Make the friendlist account wide

[brun]

I'm not going to go back and quote everything I want to respond to, but I do want to say some stuffs. There has been a lot of great conscructive conversation since I decided to take my leave from the forums last night. I like some of the new ideas, and feel a couple of them could work given enough finesse, and programming time to put them in. I can see how it may detract from roleplayers, but I also think there is a solution there somewhere.

 

Second, and last, Riela, please stop trying to use real stories as emotional appeals to get your point across and call for privacy restrictions. I've tried to keep things when speaking of others as general and vague as possible, using the things I've heard the most in regards to cheating here in arguments. We all have real lives, real emotions, and I'm betting the good many of us have connected very deeply with someone here, and been their rock, or they have been ours. Please don't use sob stories as a way to make people feel like your argument is anymore valid than theirs. As stated in a previous post, if there is legitimate harassment (9 accounts?) going on, contact the devs and yell at them until something is done or a response is made, document everything the harassers say and do, document every communication with the devs. If they refuse to do anything, make a public appeal. 

[Athene]

Instead of implementing things that change the levels of our privacy and anonymity, a much simpler resolution would be to have in-game moderators people can get ahold of when someone feels harassed. I hear there was a time that there were mods in-game, but due to issues is no longer true from abuse of privileges. I think even if it didn't work once, it doesn't mean it won't work now or in the future... but it comes down to the devs choosing the right people. I'd imagine it'd take a lot of stress off their shoulders to have someone handle behavioral problems.

 

People are going to get hurt no matter what new system is put in place. But we don't need to expose "identities" or put a "label" on alts imo, there should just be more help in monitoring the bad behavior and handling it as it happens.

[TashaTight]

IF were back and talking ID system again then i would be as worried bout system being used to spy and stalk members, quite possibly you might even end with opposite effect example:

 

Person A deceive and cheat on Person B, Person B ignore person A. Person A makes a new account with different Email signup, person A become Person C approach person B through a friend of Person B called person D. Now person D says to Person B this is a really good and trust worth friend, now ignored person A who is actively person C gets on friend list, uses share account wide friend list to spy and stalk person B again and tries instigate new drama with his formerly ignored Person A through person C his new avatars knowledge and taps.

 

Don't see how it fixes a problem really here.

 

Plus and ID would leave victim really exposed on alts to on newly made accounts of the abuser.

[snowbelle]

Knowing someone is alt while his profile states   " I am new person person looking for x z y " knowing he was let's say girl who caused tons of problems before, or knowing it's old account would help many ppl avoid potential hurt in long run.

 

This is a special case. A very special case. Anyone can hurt you, whether it is your friend, stranger or an alt of either of them. Knowing someone is someone only helps me from avoiding them. But it doesn't stop them from harming me in other ways through world, local or PM. Ignoring is the only way to do this.

 

A simple solution is to put the amount of time an account has been active in their profile by the system. So people will know that they have been here for a short/long time. I don't want people to know my alts, I use them to spend time with people that I like when I don't want to be bothered by the rest of the world. I don't want people to spy on me.

 

Stop proposing ideas that will help 1 in 100 and screw over 99 in 100. Getting "hurt" isn't the only thing that needs to be considered here. There are other ways to solve this and exposing your alts is not it.

[MarMohan]

There is a very good saying "Even wolves hide in sheep's clothing", which is true because if they really want to hurt someone they will.  Some of the suggestions make it a little more difficult to do that.

I don't think there isn't one person here who hasn't heard about someone getting hurt or whatever by someone else, it happens.

 

From what is known of what was the in game Moderators, if you read the reviews left on sites about the Mods that once were, most of which are still said in game to people, I don't think there would be that many people in game if that happened.

I can agree even when things are read that is sent, how to you know that something is going to be done.  You can use the report system and while you would think it's looked into but sometimes you have to wonder if it is.

I can state even when taking a break from the game, you still come back to the same old bs that was there when you left, too many people know this to be true.

 

The gist of this whole topic is people want to see the game be safe for players all while protecting privacy.  Maybe the devs will come up with a plan to do that, maybe not.

