Mods.

[Vinkman]

What about the status quo is different from what you described?  We've got the tools (.squelch) to deal with it for ourselves, we also have the tools to let the mods know someone's showing his backside on the public channels (.report).  Plus, they've got mods on to notice stuff.

What's the difference between that and what you just described?

The drama is just going to happen because it's what happens when certain people get online.

'Do it yourself' is a horrible idea for an online community.  First day of your two week trial, what are you going to think about six conversations between some yutz yammering on 200 or country about the lizard people controlling his brainwaves, while others share their oh-so-fascinating theories on 9-11, while guy number three is on about how much he loves being a Christian and everybody else should be one too?  Logging in every day even if you're not new, you'll get sick of it too.  What is accomplished by allowing it, other than giving loud, obnoxious people a semi-captive audience?

Great, squelch them...  Every single time you log in.  Again, where is the benefit in not putting a stop to them?  It's not like it's that difficult.

Wiley.

No difference Wiley. After a long thread it's not always easy to remember how it started or what course it took to get here.

Refresher: I reminded people that were complaining about polital chatter from the same three people all the time, that there is .squlch. To which I was told in Capitaol Letters WRONG ANSWER! by skuzzy and other moderators.


So I'm pointing out that not only is .squelch NOT the wroing answer, but may infact be a better answer. Which is not to say the ONLY answer.  

[Wiley]

Why don;t you try telling your customers that it is your car shop so no whining about service, no comments, and no requests, no talking about subjects you don;t aprove of while they are waiting, etc because it is your house and you make the rules.

That's a perfectly viable way of doing business.  For example, having a rule that you're not allowed to be belligerent to the staff is generally speaking, a non-official rule in a lot of places.  There are actually signs about that in some places (hospitals for example).

You can't analogize an MMO game to anything in the real world, as it's vastly different from dealing with people and places in the real world.  The closest thing to an appropriate analogy I can think of, is it's like email spam.  Stuff coming over your ingame comms that's irrelevant and most likely not of interest to you.  Would you prefer if your ISP didn't screen spam for you?

Vinkman- I disagree it's a better answer, though it does work reasonably well as long as there aren't too many people on about it.  I personally see .squelch as being mainly used for people that just annoy you for whatever reason, but aren't breaking the rules.  Now the rules are slightly nebulous, but if lack of common sense gets you muted, it's probably for a halfway decent reason.  To have as company policy 'anything goes' on the public channels, and leaving people to weed out the BS every time they log in, IMO is a poor, poor decision.

Again, what does it accomplish, other than giving the loud obnoxious people a semi-captive audience?

Wiley.

[CAP1]

i've never had a problem at my shop. for some reason, people tend to avoid "hot" topics here. guessing it could be the face to face thing.

 my friend has had problems with customers in her store a few times. i've personally escorted a couple of the trouble makers to the front door(at her request). she doesn't take any crap from any customers......at least not concerning them being belligerent of ignorant to her hired help. they're free to calmly take up any problem with her....but if they give her customers crap.....they're gone.

 also, she has a policy of having anyone carrying bags to check them in at the door........she's been shoplifted too many times.

[hitech]

It is not one sided CAP.  The house exists while we exist in it.  If we don;t exist in it, there is no house.  Actually, it is not a house at all.  That is a bad analogy.  It is a business.  The business belongs to HT.  The arenas however don't.  They stopped the moment the check for the 15$ was cashed.  That been said, the arenas don;t belong to a single player either.  There has to be a balance.  If there are rules, they need to apply to all at all times the same way.  The i mute who ever i want when ever i want cause it is my house is wrong.

As for shutting down the place, please    That's like me telling my boss that he cannot ask me for anything because I can quit at any time  

Why don;t you try telling your customers that it is your car shop so no whining about service, no comments, and no requests, no talking about subjects you don;t aprove of while they are waiting, etc because it is your house and you make the rules.

Make no mistake, I WILL mute you any time I choose to.
And the Arenas belong 100% to me. And I will do with them as I wish.

Why don;t you try telling your customers that it is your car shop so no whining about service, no comments, and no requests, no talking about subjects you don;t aprove of while they are waiting, etc because it is your house and you make the rules.

I would show you the door if your behavior started annoying my other customers, and hence was damaging my business. Do you really believe I should I tell my other customers to cover their ears.

I am some times truly amazed at the length people will go to , to try make other people put up with completely improper behavior.

