Transphobia in VC

[plush canyon]

This isn't an end all be all, if you have thoughts and feedback please write something out. I want to hear everyone's voice.

Introduction

The Factorio VCs have provided me and others with hours of conversation, fun, and enjoyment. Along with these hours of enjoyment there is a lingering transphobia problem to address. I've had many moments in VC personally that have enriched or improved my life. I have met friends that I talk to almost daily and enjoy spending time with. For this reason and more I like the VCs and enjoying spending time in them for the most part.

However it is difficult to enjoy VC when I have to constantly hide the fact I am trans. I've have had randoms join and say things like "You'll never be a woman", "You're useless", "You don't sound like a she/her". I should not have to hide who I am in fear of being bullied. I want this issue improved.

Potential Solutions

• Have a moderator or a specific VC moderator in the channel
• Have a bot that records everything everyone is saying and allows a moderator to run a command to get a certain time frame of audio
• Remove the VCs to prevent all problems altogether
• Your own solution, I would like to hear your own potential solution.

Personally I prefer the VC to have moderators. This would allow for more regulation of the channels and less mistakes than say letting an invasive bot handle the moderation. It's also better than outright removing the VCs all together. Overall, less bias and makes trouble makers think twice

Why did I write this?

I didn't write this out of hate, or anger. I wrote this out of love for something I enjoy being apart of. Out of annoyance at the transphobia I've had to deal with. By having this discussion I want to see this server be improved to become a better place for everyone .

Consensus

• 🇦 Have a moderator be in VC
• 🇧 Have a bot that records
• 🇨 Remove the VCs entirely
• 🇩 Your own solution, I would like to hear from you
• I would like to be a VC moderator

[sullen crown]

Solution C kinda defeats the purpose of having a community, lots rather VC

As for the bot being in the channel, could work.

But then what if the user stops talking?

Best solution is just to record yourself ideally

[plush canyon]

I think the idea is to have the bot constantly in the channel

also @gilded warren has said to me not to record

[sullen crown]

There is no way to have a bot in the channel constantly, when there is more then 1 channel, Discord only lets bots be in 1 vc/guild

Currently that would work

[plush canyon]

I think they would have multiple bots, it's not my idea personally more of olivia's

[sullen crown]

as there are only 1 active channel being used

Honestly best solution would just be generally more VC Moderators

People who at the very mininum can vc mute/kick

[celest escarp]

1. Phobia is etymologically fear, not hate/aggression (though it can lead to it), and the term being used for conflating them both is harmful in multiple directions (preventing growth from people blamed for ignorance until they feel justified in never outgrowing the fear as I was fortunate enough to have been able to)--but that's a bigger issue and aside from the point at hand I just wanted to raise that consideration
2. There has been extensive discussion on the state of voice channel moderation with a number of options considered but I'm not aware of any conclusions yet. I'm sure this will nudge it again

[hard axle]

Can’t you just report people case by case for transphobia? Seems excessive to do your proposed ideas.

[plush canyon]

I've encountered it enough that it's not worth my time anymore

I think pushing burden onto members is pretty annoying as well

[plush canyon]

I've just straight up left or just ignored the discussion

[celest escarp]

it's helpful to remember that while there are some people for whom you'll never change their minds, it's the people "on the edge" who are most important in many ways--the ones who you can either draw into understanding or push from empathy entirely

I know that's an extremely privileged take and overly idealistic etc. but it plays a role

[plush canyon]

you'll never change their minds
it's not my job as a trans person to educate, I just wanna live my life

I get ignorance

but if I say I'm a girl and you ignore it

that's not ignorance

[sullen crown]

Could have a small set of servers that require a membership to speak in

[celest escarp]

I wish so much that people could more reliably see individuals rather than stereotypes, both in others and even themselves at times, but there will probably always be people who need simple rules which apply to everyone rather than understanding. To that end I would support requiring "they" be used as a baseline, but not enforcing every possible pronoun use, for example

[plush canyon]

splinter communities? or like you mean here

[sullen crown]

It would be a role that allows people to speak in the channel

Could be achieved by general activity

[celest escarp]

anyway if anyone's looking to understand more or find a warm refuge from the ravages of issues like this, look up egscomics--it's not what it seems from the start, it's incredibly heartwarming and mindful

[sullen crown]

One way is to just do this:

Nothing.

If they come in to harass ya, just mute/report and move on.

Don't say a word to em

They will get tired and move on

[plush canyon]

that still puts responsibility onto the user which most people won't do

[sullen crown]

They are and always have been attention seekers when they harass people

[sullen crown]

True

[plush canyon]

I'm still highly in favor of making regular vc people mods

[sullen crown]

Agreed

[static dragon]

Here's the thing: if people aren't willing to report stuff, moderation of the VCs is going to be impossible, and that leaves only one solution to them

[hard shore]

I could moderate. I am on an fair bit these days, and usually quiet but listening.

[hard shore]

Not a huge amount to report from what iv seen, especially compared to other VC's iv been in.

the odd person who joins the server just to troll VC.. but the majority of regulars seem well behaved

[celest escarp]

the Factorio puzzle-game creative-building bias of the game/server self-selection does a lot of heavy lifting but it's far from a guarantee

people have expressed surprise that the moderation team is so small given the scale of the server

[hard shore]

Yea. I run a 4000~ member server that initially has a similar community. though getting a fair number of younger users recently that are often a bit abrasive.

[sullen crown]

As of the last few months, I've practically been on like a chronic discord user

Also I do help run a 12k+ members server

[celest escarp]

while I firmly believe there's more variation on an individual level than between people of different ages and other superficial traits, it is true that there's a spike in chaos around school vacations :P

[hard shore]

as they say, idle hands are the devils plaything

[sullen crown]

Lol

[hard shore]

But yea. For a lot of those trouble makers, just swift early moderation with a warning by a mod usually makes them find somewhere else to troll.

logging the warnings somewhere is also very useful for future moderation actions

vast majority of the server never gets 1, so the guy with 3+ tends to look a little sus

[glossy spire]

the ephemeral nature of VC makes it a more difficult environment to adequately cover with mods (given the number of channels, it seems like we'd need dozens to make sure there was one available at any given time to monitor an active channel); personally, I'm in favor of bots doing a rolling-record of the last <x> minutes so that we have some kind of concrete record of what actually happened

[hard shore]

Eh, naturally 100% coverage isn't possible, but between like 5 of the most chronically online people, you could prob get 70%

also, mods can be discretely summoned when users get trollish

[static dragon]

If, of course, someone reports that something is going on so recordings can be pulled (or maybe instead, someone hits a "submit recordings" button)

[hard shore]

You don't need one for every channel, just one that can respond in a reasonable time

[glossy spire]

sure, but there are a lot of ifs in this no matter what solution is used (if a VC mod is in a channel, if a full mod can be summoned in time, etc)

fundamentally, VC is sync and text channels are async, and the latter is a lot easier to deal with

[hard shore]

Plus I don't know of any free/cheap bots that do voice recording. Haven't seen that functionality in other servers.

since you can't be in 2 channels at once...

[glossy spire]

from my understanding, the infrastructure to deploy bots to do this is not the issue so much as how VC users feel about it as a solution

[plush canyon]

I am highly against it

it makes me feel uncomfortable

[hard shore]

I mean, how they feel about it, is kinda moot if there are technical issues with doing it at all.

[glossy spire]

right, my understanding is that it's not a technical problem

[hard shore]

It can be both

[glossy spire]

would you be willing to go into the source(s) of that discomfort?

[plush canyon]

yesn't

[hard shore]

and multiple issues seem like a stronger case then singular issues.

[plush canyon]

I mean it just gives "big brother is always watching" vibes

part of it

I feel as if it will be abused

[hard shore]

Would be kinda creepy every time you join VC to see 'RECORDERBOT2000' join next to you.

[plush canyon]

real

[static dragon]

I doubt it would be necessary to have it join until there's 4 or so people in a VC

[glossy spire]

considering that moderators see everything in text channels in the server, why would a VC recording bot feel different?

[plush canyon]

moderators don't see everything in the text channels

everything is logged yeah

but that's slightly different

[glossy spire]

not in realtime, sure, but we can always go back and look at things

[pale inlet]

i just want to add i have a not insubstantial suspicion that a bot constantly recording user voice activity may be a violation of law

[plush canyon]

olivia had the idea of forcing everyone that uses the vc to give consent afaik

I'm unsure if that would work legally

[pale inlet]

doubtful.

[hard shore]

"I also like signing legal contracts before joining VC"

sure would keep down on the trolls.

[glossy spire]

it would be equivalent to the "this call may be recorded for quality assurance" canned message you hear calling into a call center

[plush canyon]

then that just kills the vc imo

I would just leave

[plush canyon]

so yeah extremely legally dubious

for discord at least

[hard shore]

"By using this VC, you agree to.... allowing the mods to issue $1,000 fine for saying the N-word" - the VC contract I really want.

[hard shore]

pretty much when you consider all the countries on earth.

[glossy spire]

well, apparently discord is perfectly happy to list recording bots in their app directory, so apparently they're not worried about any repercussions

[plush canyon]

yeah I was gonna suggest you but didn't want to drag you into something you didn't want to be in

[hard shore]

Thanks.