[Guest Twiggy]

I haven't had a lot of time the last couple of days to get involved in this and have just finished reading through what has been said.

Although things had got a little out of hand what I see is some real thought going into things and no matter which side of the debate you are on I for one appreciate it.

I will get back on later and have a much better look but one thing I noticed that I feel is well worth thinking more on is SnowBelles suggestion of showing the start date of accounts in our profiles.

I haven't had time to really think about it as much as I will have liked before doing this post but it seems something really worth putting some thought into.

For now it seems something that could easily solve many of the problems as it can get past a lot of the problems faced by new players and people trying to make people believe they are new players.

And that is where most of the problems are generated, knowing that a player has had the account for some time would definitely make a huge difference.

One problem I can see though is we could match up dates and find who is who, so maybe needs to be done in a way where it is referred to as "account is 3 months old, or less than 1 month, then less than 3 months and so on.

I still think that making alts show in a different color is the best solution and would not cause as much drama as people seem to want to say they will, but finding any solution is what I feel is mostly needed.

[Leeloo]

Hmmm... Exept if someone can tell me why one or two of my last posts got canceled , i will no longer post here .

[Ashbash]

Hmmm... Exept if someone can tell me why one or two of my last posts got canceled , i will no longer post here .

Because if you read my post, a couple of pages ago, any posts that aren't constructive to the issue and is just flaming due to opinionated arguements which steers the topic off, were removed. But it has been regained, due to further inspection of your post.

 

But as I said, keep this post on topic about the problem at hand with trying to find solutions to the problem rather than arguing due to different opinions.

 

Edit: As everyone has opinions, and it is best to not argue if someones opinion is different to your own and instead acknowledge that opinions will be different and try to find come to a middle ground compromise which benefits both sides of the problem.

 

Regards

Ash

[TheGreatNyeh]

Instead of implementing things that change the levels of our privacy and anonymity, a much simpler resolution would be to have in-game moderators people can get ahold of when someone feels harassed. I hear there was a time that there were mods in-game, but due to issues is no longer true from abuse of privileges. I think even if it didn't work once, it doesn't mean it won't work now or in the future... but it comes down to the devs choosing the right people. I'd imagine it'd take a lot of stress off their shoulders to have someone handle behavioral problems.

The game did have in game mods at one point... Didn't work out so well. Atleast not for me anyway... Some of them spent too much time policing trivial nonsense just to flaunt their power rather than doing something constructive....

 

SkaR was the only one that seemed like he knew what he was doing outside of the dev team IMO. There were some others but I wasn't really exposed to them all that much.

 

You can try it again... But I say there needs to be a more extensive screening process.

[Callista]

The game did have in game mods at one point... Didn't work out so well. Atleast not for me anyway... Some of them spent too much time policing trivial nonsense just to flaunt their power rather than doing something constructive....

 

SkaR was the only one that seemed like he knew what he was doing outside of the dev team IMO. There were some others but I wasn't really exposed to them all that much.

 

You can try it again... But I say there needs to be a more extensive screening process.

Or maybe just hire an employee to do it instead of promoting a player to the role, I am surprised they didn't see the big "bad idea" sign all over their faces. Players have their personal friendships and enmities, giving a player the ability to police other players is bound to end up in cases where the policing player will let personal feelings get in the way.

 

Note: this is was not meant as an attack to the forum moderators

[TheGreatNyeh]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Ash and the other forum mods aside from Skar weren't a part of being the in-game mods.  All the forum mods now are really cool and I've had absolutely no problems. I'd be fine with them if they were game mods too I think... as far as I can tell anyway. xD

 

Hiring an actual professional would be a good idea too.  Someone from outside of 3Dx Chat who doesn't care about the politics.  Just enforce the rules and help out with disputes.  I'd be totally on board with that.

[Ashbash]

Yeah it was only Skar who was an ingame mod out of us all back in the day when they were around. But unfortunately Skar has decided to remove himself from mod as he hasn't the time to mod so it's unfortunate as you'll notice he is no longer in the moderating team part on forum!