So to put it simply my house my rules. I believe I get more customers buy getting rid of the the completely rude behavior on global channels. If you will not play by the house rules, you will not be in the house.

HiTech

[Wiley]

What you described is what channel 200 has been since day one, only not that nice.  Once in awhile, someone gets muted but 200 has remained the same.  As for squelching, a squelch list would do just fine but we are not going to get one are we? 

I was keeping my examples clean, as I'm somewhat fond of posting on the boards.

Permasquelch is flawed, the name list would get too long after a while.

Public channels on the internet are always going to be a freakshow, but having some kind of system in place to keep some of the idiocy down to a dull roar is beneficial.

Yes, enforcement may not always be precisely uniform, but I can't recall having seen a muting that was completely undeserved.

Wiley.

[CAP1]

you'll also get more customers with blatant honesty too. 

[Shuffler]

you'll also get more customers with blatant honesty too. 

 

[dedalos]

Make no mistake, I WILL mute you any time I choose to.
And the Arenas belong 100% to me. And I will do with them as I wish.

I would show you the door if your behavior started annoying my other customers, and hence was damaging my business. Do you really believe I should I tell my other customers to cover their ears.

I am some times truly amazed at the length people will go to , to try make other people put up with completely improper behavior.

So to put it simply my house my rules. I believe I get more customers buy getting rid of the the completely rude behavior on global channels. If you will not play by the house rules, you will not be in the house.

HiTech

I think you are missing my point here as did the others.  Rude and abusive behavior has nothing to do with a conversation about politics.  So, lets remove those two from this conversation.  I bet you, that the majority of your customers could not care less about politics on 200.  They just play the game or make fun of the online politicians.  You are getting more trouble out of a few customers acting like a cop and reporting political conversations and the mods selectively muting people based on their political beliefs than from the actual act of having that conversation.

So, I am not telling you to tolerate abusive and rude behavior nor tell your customers to close their ears (or detune 200 in this case).  On the contrary, please do show the door to people with abusive and rude behavior and do enforce the rules equally.  If you do, you will find that 200 will be empty.

Kind of funny that someone cant type something political on txt but he could tune to me on vox and teach my kids and dog some new words no problem.  A squelch list will give me the power to stop someone from annoying me without having to run to you every day and hope that you agree that that guy was annoying me.  Its like being proactive and if that fails, we can go to being reactive.

[rvflyer]

this quote makes me think of this

(Image removed from quote.)

All ace hi players should have to use a E6B like the one Spock is using.
 All there was when I started flying in real airplanes.

[ImADot]

I think you are missing my point here as did the others.  Rude and abusive behavior has nothing to do with a conversation about politics.

I think you are missing the point.  HT makes the rules, and one rule he made was that discusssion about politics is not allowed.  That should be the end of this subject...but I'm sure it won't be.

[RELIC]

I think you are missing my point here as did the others.  Rude and abusive behavior has nothing to do with a conversation about politics.  So, lets remove those two from this conversation.  I bet you, that the majority of your customers could not care less about politics on 200.  They just play the game or make fun of the online politicians.  You are getting more trouble out of a few customers acting like a cop and reporting political conversations and the mods selectively muting people based on their political beliefs than from the actual act of having that conversation.

I've never known anyone who has left the game because of the mods but I have had squad members leave because of statements made on chat by other players.  Do you have any kind of data to back up your claim?  I'd assume that HiTech might have a better idea of why customers leave the game than you do.

[dedalos]

I've never known anyone who has left the game because of the mods but I have had squad members leave because of statements made on chat by other players.  Do you have any kind of data to back up your claim?  I'd assume that HiTech might have a better idea of why customers leave the game than you do.

Same data you have on no one leaving because of the mods.  What exactly did you read that made you think I said someone left because of the mods? 

Did your squadies leave because of political discussions on 200?  I think you should read my post again.

I am saying that rude and abusive behavior should not be tolerated.  It should also not be confused with political or any discussions on 200.  The Comedy they provide is priceless and they are not worth the effort and trouble of moderating them.  However, if HT really wants to have a rule about that, then the rule should be enforced on every one at all times equally.  Hope that clears it.

[Babalonian]

I think you are missing my point here as did the others.  Rude and abusive behavior has nothing to do with a conversation about politics.  So, lets remove those two from this conversation.  I bet you, that the majority of your customers could not care less about politics on 200.  They just play the game or make fun of the online politicians.  You are getting more trouble out of a few customers acting like a cop and reporting political conversations and the mods selectively muting people based on their political beliefs than from the actual act of having that conversation.

