Moderation - Warning Point System Overhaul

[DukeofRealms]

aking another look at the OP... with the current draft having both "Ban on AA = 20 points" and "Any points awarded to one AA will be issued to all accounts" rules, 5 points quickly turn into 25 just for having 2+ accounts; 5 points lands a week ban, ban on one account = +20 for all, 20+ points = permaban. Therefore, for single-account users, 5 points = 1 week timeout, while those with multiple names are removed forever for the same 5 points. Inconsistent rules are never a good idea, especially if they appear to discriminate against a subset of your community.

Not sure where you read this, I can't see where it says the points multiply. If one account gets 5 points, all accounts get 5 points, which means all accounts have a one week ban. The 20 points ban on AA is fairly useless, so I removed it. The 20 points don't ever get added, unless you evade a ban, so again not sure where you are getting that.

To clear up on ban evasions (this will also be explained in the definitions), a ban evasion is when you use an alternative account to login to the forums. This is any type of ban, so if you get 5 points on your main account and get a one week ban, and if we find that you are using an alternative account to get around this, all accounts will be permanently banned. You can appeal to be unbanned using our ban appeal process, which has not been discussed and developed yet.

Alternate Account 1 gets hit for trolling, +2 points, had 3 active points from previous actions, total 5 points. Week ban.
Alternate Account 2 gets the 2 points for trolling, +20 points for AA1's ban. Permanent ban.
Alternate Account 3 gets the 2 points for trolling, +20 points for AA1's ban. Permanent ban.
Main Account gets the 2 points for trolling, +20 points for AA1's ban. Permanent ban.
Alternate Account 1 gets 20 points for the other accounts' ban. Week ban extended to Permanent.

You would only ever get 20 points if you were evading a ban, so again, that would not work.

 

[Kojinus]

Kojinus Yeah, my issue with the "Ban on AA = 20 points" and "Any points awarded to one AA will be issued to all accounts" rules combination is as follows:

Alternate Account 1 gets hit for trolling, +2 points, had 3 active points from previous actions, total 5 points. Week ban.
Alternate Account 2 gets the 2 points for trolling, +20 points for AA1's ban. Permanent ban.
Alternate Account 3 gets the 2 points for trolling, +20 points for AA1's ban. Permanent ban.
Main Account gets the 2 points for trolling, +20 points for AA1's ban. Permanent ban.
Alternate Account 1 gets 20 points for the other accounts' ban. Week ban extended to Permanent.

Single Account Guy gets hit for trolling, +2 points, had 3 active points from previous actions, total 5 points. Week ban.
Single Account Guy has no alts, so no "Ban on AA" occurs to give +20 points. Ban remains just for a week.

Hence my suggestion to axe the +20 thing and just stick with the flat points mirroring that you guys planned.

It's not a bad suggestion, but to be honest if your have any account that's close to being permanently banned, you've broken the rules too many times to justify letting you get off with only having your AA banned. Accumulating 20 points on an alt account is the exact same as getting 20 on your main account.

 

[Tydeth]

DukeofRealms
I'm not sure where the multiplying bit comes from either, as I did not say they multiplied. The 5 into 25 bit that may have lead to the confusion was based on adding those 20 points. The entire argument was based on that "Ban on AA = 20 points" thing that you removed, because the way the whole thing read implied the scenario you have quoted, since it was separate and distinct from the ban evasion listing further down.

I thank you for clarifying its intended purpose and meaning, and for removing the extraneous listing to avoid future confusion.

Also, thank you for making it crystal clear that Schine is using the standard strict definition and handling for Ban Evasion; Kojinus' use of "continue to cause trouble on an alternate account" as opposed to "use an alternate account" when he answered that question for someone else suggested a more lenient handling hence my statements on that.

Kojinus
That whole scenario was based on me reading into the "Ban on AA = 20 points" listing and concluding it meant a week ban for one's first 5 active points would turn into permanent ban for doing nothing more than having 2+ accounts and whatever landed the initial 5 points on them. Since Duke explained the item in question and corrected the OP, my confusion has been replaced with clarity.

