Visited to spec a few games from a long time, revolted by the community

[tzaeru]

So yea, this is the kind of stuff that BA's community has grown to tolerate:

[11:25:33] <[LEGENDARY]ADOLF> stfu oog
[11:25:41] <tzaeru> I'm not oog
[11:25:55] <[LEGENDARY]ADOLF> your cousin?
[11:26:19] <tzaeru> worked at his company for a while time back
[11:26:30] <lost_man> !whois tzaeru
[11:26:37] <[LEGENDARY]ADOLF> so you guys never held hands?
[11:26:42] <[LEGENDARY]ADOLF> bs
[11:27:03] <tzaeru> who knows, I don't have full recollection of every party we had
[11:27:30] <[LEGENDARY]ADOLF> omg u faggot
[11:27:37] <[LEGENDARY]ADOLF> i want to hold your small penis

Frankly I don't really feel like I needed to watch this kind of kindergarten grade stuff. It needs to stop, one way or the other.

Right now BA doesn't have the playerbase to run more than 1, sometimes 2, full hosts at a time. So just switching hosts is not the answer. A small change in community mindset would really be in order, but regardless, I anyway put up a few hosts alternative to the ones we've now. I can't play much atm - got 1 arm in a sling for a few more weeks - but I'll eventually try and get some games running!

I've some ideas about trying to attract new players, but I don't really feel comfortable with it if the above kind stuff is what the new players would be met up with.

There is not a lack of technical control mechanisms, but of responsibility and enforcement.

A few weeks ago I played in a TechA host and was insulted by a player. Not strong by BA-standards, but I'm not a child anymore and will not simply accept insults because it's "normal". The local admin was sympathetic to me and my view and kicked the offending player 15 times, until he said >>I'll behave<<, and then we had some nice matches. Ofc this cost us some time and nerve, but in the end it worked. As it is a social problem technical solutions will only go half the way.

If an autohost uses offending speech in its greeting messages, it is the lobby moderators job to kick those hosts. If the offense is repeated - perma-ban bot-account and don't give bot-accounts to the responsible admin anymore.

It's the same as for the forums: there must be rules (there are), and they must be enforced.
IMHO in the "Lobby Clients & Server" subforum there should be a sticky posting with rules for autohosts and autohost-admins. they could start like this:

• (Responsibility) To become a Bot-admin (spads level > 100 or so?), you must have registered the lobby-account with an email-address. ( I think this can currently not be checked or enforced.)
• (Responsibility) Bot flags should only be given to users which have registered the same email-address to their lobby-account and their forum-account.
• (Enforcement) Privileges (bot-flag, admin-status) can be removed if rules are not complied with and warnings are ignored.
• (Enforcement) Autohosts w/o valid admins are auto-kicked.
• (Conduct) The same rules as for the forum apply, with regards to respect in speech etc.
• (Conduct) Autohost-owners are required to create and maintain a forum-post detailing rules specific to their game/autohost/admin-style/speech-rules (diverging/extending from the generell conduct-rules).

Handling some email-address-verification and a forum post is way less work that setting up a linux/win root-server and installing and maintaining spads. So why not require the above (or similar)?

This sounds like a lot for the spring gaming community, but think about it: similar rules and operations are what you find everywhere in RL and in other - working - [online] communities!

In principle, I do strongly agree with that autohosts should adhere to certain common rules, but I'm not really sure if we would find the lobby mod time and general community willingness to committing into something like this?

I am, however, sure that any few toxic players unwilling to adhere to these rules that we might lose, would be readily replaced by players who otherwise would have limited their playtime due to the aforementioned players' behaviour.

[ThinkSome]

Right now BA doesn't have the playerbase to run more than 1, sometimes 2, full hosts at a time.

It totaly does! It just doesen't have the player base to run more than 1 8v8. Cap hosts at 4v4 and you'll have more and better games with stronger teamwork.

Additionally consider capping max connected clients to ~12 on these (8 players + 4 spectators).

I anyway put up a few hosts alternative to the ones we've now.

I should totaly open 100 Spring:1944 autohosts, that'll surely solve Spring:1944's population problems. /s

If an autohost uses offending speech in its greeting messages, it is the lobby moderators job to kick those hosts. If the offense is repeated - perma-ban bot-account and don't give bot-accounts to the responsible admin anymore.
...
In principle, I do strongly agree with that autohosts should adhere to certain common rules, but I'm not really sure if we would find the lobby mod time and general community willingness to committing into something like this?

