Community Table: Thoughts on Moderation? We invite your feedback!

Official Announcements
#1

Hey folks,

The combined forum and Discord community is the best “guild” of people I’ve ever encountered. If you are reading this, you are one of these community members we’re referring to that is extra-awesome. Everyone helps each other, is friendly, knowledgeable, resourceful, and we almost never need to ban anyone here. It’s a haven.

The Backstory/Issue

However, every now and then there will be players in-game that bring about toxicity in some form. I was reviewing our Steam reviews and most issues seem to involve “toxicity” (in some form) for those that are not part of our guild.

Due to this, we want you guys to have an awesome experience and have crafted what may arguably be one of the most fluent and transparent human moderation systems that indie games can offer (more info below):

https://forum.imperium42.com/t/heres-what-happens-after-you-report-a-player-your-reports-matter/49294

While we’re super proud of our system and you can see that your reports do something in the Discord #justice channel, there’s one major double-edged sword:

Revenge Reviews

Let’s discuss some possibilities to potentially [and reasonably] alter our system where we can moderate without developer backlash. Some players will even revenge review for just a warning or a 1-day suspension. Sometimes with up to 800 hours logged.

Up until now, we have been providing additional awareness factors for proof of such a review, but this requires investigation, research, and time. We want to try thinking deeper to think how we can avoid this.

As a community-based game, we are reaching out to our players for ideas.

Here is what we have tried:

  • Provide a screenshot with proof of logs (to prevent “Banned for nothing” reviews)

  • Added additional information within suspension messages (date/time unbanned)

  • Unless extra-bad, scale from warning >> 1d suspension >> 3d >> 7d >> etc.

Here is what we CANNOT do:

Some of these may be obvious, as we need to respect Valve’s rules; but just in case, we cannot:

  • Ask for a review in-game (like annoying mobile apps)

  • Exchange something for a review

  • Issue disciplinary action for a revenge review

Here are the ideas we’ve had, but passed on:

  • Bad guys queue instead of a suspension. We can’t do this because it takes 16 players for a game and we don’t have that many players suspended at once. Generally, after the first suspension or warning, most players STOP being toxic (which is a good thing). This would only work for ~2 player games.

  • Only issue warnings. If there’s no real suspension, people will just keep going.

Current ideas that may work:

  • 3-Strike rule.
    Instead of suspensions, we ONLY issue warnings. After 3 strikes within x amount of time, players are suspended for 1 year.

  • Continue with current system, but :insert some really smart change:
    Our system works well, but we need a way to prevent revenge reviews that also complies with Valve (Steam)'s terms of service. Revenge reviews are really making the devs stressed out and requires additional resources that we could be using to make the game better.

Conclusion

The better we moderate, the more potential for revenge reviews. This makes moderation a bit tough – we need some changes, somehow. We could use your help surveying:

  • Do you like or dislike the way we moderate?

  • What are your thoughts about how we handle moderation?

  • How would you improve our moderation system?

  • Psychologically speaking, let’s dive into their mind:
    If you were suspended for 1-day for racism, what would discourage you from revenge reviewing?

  • Any other ideas to allow us to moderate without potentially receiving backlash?

Comment Below! Thanks, chat! image

9 Likes
#2

My words probably do not make sense and should not weigh much nor do I want it to.

Personally, I like how the ToL Community moderates. It’s relatively efficient and the community barely sees any negative thoughts and if they do, its censored quickly. I actually like this system over the three strike system since some things are just too bad to receieve a strike for. Plus players could really just make infinite accounts. Which brings me to the next part. I suggest a mandatory link of the steam profile for the Discord. This would lessen the amounts of revenge reviews because everyone would hate to have their main Discord account noted as a Revenge Reviewer. If I was suspended for racism, I would likely be discouraged from revenge reviewing if I would be regarded as a revenge reviewer on my main hypesquad discord account. :woman_shrugging: Sorry I’m pretty useless as feedback.

7 Likes
#3

Thanks for your feedback!