I thank you both for your responses, and I apologize if you feel I wasted your time. The rest of the list looks perfectly fair to me.

 

[Megacrafter127]

You can appeal to be unbanned using our ban appeal process, which has not been discussed and developed yet.

I just have 2 conditions for such an appealing system:

1. One must always have the ability to read one's own removed posts, or the original version of the post before it was edited by a moderator, so one can base one's arguments against a ban or a removal/edit of the post itself.
2. Even while banned or permabanned, one must still be able to log into one's account, and have read access to all posts, that lead to one's own post, which was removed/edited, condition 1 must still be upheld too. Otherwise, it is unnecessary hard or even impossible to find solid arguments against the ban.

 

[DukeofRealms]

I just have 2 conditions for such an appealing system:

1. One must always have the ability to read one's own removed posts, or the original version of the post before it was edited by a moderator, so one can base one's arguments against a ban or a removal/edit of the post itself.
2. Even while banned or permabanned, one must still be able to log into one's account, and have read access to all posts, that lead to one's own post, which was removed/edited, condition 1 must still be upheld too. Otherwise, it is unnecessary hard or even impossible to find solid arguments against the ban.

This can be done a number of ways, without giving users permission to view deleted threads/posts and having access to the forums when banned. Allowing users to login, even if read only, defeats the point of a ban.

1. If the user has a complaint about a post being removed, an administrator should be contacted to review the actions. If the user wants to see the original post, they can request it.
2. Will not be done, if a user is banned (especially permanently banned), and believes moderation action has been unfair, the user can simply request an administrator to review it. If the user wants to see a particular post, it can also be sent to them on request.

If the user is correct, the administrator, in most cases, will identify this. If the user needs a post, and wants to argue on that, it can be given to them.

 

[Plazmatic]

• 2 Points - Excessive Profanity
• 2 Points - Trolling I
• 3 Points - Trolling II

These three should probably go, they are highly redundant, and problematically subjective

First, if you are really that worried about people casually dropping F bombs you need to implement a defaulted censor option (which isn't hard) which can be toggled off, since the line between excessive profanity and well not, is way too subjective to be left up to any individual. However in 99% of cases with "excessisve profanity" were looking at either low content posts, offensive posts/personal attack/generally assholery. This is already covered under your other rules, and it much easier to make a non culturally biased decision and have it still be reasonably refuted based on that sort of rule.

Trolling is way too subjective, sensitivity, personal views on arguments, and language barriers all severely hamper the ability for any individual to accurately get if some one is really trolling. I've found that people in general are very bad at determining the difference between joking, sarcasm, disagreeing and trolling. What you should really be looking for are people purposefully misleading some one to do something that might harm their computer or self, other offensive cases of trolling are covered under the other rules.

The trolling rule should instead be replaced by something about hacking or infecting another persons account, computer or otherwise causing an individual to do damage to their property or well being, something along those lines.

 

[CaptainTaz]

This can be done a number of ways, without giving users permission to view deleted threads/posts and having access to the forums when banned. Allowing users to login, even if read only, defeats the point of a ban.

1. If the user has a complaint about a post being removed, an administrator should be contacted to review the actions. If the user wants to see the original post, they can request it.
2. Will not be done, if a user is banned (especially permanently banned), and believes moderation action has been unfair, the user can simply request an administrator to review it. If the user wants to see a particular post, it can also be sent to them on request.

If the user is correct, the administrator, in most cases, will identify this. If the user needs to post, and wants to argue on that, it can be given to them.

I'm just curious on how the appeal system would work. Would it be over E-mail? I don't plan on causing trouble, but I would like to know as clarification because I am a little bit confused.