 

Also to keep on topic guys! Mods are still a 50/50 suggestion as some wouldn't mind it, but others will be against it, so again need to find a middle ground and compromise of both sides of this situation and find a suggestion and idea that all can agree to. ^^

[Chilles]

...

 

This topic changes also in a big In-Game Moderators discussion

This isn't needed again and again

[Guest Twiggy]

I know this is yet another suggestion but I feel that is the point of this, to discuss possibilities of things that may be able to be done to solve a problem that we all know does exist.

I agree that the original proposal of having IDs put to people in friends lists is not such a good idea, some of the points made by people shows it would cause problems in itself.

Although I still feel different colored names for alts would not cause so much harm and is what I would prefer to see I think that a revised system that Snowbelle suggested could make a big difference to.

It is compromise that I hope both sides are willing to look at.

My opinion is that one of the biggest problems we have with alts being used in a way they should not be is people making them self appear as new players.

It is done for various reasons and after having put a fair bit of thought into reasons people would want to represent themselves as a new player I cannot think of one that is not for any decent reason that would take away from the game.

I have seen people represent themselves as new players with alts so many times and every time has been done to either try to manipulate other players, create drama by spreading rumors, gain favor with a player that has already decided to stay clear from them and various other things that cause problems in the game.

I think the biggest problem this causes though is the distrust towards most new avatars, people just do not know if they are actually new players or not and we have in many ways been taught to distrust before trust.

I myself used to spend a lot of time trying to help new players to find their way in the game and in doing that I saw a lot of problems they face.

I stopped because of the amount of times I found that the player I was helping turned out not to be new at all, I wont get into what they were trying to do because I think that has been said many times before.

I am not going to get into the problems faced by new payers as well as again they have already been mentioned so many times before that I think most of us know them already.

What I will say though that I have said many times before is how I feel this effects the growth of the game.

We have to many new players do not go past the 1st month and a lot is due to these problems they face.

It's simple, if we can somehow make it so people can better trust a new avatar to be a new player we all can make new players feel more accepted into the game, on top of that more people that have been here for a while would be willing to help them find there way in the game.

The result will be more will continue to play past the 1st month and the game will benefit from that.

There are other benefits that I feel doing the following will create but the above is the main thing I wanted people to be clear on.

That and that I can't see how doing the following will present any of the problems pointed out by people against other ideas that have been discussed.

 

My idea is simple and is a revised idea of what Snowbelle mentioned.

 

For each account all avatars created in that account will show names above them in certain colors set by the age of the account.

A player that has been in the game for less than a month will show in yellow.

A player that has been in the game for more than a month and less than 3 months will show in green.

A player that has been in the game for more than 3 months and less than 6 months will show in orange.

Players that have been in the game over 6 months show as white.

 

I know that having different colors after the 1st month isn't really necessary but I have some ideas where those points in an accounts life can be used for other things, such as at 3 months we can have a bigger room and again at 6 months.

I also think that we seem to go through different levels of knowledge in the game at about those points.

It could give each player something to aim for.

 

Again this is only a suggestion, I am not demanding this be done or that it should be exactly as I have shown, it is just what I have come up with and put it in here to see what people think.

It would not solve all the problems that have been discussed with the use of alts but would go a long way to helping with some of the ones I feel are important to get past.

[brun]

blerp

 

Please provide metrics, including links to sources on player data, how long subscriptions last, including duration trends. Since you claim in your post that new players don't make it past a month, you surely have the data to back it up, not to mention the added data of player surveys of those to figure out the true reasons behind them on renewing their subscriptions. 

 

I'm not willing to look at anything that would mark individuals whether new or making alts by giving them special colored names.  This will lead to issues with MORE discrimination against the new players you're supposedly trying to help. Your whole color coded system is bad and would serve no purpose other than to call people out for their lack of time here. There are already fights in world and local where users (who are comparatively new themselves) are telling other even newer users not to participate because they don't know how this game works. You will not achieve anything by giving people color codes other than more drama.

 

What if I make an alt and let it sit for 6 months so it becomes white and claim to be someone I'm not who mostly just lurks and makes my way into friend groups? It's not hard to let an alt sit and not pay much mind to it. My male avatar has been on my account pretty much from the beginning, and would be automatically grandfathered as white with your date scheme. Would you set the limit higher? Because that alt has existed for a year and a half. 

