Adding a "toxicity" rule to the servers

[Maddo]

You're definitely not wrong, but however the rule is worded, people are going to say that anyway. Even if it was a blanket "toxicity" rule, you'll still ban people, and they'll still claim they were just talking a little trash, not being toxic.

From what I'm understanding, admins are already actioning toxicity, he just wants a rule in place so he can point to it when people complain on reddit.

I'm still not entirely on board with banning blanket "toxicity", and I was simply trying to offer something that makes it clear that actual toxic people, not clowns, are going to find themselves actioned.

I'd say just have a blanket rule against toxicity and leave it up to the admins, BUT this would not go well, because of one fact, the admins are police, judge, jury, executioner and they are also their own appeal court, this would make toxicity entirely up to what an individual admin deems as toxic. Those not being punished aren't even allowed to have an opinion on a report or an appeal if they see things from another point of view, you can't even apply a rating anymore to express an opinion.
This just tells me that any rule would have be against a specific behaviour or you are just going to have people complain that Skial sucks because of their admin, it doesn't cure the problem of people slagging off skial, it's just pushes the bubble down to have it pop up somewhere else. The word 'toxicity' doesn't actually mean anything specific enough.

If admin are actioning toxicity, perhaps more of them should post in this thread stating what line those people have crossed, what did they exactly do or say to get punished? This should give at least a basic idea of what this dreaded toxicity is and allow the drawing up of a framwork to hang a rule from. My guess is it's for threating people IRL and constantly hounding someone with abuse.

 

[Failed Austrian Artist]

Sorry, can't endorse said proposed rule. Namely for reasons that have already been fully explained. What exactly is "toxic behaviour" and when does one cross the line from joking and trash talking to toxicity? I have no doubt my own behaviour on Skial could be misconstrued as toxic, although anyone who knows me understands I'm joking 100% of the time and not to be taken seriously, ever.

 

[Mr.Colin]

Since I last commented I think a few interesting points were brought up that I'd like to mention and share my thoughts.

The hyper-fixation on the 'wording' of this rule is strange to hear. The way that the servers rules are currently formatted easily give room to provide examples of toxic behavior. It could be listed like this.

"Toxicity. Examples:
Personal attacks on a player or group of players
Threatening to harm yourself or other players
Engaging in targeted harassment of other players"

You could also very easily look toward other online communities that have already defined their rules around 'toxic' behavior.

From twitch TOS
"Hateful conduct and harassment are not allowed on Twitch. Hateful conduct is any content or activity that promotes or encourages discrimination, denigration, harassment, or violence based on the following protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, color, caste, national origin, immigration status, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious medical condition, and veteran status."

People can’t be bothered to actually make a report and then whine about the servers being full of degenerates, leading them to stop playing on the servers. The only actual solution is to substantially increase the admin team, but that can come with its own problems.

What reason would a potential new player have to take the time out of their day to file a report against another player when they can more simply quit and go join a server where they are not experiencing this issue?

I am unaware of the administration structure of Skial servers but having run into similar problems form my days of hosting and administrating on ArmA and Gmod servers I think the solution is quite simple if done correctly. Skial has many frequent members on their servers daily. It would be wise to consider creating a distinction between an administrator role and a moderator role. Mods would have less control over the logistics of the rules and would be easier to apply for. They would not have the ability to ban players but the responsibility to report them. The goal would be to have at least one moderator connected to most if not all servers at once. This way nothing slips under the radar. Positions like this are coveted amongst players for a community they care about.

Something like this could help to resolve blatant violations of the rules that newer players would be discouraged by witnessing. There is also something to be said by having someone (a mod or admin) connected to a server. Just presence alone will discourage people from violating rules.


Again, I'm not sure if this is already the case as I am not aware of the current structure.

 

[Maddo]

Threatening to harm yourself

Er... what?

Hateful conduct and harassment are not allowed

Just this wording would be enough imo.

Mods would have less control over the logistics of the rules and would be easier to apply for. They would not have the ability to ban players but the responsibility to report them.

Anyone can currently make a report, so no need for a role for someone who can only make a report.

 

[Maddo]

veteran status

Is this now a protected characteristic?

