Moderation Update Thread

[AniX]

On AI in Mafia and Discussion

In August of 2023 we released guidance on the use of AI in mafia games. The purpose of this guidance was to get ahead of a rising trend across the board of AI content and the increasing capability and use of AI tools in society in general. Our policy was designed to handle the truly heavy use cases of AI and to create recourse for us in the case of AI being used to break other site rules.

Over the course of the months since then, our thinking on the subject has changed. While we initially thought that the biggest threats to mafia from AI came from its potential for abuse both in the sense of removing player (and poster) accountability as well as in the potential for machine learning to create scum hunting tools, we thought the use of the technology on games itself was rather benign in its effects otherwise, so long as it was clearly labeled and understood to be coming from AI and not directly from the player.

We no longer think this, having observed the use of AI content in game as a primary communication method and now believe that the primary problem with it is that it leads to unfun and irrelevant games and posts. AI generated content in game makes the experience worse for everyone playing that game both because it is not real content that can be read but also because it is verbose and quite frankly irrelevant most of the time. It shares many characteristics with spam in this sense. We are of the opinion that while there may be some small use cases for AI generated text in the course of playing a mafia game those use cases are vastly outweighed by the needs of the other players in the game to not have their games cluttered with dense and mostly irrelevant text from other players.

Additionally, while we did make the original rules to cover mafia since we were primarily concerned with the mafia applications as discussed above, we should have considered that some characteristics apply to discussion as well, most notably the fact that AI generated content can be used to remove accountability for one's actions and this is something that should be regulated equally to all parts of the site.

For these reasons we're revising the rules on AI as follows:

The following will be added as a general site rule:

AI Generated Content

Players are responsible for all content they post and for making sure it follows the site rules. Creating content with chatGPT or other AI generative tools is not an excuse for breaking site rules, and will not be treated any differently by the Moderation Team.

And the mafia side rules have been changed to the following:

Machine Learning and AI

1. AI generated content can lead to an unpleasant and difficult to parse game for other players in the game and has the potential to create a situation where a player is unreadable in the game because all or substantial parts of their content is generated by chatGPT or other generative tools. Because the usage of AI both makes the game worse for other players and because of that potential for abuse, use of AI tools to generate any part of posts in mafia games is prohibited.
   
2. While chatGPT and other AI generative tools themselves are not able to actively distinguish mafia players from town players, there is a potential for the creation of machine learning networks that can be trained on data which lets them distinguish mafia posts from town posts. Using machine learning to generate reads, regardless of perceived accuracy, is prohibited and will be considered cheating.

[AniX]

One clarification and one minor new rule:

In order to more prominently feature current rules regarding game limits, the following rule has been added as Rules for Mafia Players General Rule 7:

Each player, including their alts and hydra accounts, can be active in a total of only eight games at a time. Micro Games (games of nine or fewer players) and Quick Games (games played in the Sandbox forum) do not count towards this limit. Games replaced into do not count towards this limit.

The following rule has been added as Rules for Mafia Game Moderators Rule 20:

Game moderators may not alter their game's total player count after sign-ups for their game has begun, unless notice of potentially doing so is given beforehand.

[Thestatusquo]

We are making a small addition to our discord rules.

7. Shared discord channels are meant to be spaces of community and varied discussion. There is a possibility that even without breaking any other rules you can make discussion spaces less community oriented or more difficult for other users to engage with in ways you don't intend. This usually happens when a user either monopolizes a space by bringing up the same topic or points over and over again or makes posts that are unpleasant or traumatic for other users to interact with. Such cases are rare but in those circumstances we may ask you to cease your discussion entirely or move it to a more private venue where other users can choose to interact with it on their own terms, like a dedicated forum thread.

[AniX]

Minor rule addition:

The following has been added to Rules for Mafia Game Moderators Rule 7, to increase clarity of expectations:

Game moderators may force replace at their discretion, using their judgment regarding site and game-specific rules.

Game moderators are expected to inform replaced users via private message when they are being force-replaced for any reason, such as inactivity or rule violations.

[AniX]

Rules for Mafia Game Moderators Rule 11 has been slightly modified, to increase clarity of expectations:

Game moderators should treat modding as a serious commitment.

Game moderators are expected to read the game,

provide votecounts, and provide other updates (e.g., flips, phases, replacement announcements, etc.)

at least once per day or

as frequently as the game's prod timer,

whichever is shorter,

or ensure that a backup moderator or co-moderator can fulfill this expectation.