[plush canyon]

doesn't discord also have an arbitration clause

I think what a company does vs what's legally allowed is at times different

[shut flame]

having a few vetted community members report things and/or mute people is a good idea code green was talking about, that way even if mods are not around u still have someone trusted reporting stuff so that u can mute people later

[celest escarp]

fwiw a simple recording would have issues in terms of identifying the actual source of audio as well

it would need to have source identification integration

dunno what that does to the available resource pool

[gaunt island]

Would it be easier to just make it so people can't join vc until they've talked in the server a fair bit, avoids people joining specifically for the purpose of spreading hate

[icy grotto]

Reported stuff before; Got hated on for "lying about it" when 10 others can recall it. There's no winning here.

I can't be fucking bothered to deal with outright hatred towards my life because some ignorant fool decided to make my life miserable.

Other discord servers are able to deal with it. Why not here?

What is the line drawn as-well?

At the end of the day if you foster a non-inclusive enviroment a small subset will not interact with the other; as it stands concurrently I am willingly cutting my connections to this discord and factorio in general as the amount of hatred, disgust and outright fascistic tendencies have (especially recently) become so prevalent that there's people just straight up saying they're fascists and want me dead.

Either that or the staff here give so little care to voicechats (which are active daily) that most of the moderation is almost up to the users.

[plush canyon]

this is an example of why I hate rule 1 because it's so non-specific so it achieves nothing

[icy grotto]

I don't mean this to be mean. But almost all large servers have specific rules to deter bullshit.

"Be nice" is not arule. It's basic human decency.

A "voicechat bot" ain't achieving crap other than shooeing everyone away.

I have nothing to hide but that does not mean I don't like my privacy.

(Thoguh tbf it is a public voicechat, I realize as much)

[plush canyon]

there's something about public voice chat that make them a more private space I will say

especially in smaller groups

[icy grotto]

I mean; Reallife political kollektiva are opent o anyone, you see police there?

I sure as fuck don't.

Either way I'm whispering into the void so-to-speak. I hope it changes for the better; But I have serious doubts that moderation will keep itself up to a standard.

That said.
This is not my discord server; But those are my opinions.

[glossy spire]

then it would seem the only solution is a bunch of VC moderators

[plush canyon]

yes which is what I've been saying before I even created this

[icy grotto]

IIRC I talked to olivia ages ago about it

Strictly disliked it.

And this is after all; A dictatorship lol

[celest escarp]

I'd prefer a system where people are assigned temporary roles keyed to particular voice channels created upon joining by someone who can then elevate others to join with them

[icy grotto]

Might as-well just make a group dm at that point

[celest escarp]

pretty much

[icy grotto]

Close the voicechats and stop giving a crap lol

Not like the rest of the discord isn't neutered already.

[glossy spire]

in what sense, exactly?

[icy grotto]

This server in particular is one of few who disables most new features (though tbf a lot of them are shit)

Sidechannels in VC are locked, #memes , embeds get you yoinked

Disabled most features.

Though I also am smart enough to know why.

[glossy spire]

seems like despite that we still have tons and tons of interactions across all of the channels

[plush canyon]

I would also say that the server tries to be politically neutral (at least that how it comes off to me) but is against transphobia (not stated in the rules) and supports ukraine (not very politically neutral)

[celest escarp]

it's to keep memetic cold wars of confirmation bias from invading text as much as it has voice

[icy grotto]

I'm not saying it's good or bad :P

Just giving examples.

[hard shore]

Being against bigoty is not political. -_-; Unless being a decent human being is now somehow a political view.

[glossy spire]

I guess I was reacting to the various possible connotations of neutered here (which isn't precisely neutral a lot of the time)

[plush canyon]

trans people are political smh (they're not but it's a very politically fused topic)

[icy grotto]

Queerness is poltical for fuck knows why.

It shouldn't be but it is; And my life depends on some old farts that decide the fate of my life

At-least when i play videogames I don't wanna fucking deal with it

[glossy spire]

it's a challenge to traditional power structures, so that unfortunately makes us political

[gaunt island]

Something something everything is inherently political

[icy grotto]

Well sure; but that's also a non-pointer. Brings us nowhere lol

[gaunt island]

Personally I don't like it when people hate on me for identity but you know

[icy grotto]

At the end of the day

[gaunt island]

This whole thing has kinda led nowhere, I think moderation from active users is probably the best way to go about it, even just being able to kick someone from VC would be enough

Or server mute them

[glossy spire]

anyway, as was noted earlier, VC-only mods are something that we're discussing, and your feedback here is useful for that discussion

[gaunt island]

Obviously this should only be given to very active members

[celest escarp]

it shouldn't be, but it becomes so at scale once outside an individual's "family bubble" of whatever scale; I'm just saying that there's also potential for false flags and people seeing what they want or expect to see and so at a certain scale it's good to avoid certain types of communication which feed into stereotypes in ways that drive hopes/fears and cause tensions about what is said implicitly rather than explicitly

[icy grotto]

I'm sure there's plenty out there that are willing to do it.

Hell the fact alone "vip" exists and even after being here for 8 damn years I still don't have it? It shows the little care given to voicechats.

[celest escarp]

trouble is if we're talking about creating a team of VC-specific moderators then it's a massive organizational expansion and presents difficulties to maintaining trust levels

[icy grotto]

This is not a point about me not having it. It is a point that text-chat is far-far outweighed in terms "care" given and time maintained moderating it

[glossy spire]

yes, this is essentially the problem to overcome

not that it's insurmountable, but it will take some effort and time to do

[gaunt island]

A trust system is usually just a way to solve it

This is how places like tildes do it

Be active, be involved, eventually you can help moderate on a small scale

[glossy spire]

text-chat is far far far easier to moderate; and a fair proportion of the moderation team (myself included) actively avoid VC

[icy grotto]

It's not impossible. I've seen systems 3 years ago when i moderated a (back then 50k users) discord that still thrives and has 90% mod retention

[gaunt island]

This doesn't replace actual moderators

[icy grotto]

Yeah. Me as-well now lol.

[gaunt island]

It's just a way to deal with minor infractions without needing to involve specific people

[hard shore]

Agreed. Many VC people are not active in text and visa versa.

[icy grotto]

And I have an insane amount of time spent in these voicechats

[hard shore]

If I was a voice moderator, just server mute and reporting to the regular mods is fine.

[gaunt island]

Also somewhat unrelated but semi related, why are people allowed to use the r slur here lol

[celest escarp]

we've had cases of people going years reporting others for verbal abuse until finally posting a video of themselves trashing the factory in multiplayer and provoking it

trust is insanely hard to ensure at scale

[gaunt island]

I disagree tbh

Cause these people wouldn't be getting trusted roles to begin with

[icy grotto]

Iron; I'll be honest. That is such a silly comment.

[gaunt island]

Also you can just

[shut flame]

there are still trusted people, code green did say he could make a list

[gaunt island]

Take it away

You don't earn trust automatically it's given

[celest escarp]

Is it? When I felt violated for someone misdirecting me?

[icy grotto]

Just cause someone starts something assholish in-game doesn't mean the other person is rightful in being assholish either.

[celest escarp]

That's not what I said

[icy grotto]

"Misdirection" sure. It's not nice I agree. But it's dishonest.

I don't like griefers like the next guy

But I get griefed ? Load an auto-save and keep going and ban the fucker lol

No need to go be an asshole to others about it.

Doesn't mean provoking is good either to be clear

[celest escarp]

What I'm saying is that it is easy for misunderstandings to spiral and people to start omitting provocations or not allowing for the possibility that others were unable to communicate their discomfort before a better decision could be made

[icy grotto]

That's fair.

[shut flame]

that's also why number of reports is not a good metric of trust

[icy grotto]

At the end of the day this ain't my discord. And I sure as hell won't be around in the vc's. But it is sad as hell to see where it's going. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Needing to "prove" my realness or "shoving my gender ideology down someones throat" or silly arguments like that.

Which is tiring after a while. And so far out of the hundreds of voicechats I spend somewhat time in. This server is one of the worst.

I've been around on discord and teamspeak for at-least 15 years. This server still outdoes pretty much all others. And I was in some weird ass servers.

The onyl one somewhat worse is the singleplayer tarkov-mod discord. And even then they managed to reign it in.

[glossy spire]

a question: how should a VC moderator deal with claims that they misinterpreted an interaction, and what would a fair appeal process look like, given there would be no record of the original interaction?

[icy grotto]

Counter question if you don't mind: Do you want constant provability beyond reasonable doubt?

[pale inlet]

Case by case basis. Make a judgment call.

[glossy spire]

I don't have a good answer there, to be honest; I'm still trying to reason through the mechanics of all of this

[hard shore]

Simple solution: No server bans without recordings.

[icy grotto]

Perfect provability works if you have moderators (eye-witness)
Or with recordings (like texts, documents etc)

[hard shore]

ie, only warnings/temp mutes

[icy grotto]

At the end no system can be perfect due to fallability of humans.

Look at the court system which we still haven't figured quite out

[glossy spire]

recordings would seem to be off the table, though, if the reactions in this thread are anything to go by

[icy grotto]

But the best you can do at that moment is at-least something.

