moderation of bad language in autohosts

[triton]

I heard abma joined a game and banned Adolf, Stardom and lucido. How many other players did you ban dude?

Before banning or doing anything alone, I think you could talk to EXPERIENCED BA admins. You can't join a no man's land and start to apply the perfect rules that you want. We have a new tool for discussing, called discord, join us here, you are welcome:

https://discord.gg/9NfPSyc

Have you seen any survival movies? With post-apo and stuff? Even cowboy movies...

The BA community is VERY small, if you come here and try to teach savages to be polite, by banning them, it won't work at all.
You would just comdemn all of us. People are too used to speaking like idiots in Overkillhost.

It reminds me when Forb read his server log, and banned 90% of players who were actually HELPING to make the new BA version possible.
The most annoying part for me is that I am defending some behavior I dislike, just because I want to be able to have players here, and I feel like the guy who tries to promote Spring Engine is dead since 10 years already.

I think It was OK, to have 2 main autohost systems, one for players with strong language, and one for polite people.
One thing I would also recommend, is to NEVER PERMABAN players, you just can't afford to do that.

If you really want to improve things there is many ways to do it.

EXPERIENCED admins here know when to not ban/kick someone if its screw, the game, the community..

Sometimes you need to punish someone less severely BECAUSE if you do punish him too hard, you punish WHOLE community...

For example, in BA, a the moment, you just can't ban for language stuffs, or you fucking kill the whole community

The only thing you could do to try to improve the game, and make it suitable for kids, WITHOUT FUCKING KILLING THE GAME, would be to temporary mute people.

From what I heard, with the rules you apply, you banned a player called StarDoM, Australian, and with same rules, you would actually ban most BA players, even the greatest we had in the past 10 years.

YOU ARE SO WRONG

[Silentwings]

@triton: Hearsay is discouraged for a reason - none of those players actually appear in the current server banlist.

I *know* that a small number of people were given short bans yesterday for excessive bad language, and the debate about what extent of bad language is permitted in autohosts is one that we are now going to have to have. I suggest you take a more fact driven approach to it.

The new rules mention only "excessively hateful or obscene behavior".

I have said many times that "how moderation in autohosts should be done is a very difficult question" and had many people reply with "no its easy why can't you just do this, moderators are all lazy/disinterested/useless" -- so now you can all put your two pence in and discover just how many different opinions there are here.

Split from viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36402 into a new thread where permissible levels of bad language for hosts/lobbyserver can be discussed.

[abma]

@triton:

we had several complains about people behaving without any respect of others on some autohosts. Thats why we reacted to that.

i banned people who:

- used a lot of strong words, even after beeing warned
- used a nickname which clearly was an insult

also the ban expired already, so i don't see why you want to discuss. When discussing or communicating here all of us needs to respect each other. Insulting or using a lot of dirty words won't be accepted. Expect to get a warning or instant ban when you do so.

don't expect to receive patience when using nicknames which are already insulting.

maybe see the TOS for the lobby server: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sprin ... eement.txt

What do you suggest to improve the situation? extensively insulting each other is a no-go, IMHO we must react to this. Do you think mute is enough? What to do when someone is using a username which is already insulting?

side note: i refuse to use discord.

[gajop]

Have you seen any survival movies? With post-apo and stuff? Even cowboy movies...

The BA community is VERY small, if you come here and try to teach savages to be polite, by banning them, it won't work at all.
You would just comdemn all of us. People are too used to speaking like idiots in Overkillhost.

One thing I would also recommend, is to NEVER PERMABAN players, you just can't afford to do that.

Sometimes you need to punish someone less severely BECAUSE if you do punish him too hard, you punish WHOLE community...

For example, in BA, a the moment, you just can't ban for language stuffs, or you fucking kill the whole community

From what I heard, with the rules you apply, you banned a player called StarDoM, Australian, and with same rules, you would actually ban most BA players, even the greatest we had in the past 10 years.

We cannot let players behave like that just because they are few, or experienced. If you let them keep doing it, only those who act the same way will stay. We end up chasing away more players than we keep. Although, I don't think player numbers should be the only driving factor. It is about the community that we're trying to build.

I think It was OK, to have 2 main autohost systems, one for players with strong language, and one for polite people.

