Reputation Filter for Lobby

[leaden sable]

Keeping it simple: mods remove points from player's name for ea moderation action. Start with 100.

Lobbies have a min reputation level: 90 (anyone with 10 mod actions against them can't play but can spec).

Have points decay over time or something.

But the main goal is to have people who suck, and insist on sucking, play with other like minded folks.

[ashen robin]

I think the 98 lobbies would be plenty spicy enough for me.

[lapis warren]

Is this really an issue?
I would say there are very few people with 10 mod actions against them and most of them are already perma-banned.

[sacred veldt]

The only type of people affected are banned users with those numbers
Yep would definitely be on that list of banned users with a karma of around 70ish…I think

[frozen totem]

Like a social credit ? Hell no. There is already not legitimate quick & dirty moderation actions, furthermore rehabilitation arc should be incentive, not gatekeeped by arbitrary number than mean nothing. If someone did bad things to you, just AVOID HIM, or BLOCK HIM, or MUTE HIM, the balance algo will put him in other team. If he is really naughty, launch kb vote in lobby. I mean there is already all tools to deal with it, don't need authoritarian bullshit system used in some country..

[leaden sable]

Please keep in mind that “10” is an arbitrary number. Frankly, it doesn’t even need to be this granular for the community to use. A simple aggregate like “good” “average” “poor” community standing backed up by the above mentioned points on the mod panel.

As far as need for this feature: I’m not going to get into name and shame here; but we can discuss in DM if you want use cases. Toxicity is a real issue for team games. The mod channel is -full- of mutes and login reminders. Many are repeat offenders and many are slight variations on the same theme. Mute for bullying, mute for harassment, warning for hate speech, etc. The “usual suspects” cycle through these warnings and mutes frequently.

I don’t want these players out of the community. An argument can be made for that. And that’s why perma-bans exist - but I’d like another step before getting there.

Players that don’t verbally explode on their team also say dumb, hurtful, offensive, and defensive shit. It’s the definition of bad sportsmanship. That kills the game. This isn’t a new idea either. Dota has a similar concept in action.

[leaden sable]

It’s not a ban. It’s a middle ground to that. Players not meeting the top tier community score (which there will be many) can still play with others in their bracket.

Spectating is a great way to interact with the community still and help rebuild opinion and be a net benefit. Maybe somebody could help with an appeal to speed things along if the decay is too slow.

[leaden sable]

Mod team has yet to do something I outright disagree with, but I have definitely questioned some decisions. The majority of those reversed on appeal. Just my opinion.

To your point, I think rehab is a much better path forward than a ban, which this feature would not be. But not everyone is ready for rehab. There are people that have deep personal issues… and they take those into the game. It’s neither our job nor our responsibility to foist upon them rehab. Frankly, even just confronting an asshole in game will make them worse. And all the while they’re spewing hate, they’re killing the vibe for everyone else. I’ve seen shit in main discord spiral out of control when normally chill people get in the same room with a douche.

None of the tools you mentioned in the game are useful for rehab. This feature request definitely would be.

More of an anecdote here but, playing games with people in the same os bracket, gets stale. And it only takes one bad apple to spoil a good time. I just want the “bad” apples to have their fun in a different lobby more suited to their level of social niceties. I’m not trying to yuck anyone’s yum here… but if you want to be a dick, please by all means - just do so in another lobby.

If this were a better timeline we could confront, teach, self correct, and improve the community one ass at a time. But there is a critical mass, and voting isn’t helping.

[weak glen]

"I just want the “bad” apples to have their fun in a different lobby more suited to their level of social niceties."
We don't have the player base for this.

There have been months in a row were the lobby I prefer to play in higher/to mid tier rotato did not happen in my time zone. The people I had on my mute/avoid list would be unable to play the lobby, and it would cause the lobby to die, and back then I advocated for them to be able to play. I am doing that again now. The issue with player count is it hard to get a sense of who is missing and why.[ The prior context was abusing the boss system to stealth ban people from a lobby without notifying anyone in the lobby, or the player who was being stealth banned.]

