When Whistler/Nihilus/Phaserlight etc speak on 100, their names appear as in default, by their nation. When they message you in the capacity of guide, it's something like "Guide98" and the name as well as the message is all white.

I definitely do not want "people posing as employees" reported as tickets. Like I said, if it comes in over chat, use the Report system.

I just don't see the "posing as employees" thing as a major concern. If you think it isn't a dev or a guide, then have them guide-message you. People have used that as a litmus test for decades.

If you want to report them as pretending to be a guide or a dev, then use report on the respective line of text. It's very apparent to us if someone is pretending, obviously.

There will always be a million 13-year-old idiots saying "my dad is a dev@!#" or something; it hasn't been an issue for 20 years, I'm not super concerned about it now. But, I don't have a problem with adding a specific category for it.. I'm just not sure that the need is really mandated? But, we can consider a category.

The problem with categories is that.. there are a lot of people who want to report everything. Someone blowing up their ship? Abuse! Someone stole their cargo? Fraud! I have hundreds of Play Store reviews bitching about pirates running "protection" rackets (ie, warranties).. because those new players just never wrapped their head around the idea that that is part of the game.

I don't want to be so broad in my enabling of Report activity that I end up inundating us with too much silly stuff (soaking up time with irrelevant nonsense and basically devaluing the report mechanic), which is why I would like to be as narrow as possible, for as long as possible.

This is why I definitely do not want "All other RoC violations" because that leaves open a million things to interpretation, and honestly I will have no idea what it is that people are trying to report.

So...categories I would like to suggest are:
Real-life Threats
Consistent/repetitive use of profanity
Repetitive sexual references
Use of racial/otherwise toxic slurs (referring to someone's sexuality, nationality, religion etc)

These do loosely come under "Toxic Chat and Trolling", but I don't think they can be put under one blanket category.

- "Ban or Mute Evasion"
I think that one is helpful.

- "Real-World Illegal Activity"
I think that one is of some use.

- "Threats of Real-World Harm" / “Real-life Threats”
This seems like "Toxic Chat and Trolling".

- "Sexual Harassment"
This seems like "Toxic Chat and Trolling".

- “Consistent/repetitive use of profanity”
In my opinion, directing profanity at others is not permissible but casual profanity is managed by the filter. I suppose there are instances when it’s over the top, but that might be “Toxic Chat and Trolling”

- “Repetitive sexual references”
This seems useful. It can get a bit cringey at times.

- “Use of racial/otherwise toxic slurs (referring to someone's sexuality, nationality, religion etc)”
This seems like "Toxic Chat and Trolling". I’d reword it so we don’t have people reporting anti-Serco/Itani/UIT comments.

I just don't see the "posing as employees" thing as a major concern. If you think it isn't a dev or a guide, then have them guide-message you. People have used that as a litmus test for decades.

Is it not a major concern because you don't think it happens enough or because it's not in the upper echelon of RoC concerns? Because it's number 3, which suggests to me it's *not* trivial.

Again, how is a newer player even supposed to know that something like a "guide message" exists? I've been playing for a long ass time and I haven't seen a guide message like that in forever, so I totally forgot about it.

@Whistler

I think there is a major distinction between being an asshole/toxic character in-game, using language that is wholly in reference to things that can occur in-game, and making RW threats or harassing commentary (i.e. disparaging comments about someone's alleged true RW identity). I think some people start out trying to keep their vile in-game and then, when they see they aren't effective, they resort to upping the ante and bringing RW into it. That can not only feel very threatening, but can have devastating consequences. Ever heard of "swatting"?

So lumping all harassment into "toxic chat" and just letting incarnate sort out the difference doesn't seem like a good idea for this game. This isn't My Little Ponies Adventure Game -- this is Vendetta, a name which by definition welcomes vengeance. People are going to get pissed at each other and act out. It's not enough to just say "please be nice and settle your differences with blasters".

I think Incarnate is able to suss out what is toxic / trolling and why easily. I thought the suggestion was more pointed at having categories that allowed the user to understand what should be /report-ed.

Using a RW racial slur or making IRL physical threats is self-evident in most cases. I have noted some harassment that is difficult to capture in a line of chat, but Incarnate has already pointed out that /ignore is made for that.

My last post was an attempt to pull together the categories suggested so far and to add my thoughts on them.

Yeah, I have zero trouble differentiating racial slurs or real-life threats, and I've reacted to.. many, many of them already, with the report system.

