Moderator Free October

[Lucius]

There goes my plan to log into the game at all in October. If this stays in place, like the removal of general chat 'trial', then I'm gone from the game; I'm out. This is ridiculous.

The system in place will identify people being blocked. It will assign bans accordingly. I'm not going to give too much insight to its workings for now as things may change as more information is collected and to prevent any attempts at abuse of the system.

Where in the nine circles of Hell is the transparency here?

How is the system going to assign bans? By the number of people who block the same person? By the actions that the person took before being blocked? By what they said in the chat? How?

I refuse to be responsible for someone being banned just because I blocked them to alleviate the lag, or because they were repeatedly posting movie clips in chat, etc.

The excuse that you won't give insight into how it works just because things can change is null. Things always change, and somehow that doesn't mean that transparency can be thrown out the window on account of that.

I don't know what kind of point you're trying to prove, but even the nicest communities have moderation and a staff team. Moderators are there to be impartial to any personal conflict that goes on and administer the proper punishment based on evidence available. You now supposedly gave that power to the masses. Masses who hold grudges, play favorites, have no need to even provide evidence, and will abuse this system.

As it stands, and with the limited amount of information available right now, I am vehemently against this; computer programs should not be used in place of human judgement. Especially not for a community as large as one here.


Edit: I'd just like to ask something here as well. Not to make assumptions, but have you thought this through? Did you consider other options? Have you sat down for an hour or two and asked yourself, "Is this what's best for my community?"

Because this looks like a very rash decision. Especially since you void the staff for the duration of the trial, which is the opposite of what you should be doing. The staff should be there to ease in the transition, prevent abuse of this system, and provide feedback on its effectiveness.

You've essentially delegated all of that upon yourself. I don't know why you would consider that as a good idea.

[Tambourine]

I'm going to completely blunt and honest; this has put me in even worse faith for the game now. For the past year, I've been trying to keep a positive outlook on the game. I've been hyped for the updates staff have been working on. However, the community is slowly crumbling, and I thought this was what rock bottom was, and that the update would help boost the player base. Now, I kinda feel like I've been handed a shovel and been told to "keep digging." I had hopes things were looking up, but man this is not a good look on FH itself.

While I understand why you don't want to give information as to how this will work, it just makes me fearful of how it's going to work to begin with. I almost don't want to play because I know people may target me or my friends for petty past drama.
How do I know it can't be manipulated? What will keep people from logging on and mass-spamming a person in hopes to get them banned because they dislike them? Faith is something lacking in the community between staff and the playerbase, and this just makes it worse, because now apparently staff don't communicate with one another? I'm just lost.

What about someone who just wants to block someone because they make them uncomfortable? Is that going to put a red mark on the person even though they didn't break rules? What if I'm roleplaying in a public map and someone is chatting nearby, and I just want to see my rp parter's posts? What if I just want to block someone because they're being annoying but not breaking any rules? There are a ton of people who just do that very thing.

If there's more to it than just blocking such as filter words, how do I know if i'll get snagged by the system for saying a word that has a curse word in it, like association? I've never seen a good chat filter system, ever. It can be just as buggy as it can be avoided using spacing or symbols to deviate the bad word itself. What about private chats, is it going to effect that?

Better yet, what is keeping people from just not blocking all together? In so many online games now, cursing is just normal. No one really sees it as a bad thing anymore. It really just doesn't bother people.

I just don't know how to feel about this other than confused and scared. I love this game, but I don't want to play it if it means I'm just going to end up getting harassed by a easily manipulated system. Call it overreacting if you want, but the fact there is no information on this just leads to confusion and fear. It makes people lose faith. I'm tired of losing faith. In the friend group I have, not a single one has a good feeling about this.

EDIT: And now I see what I fear the most; people are looking to leave. Great. Just great. And you know what's worse? This is just going to harm the moderators and staff who were not apart of this choice. It's going to make THEIR lives harder. That, in itself, makes me infuriated. Now people wonder if there's a serious attempt to just put the game out of it's misery, and I can't blame them now.

[Aka.Kurosaki]

Raz, this is seriously mental. Why do you think this is a good idea? This is obviously a joke.

Did you not think about hordes of groups who can literally block one user because they simply don't like them and haven't done a single thing wrong against rules?

Or the fact people can now witch hunt a user and get them perm banned because they just don't like them? People WILL do this. We need to mods to act as a neutral stand point.

Its like letting a country run a muck without a court system, it just won't work. We NEED mods. If it's too much for the amount of mods you have get more mods.

