Like this idea, especially on the forums (agree with sze and odin).
Also, someone make a uservoice for more uservoice votes :P

Edit: page 3, forever alone :'(

Edited 3/13/2015 03:49:46

So if you get an M rating your can't join tournaments, ladders or post on the forums? That's basically a soft ban.

few concerns and few ideas:-

1.if a friend of mine gets the M tag but i don't think of him as an offender,how will he be able to join my E games?(i don't want other M players to join,and i don't want to ask my frind if he's online and invite him each time)
sloution-along with having the option of allowing all M players to join my game,i'd like to customize that list for my personal account(which won't change their global M status ofc)

2.is the M tag permanent?
i suggest 1-2 week ban for 1st time offender and 1-2 month ban for 2nd time offender and it goes on increasing

3.will some clans or community misuse this system and provoke someone and then report them for wrong behavior?(consider poonsquad for instance)
can't find any solution for this,unless some other un-biased committee is made from some volunteers/selected players each day to check on what really happened

I like the idea. It's not perfect yet, but nothing is perfect from the very beginning, even Warlight itself isn't. But it's a nice step in the right direction. I would love to see how it will exacly work out when it is introduced and how it developes from there on.

What about posting on forums as an 'm'?

I think WarLight needs to start verifying emails for account creation now and set an age limit for players joining the game. While this doesnt get rid of garbage, it does lower the ammount of troll accounts and young players.

How does verifying email address have any bearing on the issue? Sure, it would slow the trolls and alt-accounts a bit but only a little bit. There is still no age verifications aspect to it so that is completely moot.

And you also misunderstand the purpose of the M label. It has nothing to do with player ages but is instead focused on what they are willing to see/deal with. Just because you have to be 18+ (in the US) to take money from the coin games (you can still play them as a minor) doesn't mean you want to deal with the obscenities

or people could just be aware of obscene images and language

using blacklist is a good way to manage these kinds of things already+ people already know who has bad reputation for trolling... the things we only need are heavy filters for the forum and more filters for the games

P.S. maybe Fizzer or Mercer will read every forum posts before allowing them to be shown on the public?

Edited 3/13/2015 14:41:03

@HankyPinky

1) I don't see games as much of an issue. On top of that, blacklisting works well enough and accomplishes the same thing.

Please don't take offense, I mean this as a respectful rebuttal: I do see open games as a huge issue, take a look at the link to the game I posted. No, blacklisting doesn't work to prevent those games/players/clans from appearing on my open games list, doesn't accomplish the same thing at all. If it did, I would be satisfied with that as a solution.

The reason I feel this is an important issue is that, according to the Warlight Terms of Service, I think the intention is for this game to be "family friendly" -- and if it weren't for an increasing number of potty-mouth players (who seem perfectly happy to ignore the Terms of Service), it still would be very family-friendly, more so than many online games. If the Warlight admins want to be lenient about banning such folks over their violations, I understand and appreciate that too. I don't intend to be hard-nosed about them, and I think we can all still get along -- but I really appreciate the admins for considering solutions that would allow me to shield myself and my children from this rising tide of smut. Okay, stepping down from my soapbox now.

@Alcarmacil, I think it would solve the problem if games created by blacklisted members didn't show up in your open games, though. I think blacklisting can solve the problem, but it needs to remove the players more fully from your experience.

If your blacklisted members' open games didn't appear in the Open Games list, their forum threads didn't appear for you, and their forum posts were hidden in a similar manner to how they are currently hidden in in-game chat, that would go a long way to solving the problem.

Every time I browse the forums, I add on average 2 more players to my blacklist. Blacklisting doesn't work if new players (or better: alts) just pop up again and again. The game Alcarmacil linked to was created by an alt (someone level 1), so blacklisting wouldn't solve that either.

(As a side note, blacklisted players can still invite you to a clan, which was claimed to be impossible as well.)

Blacklisting is not effective, nor efficient for the player, nor will it ever be (although it still could use some improvements).


Other than that, I do agree with what several people said before: creating this kind of M and E players is basically a soft ban and wouldn't work. Any troll assigned an M will just return with a clean "E" alt. (Also: don't call it "M" please, that letter should be reserved for members, it's about the only advantage they have left.)

A possible solution: rather than assigning this to players, it could be assigned only to games and forum topics (clearly indicated). Users can indicate that they don't want to see games with a certain adult rating. Every player can join every game, but when a game has a certain rating, they should keep to it, end of story. Flaming, cursing and inappropriate language in an so-called "E" games or topic could and should be penalised more strictly and it would certainly help against most of the trolls and hopefully keep the forums somewhat clean.

Additionally, some "jokes" and "language" should still warrant a suspension or ban even in "M" topics, I've seen insults and racism here that are punishable by law in my country (and there are very few exceptions to freedom of speech in my country), no "M" tag justifies that.

Edited 3/13/2015 16:06:19

@Beren Erchamion

Exactly! That's something I've pointed out before, and if that modification were made, it would do the job to my satisfaction. I can still see merit to the current proposal, so that, with a particularly problematic user, it isn't necessary for other users to have to manually blacklist, after already having been exposed to their smut... but I'd really be happy with either or both of these solutions.

btw, love the handle

MathWolf makes some very good points as well and he's right about the shortcomings of the M/E system or even blacklisting.