[pale inlet]

This isn't a court of law and it is neither realistic nor reasonable to hold community management to the standard of "proven beyond reasonable doubt to be a dink."

[icy grotto]

Temp mute them, warn them; Tag them in your system and implement a "crow clause"

[hard shore]

Constantly on bot-based recordings are. IMO people feel differently about moderators recording after they have cause to

[icy grotto]

"A crow clause" being basically death by thousand cuts.

Just cause you don't break the rules doesn't mean you're doing something wrong.

[hard shore]

Also a huge difference between one moderator warning someone multiple times, and multiple moderators warning someone for that reason

[loud thicket]

i know its probably not the best way but when someones becoming an overbearing arsehole i tend to just block em for a bit and let them scream into the void it dosent get rid of the root cause but it allows me control of their access to me

[hard shore]

Generally on servers im on, voice infractions without recordings are treated more as a warn/temp mute only situation, and will only be used to estabilish a pattern of behavior for more serious infractions

[icy grotto]

While I do mute people as-well it also leads to situations where there's 10 people and then a person has like 8 of those people muted lol

Which could be considered an asshole move as you willl talk over others

[hard shore]

Yea, just annoying when they then talk over you.

[shut flame]

the way i see it an easy (but obviously not great) solution would be to monitor how many people are muted by a certain person and compare that to other mods, that should give an idea of whether someone is overreacting

would solve the most obvious problems

[celest escarp]

it would be nice if discord provided that info I guess

[gaunt island]

Usually if someone is reported by multiple users there's clearly something wrong lol

[icy grotto]

Well; that would require mods to actually be active in voicechats; Which currently is basically only codegreen

[gaunt island]

If it's just one person then sure, there's reason to believe it might be an overreaction

[hard shore]

thats why you have mods report in some mod-only channel the mutes and why

[glossy spire]

if those blocks could be turned into reports, that would definitely give us more data to work with

[gaunt island]

But if multiple people are reporting them clearly there's something wrong

[shut flame]

yeah but that's paired with the idea that more trusted people can mute

[hard shore]

(Do note, the server owner can see the audit log of who muted someone. but it requires manual reporting on 'why')

[celest escarp]

ah sorry I thought you meant locally not as in the server-mutes

[icy grotto]

Well that's where the bullshit rules come in. They didn't "break" them necessarely.

So I can't report it.

[shut flame]

i meant server mute, if u decide to have more people with those priviledges in vc

[icy grotto]

Again harping back to "being nice" is not a rule it's basic human decency.

[glossy spire]

if you felt the need to block them, then it's highly likely they violated either rule 1 or 2 or both, though

[loud thicket]

being nice is also a scale XD cuz i could call someone a cunt and it would mean different things based on context

[glossy spire]

reports are just that, reports; they give the moderation team information

[hard shore]

lol yea, thats why the server I run has 'Don't be a dick' as rule #1, along with 'no politics' -_-;

[icy grotto]

All my servers have quite the rulelist for a reason.

It gives concise ideas of what's disallowed.

[celest escarp]

some people enjoy sassy jokes but I wouldn't want them in text from someone I don't trust

in voice you can "hear" the warmth, changing things a bit

you can also hear negativity in what might otherwise be an innocuous statement

vc is a huge additional dimension

[icy grotto]

Tone indicators exist; But that's a lazy sidenote.

[loud thicket]

XD i tried learnin tone indicators and tbh its like learnin another language

[icy grotto]

And plenty of people don't know them which is annoying lol

[glossy spire]

as a ballpark estimate, how many VC moderators might be sufficient to provide pretty good coverage of the existing VC channels?

[hard shore]

Yea, there is another 10 rules or so, but it gives the moderators some leeway when racist/sexphobic/etc issues come up. Or just generally someone being a dick.

[icy grotto]

Sure; In voice a discussion can also sound like a screaming match but it felt civil to me lol

[celest escarp]

yeah and I'd respect the difference in tonality in a vc despite likely treating it in the more worst-case in text :/

[hard shore]

Id say 5 people could prob give >70% coverage easily.

[loud thicket]

ngl 1 or 2 would fit the bill as theres useually only 2 groups in vc at a time

but could also do patrols

[icy grotto]

Either way; I gave my opinions though.

[hard shore]

And usally its 1 or 2 tiny groups of friends doing a multiplayer game, and then one larger free-for-all that is the one that prob needs moderation

[celest escarp]

reminds me of a sibling in law being surprised by the intense debate between other siblings from my family and thinking it was angry when it was just assertive and well-reasoned sorting out of differing perspectives :P

[icy grotto]

TL;DR rules need a working through to be concise (you can have your little vague "Moderators have the last call" rule I'm fine with that.)

And vc needs moderators. Not bots.

[loud thicket]

exactly focus on the crowd

[hard shore]

plus, when a mod is online in a channel, people in other channels can always DM them if they are needed elsewhere

[icy grotto]

While I would offer myself. I sure as hell know I won't fit the bill

[loud thicket]

XD im a bit of a foul mouth but i dont mind throwing my hat in the ring

[icy grotto]

Also depends on the server. Not every moderator can moderate on any server.

[loud thicket]

exactly this

[icy grotto]

I can moderate forums, discussion baords and even my mastodon fine.

And even my own niche server fine too.

[celest escarp]

I'd be interested in implementing some sort of election of vc moderators by and from a pool of regulars in the voice activity log prior to a certain date

they'd have their own dedicated channel and only jurisdiction over voice channel permissions

[icy grotto]

Besides the point tho.

[loud thicket]

also different people turn out to be different mods like theres the fisherman mod that lets a few things slide here and there and theres the bootstomper who crushes rulebreakers like a dreadnought

[static dragon]

The demands placed on us regarding VC moderation tend to fall into the same categories

[cyan robin]

The point is that it’s not a bot moderating, it’s a bot actually recording what happened when it turns into a massive he said she said shitslinging extravaganza

So that a person moderator can step in and tell what actually happened without relying on unreliable narrators

[hard shore]

... nobody recommended a bot moderating. lol

[cyan robin]

.

And it has been discussed way farther above

[plush canyon]

yeah I agree with this

[plush canyon]

everyone is against this idea

or well a majority of people are

because there are better ways to handle things

[glossy spire]

it'd be worth letting the moderation team know who you would consider a capable vc-mod

[plush canyon]

I can say privately

Make a ticket or something

[celest escarp]

I think this should wait until a decision is made as part of a larger thing if it happens

[glossy spire]

I don't see any reason to wait; it's additional information no matter what. As Sherlock Holmes said, "Data, data, data! I can't make bricks without clay!"

[sullen crown]

Could always remove half the VCs as most don't ever get used

[gaunt island]

That doesn't really solve the problem now, does it

[sullen crown]

Less channels to moderate still

[gaunt island]

If a channel isn't used it doesn't need to be moderated

[cyan robin]

The problem isn’t the number of channels, it’s moderator availability and otherwise lack of things reported when moderators aren’t there

[plush canyon]

Get more mods

[gilded warren]

If users are not reporting what happens in VC when it happens, and there isn't a moderator there then are you saying we should just not care because a moderator wasn't there when it happened?

[cyan robin]

We're considering multiple avenues here to be clear

More mods is likely part of an answer

in some form or fashion

[plush canyon]

Yeah that's def what I said

[gilded warren]

Get More mods
Isn't an answer to what happens when a moderator isn't there and nobody reports an incident

[plush canyon]

Chop off everything to the right of availability in their message

[rigid pilot]

That is illegal everywhere in the English-speaking world. You can only be recorded by A) another person, not a bot and B) with prior indication the convo will be recorded. The one exception is law enforcement with a very specific kind of warrant.

[sullen crown]

Wrong

In the United States it's fully legal to record anybody publicly

Ruled in favor by the supreme Court

[grave owl]

this is a private discord

[sullen crown]

Accessible from the public

Doesn't require me to ask permission to join

[glossy spire]

corporate call centers effectively use bots to record calls (and you are informed when the call connects that it will be recorded)

[sullen crown]

Also I don't think it's illegal still

[cyan robin]

If it's also clearly posted and labeled on entering the channel, that's it's own aspect too

[sullen crown]

If it was illegal people would be in jail right now, as several have already recorded private chats in Discord

[grave owl]

can we stop talking about bots recording vc because I can not defninitively say but I'm confident it's not happening

[rigid pilot]

TY CodeGreen. I was just jumping in off the top post, hadn’t read the full thread

[cursive mauve]

That's not true at all.

In two party consent states in the US, warrantless one party consent recordings aren't admissible in court, but this isn't going to court. There is no criminal trial involved in banning an asshat channel bombing and screaming the N-word, or telling people to suck their cock. It's a discord server. Nobody has any rights to be here. If someone records you saying something profoundly stupid and puts it on youtube, reddit, tik-tok, or whatever, you have zero recourse.

There is nothing stopping people from recording VC interactions should they choose to beyond it being a bit of a hassle to setup.