Also one of the current issues is that noob lobbies have proliferated to the point at which in many time zones if you are above 25 os you are locked out of playing in except maybe 3 lobbies tops.

Overall this moderation action is kind of like mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines in the US, or three strikes laws. In that case if your 3rd crime is stealing a loaf of bread you could end up with 20 years of jail time. It removes agency from the Judge to make the punishment fit the crime, and I think this would do the same.

If the proposal is to have some time of probational period after a ban, then sure that makes sense, but still requires some careful craftsmanship to ensure a just application that isn't biased, or very time consuming for the moderation team.

TL;DR, Oddly when you think about banning or removing people from the player pool in some sense punishes the people who are not banned by removing their ability to play 8v8s, and given that more care should be given to not causing the greater community harm.

[leaden sable]

Thank you for the thoughtful input.

Perhaps a more useful feature down the road. Though I would still advocate developing it and implementing (though disabled) in the near term. Let the community know that it exists and will eventually be turned on will help the transition process.

[pliant coyote]

This is partially true. But in the case of things like the op rotato lobby, there were a large number of players who were actively avoiding that lobby due to some of the players who played in it.

In such a case, weeding out the unpleasant players would result in having an actually more consistent lobby, as more players would join it and not be put off by the players already in it.

I very much feel that not having this kind of lobby moderation system actually leads to community harm, by allowing a few bad actors to drive away the majority that you do want to have around.

Basically, why try to keep in the 3 or 4 people this would remove, when they are preventing who knows how many more people from joining?

[safe bronze]

+1 that a system like this is needed, but maybe less strict than lobby segregation

it should probably aim to incentivize good behavior rather than punish it, which also works towards the argument of player base size

from where I sit, the playerbase problem is an issue on how well it can be implemented though - because people are unlikely to forget; making it difficult to "rehabilitate"

not to mention how you deal with players voting "bad" when they just played bad

[pliant coyote]

it wasnt a voting thing, its literally actual moderation actions, not player voting

[weak glen]

The core design that I would like is that of transparency. Currently, if someone i know who is toxic isn't playing, I can go look them up see why they got moderated, and make choices based on it. This proposal doesn't naturally violate that design.

I see your point regarding people avoid lobbies due to toxic people, I am not involved enough in social off shoots of the bar community to have an well founded intuition about the size of that effect. I really think there is something odd here to be careful about. We can both tell these plausible sounding stories about why a lobby isnt being filled. Too many toxic people play, vs regulars are a sort cornerstone that make lobbies happen.

What I have seen is just waiting around on weekends in a lobby of 14ppl for 2 more to join for 20-30mins, or god forbid trying to seed your own lobby.

Also, fyi we already have this point system for moderation actions in the lobby system. I believe you can tell who has had moderation actions and taken against them and the amount by using the !status function while people are in the lobby but not in game. I could be wrong about this or misinterpreting something, I just realized this while mucking around with the feature.

[pliant coyote]

It's hard to know the exact number of course, but I have talked to probably at least 10 or so different people that say they didn't join x lobby (not just op rotato) because some of the regulars are sufficiently unpleasant. I have to assume there's a great deal more than that.

And yeah, you don't know how many of them would be the kind of players that you'd want to play with or would stick around, but it's worth finding out imo

For the current system you're talking about, assuming it works like you say which I have no idea about, it doesn't really do much if you have to look at every person and manually remove them.

Just like we have min chev and minrating, having minrep seems like a useful tool as well, for much the same reasons. Yeah, you could manually boot every 2 chev from the game, but its needlessly confrontational when you can just prevent them joining in the first place.

[weak glen]

I have low trust in people being fair minded on the interwebs, but I guess if people destroy lobbies by senting aggressive mins they would eventually learn not to.

With respect to the status function, it just shows that we already have something like this coded, and the act of adding a minrep isnt a big project. I am not saying use !status, and manual kicking as a solution.

[pliant coyote]

Generally I would say if you set it to something like <5 moderation actions you aren't going to kick out any people you want to keep around. And yeah, if lobbies die because of it.... well, lobbies die all the time, and you just make a new one. People will learn.

Yeah, that makes sense, seems like functionality should be fairly easy to implement then, if it's as you say it is.