The only advantage of categories, as far as I can tell, is:

1) Making ambiguous reports clearer to the administrator, like someone bypassing a mute.

2) Fostering more reports by making people more comfortable reporting various topics, but this is kind of a weak-and-wobbly justification for me, as like Whistler, I tend to see a lot of things falling under generally "toxic" chat.

Is it not a major concern because you don't think it happens enough or because it's not in the upper echelon of RoC concerns? Because it's number 3, which suggests to me it's *not* trivial.

So, if I lower it on the list, will you stop being so upset about it? That list is 20 years old, and was largely copied from another game at the time. It's a reasonable list, but don't read too much into the ordering.

It's not a major concern, because it happens relatively frequently, and most internet gamers know to ignore people in games who claim that their brother/dad/whomever is an admin and they're "totally" going to come get "vengeance" for their family-member losing in a PvP game.

Yes, it's against the rules, so it's laid out in the rules clearly so action can be taken. But it is not so elevated an issue for most, because they just ignore it. It's actually fairly common, you're just the first person to bother reporting it in a long time.

Regardless of new-users and "guide messaging".. all persistent-world games have some visually-obvious version of administrative contact methodology. I don't know exactly what will make you happy here? I guess we can add some kind of training tutorial that shows people different text types, and tell them to ignore fake admins, although I'm specifically trying to get rid of the sheer number of required tutorials we have already..

I remain positive and hopeful this suggestion will be considered in whatever way best serves Guild Software!

Mmmkay.. well, anyway, to recap, we seem to have something like this:

Existing categories:
- "Toxic Chat and Trolling"
- "Real-Life Politics"
- "Spam"

Potential new categories:
- "Ban or Mute Evasion"
- "Real-World Illegal Activity"
- "Overly Sexualized Content"

Uncertain-if-they're-specifically-needed categories:
- "Falsely Claiming Administrative Powers"
- "Threats of Real-World Harm"

Further feedback?

Again, to confirm what Whistler said above, we do not enforce language restrictions, only usage. So, calling someone else a "poop-head" is as bad as any other more colorful language, because it's directed at an individual. But, saying you yourself are "flying like poop today" is okay, much like saying you're "flying like shit" or whatever else.

Players are expected to generally use the filter to handle most language issues.

I agree there but when it gets excessive. Like you occasionally just get those people in VO discord who just jump into the server and start talking crap. We had something like that a couple of months ago. Thats what I was speaking about when I said "Excessive use of profanity". Granted there is a chat filter, but just because you turned it off shouldn't mean you're signing up for a continuous stream of unnecessary swearing. I'm not saying that every single swear-word should be reported, but when someone starts going nuts with it, I think there should be some consequences. Obviously that may come under Toxic Chat as well.

That sounds like a job for /ignore to me.

Yeah, toxicity is usually "directed" at something. At a person, at the game ("this game is dead and sux"), whatever.

If someone just starts cursing up a storm because an unrat took out their moth, that's not really the same kind of thing.

If they're really doing nothing but cursing, over and over and over, then that would fall under "spam" as well.

But, again, we generally do not take action on language. And lots of opinions vary on this, but I'm not going to start taking action purely on language. Especialy after adding twenty more languages. That's a harrowing number of potential curse-words and cultural challenges.

Plus, when it comes to cursing, "excessive" is a pretty vague and subjective line to find.

True.

Is this really what you guys want the devs spending time on while there is already a perfectly fine report system?

Maybe one for reporting inappropriate names?

Inevitable the whole thread is about why the report system is not "perfectly fine". I think we got there from the entire discussion.

And yeah there could be one for inappropriate names too. There's been a couple of cases. Already one (Barack Osama) has been changed. Not sure whether it's a matter for /report or support tickets though, since names are a one-time change.

Let's please be mindful of Rule #3 folks.

incarnate posted:
toxicity is usually "directed" at something. [...] we generally do not take action on language.

Just wanted to clarify: is this a policy that covers all language not directed at someone? Racist, sexist, homophobic etc language included?

This is specific to profanity. Casual profanity not directed at a person, so long as it's not spammy, is generally OK. Profanity directed at others is not.

Slurs and overtly sexist, racist, or homophobic content are not permitted at all. Those are points 1-2 of the RoC:

1) You may not harass or threaten other players.
2) You may not use any sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive language.

thanks for clarifying!