There's a limit to things

[Sundiata]

Sorry to be a snitch/not sorry, but there is a limit to things.

I ignore this type of unprovoked bigotry and racism in the vast majority of cases. But it's a bit different if it's deemed acceptable for a regular visitor of the Multiplayer Lobby to use the crowded lobby to espouse overt religious extremism, spamming out any normal discussion people might be having, and then out of the blue turns it into a heavy racial rant as well.

Read pesem's messages. There's a limit...

I want to clarify very clearly that this is only a small part of a much larger rant that went on for a while. It wasn't provoked either. He just joined the lobby and started ranting about how only Jesus can save us. I guess he saw me online, and decided to go all anti-African... What kind of Christianity is that? 

I had one previous encounter with him, the time before last, when he was ranting even longer about Jesus, and that women in tight dresses were the devil trying to tempt us and blablabla... I asked him if he always does that in the lobby and the ranting became even worse. 

@Hannibal_Barca eventually muted him this time because he launched personal attacks. But here's my second problem. I originally asked if there were moderators online and @user1 responded. I asked him to ban the account based on the considerable rant he could read for himself, but he just ignored me and left again. The racist ranting continued unabated, and I notified user1 again, and told him that kids play this game. His astonishing answer was that you needed to be at least 13 years old to play, and promptly left again, further ignoring me. The racist ranting continued. So what is he saying? 13 year olds aren't kids? Hardcore racism is perfectly fine in the lobby? I should stop bothering him? 

How long has this nonsense been going on? Kids play this game... Africans play this game... Other non-supremacists play this game... I don't know if Pesem is a schizophrenic mad man or if he's just a super troll. I honestly don't care. This behaviour should never be tolerated, and I feel embarrassed to have to make a post about this. I'm disappointed that such behaviour is deemed acceptable, and expect this to end. Religious extremism, racism and sexism have no place in a multiplayer lobby where people get banned/muted for way less. I have to deal with Christian extremist neighbours in real life, and faced more racism (actual violence) than anyone should have to in their life. I'm going to throw one hell of a tantrum if I have to tolerate it in the lobby as well. I go there to relax. Not to find out that in fact, I'm a soulless monkey created by satan.     

 

Edited March 19, 2019 by Sundiata

[av93]

Any kind of form of opression to humans beings shouldn't be tolerated.

[elexis]

Agree that merely the messages on the screen warrant a mute or suspension already. Last time I checked, pesem was using a smurf account, so it seems there was some moderation success at least.

[Sundiata]

I've had this sort of thing a number of times before, but I really can't be bothered to report it. It's not worth it and it's really not much of a problem, normally. But this guy... Jeez... 

We now have downloads from almost every African country. Imagine opening the MP lobby for the first time, only to find Pesem's ranting... 

Oh, and he hates muslims too, but I guess that was a given...

[nani]

For these cases a shadow mute is the best option, makes the troll believe people are reading it and because he can't really know if he is being shadow muted he finally gets tired himself.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 minutes ago, nani said:

For these cases a shadow mute is the best option, makes the troll believe people are reading it and because he can't really know if he is being shadow muted he finally gets tired himself.

Hell, have a chat bot specifically for this that will randomly reply to these shadow muted people, further perpetuating the illusion. lol

Edited March 19, 2019 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[LordGood]

I find both these extreme posts and the very concept  of shadowbans abhorrent. If these bans are included in moderator arsenals they should not be used lightly.

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

I originally asked if there were moderators online and @user1 responded. I asked him to ban the account based on the considerable rant he could read for himself, but he just ignored me and left again. The racist ranting continued unabated, and I notified user1 again, and told him that kids play this game. His astonishing answer was that you needed to be at least 13 years old to play, and promptly left again, further ignoring me. The racist ranting continued.

I find it hard to believe that a mod would look at those racist rants and just let it continue. What was @user1thinking?

[Sundiata]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

I find it hard to believe that a mod would look at those racist rants and just let it continue. What was @user1thinking?

Yeah, the psychotic rant was one thing... But the idea that African satanic monkey talk was deemed appropriate lobby chat had me like:

Spoiler

 

 

 

2 hours ago, LordGood said:

If these bans are included in moderator arsenals they should not be used lightly.

Who knows, a moderator might have decided to shadow ban me because I was annoying him with my desire to be addressed as a human being, so I sort of understand what you mean. With great power comes great responsibility, and not every moderator might be ready for that. 

 

[Trinketos]

20 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Yeah, the psychotic rant was one thing... But the idea that African satanic monkey talk was deemed appropriate lobby chat had me like:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Who knows, a moderator might have decided to shadow ban me because I was annoying him with my desire to be addressed as a human being, so I sort of understand what you mean. With great power comes great responsibility, and not every moderator might be ready for that. 

 

if you tell him that god does not exist?

[Sundiata]

1 hour ago, Trinketos said:

if you tell him that god does not exist?