[leaden sable]

Heard, and agree with much. Seeding lobbies is very difficult. Low user count is definitely a boulder size contributor. Getting into a desired match is also difficult. New lobby and match making should help quite a lot get the needed players where they’re wanted.

There is already a lot of variety to slice up the game lobbies. I think it’s likely that adding too many of those, especially at a higher point in the possible divisions, is a problem. But with that said: In my opinion, having fun/good games, is more important than quantity of games, and interfacing with fewer toxic elements is more important still.

[leaden sable]

In rewarding positivity: Are you suggesting a kudo or upvote type system with Min x amount of upvotes to play?

[frozen totem]

"This feature request definitely would be." => NO. Rehab arc need to explain what is wrong about the behavior of someone with common rule (COC), what you suggest is hard exclude people based on their supposed reputation with a "social credit" based on "not always" legitimate mods actions

[pliant coyote]

'Not always' is doing a huge amount of work there.

You have to be pretty consistently awful to manage to accrue multiple moderation actions. Even if some of them aren't 'legitimate', if you have say, 7+ actions against you, a good few of them will be legitimate.

It's really not that hard to not get moderated. I've been playing for over 3 years and the one and only action I got was at my own request. If moderation was as bad as you're trying to make it out to be, that wouldn't be the case.

Just don't be an asshole, and you won't get moderated, it's pretty simple.

[stone wolf]

I'd like to add to this. Read the CoC and won't get moderated.

[pliant coyote]

I haven't even read the CoC tbh.

It seems pretty obvious. Don't insult people, don't rage at them, don't grief them. Everyone knows what those cover, they just think they can get away with it anyway.

Don't be surprised that if you try to skirt the edges of that that you get moderated.

If you're saying 'well, if I say this I'm breaking CoC, but if I nearly say it I'm not' then at some point you're going to mess it up and get moderated.

[narrow bolt]

you can be pretty awful without getting coc modded, just be passive aggressive or scummy instead. It's just a measure of how directly aggressive and toxic you've been.

The danger with a reputation system is moderation basically turning into a soft ban already

and people treating others as second class citizens just for having moderation actions. When there's a shortcut on how to treat others that doesn't require judgement people are quick to take it

How many avoids are need to prevent someone from joining the lobby? Maybe that system can improved. Perhaps reduce the threshold from 8 to 7/16 players

[stone wolf]

I'm mostly talking about the frequent I-didn't-know-you-weren't-allowed-to-do-that sort of things. Not wishing IRL harm on your opponents is obvious common knowledge. Things like not using self-D to end a game, not d-gunning your team-mates (even if they started it), not spoiling the game state as spec (even if the game is "over"), not making a second account, etc. Those sorts of things.

[pliant coyote]

All of those other than the 2nd account thing are fairly obviously unpleasant/assholish things to do, people just think they can get away with it because being an asshole doesn't always have consequences. The second account is the only one that's not clearly out of line.

[frozen totem]

You clearly underestimate the malicious intent by some gamers who bait someone to report him. Then some mods take quick & dirty judgment without context (inside & outside the game) or contradictory version and you end with non legitimate punishment which the delay of the appeal is same time as the punishment time, so you give up. If after that you are gatekeeped from lobby, then it end with same abuse when 1 boss could silent hard block you from lobby before (happen to me by someone who arbitrary decided to take a malicious revenge on me). You just kill the game like that.

[leaden sable]

I’d second this, except avoids encapsulate both “unskilled” players and it’s totally mob rule.

[leaden sable]

A lot of the concerns here, such as: soft bans and the imposed restrictions being multiplicative are valid concerns. Your point is also valid.

Being rude has a cost. Don’t want to pay it, take the time to be nice.

If you don’t care, and/or want to be rude… this suggestion is a way to keep people playing. They’ll just be playing with other like minded folks. Which in my opinion waylays the aforementioned soft bans or multiplication of punishment. We’re creating a space for people, rather than kick banning them.

[pliant coyote]

'Bait someone to report him'? Are you saying that people are mean to you, and you have no choice but to break CoC in response?