We do not think so. Proper language and decency will be maintained on all autohosts.

EXPERIENCED admins here know when to not ban/kick someone if its screw, the game, the community..

And yet if the current community on some autohosts is the result of "experienced admins" work, I doubt they know what they're doing.

YOU ARE SO WRONG

Are you sure it is not you, who is wrong?

[Senna]

Dude Triton i know bans are bad for any mod community. But everyone should respect each other and avoid bad languages or insults.

So im up with abma on this.

[FabriceFABS]

Dude Triton i know bans are bad for any mod community. But everyone should respect each other and avoid bad languages or insults.

So im up with abma on this.

It's not that ban is good or not : If it were toxic, it wouldn't exist anywhere, in any system.

On a justified ban, the player have to question himself (if he's got his own capacity to do so) to avoid :
1. Reproduce bad behaviour,
2. Receive again a ban.
This processus is normal, everyone (should) do it.

In a community, you have to accept good-sense rules, and cohabitation with other players.
I won't repeat what said above, it is nearly perfect.
Your freedom stops when other's starts.
This mean that we should manage our mind a bit to be compatible with most of the people, and not only 1 or 2 because they are good or best friends for instance.

Ban permits to preserve order when softer ways like gently talks, warnings... didn't worked.

Mostly, this is how life works in general.
Everything is so-classic in this procedure.

[FabriceFABS]

Things must be clarified :

I heard abma joined a game and banned Adolf, Stardom and lucido. How many other players did you ban dude?

What's the goal to kwow it ?

Before banning or doing anything alone, I think you could talk to EXPERIENCED BA admins.

Oops maybe I'm not experimented BA admins.
I don't know by the way who is BA admin.
I may say as BA admin (but mostly as a classic player),
I did report enough (some others did it also), IMO we won't wait forever, enough is enough.

You can't join a no man's land and start to apply the perfect rules that you want. We have a new tool for discussing, called discord, join us here, you are welcome:

https://discord.gg/9NfPSyc

Good sense rules aren't subject of discussion IMO.
I think you don't matter or you don't realise the importance of the actual problem.

The BA community is VERY small, if you come here and try to teach savages to be polite, by banning them, it won't work at all.

It you thay say it.

You would just comdemn all of us.

Surely not. Who is supposed to be US ?
I don't feel being condemn. Who else ??

It reminds me when Forb read his server log, and banned 90% of players who were actually HELPING to make the new BA version possible.

Same said above : It's not because... That it should be accepted.
I read logs also from ages (but really more those last 2 years), because I feel responsible and engaged for SpringRTS and what's going on also.
I also open random replays too.
What's wrong ?

The most annoying part for me is that I am defending some behavior I dislike, just because I want to be able to have players here, and I feel like the guy who tries to promote Spring Engine is dead since 10 years already.

I'm defending SpringRTS by offering autohosts, helping in all the ways/subjects as I can to anyone that asked me, I report bugs, got also french website....
Some others dev staff spend also their free time to develop SpringRTS.
What about trying doing some advertising for SpringRTS for instance instead of defending some behaviour you dislike as you said ?

I think It was OK, to have 2 main autohost systems, one for players with strong language, and one for polite people.

I want also a mid-language autohost
What a joke, are you serious ?

One thing I would also recommend, is to NEVER PERMABAN players, you just can't afford to do that.

If you really want to improve things there is many ways to do it.

EXPERIENCED admins here know when to not ban/kick someone if its screw, the game, the community..

More simple and easier : Warning(s), no reaction ? Ban.
No really experience is needed, good-sense rules.

Sometimes you need to punish someone less severely BECAUSE if you do punish him too hard, you punish WHOLE community...

For example, in BA, a the moment, you just can't ban for language stuffs, or you fucking kill the whole community

The only thing you could do to try to improve the game, and make it suitable for kids, WITHOUT FUCKING KILLING THE GAME, would be to temporary mute people.

From what I heard, with the rules you apply, you banned a player called StarDoM, Australian, and with same rules, you would actually ban most BA players, even the greatest we had in the past 10 years.

YOU ARE SO WRONG

So it's time to change.
I remind you that SpringRTS is :
- NOT for 18+ years old exclusively,
- Public, and in public space.