 

Not to mention the fact that no one has a right to be able to distinguish how long any other person has been playing based on a color above their head. I've deleted gifts on other alts to keep them "clean" so people wouldn't really know how long they existed. These were alts used by me when I wanted to test/break things, so I kept them without friends or gifts as a way to have no residual attachment should I want to delete it to make something else.

 

The only solution that could work, without giving away a players privacy or putting them into some ugly rainbow colored mass, would be to charge XGold for continuous alt creation and deletion. That is if the roleplaying community were to agree to it, seeing as Skar thinks it would be an issue.

 

The problem that you and others are trying to tackle with segregating the community by means of avatar age, colors, etc... isn't one that should be tackled with ingame tools or moderation unless the harassment is to a point of truly and honestly breaking the rules.  As far as I am aware, and have confirmed with other users and moderators of this forum, the block feature works in such a way that if you block "Brunhidle" you wouldn't be able to see "ChristophAnton" ingame, whether it be physically or his text. So if a person is being bothered by the same person on another account after being ignored, that constitutes as harassment and should be reported to devs. If they are clearing their blocklist or removing a known bad person from their list based on a friends advice, that's on them. Should their blocklist be cleared through no fault of their own, with the addition to PMing people from profiles, you could go through gifts of a known friend who has a gift from the person you are intending to block, click to go to their profile, click to private message (even if they aren't online) and block them that way.

 

People are trying to 'fix' a problem based around human emotion, and you can't, because all people are different and have different emotions, and act and react in many different ways. There are other ways to go about this, for both sets of people that you are targeting in your post. Tutorials and guides. Though I haven't looked at current materials for new players here on the forum for probably over a year, the last I did look, they were scant at best. For the other group of people who some feel the need to protect, they need guides on how to protect their online security and themselves. You can not and will not be able to make any game changes that stop making people have hurt feelings over situations that the game itself can't and doesn't control. I am more than willing to get together as a group and help write various documents for new players and ways to personally protect yourself, should the idea be liked yet no one wants to take the burden onto themselves.

[Wintermute]

I don't even know what is really on the table anymore. So much ad hominem is a pain to suss through.

 

Perhaps the spiraling completely out of control actually lead to the real thinking behind this request and its proponents.

 

Near as I can tell, what is actually being requested is a proper in-game report button.

 

The rest of it is just fabrication and narrative.

 

Q: What is the root of the request to color usernames?

A: Differentiation between characters.

 

Leading:

 

Q: Why differentiation between characters?

A: Feelings.

 

This is a request filled with nine pages of people looking to legitimize what is essentially a pointless worry of future-victimization. If that can even be a thing.

 

Requesting a function to protect oneself under any other guise is disingenuous. Or perhaps they don't notice.

 

You do not get to impinge upon the anonymity of others because their very anonymity makes you feel uncomfortable.

 

Thread should be moved to the therapy bin.

[xMaceyx]

So that means then, because I have been here for 23 months I must be one of the good guys. Even though my main Avi I have only used for ten months. There are people on here that have also been around a long time and are serial pests, they just change avi every few months until people figure out who they may be then they re create, ( I am not one of those people) then go on their witch hunt again. So showing how long you have been in the game isn't going to stop it.
Maybe it should be a case of showing how long that Avi has been in use for. Although as I have said before you start implementing rule after rule, and people will go elsewhere, this game still does not have enough content to hold people here.
 
Off topic.. it was only one Mod that was the problem. Abusing her power constantly. I would not be against an in game Mod, for example AshBash, he is well liked and you know he would be fair. But ideally one brought in by the Devs, who is here to police the serious stuff, not banning people for an hour because their opinion was different to hers.

[Guest Twiggy]

Please provide metrics, including links to sources on player data, how long subscriptions last, including duration trends. Since you claim in your post that new players don't make it past a month, you surely have the data to back it up, not to mention the added data of player surveys of those to figure out the true reasons behind them on renewing their subscriptions. 

