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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2020 8:36 pm
by Blair
In post 73, Micc wrote:There are people who play on this site regularly that I’ve “blacklisted” in the sense that I would never sign up to play a game with them, and I would seriously consider replacing out if they replaced into a game I was alive in. But I would never consider it fair for me to tell them not to play in a game so that I can. For the most part these people haven’t done anything wrong, and if they have done something wrong it’s already been reported, reviewed by site mods and consequences served. My simply not wanting to play with them doesn’t give me a right to tell them what to do.
Micc is dropping nuggets of wisdom here.

Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2020 8:37 pm
by SJReaver
In post 74, Blair wrote: This is already the case, without any new rules.

There are already mods who force-replace players for toxicity. I replaced into a game once where the mod had just force-replaced five players at once because they had turned the thread into a salt-flat.

If you make it a site rule, though, then you need consistency.
Oh, I didn't know that.

In that case, it sounds good! I don't see the need to change things.

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:04 am
by Alisae
In post 31, Ircher wrote:As for replacements, I'm of the opinion that beggars cannot be choosers. Finding replacements tends to be a big enough ordeal as-is. Arbitrarily rejecting replacements (or worse allowing them then replacing them) because they are blacklisted just disincentivizes people from replacing in.
If I am 4 days deep into a game and someone I have strong feelings about not playing with replaces in, then you bet you're fucking ass I want them replaced out.

Also finding replacements is not a big deal.

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:08 am
by Alisae
In post 38, Nahdia wrote:i dont always read the full playerlist of games i offer to replace into
honestly, if you're considering replacing in, you should rly do yourself a favor and read the full playerlist to make sure there isn't anyone you know you're going to get into a conflict in. If you replaced in without knowing who is in that playerlist, and you find out that someone who you will start conflict in is in that playerlist, then thats your fault

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:12 am
by Alisae
In post 60, Micc wrote:Finally, following a player around by replacing into their games despite clearly being asked not to can be a form of harassment. Please report posts or PM a Listmod if you believe this is happening. We will take action against harassment, but please know that there is some burden of proof of ill-will necessary. We see two players who don’t get along simply wanting to play in the same game as a game mod issue, or in the case of the Newbie queue, a “remove yourself if you can’t behave” issue.
This is good

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:40 am
by Alisae
In post 37, Menalque wrote:
In post 35, Ircher wrote:In addition, as I pointed out in my previous post, mods shouldn't be picky about replacements because they are hard to come by as-is.
I will respond to your longer post tomorrow when I’m not on my phone and it’s not 3am but is there any basis for this? Generally the replacement queue moves pretty quickly, and in the case being described it’s likely they’d have to do more replacements anyway. Either of the player who already was playing, of others who leave as the game becomes toxic and fighting starts, or of the second followed by the first.
No its just based on misconceptions.
Very rarely are games starved for replacements for a very long period of time.

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:41 am
by Alisae
Like yes sometimes replacements can take forever to find, but generally speaking finding a replacement doesn’t take that long. Especially if you have friends you can badger to replace in.

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 11:46 am
by Nahdia
In post 78, Alisae wrote:
In post 38, Nahdia wrote:i dont always read the full playerlist of games i offer to replace into
honestly, if you're considering replacing in, you should rly do yourself a favor and read the full playerlist to make sure there isn't anyone you know you're going to get into a conflict in. If you replaced in without knowing who is in that playerlist, and you find out that someone who you will start conflict in is in that playerlist, then thats your fault
tbf, i cant think of any players that would make me refuse to join a playerlist. i guess there are a couple i conflict with a bit more often than average, but none that i just outright wouldnt play with that i can think of.

Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 3:21 pm
by Isis
The games that run out of replacements are the 40-50ps that actively "saturate the market" to the point where every active user of MS has either queued for the game, replaced into the game, or decided they don't want to get involved in the game. Everything else gets replacements very quickly because "games with no delay between expression of interest and role PM" are a special category of game that cannot increase their supply to meet demand, and demand happens to be higher than the natural supply.

Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 7:11 am
by FakeGod
Fortunately, at least from a game moderator perspective, we have absolute control over our own playerlists, and therefore we can enforce whatever the hell we want.

It's more tricky when you are a player dealing with a blacklist, but I used to enforce Wisdom of the One and it was fairly effective from my experience.

When in doubt, just WotO.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:55 am
by Nancy Drew 39
In post 62, SJReaver wrote:My preference is for mods to be more aggressive in terms of what behavior is allowed or not. That games are allowed to devolve into page-long insults, slurs, and shouting matches ruins the experience for every player in the game. Why is it allowed in the first place?

I see tons of mafia games play out where people manage to remain civil, even when things get heated. Why should two players with a grudge and lack of maturity turn a game into a shitfest for everyone?
+1

I agree with this, both mods and players should be more pro-active about unacceptable behaviour. I’ve literally been in games, where players wanted to replace out because two players refused to put their respective issues aside and dragged innocent people into their feud.

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:08 am
by Nancy Drew 39
In post 64, Menalque wrote:@SJreaver you clearly have no understanding of site culture or what the term “respect” means so I’ll be ignoring whatever your opinion is regardless. Feel free to prattle away in the background if you must though!
You BOTH have valid opinions on this topic and both solutions can help to resolve the issue. I agree with what Micc posted basically. As a game mod, I don’t want to be be able to make my own decisions on this. If any kind of general rule were to be made, a valid reason would need to be shown, kind of similar to obtaining a restraining order. So, if player W pms me that every recent game they have been in with player V has in essence turned into a shitfest. I would blacklist whichever of them signed up last. I of course would want to be sensitive to all blacklist concerns but I’ve also witnessed players be publicly humiliated and I don’t feel that’s right either. Game mods should be expected not to ignore complaints of toxicity. I had that experience once where certain players were being intentionally toxic and despite my complaints, the mod chose to do absolutely nothing about it and that imo, was completely unacceptable. So, I recommend that being enforced. However, for mods who choose not to enforce blacklists, the simple solution is to not sign up for their games.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 5:51 am
by CreativeMod1
So, I agree with both sides of the argument here, I think that there should be a system set up in someway to help protect players but at the same time I worry about people abusing the system.

I think it's important to note that there's 2 different main reasons of blacklisting someone.
1) I don't like this players playstyle, they're annoying etc.
2) This player has been toxic towards me and I can't play with them

I don't think anything should be done about the first part, like if said player hasn't done anything actively wrong then I don't think it'd be fair to force them out of a game or stop them from signing up
However, I think the second part holds a lot more merit and I think is what we should be focusing on here.

If you've been the victim of another player being toxic directly towards you, you should have the option to not play with that player again, they should be added to your official blacklist and shouldn't be allowed in your games nor be allowed to replace in.

The way to make this fair to stop players from abusing it is to use the report function. Upon making a report there should be an option to Blacklist a player. Said player is Blacklisted only if the mods decide that the report is worthy of action (no matter how small) because the fact is, if action is needed then the player did something wrong and thus there is a victim.

Using bans as a reasoning to stop toxic players isn't enough because toxic players don't always get banned or if they do they only get banned for a certain period of time.

If I've had an issue with another player, enough to report them and they've had action taken against them, then I'd want to be able to have the option to never play with that player again.


As for the logistics of this, a spreadsheet can be utilised to keep track of each players individual blacklists, when a report has been completed then the listmod would update the spreadsheet. You can then do a searching tool on the spreadsheet which displays a list of blacklists for players in a game. Only listmods would have access to this. I feel like for these kinds of issues a listmod should be able to intervene in a player list and remove a player from that list.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 12:23 pm
by SJReaver
In post 87, CreativeMod1 wrote: The way to make this fair to stop players from abusing it is to use the report function. Upon making a report there should be an option to Blacklist a player. Said player is Blacklisted only if the mods decide that the report is worthy of action (no matter how small) because the fact is, if action is needed then the player did something wrong and thus there is a victim.
This forum software looks like it comes from the late-90s, so I think changing the interface to accomplish that is a non-starter.