I mean, there's an easy solution. Report the people baiting, and don't break CoC?

Seems like that would fix the problem to me.

If you're saying that this hypothetical person didn't break CoC and then still got banned, then sure, that's a thing to argue about, and absolutely I would want to know about such things.

But so far, every single time I've seen someone complain about unfair bans, when people look at the replays it's revealed that it was completely deserved.

Always amusing when people think emoji's can replace a real argument.

[dire coral]

I also strongly advise against implementing any kind of 'points' system based on behavior. Like fightwar said, we don't need a 'social credits' system. And, as Happiness just said, mods review replays and figure out fault. Sometimes, people just get things wrong, emotions run high, and details are missed. There's no reason to make a special punishment, here.

[narrow bolt]

you scoff at it but i've seen it happen from multiple groups of people
it's not the reason most people get banned, but since coc is pretty wide reaching and mods only see what you report there's always some people who will try and weaponize reports.

There's plenty of shit talk that could be considered coc but don't get modded cause it's not reported, or doesn't have one of those 'bad keywords'

[pliant coyote]

So far, I haven't seen a single instance of people claiming false moderation where I didn't agree with the moderation action

And yes, the report system could be improved, as it tends to involve jumping through too many hoops

[narrow bolt]

yeh I think large majority of mod reports are justified

if you lower avoids required to 7, then when a player is so bad you don't want to play with them, just talk to lobby and convince people to avoid that person
it's unlikely that they will be perma blocked from the lobby but they will be for the people who want to avoid them the most

[pliant coyote]

This wouldn't be terrible either, although I would prefer to tie removing people from lobby to something tangible like actual mod actions as opposed to simply a popularity contest.

Avoids would also need to be more easily accessible, as it stands it's a massive PITA to actually avoid someone, and I suspect a majority of players aren't even aware that anything more than block/mute exists.

[narrow bolt]

maybe that person is less toxic with other groups of players -- the fact that straits lobbies hates them shouldn't make them automatically social pointed for the glitters lobby, for example

[narrow bolt]

people use avoid right now just to avoid inflated os people
that could have some unintended consequences cause you don't want those votes counting towards lobby ban

[pliant coyote]

Some people use it for that, yes.

It's another reason I would prefer not to tie something like this to avoids.

As you said, unintended consequences.

Generally, if someone has say, 10+ mod actions for abusive language, generally everyone in the lobby agrees they are unpleasant to play with. They just may not quite care enough to actually kickban them every 15 minutes.

[leaden sable]

You’re absolutely right. Some players trigger others to act out. It’s almost like there should be a separate lobby for them. They should still get to play just like everyone else. But if they’re going to keep being toxic they shouldn’t be forced on players who aren’t.

[leaden sable]

The intent, I may have not communicated well, is that the point system, or whatever form it takes, is mod controlled. It just piggy backs on the existing system to help the community play, by choice, with more integrity or less if they choose.

[rapid dew]

I will try to make a reply as this really fires me up and I care for both sides and the topic is important for the community as whole.
Don't mind me if you think it's offtopic. You guys are doing well.
I can see how it would feel effective and useful for all players if there was a global feature that makes people fear that their behavior has consequences and makes sure they get treated thereafter. This would indeed communicate directly, point to, and make prevention that people stop griefing themselves by getting triggered by others and getting griefed by others in such a way that it breaks CoC.

I'm fairly certain that the problem of toxicity has many solutions, so I just want to make an addition to this without taking anything away from what has already been said.
I think several lobby tool designs could be used and combined; it takes the toxic levels down a notch and creates a better attitude generally.

If this was a project to end all toxicity, I would say that the first step is understanding that it is validating that people get frustrated and feel hurt.
It only gets problematic in the relationship to others when we REACT to our emotions.
So when you get attacked by anyone, you have to stay focused and not react back. That is how the cycle stops. There needs to be more accessibility for this information in my personal opinion.
Could it, besides having a lobby social rating of sorts, be of interest to give the choice to the player themselves to have easy access to a tool shaped in a way that's easy to use and understand that gives them control?
Maybe it would act as one of several delaying efforts before someone would lose this social rating, resulting in a ban.
Perhaps a 🔈 marker where you can choose yourself if you are fed up with someone but still want to play the game found in the lobby to the left of a player's name and rank🔇.
This mute would mute both ways so you can't trigger each other anymore. Strengthening and enforcing the mute function.