 

I'm not willing to look at anything that would mark individuals whether new or making alts by giving them special colored names.  This will lead to issues with MORE discrimination against the new players you're supposedly trying to help. Your whole color coded system is bad and would serve no purpose other than to call people out for their lack of time here. There are already fights in world and local where users (who are comparatively new themselves) are telling other even newer users not to participate because they don't know how this game works. You will not achieve anything by giving people color codes other than more drama.

 

What if I make an alt and let it sit for 6 months so it becomes white and claim to be someone I'm not who mostly just lurks and makes my way into friend groups? It's not hard to let an alt sit and not pay much mind to it. My male avatar has been on my account pretty much from the beginning, and would be automatically grandfathered as white with your date scheme. Would you set the limit higher? Because that alt has existed for a year and a half. 

 

Not to mention the fact that no one has a right to be able to distinguish how long any other person has been playing based on a color above their head. I've deleted gifts on other alts to keep them "clean" so people wouldn't really know how long they existed. These were alts used by me when I wanted to test/break things, so I kept them without friends or gifts as a way to have no residual attachment should I want to delete it to make something else.

 

The only solution that could work, without giving away a players privacy or putting them into some ugly rainbow colored mass, would be to charge XGold for continuous alt creation and deletion. That is if the roleplaying community were to agree to it, seeing as Skar thinks it would be an issue.

 

The problem that you and others are trying to tackle with segregating the community by means of avatar age, colors, etc... isn't one that should be tackled with ingame tools or moderation unless the harassment is to a point of truly and honestly breaking the rules.  As far as I am aware, and have confirmed with other users and moderators of this forum, the block feature works in such a way that if you block "Brunhidle" you wouldn't be able to see "ChristophAnton" ingame, whether it be physically or his text. So if a person is being bothered by the same person on another account after being ignored, that constitutes as harassment and should be reported to devs. If they are clearing their blocklist or removing a known bad person from their list based on a friends advice, that's on them. Should their blocklist be cleared through no fault of their own, with the addition to PMing people from profiles, you could go through gifts of a known friend who has a gift from the person you are intending to block, click to go to their profile, click to private message (even if they aren't online) and block them that way.

 

People are trying to 'fix' a problem based around human emotion, and you can't, because all people are different and have different emotions, and act and react in many different ways. There are other ways to go about this, for both sets of people that you are targeting in your post. Tutorials and guides. Though I haven't looked at current materials for new players here on the forum for probably over a year, the last I did look, they were scant at best. For the other group of people who some feel the need to protect, they need guides on how to protect their online security and themselves. You can not and will not be able to make any game changes that stop making people have hurt feelings over situations that the game itself can't and doesn't control. I am more than willing to get together as a group and help write various documents for new players and ways to personally protect yourself, should the idea be liked yet no one wants to take the burden onto themselves.

 

For starters you wouldn't have to leave your alt sit there for 6 months to have it appear 6 months old, my suggestion is to have it account wide so as soon as create an alt it will show as the account holder being over six months, all and any avi created on that account will show in the color to the age of the account.

There is a lot more than peoples emotions being talked about here, I think you need to take some of your own advise and read through things that have been said.

A large part of the problems caused by alts are when they create an alt and pretend to be a new player or are not so easy to detect because we all appear the same, except for gifts we have no way of telling any different.

So when a player creates an alt that has no gifts to show age, then it is very easy for them to represent themselves as a new player.

Now if you think I have to have made studies based on figures you know I could not possibly gain, I suggest you look back through the many posts in here and you will see how many times it happens.

Also do you believe you are the only one that is able to ask questions to people to find out what the common beliefs are in the game, as from what you say it certainly seems you think that.

There has been some 6500 people register in these forums and if I go on what lots of people agree on and have said yo me in these forums only a small percentage of players actually register in them.

If that is true and I have no reason to doubt the word of the people that have said so as they have been in these forums for a long time, then it would be safe to say that in the tens of thousands of people have gone through the game.

For the game to only retain the amount it does shows it has a high leave rate.

I spent a lot of time trying to help new players settle into the game, and there are people in these forums that know that, some mods even know that.