You also haven't accounted for people reporting players they are not the 'victim' of. What's to keep me from going into a game I'm not part of, finding someone behaving badly, and reporting+blacklisting them?
As for the logistics of this, a spreadsheet can be utilised to keep track of each players individual blacklists, when a report has been completed then the listmod would update the spreadsheet. You can then do a searching tool on the spreadsheet which displays a list of blacklists for players in a game. Only listmods would have access to this. I feel like for these kinds of issues a listmod should be able to intervene in a player list and remove a player from that list.
A giant spreadsheet that someone has to maintain and the list mods have to check for every player of every game sounds cumbersome. It's not like these people are paid; they're doing these things in their spare time.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 1:04 pm
by CreativeMod1
In post 88, SJReaver wrote:This forum software looks like it comes from the late-90s, so I think changing the interface to accomplish that is a non-starter.

You also haven't accounted for people reporting players they are not the 'victim' of. What's to keep me from going into a game I'm not part of, finding someone behaving badly, and reporting+blacklisting them?
Wouldn't have to be a change in interface, just simply when I report has been finalised you can reply to the message you receive saying the report is closed requesting to blacklist said player.

The point of this is more so for the Victims and therefore you can only blacklist if you're the victim of something.
A giant spreadsheet that someone has to maintain and the list mods have to check for every player of every game sounds cumbersome. It's not like these people are paid; they're doing these things in their spare time.
Oh boy, you should see what I can do with a spreadsheet, I could easily whip up something in a couple of hours.


Also, gonna point out that the LSGs have a thing for blacklisting so why can't Mafia games? Whenever you sign up for an LSG you'll always have a question asking about if there's any players in which you can't play with and Mods will accommodate this when casting for the game.

Admittedly LSG games are 1) Anon games (for the most part) and 2) individual games (so there's no abuse of trying to keep certain people off your team)

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 1:41 pm
by Isis
It would not be a high difficulty feature to modify the report function for something similar to what CreativeMod referenced. The optimist in me hopes that warning and tempbans are a rare enough occurrence that asking listmods to manually do that isn't a colossal task either, though.

Post 87 does present what seems like a pretty reasonable policy.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 2:55 pm
by Ircher
I think another problem with blacklists is the fact that people change. Most of the people who won't change their behavior after banned will end up getting banned again and again all the way up to an indefinite ban. The others will curb their unpleasant behavior because they genuinely want to be a respected part of the community. The issue with blacklists is that it isn't necessarily fair to the toxic player if they get blacklisted forever and never given a second chance to make amends with the player that blacklisted them. Maybe the person was young and immature and didn't realize the harm they caused. Maybe the person is trying to improve but sometimes relapses. Maybe the person was going through a hard time in life and ended up taking their frustration out in the thread/on another player. Do these reasons excuse the action? No, but it's also not worthy of forever holding a grudge. If we end up having a formal blacklist system, I think it should be time limited. Maybe the blacklist should be valid three times longer than whatever the ban period or one year, whichever is shorter. (In the case of warnings, let's say the blacklist only lasts for two weeks.)

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:26 pm
by Nancy Drew 39
Spoiler:
In post 87, CreativeMod1 wrote:So, I agree with both sides of the argument here, I think that there should be a system set up in someway to help protect players but at the same time I worry about people abusing the system.

I think it's important to note that there's 2 different main reasons of blacklisting someone.
1) I don't like this players playstyle, they're annoying etc.
2) This player has been toxic towards me and I can't play with them

I don't think anything should be done about the first part, like if said player hasn't done anything actively wrong then I don't think it'd be fair to force them out of a game or stop them from signing up
However, I think the second part holds a lot more merit and I think is what we should be focusing on here.