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I think that the issue is that there need to be clear guidelines for what is and is not appropriate for lobby chatting.  While I would say having respectful religious discourse is quite innocuous (Not that pesem in any way reflected that behaviour), the boundaries should be readily available to everyone, making moderators feel no issue when action needs to be taken since they are just following protocol.  user1 felt insecure because of the lack of these, leading to inaction.  Of course this would not eliminate the need of moderators to interpret the rules, yet I think that it would be a sep in the right direction.

[Alexandermb]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

Offtopic: You just gave me an idea with this.

[Imarok]

I have to totally agree: These rants are unacceptable.

[coworotel]

6 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

Offtopic: You just gave me an idea with this.

Nuclear templar guerrilla mod?

[elexis]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

there need to be clear guidelines

7 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

following protocol

Terms_of_Use.txt

Quote

Document Date: 2018-10-13 By using the 0 A.D. Multiplayer Lobby, you agree to:

	1. Only create one account per person on the service unless authorized by Wildfire Games.

	2. Not impersonate other users of the service and only use your registered username in multiplayer matches.

	3. Not post profanity, pejorative terms or pornographic content.

	4. Not harass, harm, intimidate, discriminate, threaten, defame, cause damage to others or purposefully demean the worth of others using this service.

	5. Not violate the privacy of others by disclosing personally identifiable information (for example real name, location, ID) or private details (for example social media or messenger account names) of others without their consent.

	6. Not incite violence or promote illegal acts.

	7. Not attempt to artificially adjust any user of the service's rating or any of the statistics which impact it. (Examples of this are, but are not limited to: cheating in ranked games, reverse engineering the service, and taking advantage of other users of the service.)

	8. Not undermine the intended gameplay or purposefully gain unfair advantages in multiplayer matches (for example cheating, using exploits or bugs).

	9. Not spam the service and not post large amounts of repetitive or unwanted messages.

	10. Not use the service to promote specific goods, services, or products unless authorized by Wildfire Games.

	If a moderator deems your behavior to be inconsistent with these terms, your account may be restricted, suspended or terminated.

From what I gather, it was your guys first witnessing of pesems noisefloor. There are few others who seem to have been born with some essentials missing. The first important thing to me is that everyone knows who is the author of foul messages and that they have the freedom to avoid that individual without having to leave the lobby. If people chat that on their own server, others know that's the badpeoples corner and that they won't join that area anymore. If such messages are posted in the lobby chat, especially if they are posted over large periods of time, the users have no choice but to have to read that crap, and thus I would agree that a mute or temporary ban is appropriate. It is very stressful as a moderator to face poisonous people on a daily basis and get attacked for banning them and not banning them at the same time. No matter what you do, you do it wrong, and whatever the bad people do is now attributed to the moderators. So lets remind ourselves that we can be happy to have any moderators and online multiplayer at all, it's not to be taken for granted.

[Sundiata]

The terms of use are clear.

User1's "responses" were insultingly dismissive. I would have never made an issue out of this if Pesem was simply muted or banned for his overt extremism, but he wasn't! He was eventually muted because he simply insulted someone else (not race related). The message was loud and clear. Insulting Africans for soulless satan monkeys is fine. Insulting non-Africans is not. THAT'S my problem...

I don't care if moderators receive flack for banning people simply because they wanted to play a multiplayer game with some friends on the same network and I don't care if moderators receive flack for banning or muting people for mild swearwords. There's a lot of edge cases that are dealt with ruthlessly, but hardcore racism, bigotry and sexism.... Nah, that's fine... That's what's shocking to me, and that's the reason I made this post. 

After asking around a bit, Pesem seems to be a regular, and his behaviour is well known to other players. The previous time I saw him spewing bigoted and sexist rants, there was no disciplinary action whatsoever either. Hence the question: how long has this been going on?

This is not an edge case, and as I said earlier, I feel embarrassed and disappointed that this needs to be pointed out. Where I'm from, Hate Speech and Defamation are criminal offenses...

Edited March 20, 2019 by Sundiata

[Gurken Khan]

9 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

I think that the issue is that there need to be clear guidelines for what is and is not appropriate for lobby chatting.

1 hour ago, elexis said:

3. Not post profanity, pejorative terms

Quote

african people were created by satan

africans were created by the devil

satanic entities have twisted some monkeys and created africans

africans don't have souls

Yeah, who could really judge if those statements were pejorative...

[elexis]

23 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

The message was loud and clear. Insulting Africans for soulless satan monkeys is fine. Insulting non-Africans is not. THAT'S my problem... 

As far as I understand, the one moderator doesn't care whether non-africans are being called soulless monkeys either. And the other moderator seems to have jumped in after a certain amount of BS had been exceeded, not because of the specific content. But I haven't been there and precisely for that reason that I have better things to do than trying to get 120 random people in a room to become happy with each other.

20 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

Where I'm from, Hate Speech and Defamation are criminal offenses... 

There's a difference between defamation and hatespeech. The latter is often defined to be anything that makes anyone subjectively feel uncomfortable and thus something we must strongly oppose if we believe in free speech. Someone could say your message offends me personally, whatever it is, so you should go to jail. Calling for violence and defamation is more specific and also a criminal offence in countries where free speech is in the constituion.

