I think we can agree that we want some level of freedom of speech that lies between what we have now and Club Penguin. I think we can even agree that we would like the needle fall much nearer to current state VO than a Disney product. What we need are specific suggestions and discussion of where within that continuum we would like to be.

There has been some talk of:

100 for game-related speech
1 for help

Then perhaps there could be specified and clearly-identified channels for other specific topics. These wouldn't spill directly into the game, but could have some effect I suppose. They would be difficult / impossible to moderate given current resources, but perhaps that's okay.

add a command /topic that list the default channels with a description of each channels intended purpose.

/topic
1 help, 11 nation, 100 ingame, 1000 off-topic, etc ...

then when I see someone off topic, and can send them a /msg "antibody" /topic
and when people don't respect the topic boundaries, I can just /vote mute or /report them.

First increase the player base's opportunity to behave correctly, and then deal with the remainder.

So what would appropriate RP banter look like?

"Shoulda paid, kid." Ageist? Acceptable?

How about "Die you lily-livered coward!"

There's a lot of sexual references. Some are explicit or harassment, both of which are against the RoC already, so we probably don't need to discuss that. What about innuendo? Does that contribute to toxicity?

[100]<antibody> it is very rude for itty bitty little pissant germs like you to leave nation space, "Iphoch Uranus"

Personally, I do not think any form of verbal conflict in 1 or 100 is acceptable. I do not even think that polite and civil rp is acceptable on 1 and 100, except as it is game related action based rp ("meet me in sedina to trade", etc..). RP channel is 300, "off topic" is 1337. 100 is about multiplayer coordination to do something in game.

May 16, 2006 sarahanne : New to Vendetta? Look in this thread for Help!
Dec 27, 2008 davejohn : Chat channels in vo.

edit: I think that in game action based conflict should be allowed on 100, in only the most factual terms.
[100]<antibody> if I catch you outside of nation space again, I will shoot you again, "Iphoch Uranus", further commentary on /join 1337
[1337]<antibody> it is very rude for itty bitty little pissant germs like you to leave nation space, "Iphoch Uranus"

editedit: I take it back. one sided conflict should not be allowed on 100. if two people are threatening to meet, they can exchange a location to go fight. 100 is in game cooperation, even if the cooperation is to go shoot each other.

Expecting people to not snark at each other on the general chat channel is absurd.

@Whistler: I see nothing wrong with calling somebody a kid. It seems to me that the goal should be avoiding ties to pervasive real-life violence and oppression. There are assholes out there who kill or abuse people for being gay, trans, black, etc. There have been full fledged wars over people talking to the same imaginary friend in a non-sanctioned language. Those are real issues with potentially a lot of volatile baggage. I'm not aware of anything comparable for calling somebody immature. There's no KKK-analog going around lynching people for not having grown out of adolescence. Therefor, it's a valid taunt.

So, I don't know what the line should be, exactly. I've had newer people open tickets for being called "scum", and I had one notoriously toxic vet actually open a ticket for having-been-called "disgusting" once.

I mean, I'm personally a pretty hard-bitten internet veteran, so these notions of "relative" lines can be a little hard for me to judge..

But, perhaps that's inherently the issue? If we remove any kind of name-calling on 1/100, at-all, that's technically more easily enforced (no nuanced "lines" to consider?). On the flipside it's.. way more annoying to actually do, and potentially harder to train newbies, and may end up coming across as super-nanny-happy.

I dunno, may be worth it in the long-run though..

Also worth considering: whatever system we implement here is largely dependent on the userbase choosing to send "/report" issues, as we probably won't have Guides to actively cover a lot of the time. I don't know that people will "/report", if the bar is too low? But.. I don't.. know, in general?

The "Bright Line" rule: The best place to draw the line, is where there is the least room to debate about which side of the line you are on.

I have heard players indicate that they are offended by being called "kid".

I paid good money to play this game, and that gives me the right to "play the game", by intended game mechanics. It does not give me the right to in any way interfere with other customer's ability to play the game, by any means other than intended game mechanics.

I have taken an extremely strong "free speech" position. Because the game can easily accommodate it, without interfering with business, by moving off topic conversation to non game specific channels.

