The Guards - A calm discussion about existing issues.

Let me preface this by stating that this is not a thread about bashing the Guards in any way at all. The guards, in my personal experience, do a commendable job of policing the forums and in-game fairly and effectively as volunteers. They give their free time to improve the community of the game and for that they deserve high fives.

The real purpose of this thread is for me to get more information and perhaps give any assistance I can in improving the relations between the community and the guards. Perhaps this thread may even shed light on some issues if they exist.

I understand a thread already exists that covers the role of the KAG Guards in detail and I will be referencing however I decided that it would be more appropriate to discuss this in a new thread just in case some over zealous killjoys decide to jump in here and turn it into a Guard bashing circlejerk.

I think we all understand the main role of the guards, that is to police the forums from spam, flame wars and generally deteriorating into a dystopian digital cesspool. Their second main role would be to prevent large scale griefing and cheating within the game, arguably the most time consuming and important.

The first aspect I would like to discuss is Ban-Appeals. Currently if you are banned there is no way to fight your case in the event you get banned. I'll talk about a recent conflict I (without specific names or details) witnesses and why this is an unacceptable situation.

Person A decided to get Person B banned because they were upset with the way they spoke to them. Person A falsified reports to the guards and had Person B not been informed of this and been able to post their own counter evidence showing this Person B would have probably recieved a very large ban without any way to give their evidence because of the following reasons.

When you are banned you cannot access.
- The game KAG itself
- The Forums
- IRC

Literally all three places in which a KAG guard can be contacted are unavailable when you are banned giving you absolutely no recourse when there is a genuine dispute over a ban. The only way to appeal would be to break the rules and create an alternative account, essentially becoming a self fufilling prophecy. You have to break the rules to prove your innocence.

This situation is unacceptable and must be rectified.

Another issue I have seen that ties into the above case is that players who get upset over the way they have been treated despite behaving as bad or worse than the person they are upset with thus deciding to abuse the power of the mods in order to get someone banned. This situation is also unacceptable. I have only ever seen the KAG guards power for banning people for inappropriate conduct used to fuel personal conflict and not actually resolve issues. However I could be wrong, this is my personal experience from a few cases. Thus I want to raise the issue that perhaps Guards shouldn't get involved with in-game keyboard gangstering unless it happens over a long period of time and it is obvious that attempts to resolve the dispute without resorting to official reprimands are not working.

This I think is in part due to KAGs own failings, it does not give players a way to ignore players. Typically in online games the best course of dealing with this is without getting the moderators of the game involved at all and instead giving the players the tools to deal with it, namely an ignore feature. This helps prevent KAG Guards wasting their time and energy trying to play Whodunnit.This is feel is a more elegant solution to the problem as it also prevents hard feelings all around when people are throwing their E-peens in each others face.

I understand that typically moderators instantly close and delete topics of this nature, but I'm hoping that the Guards of this forum are more mature and able to accept open discussion with the community about improving the service they voluntarily provide. It can be very frustrating as a member of the community to see issues of this nature go unresolved and to see the moderators power abused. That I why I'm making this topic, not to bash the guards but to hopefully raise issues that I feel are genuinely negative effecting the community.

I hope the community and the guards can come together and decide on solutions for these problems if they truly exist in the case of abusing Guard power to fight a personal vendetta. The Ban Appeal process is a real issue that needs to be resolved.

Thank you for your time.

 

Don't know about issue 2.

Issue 1 I agree with but you made a mistake:

"When you are banned you cannot access.
- The game KAG itself
- The Forums
- IRC"

The last is not true. You can access #kag channel. You're only banned from #kag.ingame I presume. You just need to find a way to get on IRC and go in the #kag channel. However I also think since the ban appeals thread exists you shouldn't be banned from the forum at all. The only thing you should be banned from is the game itself. I haven't heard of anyone being banned permanently from the forum yet so even people who break forum rules won't have a problem using the forums, they'll just have to wait however long it is if they're banned on the forums then go to the ban appeals thread.