[sullen crown]

Making a blanket statements is going to always end up being wrong

Because nothing is consistent in the world

[cursive mauve]

And insofar as I'm aware, that's pretty similar in most of the western world. America takes it a bit further than quite a few countries, but nobody goes to jail when private conversations get leaked online because it's not actually illegal in the vast majority of cases.

[glossy spire]

anyway, as noted, recordings are not the direction we're looking to go in as a first step

[cursive mauve]

I'm not talking about bot recordings.

[glossy spire]

so it's not worth continuing this particular offshoot of the conversation

[cursive mauve]

I'm talking about personal recordings.

[glossy spire]

sure, but that's not something we have control over

[cursive mauve]

Quite frankly, I don't really see an alternative at this point.

[sullen crown]

There is 0 we can do if we aren't allowed to record in Factorio vcs

Because then it becomes hearsay if only one person reports it

[gilded warren]

To the best of my knowledge you are not allowed to record calls without the consent of all users in the call. Discord is based in a state which is not one party and Discord also has to comply with gdpr.

If you want to be able to record calls legitimately as users we will have to amend our server rules to make people aware that by joining vc they are agreeing to being recorded

[hard shore]

Witchburning based on hearsay it is then!

[gilded warren]

I’m not discussing approaches to fixing vc here while it’s still being discussed internally.

Merely stating that being recorded without your consent isn’t allowed. https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360071369492-Record-Calls

[hard shore]

the guy who says its not allowed has made 41 total posts on the forum

Not exactly an authority on the subject, and I don't see anything to indicate hes discord staff.

Also i'll note that discord literally alerts you when 'a user with clipping is enabled. you may be recorded' has joined the voice chat.

If it was illegal/against policy.. you'd think discord would just not allow them to join voice chat, since it can detect it and alert others

[gilded warren]

Huh. You can record calls through other means like obs

Clipping is acceptable

[hard shore]

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/15zcjgj/the_new_clipping_feature_will_allow_anyone_to/

Dang, I need to enable clipping lol that sounds so useful for discord reports

using audicity is annoy since it doesn't record my own mic and id like the discord mods to hear my sas. /semi s

Sad, I just checked and all I have is the option to enable/disable recording of my own voice in clips.. thats.. an interesting setting to have

[hard shore]

Soo, clips are problematic in that not everyone has access to the feature, and troublemakers can just.. opt out.

[gilded warren]

Huh? As long as everyone in the call knows they’re being recorded then we can accept a recording

And yeah, unfortunately that does mean troublemakers can opt out of being recorded. They have that right

[hard shore]

I mean, I can't even use that feature to clip anyone. For unknown discord reasons.

[gilded warren]

Who knows when it come to discord lol

[hard shore]

Its a >1 year old feature, judging from that reddit post as well

So im not holding my breath on it being fully released any time soon

[devout lion]

Last time I looked into it I was able to find a statement on discord's site (not in a support thread) where they state that they aren't allowed to record voice calls without everybody's consent (but I can't find the page again for some reason). Subsequently I'd assume the same applies to users recording voice calls. I can't find any mention of it in discords TOS/privacy policy/community guidelines, outside of "following the law", which may or may not include VC recordings.
We cannot advocate for doing something that's against TOS so to be on the safe side I'm not advocating for anybody to record VCs without everybody's consent.
(The clips feature would be fine to use of course, I'm just talking about recordings outside of that)

[buoyant flint]

I've never been in VC on this discord and am not active in chat very often, but here's an idea for a spin on VC-mods. The main point is that there could be a seniority-based system that allows VC users to self-moderate to a certain extent. This would of course need to be implemented (as a bot), but that at least shifts the cost to be more up-front.

You're already logging when users join/leave VC. Based on that, keep track of how long they have been in VC since joining the discord, and assign points/ranks based on that.
Next, let them start kick/mute votes, where a user's rank influences their vote's weight. Someone who has spent hundreds of hours in VC could more easily mute someone compared to a user who has never been in VC before.

Some unordered thoughts on details/variations of the idea:

• Point/Rank calculation would definitely need a lot of thought and tuning. Do Points grow infinitely? Do they cap? How many max-point vc users would be required for a vote to go thought? How many minimum-point users?
• Points could also be kept on a rolling basis, keeping track of VC activity over the last week/month/... instead of lifetime VC activity
• Having a point quota for a vote means that, depending on how the exact numbers, there could be a grey-zone where votes can't go through
• Alternatively, have the quota be dynamic based on the total points in a lobby (maybe combine this with a minimum seniority before points are assigned so trolls can't group up, join with fresh accounts and overwhelm a lobby)
• Rank could be visible as a discord role, but having them hidden (or discoverable via bot command only by the user themselves) could improve effectiveness by preventing trolls from trying to only be toxic in lobbies where the point quota for a vote is not met (see previous point)
• Moderator actions against someone should lower/reset their points
• Cooldowns on casting a vote could also be worth considering

That turned out to be a lot of text, and the initial setup would definitely be a lot of work, but the user-facing part of the system would be very simple to explain

[hard shore]

^ encourages trolls to idle in VC to accumulate points, instead of consider temperment of moderators/etc.

[buoyant flint]

True. The AFK channel (if it's set up to automatically move users, dunno if this server does that) alleviates that somewhat, but not fully. Being the only person in a VC channel should also not count when calculating points. But your point might already be enough to counter my suggestion, I can't come up with a sane way to prevent people to join and be silent in an otherwise active VC to accumulate points

[hard shore]

Iv seen people (trolls especially) turn their voice activation point so low they are always transmitting -_-;

[stuck yew]

if you are streaming or watching a stream, it doesn't kick you. you can be fully deafened and streaming a new tab on google and it will not kick you

[buoyant flint]

Yup to both points. So this specific idea is probably not practical, but I still believe it makes sense to try and come up with a semi-self-moderated system for VC users as an alternative to high-overhead suggestions like always having mods be in VC.

[buoyant flint]

Gonna try to keep arguing for my idea just for the sake of brainstorming - maybe some new, better ideas can come out of this.
A high minimum-activity cutoff before assigning points would hinder trolls who afk just to gain voting power. That way this system is essentially an automated way of identifying the top X most active VC users instead of explicitly and manually assigning VC mods.

Counter-votes could also be an option.

Both would require a troll to accrue more points before abusing the system, and if points are reset by moderator warnings, a troll would have to spend a lot of time idling in VC (could be in the hundreds of hours). If the numbers are set in a way that requires multiple users to vote (maybe unless the user is in the top handful of VC users), it would take even more effort to abuse it.

[stuck yew]

that might turn into the issue that i have with the phantom forces votekick though. since so many people casually play (that game) or join vc (here) you might not have enough people above the threshold at all to enable the votekick

[plush canyon]

The problem with this idea is that it's easily exploitable especially if planned

Get a group of friends have them get some trust factor or whatever, now you have a kill squad

[buoyant flint]

yeah true, and if that happens it's up to manual mod intervention again

[pale inlet]

I maintain it is both acceptable and necessary to simply allow the moderators of a community, if acting in good faith, to take action against VC reports as they deem appropriate.

Moderators are human and fallible, but that does not automatically mean their judgment is inherently suspect. This is not a server where any random yahoo gets the role just by asking nicely. If they're trusted enough to be in that position they can be trusted to make judgment calls based on whatever evidence is available, even if said evidence is not exhaustively thorough in its conclusions.

They can use whatever tools to provide addl points of data from which to draw their conclusions, but there's no reason to paralyze them into inaction simply bc we cannot provide the absolute rigor required in a court of law to sentence a human to prison.

[rigid pilot]

The issue is not a lack of moderation, the issue is cultural. There are a lot of things said in this discord that would see people cut off if not kicked out of hang outs in my area. Some real nasty shit that is totally unacceptable and yet casually occurs time & time again. That's not the responsibility of moderators alone to solve. It is on everyone to A) acknowledge that there is in fact a problem, a problem which extends beyond transphobia (although that is by far the most explicit & direct at the moment) and B) agree to themselves to work on it and try to be a better person in our conduct with others.

[glossy spire]

yes, if people conducted themselves well, and abided by the server rules, the moderation team wouldn't have much to do; unfortunately, that seems to not be the case in VC right now

moderation is part of the feedback that generates cultural change

[rigid pilot]

Direct moderation is a tough stick. Banning is most effective, but doesn't solve the underlying issues necessarily. It also can't be used against people in a position of privilege & can be weaponized to stifle communication. Personally I would prefer if we can have a middle ground for users who would like to be part of the wider Factorio community but whose conduct has in the past breached the unacceptable. I'd rather approach issues of tolerance with, well, tolerance.

[cyan robin]

You stand for what you tolerate, which is why I’m glad we have a ticket now instead of continuing to let the problem happen.

[glossy spire]

I'd note that we are also more than happy to ban moderators that abuse their power (and have procedures in place for such an eventuality, though we don't expect to have to use them at this point)

[rigid pilot]

I was only noting the possibility, not saying it's a reality.

[glossy spire]

understood; I just wanted to clarify that it's a possibility we've given some thought to, since, as you say, moderating users in positions of power can be a tricky thing

[gilded warren]

When you say "in hang outs" do you mean small tight nit communities?

In all the large servers I am in this has by far the most active Voice Chat I've seen for a server that isn't specifically there for voice chats.