29 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

 This is not an edge case, and as I said earlier, I feel embarrassed and disappointed that this needs to be pointed out.

You are right, it's not an edge case. With 100k of lobby accounts and 10k of them being used every month, someone is toxic on the lobby chat every day.

31 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

I don't care if moderators receive flack for banning people simply because they wanted to play a multiplayer game with some friends on the same network and I don't care if moderators receive flack for banning or muting people for mild swearwords.

Point was that it's impossible as a moderator to not getting shat at on a daily basis for moderating too few or too much and that this just results in moderators being even less willing to donate their time.

I think just because a moderator did not chose to policy speech, doesn't mean that he does condone that speech. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have a platform where there is no authority, so that toxic messages are only attributed to the person who posts them, not to the person who didn't policy them, i.e. a more peer-to-peer platform, or just removing the chat feature from the lobby altogether. At least I didn't donate my time to such bullshit anymore. As a moderator I have received enough of such accusations to stop joining this room. And no, I'm not being convinced to give other people moderator access who promise to ban a lot more violently for their personal definition of hate speech. It often ends up in being the same kind of offensive behavior but under opposite sign, and will lead so just the same accusations. When I think back about the people who have offered themselves as a moderator and how they behaved in chat later, I'm glad they didn't get moderator access.

So yes, I agree that a mute would have been appropriate in this situation, but in general, Wildfire Games should enable players to play, but shoul avoid putting themselves in a situation where they are responsible to make 100k players accept each other.

[LordGood]

1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

Where I'm from, Hate Speech and Defamation are criminal offenses...

Spoiler

love my country tbh

[Dakara]

Maybe it's a role play and it's against the Kushite, Carthaginian civilization. LOL

 

I am for no moderation, because being mutated while we talk quiet but we used the word "@#$%" or "@#$%", which may mean just broken or bad action is frustrating.

Néanmoins, il faut une fonctionnalité pour ajouter les joueurs à une blacklist afin de ne plus voir ses messages.24h ou à vie.
Avec ca plus besoin de modération.

There are often players who harass others (and without being vulgar just by treating them "noob" "nub"  100 times afilée).

 it would be interesting to have a "profile" on the lobby with different information that could be informed. (language, country, 300  character description ). Give a slight social aspect.

Edited March 20, 2019 by Dakara

[Itms]

Hello! I am sorry about the situation here. As far as I understand, the report was followed by action, but the report itself was not properly acknowledged. I just sent a PM to user1, telling him to answer here to clarify the misunderstanding.

pesem's messages are definitely unacceptable and unwelcome on the lobby, and they are indeed covered by the Terms of Use. So let's not spiral down, and as far as possible let's not involve politics here. Let's just solve the misunderstanding that happened between Sundiata's report and user1's answers to it.

[Guest]

(Pesem has been at it for a long time under different Aliases. Never encountered any racism or anything as vile as this. Just going out of his way to PRaise JEsus)

[nani]

1 hour ago, Dakara said:

 it would be interesting to have a "profile" on the lobby with different information that could be informed. (language, country, 300  character description ). Give a slight social aspect.

That would lead to discrimination

[Sundiata]

I just want to make some on-topic clarifications again because the discussion is indeed veering of into something different.

3 hours ago, Sundiata said:

The terms of use are clear.

Quote

african people were created by satan

africans were created by the devil

satanic entities have twisted some monkeys and created africans

africans don't have souls

As I said, this is just a small part of the rant in question and he must have repeated those statements and variations of it several times over. The previous time I saw him ranting it lasted even longer and went into sexist, Islamophobic and again anti-African territory, with no action taken whatsoever (and I tried notifying moderators several times then as well). 

I notified user1 several times in the lobby and even informed, right then and there in the lobby that I will make a post about this in the forum as I was unhappy about the course of events leading up to the mute of pesem, not because some BS threshold had been exceeded, but because he started personally attacking another lobby member. 

The misunderstanding is a difference in what is deemed acceptable conduct in the lobby, as pesem has clearly been at it for a while, and rather than clarifying whatever action was supposedly being taken, the moderator in question took the time to give me an illogical and dismissive response instead. 

I could have just laughed this whole thing off. I still want to. And if it was one on one, I probably would have done just that. But in a public lobby where African kids or kids of African descent may well be reading along (let alone everyone else), for god knows how long, is honestly horrifying to me. Even kids can read between the lines... This isn't about politics or freedom of speech or moderators having to babysit manchildren. As a child I've had to physically defend myself against violent and unprovoked attacks by people espousing such rhetoric. I've faced dogs, rocks, sticks, fists, feet, spit and more, by people screaming those kind of things at me, and I'm not someone who ever picked a fight or looked for trouble. I'm also not the only person with such experiences. So excuse me if I'm a little sensitive about this. There are still people loosing their lives and their minds because of this rhetoric. pesem and his kind bring up some really bad memories for me, and others as well. It kills me that kids still have to face this nonsense today. It also kills me to have to explain where this rhetoric leads to. They're not just "words". That kind of rhetoric is a weapon.    

 

Edited March 20, 2019 by Sundiata