Give us the tools to help ourselves.
I have brought this up before, but I’m going to make a final formal plea.
The behavior and tenor of the online environment in AH had gotten worse and worse. The constant, mind-numbing whining and complaining, taunting, fit-throwing, excuse-making, FM postulating, quit-threatening BS has become almost unbearable.
It didn’t used to be this bad, and I don’t think it has to be. Give us the tool that will help us encourage each other to tone it down a bit.
We need a permanent squelch buffer.
There are two ways to maintain order in any community. Through laws (i.e. direct intervention by the authorities in this case HTC), or through “social pressure”.
Any community that tries too maintain order using strictly social means needs to utilize two of the most powerful behavioral modification tools societies have traditionally used. Shame, and Ostracization.
To be effective, I would think a permanent squelch list should provide at least the following features:
1. The squelch list must be persistent between user sessions and version upgrades.
2. An easy and convenient interface to add and remove individuals to the squelch list. Preferably with some kind of GUI, however, even a cfg file will suffice.
3. Statistics should be kept on how many players have a player squelched and that should become one of the statistics displayable from the scores page. Anyone at anytime can go a query the current “amazinhunk” ranking.
This would be a powerful social tool for our player community to shape its members behavior.
It helps quantify and display the community’s displeasure with an individual player. It’s there for all to see on the scores page at anytime. There are penalties for annoying the other players and those penalties are mercilessly visible for all to see. And ranked. Might be interesting for squadrons to be able to query to scores page to see how applicants for membership have behaved in the past.
Shame.
What is the one thing a problem child craves most? Attention. Nothing will annoy the whiners more than knowing that no one is listening anymore. Not just that they are rolling their eyes and willing themselves not to reply, but that the text isn’t even making it to their buffer. Turn their mic off. Remove their forum. Make them irrelevant. They can pout and rant and taunt and whine and throw fits all they want but the words fall into a vacuum. Their audience has turned their collective back.
Ostracization.
I understand the arguments that HTC might have against this. I understand that their goal is to promote social interaction between players in order to foster community and they don’t like the idea of players permanently cutting comm lines. However, by not providing a permanent squelch list where I can surgically place troublemakers, I am most often forced to squelch the entire chan1. Sometime I’ve even wanted to squelch chan2 when those individuals are on my own country team but I can’t even do that. And since I can’t totally remove the text box they are able to insinuate themselves into my buffer. When I’m searching the text buffer for useful information I am forced to constantly have to step over their verbal excrement.
None of us have to power to control who HTC accepts as customers. I wouldn’t want too. Anyone they can get $30 out of they're welcome to. But by giving us a tool like this you allow each user to trim the population down until they have created the type of community they are most comfortable with. You empower the user to refine with whom he has social interaction.
If you like whining and complaining; if you like talking and hearing smack, then don’t squelch. If you don’t like certain peoples behaviors then squelch’em. Eventually, each player tailors the community that they want. No one if forced to squelch anyone. It allows me and many other to not be forced to squelch all of chan1. I have enjoyed many good times on chan1 with good natured banter but lately it just hasn’t been worth the cost. There are certain people who I would like to right click on their roster name and POOF they’re gone forever. I don’t see them on channel 1, not on channel 2, not on private comms. Nada. Nothing. Not now, not the next day I play, not next month. Forever. With one click.
It’s the perfect solution. Everyone configures the flavor of community they enjoy. Everyone gets what they want. Except the whiners who want attention and fek them.
Thank you for your consideration.
Regards,
Wab
[This message has been edited by AKWabbit (edited 01-02-2001).]
