Rule Discussion Thread #2

[Ryan]

Hey,

So I've been looking through the rules and there's quite a few I think we can keep as is, because in all honestly, there's a few things that I won't budge on now matter what. These are the more serious offenses like real world trading, hacking, botting, Real life threats etc, etc.

So, I think it'd be beneficial to review the rules that seem to cause the most 'uproar'.

Same rules apply to this thread, as they did to the last;

So. I think its about time we make this thread. It's been brought to the attention of pretty much everyone on the server that some of our rules are outdated and perhaps need to be re-discussed. This is going to be that platform. Before we do start discussions, I have a few very specific rules to put in place to ensure this doesn't become a shit show like the last thread did. If you don't follow these rules, your post will be deleted.
1. No flaming, baiting or putting people down for their opinions. We are all entitled to one. Respect each others.
2. We're only going to be discussing TWO rules at a time. Please do not try and discuss anything that isn't related to these two rules.
Feel free to post your opinions below, the more popular opinions will be polled and a decision will be based off that poll result.

In this episode of rule changes, I'd like to look at 'Clan advertisement' and I'd like to clarify "offensive language".

Clan advertisement;
This is a fairly straight forward one, I think it works pretty well as it is.. but we seem to be getting a lot of "spammy" yells, with people saying things like #(insert clan name here) on 15 different accounts at the same time. Some people think this counts as "mass advertising" others think it doesnt. Just something that we need to clarify and agree upon as a community.


"Offensive language";
I think it's important to know that whilst somethings may not be offensive to one person, they may be to another. So keeping things fairly broad and implementing staff discretion will be a driving force in this particular instance. The only reason I want to visit this particularly, is because we quite often get reports of people saying things like "Fuck you kid" and what not. I think we need to re-word things a little to ensure that people are taking the necessary actions to either ignore or not retaliate to these sorts of instances.

Like before, state any opinions or ideas of how things can be re-worded below and we will go from there.

Thanks friends,

Ryan x

[Empty]

1. CLAN ADVERTISEMENT.
I think the community wants actions to be taken against those that continously yell (insert clan name here) as you said, we currently have a 5 minute "cooldown" on advertisements per clan, and we all have seen many mutes due to people breaking this rule.
(CURRENT RULE)

Clan advertisement is allowed on all accounts on yell once every 5 minutes. If a clan is spamming yell with advertisements (due to it being on multiple accounts), then the clan can be told that only its owner may advertise it. If the owner keeps abusing yell for clan advertisement, (s)he will be muted or even banned. In public chat, clan advertisements is allowed once every minute.

Option 1:
With how slowly the yell sometimes goes i think it would be appropriate to high up the stakes and put a 10 minute cooldown on clan advertisements.
one offense - verbal warning
two offenses - warning
three offenses - temporary yell mute
and so on.

Option 2:
only allow clan advertisements from the official clan account to avoid any further misconductions.
I.E) The lounge
GG Lsp
What iz nh


2. OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE
What it comes to this people who are reporting these have to take into account the context and playful behaviour between the people offending eachother.
It's the same at any school IRL, teachers don't care if you call your friend some inappropriate names, nor your colleague. This is because they can see facial expressions of the people doind these acts and then decide up on further actions if they are needed (in a non playful behaviour)
Offensive language is fine as it is, but recently there's also been pretty questionable things on yell which are clearly jokingly said but should still be kept out of yell and these should IMO be punished with a verbal / actual warning.
(CURRENT RULE)

You may not insult a person or a group of people, whether this be in-game, on the forums or outside PkHonor. This applies to both public and private conversations.

In a smaller scale it's pretty self explanatory, but this hasn't been followed in years on end, so typically it needs some radical changes

[Church]

Personally I'm a fan of how we handle CC things now, and I am of the opinion that clan members yelling things like #whatiznh in mass at the end of their yells counts as advertisement. Personally I've never sat there with a timer and checked to make sure they're not yelling a second early, and more or less just do it by feel, so when multiple people all yell it at once it's either premeditated or bandwagoning that breaks the spirit of the 5 minute cooldown rule.

For a more direct suggestion as to how it should be worded I think the current version is fine with a minor change (old in red, new in green):

• Clan advertisement is allowed on all accounts on yell once every 5 minutes. If a clan is spamming yell with advertisements (due to it being on multiple accounts), then the clan can be told that only its owner may advertise it. If the owner keeps abusing yell for clan advertisement, they may be muted or (even banned) restricted from further clan advertisements. Saying negative things about another clan is not allowed, simply because it's inappropriate and offensive towards others. In public chat, clan advertisements is allowed once every minute.

