Recent uptick in mutes in game

Copy pasted from my post on discord:

I’m leaving this here, since there’s not a suggestions channel. Please let me know if it fits better somewhere else. I’ve noticed an uptick over the last few weeks of players being (in my opinion) frivolously muted. It’s my opinion, as well of that of many other players I’ve spoken to that this is, overall, bad for the games longevity. We love the game and we want to see it continue to thrive and grow. I’d like this humble comment to serve as the catalyst for internal discussion between you mods to decide what’s the best way to go forward on this topic. Thanks for your consideration, and for all the work you guys do. ❤

Thu 23 Jul 2020 7:28 PM by ExcretusMaximus

I feel like the GMs are getting burned out dealing with the ridiculousness that is this server's player base, and doing it for free.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 7:38 PM by LolaEbola

I want to push back a little bit on what you call ridiculousness. I get that sometimes people can be toxic, oftentimes extremely so! I don’t have any issue with these people getting a 24 hour mute to think things over and cool down.

What does seem frivolous is a friend of mine being muted for using light profanity when /filter exists, and is indeed tricky to even turn off permanently. It feels frivolous when there’s civil discussion happening, and participants are muted without warning. (I think much of this would be solved by some type of toggleable realm wide general chat for us more chatty folks.)

I’m not here to defend racism or personal harassment or toxicity. I’m just asking that we not be over policed and that some common sense guidelines be set up to inhibit any potential mod overreach. Making things less subjective and more formulaic certainly can’t hurt, in my opinion.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 7:38 PM by

Uthred

At this moment there are 3 mutes active aka 3 players muted for 24h each. Having about 2000 different players on the server every day, I dont see where this a high number and/or an uptick.

2 of the 3 mutes are for realm switching and flaming after getting killed in rvr.

The third mute was a player who got told to stop on discord and then continued ingame.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 7:43 PM by gabralla

In light of recent events I am very troubled by the "muting" of individuals because of their advice usages. Advice is for as it is called /advice, but we are all pixels in this game and behind those pixels are fallible human beings. No one is perfect and going to use /advice continuously in all regards the way that channel is functioned. HOWEVER, in light of Phoenix's Freeshard enlightenment you can have your settings where you can click off of advice if it is intolerable to you or ANY other channel as any individual sees fit. If there is a complaint brought forth about the misuse of advice or any other channel that is brought to the attention of the GM's then would not a follow through of such actions be first served before muting or banning individuals. For instance.....

#1. A warning issued first to let the individual know they are crossing boundaries.
#2. A look into the person filing the complaint as well as the offense of the individual. (to make sure it is even-sided)
#3. A mute (only if the issue of speaking with the offender has not been resolved)
#4. A ban

The ambiguity of the procedures for muting and banning any individual in this game is concerning to say the least. One for ALL and ALL for one. If a rule is set in place then not only should it be follow to the letter of the law, but it should apply forthwith to ALL individuals and not singling out individuals. A set of guidelines are a foundation for creating peace and serenity instead of chaos and confusion. I am imploring GM's to please take into account an individuals past history of abusing such guidelines and if they have went through each process of the steps before muting and banning people.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,
Gabs/Gabralla/Gabsyatodeath/Gabshammers/Gabspirit/Gabbayabbado "Midgard For Life"
LGM: Sc'er, Alch, Ac'er, Tailor, Fletcher.
Odins Guard Guild.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 7:43 PM by LolaEbola

Thanks for the data, Uthred. I obviously don’t have access to this information, and so all of my arguments are anecdotal here.

It’s entirely possible that many of the cases people talk to me about are exaggerated or they don’t want to talk about why they were REALLY banned. That makes sense. I can’t speak to that.

What I can speak to is my own mute from a few days ago, which centered around a conversation going on in /advice. Nothing offensive was said, there was no flaming. Was it off topic for /advice? Perhaps. I believe there’s an argument to be made that our conversation was good information for some. (We were ironically talking about toxic behavior and messages we get from people we’ve killed in rvr.) I appealed this mute on discord and it was lifted barely 30 minutes later. I’m asking that there be guidelines in place to prevent this type of situation, which I seem to have heard about almost daily.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 7:59 PM by

Uthred

Rules are the same for everyone and we dont do any exceptions. This is a freeshard meaning we are not 24h monitoring the chat. So one day you wont get muted, the next day may get muted because a staff member was online and "could take care of you". Whenever we get a report about a player we will check on it and we will take action when needed.

If a staff member tells you to stop, you have to stop. No matter if you like it or not. If not you will get the mute. Simple as that.

Advice is and has always been a chat to help players and realmmates. We dont want no barrens chat in here and we stated that endless times. The argument, that players can turn off the chat, when they dont like it is more than not valid at all. This chat is for everyone and only because some players cant follow the rules, players that stick to the rules and dont like the "rule-breaking" behaviour of others should turn the chat off? NO. This is so wrong in so many ways.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 8:05 PM by LolaEbola

If those are the rules, let me be clear.. I’m happy to follow them. I will say, that in that case, a realm wide general chat would be very much appreciated by many of us. As things exist, there’s currently nowhere in game for us to discuss broader topics concerning the game. Yes, the forums are always here, but many people (including myself) don’t frequent them, and I don’t think that should exclude us from discussing the game we love. We’re driven to /advice because that’s the closest forum we have.

