goio's great community

[shaelyn]

Hi everyone,
Let me weigh in on the topic at hand as well as some of the suggestions made for us to perform moderation better. 

So far, the tangible suggestions for us are two: 
1) To obscure the notification to reported player so that they don't speculate who reported them.  This was an byproduct that we did not anticipate, and currently, our solution is to add a delay to receipt of notification of being reported.  The timer I'm recommending is 30min.  Of course, there is a chance that the reported person may not receive the report due to the delay.  However, we do take notice of every single report that comes through as you know, so we can still act on the report asap.

2) More status updates for the reporter to know status of report filed.  Our solution for this is to add notification via email of 2 states of progress - when we received and view the report, and when an action is taken.  Please note that we also need to protect individuals' privacy and protect the community against reporters who may not be well intended.  Thus, we can only say that we have viewed or have taken some form of action.  In other words, we will not be disclosing the specifics of our actions taken.  I think the reasoning is obvious here, so hope this is understandable. 

We will try our best to implement these for the next update.

Thanks for this, Howard.  It's the solutions that I'm after.  I realize this thing can't really have a complete resolution, but I'm glad you guys are taking steps to close the gap a little.

I'm down with the discussion itself as well; I do believe there's something to be said about awareness, and a thread like this is a great place for it.  brain is too fried from the continuing sitcom that is Shae and Daemacil's Great Move 2014 to contribute anything more worthwhile, though.

so otherwise, thanks Lydia for making this thread and taking a stand.

[sparklerfish]

The delay in report notifications would be a great start.  If you're harassing someone and get reported and immediately get a notification, it's gonna be pretty obvious who reported you.  I often get counter-reported in such a circumstance, which is pretty ridiculous -- are they reporting me for reporting them? 

[CitizenFry]

Interesting side note: you have one of the highest report to capture ratios. (Basically how many of your reports turn into warnings and/or bans.) So thank you for the effective reports.

I think a high report-to-capture ratio would mean the reports are ineffective, wouldn't it? </pedantic>

Assorted comments that came to mind while reading this thread:

- I've seen a fair amount of undesirable behavior in this game. I try to ask people not to do it when I see it, and if that fails I try to report. I actually started a discussion on another forum about a situation I had seen in this game. Basically: when the inappropriateness is targeted at a specific individual, should I try to comment on it publically, in addition to GoIO's handy report feature? I'm still not sure, although I think I lean towards "yes, tell that person to stop it."

- Is there a way to differentiate between "I don't want to listen to this person RIGHT NOW" and "I don't want to listen to this person EVER AGAIN"? Sometimes in big lobbies there will be ten or twenty people talking at once and I can't hear what ammo my captain told me to bring, and I just want to temporarily mute everyone who's not on my ship. I don't want to have to go through and block everybody, because if I forget to unblock someone, then a week later when I run into that person again, I might think ze's one of the trolls I've blocked, and that'd just be unfortunate

- I think I might have found a bug: a few times when I've been in the process of typing up a report, the match will start, and then I'll get a popup telling me that I've been reported, even though I haven't done anything (not even reported someone else!).

- obviously, reporting on specific complaints isn't going to be a thing. But would it be possible for MUSE to report statistics on complaints in aggregate? For example, in the month of September, X complaints for harassment were filed, with Y warnings and Z bans applied; W accounts were banned for cheating, etc.

[macmacnick]

We need a Mute feature (Like blocking) for those people who you are annoyed with or just don't want to listen to verbally at the moment. It could only mute their voice chat for you, and you could (maybe?) un mute them from the social tab afterwards...

[shaelyn]

We need a Mute feature (Like blocking) for those people who you are annoyed with or just don't want to listen to verbally at the moment. It could only mute their voice chat for you, and you could (maybe?) un mute them from the social tab afterwards...

...and maybe mutes should reset after you log too, while blocks don't?

I could see this potentially getting confusing, though.

[Keyvias]

Interesting side note: you have one of the highest report to capture ratios. (Basically how many of your reports turn into warnings and/or bans.) So thank you for the effective reports.