And in large servers I've been in voice chat has always been questionable unfortunately. (Not that this is an acceptable excuse)

If there is "real nasty shit" that is said in voice chat that you know about and are not reporting then starting to report it is immediately a good start. And even better is convincing the others in your channel to report it as well.

One of the reasons the ontopic channels are pretty decent in my eyes is they're somewhat self reporting. I've seen people reporting others for things that are not ok for moderators to follow up on, they've also often said in the channel it isn't ok.

I've been incognito in voice chats a few times and it's not uncommon to hear things that are not only not ok, that I know someone in that chat doesn't like and they fail to report.

We are talking internally about things we want to change to try and tackle this issue since it is an issue and I do want a healthy community people can feel safe in, but as pointed out by all this worry that every vc could have a bot in recording it for moderation people don't want the kind of moderation that occurs in text channels and that means self-moderating to some extent.

It's also worth pointing out that there is more than one person in this chat who has complained about the state of VC who themselves have a disiplinary action for something in VC. So when asking for harsher punishments their past actions might also be included in things that "deserve harsher punishments".

[rigid pilot]

No I mean in real life. Bars, clubs, pubs. And yes I agree that large publicly available voice chats are always going to be a bit of a problem. Part of the problem might stem from English not being everyone's first language. A lot of the things I've heard that I know weren't reported (usually because I didn't) were nasty, but could also be explained by the person who said it not understanding just how nasty what they said was in English. The most recurring example of this is people using "fag" or "retarded" as insults. It happens so frequently reporting isn't really a great solution, and unless in quite a small group it's hard if not impossible to preempt or comment on the behaviour without making the whole chat about what was said. And that in my experience always makes things worse. Part of what makes this discord attractive is the active voice chats and trying to nanny that while not in a moderation position is not something most of us would like to take on.

Speaking of bars & pubs, there is always going to be a "Fox News effect" where a handful of people who it's perfectly reasonable are at the establishment but whose meaningful conversations starts with a conspiracy theory and ends with an insult. It's hard to know what constitutes a "safe place" when the physical person is not there to be judged and all you have to go by is the nonsense coming out of their mouth. I personally am not trans but I have been there more than once when just such a 'conversation' kicks off. It's one of those things where moving to another channel before the real nastiness comes out is a reliable solution, but doing so doesn't address the underlying behaviour. And more importantly it doesn't address any chasing behaviour that sometimes does occur. Direct bullying does in my experience get dealt with. But the bigger problem is that the Factorio discord is not a place where everyone can be without concern such bullying might spontaneously occur. Gentle, but firm, handling of Fox News-y nonsense needs to be a universally consistent thing. Not using explicitly awful language, regardless of whether English is a first, second, or third language needs to be consistently enforced by the people who are currently in the chat. I don't really view the problem as one of moderation. As I said the other day, the problem with this discord is cultural. There are things said here that wouldn't have been acceptable 25 years ago but don't rise to the level of needing constant moderation.

[plush canyon]

It's also worth pointing out that there is more than one person in this chat who has complained about the state of VC who themselves have a disiplinary action for something in VC.
I disagree completely, it's not worth pointing out at all. just because someone fucked up doesn't mean that they can't want to improve the voice chats, this is an irrelevant point that shouldn't be brought up at all imo
So when asking for harsher punishments their past actions might also be included in things that "deserve harsher punishments"
also if you're going to retroactively increase people's past mistakes punishments that just kinda like a, unsure what word to use other than stupid, thing to do

[rigid pilot]

And just to make what was implicit explicit, the issue is also not randoms. The issue is people who are regulars.

[celest escarp]

nowhere was retroactively implied

the point is consistency

[plush canyon]

consistency doesn't matter

if you're changing the rules of the game to begin with

[celest escarp]

I do not mean consistency across time but across people

[plush canyon]

nowhere was retroactively implied
"also if you're" heavy emphasis on if

[icy grotto]

In all the large servers I am in this has by far the most active Voice Chat I've seen for a server that isn't specifically there for voice chats.

I wanna touch on that.

• Satisfactory Modding
• Terraria
• Dark Souls
• SPT (SinglePlayerTarkov)
• RiskOfRain
• EuroTruckSim 2
• Tons of otherwise decently smaller server who are text chat focused, I am active in, and have half of this discord's size.

Yet this small list of servers who are all far more text active than vc active still have the same if not more activity.
Yet none of them have the same issues as here.
Yet all of them are well moderated. So at best this is biased, at-the-worst this is just ignorant.

I've been incognito in voice chats a few times and it's not uncommon to hear things that are not only not ok, that I know someone in that chat doesn't like and they fail to report.
I heard plenty of slurs given my way; But I also (used to, not anymore for half a year now) used that moment to inform and educate.

It's also worth pointing out that there is more than one person in this chat who has complained about the state of VC who themselves have a disiplinary action for something in VC. So when asking for harsher punishments their past actions might also be included in things that "deserve harsher punishments".
So if I break the rules my opinion is invalid? Sounds a bit harsh and unreasonable in my opinion. Just cause you break rules doesn't mean you shouldn't have an opinion. I'm sure most of my rule-breaking by now (which I'm not ashamed to admit, all humans make mistakes) was spured due to people coming in, yeeting slurs and me wanting to engage educationally.
Though by now i've given up as I noticed that it is entirely useless to argue with people who want me dead, they'll want me dead no matter what.

And in large servers I've been in voice chat has always been questionable unfortunately. (Not that this is an acceptable excuse)
As above. Seems rather biased? I've been in far larger servers with way better cultures. And as far as I can tell the culture here is one of the most conservative (short of political discords) of all gaming servers I was on so far. And there's some right fucked servers inbetween there. Such as the SPT server. Which had multiple times now had the vc killed for it to come back and finally after all this time of fostering a good culture they managed to become better than this discord in that regard.

We are talking internally about things we want to change to try and tackle this issue since it is an issue and I do want a healthy community people can feel safe in, but as pointed out by all this worry that every vc could have a bot in recording it for moderation people don't want the kind of moderation that occurs in text channels and that means self-moderating to some extent.
It's good to see change and I'm curious what those are. But a healthy community is not just moderation and self-moderation it also includes being:
A) Direct with rules.
B) A transparent way of moderation
C) Self-moderation always has issues but it's better than nothing. THe question is, how manys times would you like to hear to TW ||"Kill yourself"|| before oyu become utterly tired and numb to it and just accept the fact there's a large enough part that people Even feel comfortable to say it out loud.

Edit: This is not to invalidate. But to give perspective.
And from my anecdotal perspective at this very moment, this is one of very servers I am in with more than 10k people where the rules are not just vague, but also small and don't encourage inclusivity and proper manners.

So all in all, I'd say again, moderation is good, but if the culture is already far enough where open talks about genocide, "KYS"'ing and similar are decently common place? There's a far deeper issue here at play than just lack of moderation.

Edit2: This text has grammar issue apologies. Am a bit woozy after hospital appointment.

[celest escarp]

if anything was implicit it's a "[would have]" in front of "deserve[d]"

the point is that one insult does not justify another

anyone feeling the need to go on the offense as defense should either take a breather or get moderation, full stop

[plush canyon]

C) Self-moderation always has issues but it's better than nothing. THe question is, how manys times would you like to hear to TW ||"Kill yourself"|| before oyu become utterly tired and numb to it and just accept the fact there's a large enough part that people Even feel comfortable to say it out loud.
with this point I've personally heard you say "wow suicide jokes are so funny" ironically like a 100 times in response to someone making said joke

[icy grotto]

ironically.

[plush canyon]

yes (probably should've stated that, I thought it would be obvious)

[celest escarp]

irony/sarcasm is a short-term deflection and a long term tragedy

[plush canyon]

fixed

[icy grotto]

So me saying/joking ironically that those jokes are bad is also bad?

Or how am I supposed to interpret this exactly? /gen

[celest escarp]

when I use sarcasm, it's a sign to me that I need more sleep and to clear my head, because it means I need time and space to formulate a response which actually communicates my intent rather than falling back on a mockery of what communication even is

I do not find sarcasm outright offensive but it is an abdication of responsibility for one's end of a connection should it be meaningful

[rigid pilot]

Okay that's nonsense bud.

[icy grotto]

To me sarcasm is a coping strategy when I'm wanting to deal with a shitty situation.

[plush canyon]

I use sarcasm for fun

I am very neutral with everything I say typically and don't feel much emotion in what I type especially

[icy grotto]

When I get told "I'm not a woman" I automatically try to be burly as fuck cause it's funny. And makes the others person maybe realize their comment is stupid after I tell them directly.

Sarcasm is perfectly acceptable way of dealing with crap.
The same way I deal with people who attack me in reallife by becoming "ironically even gayer" to spite them

[celest escarp]

It's not nonsense but it is overly idealistic and I know it's not always practical, I'm not trying to say sarcasm is wrong, just not ideal

[plush canyon]

to view sarcasm as anything other than another tool of communication with it's ups and downs is silly I suppose?

[rigid pilot]

Okay. Whatever. Please try not to derail the conversation.