That being said, when I was muted, I did NOT receive a warning. The GM told me that he had made a warning in /advice 10 minutes before, at a time that I was not involved at the conversation, and indeed, not even at my computer.

I would ask, that if I’m breaking the rules, you put a yellow text warning directed specifically to me before muting me. That seems both fair, and instantly implemented.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 8:17 PM by

Uthred

We will not put in a realm wide general chat for obvious reasons. We had this back in beta in discord, where we even had an offtopic channel and no, this will never ever happen again. Each morning you were busy for 30 mins to clean up the mess from last night, no thank you. Not again.

Thu 23 Jul 2020 9:37 PM by LolaEbola

Would you care to comment on my other point? About mandating warnings prior to muting?

Thu 23 Jul 2020 9:46 PM by gotwqqd

More need to be muted
No warning

Thu 23 Jul 2020 10:11 PM by LolaEbola

Would you care to elaborate on this? Or am I just being trolled? Either is cool tbh, I just want to know.

Fri 24 Jul 2020 12:05 AM by Khrin

All private servers eventually descend into admin anarchy. 'Tis the way of things.

Fri 24 Jul 2020 12:24 AM by LolaEbola

I’d greatly prefer admin anarchy to what I see as admin overreach, personally.

Fri 24 Jul 2020 2:38 AM by joe1805

There was 3 mute out of 2000, and you're complaining? i'm not entirely sure what the issue is here? This thread seem so extremely exaggerated, and please take this drama elsewhere.

Regards.

a casual mid player.

Fri 24 Jul 2020 7:17 AM by Sepplord

You can make a general chatgroup yourself btw. and advertise it in advice
anyone actually intrested in following the topic can join and you can talk all day in whatever way and tone you prefer, since private chats aren't policed (even better YOU can police the chat)

the investigation procedure suggested earlier is a good procedure, but it forget one important thing: GMs are not working in this game, it's their free time. And it is quite understandable they don't want to spend 30minutes instead of 3min for every report or offensive discussion.

Fri 24 Jul 2020 2:19 PM by LolaEbola

I feel like asking to be warned before being muted is a very reasonable request. I’ve conceded everything else. That courtesy is all I continue to ask for.

Is this really an unpopular opinion?

Fri 24 Jul 2020 3:23 PM by Kwall0311

Heres a thing, what if... you just didnt say anything and played the game.

Fri 24 Jul 2020 7:13 PM by LolaEbola

Kwall0311 wrote: ↑
Fri 24 Jul 2020 3:23 PM
Heres a thing, what if... you just didnt say anything and played the game.

I’m a very social person, and in an mmo, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps, you and me are different, but I enjoy my games the most when I can talk with the community.

Snarky comments aside, is there any reason that people shouldn’t be warned before being muted? I’m not asking for the world here.

Sat 25 Jul 2020 9:28 AM by

gruenesschaf

LolaEbola wrote: ↑
Fri 24 Jul 2020 7:13 PM
I’m a very social person, and in an mmo, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps, you and me are different, but I enjoy my games the most when I can talk with the community.

Snarky comments aside, is there any reason that people shouldn’t be warned before being muted? I’m not asking for the world here.

If it's about the public channels you will usually, but not always, see some form of warning directed at the channel before mutes are handed out. Depending on what is written however a mute may also happen right away. In the end, given the usually low duration of mutes, you can basically consider the mute itself a warning with comparatively minor consequences.

Sat 25 Jul 2020 2:36 PM by LolaEbola

Further up in the thread, I mentioned how I was muted earlier this week without warning. It wasn’t anything inflammatory I was saying, just “off topic discussion” a conversation I would have certainly dropped, had I been warned.

This doesn’t only mute you from /advice. You also lose /lfg, /region, even /as. Again, I’m a social person and faced with 24 hours without those channels, I would have preferred to just log off for the day.

This issue could be solved by simply making sure to send a warning prior to muted. This is all I’m asking for, and I can’t fathom how it’s being seen as an unreasonable request.

Sat 25 Jul 2020 3:25 PM by

Uthred

The GM made an annoucement before. If you dont read it for whatever reason, you have to deal with the consequences. Everything else was perfectly explained by Schaf in his last post, which im going to quote:

gruenesschaf wrote: ↑
Sat 25 Jul 2020 9:28 AM
If it's about the public channels you will usually, but not always, see some form of warning directed at the channel before mutes are handed out. Depending on what is written however a mute may also happen right away. In the end, given the usually low duration of mutes, you can basically consider the mute itself a warning with comparatively minor consequences.

Also I dont like that you dont stop trying to get this thread into a direction which makes the staff look bad. You are assuming that we would hand out mutes in masses and for no reason. Just take a look at the topic of this thread. Do you have any proof for that? No, in fact the total opposite is the truth.

And further more, when you created this thread 3 players were muted at that time. Now, it is only 2 players that are muted in this moment. Feel free to open a new thread about the recent downtick of mutes in game.

Sat 25 Jul 2020 4:53 PM by gotwqqd

LolaEbola wrote: ↑
Sat 25 Jul 2020 2:36 PM
..... I would have preferred to just log off for the day.

Why didn’t you? Did the devs force you to stay on muted?

Sun 26 Jul 2020 12:30 AM by LolaEbola

I’m just going to take the L on this thread and back on out. Thanks for the discussion, guys.