid of speaking up for our rights, in regards to what breaks a rule, what we can and cannot do, and what is written as opposed to what is enforced. If something is a rule, we know not to break it. If we are told we broke a rule that isn't there, we're going to speak up. That's how it is. In the past, there have been a lot of problems caused by this sort of attitude about rules. I hoped that with the new site, that sort of problem would be behind us. In that sense, yes, please do not have 'open interpretation' rules, but also no, do not try to micromanage the community when creating a solid set of rules. What kind of game has such a powerful, developed metagame in Alpha stage like this one has? There are large factions of players, most of which have their own website. Is it now advertising for them to link to that website? Or if they have a teamspeak channel, or, heaven forbid, an IRC channel, should they not be allowed to talk about it?

Furthermore, if a server host has a donate button, or, theoretically, they charge players to play on the server, and they advertise that server, this is against the rules as well? These sorts of things need to be taken into consideration for a situation like this. It is fine to set a solid set of rules, but moderators need to be situation aware, and not -start- trouble over what they perceive as a rule break, even if it is harmless.

Overall, moderators need to have some room to decide for themselves whether a specific situation is a problem or not, certainly, but there needs to be a clear line between what is ok and what is not. If it's too blurry, moderators and users will not be seeing the same line, and somebody is going to step on somebody else's toes.

 

[ridik_ulass]

I appreciate your response, and In fact I don't think I have ever heard an apology from an admin or moderator on this site ever, even by proxy of someone else's disagreement.

Your behavior I don't think was in the wrong, you warned me, then kicked me.

It is your decision that I contest, and if you are as you say unwilling to change it the the apology is in vein and moot.

after you moved on that I was breaking rule #9 which I think we agree I was not as I had no monetary gains to be had. you then went on to say the new chats, would be evading moderation and were beyond admin control, although I can see why that might concern you by that same decree one might say that faction websites, faction voice comms and any other 3rd party product, program or site should be banned.

as tn44 stated, we previously had the power to do such things, and the server of the IRC has its own rules as stated here:

https://www.esper.net/charter.php

which comprehensively protect users.

it is not and should not be you or any admin/moderators obligation to manage the community outside the community, and preventing us from existing or going to private places to establish our self's, our factions and our alliances is unnecessary at best and Orwellian at worst.


now I could understand, appreciate and agree with some definition to allowing people to do it, maybe a definite limit to time and amount of posts made. something like one post per 15 minutes would be reasonable, which could increase to 30 mins if the issue was getting messy or out of hand.

but by the definition of established rules I was neither advertising nor is there an established rule about trying to circumvent moderation. maybe those rules need to be made and drafted.


But sadly considering your apology comes with no actual action I find it disingenuous and am unable to take it.

Secondly, the idea of more channels sounds good on paper, but considering the issues already moderating one, and the attention required by staff to watch more then one on a 24/7 basis I think that would just open you up to some actual rule breaking abuses by the community, the stuff that needs to be moderated.

To enforce non existent rules and opinions as law and allow established fair rules to go unchecked comparatively would be a very unnecessary contradiction and a compromise of the position of every moderator and admin on this site.


I hope my words reach you, and maybe alter your perspective on this situation.


Either way, I appreciate your time and apologize about the community on a whole there is a lot of unchecked issues that they haven't have the avenue to distill it concerns me that issues like this could allow the disdain to further escalate.

 

[Winterhome]

On a less professional note...
Unofficial, unaffiliated chat rooms (preferably with the reputation of "full of screaming lunatics and spammers") are helpful in that they clean up the official community by providing an alternate outlet for rulebreaking behaviors without banning players who would otherwise recommend the game to their friends.


From what I remember reading during the argument, it was decided that providing alternate groups was harmful because it would apparently imply that the official team and site were affiliated with them.


It might be possible to be completely unaffiliated with an alternate chat room by means of including a disclaimer on the site itself. If it's not #starmade or any of the official groups, or on star-made.org or starmadedock.net, it's not official, and is unconnected with the official team or their opinions.

 

[resba]

Alright here's what we're going to do:

Based on discussions I've had with the rest of the staff and with the OP of this thread we have decided to work on seperate guidelines for the interim IRC chat. Thank you all very much for your input during this.

So we can keep everything archived and proper I'm going to lock this topic with this post, if anyone want's to unlock it, please feel free to PM me and we can discuss further.

Have a great night everyone!