Adding a "toxicity" rule to the servers

[Praetorian]

First off, thanks for this opportunity to share my own thoughts on the above subject matter. and for allowing me the privilege to be a part of this Skial community. (And yes the aforementioned is a genuine comment.) Since my earlier days of TF Classic and having been involved internally as a clan leader/admin I experienced alot of toxicity then and now after a lengthy hiatus from the battlefields of this beloved game, that same "saltiness" still prevails.
I came back not because I searched other multi-tf2 communities but I settled on this particular Skial community because I decided this where I needed to be. Why?

• The rules are not hard to follow and are straight forward and are thoughtfully crafted by experienced gamers/developers within this Skial gaming community. There is either comments/sprays that is acceptable and what is not. This forum is constantly monitored and structured with ample opportunities for any player to add their own comments good, bad or indifferent.
• My experience on the servers has been by in large accepted for what has been in practice here a long time. There are some for sure like new comers that don't bother to type !rules and or some players who take their chances and blatantly run afoul and hope they don't get caught.
• I agree that by in large most gamers rather don't want to take the time to go thru the ordeal of filing a report because its not their "job". So they take umbrage towards Skial via other easier media platforms to share their "unhappy" gaming experiences with us.
• While it is true admins cannot be on the servers 24/7 to police the actions of those "few", toxicity will always be commonplace. I recently researched online games and toxicity is not new. I'm sure if there was a meter to track the toxic comment(s) on the servers, it would be an added expense of the scale on venting our other side of our human minds and of how ugly our world can be.
• Finally, I have no empathy for the Skial haters/cheaters but I know the vast amount of resources that Skial ownership puts in to trying to keep everyone happy but we all take ownership for our own actions and credit to all those who appreciate and respect the immense efforts here and in our VAC/SMAC gaming servers around the world.

Suggestion re: Skial server rules

Current Skial server rules,

• Any other discrimination based on gender or religion is not allowed based on admin discretion.

Propose,

• Any form of discrimination besides gender and/or religion is not allowed. We reserve the right to review at the admins discretion

Discrimination on its own merit is broad and encompassing already and toxicity is within in the context of this word. The previous version imho, focuses on 2 separate points whereas adding form opens up the spectrum for whether the alleged offense warrants a comm. ban

 

[Hellgasims]

some questions that came to mind when I saw this. what's the defined line between something reportable and something not? will there be an influx of people reporting minor infractions and bloating up the report section claiming their reason to be toxic? understanding that racism and discrimination aren't tolerable, will silencing player conflict pose for growth or decline of server overall fulfilment?

 

[Maddo]

You cant police something which is subjective. There would have to be a definitive line to cross, but that line is drawn differently for every individual.
There would need to be a set of community guidelines to combat this behaviour, which in turn would need a peer review of individuals suspected of being toxic to the community, aka democracy or a jury.
It has to be a case of "WE don't want you in our community anymore" otherwise you will find a whole lot more complaints about Skial admin on reddit etc.

 

[Friendly Killer]

Well just to add my 1 and a half cents of imitation wisdom here. Unless there is a clear definition of what "Toxic" would be, Skial would be flooded with toxic reports. As Maddo said "You cant police something which is subjective." I myself have been called toxic just for my name. Using my Bind, "What can I say, Friendlies look good dead" players call me toxic. Hell killing friendlies is toxic to some. People get mad when someone call them stupid or retarded and people tell them to stop being toxic. So just my thoughts. Thanks

 

[porkchop]

I frequently use taunts after kills, usually just for a laugh but I know it gets some players fired up. Hopefully this isn't considered 'toxic' behavior.

 

[Inferno Lord]

Intro

Adding my two cents into the bin here, I know I’m not a long time member but I have grown to be quite good friends with a good handful of the staff and many regulars among the various servers from Dustbowl to 2fort to Payload. I feel I should have at least an average regular view on the matter.

Suggestion

Toxicity should not be a rule but rather a guideline. To hope to enforce such a rule such as toxicity would be a monumental task outside of very specific circumstances (IE. Racism, Transphobia, Religion, Extreme Xenophobia) for the user base. Staff shouldn’t have to carry such a burden as it is down to subjective view on what is too much. Rather the proposition I feel is better kept is that Admins should be able to cool off people or ward off excessive behavior. I know this might not be the most welcomed suggestion, why should anyone be told how to act? They shouldn’t, no one should be forced too but having said that there shouldn’t be anything wrong with defusing a very heated problem. The reality is some people can handle certain toxicity more than others but it should also be a reality that some things can go too far and I feel having level headed staff be able to tell people to chill out as at least a mediator should be something at least. It won’t force players to stop but it can at least give some semblance of order for players. Should people be muted for a short amount of time should they continue or escalate such behavior? That should be down to what the staff think is best I think.