Saying sometimes some few words is not so toxic as it may seems because the context exists for instance just after an ended game, some players can be exited, we are humans.
It can be understandable and can be the exception.
This is *NOT* for this behaviour that some players have been ban.

[triton]

And yet if the current community on some autohosts is the result of "experienced admins" work, I doubt they know what they're doing.

This sentence is so demagogic...
The current community is not the result of experienced admin's good work. This is way more complex.

You can't judge admin's job when there is no good account system. If you ban a big troll, the big troll comes back with new name and even new flag if he's used to it.

I kicked and banned many players for offensive names, bad behaviors etc.. But it doesnt help much in the long run.

Btw I might stop to post on forum, I suck too hard at this game, and I might be missunderstood a lot.
I am one of the BA admins that fighted the most bad behaviors, and I think we are on the same side.

I hate it when experienced players insult new players, and I spent many hours trying to teach and trying to protect new players from bad behaviors.
Also as a non-english native speaker, it's not so easy to know which word is offensive and which one is not.
For example, I feel offended when a guy use the word "jew" as an insult, I also dislike the usage of the "N word", but if someone join a server and say hello niggaz, I dont know what to think. I also think that language is constantly evolving, and it might be a mistake but I feel like the "F word" is not offensive to me since I watched this south park's episode : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_F_Word_(South_Park) but again I might be wrong.

In the end, I agree we could have some global admin system and I am ok with abma banning bad behaviors if he never do perma bans without talking with others admins.

I am the kind of guy who think that by banning racist's behaviors u force them to stay together so they can't change their mind,
From what I know, most people who fight racism, are doing the contrary of what they should do.
I loved and lived with a racist woman for 5 years, but she wasn't racist anymore before the end of our relationship,
she just had very low culture to start with.
She is one of the most generous people I ever met.
People can change, but not if you let them stay with only racist people.

For Adolf, I never saw him acting like a stupid racist guy, I never saw him using jew as an insult, he never insulted muslims, or french people, he's not using the "cunt" word when he sees ladies here, he agrees on not using the N word when talking with me etc.. you can blame adolf for many things, but I dont think he's racist.

I saw and talked with many racists players, and most of them didn't need to use banned words to say racists bullshits.

I start to understand how I was wrong on some points, and I would apply more stricts rules if I could, but last time I tried to be more intransigent with bad behaviors, I ether lost my admin's rights on the server I was trying to clean or players just changed autohosts to avoid any rules they disliked.

[Silentwings]

If you ban a big troll, the big troll comes back with new name and even new flag if he's used to it. I kicked and banned many players for offensive names, bad behaviors etc.. But it doesnt help much in the long run.

I saw and talked with many racists players, and most of them didn't need to use banned words to say racists bullshits.

I think a lot of autohost admins have been through the same experience.

Good sense rules aren't subject of discussion IMO.

I think we are on the same side.

What is up for discussion is how the many various people involved with lobby/autohost moderation want to handle foul language in chat, and generally insulting behaviour. Afaics you are all essentially on the same side - but with very different positions on how strictly you want to enforce/create rules, and on how (in)effectively you think they can be enforced.

[FabriceFABS]

Triton, you removed this in your message :

Today Adolf said that I dont have admin's right on Overkill because Murtagon doesn't like french people. How do you think I feel about that?

Sorry I mention it again because I want to say that simply : Why you keep continue to stay with them ?
Do you really believe him ? Did you talk to Murtagon ?
You are admin on ACE autohosts and still continue to talk with them. It's your choice, why do you keep going right there like a sheep ?
Sorry It's not offensive, really. Sometimes, I really doubts in some things.

...
You can't judge admin's job when there is no good account system. If you ban a big troll, the big troll comes back with new name and even new flag if he's used to it.

- Actually there's a system that can be build forbids VPN/Proxies IP. A whitelist can be managed eventually.
This is a first point,
- Also, we should delegate some humans to validate every new nick with eventually a little more strongly system like for instance, email required.
yes yes I know we can do 1-day email, but however. This is exemple.

I kicked and banned many players for offensive names, bad behaviors etc.. But it doesnt help much in the long run.

Things will change, now, you just need to report. Admin staff really consider it.