[celest escarp]

deflecting an offense by someone that way feels like doing something about it but it just feeds into misunderstanding

[icy grotto]

It'd be even more ideal if the person didn't even have the idea of doing shit in the first place.
Again coming back to "culture"

Sure I can and do report it afterwards and tell them directly

But I can also make fun of the situation to cope with it mentally.

Reporting is one thing; But slurs, comments, insults, offensiveness, under-the-line questions still hit at the core and the people perpetuating it, know that.

[pale inlet]

deplatforming undesired behavior is and has always been the most effective way to curb its occurrence.

Blaming it on "culture" is at best misinformed and at worst dishonest, because culture is informed by what people consider "acceptable".

[cyan robin]

You stand for what you tolerate.

Whether intentional or not.

[icy grotto]

I wouldn't disagree necessarely. But culture is as you say yourself what people find acceptable. And so far, at-least here, it's far worse than elsewhere. So saying "it's not culture cause I'm misinformed or dishonest" is only half the story no?

[plush canyon]

I do think think culture is so backwards it's not even funny, I think I have mentioned it earlier and so has andromeda, rule #1 is just straight up useless, "be nice" yeah that's like a nothing rule, that's common sense so it's useless and hard to apply ever, I reported someone because they said something transphobic and I'm just like "what rule is this?" and I don't think "rule #1 - be nice" because it's just so nothing I could apply rule #1 to literally everything, it's too general to actually be useful, this is tangentially related to this topic but it would be helpful if instead of "rule #1 - be nice" it's "rule #1 - bigotry, hate speech, and other phobias are not allowed"

[icy grotto]

It can (and is) more than one thing. I would still argue what people perceive to be acceptable (ergo culture). As per usual in life it's never black and white.

[cyan robin]

It’s rule 1, yes

Not even a question

[plush canyon]

it's useless

[rigid pilot]

Absolutely not. You tolerate other people because other people are different. Toleration has nothing to do with whether you agree or not. Again, if I can reference the Fox-News Effect. I don't agree with the wackos at the bar, but I'm not going to go out of my way to engage with their nonsense. I'm going to tolerate them.

[icy grotto]

I tolerate people misuing my pronouns. I stand for fairness and equality.

[pale inlet]

I was speaking more in response to the idea that moderation cannot change culture or whatever talking point keeps coming up in here now and then.

[plush canyon]

I have a great example of this, I'm in a friend's server and some of the members are truly hateful of trans people yet I'm still in it, I don't agree with them at all yet I tolerate it

[icy grotto]

Moderation can absolutely change culture and toleration levels. I don't disagree at all!

[pale inlet]

You make it clear xyz behavior will not be tolerated and the culture will change to reflect that

[icy grotto]

However. That also requires direct input and "be nice" is objective

It fundamentally gives you the -though incorrect- right to interpret that rule.

There's a reason why laws are more than "don't hurt others"

[celest escarp]

Being nice can mean being direct and trusting that someone can handle what you wish to say to them. It can also mean being indirect and risk implying that they can't handle something, by acknowledging that it may be painful for them to hear.

Those are conflicting and there is not an objective niceness there.

[icy grotto]

So people interpret it differently and thus act differently.

[plush canyon]

can mean
I think just using "can mean" shows how useless this rule is

[cyan robin]

You stand for what you tolerate.
Means that your internal thoughts and feelings don’t matter to a situation if you sit there and don’t do anything. You may disagree, but to the person who just joined the VC and sees someone else being an asshole and you sitting there not doing anything about it either, they will see that as agreement.

[icy grotto]

I would agree with this argument in reallife but not online

For all you know I could be taking a shit and be afk lol

[celest escarp]

It shows how hard it is to make any more meaningful rule because it ends up being informed by inference of intent!

[cyan robin]

Perceptions matter as much as intent

Like it or not

We’re getting the short end of that stick from you all now

[icy grotto]

meaningful is useless if your rule is unclear.

[icy grotto]

Sure but I'd still argue online=/= reallife

[plush canyon]

Means that your internal thoughts and feelings don’t matter to a situation if you sit there and don’t do anything
this is just wrong, I've ignored multiple cases of transphobia because it's literally not worth my time especially when I get told by the owner of the server "do not record people", it's easier to move vcs or just join vcs I know I'll like, if I see @rigid pilot or @modest wing or @icy grotto it's probably a good vc

[rigid pilot]

See I would think someone saying "I agree" means that they agree. Choosing not to engage is a perfectly valid tactic and should not ever be taken as an implication of agreeing to anything.

[icy grotto]

In reallife you have your senses other than you listening whether or not I am actively engaged. I could also be on the phone, I could just be tihnking about something else.

[celest escarp]

was that actually what was said, or was that about avoiding double standards?

[plush canyon]

olivia has told me to not record to unless I get consent from every memeber of the vc

I have updated the quote to be more accurate

I have a ss

if you want

[icy grotto]

I've said it before. And I will again. I've done it too. Mostly cause I can't be bothered after hearing it a while. So I just leave and go somewhere else.

I don't have to be here.

But I care alot about this game and it's community, and that's why I'm here.

[cyan robin]

Going to another VC isn’t nothing though

[plush canyon]

it's one click

compared to me dealing with the moderation team

even the "/report" command is lengthy and annoying

[icy grotto]

Wouldn't disagree. But do you really think you could be bothered doing anything against it?

After hearing the same bullshit day in and day out in reallife and in thisu server?

[cyan robin]

It says a lot more to the person being an ass than you think, “Hey people left whenever I said that, what’s up with that”

[icy grotto]

Good.

[celest escarp]

exactly, it's doing something rather than nothing

[plush canyon]

I mean I've called out transphobia and then everyone in the vc is like "they aren't transphobic what are you on about"

[celest escarp]

the word carries different meanings depending on who hears it

to some it refers to intent

to others it refers to ignorance

it is furthering the cycle of misunderstanding in itself

[plush canyon]

people will miss signs or just actively not know they're signs

[icy grotto]

Try it with "homophobia" or "antisemitism" does that still say the same thing?

[rigid pilot]

I'll quote myself from earlier,

"The most recurring example of this is people using "fag" or "retarded" as insults. It happens so frequently reporting isn't really a great solution, and unless in quite a small group it's hard if not impossible to preempt or comment on the behaviour without making the whole chat about what was said. And that in my experience always makes things worse."

[icy grotto]

Plenty of people would argue no. And even would say that I'm shoving "trans agenda" down their throat

[plush canyon]

I don't care about intent or ignorance, transphobia is transphobia, I don't care if it's intentional or not, if it's not intentional I would rather them be educated than just straight up banned or something, as I've said 10000000s of times it's not my job as a trans person to educate

[icy grotto]

But if I did it because someone made the same statement about jews? It would be clear as day.

[celest escarp]

sort of; the former is often people who could be bi who thus think that hetero is "also" a choice.. they think they understand it but they actually fear a choice they don't realize others lack >.<

[plush canyon]

what

[icy grotto]

The fact you didn't say no proves me point that "transphobia" is far less valid of a concern than antisemitism or homophobia lol.

[cyan robin]

People think it’s a choice because they don’t realize they’re on the fence to start with

[plush canyon]

the former is often people who could be bi who thus think that hetero is "also" a choice
what the fuck is this take honestly???? (not being mean or anything but this is genuinely like a confusing take)

[icy grotto]

People think me uprooting my life, about to lose my home, losing my friends, hacking my biology and being dirt poor due to medications is also choice.

[celest escarp]

other way around; it means that transphobia is even less clearly defined and thus more explosive of an issue :(

[gilded warren]

This thread needs to veer back towards constructive very quickly.

[cyan robin]

I’m going to point out “what the fuck is this take” as being a poor choice of phrasing that is not helpful in particular

That reads as insult, not as incredulousness

[plush canyon]

which is why I said it's not mean on purpose

[icy grotto]

I could chose not to transition. Yeah my life would be easier.
But also mentally I would be depressed as hell.

[plush canyon]

because I use swearing to enhance not insult

[cyan robin]

Then don’t say it!

You knew how people would take it, so instead of adjusting language you made it even harder to express

[plush canyon]

I don't know about harder to express

[icy grotto]

It's not that far off though.

If you wouldn't say the same thing with a gay context, don't say the same thing with a trans context.

[cyan robin]

You had to type a whole extra clarifying sentence instead of just, starting with that and leaving out the part that makes it feel bad to the person reading it

[plush canyon]

so instead of adjusting language
the amount of swear words I've removed from my messages so far is probably over 20

[cyan robin]

Good, swearing is rarely helpful in a conversation that’s supposed to be constructive

[icy grotto]

If I ask why anyone is trans, it's less of an issue than asking why they're gay.

[gilded warren]

I appreciate the topic being discussed here is complex and deeply personal to some.
But, we should be here to constructively improve the community.
If the thread no longer serves that purpose and begins devolving into heated debates I will lock the thread.

I suggest everyone takes 5 minutes for themselves to cool.

[plush canyon]

I think this is honestly a waste of time conversation to have, I'm sorry if I have offended you @celest escarp, I did not intend so, I meant it as an emphasis of confusion

[celest escarp]

Are you saying this or suggesting it as your interpretation of what I said? D:

I was acknowledging the relative uncertainty culturally and how much clearer it is to me that there's room for building understanding of others in one case where in other cases it may require people building understanding of themselves and that's much harder to get into

[icy grotto]

Further proving my point if anything. As I am unsure if you understood it at first or not :P

I'll take this as a "I understood" though

Apologies.