Personal Note

I am not highly against toxicity, I don’t mind banter and some jabs here and there but even I have ran into many players who I felt went too far, where even staff had to tell me that as much as it sucks it isn’t against the rules and there’s not much else they can do. That’s understandable but I feel someone should be able to tell people at least to just knock it off. It’s a simple thing we do outside of games and having someone be able to do the same in these servers can maybe help people at least feel it’s not just a toxic environment just something that can get a bit too far at times. There has been a lot of arguing and excessive chats that I’ve seen on servers recently like Dustbowl and 2fort where it droned on for multiple hours which at that point even I felt enough was enough but who was I to tell them?

TLDR: Let staff have some authority to defuse overly toxic behavior should something ever go too far without breaking a rule and have it simply be a guideline. Toxicity should be fine otherwise unless it does break a rule or truly does go beyond reasonable. Punishments on continuing behavior I think are up for debate. This suggestion may even be a thing now but I haven’t seen it exercised yet.

 

[HoneyBoy_2]

to me there might be some miscommunication as to whats toxic or not like if someone doesnt know how to take a joke they may see it as a personal attack and report it and possibly get that person either wrongfully muted or banned

 

[Bottiger]

You are right that there doesn't seem to be a way to define what "toxicity" is exactly. It would have to be left up to an admin to interpret if a player is being "toxic" or not unless somebody can come up with an idea.

I just wanted to point out though, why is it that we get so many people claiming that our servers are toxic like this? Is it really unavoidable? Why do no other servers get the same complaints?

These are just some recent examples of people making this claim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t50aeo/_/hz2rjgm
https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t4qyyi/_/hz13rvv

 

[Metroidz]

You are right that there doesn't seem to be a way to define what "toxicity" is exactly. It would have to be left up to an admin to interpret if a player is being "toxic" or not unless somebody can come up with an idea.

I just wanted to point out though, why is it that we get so many people claiming that our servers are toxic like this? Is it really unavoidable? Why do no other servers get the same complaints?

These are just some recent examples of people making this claim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t50aeo/_/hz2rjgm
https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t4qyyi/_/hz13rvv

Its the current generation of gamers. As games grow old, new generations of kids play older games and bring their "Style of humor" to whatever games they are playing.

Back when I first started playing online FPS games I never ONCE heard people telling each other to "kill themselves" or wish people got cancer. Now it is commonplace in games, which happen to include your servers.

Around the time when George Floyd died and the riots and trial were going on you could see thousands of steam users changed their steam names to shit like "George Floyd Gaming", which that famous pic of him. It's just modern times to be toxic as humor, or to be butthurt and loudly express how offended you are to everyone else.

 

[Blade D_Hero]

I frequently use taunts after kills, usually just for a laugh but I know it gets some players fired up. Hopefully this isn't considered 'toxic' behavior.

Comments like this are incredibly disingenuous to what Bottiger is actually suggesting. No, you won't be banned for taunting, saying "get good scrub" or any manner of other petty, insignificant trash talk. The line is at people who make a name for themselves on the servers for being extremely unpleasant and who are responsible for other users leaving.

When I first started playing Skial, there was an asshole on one of the 2Fort servers who would constantly and persistently target a group of 4-5 regulars who didn't even use voice chat, telling them to kill themselves, saying he's going to find them in real life, etc. Any normal person knows that this is ridiculous behavior and shouldn't be tolerated, which is essentially what this rule is proposing. If you're a large enough asshole for an entire server to know you by name then this rule would apply.

Also, people make it seem like it's hard to figure out how someone acts over a longer period of time, which really isn't true. We have chat logs and people can provide demos/videos of occurrences occurring on multiple occasions.

 

[Seminal Inhalation]

You are right that there doesn't seem to be a way to define what "toxicity" is exactly. It would have to be left up to an admin to interpret if a player is being "toxic" or not unless somebody can come up with an idea.

I just wanted to point out though, why is it that we get so many people claiming that our servers are toxic like this? Is it really unavoidable? Why do no other servers get the same complaints?

These are just some recent examples of people making this claim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t50aeo/_/hz2rjgm
https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t4qyyi/_/hz13rvv

There is no one reason for it, it's many reasons.