...
I am the kind of guy who think that by banning racist's behaviors u force them to stay together so they can't change their mind,

You can't put a policeman every 1 meter... neither control what is happening in each private home for instance.
But doing policy on public spaces, yes. People shouldn't receive such behaviours or such bad advertising.

From what I know, most people who fight racism, are doing the contrary of what they should do.

It's not racism only actually, it's all bad behaviour.

I loved and lived with a racist woman for 5 years, but she wasn't racist anymore before the end of our relationship,
she just had very low culture to start with.
She is one of the most generous people I ever met.
People can change, but not if you let them stay with only racist people.

This is another point.

For Adolf, I never saw him acting like a stupid racist guy, I never saw him using jew as an insult, he never insulted muslims, or french people, he's not using the "cunt" word when he sees ladies here, he agrees on not using the N word when talking with me etc.. you can blame adolf for many things, but I dont think he's racist.

You said it «I don't think»... Yes, you will never sure totally, because you are not in his mind.
Even worse detectable because firstly you don't see this [man / woman / child] physically, and secondly, this player use so many nicks and IP that all shows he's not honest.

I start to understand how I was wrong on some points, and I would apply more stricts rules if I could, but last time I tried to be more intransigent with bad behaviors, I ether lost my admin's rights on the server I was trying to clean or players just changed autohosts to avoid any rules they disliked.

This won't be possible anymore right now. Just be patient.

[zweistein]

As long as we have this excessive amount of players we should totally increase kicks and bans! The bigger the community, the more moderation we simply need!

...oh...wait a second...

[abma]

As long as we have this excessive amount of players we should totally increase kicks and bans! The bigger the community, the more moderation we simply need!

...oh...wait a second...

IMHO for a community we need polite climate. Without this all people will leave, including game/engine/infra-devs. All devs here get no money and do this in their spare time. Polite climate -> more devs -> more/better games/content -> more players.

People poisoning the climate here should be warned/muted/banned. Insulting people work in a commercial game maybe, but IMHO don't work/aren't welcome in a opensource-community.

What will you do if i leave because of to many insulters here?

I can only say: thank you Silentwings, gajop, Senna, FabriceFABS and people i forgot for beeing part of this: without you it won't be fun to do stuff in the springrts world.

edit: site note: you can still host a game and insult each other when you want but its limited to 10 players / you won't get a botflag.

[zweistein]

I say those Botflags and Botflagged hosts access to data is just perfect and was needed for a long time! Finally bans get useful!

But where I disagree is to reeducate a very very small established community because you want it to behave like you want it... Here is the thing:

• - There is a 2 hour range for 8v8 games per day
  - As soon as it becomes 6v6, a lot of players go spectate because they dont play anything but 8v8. So it becomes usually 4v4 or 3v3 at 11pm in my timezone.

We also know: the more noob you are, the better big games are for you. Other player can carry you. You point out that new players would stay in a polite community. I'd answer that i dont see many new players trying out spring anyway. Two thoughts about banning the established community:

• - You simply need every player as I explained with the 8v8 games before...
  - Those using "bad words" are the community pusher. They talk a lot, they laugh a lot, they dominate the chats. If you stick with the introverts that do not talk: the social aspect and fun decreases. You stick with the more boring people. That happend to a lot of small communities until they are completely gone.

This is just a warning that you should not moderate strict or harsh. BUT IF YOU WANT TO BE HARSH:

12:05:30 AM] <[HATERS]Gayyiijjo> senna rename to [HATERS]Nixtux
[12:05:31 AM] <[HATERS]Gayyiijjo> hahaha
[12:05:32 AM] <[HATERS]Gayyiijjo> gg
[12:05:36 AM] <[HATERS]vbs> xD
[12:05:45 AM] <[HATERS]vbs> ye that would be OP xD
[12:05:52 AM] <[ACE]Senna> oh man u dont know what happend with nixtux
[12:06:07 AM] <[ACE]Senna> he lost his wife

You thanked your friend Senna who does those things. And he did not correct that rumor so that people asked me if that is really true... I'd rather ban him than those people calling their friends "cunts", "tards" and "nigger" for fun. But we need him as a player, too So dont start overmoderating or everyone gets banned!