Lobby moderators? That is a critically endangered if not already extinct species!

I am, however, sure that any few toxic players unwilling to adhere to these rules that we might lose, would be readily replaced by players who otherwise would have limited their playtime due to the aforementioned players' behaviour.

Of course, and not just replaced, but replaced several dozen times over.

[MasterBel2]

Right now BA doesn't have the playerbase to run more than 1, sometimes 2, full hosts at a time.

It totaly does! It just doesen't have the player base to run more than 1 8v8. Cap hosts at 4v4 and you'll have more and better games with stronger teamwork.

Additionally consider capping max connected clients to ~12 on these (8 players + 4 spectators).

Please can this be done? Personally though I'd like it capped at 5v5 not 4v4 but same difference? We'd get so many more games if this was done.

If an autohost uses offending speech in its greeting messages, it is the lobby moderators job to kick those hosts. If the offense is repeated - perma-ban bot-account and don't give bot-accounts to the responsible admin anymore.
...
In principle, I do strongly agree with that autohosts should adhere to certain common rules, but I'm not really sure if we would find the lobby mod time and general community willingness to committing into something like this?

Lobby moderators? That is a critically endangered if not already extinct species!

I am sure that among those who play online at the moment there are quite a number who are well qualified enough to be a lobby moderator, and maybe even more that could fit the position of autohost admins. Maybe there should even be subcategories of autohost/lobby admins that allow trusted people to do certain things, say in an autohost be able to kick/mute someone.

I am, however, sure that any few toxic players unwilling to adhere to these rules that we might lose, would be readily replaced by players who otherwise would have limited their playtime due to the aforementioned players' behaviour.

Of course, and not just replaced, but replaced several dozen times over.

Amen to that!

So now, next question… who do we pester to get this done?

[smoth]

would be neat to have a swearword/hatespeech censor setting for our chat

[MasterBel2]

Would that be better to be implemented lobby/serverside?

[Forboding Angel]

Gameside it wouldn't be much good, except we could enact autobans for various words. It's tempting, but last time I saw a regex for word filtering it scared me.

[Silentwings]

So now, next question… who do we pester to get this done?

I am sure that among those who play online at the moment there are quite a number who are well qualified enough to be a lobby moderator, and maybe even more that could fit the position of autohost admins. Maybe there should even be subcategories of autohost/lobby admins that allow trusted people to do certain things, say in an autohost be able to kick/mute someone.

For everything that happens inside autohosts, you need the autohost owner to set the permissions for users/admins/etc in their SPADS config. Subcategories, etc, are all possible. If existing hosts are not interested in cooperating, you can set up your own.

As far as I can see there isn't a need for more lobby moderators at the moment. There are not many lobby moderators, nor a need for many of them, since they only act rarely. The only role they play here is giving/removing botflags and dealing with situations in which hosts (for some, usually very serious reason) are unwanted on the Spring server. Neither of these roles warrant a constant presence.

Automated filtering of language was tried on the Spring server at some point in the (now distant) past. It was not effective.

[ThinkSome]

For everything that happens inside autohosts, you need the autohost owner to set the permissions for users/admins/etc in their SPADS config. Subcategories, etc, are all possible. If existing hosts are not interested in cooperating, you can set up your own.

If existing hosts are not interested in cooperating, then perhaps they should not be present in the lobby?

As far as I can see there isn't a need for more lobby moderators at the moment. There are not many lobby moderators, nor a need for many of them, since they only act rarely. The only role they play here is giving/removing botflags and dealing with situations in which hosts (for some, usually very serious reason) are unwanted on the Spring server. Neither of these roles warrant a constant presence.

And allowing the things mentioned in this thread to continue is not a serious enough reason?

[Forboding Angel]

He is one of those people who believes that chaos should rule, a la 4chan. Spring has had a lot of them over the years, and their loud bellyaching and whining is one of the main reasons that spring turned into a toxic cesspool.

Back when spring had 300 ppl in the lobby playing, ppl like decimator ruled with an iron fist (not really ) and kept things clean, but got tired of the lack of user account verification.

So, here we live in filth of our own creation.