I think a high report-to-capture ratio would mean the reports are ineffective, wouldn't it? </pedantic>

If she was reporting the same players, I'd agree, but they are different players.  We are always selling copies so that means always new players. Some new players are not good matches for the Guns of Icarus community.
Most players who get reported only get reported once. Either because they leave after the warning or change their behavior.

We'll definitely investigate that bug you reported on reporting. We'll see if we can reproduce it/ fix it

@Blocking
Blocking does mute players for you both in voice and in text. So if you can block someone speaking how you don't like.

[shaelyn]

@Blocking
Blocking does mute players for you both in voice and in text. So if you can block someone speaking how you don't like.

yes, but I believe the idea was to have something to distinguish between players you want to block permanently VS just muting temporarily and un-muting later, for situations when five conversations are happening in voice chat at once and you just want to hear one.
instead of adding an additional mute function, it may be a thing to have something within the current system to just indicate if you want to block permanently or not.  a button next to each name?  a pop-up window when you block asking if you want it to be a permanent block?  lots of ways to do this.

...or, in the interim or if it won't be changed, use text chat for those situations and leave people unblocked?

sorry if the thread's derailing a bit...

[TeddyBearMafia]

Last night I encountered a particularly egregious example of sexism in a lobby which was persistent, distracting, and repetitive. For others to avoid it, everyone would have had to have left the lobby and restarted a new one, and seeing how hard it is to get a bunch of high level players together for a semi-competitive game in a public lobby, everyone was understandably upset at the prospect.

When several of us asked the offender to stop, he persisted to the point of being blocked and reported. However, as noted by others, because he could see the reports he and his friend persisted in their harassment by repeatedly reporting both the target of their comments and those of us who had reported them. Ergo, I can see the need for some delay before reports are processed.

As for any analysis I can offer as to this story, I think that one of the problems arises from the small and pretty insular nature of GoI's community. Generally, we take it on face value that we don't need to have super active moderators ready at the drop of a hat to resolve a crisis or an argument, especially on off-hours. For a number of reasons that redria and others have addressed, this assumption tends to cater towards the experience of male gamers, but I do think that I can fairly assume that most of the players I regularly encounter in lobbies do not engage in overtly sexist comments or behaviour. Therefore, when someone outside of this community engages in behaviour we find reprehensible, it is jarring and seriously disrupts the community feeling of the game.

I'm not sure if there's really much that can be done about it beyond Muse's individual handling of reports, which is appreciated. There's little to no restorative justice available for incidences of harassment, and that is disappointing if understandable given the online environment. At the very least, I intend to continue to engage with those who make offhand sexist comments in GoIO in order to see if I can't get them to recognize what they're doing wrong, as opposed to simply blocking them. Hopefully that is at least one thing I can offer to try and make the community better in an anti-oppressive manner.

[Goldenglade]

Night time moderator here ^^ sorry I was in the process of moving to Florida but i'm back and will be in game more often in those late night hours ^^ Feel free to contact me on steam as needed should you not find me in the game

[sparklerfish]

Man, I was in a lobby yesterday that was having a really positive discussion about feminism until it somehow turned to be about female pubic hair.

"A conversation about women as people?  OH NO, QUICK, BETTER TURN IT TO BE ABOUT SEX!"

[B'Elanna]

Man, I was in a lobby yesterday that was having a really positive discussion about feminism until it somehow turned to be about female pubic hair.

"A conversation about women as people?  OH NO, QUICK, BETTER TURN IT TO BE ABOUT SEX!"

honey, you know that...
women aren't supposed to grow hair, take shits and fart, or smell of anything other than rose paddles and rain on a clear summer day.
that's just not okay.
women are supposed to be soft and beautiful to look at, easy for the eyes AND nose. you don't want to bother your man now, do you? or any other for that sake.
always be gentle and understanding, make them feel heard and considered! as a woman it is your job to make sure men feel that they matter. and what better way to do that then making them decide what body hair you can admit to growing and what is just disgusting and you should hide your shame.

oh and Aayra, i don't really care if people want to come or not, lydia and me would be fine playing alone but by giving it a broad title like "girl gaming night" or similar things it made it clear that we do want female company and NO we do not have to know you first. and it worked. we had a really lovely evening and it was kinda nice. we played in the iron fork and then we split up into L4D2 and TF2. and then i left and they continued playing. people got to know one another, and now also casually want to hit each other up for a game here and there. exactly what i wanted out of this.

and what i mentioned about being respectful and mindful of making sure you as a male player don't make women uncomfortable only counts if those men don't have the consent of those women to treat them a certain way. if you are fine with public flirting all the power to you, but it obviously means you have talked to people about it and it was okay for you to be treated like that right? as for random strangers. it only counts if they want to be decent human beings respectfully approaching a situation. hey if not then that's fine too. they're just gonna be called out on the disrespectful boundary crossing individual they are.
cat-calling and disgusting behaviour is not always done to hit on us sorely.
sometimes it's like a dog pissing on his territory. they feel we're not supposed to feel comfortable here and they try to enforce that. "not feeding the troll" is shutting up and letting them piss all over this community. this is why CAs shouldn't block people right? to not be oblivious to abuse and not letting it happen continuously but honestly i lost all my believe in this CA system. they have no power to do anything anyway. some are more scared to stand up to abuse than before they got their yellow name. it's kinda sad.

(this is more to everyone)

look i don't really care if you think i'm an over-reactive over-sensitive feminist killjoy that takes away your innocent fun. i don't.
i just wanted to invite other girls to play video games with me.
and those who want to come can just show up any time.

that's. it. ^^

[Squidslinger Gilder]

honey, you know that...
women aren't supposed to grow hair, take shits and fart, or smell of anything other than rose paddles and rain on a clear summer day.
that's just not okay.
women are supposed to be soft and beautiful to look at, easy for the eyes AND nose. you don't want to bother your man now, do you? or any other for that sake.
always be gentle and understanding, make them feel heard and considered! as a woman it is your job to make sure men feel that they matter. and what better way to do that then making them decide what body hair you can admit to growing and what is just disgusting and you should hide your shame.

oh and Aayra, i don't really care if people want to come or not, lydia and me would be fine playing alone but by giving it a broad title like "girl gaming night" or similar things it made it clear that we do want female company and NO we do not have to know you first. and it worked. we had a really lovely evening and it was kinda nice. we played in the iron fork and then we split up into L4D2 and TF2. and then i left and they continued playing. people got to know one another, and now also casually want to hit each other up for a game here and there. exactly what i wanted out of this.

and what i mentioned about being respectful and mindful of making sure you as a male player don't make women uncomfortable only counts if those men don't have the consent of those women to treat them a certain way. if you are fine with public flirting all the power to you, but it obviously means you have talked to people about it and it was okay for you to be treated like that right? as for random strangers. it only counts if they want to be decent human beings respectfully approaching a situation. hey if not then that's fine too. they're just gonna be called out on the disrespectful boundary crossing individual they are.
cat-calling and disgusting behaviour is not always done to hit on us sorely.
sometimes it's like a dog pissing on his territory. they feel we're not supposed to feel comfortable here and they try to enforce that. "not feeding the troll" is shutting up and letting them piss all over this community. this is why CAs shouldn't block people right? to not be oblivious to abuse and not letting it happen continuously but honestly i lost all my believe in this CA system. they have no power to do anything anyway. some are more scared to stand up to abuse than before they got their yellow name. it's kinda sad.

(this is more to everyone)

look i don't really care if you think i'm an over-reactive over-sensitive feminist killjoy that takes away your innocent fun. i don't.
i just wanted to invite other girls to play video games with me.
and those who want to come can just show up any time.

that's. it. ^^

[macmacnick]

I, for one, stand up to trolls. See a troll and i'm online, just summon me. (I have my methods of dealing with trolls.)

[RedRoach]

If you see a troll on the internet, don't feed the troll, let the troll feed you.

Whenever I see a douchebag on the internet, I take a "Enlightened gentleman" approach with the most exquisite insults ever.

Retard: WHY THE SHIT ARE YOU LETTING A GIRL ON YOUR TEAM!?!?111!?
Me: Excuse me good sir, but I am not allowing a girl on my team, but rather a valuable team player unlike yourself. In addition, I find that assistants who do not scream are much more valuable than those who use binary code to express their anger instead of proper punctuation.
Retard: Dafuq?

[Shadak Shademore]

I don't Tolerate trolls.