 

[Mr.Colin]

Threatening to harm yourself or other players

Er... what?

More of a CYA for Skial itself.
"If you do X I'm going to Y myself!" type beat.

I also mention it because most communities that address toxicity within their rules also mention that statement.

Anyone can currently make a report, so no need for a role for someone who can only make a report.

I would think there would need to be some 'admin control' given not enough to make lasting impacts on players but the ability to kick someone for example. Again this is just to have more 'administrative roles' connected at as many points in the day as possible.

Is this now a protected characteristic?

I guess so 🤣

These suggestions are just some of the things the admin team could look into and revise as needed of course.

 

[Antamania]

More of a CYA for Skial itself.
"If you do X I'm going to Y myself!" type beat.

I also mention it because most communities that address toxicity within their rules also mention that statement.


I would think there would need to be some 'admin control' given not enough to make lasting impacts on players but the ability to kick someone for example. Again this is just to have more 'administrative roles' connected at as many points in the day as possible.


I guess so 🤣

These suggestions are just some of the things the admin team could look into and revise as needed of course.

If you can trust them with kick, you should be able to trust them with ban.

Some admin abuse is still admin abuse and would still reflect poorly on any community.

Skial's system is fine enough, people just need to actually use the tools available.

 

[Maddo]

I also mention it because most communities that address toxicity within their rules also mention that statement.

The world has gone to shit.

 

[CommunistF2P]

For those of you who have been here for a long time, you know that the Skial stance on moderating players leaned towards the side of player freedom.

We believed it was not our place to moderate chat among players (like Valve) except for clearly defined and unarguable cases of things like racism or advertising. There is a votemute available to the server.

However, after many years, one of the most frequent and reoccurring criticisms by people talking trash about us on reddit and youtube is that our servers are more "toxic" than casual. So we've decided to look into adding some kind of anti-toxicity rule.

Before we throw something up there, I'd like to see your thoughts and opinions on this, especially how the anti-toxicity rule should be phrased.

You should do it. But it should be only to block harassments, racism and hurtful insults.

I am very tired of people bullying me of my name even though it's just a joke, I'm also tired of them making fun of asians since I'm an asian myself.

 

[gala]

You should do it. But it should be only to block harassments, racism and hurtful insults.

I am very tired of people bullying me of my name even though it's just a joke, I'm also tired of them making fun of asians since I'm an asian myself.

We already punish for discrimination based on race, gender or religion

You can report them for making fun of asians in that case and they will be muted

 

[TheCockGenie]

Wondered if such a thing would be covered here since it's not explicitly under griefing. had a guy and his buddy take a liking to me and decide to go pocket kritz combo, and had another friend on my team running around as spy telling them where I was and what class I was while they were constantly changing themselves to counter. It's not a big deal but it's irritating not being able to play much because you keep getting tunelled by some kids who treat everyone else as a friendly just so they can charge uber and kill you every other time you leave base while talking tons of shit. Muted them so instead one of them changed his name to call me out once they inevitably dommed me.

 

[gala]

Wondered if such a thing would be covered here since it's not explicitly under griefing. had a guy and his buddy take a liking to me and decide to go pocket kritz combo, and had another friend on my team running around as spy telling them where I was and what class I was while they were constantly changing themselves to counter. It's not a big deal but it's irritating not being able to play much because you keep getting tunelled by some kids who treat everyone else as a friendly just so they can charge uber and kill you every other time you leave base while talking tons of shit. Muted them so instead one of them changed his name to call me out once they inevitably dommed me.

Ghosting for enemy team is griefing

 

[Hematite]

I've been playing on Skial servers for quite a while off and on. What separates good servers from crappy ones are owners and their staff. So, thank you for taking the time to have this discussion.

Most of the time, I play on the 2Fort NY server and the regulars there are, by and large, a pretty cool group of people. From my perspective, the staff doesn't have a lot to worry about.