While doing that I was able to see what they face and how many chose to leave after copping the sort of crap that has been pointed out so many times in this thread and dozens of others before it.

Plus if it wasn't happening with the figures I mentioned before there should be a lot more people in the game.

You have not produced a decent argument against any of this other than having different colored names for alts could maybe have people use it for witch hunts.

Players already use alts to help with witch hunts so in a sense that kind of balances out.

The other suggestion you made of a problem with it makes me feel you want us all to put up with the problems so you can occasionally go to am orgy with an alt without having a different color on name.

What difference would that make, having it known you were using an alt to go to an orgy, and for the little bit of difference it could make it sounds very selfish to me that we all have to put up with the crap from alts so you can do that.

It seems to me that no matter what is put forward to help with this problem, and there is problems, all you have to do to see that is look at the many posts that keep popping up because of it, it seems to me that you will always find something wrong with them because you just want to be able to make an alt that can look like a new player.

Yes this later suggestion will not stop a lot of things that have been talked about in this thread and others before it, but it will help in a large way with some.

The truth is you and others just do not want any changes made, you will not give an inch and never have and that is the reason the game is the way it is now.

What will you do to advise people on how to protect themselves, tell them the normal crap that has been suggested in these forums and in the game since it started.

Stick with people you know you can trust your friends, don't trust until they prove they can be trusted.

I used to do that to, I even went around telling people the same thing until I realized that what we were actually doing is creating an anti social environment.

That what we were doing was making it hard for new players to be accepted as no one knows who to trust and doesn't give many of them the time of the day.

[Chilles]

Off topic.. it was only one Mod that was the problem. Abusing her power constantly. I would not be against an in game Mod, for example AshBash, he is well liked and you know he would be fair. But ideally one brought in by the Devs, who is here to police the serious stuff, not banning people for an hour because their opinion was different to hers.

 

Bran wasn't a bad person, I've talking a lot with PM with her and mostly I had a really good relations to her

But she was also handling about her own interests because she was a member with God functions and I understand this behaviour...

 

And you think really again a Member with God functions can be a neutral Moderator in-Game, I don't think so...

Early or later will also this member abuse this functions for his own interests.

 

A in-Game Mod can't be a Member!!!

 

 

[MarMohan]

Put the date Joined on the profile account wide like other chat venues, it won't matter how long it sits unused, people will know how long they've been on.  Other sites have asked what the users thought of this and guess what they amount of time gives a color for each year there would be no difference if they did it for months.  They only things that the users complained about was the colors which the sites adjusted to help others see it.    They also list the last login date on the profiles which does not have to be listed on here.  Forget about the colors, if the date is put on as universal, that may be the easiest solution possible.  There are people on here who do have vision problems, I know I helped one of them.

Simply putting the date of start doesn't invade the privacy of anyone nor would it cause issues.

A nice example is look at the part of our forum profile it does state when we joined so no reason in game profiles can't show it.

 

With regards to in game Mods, they should not be a part of the game, hired externally to make sure that the policies are followed so it is fair for everyone.

[brun]

A nice example is look at the part of our forum profile it does state when we joined so no reason in game profiles can't show it.

 

You do not receive a forum account with your subscription, it's a completely different sign-up. You are joining a public forum that is visible to people who both do and don't play, and the rest of the internet, the same level of anonymity isn't expected. The only thing not visible to forum users who are not logged in is user profile information. The rest, posts, replies, images, etc is all visible.  You can sign up to the forums at any point you wish as a public discussion area.

 

There is no reason to see identifying details about my account inside of the game besides what I choose to provide. No one should have a right to view when I started paying a subscription fee for a service under the guise of some type of protection for peoples feelings.

 

I don't pay my subscription to protect people.

I don't pay my subscription to help people.

I don't pay my subscription to let others have identifying information available to them just for logging in beyond what I say in my profile.

 

I pay this subscription to hang out with cool people and have a few orgasms. 

 

Why do you want to take my fun and anonymity away from me?

 

No ones feelings are going to be spared by offering up data on the playerbase as a whole. People are still going to harass and mess with each other and be unkink and untruthful. You're not helping anything by advocating for less privacy. 