-People come on to play, get their ass kicked and they get angry and start insulting people or even turn racist to make them mad in turn.
-People come on just to give skial a bad rep.
-People come and act like they always have on video games which sometimes happens to be toxic. They act the same on skial as they would anywhere else.
-A child gets on the mic and everybody gets mad because young person on mic and they voteabuse them.
-Micspammer that even when reports can take anywhere from 1 hour - 2 days to get punished which is nowhere close enough in the people's eyes. By then the micspammer has left.
-People pass votereport but are never told to post evidence other than a little message when it passes that they are going to miss and even if they do see it they don't wanna make an account to post it and just pray the votereport works which it won't because 0 evidence, they are dumb dumbs.
- I've seen people flat out say "Killing is toxic" and be completely serious about it. They think if you kill in the game, you are toxic. Especially friendlies.
-Guy plays too good and people get mad at them and votekick them off for "hacking" and now skial is toxic because they won't let him be good and he doesn't know he can appeal it. Even if he does the same thing will likely happen again.
- Usually when people are reports for micspamming or being racist the report tends to take longer than normal. This lack of action makes people think skial as incompetent or allowing racism or micspam on top of the idiots who dunno how to report or won't login.


There's more but I think that's a decent bit for now. The line for toxicity is impossible to draw and shouldn't be drawn. Another reasoning I have is: what if you're being toxic to someone who was already being toxic? EX: A guy is harassing me, telling me to "fucking kill yourself" and I stand up for myself and fight back saying similar stuff perhaps, am I too going to get banned for toxicity? Will I be banned for sticking up for myself even if I am being toxic in doing it?

What if i'm on a server with my friend and we start joking with one another and we playfully insult one another. I'll give an example: "god hellgasims you're so gay we should call you hellGAY" "fuck you ur gay as hell" Others in the server know we're joking around as pals and think nothing of it, but say a new person joins in that knows nothing about us and sees us being "homophobic" and reports us. Are we going to be banned due to this report?

Honestly, this seems like it's just going to flood the report section with needless bullshit with only a small percentage actually being valid. I know you've been taking off rules and getting rid of other stuff to help cut down on reports and this will undo that and potentially create more stress for the admins.

 

[Maddo]

You are right that there doesn't seem to be a way to define what "toxicity" is exactly. It would have to be left up to an admin to interpret if a player is being "toxic" or not unless somebody can come up with an idea.

I just wanted to point out though, why is it that we get so many people claiming that our servers are toxic like this? Is it really unavoidable? Why do no other servers get the same complaints?

These are just some recent examples of people making this claim.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t50aeo/_/hz2rjgm
https://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/t4qyyi/_/hz13rvv

It's funny, because the same guy also said this about a month ago:

Obvioulsy someone/something has pissed him off in the last month.

 

[gala]

The line is at people who make a name for themselves on the servers for being extremely unpleasant and who are responsible for other users leaving.

This is what I wish would be a guideline or a rule, I have muted two people so far that have gone to the absolute extreme (threatening to skin people alive constantly, other kinds of death threats). While they technically weren't breaking any rules, however nobody needs to hear deranged shit like that and it would have also looked really bad to let them act that way

I doubt people who say stuff like that to begin with care about any rules preventing them to do so but at least there would be a clear reason to mute them and they can't dispute it by saying "there isn't a rule preventing me from threatening to kill someone constantly, so unmute me please"

Is there any reason we should allow that kind of behavior?

Nobody needs to hear that kind of stuff, honestly. It doesn't matter if players can just mute them from client, it still shows that we allow that kind of speech on the servers which is not a good thing, might as well remove the racism rule and tell people to mute racists themselves from client

 

[Maddo]

skin people alive

No worse than being gutted like a cornish game hen, or being buried in a soup can.

 

[Rand]

I understand the conundrum of the original question. I agree with most of the opinions put forward that you can't really set a hard line on a toxicity boundary. But since this question has been raised in a public quorum, I would like to raise a small suggestion.

I said this to a Skial admin recently:

"I know that I should make a suggestion on the forums, but, I am wondering if there could be an associate admin for Skial? That ONLY deals with spam/rascism/mic spam/etc? Nothing to do with hacking. I am not good with hacking, as you know. I think too many players are hacking. But, I think that some associate admins that didn't have that capability might be a plus?"

Maybe a 'lower tier' admin class that could try to deal with the continual mic spam/racism/toxic stuff? (Since regular casual died because of the bots, there has been a tidal wave of this type of infraction on Skial servers.)

That said, only if Skial defines/suggests per this thread an outline of toxicity then that should be suggested/followed.

TY

 

[Jermaphobe]

I understand the conundrum of the original question. I agree with most of the opinions put forward that you can't really set a hard line on a toxicity boundary. But since this question has been raised in a public quorum, I would like to raise a small suggestion.