If you've been the victim of another player being toxic directly towards you, you should have the option to not play with that player again, they should be added to your official blacklist and shouldn't be allowed in your games nor be allowed to replace in.

The way to make this fair to stop players from abusing it is to use the report function. Upon making a report there should be an option to Blacklist a player. Said player is Blacklisted only if the mods decide that the report is worthy of action (no matter how small) because the fact is, if action is needed then the player did something wrong and thus there is a victim.

Using bans as a reasoning to stop toxic players isn't enough because toxic players don't always get banned or if they do they only get banned for a certain period of time.

If I've had an issue with another player, enough to report them and they've had action taken against them, then I'd want to be able to have the option to never play with that player again.


As for the logistics of this, a spreadsheet can be utilised to keep track of each players individual blacklists, when a report has been completed then the listmod would update the spreadsheet. You can then do a searching tool on the spreadsheet which displays a list of blacklists for players in a game. Only listmods would have access to this. I feel like for these kinds of issues a listmod should be able to intervene in a player list and remove a player from that list.


If a certain player literally ruined a game for me and caused me undue rl stress, do you think I should still be forced to play with said player even if the mod doesn’t actually do anything about the report? Imo, requiring a report is one thing but you’re pretty much making a players’ personal comfort level be based on proof of moderator action, when you won’t even find out if any action has been taken unless it results in an actual ban.

What is ideally needed is for game mods not to outright ignore valid player distress, which was 100% my experience in one particular game. No one should be forced out of a game due to unwarrented bullying, harassment and insults which was my specific experience.

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:36 pm
by Nancy Drew 39
In post 91, Ircher wrote:I think another problem with blacklists is the fact that people change. Most of the people who won't change their behavior after banned will end up getting banned again and again all the way up to an indefinite ban. The others will curb their unpleasant behavior because they genuinely want to be a respected part of the community. The issue with blacklists is that it isn't necessarily fair to the toxic player if they get blacklisted forever and never given a second chance to make amends with the player that blacklisted them. Maybe the person was young and immature and didn't realize the harm they caused. Maybe the person is trying to improve but sometimes relapses. Maybe the person was going through a hard time in life and ended up taking their frustration out in the thread/on another player. Do these reasons excuse the action? No, but it's also not worthy of forever holding a grudge. If we end up having a formal blacklist system, I think it should be time limited. Maybe the blacklist should be valid three times longer than whatever the ban period or one year, whichever is shorter. (In the case of warnings, let's say the blacklist only lasts for two weeks.)
That is an extremely valid point. What if a particular player for whatever reasons would up theoretically pissing off 20 different people and as a result found themselves permanently blacklisted from all games, despite whatever triggered said member’s unacceptable behaviour is no longer an issue? In that case, blacklists could theoretically override temp bans. So I would suggest that blacklists be of a certain reasonable time limit and subject to review. similar like say a parole board.

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 3:02 pm
by Blair
In post 87, CreativeMod1 wrote:1) I don't like this players playstyle, they're annoying etc.
2) This player has been toxic towards me and I can't play with them

I don't think anything should be done about the first part, like if said player
hasn't done anything actively wrong
I think you're mischaracterizing category #1.

My blacklist is almost entirely populated with players from category #1, and they absolutely HAVE done something wrong. I would contend that someone playing the game in such a fundamentally flawed, unorthodox, and damaging way that it actively ruins the game and wastes EVERYONE'S time investment is arguably even worse than a player who bickers with a single player and ruins the game for one person.

I don't want to wade too deep into gossip territory, but I played in a game not so long ago with a player who (as a Vanilla Townie) claimed they were a "Miller Mason" in their very first post of the game, maintained this story consistently throughout the game, constantly relayed "messages" to us from his "Mason partner" and then finally, at the end of the game in mass claim when we were ready to vote him out because no one had claimed to be his Mason partner... he says "Whoops, sorry guys, I was actually lying this whole time! I'm a vanilla townie."

