ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

First of all, the thing I've heard come up the most, an ignore button. Lets face it, some people are annoying, or like to troll, or whatever. The most adult thing we can really do with these people is ignore them.

Next up is the ability for users to create channels. I'm not sure if they should be password protected, maybe just have moderated by the person that makes it so people can kick people or ban them from the channel. But I think some communities would really appreciate this feature (Something Awful posters).

The later is less of a priority, and I'm not sure exactly how it should be handled. The former though I think is something we can all get on board with.

As the community expands an ignore button will become ever more important, and at some point a reporting system (I volunteer as a moderator :) ) with temporary bans for people who behave particularly badly.

There's already a report option. I've made use of it a bit. But without a moderator (aside from Darkgod) I'm not sure what good it does.

More chat moderators and more people who can use code/network magic to fix bugs would probably be good at some point (not volunteering because I know jack all about network code).

I agree with the ignore button, although from past experience I'm not sure it works really well (since at one point you wonder who are other people arguing with).

As for adding channels, it would be nice if you could register a channel. That way it could persist and wouldn't have to be re-created every time everyone on it leaves. The person registering a channel could choose whether it should be public or private (password protected), and who gets moderator powers on the channel. You could auto delete a channel if it hasn't been used in a month.

I'd also suggest being able to follow multiple channels at once. So something like:

[tome] <name> message
[tome-spoiler] <name> message
etc.
with the option to change the color of each channel (so it's easier to follow).

As for moderation on the public channels, yeah, there were some...characters that probably needed a bit of mod hammering, but overall the channel has been pretty civil...most of the time.

When the game gets greenlit on Steam though...We'll probably need dedicated mods.

supermini wrote:I agree with the ignore button, although from past experience I'm not sure it works really well (since at one point you wonder who are other people arguing with).

As for adding channels, it would be nice if you could register a channel. That way it could persist and wouldn't have to be re-created every time everyone on it leaves. The person registering a channel could choose whether it should be public or private (password protected), and who gets moderator powers on the channel. You could auto delete a channel if it hasn't been used in a month.

I'd also suggest being able to follow multiple channels at once. So something like:

[tome] <name> message
[tome-spoiler] <name> message
etc.
with the option to change the color of each channel (so it's easier to follow).

As for moderation on the public channels, yeah, there were some...characters that probably needed a bit of mod hammering, but overall the channel has been pretty civil...most of the time.

When the game gets greenlit on Steam though...We'll probably need dedicated mods.

You know, at this rate we may as well just integrate IRC into TOME.

Also, I can't help noticing several separate posts turning up all at once to request an "ignore" function. Has the TOME community gained some sort of ubertroll?

It's just the nature of growth. Once you get beyond a certain threshold you start to attract some trolls. The bigger you get the more trolls you have. Tome has seen a lot of growth very recently and thus a lot more trolls and a lot more requests for an ignore button

I don't have any IRC clients on my computer, if you integrate IRC into tome, what does that mean for people like me?

I'd like to think that the existing community can keep trolls down to a reasonable level, a troll that doesn't get fed is a troll that goes away. There's enough respect and civility in ToME that I'd hope we wouldn't NEED the ignore function...

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:I don't have any IRC clients on my computer, if you integrate IRC into tome, what does that mean for people like me?

I'd like to think that the existing community can keep trolls down to a reasonable level, a troll that doesn't get fed is a troll that goes away. There's enough respect and civility in ToME that I'd hope we wouldn't NEED the ignore function...

I don't have an IRC client either, I just use Mibbit. I doubt it would ever be necessary though. I think they mean to make ToME's chat feature into some kind of IRC client itself.

supermini wrote:As for moderation on the public channels, yeah, there were some...characters that probably needed a bit of mod hammering, but overall the channel has been pretty civil...most of the time.

What exactly qualifies as 'uncivil'? About the worst I've seen has been some spirited debates, usually over the newcomer/purist debate over adventurer/roguelike. (Though magic vs antimagic has some fair number of debates as well...) While there's been some strong positions, I don't see people being (seriously) rude to each other, or anything like that. I have yet to see any true incivility in chat.

As for channels, we do need more, but I feel like making a bunch of small private channels might be a step in the wrong direction. I don't mind private chat between users, but part of what makes the game a more accessible roguelike is the social aspect of it. You don't feel quite so alone whilst playing it. If the community devolves into a million tiny private rooms, this crowd goes away. OTOH, that still splits the community, but there's not really a choice there.

As for dedicated moderators, when we get greenlit, if we go that route, we'll need more then the one... Especially if we get so crowded we split to separate channels, twould be difficult for just 1 or 2 to police all the channels.

Have a tiered chat system, then. Say, five tiers, like five stars, four stars, etc., with people defaulting to five.

If X people complain about you, you drop a tier, or you are flagged for a moderator, who can drop you a tier if they feel it fitting. Or, you're automatically dropped a tier but can appeal it to a moderator. People who aren't flagged a while could go up a tier after a certain period of time.

