• Please go to our Discord or SteamRep for trading. Bans and appeals go HERE
Here's another fresh example from today with people claiming that our servers are the most toxic.

4g6SHUA.jpg
That's not saying Skial is most toxic? They are saying the toxicity is everywhere and blackwonder is more toxic than Skial.
 
I don't believe its worth adding a no toxicity and especially using reddit posts as a reason. TF2 has a huge whiney playerbase and they'll find any nitpick no matter how big or small to cry wolf about for over 10-30 minutes.

base toxicity such as shit talking someones skill, making fun of someones in-game death, getting pissed at someone being useless is just a natural part of competitive games like TF2 and every other online shooter. Keeping the rules the same where we can just report overboard toxicity such as racism, creepy comments and death threats, anti-LGBT rhetoric etc will have no negative consequences whatsoever for the future. I doubt skial's playerbase is suffering from anything some randoms posts on reddit from how I see servers full or half-full everyday.
 
I put forward a vote to mute someone that was spamming mic, then was almost votekicked 2 minutes later in retaliation. This just happened, but it's the second time this week something like this has happened to me. The first time I didn't bother filing a report. Is this toxic? Is this kind of behavior good for player retention and skials reputation?

This is why I don't play Harvest | US as often. Watch through it for the full experience
this is exactly what I meant when I was talking about idiots congregating. Four 15 year old dudebros and two children screaming and singing and making continuous verbal diarrhea. Nobody who isn't a child wants to be in that environment, and it's why I usually play with voice_enable 0 on.
 
Is this topic still going on? @Bottiger Just do whatever you plan on doing and stop trying to make yourself, your servers and your forum look better than what it really is, or has become since you tried and failed to "clean it up" with removing unmod and hiring inept mods. You failed. Fess up.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BadmanoftheBrine
as someone who has been apart of many VSH communities over the last 10 years, I can say that the number 1 reason for me giving up on a server is toxicity. When bad apples are able to get by with more and more edgy or harassing comments it just spreads because people realize that they can get away with it and it's the accepted norm and makes the environment feel unwelcoming to many players. I almost exclusively play on the Skial VSH server and I can honestly say it's improved from where it was even a few months ago. some of the regulars that got away with racist or transphobic jokes have been booted and without them the server is much more fun to play on and I respect how quickly the mod team responds to reports on the forums. I think having a harsher stance on toxicity will curb the behavior that pushes good players away and help the server's reputation along with it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dash7 and gala
Just make it that if you call someone a noob or anything like that that it's not against the rules but if it goes too far like for example threatening someone or telling someone to kill him self that it is bannable / mutable.

Why the fuck is it only against the rules if you threaten an admin but not a regular player? That doesn't make any sense.
 
Just make it that if you call someone a noob or anything like that that it's not against the rules but if it goes too far like for example threatening someone or telling someone to kill him self that it is bannable / mutable.

Why the fuck is it only against the rules if you threaten an admin but not a regular player? That doesn't make any sense.

Explain how this person got banned for threatening others then -
https://www.skial.com/threads/kathl...d-muted-on-every-community-server-ever.98362/

https://www.skial.com/threads/tf2-appeal-james819.98368
 
Just make it that if you call someone a noob or anything like that that it's not against the rules but if it goes too far like for example threatening someone or telling someone to kill him self that it is bannable / mutable.

Why the fuck is it only against the rules if you threaten an admin but not a regular player? That doesn't make any sense.

And how exactly do we draw the line between "if you call someone a noob or anything like that" and "goes too far"? That's essentially what people are worried about. They want a clearly defined line when it might not be possible

Why the fuck is it only against the rules if you threaten an admin but not a regular player? That doesn't make any sense.

Because people often abuse reports on other players more often than admins and we'd be getting people trying to revenge report others for saying "I'm going to kill you".
 
Then tell me why it's not stated in the rules? Instead of:
  • Threatening to attack Skial or Skial staff.

    It should be:

  • Threatening to attack Skial, players or staff.
Either the reported player you sent is punished for something that is not stated (properly) in the skial rules or Skial already has a rule against toxicity but it's just not stated at all.

In that case why not just clarify what Skial's current toxicity standards are instead of thinking of a 'new' rule?

With current toxicity standards, I mean how do skial admins currently deal with toxic people.