Oh, and we generally know who revenge reviews, but we discovered that almost no one in our guild revenge reviews – rarely any actually even get suspended. The issue is mostly outside of our guild (Discord+Forum).

We try our best to censor offensive terms (since our playerbase minimum is age 13), or otherwise terms that cause off-topic drama in-game since time is limited. Players are free to speak their thoughts – as long as it doesn’t offend in a PG-13 level scenario.

#4

Honestly the 3 strike rule would be good but it shouldn’t apply to the most toxic or really bad players

#5

I’d say it works really well.
The only bad part is that you can’t really collect racist logbooks without a screenshot upload on imgur or some other platform.

I’d say I like it but it just needs more people.
The Judge role on discord is a great addition to this. but I think maybe getting a new type of role that isn’t Guide that could read report logs could work well.
Something like Reader in which you get access to report logs and that’s it. (Guides will automatically have this role)

read above. also add everyone’s logbooks as a stored thing on report so reports against people can be made easier if you don’t have a screenshot.

A permaban would be a great way to prevent revenge reviews as those revenge reviewers can go back to their shitty Town… of Salem

Hopefully Valve could also add a thing in which devs could remove unfair reviews from their games. I’d only get mad if you removed all negative reviews with this.

Try not to say the person who banned the player to prevent witchhunting but other than that, idk much else about this topic.

#6

Also i like how you guys handle things but during one of the games i was in i had reported a prince for jailing me when i was about to die as a confirmed butler i forgot to turn off caps locks and got sent a fyi thinking it was a salt report i think reports should be double checked to be 100% sure its a salt report or not

1 Like
#7

tbf, they do this already. but sometimes it’s not apparent.

Maybe send a message to a mod on discord explaining to them about the situation if you think it could be misunderstood

#8

Ive actually done that weizen explained it to the other mods but i was just giving feedback from that fyi msg

1 Like
#9

ACTUALLY, this is changing REALLY soon. I’m literally coding the logs…logs… now ;D

4 Likes
#10

raicts.

my own spelling errors. yay

#11

We already censor out who issued the ban.

Permabans have the greatest chance of revenge reviews, though. But the 3-strike idea would hopefully PREVENT those reviews since the average person would get 0~3 warnings instead of a suspension (suspensions have the greatest chance of revenge reviews. Warnings have a chance, too, but not as high)

Hehe I doubt they’d do that – it’d be exploited by dishonest titles. We only call out revenge reviews if we can post the evidence of their own words/logs. Some other titles may not do this.

4 Likes
#12

FYI’s are unlogged… FYI’s! :slight_smile: they don’t go on record. No need to contest it. Usually we’ll issue FYI’s if we’re PRETTY sure x situation, but MAYBE could be y situation. The FYI’s should popup sort of “happier” and friendlier, even roleplaying a little

“a mysterious note appears”

Is there a way you’d read FYI’s and not feel the need to contest? That was sort of the original intention, but seems like our FYI’s also need adjustment too ;D

What if we added a note at the bottom saying this doesn’t go on record, or something?

#13

We don’t ban or punish people who aren’t good at the game. Sucking isn’t against the rules!

3 Likes
#14

what I meant by this was.

Permaban players WHO revenge review the game.

#15

It’d be inappropriate to ban someone in-game just for their review, imo. People should be able to review freely without fear of in-game punishment. Where do we draw the line between a revenge review and an actual review?

12 Likes
#16

Yah that was a bad example i gave and @í42-Xblade i know was just giving feedback

#17

actual reviews are fine.

Like negative views that are reasonable are all good.
but revenge reviewers from banned players aren’t.

#18

You can’t go punishing people just because they gave your game a negative review though

6 Likes
#19

regardless of the reason behind the review

And what would we decide is a “Revenge Review” then? Anyone who reviews negatively with any kind of action taken on their account, regardless of how valid the review is?

2 Likes
#20

alright then.

you are right there.

I’m going to stop posting now, my head hurts.