I find this to be more than a little disappointing. We don't want to control anybody's behavior, we want them to show some self-control. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for everybody. This subject has been broached many times on the board. The suggestions of granting people some power to help alleviate this is something we were strongly against at first. We considered a lot of other options, but their drawbacks were worse. We reversed and decided to try this method. It's been working smoothly for the last few months, but we also realize there will occasionally be problems.
I personally am pretty liberal about it. A simple reminder usually works for me when I see somebody losing their poise or pushing the envelope. But that's me too, I've seen people react very negatively when given a similar reminder from another player. I am also far more likely to witness poor conduct when people don't know that I'm online. It's one thing when somebody gets carried away, it's another when somebody is blatantly trying to abuse, incite, or offend people. I have had to summarily dismiss people from the service for egregious and indefensible behavior. But those are people who didn't come to play the game, they came to abuse the system.
Some people would like to have a very clear cut definition of what is and isn't acceptable. We can no more make a clear definition about that than congress can define what pornography is and isn't or the NBA can define what is and isn't a technical foul. I can give some clear-cut examples but I can't define the gray area. There is no clear line to toe. It comes down to our opinion as to whether something is detrimental to our business. We can't uniformly enforce a strict policy and we make no claims to do so and will not be liable for failing to do so. For most people this doesn't matter since they're not trying to toe the line.
We've had no issues like this one the past few months that this has been in place but inevitably something will come up that will ruffle some feathers. What concerns me more is reading a post like the one DoK made recently as a somebody new to AH and his observations concerning the conduct of some players. How's it appear to the new guy who just came online for the first time?
In this particular instance, I would have initially thought that a mute was probably not warranted, but even so, it's not like it's capital punishment. Hopefully, it keeps you from saying something you would regret and nobody else wants to hear. Judging by the vitriol in the other thread, I'd say it was a good thing if that was an example of where the conversation was going in the arena.
We realize that questionable calls may happen. We're not doing this to be unfair and try to target or slight people. I'm sorry if you feel that way. It's not something we like to have to deal with. Between developing and supporting the game and administrating the business side, we're always stretched for time and having to work out of multiple holes. To think that our motivations in having to deal with this is other than a pragmatic necessary evil is something I can't even comprehend.
------------------
Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations
