Adding a "toxicity" rule to the servers

[Sheev_Palpatine]

I think times may be changing. Riot and Blizzard are doing it, other communities are doing it with relatively little backlash and as I've shown already, there are numerous people claiming we are a haven for toxicity as well as youtube videos.

I am not sure we can rely on our current players to say whether or not it is a good idea, because we've basically self selected our players for ones that have a tolerance for "toxicity" as those that could not stand it would not stay on our servers.

Riot and Activision Blizzard are also companies that have had serious lawsuits and settlements recently and have been trying to save face.

From my viewpoint of an outsider looking in, Skial's issues stem from years and years of unwillingness to do anything about toxic players that weren't exactly breaking server rules and telling anyone who tried/wanted to report the bad behavior was told to simply mute/ignore/block them. This is why these Youtube videos pop up and the occasional Reddit post. It's been a build up over the decade Skial's been around and honestly change would be a good course of action. You just need to figure out how to implement it without it imploding. The server rules used to be extremely vague, but they can't be too detailed either or no one will read them. You gotta strike that perfect balance and specify what toxicity means to Skial servers.

 

[KinCryos]

at the very least, it can probably be mentioned that tools exist to allow players to avoid voice/text chat from user-specified players in minor or annoying situations, as well as perhaps the differences between the Main Menu's "Mute Players" option and the !ignore command:

• !ignore (iirc) only blocks voice from user-specified players and expires when you leave the server, which is perfect for minor annoyances and very light trash talk
• TF2's built-in ignore tool uses a persistent blacklist of accounts to block both voice and text chat from, no matter what server you're playing on, until said players are specifically removed from the list, which is great for annoyances that get under your skin

not to mention that demos will record any voice chat that you can hear, which is a great help in extreme situations such as credible threats.

 

[RenZ]

I am wondering where is the line drawn? there's the extreme of death threats and there's like little snarky comments that can come off as toxic. Just curious about that.

why not add 'toxicity' to the list of votemute reasons and call it a day

I quite like this, it can be abused, but that's pretty usual for the votemenu system.

 

[Bottiger]

Riot and Activision Blizzard are also companies that have had serious lawsuits and settlements recently and have been trying to save face.

Their lawsuits have nothing to do with getting rid of toxicity in their games though.

And as an example, remember how all the regulars were all hardliner anti-friendly, and now that we've removed friendlying from the rules, our servers haven't imploded, especially our 2fort servers where friendlying happens all the time.

It might be a hard pill to swallow, but the regulars might not always be right.

 

[Maddo]

Nobody is saying not to stamp out toxicity, those expressing an opinion here mostly seem to be unsure where the line is drawn though.
Drawing that line to appease a random reddit user over a regular is not the way forward.
Draw the line for the benefit of those who have actually been affected by 'toxicity' not some unknown who says Skial is toxic without giving any examples aside from discrimination, which as you know is already against the rules.
I know you will add this rule in one form or another, and I am pretty sure that admin will all interpret this differently, or will decide something is indeed toxic due to not wanting to seem part of the problem. As I said before, you're just going to switch from people saying "Skial is toxic" to "Skial admin are terrible/bullies/toxic etc", especially when certain heavy handed, non-empathic admin get to work.

 

[Dash7]

If an 'anti-toxicity' rule is well quantified, I think it could be very helpful to the servers. In my opinion, I feel that the response to moderating toxic behavior is very lacking.

The only reason I see to allow toxic behavior on the servers, is that the servers need those percentage of players that are toxic to provide traffic, driving ad revenue so that the servers can be self-sustaining. I don't see any other reason.

---

Some examples of what I believe to be a lacking response to 'toxic' behavior​

• See how many times this player was muted, before they were comms blocked
  • https://www.skial.com/sourcebans/index.php?p=commslist&advSearch=[U:1:196355275]&advType=steamid
• I reported this player [ https://www.skial.com/threads/zy_alt-acc-discrimination-and-harassment.98281 ] for racism and other offensive statements. They were comms banned for 1 day, and reviewing their sourcebans history [ https://www.skial.com/sourcebans/index.php?p=commslist&advType=steamid&advSearch=[U:1:1279094796] ], it appears that they have been votemuted 6 times since their 1 day ban.
  • I mean just reading their chat log, they could be reported again on the forums for various racism type statements. One example:
    