[SophyTheLioness]

Although I've never posted something like this I think that in the long 5 years I've been playing FH its about time. Honestly, I'm probably gonna list off the same reasons the posters above me have foretold and I'm sorry about it but I must embolden their worries even further. This is no way to manage a community, not one as big as this, not one as distanced from one another like this.
First off... This community is primarily played by children. Immature children. A good portion of them don't know how to behave or have troubles behaving... The very reason we have a staff team in the first place.
Second- Self management in a community as wide as this (More than 150 players get connected in a single DAY! There's bound to be trouble) would simply not work, especially an entire MONTH, 30 days. It's not as easy to manage as, say, an Impressive Title server, which as a top may get 50 separate users online a day.
Third- Not having access to FH's source code (as far as we know) gives in the conclusion that the game's code has remained untouched ever since Kovu left. This screams the words outdated, and rudimentary. This means putting a system for auto-banning that will NOT be ingrained into the actual game and that will instead operate from an outsider source is quite the dangerous feat and a decision taken with no second thoughts.
I'm no admin- I don't know what is it like behind the counter, of course, but what I am sure of is that this will not give good results with the kind of toxic, brittling community FH has built up over the last years. I'm a nobody, and go on as you may- But don't say none of us didn't warn you if it goes as predicted.
Fourth, but not least, this may actually do the opposite of strengthening the community's unity- Making it weaker and making members bitter to one another, defensive, and on guard at all times. Shy and afraid to interact with other openly, apprehensive of what may come if they say the wrong thing to the wrong person without meaning for it, and getting banned. It is very easy to bring chaos in a group if there are no regulators present to control the situation and bring in a neutral, down-to-earth thought into it. These are the same reasons you can't make a robot a cop.

On the other hand, only giving in negative feedback to this feature would be a rash move of mine, so my only advice, for now, is that you reconsider taking a step back and talking with your staff team because you're in constant collaboration and as a group decisions must be taken as one. Lately, the community has begun sensing the feeling that the staff team is too distant from the playerbase, so my sole suggestion would be to try and expand into this issue further on and try to solve it, again, as a unit, not solo. Thanks for reading up to here.

As it stands, and with the limited amount of information available right now, I am vehemently against this; computer programs should not be used in place of human judgement. Especially not for a community as large as one here.

Literally my point, thanks Luc
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[Jirvey]

At first I wasn't going to comment here since everyone else is already basically saying what I wanted to say anyway, but nah, you need to know how ridiculous this is.

"Do you guys need someone to watch and babysit you?" Haha. How condescending and childish. It's more like "Do you need the members to do your staff's job for you?"

Do you realize how easily this could be exploited? Instead of this banning the trolls and such who would be causing problems, they will likely all band together to block and ban random members just for the fun of it. Either the number of blocks needed is so high that it's borderline pointless, or it will only work simply because the people being bothered can no longer see the offending party, or the number is low enough that it would be easy enough to get a group together and run around randomly blocking and banning people. The fact that apparently you didn't even ask the other staff members for their input (or just ignored their input) is also ridiculous. You guys are meant to be a team. Are you simply trying to run all the players off so you don't have to deal with this game anymore? Why not just shut the server down and save everyone the trouble.

[WolfWorms]

Uh. Raz. What? I can't say I support this. Theres nothing else to say, it's all been said already.

[snuggypink]

Oh my goodness
This is the opposite of what a functioning community looks like.
There are many things that can go wrong in the sense that-

1: Many movie spammers are blocked, but they are only looking for fellow role players- they aren't necessarily doing anything wrong, but it can come out as unjust and with almost no say in the matter.
2: What if a whole gang of trolling players decided to come together in order to get random players banned for no reason by creating a massive group that blocks many people at a time?
3: Players may in fact mass block a staff member of any kind resulting in an unfair ban as well.
4: The ban system has never been looked upon as good thing within this game, the record is as clean as the polluted ocean. Many people in the past have complained time and time again about being unjustly banned. DM's have been sent to countless staff members asking to give them a second chance, moderators having to say that they have no idea how to lift the bans, excuse after excuse. It is becoming a hassle just to play without the fear of someone looming over and just ready to remove you from the game.
5: How. Long. Do. The. Bans. Last. Is this system going to be a first time ban = 24 hours, Second time = a Week, The third time =  A Year, & the final straw is a perma-ban?

This may be me grasping at flimsy straws- but this just seems like an awful way to go about things within the game that is supposed to be a successor to IT servers. The hack of 2015 was something to come together and fix things for the better, but seeing this it seems things have fallen to the worst and should be reconsidered & thought out thoroughly before implementing strict rules over those who disagree.

[LonesomeRider]

There's not much one can say after many have spoken the same things.
This really isn't a good idea... The game's gonna lose control with this concept, Raz. It won't last.

[Humanoid]

Interesting concept no?

Lets call it a test / trial and forum operations will continue as usual. In-game however you will have no moderators.

Nope I'm not crazy of course something is being put in place. Note: if its not working it may not even be a whole month.

I know there are a lot of you out there who provide reports etc back to the staff.

Well for the month of October and maybe beyond. You the community will be in charge of self moderation.

How is it going to work?

Well from your point of view as a community member you have a very simple job to do. If you see someone or something that shouldn't be going on block the person.

The system in place will identify people being blocked. It will assign bans accordingly. I'm not going to give too much insight to its workings for now as things may change as more information is collected and to prevent any attempts at abuse of the system.

So I guess what it boils down to is can you guys keep a clean and friendly environment? Or do you actually require people to sit and watch you?


Roll on October!

Raz

You're making the biggest mistake of your life.
How do you expect people to be happy by this.

I disagree.

[shredgun]

No thank you.