I don't think it's terribly unreasonable of me to experience that and decide, "I don't want any more of my (weeks or even months long) games ruined by that guy."

Like I've said earlier in this thread, I don't think mods need to enforce blacklists anyway, but I don't think the two categories of blacklistable offenses are different enough (in severity) to warrant separate systems.

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 5:20 pm
by CreativeMod1
Hmm okay, so with that one I'd agree that that's something bad a player did and I'd put that within a category of said player was purposely throwing the game or trolling the game

Maybe another discussion to be had could be to look at the reporting feature as a whole, should there be a report button for someone actively ruining the game? and then if someone is reported for and mods agree that said player broke those rules. Then yes being added to blacklist would be fine in that case

I also highly agree with Irchers point about people changing and having timed blacklists could be a good work around for that and I would also agree that it'd have to be longer than the ban length.

I would however argue that if a player is getting blacklisted by so many people then it'll be a lesson to them to strive to be a better person and something like this could help stop players from being toxic. It's one thing being told that you've been banned by the mods for a couple of weeks, some people might laugh and get grumpy at the system. It's a lot more powerful to be told "Players in this game don't want to play with you" I feel like that message is more likely to resonate with a player and get them to think about their actions more.

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2020 5:59 pm
by Isis
You can use the report button for violations of universal mafia rules, because those rules are listed alongside site rules, and you can use the report button when someone breaks site rules. So if someone posts their role PM, you can report it.

Theoretically if a mod had a rule in their ruleset that was not among the mafia rules in site rules like "don't prodge" you could PM the mod but it wouldn't be within purview of the report button. In practice there's like virtually no problematic players that go around breaking rules that are not in site rules like prodging or posting unspoilered images in games under mods that prefer that not be done and get themselves blacklisted that way. Heated posts that strict mods take issue with and lax ones do not all fall under the umbrella site rules: "Do not make any post or start any thread with the intent to insult or offend any other user on this site.
Do not make any post or start any thread that abuses or harasses another user." and so could be linked to reports.


I don't see why you would time blacklists and force a player to remove an entry from their blacklist after a certain amount of time has elapsed. The blacklister can decide for themselves whether to remove the entry, games aren't played in PTs so it's possible for them to find out whether their behavior has improved. The blacklister is also reducing the number of games they can potentially join so they already have an incentive to make a rational decision on whether the blacklist is still warranted.

Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2020 3:56 am
by Titus
I feel there's at max a handful of players who ruin games. These players lynch newer players just because they can, insult teammates who they perceive to be less skilled and never take responsibility for their play and how it impacts others. Some change. The major offenders do not and call any request for civility as censorship of their own personal rights to be a jerk. The major offenders will never change and will always remain on my blacklist.

Without the ability to have and enforce a blacklist, the community membership will drop. I will most likely never remove a certain individual from my blacklist as he continues his behavior in games I am not in. To mandate removal of players from a blacklist supposes a) time heals all wounds b) no transgression is serious enough to warrant a permanent blacklist and c) the offenders learn from their mistakes.

Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2020 1:54 pm
by Blair
Yes, there are definitely some players on my blacklist whom are unlikely to ever come off, and other players whom I've waited a while and then decided to try playing with them again. It depends.

Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2020 7:57 am
by NorwegianboyEE
In post 94, Blair wrote:I don't want to wade too deep into gossip territory, but I played in a game not so long ago with a player who (as a Vanilla Townie) claimed they were a "Miller Mason" in their very first post of the game, maintained this story consistently throughout the game, constantly relayed "messages" to us from his "Mason partner" and then finally, at the end of the game in mass claim when we were ready to vote him out because no one had claimed to be his Mason partner... he says "Whoops, sorry guys, I was actually lying this whole time! I'm a vanilla townie."
Man, sounds tough. Imagine being in that game.