Forum


An Advisor's Reply (to the community)
Posted By: Grunvagr at 8:56 PM, Thursday June 26, 2008 EDT
***This blog concerns Grunvagr's views on the moderating issues in kdice, and what the community can do to help improve things***


First off, I want players to know that we do listen to the community. That's the whole point of having advisors in the first place - having someone to represent you, moderate offensive behavior and upsetting avatars and try to keep this place clean, overall.

Second, there needs to be better definitions of what is to be accepted and what is to be considered unacceptable, both in terms of avatar use / things players can say to others, etc.

Now, the problem arises where people want minor concerns moderated (demanding mutings or bannings of other players for minor offenses).

I want to make sure of one thing. Kdice has always been a relaxed community atmosphere, where players can relax, enjoy the game, chill with friends, joke around and enjoy each other's company. It should remain that way.

Now, that said, there needs to be some sort order to things where players cannot blatantly offend, harrass others, etc. That's where advisors come in.
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Here's the situation, summarized:
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* Certain players in the community want more moderating (more players banned, more mutings, etc)

* Certain players want the opposite, where they feel too much is being moderated and they feel discouraged by advisors for being TOO strict and not letting them enjoy the game and goof around with buddies as they have for many months / years.

That is the fine line and there should be no way we can't appease both groups. The key is simple: define what is acceptable and what is not.


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What needs to be done:
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>>> The best way to quickly change things for the better is the IDEA FORUM <<<

What we need are more things in place that HELP advisors to handle your complaints, look into problems, and address them if they indeed should be handled (by muting / banning, stripping an avatar away, etc)

So the purpose of this blog is to ask the community to help us help you.

For example: If someone cusses you out at a table, right now chat logs are nothing but copied and pasted as proof - something that could be forged easily and thus anyone can blame anyone (so if I'm not at a table and dont see it, just understand that an accusation IS an accusation only, not proof).

What we could and should do as a community is look into ways where we can document infractions easily - that way they can be handled quickly.

So for instance, an idea I can think up of right now that makes sense would be a chatlog saver - an option to save a chatlog in a game and post it later for advisors to review (something that would be saved as a file and thus better than just copy / pasting bad text on the forums - which spam the forums and dont make things look good for the beautiful game in general). Forum posts should be upbeat, or discussing life or the game, not about people cussing / name calling, etc - when that is SUCH A SMALL PART of the community.
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Here's another idea that I formally proposed which already has gotten some support:
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http://kdice.com/ideas/ideas/44761619?


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What can you do?
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Ask not what kdice can do for you, ask what YOU can do for kdice ;)

Think up of good ideas to help moderate and suggest them. Also, compile a list of acceptable or unacceptable behavior or discuss that in a forum post.

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What's the point??
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The purpose of this blog is to acknowledge that advisors do listen to the community. But we want players to understand that we don't want to alienate half the community by moderating too severely, nor do we want to ignore people that are harrassed and demand help from us.

Let's discuss and take things from there. A list of acceptable and unacceptable behavior alone (you'd be surprised) is amazingly difficult to make. So lets work together to compile one.




***This is Grunvagr's views on the issue of moderating. If you agree or disagree, take it out on ME***

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Reply away

« First ‹ Previous Replies 41 - 45 of 45
Shevar wrote
at 5:17 AM, Tuesday July 1, 2008 EDT
The way racism appears on this site is NOT a big issue i think. Mainly its just the wrath of idiots and we should deal with it secretly. If we give them attention they get what they came for. With the advisor log in place, we can finally get rid of the topics where you can read the senseless crap of somebody freaking out.
scorp888 wrote
at 4:26 PM, Tuesday July 1, 2008 EDT
I think the key thing people are missing is context.

The N word is not the only racist word.

In context, unless someone has put a real picture of themselves up, got it verified, and they are black, I don't see how nigger can be offensive, given that it has no context. You could have effectively a black person calling another a nigger, now given that seems to be ok in rap music, why is it not ok in kdice?

I think Grun hit it on the head, is the OTHER person offended?

If they are, then it's something to look at.

There are from what I see, more homophobic posts than anything else, I see the faggot and gay word used far more than nigger, I guess because the idiots that spout it figure that as they are guys, they are guessing a number of the other players will be guys, and will therefore be offended. These idiots can of course be gamed, and that's fun, but perhaps not for all the players at the table..

Why not having a rating on the tables?

0 PG
0 15
0 X-rated

?
Earl Grey wrote
at 6:54 PM, Wednesday July 2, 2008 EDT
See

http://kdice.com/discussion/topics/44762293

for reporting on OVER9000

E.G.
mabopsa wrote
at 11:56 PM, Thursday July 10, 2008 EDT
Hi. Thought I?d put in my two cents too. There have been some very logical and valid arguments given here. Please bear with me if what I write is not equally coherent, since I don?t usually follow discussions in the forums or the Idea corner, and am just jotting down a few things that came to mind.

First of all, I love the community aspect of KDice. And I love the fact the moderators here are not dictators here who ban people for the slightest offence.

I realized the importance of this all the more, when I recently joined a chess game site and saw moderators banning people left and right just because they used the F word or took jabs at each other or (and this was what angered them the most) when some user disagreed with the moderator or made fun of him or her.

Too much moderation ruins the community aspect just as much as stuff like verbal abuse, porn avatars etc do.

So what could be done to solve this dilemma?

I don?t know how feasible this is, but please hear me out. Instead of giving more powers to the moderators how about giving more autonomy to the players? Let me give an example to explain what I mean by this. Some people were offended by porn avatars (I personally don?t care) so Ryan introduced a feature whereby people could click on any avatar they didn?t like to turn it to a smiley face. In the same way how about giving each player ?mute/ignore? button? If what a player says is offensive then the offended player can just click on this ignore button next to the player?s avatar in the table, so that he/she cannot see what that player says anymore.

The degree of what is ?offensive? differs from person to person (I personally love a good verbal argument, and am willing to give and take a lot. Lol) so this basically allows an individual to decide what he/she wants to hear or see. At the same time, the other players who aren?t offended can keep chatting with both players. This should solve the issue of too much interference from moderators and at the same time appease players who?re ?easily offended?.
hobbbz wrote
at 10:57 AM, Monday July 28, 2008 EDT
Have different groups of tables

Anything goes, no restrictions on avatars or language.

Family safe, random friendly avatars, strict word filtering.
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