    PAYLOAD+ | EU ████	02/12/2022 - 08:17:58 AM	zy_alt acc	nier nier nier nier nier nier nier nier
    PAYLOAD+ | EU ████	02/12/2022 - 08:17:25 AM	zy_alt acc	NIERS
    PAYLOAD+ | EU ████	02/12/2022 - 08:17:15 AM	zy_alt acc	man still plays spy in 2022
    PAYLOAD+ | EU ████	02/12/2022 - 08:16:48 AM	zy_alt acc	pick cotton
    PAYLOAD+ | EU ████	02/12/2022 - 08:16:43 AM	zy_alt acc	stupid black
    PAYLOAD+ | EU ████	02/12/2022 - 08:16:34 AM	zy_alt acc	MATTI YOU SHOULD GO KILL YOURSELF NPOW

  • In my opinion, a 1 day ban for what I reported them for was inappropriate. And they obviously continued their toxic behavior immediately after being unbanned.
    • Possible offenses in just those few messages: (Dodging n-word ban, racism, go kill yourself, etc..)
• I don't want to exhaustively search all offensive language, but see at least some low hanging fruit:
  • https://stats.skial.com/#summary/chat/All/faggot

---

I don't think discriminatory language and discriminatory behavior on skial is moderated enough, and when it is moderated, it appears to me to be lenient. I think that it is completely unacceptable to use discriminatory language based on race/ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation. I don't think there is any place in 2022 for people who feel the need to displace others that don't fit into their worldview or scope of comfortability based on the above factors. I do not believe skial benefits at all from allowing those people to play or speak on these servers.

From what I can tell, the standard operating procedure, for dealing with players that use language that is actionable based off of the current rules, is to remove their ability to communicate, but allow them to continue to play. This sets the precedent that this kind of behavior is acceptable to a point.

 

[gala]

I think that it is completely unacceptable to use discriminatory language based on race/ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation. I don't think there is any place in 2022 for people who feel the need to displace others that don't fit into their worldview or scope of comfortability based on the above factors. I do not believe skial benefits at all from allowing those people to play or speak on these servers.

There already are rules to prevent this kind of behavior, this thread is discussing possible revamps on the existing rules to also include toxicity/excessive toxicity (constant harassment, death threats, other persistent heavy trash talk with the intent to drive people away from the servers.

In my opinion, a 1 day ban for what I reported them for was inappropriate. And they obviously continued their toxic behavior immediately after being unbanned.

We give 1 day comm blocks at first since most people should learn after that but when they repeat the same offense again the length will rise. It's usually 1 day > 3 days > 7 days > 1 month > 3-6 months > permanent, which is relatively lenient but usually applies to minor issues such as micspamming, voteabuse, chat spam.

In cases of racism and discrimination we might skip these steps and go directly for longer mutes depending on what their chat history looks like and how recently was their last mute. But first mute is usually 1 day.

We admins do not have time to keep tabs on every single person muted and see if they re offend after their punishment has expired. If the player doesn't get reported or doesn't get noticed on the server by an admin he likely won't get punished

From what I can tell, the standard operating procedure, for dealing with players that use language that is actionable based off of the current rules, is to remove their ability to communicate, but allow them to continue to play. This sets the precedent that this kind of behavior is acceptable to a point.

Why not let them play? If they cannot communicate with other players anymore, they cannot break said rules either so the issue is fixed. If they try to get around their silence by either changing their name, using discriminatory/racist item names or decals, then we ban them.

 

[Dash7]

There already are rules to prevent this kind of behavior, this thread is discussing possible revamps on the existing rules to also include toxicity/excessive toxicity (constant harassment, death threats, other persistent heavy trash talk with the intent to drive people away from the servers.

My point is, that, this type of behavior is not moderated well enough, and is a type of 'toxic' behavior, and better moderation of that type of behavior will reduce the amount of 'toxic' behavior experienced on skial. Better moderation of existing rules reduces the need for an anti-toxicity rule.

We give 1 day comm blocks at first since most people should learn after that but when they repeat the same offense again the length will rise. It's usually 1 day > 3 days > 7 days > 1 month > 3-6 months > permanent, which is relatively lenient but usually applies to minor issues such as micspamming, voteabuse, chat spam.