Other small tools could be:
-A person who gets a warning gets a CoC verification window the next time they start their game.
-If you know you are having a bad day, go easy on yourself and disable chat (social chat, not lobby commands).
-If you are brave, communicate to others you want to play but focus on your own game before you do this, or could it be a automatic message if you have chat muted that if you go into a lobby this pops up as an automatic message?
-Maybe try this anyway with the people you like to play with but also don't want to hurt at times?
-Making the chat window to the right smaller and adding emotional skills reminders in between as pinpointers to how you can take care of yourself and the community.
-Have a mental health focused(no education needed, but passion and understanding for people's wellbeing) mod offer pedagogical vc chats with people in risk of getting banned what they need to change in order to not recive the perma ban. Ask what they like about the game and if they want to continue play at all(here could be found resources of future prevention meassures?).
-If someone has gotten a warning, make them only able to write a message every 1-5min, they might get time enough to form thoughts and constructive feedback if given time. This could maybe help to form less abusive behaviour?
(I can come up with more too, but what I'm saying is that it's an important topic and maybe we can find many ways. Some more available for the developers too. )

[viral lake]

I think its a great idea and I even found a proper name for it.
We should call it social credit to demonstrate how players are behaving in the game. It should start at a fixed number (could be 100) then it would decrease with moderation actions and increase if you report people who then get moderated for given offense.

I think it would make BAR great again!

[narrow bolt]

Really trying to create a dystopia, huh

[leaden sable]

I appreciate the thought-out feedback, and well constructed info/text. Cheers.

Very briefly, in my opinion any tools that help slow roll the jump to a ban are worth the time. Some of your outline is a bit too gentle and/or would interrupt game play too much.

I'd encourage you to make another suggestion thread, especially if this one gets flamed. But I'd like to focus more on hashing out iterations on this topic for now.

[leaden sable]

Not only is this unhelpful, but an inaccurate summary. I'm not sure what your goal is - but this underscores my point.

[leaden sable]

I'm attempting to outline a more equitable lobby option - not just round-robin boss or use mob mentality to enforce a minority opinion/whim on anyone who disagrees.

What I'm suggesting is a data driven and community set barrier to entry, the exact same as OS. Instead of wins or losses - we're measuring CoC violations. I'd really like you to contribute, because you have a mind for reasoning. I would request less agro and perhaps more congenial feedback. Ya, this is the internet - but we're a community.

Despite my opinion, I'm extending the same courtesy.

[weak glen]

This was a major issue for many players. One person would become the boss and avoid everyone they didn't like, thus locking out around 30 people from playing in the OP lobby. Glitters was like this for a while. The avoids were, as far as I could see, only really about not playing well enough for their os, and nothing to do with toxic behavior. This is part of the history of why so many commands were added so that one didn't need to be a boss to set up a lobby.

As for baiting, there is a long tradition of people IRL finding ways to be cruel and insufferable without breaking the law. It would not surprise me one bit that toxic people in BAR work together to piss off people they don't like without violating the Coc. For example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting). Any moderation system should take that as a given thing that will happen.

[leaden sable]

I can see the issue here I think. Hit me up if I'm wrong:

Groups can tip toe around CoC without individually violating CoC. Which would in effect circumvent any adjustment to their "reputation rating", because moderation isn't triggered.

If I'm understanding this correctly, it's a big problem that won't be fully addressed by a reputation filter; but it also isn't currently addressed at all.

I'd like to offer up the -hypothetical- that toxic groups are composed of people who may not have CoC violations, but soon will. If that is true, this reputation filter would be a good first step to dealing with this issue.