Then, in chat settings, people can set what rating tier of player they see-all tiers, just the higher ones, or, if they're into that, just the lower ones.

This segregates chat a bit, without making it non-homogenized. It allows user input into what they find offensive, and what kind of user they don't want to see, without removing the people forever. And it's hard to abuse-yes, trolls can just flag every single person they see making a comment, but that can be fixed by only allowing a limited amount of flags(say one per hour, or a few per day). If someone liberally abuses it still, through sheer dedication, well, their information is tied to an online account that can easily be removed.

And since so much of your info(online unlock storage, character vault) is tied to your profile, it will be rather rare to have a troll try to make multiple accounts to evade the rankings or spam up the ratings.

Conceivably, you could even add a positive side to this-say, start everyone at three stars, then have people also be able to give out upvotes to helpful people and have them gain stars. Not required, but an optional, possibly appealing, element.

Crim, The Red Thunder wrote:(Though magic vs antimagic has some fair number of debates as well...)

Hah, really? How very very appropriate... :)

I think multiple channels for moderation is a bad idea. Best thing is temporary bans - an hour for minor infractions, a week or more if serious. Repeated transgressions get a year. And there should be room to appeal.

But then moderators would need access to chat logs, which would involve data retention, which has loads of problems in many countries regarding data retention... Ah, nightmare :/ The simpler we can keep all this the better.

That's why I'd suggest keeping the public channels mostly as they are, and adding the option of private channels which people using them should regulate themselves.

I understand the concern about a million of little chat rooms, but honestly, chat is already overloaded. People could make different channels to discuss books, music, whatever, without using the general chat which is usually under the heavy load of questions like "how do I use crystal focus?" and "why are my sustains turning off", once every ten minutes. Not that I mind those, I try to answer as many as I can, but I'd like to talk about something else, sometimes.

As for moderation and moderation rules, it's difficult. We don't have any official rules of what is allowed on chat and what isn't. Is swearing ok? What about typing in caps? Or intentionally lying to people to get them killed? I've seen all of these more or less.

So first, we need to agree on a set of ground rules, and then we need to decide who or what is going to enforce them. If it's going to be the community itself by the 'report' system, you will see people who don't agree with the majority being silenced in every discussion.

If it's going to be people with moderation powers, you need to make sure that the mods are not going to abuse those powers, and be ready for the fact that people will be screaming abuse whether or not it's actually true.

I just wanted to add that ToME chat has been one of the more civil and helpful ones I've ever been on and while there's a few rotten apples, overall there's no need for heavy moderation at the moment.

supermini wrote:That's why I'd suggest keeping the public channels mostly as they are, and adding the option of private channels which people using them should regulate themselves.

I understand the concern about a million of little chat rooms, but honestly, chat is already overloaded. People could make different channels to discuss books, music, whatever, without using the general chat which is usually under the heavy load of questions like "how do I use crystal focus?" and "why are my sustains turning off", once every ten minutes. Not that I mind those, I try to answer as many as I can, but I'd like to talk about something else, sometimes.

If they can still LISTEN to primary channels simultaneously, that might work, especially if you hardcode the Tome channel to auto-connect on every session, regardless of any other rooms you might have preset to be connected to. Lets not give people the option of auto-disabling standard chat. If they want to mute that part after, fine, but lets encourage them to remain part of the community.

As for moderation and moderation rules, it's difficult. We don't have any official rules of what is allowed on chat and what isn't. Is swearing ok? What about typing in caps? Or intentionally lying to people to get them killed? I've seen all of these more or less.

So first, we need to agree on a set of ground rules, and then we need to decide who or what is going to enforce them. If it's going to be the community itself by the 'report' system, you will see people who don't agree with the majority being silenced in every discussion.

Kinda hard to set swearing by itself against rules, given the overall tone and content of the game, along with the fact that some names actually have these words in them, on peoples accounts. Simple ruleset would be "Would you say this to someone standing in front of you, if they were bigger and stronger then you?" I don't see a problem with language yet, unless it becomes vindictively and aggressively directed against an individual. And frankly, I have yet to see that from anyone. Also, if we do go that route, we might want to throw the rule guidelines into a chat tutorial. It occurred to me yesterday when someone asked, they don't know HOW to open public chat, or how to whisper. Guy in question could only whisper to me by right clicking my name, didn't know how window opened. Some sort of simple documentation mentioned in one of the tutorials might help, could dispense a guideline for behavior at the same time.

If it's going to be people with moderation powers, you need to make sure that the mods are not going to abuse those powers, and be ready for the fact that people will be screaming abuse whether or not it's actually true.

Which brings us back to data retention, we likely won't have the ability to do that; since to deal with a 'disputed' claim, we would need the evidence of what was said by who, and when. Speaks heavily towards self-governed, rather then moderated, at least in my opinion. Or being slightly careful in selecting moderators.