The problem of flooding, spamming and all out flaming wars in the main channel is increasing.

My request is that a Moderator "rank" would be created, and that the person with such a rank would have the power to muzzle, kick and ban players (accounts) for a limited ammount of time.

I myself am a sysop on the PhoenixWorx TA server, and have those abilities there. Unfortunately, people can be so annoying that i sometimes have to use them. The same problem is growing on the Spring main lobby.
What i would like to see is that a moderator, by giving a simple command, could stop someone from ruining conversations, or insulting others, or even being plain stupid with making racist or otherwise being offensive.

The commands i use are i.e.

/muzzle RedDragon 15
/kick RedDragon
/ban RedDragon 120

Respectively muzzling my account for 15 minutes, closing the client and the last, closing the client and make it not possible for RedDragon to log back on for 120 minutes.

Also, a command to undo (chat)bans is usefull: /muzzle RedDragon 0

And final, a limit to the powers is something you need too, since i've experienced a sysop going on a powertrip and banning the whole lobby (27 users) for about a month

Such a system would be a start. It beats having a chatfilter (which most people don't turn on anyway) which is never fullproof: They'll just spell "n!gger" in stead of "nigger".

Also, if chatmoderator would be around, it'd be a great help if registerring would become a bit less easy (and fast) by having ppl sign up via email validation.

About the moderators themselves, i suggest selecting people which are at least mature, and have some common sense about what is to be tolerated and what is not. In my opinion, any for of racism or other offensive statements should be discouraged as strongly as possible.

A 2nd task the moderators should have, is assisting new players with getting started, or answering any question they might have about Spring, maps and mods. Or point them to tutorials, forums or other information about this great game.

I've spoken to some about this, and me (yes, for those who don't know yet, i am IownU too) and Maelstrom are willing to help out.
Others i can think of who would be great moderators are Mother, Mong and Dwarden.

Sorry for all those (and there are many) i did not mention.

I hope this post will get something in motion.

http://taspring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Monthly_Topic_Rotation
Oh yea, +1 to me


Anyways, it is needed. There were some spammers in the lobby today annoying everyone. I know there are some moderators out there already, but they are hardly ever there. We really need some more.

moderators combined with automatic antispam features (against repeated lines and ammount of lines / time) plus user used IGNORE feature (server located ignore list to prevent data being send to client)

will be resulting into optimal solution ...

Oh, and if there are to be moderators, let's not make it a popularity contest but a decision by the current Spring team, selecting those the best suited for the job.

Giving moderators the power to completely disable a person's connection from the TA Spring server would be complete and utter overkill. A moderator should only have the ability to prevent a person's text from being seen by others on the server, IMHO.

This however, leaves the option of said reatrd spammers enterting a battle and spamming in therre. Now, the battle host can choose to kick, but it would be tiresome if they re-entered and had to be continaully rekicked, so i would like to suggest a "prevent from entering this battle" list that the host controls.

sounds alot like "WAAAAAAAAAAAH"

Look it is the internet. I think all it would need at best is an censor/ignore feature. We do not need to police the chat server. The code can do a check for profanity and replace the offending characters with '*' prior to the client even sending it. If there is one client being particularly abusive to another the client can just ignore the client. Policing a chat is too much like children's school let's just be above that.

Or you could get tougher skin. I spend a lot of time on the TAU forums and there is a lot American bashing but I don't let it get too under my skin. For the most part such actions are foolishness and I ignore them. That is part of getting over it. There is not a single person I know that has not known how to curse proficiently by the age of 10. I sincerely doubt we have 8 year olds playing.

Having to keep a moderator is a situation that WILL deteriorate overtime to elitist and/or popularity contests. Let us just take the passive moderation road.

Its not so much the abusive behavious, its the spamming that is really annoying people. That cannot be ignored, as you cannot chat while this is going on.

Plus, there's a lot of people whose parents monitor their computer use and qould kick them off if they saw


PENIS


fifty times in a chat window their kids were using.

Not at all. I can't think of a successful internet comunity without a moderation system. Even the greater internet comunity does have laws and protections forced on it by outside forces.

It isn't as if its a hard MTR topic to implement, c'mon sy's.

If it isn't hard, you vollunteer to do that :)

The lobby is Betalords, not the SY's as a whole. Complain to him.

As Maelstrom already mentioned it's already there.
http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2770&start=20
IRL, Noise is the only mod online frequently and he's is much in game (as he should). So we just need more moderators. It's a good thing Betalord is picks them out himself.
As for spamfilters, oh c'mon, grow up. such a thing is stupid and annoying, and mostly provokes people to insult.

We are not kids (most of us aren't) and we can be responsible for the language we use without cencorship, we should focus more on personal attacks and spam.

Maybe the user should be able to switch on the filters or not.

I do recommend one of the SY's should moderate, like Betalord or something, I honestly dont trust other power-hungry control freaks.

Most IRC clients use spam filters... It's not that inconvienient. Basicly what they do is just block repetition made more then 3 times in a row and limit the number of messages posted per a cerian period of time (usually assuming more then 1 message per second in a 10 second period is an attempt to spam)

All spam blockers do is flood control, they don't ban people or mute them, just noshow any messages that don't meet the criteria.

Just put some simple flood limits on it.
Like if you write 3 lines in 1s you get kicked etc.

I'd vollonteer to monitor the client, as I don't actually play spring online (Rasafrasafrakcing PC won't set up port forwarding properly, plus my graphics card has died)

again, a prepost censor and a (to clarify) USER IGNORE would solve these problems.

The censor can do string manips prior to the message being sent. Hell, I am willing to bet that the same code can check to look for repeat lines or even limit how quickly one can post. However, if someone is spaming a user ignore feature would be great. I am strongly against a moderator. too much power for anyone.

im fine with censoring as long as i can turn it off...

I'm for it, I'd support flood control and moderators. About moderators getting too much power, would that be a problem if they were picked singly by the SY's and had to answer to them?
very nice commands, they'll give spammers some time to cool off before trying to screw around.