AI summary thus far for anyone catching up:

[frozen totem]

Please, stop use dumb AI and start to think by yourself. Last study suggest the more you use AI the less intel & cognitive capacity you have. You suggest a credit social, we know the pro & cons of it, and it is a HARD NO for this game

[ashen robin]

-1 social credit

[rapid dew]

It' is only a summary

[bright apex]

this makes 0 sense, if someone gets moderated he gets barred from playing. What's the point of this? People who suck don't get moderated, they are just bad at the game. People who are constantly toxic get moderated anyway.

[leaden sable]

Moderation actions can include a login ban for a set number of days. It can also include mutes, reminders, and warnings.

The goal is to aggregate those things into a reputation value to best match players with similar reputation together.

[leaden sable]

Hey man, we’re hearing you out and taking your opinions seriously. Why aren’t you doing the same?

[bright apex]

its sounds like you just want to send people to the gulag for saying mean words. this double moderation makes no sense at all. either someone did something bad and got banned for it or not. The moderation is often on case by case basis, how then u decide the amount of points moderator deduce? What stops host from just enabling either perfect score or you are out.

I don't think this solves anything, while adding extra work for the moderators. There will also be another point of conflict between player vs moderator (hey, why u deduced 10 points for this warning while others only got -5)

[leaden sable]

We’re not making a political prison. It’s not even a good analogy. Nothing is keeping them from appealing. Nothing stopping them from playing the game. They’re part of the community still and would be able to play games. I’m sounding like a broken record here

[bright apex]

you say:" Nothing stopping them from playing the game."
in your proposal: "Lobbies have a min reputation level: 90 (anyone with 10 mod actions against them can't play but can spec). "

[leaden sable]

You do raise a good point about consistency. Mods have a lot on their plate. It’s all subjective right now and while I think that adds a lot of flexibility to their actions… it seems like all the nay sayers here think the mods aren’t flexible enough or even just bad at their roles. I think that’s bullshit; but would you agree that moderators should have a rubric to apply reputation modifications consistently and equally? The community could even help define how severe.

[leaden sable]

That only means they can’t join that lobby. The same way low os can’t join pro, or 30 OS can’t join noob. Nobody is claiming they can’t play if they’re dealing with skill caps.

[bright apex]

the points have to be subjective as moderation is subjective. if someone is toxic 10th time in a row his punishment is more severe, which means the points have to be more severe too.

[leaden sable]

Yeah. I definitely would agree. I just don’t know how to make it always match up. Punishment has to fit the crime every time. I don’t know how to do that. Rubric is how dota handles it.

[fringe estuary]

Here's my take, as the community manager: this sort of reputation solutions sound good on paper but have a lot of very problematic aspects to them:

• A reputation number simplifies complex behaviours into a single value, while current moderation policy applies penalties that aim to best address the type of felony (within what's technically possible).
• Even harder to determine the moderability of gray-area situations when you need to weigh them and produce a discrete number. Does one use of slur amount to 3 griefing attempts? At minimum it's just making things more complicated to manage.
• You would think isolating all the nasty behaving players into one room is a good thing, I would argue it is the last thing you want to do to keep the community healthy. This sort of funneling creates bubbles of confirmation bias about the team and lead to much worse drama in the end. These players would just reinforce eachothers behaviour instead of stimulating some sort of redemption arc.
• Fragmenting the playerbase - can the good behaving players join their exiled buddies? If not, then these lobbies would be very stinky and probably most wouldnt play them. If yes, then there would be lobby wars, with toxic players trying to pull others into their room to play 8v8 and such.
• The "gamification" of behaviour incentivises preformative compliance instead of genuine reform.

We have a different system, separate from moderation, that might address some of the concerns I’m guessing you're trying to raise here: accolades, which are a peer-to-peer reputation system between players. It’s designed more to reinforce wholesome behavior rather than penalize toxic behavior. We may implement it in the new infrastructure/client.

[leaden sable]

Thank you for your time and feedback.

[reef bloom]

The game is already dead if you’re over 30 os. There’s not enough players. I’ve read the old threads about blocklist and it was cancer and not good for the game. This is no different.

[amber tangle]

I want my accolades

[zealous shale]

from my understanding of this, wouldnt it be very easy to get a couple of friends and give eachother accolades whenever you can

especially the ultra dedicated which are usually the worst