Snark all you want, on channel 1337. Take it to where it will not be noticed by anyone that cares. I expect every one will /join 1337, and it will then look like 100 used to, but 100 will still be used, by customers using it to play the game. All the toxicity will be on 1337, and if you do not like that toxicity, /leave 1337. /join 1338, and invite your friends. 100 will be a nice peaceable game play related channel and nothing but, and I am suggesting near zero tolerance of anything otherwise.

Anyone that wishes to play this game, as intended, should absolutely be allowed to do so, as absolutely peaceable as game mechanics allow for, with full access to all game specific channels, with an absolute minimum of non consensual non game related interference.

Maybe the /report functionality should be implemented then as at first a data gathering exercise.

Ultimately I think your goal is to have 100 chat be what is good for your game. I believe that what your customers by and large find appropriate would be a reasonable approximation of that. The hard part would be seeing what is not reported, and thereby generally found to be appropriate by the community at large. I have no idea how to suggest you go about that, other then watching the chat of a few of the saltier members of the community, and seeing what they say that is NOT reported.

You will of course have a few outliers. Some people will not mind being berated mercilessly, and some will rage out at any provocation, or none at all. Hopefully you can sort that data out from the good data to draw a guideline. Some people do take abuse they should not, and others need to toughen up a little.

I do not believe that some noob calling me a jerk because I went roaring through Dau and splashed him with a dozen or so ice-flares is being unreasonable. A veteran trader, going on a 10 minute tirade because I damaged his XC in Latos probably is.

Some back and fourth, game related banter I think is good, as long as it is kept civil. It adds some flavor to the game, makes it feel more immersive, or alive. When it gets to leveling personal insults about another players intelligence, parentage, etc, that is going too far.

Now that we have Discord, what happens on 100 now may be recalled and searched by non-devs. Where we used to enforce only what we see, perhaps those who violate the RoC can receive a friendly email from GSW about their recorded behavior. A few trusted souls could provide this service, scanning through and forwarding only actionable items to GSW for escalation.

Being able to decongest 100 though multiple channels was the last point I mentioned, the others got conveniently ignored...

It's NOT ONLY about decongesting it, people currently avoid 100 completely due to its content. Different chats let's them stay in chats related to their gameplay, and doesn't isolate them completely, something which is a major issue in the game currently. People are seen complaining about how such players avoid chats completely and just do their own stuff...

Every single MMO I have ever played has had different chats reserved for different purposes. I can't remember any game I have played that lets every single person online communicate at the same time on the same interface.

EvE has different chats for lots of different stuff, such as Resource wars or factional wars where people group up to do stuff together, they are kept minimal. I have rarely seen long rants of anything off topic on any public chat.

If the devs decided to publicly address this issue, then it shows that they want to invest their time into solving it. It's obviously not something that can be resolved quickly, which is why /commands aren't enough. People will take a friendlier GUI over a bunch of commands any day, ESPECIALLY the mobile playerbase, which seems to repeatedly get ignored when any issue is discussed. I'd rather wait for a properly implemented UI rather than a shoddily and hurriedly implemented command.

PS : If you want to discuss anything off-topic, there are private chats and group chats for that. If you aren't a living in a cave, you can also use something called "discord" for off-topic chats.

Discord would be a good solution, so long as the off-topic discussions were kept off the relay.

I'm of the opinion that adding a Chat Police Force is going to be completely counterproductive to reducing toxicity. I would encourage care be taken not to go crazy with excessive over-regulation.

I also think segregating chat into too many channels is a bad thing really, I mean, I think the whole point of this thread was to get feedback on us all being a bit nicer of a community after so long of getting away with being asses, and for some thoughts on how to achieve this. Honestly, the channels are fine as they are - it is the people on them that need to take a sip of STFU sometimes and the /report command may go some way towards this, but only if followed up by some swift kicks-in-the-butt if we get out of line.

Sometimes less is more, and if we all end up on channel 1337 and 100 + 1 become ghost towns (which is what I predict may happen) then the point is missed entirely.

Every single MMO I have ever played has had different chats reserved for different purposes. (...) EvE has different chats for lots of different stuff, such as Resource wars or factional wars

EVE has like 30,000 concurrent players on at a given time. I'm not unfamiliar with the value of breaking things out by topic, but there are two competing values here..