[celest escarp]

I'm not sure I do :(

[icy grotto]

Hmm, let me rephrase it.

[plush canyon]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying still @celest escarp

I've read through it all and I'm still confused

[icy grotto]

Give me a minute; I'm skimming through it all again.

[icy grotto]

This bit.

I'm basically saying that if you replace the "gay" with "trans", which one is less of an issue?

[plush canyon]

I would say neither

[icy grotto]

Not you. It's s generalistic statement

Most people have no issues with "the gays" but as soon as you say trans it's an issue.

There's a reason crap like "LGB without the T" exists.

[celest escarp]

"Which one is less of an issue?" is a loaded question and re-shapes things in itself--I'm referring to complexity of understanding, not relative impact or severity

[icy grotto]

Fair enough.

[rigid pilot]

• Don't be prejudiced about other people's identities. One's sex is not a choice, especially if it was wrong at birth.
• It doesn't matter the latin meaning (aka NOT the English one) of "phobia" is fear. The word "transphobia" means "prejudice towards trans individuals".

[icy grotto]

More so asking this culturally. Most people IRL would probably say "trans" is a far bigger "problem" so to say.

[celest escarp]

well I say screw that noise for what it's worth (as in the extreme views causing that)

stereotypes are so harmful, both externalized and internalized

[icy grotto]

Sure; But it's still the majority of people.

I have to care about it. Thus I also have to care about it here.

[gilded warren]

Can I again politely remind everyone this thread is here to address and tackle issues related to voice chat.
The more adjacent conversations that happen here the more it dilutes this thread and makes it harder for the thread to achieve its goal.

[glossy spire]

If it is truly that the culture in VC that needs to change, and if the feeling is that no amount of moderation is able to do even basic enforcement of rule 1, then I'd say we'd need to consider what it would take to wipe out the existing culture and start over, which might look like very long duration vc-bans for any infractions

[hard shore]

Or moderators not all actively avoiding VC.

(as at least one moderator has stated on this thread they do actively avoid VC)

And iv honestly never seen one join...

[glossy spire]

sure, but if it's only moderator presence that's deterring bad behavior, then obviously there will still be problems when a moderator isn't in a channel

[steady raft]

Testing...

Oh, its not locked.

Or else it IS locked and I am the only user seeing my typing...that used to happen in the old IRC channels.

[loud thicket]

nah its open

[steady raft]

I seems like they all sorta talked themselves out. Good points were made though. Thats what I think at least.

I don't envy the moderators having to decide on rules though, and then having to enforce them.

[fiery wyvern]

I have something to say on it but idk if it will matter

[steady raft]

Hmm..the "recording bot" mentions opens a subject that is interesting to me. I saw some blanket statements that are just not correct,

Some users are confusing contract rules (TOS) with actual law. They are not the same.

For example, Discord is homebased in California USA, and so a good portion of the legality of recording these channels would be governed by that state.

But there are US federal laws too...in this case, from the FCC, that enter into it.

[fiery wyvern]

I stopped using the voice chat because it is not bound by the server rules. Users get away with toxic behavior indefinitely until a moderator pays any attention to it. If the voice chats were adequately moderated, I might see any reason to interact with them.

Otherwise I think it’s unjust to provide access to such a toxic environment within a healthy discord server like this

[steady raft]

And everyone knows that most every law has its own definitions and exceptions. For example, recording in private and recording in public can be different. Recording a citizen and recording a public servant can also be. And recording face to face and recording a telephone call can also be diff.

[rigid pilot]

That discussion has already been concluded. The mods aren't going to be adding any kind of recourding.

[steady raft]

I know, its just an interesting subject to me. 8-)

[fiery wyvern]

Course my experience is gonna get buried

[steady raft]

No, I see your comment Male. I'm simply sorta finishing my own thread. 8-)

[fiery wyvern]

Why are you calling me male in a thread about transphobia

That’s really fucked up…

[steady raft]

As was said, VC is inherently more difficult to moderate because there is no history to scroll thru and so no means to know for sure exactly what was said and who said it. Know what I mean?

I said Male, as in short for Malevolent bug squisher. Not male.

[glossy spire]

right, and that's exactly what we'd like to remedy

[glossy spire]

just please take a bit more care when you abbreviate usernames in the future

[steady raft]

Can we also be a bit less sensitive, and pay more attention to what was actually typed? Note the capital M.

Which is something that I also noticed in that very long thread above. Instances of users jumping to negative conclusions instead of asking for clarification. And also putting words in peoples mouths.

[glossy spire]

given the context here, that's not enough, especially considering the potential for accidental capitalization and such; it's a very small ask to, e.g. add one more letter to the abbreviation to make it Malev instead (which would be unambiguous)

[steady raft]

I reserve the right to have lazy fingers. 8-)

(jk)

I do have some questions to throw out though...I suppose not surprising since it took me an hour to read that entire thread.

Like, what is TW?

[glossy spire]

trigger warning

[steady raft]

Ah. Makes sense now.

[devout lion]

signal to noise ratio in this thread: chart with a downwards trend
please (for the love of <insert something appropriate>) try to keep this thread on topic. You've said yourself it took you 1 hour to read through it

[steady raft]

Sorry.

[gilded warren]

!s warn If someone doesn’t like the shorthand you’ve picked, pick another. This is really rude and politeness is free.

[zealous steeple]

@rmm8dis warned

Reason: If someone doesn’t like the shorthand you’ve picked, pick another. This is really rude and politeness is free.
Duration: 30 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes

[gilded warren]

Writing jk after doesn’t make it any better btw.

So, in spirit of keeping things on topic…

What do you all feel it would it take to get people who hear things they don’t like to report them to the moderators in some trackable capacity.

Even if we might not always be able to act on one report about one user, multiple reports about the same thing show trends that can be acted on more confidently.

Having things being reported also makes it so much easier for me to know what’s going on over time since it’s logged

[shut flame]

that this doesn't happen when trusted users report things
#moderation-desk message
or that u can reasonably expect an action to be taken by the mods if u report something (this had to wait half a day and get 2 more reports for any response)
#moderation-desk message

[modest wing]

Yes, moderation desk works perfectly (for me) when it doesn't deal with issues that are on the grayscale, but as previously mentioned by many, trans discussions do end up on the grayscale unfortunately.
While the idea of trusted/veteran members having some VC moderation ability is tempting (since I may fall into that category), it would sour my experience of the VC were I given such responsibilities.

[plush canyon]

I'm unsure what you mean exactly but anyone being told that it didn't happen is EXTREMELY discouraging, this isn't directed at you przemo just an addition

[modest wing]

I've never been comfortable exposing my personal ethical positions on discord.
I don't expect to be able to change people's fundamental beliefs over VC.
Stricter rules is the closest thing to a "solution" as I can think up.
Things I would do right now given a magic wand:

• Increase the minimum age requirement for voice to 16.
• Set a limit on number of people in each voice to 8-10.

[plush canyon]

I do think that maybe gating it to an older audience would help, but a bit extreme

[gilded warren]

Ok, the person who complained and questioned you was permanently muted by the looks of it.
Why not report in a ticket instead?

[plush canyon]

Who are you referring to (who is you in this context)

[gilded warren]

This

[plush canyon]

Oh that guy

Yeah he personally joined my VC told me that I'll never be a girl that I'm a tranny and more, which was after he got reported multiple times already

[shut flame]

they were but only after 2 more reports and half a day and considering they were literally saying to genocide the jews without any remorse i find that unacceptable

[plush canyon]

I'm fairly confident it took me posting a clip of him saying said things to me to get him muted

[shut flame]

also not reporting in a ticket cause it shouldn't make a difference

[gilded warren]

Half a day is not a lot of time.

[shut flame]

i would agree if not for the very cointidental ban one minute after the subsequent reports

[gilded warren]

And what if we were talking to the user in a tickets before hand?

And that took the half day hmm

[kind sigil]

first point: how could we stop users from questioning reports if the reports are done publicly? Tickets are available for people that want to make private reports. Or are you saying that the user should have been warned/muted for questioning it?

[gilded warren]

And if you are not comfortable and have stopped reporting things in mod-desk and don’t want to move into tickets to report things then what can we do when we don’t know what’s happening

[modest wing]

I spent ~90mins reading the bloated chat history here, and agree with Olivia that it sometimes strayed from it's purpose. DM me if you want more of my input.

[shut flame]

i agree that randoms questioning reports aren't something u can control but that ties to the second point where people are not instantly banned after literally promoting nazism

even if that was a trol it still does not make a difference

[kind sigil]

I don't see how it ties to the second point at all tbh

[shut flame]

nevermind that then, i can't really find what i was looking for

as for reporting things in a ticket, can i be sure that it will do anything? from what i've seen so far one report usually doesn't do anything in #moderation-desk, there has to be at least one person confirming it

[gilded warren]

You can be confident it will do more than doing nothing.
What could make this process better is why we are here discussing things.

