Suggestions for handling offensive players

[real_tabasco_sauce]

This is a touchy subject at the moment, but I have a suggestion (in addition to player mute) that might help.

In the settings, one can select "only buddies" are allowed to join a game late to spectate.

There could be another player status called "blocked" which both mutes the player for you in the lobby but also forbids them from joining games you host.

[Stan`]

That was implemented by Norse Harold but the patch didn't make it before Feature Freeze.

[Norse_Harold]

@real_tabasco_sauceBy "mute" do you mean ignore, or do you mean silence for every possible message recipient? "mute" to me means the latter (silence the user totally).

Anyone who wants to apply the patch to alpha26, please talk to me on IRC and I'll send a backported patch as well as instructions on how to apply and build it. You need to have a build environment setup first, but not with SVN. Instead, use the source code for the stable release of alpha 26.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Norse_Harold

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I meant mute an offending player for the user. Ideally setting them to blocked pretty much eliminates them from your experience, except for when the blocked player joins a TG that you are not hosting. In this case there could instead be a warning flag: “a blocked user “bad guy” has joined the game”

[Norse_Harold]

I don't think that ignoring a user solves the problem, because bullying is a "performance art" that is connected with an audience. A solution is to silence the bully, which eliminates the audience. In fact, ignoring a bully removes one's ability to try to defend onself against a bully, or at least maintain situational awareness.

Speaking of which, bullying doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are supporters who are not as visible, but laughing at the bully's jokes is a form of support. So is bullying a person back.

Let's please check ourselves for this type of support for bullying and discontinue it.

In addition, let's add mute functionality and allowlist (aka invite-only) functionality to the game.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Norse_Harold

[real_tabasco_sauce]

4 hours ago, Norse_Harold said:

A solution is to silence the bully, which eliminates the audience. In fact, ignoring a bully removes one's ability to try to defend onself against a bully, or at least maintain situational awareness.

This is true, the real solution is to completely silence the hate speech, but my point is it would be nice to allow players some control. Just something like the opposite of "mark as buddy"

 

4 hours ago, Norse_Harold said:

allowlist (aka invite-only) functionality to the game.

A blocklist is better here, because one would have to "allow" a lot of players, while you might only need to block one or two bad actors. Also we should encourage inclusion of new players to team games and 1v1s, and I'm afraid that an "allow" list for game setup would exclude new players.