 

Thats the problem. You have to wait until your ban is over to give your evidence if you get banned before you defend yourself. It would be akin to putting someone in jail and holding the Trial after they served their sentence.

Ok, I made a mistake with IRC. Thank you for pointing that out.

Anecdotally I have seen issue 2 raised to be true, however as I think I said I could be wrong on the larger scale. I may not have seen data the reflects the opposite.

I do agree that you should only ever be banned from the game itself for conduct in-game.

Thank you for your reply.

 

It's funny to compare your profile picture and your essay in the first post :p

 

I mean that if someone got banned on the forums for spam or off-topic, basically something punitive on the forums they would have to wait. That's only fair considering they've done wrong on the forums. I highly doubt the forum guards would conveniently abuse their powers to get someone banned for some forum posts and then it just so happens a guard decides to do the same thing for the game. In that rare case, they could go on IRC and I don't think a second account would really be frowned upon. Unless people banned from the forums can still send pms to the moderator or something like that, but can't post or view anything *shrugs* that would be ideal.

 

It does not give players a way to ignore players.
Well in fact,it does but it will take a lot of time and is easily by-passable.
All servers have a White-list and a Black-list,while a black list would be easier to make then a white list,the griefer would just do whatever he always does create new account/change IP etc etc.
White-List on the other hand can make you recruit trusted people/People that haven't been known to grief.
But i don't think anyone has the time nor the will to base trough 85000 players just to create a white/black list.
And it still wouldn't make much sense to close this topic just for discussing the nature of some problems,at least the guards wont unless it gets out of hand and becomes a rage/useless/spam topic.
As for 'not bother with in game gangstering' thats just a big NO,GOD NO.
You know how many times i have to call a guard because my team doesn't know what 'Damn that guy is griefing kick him!' means?
Besides(speaking out of experience) they do a damn well job about giving the person charged a chance to speak against it,they even give him/her ANOTHER chance despite the fact they see what he did.(unless its something big)
And most of the times when i see KAG guards enter the game just for a bit of fun they almost always end up ruining their fun trying to figure out who griefed this or who went 'lulz i are spy i help enemy' mode instead of playing the game.
1+ Interwebs to them, i wouldn't be able to keep my temper while trying to have a good time and it gets ruined.

 

When I said I don't know about issue 2, that also doesn't mean I think it would be bad to have an ignore feature. That would be great for players. At the very least, some kind of mute feature or something. I don't think players should be allowed to ignore moderators though.

 

You are talking about server bans and white lists. I'm talking about giving the players the power to resolve disputes by ignoring players. Thus preventing manipulating the guards into banning someone unfairly just because you had a disagreement and argument in-game.

You have completely missed the point of what I said and that is evident in your response, until you read the thread again correctly I shall not dignify your pretty low par post with a real response.

Thanks Shad. Along with the ignore feature the ability to report players for single instance verbal conflict should be removed. Only bans for repeated harrasment or stalking should be handed out. It just doesn't make sense to ban someone for something someone can easily ignore them for, unless they are being dicks to a lot of people at once.

Fair enough.

 