For me, I’m most interested in improving the reporting process as much as possible since even adding more moderators, we can’t have one in every vc all the time

[plush canyon]

Add a button that says "request VC moderator" would help a lot

[gilded warren]

We can’t be on call all the time so that button might not be effective in the way I imagine you want it to be. You can also request a vc mod in a ticket. Perhaps we can make that clearer

[devout lion]

I've seen the complaint that reports don't do anything numerous times, but they do do something. In the example of getting 1 report and another person confirming it, that's 2 reports. The first report did do something. It's effectively the same thing as getting 2 reports through tickets or the report feature. 2 people reporting the same thing builds a pattern.
So yes 1 report may not do much on its own (depending on the situation as always), but if that's the reason for not reporting something, then we get 0 reports instead of 2 or more.

[kind sigil]

It seems to me like a generally good principle to require 2+ reports before punishing someone. Ofc exceptions can be made if the mod that sees the report trusts the user that made it, but there's no guarantee of that.

Under the current system, that is. If there is a more formal trusted-VC role who can do VC-mutes themselves then that would hopefully also alleviate the issue better/faster.

[sage laurel]

but that means you need mods to take time out of there day to moderate the vc

[stuck yew]

there is an in-between validation here too. if you don't trust users in vc to directly mute others (or deal with the mess that managing perms like that), you could add a role as a "note" that someone is known to be trustworthy. it would still provide some kind of two party validation, as the person would have report and then a moderator could take action based on the information present. i think applying this role would require multiple moderators to sign off on it though.

[limpid dagger]

the ideal is that the people being made mods are the ones who are already regularly active in VC

[gilded warren]

If we add people to look over VC, this will be the approach.

[kind sigil]

Yes true, but personally I feel if we're doing that, we may as well just give them permissions to VC-mute by themselves.

[stuck yew]

if that happens, i would like vc moderation actions to be logged in some form, even if it's not publicly visible. the audit logs for servers expire after a while if i remember right, and it can be a mess to sift through anyways

[kind sigil]

I assume they would be logged the same way moderator actions are logged currently (i.e. not publicly). Pretty sure they are permanently stored.

We don't use discord's audit log.

[sullen crown]

They are not permanent

Not for discords Audit

[stuck yew]

chat messages are permanently stored. i have a chat that's 7 years old (or something like that)

[fiery wyvern]

Would you consider to make voice chat roles take a verification

Automatic or otherwise

For example being a member of the server for 5 days

Sending more than 20 messages in the server

Or for more strict requirements having a 3+ year old discord account

[plush canyon]

It's been suggested to age gate it and I think that might help a bit, but it's a bit extreme and probably taxing on moderation

[gilded warren]

I don't really think that new users are a meaningful issue here. (They obviously still cause trouble of course)
We already act pretty quickly when a regular reports that a new user has said something or is join/leave spamming, and regardless of how long someone has spent in the server I suspect that attitudes that display in voice will rarely show in text channels the same way.

From my reading of the situation it's roughly that: (And by no means am I saying this list is complete or can't change)

• People don't always feel comfortable reporting things in mod-desk
• People feel like reports are sometimes ineffective. Be that because they take too long to act on or because whatever we're acting on is not so visible.
• When something more "casually rule breaking" happens in voice, people don't always feel like calling it out in the moment makes a difference, they're not backed up by other members in the vc.
• Issues that are more complex (Like involve two long standing users of vc) are frustrating to raise and feels like a big process not worth starting.

Some of this can be addressed by adding more people who have powers in voice chat to handle things.
Some can be addressed by changes in policy/process. (We're voting right now to change the server rules to make it so joining VC you consent to being recorded for the purposes of moderation and accept you may not be informed of being recorded at the time... wording subject to change)
A good portion of this will be helped by people reporting what they hear more often and doing so consistently so we get a better picture of what's happening and how often.

Handling new users causing issues I think will be naturally accounted for by changes in processes related to handling the more challenging issues.

[plush canyon]

Any why exactly do I need to consent to being recorded

[glossy spire]

so that it's explicitly clear that any user in VC is permitted to record at any time in order to document a situation for the moderation team

[plush canyon]

This seems silly to me

I don't think any other discord does this

[glossy spire]

shrugs well, we intend to do things properly

[cyan robin]

We keep hearing a lot of "I don't think any other discord does this" yet very little about what other discords are actually doing to stop the issue we have.

[plush canyon]

Implement VC moderators

Take chill zone the largest discord server ever (iirc) it has a VERY active VC community, yet it's highly regulated because VC moderators

[glossy spire]

as Olivia noted above, we are also doing that

[plush canyon]

Yet they don't have a "consent to recording" afaik

[glossy spire]

well, here's the thing: we can't prevent users from recording in VC, anyway; but we can inform everyone joining VC that it's a possibility that such recordings may be taken, and that they may be used for moderation purposes

[gilded warren]

You might as well ask "Why do I need the right of consent"
Because you and everyone else here should have a right to provide or revoke your consent.
I believe there is a good reason why 2 party consent is so common and I see no reason why we should not have such a thing here as well.

Perhaps you want to have a conversation about how much you dislike me. What if someone records that without your consent and tries to get me to ban you using that recording? I'm sure it wouldn't be to hard to bait someone into breaking Rule 1 when discussing their dislike of another person, especially a moderator they're having frictions with.

By amending the welcome-rules of the community we're making it clear to everyone in the server that by joining a voice call in this server you consent to being recorded automatically.

I'm not seeing the big deal since it's basically what some of you have been asking to be allowed to do anyway. We're just formalising it.

Also, the largest discord server currently is Midjounry with almost 21M members.

[sullen crown]

I personally don't see a problem with making it clear that you are consenting to be recorded via joining VC

Dozens of large servers do that already

And there is the argument that hundreds/thousands don't do it, yet that's a double standard, not everything will do the same as everyone else

[fiery wyvern]

I don’t think that how many servers do it is gonna be on the list of concerns

[gilded warren]

Well.. If there are servers people think we should go talk to about how they manage things I'm happy to hear. (Though I'm very time poor right now so that might take time)
But otherwise what matters most is that we do things properly, whatever we decide that means. In this specific case that means making sure people are aware of what they are consenting to.

[loud thicket]

i mean shit i dont mind being ya crackhead envoy

[gilded warren]

It's something that I'd want one of the moderators to do since they're the ones who have to implement the changes and understand if from our side.
Thank you for the offer though

[stuck yew]

mildly offtopic here, but would you ever consider adding a streamer chat or two?

I've left vc more than once because someone was streaming to something like twitch, and not notifying anyone in vc they were recording to a third party service. I'm "more okay" (emphasized because I still don't entirely know where to stand on recording itself) with recordings being used for moderation than my voice being on some stream and it getting clipped by someone in their chat.

streamer chats would be prioritized around people who are streaming the game, and you would always know that someone was recording in them.

[gilded warren]

hmm. I feel like even in a streamer chat you'd want to know more than just "I'm in this channel therefore someone could be streaming" right?

[stuck yew]

could have roles and permissions to allow the streamer role to set status in the chat to notify before coming in

[loud thicket]

i mean its a streamer chat so what about the people that have the live role and the content creator role being the access point

[stuck yew]

could do a collapsible hub style vc that you have to join with the streamer role

this chat would be locked to streamer role ^ (reference image pulled from another server)

[hard axle]

I’d love it if there was a ban on anyone under a certain age but there’s really no realistic way to enforce that rule

[loud thicket]

there is a way to do it but holy crap the legal loopholes for it are just not worth it

[sage laurel]

there are tons of discord that do this there rules is simple (clip or it didnt happen) cause to many people started to make false reports and mainly its a rp GTA V thing

but like its not really a legal thing because if im recording a conversation on discord to use in a report then it not violating any law as because most laws states that there has to be some real life identifiable for it to be law breaking example ip, location (eg.. address), real life legal name, a discord handled is not something the law covers cause its online.

[rigid pilot]

Not true. Aliases count as identifying information. Recording someone else is always going to be covered by the law, especially if that recording is happening in a public setting.

[glossy spire]

in any case, both the fact that there is no expectation of privacy in VCs and that we will require consent to recording when joining a VC should shield us from any issues

[plush canyon]

Factorio discord getting sued

[hard shore]

Yea I would much prefer audio reports of something happening, and not just heresay. Even if it means we must all consent to recordings, the alternative is... witchhunts based on heresay.

Non clipped reports that are backed up by multiple people should be 'somewhat' valid.. but prob not warranting of ban/perm punishment unless they are a repeat offender.

[gilded warren]

The main issue here is then you have the expectation of (at least in the perspective of this thread alone) minority people being burdened with always having to record any conversation they're in to prove what happened. Seems a touch unfair to me in a way if this is as frequent an issue as people here are describing.
It was the main reason that "Some channels with bots" was pitched at one point, to help remove burdening folks with setting up and maintaining recordings of VC (plus having an easy command to send a voice clip to the moderators). But it's been made pretty clear by people they're not interested in that hence the vote on the server rules change to make it easier to setup your own recordings.

[hard shore]

Yea, But I still feel that different punishments should have slightly different burdens of proof/collaboration by others.