[MarMohan]

Words...

I was simply pointing out that we have the date when we join the forum like many other sites do.  I didn't state that you get the forum account when you join.  Just go back through and read what is written as it's clear.

Putting the date we joined up for the subscription isn't an issue, many other chat venues do that and it in no way invades our privacy.  You've not been asked to help anyone new with your subscription nor are you being asked to protect people, which I could go into details of this but won't.

 

Simply putting a date does not deter from your privacy it simply shows how long your account has existed.

Many sites just put policies in place and ask for suggestions from the Users to help make it better but in the end it's the companies decision to do what they think is best for their users so it 3DX decides to take any of these suggestion that is for them to decide and we have to accept it.

[Athene]

I'd like to preface by saying I feel my reply is relevant and hope to not see it deleted. I believe it's addressing the arguments/ideas to a solution within this thread's topic that don't revolve around removal of privacy or labeling, etc.

 

In my opinion...

 

I completely understand the fears and concerns of having a member be "promoted" to an in-game mod. That friendships they create could cause bias in certain situations. It is an obvious and legitimate concern. However...

 

I think in-game mods should definitely, 100% be allowed to be pulled from the member base (there should be more than one!). The experience of playing this game can be an aid, I believe. It comes down to the person in the position (and the structure of how Mods work).

 

Every game I can think of have "moderators" of a sort. These "staff" also all participate in the community as regular members and also play the games within it. I may main Soraka on LoL but I should know that she is not the best/worst and shouldn't argue that nor should I push this opinion onto others and punish those that disagree. Just as if I make a friend on 3DX, it doesn't mean that that person is always right and punish only those outside of my circle, nor should I punish those that disagree with me.

 

From what has been presented as the main problem before, it comes down to the choice/trust in who was given these privileges. Okay... So someone didn't do their job right. That happens and was a learning experience. I think it also helps those choosing who would be in this position to find the kind of qualities and traits a Moderator should have. Unfortunately, the first time around there were wrong choices and trust given. This shouldn't mean that we throw out every possibility of having an unbiased mind take up the role. There are plenty of people who can provide the kind unbiased decision-making our community needs! 

 

I think  in order to have an effective Moderation team, there should also be a better structure of reporting/guidelines for how Moderators handle issues. I think there should also be a hierarchy of Moderators that can only handle certain reports at different levels of "power". Without getting into the technicalities, this kind of system can be very useful to handle "smaller" issues quickly, while the bigger, badder problems can be handled by those at the top of the totem pole in a timely, effective manner.

 

I'm not trying to stuff my opinion down anyone's throat here, I just hope to help shed some light and hope on a system that has REPEATEDLY worked in other communities, so much so that people seek to pay for people to work in these positions. I know it was poorly administrated here in the past, but I think we can fix a lot more problems than just Alt Harassment by having in-game moderators! I believe this would be a huge benefit to the community!

 

TL;DR - Don't throw the idea of Mods out the window just because the past sucked! 

 

P.S. Instead of going at each other's throats, why not make a pros/cons list of why it would/would not work?

[Ashbash]

If this continues the thread will be locked, suggestions please, not one upping people.

 

Thank you.

[MarMohan]

Please refer to her post as I don't want to fill the page...

I do know that other companies do not use Mods from within the players they use their staff who actively play from all time zones to help with making the venues safe for all users so issues that arise can be addressed promptly, a badge of STAFF is on their profiles.  For those that start new, they have players that are called helpers that have gone through a screening process and have a little badge on their profile so anyone that is new can easily identify them and get help.  As it has been explained here already with the use of players becoming in game Mods, that may not work again as there would have to be several Mods to cover everyone so it wouldn't seem biased.

 

I don't agree that forum Mods should be a part of in game Modding simply because they have enough to do on here. Most companies do not use the ones they promote to forum Mods as they use Staff to maintain the game.

 

The Mods if put in place should have an understanding of the rules that are in place and act on them within the guidelines set by the company.

 

A better way of reporting such things as harassment other than a screenshot is a good suggestion as most other sites have where you can report the chat so they can see the whole chat verses a screenshot that may not give all the information.