(Edited to add items 5 and 6)

The /vote mute command is being abused in my opinion. I don't think the intent was to provide a weapon for certain groups (you know who you are) to use to attempt to bully/intimidate people. So, here are my suggestions to reduce the incidence of abuse:

1. Reduce mute timeout to 12 hours.
2. Reduce vote timeout to 6 hours.
3. Add accountability.
4. Add the ability to vote no to the mute.
5. Report all votes to player being voted on as they are cast.
6. Add /vote unmute comand.

The purpose of items 1 and 2 is to keep the mutes targeted at specific instances of "bad" behavior.

To accomplish items 3 and 4, make /vote mute "Whoever" give a list of the yay or nay votes with voter's name and guild tag, and add a yes or no parameter for the actual votes. Yes votes would increment a counter and no votes would decrement. If the counter reaches 20 the player is muted. Simple, fair, and people would be much less likely to abuse it if they knew everyone could see who was voting.

Items 5 and 6 are intended to give a player a way to "fight back" against abusive mutes. By letting a player know they are being muted, they can attempt to rally support for "their side," as well as simply logging out before the mute is in effect. (Logging out may be seen by some as "cheating" the vote... but the fact is, the mute will have accomplished the intended effect: ending the problem.) A /vote unmute command allows the player base to remove abusive mutes that go into effect before they are aware of the situation.

That was a nice, mature post ^_^

I agree 100% on the fact that we need a yes/no

Just a question for the guides; do you/devs look at every /mute incident on the logs?

If anything, the vote mute should be made stronger. I'd suggest the following:

1. It should take fewer votes to mute a trial account than a paid account. People very recently have made trial account alts to harass 100.
2. A trial account should have no ability to /vote mute someone; a paid account should have one vote regardless of the number of pilots attached. This change alone should eliminate the abuses Bidi suggests without the hassles of his suggestion.

Accountability is counterproductive because if the mute is legitimate, it gives the voted individual ammo and targets, compounding the problem.

That said, I've mentioned in other threads that a global chat channel should not exist anyway. System, Sector, Guild, Group; no more no less (unless there is a station relay deal, that could be global).

Good points, Aramath, I like point 1 and 2, they could go well with the original idea..

Aramarth's suggestions about the channels could be interesting. It'd change the strategy of things. People would dock at stations to get the latest news. Hopefully stations would record the last hundreds of entries in a channel. If that was the case, and certain guilds or simply sets of people could gain priviledged access to a channel while others could only read it, then many different databases could be developed. These might range from commentary on the Deneb run, to collected information about trade goods at various locations. I'll bet on the last one, a bind or a bot similar to irc might be created to help compile all the data in an easily accessible manner.

Currently the guides aren't sent info regarding mutes. I don't know what the devs are sent or look at these days.

It would be interesting if /mute included a place to input a reason, and that the reason and the individual votes would be available for the guides to view.

i see you have put a lot of thought into this idea...

must be due to the fact that you are on the recieving end all the time....lol

Aramarth: Point 2 is already in place. Point 1 only compounds the problems. And the point of accountability is so that people know who is actually attacking whom, instead of hearsay and lies. The PROPER way to deal with vendettas IS with ammo. And your fourth point... off topic to this discussion. Go back and mention it in those threads again. (Also, If you don't like global chat at all... easily fixed, leave the channels.)

drdoak007: I have only been muted twice in 2 years... in both cases by the same group of players. And in both cases in revenge, rather than due to inappropriate conduct in channels.

Something else to remember... being mute doesn't just keep you from talking in channels... it even keeps you from talking to bots. It stops you from talking to your own guildies... It effectively keeps you from being able to play the game. It MUST be fixed or removed... we don't really need it anyways we can all /ignore anyone that is bothering us. And for the extreme cases... more guides is really the solution... maybe a new class of guide that can only moderate chat?

Bottom line, the current system is mob rule... I don't think anyone wants that. In the previous instance (and again I will forgo naming names) I was informed afterwards that certain guild commanders had ORDERED their members on pain of expulsion to /vote mute. (The informant obviously didn't comply, though enough did to have the necessary effect.)

I agree with Aramarth that the chat system needs an overhaul.

I agree with Chillum. I was recently online when he was muted, and was monitoring and participating in the chat at the time. He neither said nor did anything wrong, but I got PMs from Daggoth Koronoth saying "/vote mute Bidi Bada". Campaigning should not allow you to mute someone. There should be some kind of accountability. For example, Daggoth should have his own chat privalages taken away for abusing the system for a personal grudge.

i've never gotten a single vote mute in 2 years play. i know of others for wich this is true.

when someone got a mute vote, they generally deserve it.

the abuse currently is on the troll side and the current vote mute is barely adequate to keep things under control.

i wouldn't change it a bit. heck, i'd even make it easier to mute someone, and would extend the mute to the forums.

call me nazi or police state redneck. but the trolls currently have it easy.

This would be MUCH less of a PITA if there was "One Character, One Account" status in VO. As in - no alts unless you paid for the extra account.

Of course I know I'm in the minority here, but doing that simple thing would solve SOOOO many problems.

A reasonably large guild like [ITAN] could probably mute players at will. And that would be... mean.

So I say that at the very least this process needs to be modified so that you get one /mute vote per ACCOUNT, not per alt. Or you get one per IP address, whichever is fewer.