[Silentwings]

@zweistein: Senna's rumor mongering was dealt with (by me). Please avoid backseat moderation that brings threads off-topic.

Please don't start your own rumor mongering either; there is no en masse banning of any community taking place.

Split further discussion of individuals to viewtopic.php?f=16&t=36409

[hokomoko]

But we need him as a player, too So dont start overmoderating or everyone gets banned!

No you don't.
The only person who's crucial to spring (and consequently BA) atm is abma (I think) as he's almost the only one dealing with infra.
It seems like the Stockholm Syndrome is strong here.
A bunch of normal people talking about how the people who make this community a cesspool are necessary since otherwise there won't be no community.


My thoughts on the matter:

1) A while ago I was curious and fired up OpenRA to spec (and maybe play) some games. It was barely a single game before I decided I'm not going to be part of that community. If you think that never happened for new players in BA, I'm pretty sure you are mistaken.

2) Everything done on spring's server reflects on people's view of the spring project and community as a whole. I wouldn't want to be a part of a project that's infamous for its foul community. Fortunately we're not there yet, but just keep preserving every single toxic player and you can change it!

I'm unlikely to post on this subject again.

[dansan]

When you see people (or their proxies) whining because they are loosing their turf, you know you did the right thing.

[very_bad_soldier]

We have a new tool for discussing, called discord, join us here, you are welcome:

https://discord.gg/9NfPSyc

"We" have a forum here which supports threads, subforums, moderation etc. and all the people are here. Discussing on Discord is hard because its just a long stream of loose comments. You don't even know where or when a discussion starts or ends. Why try to split community?

I think It was OK, to have 2 main autohost systems, one for players with strong language, and one for polite people.
One thing I would also recommend, is to NEVER PERMABAN players, you just can't afford to do that.

You know it does not work that way. There is only 1 running server 95% of the time. So either you join the "strong" language server or you don't play. Be prepared to get insulted and bullied though, have fun with it!

Sometimes you need to punish someone less severely BECAUSE if you do punish him too hard, you punish WHOLE community...

For example, in BA, a the moment, you just can't ban for language stuffs, or you fucking kill the whole community

What a weird logic
The current community is 70% trolls cause in the last years trolls were tolerated by admins. That's one reason why community is so small and fucked now. No newbie in a normal state of mind will stay here for more than a few games. Continue that way and community will fall below a critical mass in the next 6 months I predict.
So only way is to wipe the shit out now with the chance to get some new blood suitable to form a newer, healthier community.

[FLOZi]

How you really deal with racist trolls...

https://github.com/spring1944/spring194 ... 15e5dc9114

[ThinkSome]

Which was a total overreaction, if anything you should have attempted to re-educate him or use softer methods of punishment instead of axing a very good player that is prepared to work with newbies. zCram has always been nice with us regulars, but had an outburst when his team lost due to a newbie that was there for quote "explosions". I attempted several times to get him back, but he told me that he wished to stick to his principles.

I actually went and browsed my ancient chatlogs to see if his insults towards players were frequent, but could not find the evidence for it. It does seem like a one-off event, though it is true that this happened quite early in my S44 "career".

I'm not sure why you had labeled him a troll as I do not remember any instance of him provoking an argument for his own amusement. Or is this not the definition of "troll" in use here?

I really miss him, he was my teacher for S44

[MaDDoX]

I don't fully agree with Triton, far from that, but I've been talking to him about other - hopefully more effective yet less aggressive - ways to deal with the problem. And yes, it is a true problem, I've seen a fair share of players leaving the online game because of that.

We have a 'controlled group' in our local MORTS group, playing weekly with only people we know in real life, and more and more players want to join our group every month. Of course that's not enforceable in an autohost, so we'll experiment with some simple muting rules in our new autohost server:

* Players with rank < 3 are auto-muted when joining the battleroom
* Any player may request unmute of auto-muted players, by vote - or automatically, by an admin

We're also investigating the option for a votable 'Friendly Match' setting to make the match not affect the players TS, to encourage rusty or new players to play as much as they can.

PS.: The MORTS server is currently in tests with the new SAP autohosting system under development by our team. It's a SPADS-like system all coded in Python3 with bots and modules all preconfigured, we intend to expand its functionality as needed. It's currently private but we'll make it public really soon.