What we appear to be discussing is that there seems to be roving packs of jerks who join mostly just to annoy other players by breaking rules or constantly harassing a specific individual. I believe the immature behaviors are indicators of the sort of trainwreck lives they lead, but others who hear it and/or are targeted will just quit playing. The problem with this is that more jerks can then join and suddenly have majority to abuse in-game voting (how would one even report that unless they'd been recording the entire time?). This goes both ways: the social justice warriors also tend to go overboard in their zeal to force their ideals onto others.

The biggest problem is, as others have said: toxicity is subjective. There's also an issue with many responses to female players. Even long-term, established female players are subjected to, "Oh my God, is that a giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirl voice?" or other creepy comments which wouldn't easily fit into the rules.

It's my opinion that there's a sliding scale: it ranges from being intentionally annoying (e.g. performing an extended conga while a server is already full) to sadistically trying to cause emotional harm to other players.

For me, it's primarily when the behavior becomes prevalent from an individual or group of individuals. When that behavior continues to go unchecked, regardless of what the rules are, it will remain common. So, putting rules in place is fine but I suspect we'd need more staff members during peak hours to make sure the rules are enforced.

TL;DR: I agree with putting a rule in place, but there needs to be some guidance on a threshold and enforcement of the rule must occur. I also believe this might require more staff involvement, which may be a non-starter.

 

[Bottiger]

We have added a rule targeting toxicity now.

We are also experimenting with using an AI to automatically detect toxicity. However the data it was trained on is a lot less tolerant to swearing than most gamers (wikipedia).

In order to make it more accurate, we will need people to go through hundreds maybe thousands of lines of chat, and label them toxic on a scale of 0 to 1. Is anyone willing to do something like this?

You'd get a text file like this and you'd be expected to put a comma and the number at the end.

i should never be trusted with a boston basher,0
loose cannon is dope wtf,0
fuck you,1

 

[Creadora]

We are also experimenting with using an AI to automatically detect toxicity

But how would this work? Will the user just get a warning if they became toxic or getting a short mute?

 

[Bottiger]

But how would this work? Will the user just get a warning if they became toxic or getting a short mute?

It depends on how accurate it ends up being.

 

[KalashnikovA]

I like the idea of a rule against toxicity. But what about banter that could be construed as toxic? Friends say things to each other all the time that seem abrasive, yet is playful and understood to be fun. How does one differentiate a "fuck you" between friends as different from someone that is genuinely trying to be rude or cause harm?

 

[Bottiger]

I like the idea of a rule against toxicity. But what about banter that could be construed as toxic? Friends say things to each other all the time that seem abrasive, yet is playful and understood to be fun. How does one differentiate a "fuck you" between friends as different from someone that is genuinely trying to be rude or cause harm?

An admin would have no reason to do anything about that unless someone complains about it.

It seems like times are changing and a lot of people just can't tolerate trash talk, so you will have to understand that it might just better for the long term health of the servers if you refrained from acting in a way that others would see as toxic.

 

[BadmanoftheBrine]

If I hadnt gotten myself banned for a month Id have been more than happy to help.

If anything, Ive shown expertise towards the subject in question and feel like youve got a somewhat compliant test subject

 

[Greggy G]

We are also experimenting with using an AI to automatically detect toxicity. However the data it was trained on is a lot less tolerant to swearing than most gamers (wikipedia).

In order to make it more accurate, we will need people to go through hundreds maybe thousands of lines of chat, and label them toxic on a scale of 0 to 1. Is anyone willing to do something like this?

You'd get a text file like this and you'd be expected to put a comma and the number at the end.

I wouldn't mind helping label lines of chat. My only concern is if we should be labeling messages as 1 without taking context into consideration. The example you provided can be viewed as toxic by one person but another person could think otherwise depending on the context of the previous and proceeding chat logs not shown to us. If we do take a route without any consideration for context I fear a lot of players will unintentionally be targeted by this system. But if we do take an approach of removing toxicity with respect to the context of the messages, another crucial point is that somebody responding jokingly or unmalicious in chat to someone only using voice chat would also be targeted unintentionally as an automatic system wouldn't pick up context from voice comms.

I understand this automatic toxicity detection system is not near complete as you have mentioned so I was just brainstorming any potential flaws and if you have a workaround or not. Besides that, great rule addition and a much-needed one as of late.