And WTF?!? Guides and Devs don't get MUTE logs? It seems to me that the MOST basic disciplinary procedure would be to review who the playerbase thinks is worthy of being muted, and then investigate. Especially if it happens more than once.

If the person being muted continues to be muted, well, then, some action apparently needs to be taken. Especially if that person is registering trial accounts just to be annoying.

And if it looks like it's a "mob rule" type of situation, with the voters obviously ganging up on someone who (upon further review) didn't deserve the mute, well, then the discipline goes the other way.

I'm shocked that guides don't get notifications when players are muted by other players.

for an appeal process to be possible, perhaps we could reserve a channel for muted players.

but guides would have to be on to listen to that channel in order to be notified in-game.

chillum-> Point 1 only compounds the problems.

1. I'm afraid I take the diametrically opposite position on this. It is trial account alts which spam 100 and create problems. If an account isn't a paid account, said account is automatically completely without consequences for misbehavior. They'll just make another one when they're muted, and gaining enough votes takes time away from enjoyable gameplay. I pay to play, not to be forced to listen to people who lack even a ten dollar tie to our community. Easy muting of these is absolutely indispensable. Again, reduce the number of required votes to mute an unpaid account.

2. I'm still dead set against sharing with any players who voted for what. There is a reason many real life votes are intended to be secret ballot, and the same reasons apply here.

3. Being /vote muted should not affect your ability to message bots, I agree that should be changed.

4. You've got me on Daggoth campaigning. Possible solution: make the command /vote mute "player" "reason" and send a copy to devs/guides for them to log and forget unless an issue arises. Also, make it a two step process to ensure the voter's motivation. What I mean is similar to the duel command...

/vote mute "thatJerk" "He's a chat spammer"
**Are you sure you wish to vote in favor of muting thatJerk? A copy of your reason will be sent to the game administrators for review. Type '/vote mute confirm thatJerk' to submit your vote.**
/vote mute confirm thatJerk

The extra typing ought to discourage people who are being lobbied to vote for no reason.

upper case: The mute DOES extend to the forums. Though maybe you meant forum moderators should be able to "mute" posters? In which case... I believe they can, though they don't.

Aramarth: There is a reason for a secret ballot, but the abuse potential outweighs that need. If ALL mutes were reviewed by devs or guides... that'd work too probably. But that's probably a lot of work that they'd rather not do.

Lebermac: you get one vote per CHARACTER?!?... that's just ridiculous, that means 4 players can mute anyone they like. And guilds or other groups getting together and voting en masse is exactly the problem. Accountability would at least ensure that guilds would get a bad name for that.

Seems the over-all consensus is that more guides and review of all mutes would be the solution... works for me, if GuildSoftware can handle the extra workload, especially as the player population expands.

Just to clarify for Leber who said:

And WTF?!? Guides and Devs don't get MUTE logs? It seems to me that the MOST basic disciplinary procedure would be to review who the playerbase thinks is worthy of being muted, and then investigate. Especially if it happens more than once.

Please be very clear that I did NOT say that the Devs don't get mute logs. I said I don't know what they get.

You shouldn't be shocked about the guide interface. It was kludged together due to popular demand at the time, but hasn't really been developed much since. Reasons could include: it was a kludge to begin with, it's not a huge priority relative to making VO viable on its own merits, recent overall improvemtns may not support some of the more obscure guide commands, and the current guide system is not in keeping with incarnate's master plan for player-guides (which is carefully described elsewhere).

There's lots of backlash if we do anything with community-muted players (even when it's clear it was undeserved at the time).

In-game muting does indeed extend to the forums, though this is not optimal. It would be better if there were a forum-only muting as well. It's already in the hopper on the Trac system (ticket 51, priority: minor).

Lebermac, Whistler did not say that Guides and Devs don't get logs on mutes, he said that Guides don't and that he is not sure if Devs do.

See, the problem here is that it wasn't a community muting... many players were saying that it was a bullshit mute... hence why we need vote mute no... and somekind of warning about the impending mute. This was Daggoth (and others) seeking revenge, pure and simple.

AND guide/dev review. AND ACTION. I didn't even get an email in response to my email to support@guildsoftware.com.

You must have a yahoo or gmail email account then;something that gets spam-blocked easily. I, an awful vendetta player, have gotten replies within 12 hours (on multiable occasions)

To bring the topic back to itself, I prepose that we try and get a couple of these ideas implanted (We all love action-to get things done)

From Amarath

1. It should take fewer votes to mute a trial account than a paid account. People very recently have made trial account alts to harass 100.
2. A trial account should have no ability to /vote mute someone; a paid account should have one vote regardless of the number of pilots attached. This change alone should eliminate the abuses Bidi suggests without the hassles of his suggestion.

From Leber

So I say that at the very least this process needs to be modified so that you get one /mute vote per ACCOUNT, not per alt. Or you get one per IP address, whichever is fewer.

From chillum

4. Add the ability to vote no to the mute.

6. Add /vote unmute command.

From my perspective, these are the most reasonable suggestions, they are pretty good no-brainers. They are practical.

Discuss, Dissect, Construct.

this being the weekend, i would consider that normal.

those guys have lives too and i sure bet it involves not having to deal with muted trolls (weither this applied to the current case or not) while they're trying to have a good time with their families.