In cases of racism and discrimination we might skip these steps and go directly for longer mutes depending on what their chat history looks like and how recently was their last mute. But first mute is usually 1 day.

I understand that, and I believe that taking into account how often someone has been 'votemuted' should contribute to how quickly their ban is escalated, or should at least be an indication that the community is attempting to self-moderate, and it isn't working if there are an excessive number of votemutes / votebans on record.

We admins do not have time to keep tabs on every single person muted and see if they re offend after their punishment has expired. If the player doesn't get reported or doesn't get noticed on the server by an admin he likely won't get punished

I think a community as large as skial can set up some monitoring scripts to automatically tag people who are votemuted / votebanned often for review. I agree with you that without scripts / automated system to pick these cases up, it would be too much work for admins.

Why not let them play? If they cannot communicate with other players anymore, they cannot break said rules either so the issue is fixed. If they try to get around their silence by either changing their name, using discriminatory/racist item names or decals, then we ban them.

I'm just pointing out that by comms blocking people permanently without an actual ban, it is not as discouraging, but I don't have a full view on how this could be managed one way or another, just wanted to point it out.

 

[gala]

I understand that, and I believe that taking into account how often someone has been 'votemuted' should contribute to how quickly their ban is escalated,

I forgot to mention but we do take that into account as well but there has to be a vast amount of votemutes so that it is obvious the person is indeed being racist or spamming and it's safe to give them a longer one.

If a player is hit by the racism filter those count too, if someone has been silenced three times in a weeks span for 2 hours I'd put their third mute directly into a month or more, The Proficy mute would have been permanent a good while ago but looks like we didn't notice the amount of mutes he had because nobody reported him

 

[gala]

I think a community as large as skial can set up some monitoring scripts to automatically tag people who are votemuted / votebanned often for review. I agree with you that without scripts / automated system to pick these cases up, it would be too much work for admins.

Admins are all volunteers and have their own personal lives so I doubt that anyone of them will have time and interest in starting to work something like this, I also assume that bottiger has his hands full at the moment but it is up to his decision in the end, good idea otherwise and I would see something like that being useful

 

[BadmanoftheBrine]

So youre basically saying your current players are somehow worth less than new players that likely wont ever sign up to the forums, stay for over a week, or do anything productive other than use !votereport

Cos if you cant rely on us, why'd you ask us our opinion in the first place?

 

[BadmanoftheBrine]

I think times may be changing. Riot and Blizzard are doing it, other communities are doing it with relatively little backlash and as I've shown already, there are numerous people claiming we are a haven for toxicity as well as youtube videos.

I am not sure we can rely on our current players to say whether or not it is a good idea, because we've basically self selected our players for ones that have a tolerance for "toxicity" as those that could not stand it would not stay on our servers.

Apologies, my window hadnt updated, and there were posts ahead of this I wasnt able to see until now.

It just sounds like nothing we do will be good enough to please you, and you might as well have just asked a wall someone pointed out, instead of the listening post right in front of you

 

[Dash7]

It just sounds like nothing we do will be good enough to please you, and you might as well have just asked a wall someone pointed out, instead of the listening post right in front of you

I disagree with your take on bottiger's comment BadmanoftheBrine.

I think times may be changing. Riot and Blizzard are doing it, other communities are doing it with relatively little backlash and as I've shown already, there are numerous people claiming we are a haven for toxicity as well as youtube videos.

I am not sure we can rely on our current players to say whether or not it is a good idea, because we've basically self selected our players for ones that have a tolerance for "toxicity" as those that could not stand it would not stay on our servers.

I can only speak to this anecdotally. I play very often on 2FORT+ | US 1 and this is not an easy server to join. It is at most times 32/32 full. From experience, most of the people that play this server are regulars. I would assume that non-regular players are not going to join this server as often when they can join any number of easier to join servers (within skial). The point is, I very rarely see what I would classify as toxic behavior on this server.

I used to play very often on Harvest | US, however I find that sometimes when I join it, the community there tends to be younger, and from my perspective far more toxic. For that reason I have stopped playing Harvest | US as often. I also know of a player that told me that they don't play on that server as often because of frequent 'transphobic' content. When I do play harvest, I often just turn off voicechat completely, whereas I don't need to do that on 2FORT+ | US 1 as often.