I said this to a Skial admin recently:

"I know that I should make a suggestion on the forums, but, I am wondering if there could be an associate admin for Skial? That ONLY deals with spam/rascism/mic spam/etc? Nothing to do with hacking. I am not good with hacking, as you know. I think too many players are hacking. But, I think that some associate admins that didn't have that capability might be a plus?"

Maybe a 'lower tier' admin class that could try to deal with the continual mic spam/racism/toxic stuff? (Since regular casual died because of the bots, there has been a tidal wave of this type of infraction on Skial servers.)

That said, only if Skial defines/suggests per this thread an outline of toxicity then that should be suggested/followed.

TY

This is not a general suggestion thread, please keep on topic. You can post your suggestion in its own thread in our suggestions sub-forum

 

[Rand]

This is not a general suggestion thread, please keep on topic. You can post your suggestion in its own thread in our suggestions sub-forum

I thought that I said that. Thank you for supporting my point of view. I felt that I was on topic, as my post brought up toxicity apropos spam/racism/mic spam/etc.

 

[_Félix_]

I'd argue that no matter what we do, Redditards will hate Skial because it is the hip cool thing to do, especially since it makes sense for them to allow trash talking of Skial(Less players in Skial = More players in the pedo servers that give under the table payments to the reddit). Skial has tried to appease the reddit "self appointed gatekeepers of TF2" before, and it hasn't worked.

Regardless of what reddit thinks of Skial, I don't see issue with adding a bit more tightening to the rules. I personally always enjoyed the fact people could trash talk each other on Skial, but I am a gamer of older generation where trash talking was part of the fun. I don't trash talk but it is fun to see people get pissy at me for killing them.

In more specific, I'd say probably tighten down on the following:

• Any credible threats (I.E. "I'll find and kill you", stuff that isn't clearly a joke or reference to in-game killing, etc)
• Attacks on a person (I.E. Race, sex, sexuality, etc)

But not stuff like:

• Critiques of a person
• Critiques of specific stuff
• etc

I'd also prefer if it wasn't called "toxic" in the rules because "toxic" is more often than not, associated with SJW level censorship.

I do find myself joking about myself having autism, or because I am white, that I enjoy mayonnaise(which I do, fucking love that stuff). When those people(the redditards or SJWs) hear toxic, they think banning anything and everything they see offensive. This includes jokes, regardless if it pokes fun at one's self. I've done been yelled at by them else where for making fun of me being mostly gay, or calling aspergers "asparagus", or making fun furries(I call myself a furf** sometimes because I find it funny. Haven't done so on skial, but in other places), and other random bullshit.

So to summaries: I'd rather Skial do it's own thing to maybe something to cut down on directed abusive language(but not completely, still allowing people to have fun, but when lines are crossed from poking fun at other players to outright harassment it should be dealt with), rather than banning what is perceived as "toxic" by the noisy crowd.

 

[Polaris]

I support this in the case that someone is just saying shit with the whole purpose of making the individual sad, for example telling someone that has been in a depression to kill himself or literal death threats with no joke. In my case I got a polish guy describing to me how he'd split me wide open hanging from a hook while I watch how he separes my family members' flesh off their bones and telling me that he'd rape my family. Not on Skial servers but that kind of toxicity is just down bad

 

[Antamania]

For what it's worth I'm entirely against this. People will cry toxicity even at the slightest negative thing said to/about them.

We have standard rules, against racism, against bigotry etc. That should be enough. The two great things about Skial for me has always been, friendlies can't get me banned for killing them, and I will ALWAYS know why I got banned. When you make a general rule against "toxicity" that leaves a lot to the imagination.

Too general of a thing to try to ban. I also think there are features in the game with the clientside mute, and on skial with !ignore that settle most problems.

If you're trying to get a good opinion of Skial on reddit or with the tf2 people in general, it'll never happen. You're the Walmart of TF2 to them, and that's how you'll remain forever no matter what you do/change.

The tools you have added work fine enough. I get a lot of shit thanks to my give-a-ways, it doesn't bother me, if someone goes overboard I simply client or !ignore them. Perhaps informing people about the !ignore feature might help more people be aware of it, with one of those repeating messages.

I don't know what else you can do, but I'm against actioning people for "toxicity" because most of the people who you will get reports from will be people cutting out context. Someone starts a fight with someone, gets the guy going, and then starts recording a demo, shows himself being harrassed etc. This will be majority of the "toxicity" reports. It's a bad precedent and I worry for Skial if this ends up getting seriously implemented.

As someone above stated, tightening some more rules about attacks on people's sexuality, gender, race etc. there's no problem there, but I am 100% against a blanket "toxicity" ban.