Getting banned for just clan advertisement spam seems unnecessarily harsh and even if we'd never actually do it despite it being in the rule I am certainly not a fan of giving off the impression that we would, and would rather stick to mutes, then restricting it to only the CC owner account, and then if they really cannot stop, not allowing them to advertise anymore.

As far as offensive language goes, I think this one has the issue of being even broader than scamming in its need for contextual understanding and case by case interpretation. The simplest example I can think of is people using words in other language that are considered very offensive in their countries but the translated version of the word is not considered anything weird in another. The Dutch word "kanker" is considered much more offensive to Dutch people than "Cancer" is to Americans (in my personal experience.)

I'm not sure where I'd start trying to make this one more clear or structured.

[Uim legolas]

Don't start overthinking all of these rules....

Clan advertisement has been allowed about once every 5 minutes. If people start spamming too soon or on multiple accounts, the mod has a talk with them as a warning. Temp mutes when they continue.

As for the offensive language, leave some kind of decision making to the mods u know...They're assumed to be capable of judging a situation, and implementing a punishment that's not out of proportion.

Cause let's be real, I never pulled out the rules to decide if this one guy deserved a 2 or 4 hour mute for calling someone offensive names. Call it biased, I think I did just fine!

[Fungamer]

Clan advertisement;
....

I agree with Church here. If the leadership of a clan is unable to abide by a simple rule then they should be barred from advertising on yell for certain periods or even permanently (with a chance to appeal ofc)

I however think the clans should be allowed to moderate themselves if it isn't the people in leader positions who told everyone to mass yell or just break the 5 min rule. Warnings/kicks/demotions or even bans from their cc. Sometimes these people don't know or forgot about it (or do it on purpose for trolling or other reasons). If they don't moderate themselves then of course staff should step in and do whatever the guidelines tell them to do.

I'm also a fan of @Empty's idea where the advertisements should only come from clan accounts. Every somewhat respectable clan has their clan account set up with a premium status.

Offensive language";
...

I think the rule is fine as is but could use some elaboration since this is the rule that gets broken all-day.

This is from the top of my head & typed on mobile so it's not gonna be something perfect.

You may not insult a person or a group of people, whether this be in-game, on the forums or outside on the PkHonor Discord server. This applies to both public and private conversations. Clan chats aside from the Help/Pkhonor cc are excluded from this unless they are breaking other rules in the process or go too far i.e death threats, doxing, ...

We are fine with some limited and harmless swearing, but we do not tolerate it when it reaches the point of being annoying, disrespectful, or discriminatory. (merged the "swearing" rule on wiki with the main rule)

I think it's unreasonable to enforce PKH rules outside of PKH unless it is our own Discord server. If it goes beyond that, it should be taken to whatever authority is involved with moderating that platform (report them to Discord or Facebook or whatever. Or block them/leave the group if you've had enough of it.)

Clan chats should be free to moderate themselves when it's just offensive language. Obviously this does not apply to doxing, irl threats or any other crazy shit.
It doesn't apply either when players are flaming a staff member who had a legit reason to join a cc they're not a member of or even welcome in. This could be to tell the members off if they're spamming clan advertisements. In that case a moderator is simply doing their job and even taking extra steps by engaging in a respectful conversation.

If clan leadership is okay with player1 calling player2 a retard in the cc, so be it. Members of that clan can just leave the clan if they think the clan is too toxic. If you're chatting in your clan, you shouldn't be walking around on eggshells while you know the leadership is okay with some spicy banter. If it goes too far then the person who's flaming can still be warned/demoted/kicked/banned.

A player going out of their way get them muted for things they said in cc feels like a scummy move to me and is more of a report made out of spite than a legit report.
We all know the person reporting the player has said equal or worse things in cc if there's a feud going on. It's not "public" like yell/general chat so including clan chats in the rule will only serve as a means for players to use staff as a tool to further their stupid feuds rather than protecting the community.


TLDR: Current rules good. Needs some fine-tuning rather than an entire rewrite. Clans moderating themselves is good for both rules. Players (especially clan leadership) need to use a bit of common sense. If they don't, that's when staff should step in. At that point it's guidelines and not rules, which is Ryans (and other higher-ups) department and we aren't asked for our opinion on those.

Just my 2 cents.

[Patel]

As far as offensive language goes, I think this one has the issue of being even broader than scamming in its need for contextual understanding and case by case interpretation. The simplest example I can think of is people using words in other language that are considered very offensive in their countries but the translated version of the word is not considered anything weird in another. The Dutch word "kanker" is considered much more offensive to Dutch people than "Cancer" is to Americans (in my personal experience.)

Another difficulty is deciding if someone is genuinely offended or if they're pretending to be offended to get someone they dislike in trouble. This isn't something you can account for in the rules, just something you can be mindful of in general.