 

[NeonSturm]

While this isn't an RP forum, I'm okay with faction alts for some limited circumstances (different name for posting as the faction, for instance). Simply saying "faction purposes" leaves a lot of things wide open, including spying (which kicks up drama).

There are a few alternate accounts that exist already, but are not used the same as others, the Tartaran Empire for example uses a shared Alt account for their recruitment thread. It is an alt account, but it exists for a reason that differs from most cases in other forums, simply being banned on 1 account should not warrant the perm-banning of this alt.

I think it's more or less trying to give themselves some wiggle-room, because there is sometimes circumstances where X doesn't always equal Y.

I agree, we need to have separated

1. logins
2. secondary nicknames which can be shared over multiple logins
   
3. each login is linked to an Account, which provides a listing of logins that the person uses.

Accounts should be able to get merged and merged accounts should be able to get split again if it was a wrong decision and two persons were looking too similar and are perceived as one at the merge-decision-time.

Seconding this. I also want to know what "personal attack" constitutes in the moderation team's interpretation. You guys should have a clear definition of that so a mod cannot abuse that power in their own judgement and must be held to the standard, and so the users are clear on what the line is between critical comments to a user and personal attacks on a user as well as what distinguishes the severity since the blatant ones are a permaban. For everyone's sake we need a more explicit definition around that in the rules section.

Aside from that the system seems alright I guess.

The reasoning should be exact enough that the majority of users is able to follow it and accept the justification.

Else The Game (StarMade) will receive negative feedback and die in favor of a reverse-engineered open-source-StarMade-clone, Space Engineers, Seeds of Andromeda or other alternatvies.

 

[Dark-life]

Instead of banning maybe you should have a "restriction" settings first. So if a person only acts up in chat but not on the forums chat could be disabled until it is earned back or he is "tapped". If a user is "tapped" then all of their recent chat history could be displayed and if someone in the community marks a message they send as inappropriate then mods could review it. (maybe add a sort of color or symbol to their names in chat)

 

[CyberTao]

I'm just curious on how the appeal system would work. Would it be over E-mail? I don't plan on causing trouble, but I would like to know as clarification because I am a little bit confused.

The appeal uses the email assigned to the account currently. If you go down to the Registry Support board, you can see what they have set up for appeals in the only stickied thread.

 

[DukeofRealms]

I'm just curious on how the appeal system would work. Would it be over E-mail? I don't plan on causing trouble, but I would like to know as clarification because I am a little bit confused.

Well the appeal system has not been done yet. But it will be away from the forums, most likely a google form, like the one CyberTao mentioned (not the same one though).

 

[CaptainTaz]

The appeal uses the email assigned to the account currently. If you go down to the Registry Support board, you can see what they have set up for appeals in the only stickied thread.

Well the appeal system has not been done yet. But it will be away from the forums, most likely a google form, like the one CyberTao mentioned (not the same one though).

ok, that's good to know.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Well the appeal system has not been done yet. But it will be away from the forums, most likely a google form, like the one CyberTao mentioned (not the same one though).

I just hope there will be an alternate way apart from emails.
Due to me watching every thread and forum, my email provider decided to add the noreply address of the dock to an internal(and thus for me uneditable) spam-filter. I disabled the email notification setting the moment I noticed, but at that time it was too late, and I cannot really change the email as that should require a confirmation email to prevent account-theft.
However, as I don't plan to cause any trouble, I also have currently no need to change my email.

 

[DukeofRealms]

I just hope there will be an alternate way apart from emails.
Due to me watching every thread and forum, my email provider decided to add the noreply address of the dock to an internal(and thus for me uneditable) spam-filter. I disabled the email notification setting the moment I noticed, but at that time it was too late, and I cannot really change the email as that should require a confirmation email to prevent account-theft.
However, as I don't plan to cause any trouble, I also have currently no need to change my email.

That sounds fairly funny, I don't think we'll do email. It's harder to keep track of it, I'd rather just have it in one place. Also an external form means that no matter what, you can still appeal.