So, I am not telling you to tolerate abusive and rude behavior nor tell your customers to close their ears (or detune 200 in this case).  On the contrary, please do show the door to people with abusive and rude behavior and do enforce the rules equally.  If you do, you will find that 200 will be empty.

Kind of funny that someone cant type something political on txt but he could tune to me on vox and teach my kids and dog some new words no problem.  A squelch list will give me the power to stop someone from annoying me without having to run to you every day and hope that you agree that that guy was annoying me.  Its like being proactive and if that fails, we can go to being reactive.

You seem to be having two misconceptions here friend.  The first being that because a player can't say these things on a open public channel means they can say them privately to you using a less-than public channel in the game.  While they are capable of doing this, they are only allowed to do it for as long as you will tolerate them before you take action by squelching them and/or reporting them to HTC. 

HTC monitors and receives multiple complaints from abiding customers if something goes out of line on 200 or country chat as they are highly exposed channels.  However, they do not actively monitor private communications or squad communications because these are more private areas with a lot less exposure to the customer base as a whole, now this doesn't mean they will not enforce the same rules on those channels, it just means nobody is complaining (reporting) to them to do something about it.  Report the incident, the date and time it occurred at and see what happens and HTC's responce.  If someone started ramming politics down your throat completely unprovoked via private in-game messages, I'd bet money that their suspension/punishment from HTCs will be more severe than if it was a mere general political remark made indiscriminately on one of the public channels.

The second is that politics and Internet Anonymity can lead to any form of productive or constructive conversation on a non-politicaly related website/game/simulation.  Show me where this has happened, just once, without any need of heavy moderator intervention - and how we can possibly implement that structure of "political conversation not needing the time and resources of HTC to be conducted successfully" here in our community, and I'll wholly agree.  Until then, it's simply best as is, period.

[LLogann]

I hate to say it but I think it might be time to get IN this one. 

Cause after a week, it's still going downhill fast. 

[dedalos]

You seem to be having two misconceptions here friend.  The first being that because a player can't say these things on a open public channel means they can say them privately to you using a less-than public channel in the game.  While they are capable of doing this, they are only allowed to do it for as long as you will tolerate them before you take action by squelching them and/or reporting them to HTC. 

Not really a misconception.  I understand I can squelch them after the fact, but squelching after the fact will not make my dog and daughters forget what they just heard.  Match easier to perma-squelch a bunch of guys that I know act that way and btw, are never muted.  I only used that as an example to say loosen up a bit.  As annoying as a political conversation can be to some it is only an inconvenience at worst or comedy central at best.  Most people don;t care (except a select few that run to report it) and I bet you no one will ever quit over it.  However, we make such a huge deal over it by partially or selectively enforcing the rule on that while real abusive behavior can and does go on no problem.

HTC monitors and receives multiple complaints from abiding customers if something goes out of line on 200 or country chat as they are highly exposed channels.  However, they do not actively monitor private communications or squad communications because these are more private areas with a lot less exposure to the customer base as a whole, now this doesn't mean they will not enforce the same rules on those channels, it just means nobody is complaining (reporting) to them to do something about it.  Report the incident, the date and time it occurred at and see what happens and HTC's responce.  If someone started ramming politics down your throat completely unprovoked via private in-game messages, I'd bet money that their suspension/punishment from HTCs will be more severe than if it was a mere general political remark made indiscriminately on one of the public channels.

There are ways around it.  A perma-squelch list and a notification that someone wants to go on private channel with me, and me having to accept the conversation would eliminate almost all of the problems of moderating private channels.

The second is that politics and Internet Anonymity can lead to any form of productive or constructive conversation on a non-politicaly related website/game/simulation.  Show me where this has happened, just once, without any need of heavy moderator intervention - and how we can possibly implement that structure of "political conversation not needing the time and resources of HTC to be conducted successfully" here in our community, and I'll wholly agree. 

Agreed.  So, how is it going on and on and on and on every night on 200?  No to mention that it is really up to you to decide if you want to view it as comedy  or not.  However, if we have a rule is should be enforced all the time, equally, on every one.

Until then, it's simply best as is, period.

A long long long time ago, I learned that there is nothing in this game that needs improvement or that could be done better.  I think I offered a couple of solutions to proactively moderate abusive behavior and as you can tell, I don;t care what other people talk about on 200 as long as it is not really abusive.