I'm easy to please -- I'd be willing to keep re-blacklisting alts, as long as it took them off of my open games list.

However, given the alt issue raised by MathWolf, it seems to me the M/E review panel would be too cumbersome to deal with someone who just creates an alt every time they get assigned to the naughty list.

Ehm people, I see a lot of posts on here about "18+ content". Fizzer or Mercer, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that, even under the new system, having pornographic images for an avatar is going to be allowed.

There is a huge "grey area" for the meaning of "appropriate"; if an opponent moves his huge stack of armies around your defences because you overlooked a connection, a simple "Oh shit, I didn't see that! :(" could already offend some people. Using different "four letter words" the vulgarity can be increased, well, basically as much as you want, until at some point practically everybody will take issue with it.

Splitting into "E" and "M" would allow a "zero tolerance" policy on E games, while allowing (considerably?) more leniency for M games (but still no "everything goes"!). Also, please read the proposal carefully, just because you've enabled seeing M games, does not automatically mark your account as M. This means that people who aren't easily offended and might even swear "where permitted", but are capable of restraining themselves when it's the proper thing to do (when playing in an E game) would retain the E rating on their accounts. Don't think of "E rating" as "never says a bad thing" but as "ability to not say bad things, when that would be inappropriate".

---

Regarding the "three strikes" rule: I would be in favour of not putting a hard cap on the number of reviews, but having (increasingly long) intervals between reviews. After your first (final; after-appeal, if applicable) being marked as M, let's say you can apply for being reinstated as E after three months. After being marked as M for the second time, you can apply for being reinstated as E after six months (maybe with some extra time penalty if you were marked M soon after becoming E? maybe six months after becoming M and a year after your return to E?). Any further marks will not even be eligible for reversal until a year after the infraction. (Note that this is the time where players are allowed to even request their punishment be lifted. I don't think there should be a time after which it is guaranteed to be lifted; if they can't show their manners have improved, they can stay M indefinitely, in my opinion.)

Regarding the use of words like "punishment":

Keep in mind that a few/some/many (??) players will be perfectly happy with their M ratings! "Ah, finally got rid of people nagging about my vocabulary, good riddance those whiners!" or something to that effect.

I'd be in favour of having three choices for accounts:

• "E, don't show M"
  
• "E, also show M"
  
• "M"
  

which players (initially!) can freely switch between. "Marking an account as M" would then mean disallowing the first two choices. If more than two levels are chosen ("zero tolerance", "don't overdo it" and "raging allowed"), this scheme would generalise rather straightforwardly to allow that.

Players who know of themselves to have a short temper could voluntarily switch to "M", but retain the option to instantly (and without need for admin approval) switch back to "E" if they so choose. For instance, to start playing in the ladder, which they might not have been interested in earlier. If you're normally a polite person but are in a foul mood (your dog died, your girlfriend left you and your boss fired you), switch to "M" for a while, vent some frustration without the risk of minors or more sensitive people having to see it, then switch back to "E" when you're feeling better again.

---

TL;DR:

"Rating an account as M" should not be viewed as simply "punishment", because:

• Some people might actually prefer it that way.
  
• It's something players might want to enable voluntarily / temporarily.
  

Edited 3/13/2015 17:53:18

If someone's name/pic/clan icon is offensive or vulgar

Hmm I wonder who this was pointed to??????

no awful idea there is nothing wrong with the people now, if you try to enforce rules it will only make people worse

+1 Math Wolf and Odin

If you are going to ban "M" players from "E" games, at least don't screw up the ladder. This could be done by not applying that rule to ladder games, or disabling chat in ladder games, which I heavily oppose because I like discussing strategy after I lose.

But the game/tournament maker should have some choice about the players going in. If a tournament is "M" or "E" only - so be it. Tournaments die unless they are filled within a day anyways.

@Alcarmacil, I think it would solve the problem if games created by blacklisted members didn't show up in your open games, though. I think blacklisting can solve the problem, but it needs to remove the players more fully from your experience.

If your blacklisted members' open games didn't appear in the Open Games list, their forum threads didn't appear for you, and their forum posts were hidden in a similar manner to how they are currently hidden in in-game chat, that would go a long way to solving the problem.

BL already hides open games created by blacklisted players. I think all we need is for there to be a similar blacklisting forum comments thing, so people don't have to listen to idiots (which several people have already said). But then again... if that happens... no-one would have read this comment...

As someone who's worked for different game projects as a community manager, I don't really see this as a solution. Quite frankly you need to take responsibility and create a mod or tribunal system that will figure out what determines someone as toxic or non-toxic to the community. You just need to warn toxic people to stop, and if they don't to ban them or give them inconveniences. I remember one of the most successful punishments I've ever given was rather simple. If a player had an inappropriate name or avatar, I would change their name to 'Pink Bunny ____' or change their avatar to a pink bunny for a set amount of days. This made them immediately change and I don't remember ever having to deal with those people setting inappropriate names or avatars again. It was an immediate punishment which was publicly embarrassing and straight to the point.

There are ways to handle toxic players of a community that don't involve content ratings. Look at any game with a large community and you will find a tribunal system or moderator system that finds creative ways to punish people that will immediately correct their behavior or make them leave. Warlight is no different and needs to seek these methods.