No,i'm not missing the point.
The blacklist is a way for people(server owners) to ignore people, it would be near impossible(if not impossible) to make people avoid other people.
I don't see any possible way to make it like that, this isn't some MMORPG where someone in a game can basically be ignored/turned invisible just because you don't like him/her.
His/her actions still have their consequences.
Also lets say that the person has made more then one enemy in the same timezone and likes to play in the same server as you, what would you do then?
If you host a server that is populated quite a lot by people (example:Beo's CTF server) then you could basically make sure that guy never puts a step into it, thus making him ignore it.
If you are talking about a mute, what if he says something useful like 'tunnel' or tries to give good orders and/or correct your mistakes?
Then you would basically be put in a situation as the guilty one for not listening to his information, example:
Person A: Ignores B.
Person B: Dude,don't make a door there it would be better as a tower.
Person A: *ignore*
Person B: DUDE SERIOUSLY WTH.
Crowd: Facepalm.
And you say 'allow the keyboard gangstering to an extent'.
If you do that you are only wasting a spot of the server, KAG isn't a chat room for people its a team game and the said persons are only ruining the actions they could have made.
And as i said previously,guards aren't dumb enough to get manipulated by everyone so easily.
They want solid evidence.(And i hope you know that people like Shadlington handle the bans, not guards permabans at least).
And if you really hate someone, you can just leave or wait until he leaves.
But i do agree that it IS hard to make an ban appeal if you get banned from the stuff you stated.
What im NOT agreeing is with the fact that guards will believe in made up reports,
TL;DR.
Its impossible to make an ignore list in a game like this,unless you are hosting your own server.
Its not wise to allow guards to allow keyboard gangstering, just wasting spots for potential players.
I agree with the fact that the ban appeal should be very hard if its under circumstances you said.
I did read trough that wall of text,even though it may not look like it i hope you read trough all of this as well as you seem to think I've missed the point that the game lacks an ignore feature and ban appeals are hard to create.
And as beef said its a useful skill to develop, I'm not the best at it but maybe you and the rest can become better at it and ignore jerks.X3

 

Ignore list is impossible and not wise, you can ignore them anyway which is wiser.
At least ignore the dumb things he says and read the useful ones,a list to keep on who you hate isn't exactly needed.(i hope i make it a bit clear)
Because of the situation i stated its not wise to make his words not appear.
If you are talking about a mute, what if he says something useful like 'tunnel' or tries to give good orders and/or correct your mistakes?
Then you would basically be put in a situation as the guilty one for not listening to his information, example:
Person A: Ignores B.
Person B: Dude,don't make a door there it would be better as a tower.
Person A: *ignore*
Person B: DUDE SERIOUSLY WTH.
Crowd: Facepalm.

 

Who cares? If someone is worth ignoring then they clearly have little to nothing useful to say. If you're ignoring people for the hell of it then you're likely to not make any friends or screw up your team. If you're that kind of person you're probably crap anyway. Let people who are mature have the option to ignore people at the least!

 

Just my 2 cent, the good willed person might actually screw himself over a few words he didn't see while trying to do what everyone is doing.
Staying out of trouble and ignore the average jerk.
And wouldn't the guy that hates you(and the guy who is being ignored) take an advantage that you cannot see his words and make you look like someone useless to the team?
Like, griefing something and then saying it to you and you not seeing it.(and lots of other ways)
From what I've seen griefers like to keep silent until they get kicked, and I've also seen people kick just because the other guy said 'omg griefer [insert name]'.

 

I doubt a good willed person would screw himself over by ignoring a jerk, because they are ignoring a jerk..

As for your concern about ignored people griefing the ones doing the ignoring, again, who cares? The person doing the ignoring is unaffected by anything they say. If they are made to look useless to the rest of the team they can make their bid once the team actually believe that idiot and start talking as well.

Generally you only ignore someone when all they do is spout shit. It sounds like you've never seen it effectively used before.

 

Yes,you ignore people when all they spout is shit.
But there's also the moment when people both spout shit most of the time but also have their 'glorious moments' and it would be hard to help him then.
BUT if he will still see your smileys and the phrases trough the 'commands' button then it will be another case.
And since ignoring someone is purely optional it could be added,but i think it will make some games harder/more annoying to play.

 

I honestly don't care for a single "glorious" moment of some guy I ignored. Also, I honestly doubt someone going "FUK U U GAY I BUILD DIS" or "OMG DONT PLAY AS KNIGHT NUB" is going to come up with anything noteworthy. In order for me to regret it he'd have to write a novel for me.

 

Haha, you got me.
You gave your thoughts and i gave mine, now ill wait to see what other people think of the idea.

 

You two are discussing the semantics of an ignore feature, and thus having a discussion that bears less and less relevance to what this thread's actually about as time goes on; flawed customer support and hasty, misguided actions from our resident guards and administrators.

I have little to say on the raised issues publicly, but know that this thread, open letter as it is, will be heavily moderated to keep things productive and on track. I would appreciate cooperation such that action is not necessary, but I suppose that's what I'm here for regardless.