Sometimes there's even a deeper issue and how you choose to punish decides whether you're punting that issue to another day, or if you figure out the source behind why a player is acting out/two players are beefing. Frank conversations between people tend to go 'under the radar' for resolving issues because they're too ideal to generate complaints, and are not logged. This is a different topic though, my main concern was people abusing reports with (more) minor things like mean words.

[Kylo ren]

The clan advertisement rule I think is fine as is. All it was, was an anti-spamming rule anyways which is pretty self explanatory.

The Offensive Language rule though is the tricky one here. There’s so many variables to consider. In terms of the reports of people simply saying “Fuck you kid”, personally that doesn’t even make the cut to even be considered offensive.

I haven’t read the actual rule in quite some time, but if it’s anything like I imagine or recall it being when I last checked, then I would say to keep it similar in the sense of it being vague with “Offensive” language so that there’s still a sense of discretion when it comes down to Staff Decisions on certain instances, but straightforward when it comes to derogatory, or prejudiced terminology.

I.E.: Offensive Language is a broad spectrum of words, and phrases which are subjective to the individuals both using them, and being directed towards them. If the use of this language is intended solely for the purpose of offending other players, or groups of players, the responding staff member has the authority to handle the situation, using their best judgement, based on the severity of the language used.

Offensive Language deriving from a place of prejudice, however, is not tolerated. This language includes, but is not limited to the following categories: racism, sexism, sexual orientation, etc.

Basically something like that. Still gives room for interpretation, but also pretty clear cut with the more severe language.

[The underdog]

Aka change nothing, just what I proposed

[Thearlygamer]

I’m indifferent when it comes to clan advertising, I really don’t see a huge issue. Personally I think the only rule should be no mass spamming and don’t trash talk another clan.

As far as offensive language, I think it’s better to let people be as toxic as they want in THEIR OWN clan chat (not in other clans) if they want without repercussions, but when it comes to general chat, yell, and anywhere else a loop holder might try it there should be punishment.

I also believe there should be, if possible, a retraining on how harsh punishments should be given and how often (I think back to when staff would tele to players to talk things out rather than hand punishments after a single warning on yell because they couldn’t be bothered to reach out to the community “in person”). Personally I haven’t logged on and actually chatted with many people in a while, but back when I did it was completely fine to say “nigga” on yell, whether that’s changed or not idk, but if it is and I logged in and said it I would hope I’d get spoken to first rather than an instant mute. This is all hypothetical, but if this is the case I’d rather address it now than hope it’s been addressed before.

Tldr; need more hands on communication with the community and try and build bridges rather than giving a public verbal warning then insta mute

Edit: I just noticed after posting I may have gone completely off topic, but I do think a filter that players can choose to toggle on/off could help but also encouraging players to report others if they’re tilted enough. If it didn’t bother them enough to make a 5min report it probably isn’t worth muting the offender to mess up their game play. Of course I’m only speaking of situations where they’re privately speaking, if on yell or general chat with players around then they can be warned, spoken to, and punished if it persists

[Fungamer]

Edit: I just noticed after posting I may have gone completely off topic, but I do think a filter that players can choose to toggle on/off could help but also encouraging players to report others if they’re tilted enough. If it didn’t bother them enough to make a 5min report it probably isn’t worth muting the offender to mess up their game play. Of course I’m only speaking of situations where they’re privately speaking, if on yell or general chat with players around then they can be warned, spoken to, and punished if it persists

My main question surrounding filters is what happens with the rules (and by extension, mod guidelines)?

Is it okay to say a bad word if there's a filter and the only real toxicity would've come with using that word? I'd say so. It's silly to get muted over something that gets filtered anyways, so it wouldn't need to be in the rules either. And it'd be unfair to the person saying the word to get muted just because the "victim" had their filter toggled off. But it'd also be unfair for the "victim" to be told to just turn their filter on, that's the same thing people are complaining about now: Mods telling players to ignore(list) toxicity.

If they still get muted even though the toxic parts were censored then that's pretty much admitting the filter doesn't really do anything and that it wasn't really worth the dev time aside from, bluntly said, virtue signalling that PKH doesn't support toxicity. Which should go without saying.

I know guidelines aren't really for the community to discuss but I think on the subject of offensive language and toxicity in general we really need to make a rough sketch how we'd like staff to deal with it.

Anyways, I like Early's take on toxicity and I agree with it, although I'm in favor of way harsher punishments IF a player doesn't stop after being talked to. I'm not sure how that would translate for reports though, seems kind of dumb to talk to a player about it when it's been more than an hour after the fact. Anyone have ideas how that'd be handled?