1) You're advocating for multiple channels, so that people don't have to "see" all the same subject matter at the same time, in the same channel, and those who are interested can choose to subscribe to channels about their particular topic, your suggestions include "Trade", "PvP", "PvE", etc.

However..

2) If the main, default-subscribed public channels are not kept to a minimum level of activity, the game appears dead to new players, and they quickly leave. Conversely, if we default-subscribe all players to all topical channels, then people have to switch channels pretty often, which even if we improve the UX mechanics for say, mobile, is a bit of a constant interactive hassle to stay on-topic.

3) Your assertion that people leave 100 because of off-topic conversation is a bit inaccurate, I would say. People leave 100 because of it being a chaotically toxic mess of people calling each other names and constant complaining. Reducing that, alone, will drastically cause people to leave 100 less. This has proven true in the past, when 100 was not in the state that it is today.

That all being said..

I'm not against having channels for certain spammy things that are more recent or unappealing to large portions of the userbase. Like, maybe bots that are advertising stuff. Or.. I guess, people that are selling stuff? We could certainly split that off as "Trade". But, putting PvE and PvP on different channels at this stage is probably not a good idea.

Most chat, for the time being, probably needs to stay in 100.

My bad, by the content of 100, I meant the toxic part. People leaving 100 due to that also deprives them off anything else that they might be interested in.

As for your second point, I had also suggested that people by default are subscribed to channel 1 and 11. I do realise now that it might give off the impression that the game is dead.

I was hoping PvP to be a sort of replacement of the combat related chats that occur on 100, such as the usual gfs messages, pirates claiming kills or guilds engaging in verbal conflicts, and not just a place to ask for fights.

As for the UI, I meant it to be made for reporting chat abusers, since that would probably make more people use that functionality.

so instead of asking someone to just take it to the off topic channel, you prefer to tell them what to not talk about, on any channel?

So we want solutions that:

-Can be enacted quickly and easily
-Are respectful of all platforms
-Directly impact toxicity
-Are not more restrictive than envisioned by Guild (after consultation with users here)
-Do not conceal chat activity to the point of making the universe seem "dead"

What about:
-Beefing up the chat filter to avoid obvious toxic words and phrases, including alternatives.
-Making the chat filter mandatory.
-Guides review chat logs daily, highlight "toxic events", and forward the complete logs to Incarnate for review and whatever action he sees fit.

I like the idea whistler but inc spending hours reading through just toxic chats sounds like a nightmare for him. Hes gonna wind up with ptsd like those nsa agents that sort through torture videos.

It's actually not THAT bad (time wise), and I have a feeling that the behavior will diminish rather quickly.

So far today, for instance, there are just two users I would highlight.

What I do now is to literally highlight the significant parts of events I have acted upon, and he can choose to read the un-highlighted bits. I send the log of the whole time for transparency.

I question whether banning direct name calling would do anything useful. Which of these is more insulting:

A) "What a baby!"

B) "Somebody needs their diaper changed!"

I think it would just encourage people to get more creative. While I'd find that more entertaining, it also means that their insults would tend to have more impact. I suppose you could try banning insulting behavior in general rather than being specific, but that would probably lead to massive amounts of sarcasm and passive aggression.

Given that this game is built around ideas like piracy, war, and universe-wide unconsensual PVP, a certain amount of emotional robustness is necessary. If somebody is so fragile that they get offended over trivialities like being called scum, disgusting, or kid, then that person is never going to be satisfied with a game like this anyway, so trying to accommodate them is a waste of effort.

As for mandatory chat filters, I find them annoying. They tend to interfere with perfectly normal and polite conversations about things like cockpits or chinks in your armor, and they are easily bypassed. The more you attempt to make them hard to bypass, the more they interfere with legit conversation. Rather than making the filter mandatory and dealing with that nonsense, a more effective solution would be to have the game prompt the player about whether they want the filter the first time they run the game. By making it very obvious and easy to opt out, the people who insist on using vulgarity will be much less likely to bother with workarounds in the first place, thereby allowing the prudes who use the filter to see all those pretty asterisks instead of dirty words. Plus, that has the benefit of tricking bigots into thinking they can just type in slurs without workarounds, making it that much easier to detect and eliminate them.