The point is, I believe that each server has its own community, and I agree with Bottiger's statement in how the the player-base is self-selected.

 

[KinCryos]

I used to play very often on Harvest | US, however I find that sometimes when I join it, the community there tends to be younger, and from my perspective far more toxic.

I wonder how long ago that was. I used to go there and level my Strange Harvest-filtered Jarate and somehow get MVP on a few rounds (probably due to the kill-assists, in which case the game prioritizes Jarate over any other type of assist. I still think it's funny to get MVP for literally pissing on the other team and nothing else)

 

[Antamania]

Nobody is saying not to stamp out toxicity, those expressing an opinion here mostly seem to be unsure where the line is drawn though.
Drawing that line to appease a random reddit user over a regular is not the way forward.
Draw the line for the benefit of those who have actually been affected by 'toxicity' not some unknown who says Skial is toxic without giving any examples aside from discrimination, which as you know is already against the rules.
I know you will add this rule in one form or another, and I am pretty sure that admin will all interpret this differently, or will decide something is indeed toxic due to not wanting to seem part of the problem. As I said before, you're just going to switch from people saying "Skial is toxic" to "Skial admin are terrible/bullies/toxic etc", especially when certain heavy handed, non-empathic admin get to work.

Always has been my concern too. I'm not against getting rid of awful, awful people. I in fact, think it's a very good idea.

Just want some clarity. I don't want to run afoul an admin and get myself muted/kicked/whatever because me and a friend are jokingly trashtalking each other.

 

[Bottiger]

Always has been my concern too. I'm not against getting rid of awful, awful people. I in fact, think it's a very good idea.

Just want some clarity. I don't want to run afoul an admin and get myself muted/kicked/whatever because me and a friend are jokingly trashtalking each other.

I understand your position, you think that you are going to be unfairly punished by an admin and that you cannot trust the judgement of any admin.

However it is not possible for every rule to be black and white and we already have rules that are subject to admin discretion.

The question then becomes, is it worth getting rid of toxicity on our servers to make it a more enjoyable place and to stop other communities from stopping new players from joining by claiming we have the most toxic servers... in exchange for that 0.1% chance you might get unfairly muted? I think it might be worth it.

 

[Antamania]

I understand your position, you think that you are going to be unfairly punished by an admin and that you cannot trust the judgement of any admin.

However it is not possible for every rule to be black and white and we already have rules that are subject to admin discretion.

The question then becomes, is it worth getting rid of toxicity on our servers to make it a more enjoyable place and to stop other communities from stopping new players from joining by claiming we have the most toxic servers... in exchange for that 0.1% chance you might get unfairly muted? I think it might be worth it.

Edit:
Just bowing out of this. It's not worth the time. Either I'm making my point poorly, or you want to fight. Little else I can add to the conversation that I haven't already said. Do what you will at this point.

 

[Maddo]

The question then becomes, is it worth getting rid of toxicity on our servers to make it a more enjoyable place and to stop other communities from stopping new players from joining by claiming we have the most toxic servers...

The question should be, is there really that much toxicity on the servers, is it a problem, or is the problem merely people shit talking on reddit?
If it is truly as you say "other communities - claiming we have the most toxic servers" whatever rules are added will not make a difference whether they go on the attack or not. They will still say Skial is toxic, but will now start saying skial bans you for the stupidest of things.
Also, just how much traffic, particularly new players do you think actually comes from reddit, I would think hardly any.

 

[BadmanoftheBrine]

I'm just gonna put it out there I only came to your servers because a friend joined a random one, after not having played with him for a while. We'd never cared nor bothered with skial due to usually going elsewhere.

We've both stayed, but I'm at least pretty regular

 

[BadmanoftheBrine]

Or moreso, I should say I'd barely ever heard about skial, and didn't bother with it seeing as it was plastered over the community servers hub.

Certain we were on blackwonder servers beforehand

He uses reddit frequently too, AFAIK

The point of me saying all this is that it's very likely random chance new players join, and I'd even bet my left sock that players will still likely join if at random, even IF they've heard bad things. A lot of people nowadays prefer to try it before they buy it.