Because people often abuse reports on other players more often than admins and we'd be getting people trying to revenge report others for saying "I'm going to kill you".
Well, in my opinion the person should be punished if he keeps saying things like that. But I'm more against telling people to kill them selves, as that's much more offending, and upsetting than actually threatening someone because you clearly know nothing will actually happen. Maybe that's where the line should be drawn.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: JohnnyGaloshes
Well, in my opinion the person should be punished if he keeps saying things like that. But I'm more against telling people to kill them selves, as that's much more offending, and upsetting than actually threatening someone because you clearly know nothing will actually happen. Maybe that's where the line should be drawn.
You just drew the line for 1 out of 1000 different ways someone can be insulted, that's not enough to cover even half the cases that might come up.
 
You just drew the line for 1 out of 1000 different ways someone can be insulted, that's not enough to cover even half the cases that might come up.
Just a thought, in case you are seeking to find ways to quantify toxicity -> There is a project (perspectiveapi.org) that looks to quantify toxicity (google cloud platform)

I'm not suggesting using this API (although would be an interesting project), but it comes from a team of people that have done research into categorizing toxicity. I am suggesting that the definitions in 'production attributes' section may be a reasonable way to start to draw the line on what is toxicity and what isn't.

-> https://developers.perspectiveapi.com/s/about-the-api-attributes-and-languages
 
With current toxicity standards, I mean how do skial admins currently deal with toxic people.
We barely do, that's why this thread was created to get user input on how this could be implemented

https://www.skial.com/threads/kathl...d-muted-on-every-community-server-ever.98362/

This was an exception due to how excessive and graphic manner he was speaking and clearly made someone uncomfortable enough to come into my dms and ask if anything will be done to him. This was also one of the factors why we started thinking of ways to make a toxicity rule so it would be more clear in the future
 
Is this topic still going on? @Bottiger Just do whatever you plan on doing and stop trying to make yourself, your servers and your forum look better than what it really is, or has become since you tried and failed to "clean it up" with removing unmod and hiring inept mods. You failed. Fess up.
I respectfully disagree with you. An analogy would be like my team of scientists looking to find a cure for cancer one day, but just because an antigen hasn't been found yet, that does not mean we don't stop searching for a solution. Failure is not the opposite of success, its a part of the success

Rather, for our skial community, we could further reward explemplary behaviour to our players (read near bottom of article)

We barely do, that's why this thread was created to get user input on how this could be implemented

https://www.skial.com/threads/kathl...d-muted-on-every-community-server-ever.98362/

This was an exception due to how excessive and graphic manner he was speaking and clearly made someone uncomfortable enough to come into my dms and ask if anything will be done to him. This was also one of the factors why we started thinking of ways to make a toxicity rule so it would be more clear in the future

Agreed Gala.

In the mean time, we will have to regularly monitor the levels of toxic behavior collectively within our community. And I don't mean just targeting the 1 toxic word/phrase that is said like "you're a fa**ot" but a pattern from certain player(s) over a certain established period of time. And hope that someone will send in a report to be adjudicated by either a committee of 3 chose admins for reviews or each investigation report as done status quo.

From an analytical perspective, said reports are filed on a spreadsheet for review to further the community's argument to resolve toxicity to gov't legislators to put more pressure on the game developers to curb certain dangerous toxic behaviors with adequate tools (anti-toxic plugin)

To conclude, I been online gaming a longtime, and observed toxicity liken to a benign tumor. We are living with it, because so long as the game developers can monetize violence/toxicity and promote this psychological behavior, we will remain vigilant.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dash7
Just a thought, in case you are seeking to find ways to quantify toxicity -> There is a project (perspectiveapi.org) that looks to quantify toxicity (google cloud platform)

I'm not suggesting using this API (although would be an interesting project), but it comes from a team of people that have done research into categorizing toxicity. I am suggesting that the definitions in 'production attributes' section may be a reasonable way to start to draw the line on what is toxicity and what isn't.

-> https://developers.perspectiveapi.com/s/about-the-api-attributes-and-languages

That looked like an interesting solution, but it only allows 1 request per second. And you'd still need admins to manually verify that the AI didn't make a mistake. We also don't have the resources to dump voice chat from all servers and convert it to text.
 
I'll say this. People will always take things out of context. I've been here off and on for 10yrs and it's always been mostly good natured, if not edgy, smack talk. When someone goes to far, we generally punish them ourselves via votes. What's the difference if you add certain rules or bans? Will automated stuff be as effective as the community?

I'm a 37yo Army Vet, so I know I'm generally more accepting of dark humor and/or trolling. However, I have a stutter from a brain injury and I've only had 2 or 3 ppl try and actually use that to insult me. My friends will play with it, as will I, but 100s of players just treat me normal.

Additionally, maybe some ppl that do streaming or YT can be bothered to show some of the plus side here. I do media for a site and am always down to write up an interview or something if the group needs something like that. I like it here... 99.999999% of the time. The rest we do handle ourselves.
 
Last edited:
That is true, but the problem here is that we get way more of this than any other community. And the number of negative comments/videos seems to outnumber the positive ones. And there are competing communities that do have toxicity rules that use this excuse to tell people not to play here.

Take a look videos like this where we're getting blamed for the way other people act on the servers, and all the comments saying things like "this is why I avoid skial".


There's also no proof that LoL lost a bunch of players over toxicity rules.

The fact is, people aren't satsified with mutes or votemutes anymore.
I think people need to be satisfied with mute and voice mute. You can't, and quite frankly shouldn't, police everyone all the time.

As a poster above mentioned ... doxxing, stalking, persistent bullying, only coming online to be an ass, etc. ... THAT'S something to acted on. This isn't a rp game. It has set goals and paths to achieve them so adding the dimension of playing a jerk isn't going to get you further along.

I think we, as players, need to step up as well and be less self-involved and less focused on our own gameplay. You know as well as I do that there are a myriad of ways to get a troublesome player to move on without involving admins.

People can say what they want about Skial ... I literally don't know one single gamer who would NOT play on your servers just because they had heard bad things about them. They will play because "it can't be that bad" or because they think they can clean it up or because they've heard it IS that bad or, like me, realize every interaction with other people, irl or virtual, can go either way.

I think reminding people of what is and what's not tolerated and maybe reminding them that they don't have to have voice chat enabled and continuing with your strong but fair and well-stated policies should be enough. If anything, maybe add a recognition thing (I know vague right?) when you notice people helping others, being cognizant of the rules and working to make the servers more friendly.

I've been playing multiplayer games for longer than some of your players have even been alive and I'm female so I've heard and seen it all. And yet, I still log on and look for Skial servers first. They are the best servers and imo it's up to the players to rise to that level.
 
People can say what they want about Skial ... I literally don't know one single gamer who would NOT play on your servers just because they had heard bad things about them. They will play because "it can't be that bad" or because they think they can clean it up or because they've heard it IS that bad or, like me, realize every interaction with other people, irl or virtual, can go either way.

I appreciate the sentiment, but reputation matters to new players. Long time players such as yourselves know the truth, but servers are also kept alive by having a steady stream of new players that replace the ones that quit.

And we're being constantly slandered on places like youtube and reddit with dozens of people upvoting blatantly false statements about us (people getting >20+ upvotes for saying "fuck skial").

reddit.png


These comments are happening almost every other day. The number of positive comments are like 1/10th the number of negative ones. If they weren't happening all the time or if we had people backing us up, I would feel comfortable ignoring this.

But this is too much, too often, and are not being refuted at all so new players are starting to believe these lies. And if this isn't dealt with, it is going to lead to a drop in the population and people are going to look for other servers.

This might just be a conspiracy theory, but it seems like we're being targeted by another community, as the number of comments like this has exploded in the past few months ever since another group has started trying to take over our spot as the top TF2 community.
 
Last edited:
We still at this? I deleted that reddit cos botty brought up the good point of myself ironically relying too much on reddit, and wanted to apologise for that cringy thread I made. I was in belief youd organised a form of reddit control, and not that it was completely out of your control, but Im still all for !votereport toxicity server control.

The internet cant speak for skial, but the servers should at least be able to.

Think of it this way: there isnt a need for defining a line, if the majority of the server believes youre just being toxic. And, if it gets abused by a minge, theres always the likelihood of returning that fire, and more people voting for the abuser. And for the exact same reason, you cant go wrong.

I think people like to shit on the mods more than the servers (yes, they still shit on the servers, but lets be honest, constantly saying its mods is basically like crying that the nurse put a bandage on your booboo, and you dont want the other kids to see why youve got it in the first place, its easier to just say its the schools fault), I know Ive got my least favourites, just as I imagine everyone else on this site has. Thats just commonplace, especially for troublemakers.

I think one reason people target skial, is that its too well protected. The games about 15 years old, youre gonna get youngsters whove never experienced The Belt in their entire life, who cry because they couldnt play the entirety of Gangnam Style without being silenced or banned for bypassing, or get banned for various other things nearly an hour into them playing, or are just too new to the game to really have any real chance of facing off the more experienced players, and just scream "Abuse! TOXIC! HACKER!!!". As much as I stir up shit, I have to admit Ive gotten more than fair warnings on every occassion Ive deserved them (with one personal exception), and its at least tried to push me in the right direction. Ive taken a break to kinda unwind, and realise I wasnt in the right this time, but unfortunately Im not the same as every other shitstirrer who joins.

TL;DR Im back, I was cringe, sorry bot, let the servers decided whos also cringe not reddit, skial redditors did nothing wrong