How should CIG deal with toxic players and harassment outside of the game?

Talonsbane

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As I've already made my thoughts & feelings on this issue stated, I hope that you all know that my posting each of your comments with a :o7: is my way of stating that I've read your post & I'm doing my best to understand your views on things, not anything negative towards any of you wonderful wacky TESTies.
 

Bambooza

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Harassment is, yes.

"Harass, threaten, or direct inappropriate activity at any user of RSI Services or any employee, partner, or contractor of RSI and its affiliates. This includes, for example, making personal attacks or threats of physical violence, repeated ‘spamming’ or sending of unwanted messages, discriminatory statements, doxxing, swatting, cyberbullying, and stalking. "


As I said. It's there already you don't need a consultation for what guidelines need to be drawn up, and everyone with game access has ticked the box to agree to this set of morals already. You, me, them, everybody. Everybody.
And yet the scope of purview is ambiguous at best.

The foregoing shall apply to any behavior in connection with your use of the RSI Services, and shall include, by way of example, the following actions:

"In connection with use of"

You can see how everything is connected. Could the case be made that a classmate you don't like made fun of your mother's size and since you both also play SC it could be argued that it's a personal attack and thus worth of having their account banned?

What level of harassment constitutes an account ban, who decides what is and is not harassment? I generally suspect that we as fellow testies have a lot of overlap with what we define as harassment and some notable extreme examples of what we would agree is bannable behavior. But even in this small group there is a great deal of dissidents in what is and to what level. Even if it was just you and I making judgment calls we would have many an area of disagreement.

So you can see when I say who's moral compass do we use it becomes full of pitfalls and ambiguity let alone the limitless scope of attempting to be moral police of millions of subscribers with their own contries legal rights.

It is why most games limit their scope to hostile behavior with in their controlled services. That way when I post something terrible in chat or in Spectrum they can easily review and mods can make a judgment call in regards to their understanding of the rules.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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And yet the scope of purview is ambiguous at best.

The foregoing shall apply to any behavior in connection with your use of the RSI Services, and shall include, by way of example, the following actions:

"In connection with use of"

You can see how everything is connected. Could the case be made that a classmate you don't like made fun of your mother's size and since you both also play SC it could be argued that it's a personal attack and thus worth of having their account banned?

What level of harassment constitutes an account ban, who decides what is and is not harassment? I generally suspect that we as fellow testies have a lot of overlap with what we define as harassment and some notable extreme examples of what we would agree is bannable behavior. But even in this small group there is a great deal of dissidents in what is and to what level. Even if it was just you and I making judgment calls we would have many an area of disagreement.

So you can see when I say who's moral compass do we use it becomes full of pitfalls and ambiguity let alone the limitless scope of attempting to be moral police of millions of subscribers with their own contries legal rights.

It is why most games limit their scope to hostile behavior with in their controlled services. That way when I post something terrible in chat or in Spectrum they can easily review and mods can make a judgment call in regards to their understanding of the rules.
"Could the case be made that a classmate you don't like made fun of your mother's size and since you both also play SC it could be argued that it's a personal attack and thus worth of having their account banned?"

I believe I have been very clear in all my posts about actions being related to game advantage and there being no prior connection between parties as in the RingsII example. I need say no more on that, I have said it about 3 times now, all I can do is repeat myself.

Two further points:

1) The rest is already covered and explained in the ToS for in game infractions and why when you say which frame of morality I say the one which already exists... because it does. I'm not going to go copy/paste all of CIGs literature here, I've already inked you directly to section 4 of the ToS "Rules of conduct" in my previous post which does have advice addressing examples, legalities and local customs etc, it's a good read if you have the spare time, enjoy 👍

2) You've already agreed to and are currently beholden to this set of terms regarding your conduct in game and on RSI services such as spectrum. Apologies for being the bearer of bad news but if you don't like the wording of those terms, you're already living them...

Quick question though, a thought has just occurred to me: If a player Doxxed a devs address outside of services CIG has control over like Spectrum or in game chat, or worse case started stalking a dev IRL, do you think CIG'd keep their account active because it wasn't done on their set of services?
 
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Bambooza

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"Could the case be made that a classmate you don't like made fun of your mother's size and since you both also play SC it could be argued that it's a personal attack and thus worth of having their account banned?"

I believe I have been very clear in all my posts about actions being related to game advantage and there being no prior connection between parties as in the RingsII example. I need say no more on that, I have said it about 3 times now, all I can do is repeat myself.

Two further points:

1) The rest is already covered and explained in the ToS for in game infractions and why when you say which frame of morality I say the one which already exists... because it does. I'm not going to go copy/paste all of CIGs literature here, I've already inked you directly to section 4 of the ToS "Rules of conduct" in my previous post which does have advice addressing examples, legalities and local customs etc, it's a good read if you have the spare time, enjoy 👍

2) You've already agreed to and are currently beholden to this set of terms regarding your conduct in game and on RSI services such as spectrum. Apologies for being the bearer of bad news but if you don't like the wording of those terms, you're already living them...

Quick question though, a thought has just occurred to me: If a player Doxxed a devs address outside of services CIG has control over like Spectrum or in game chat, or worse case started stalking a dev IRL, do you think CIG'd keep their account active because it wasn't done on their set of services?
As for the employee that's a good question and I'm not sure what the answer would be
I do know going back over the tos and supporting documents they did say this


HARASSMENT ON THIRD-PARTY PLATFORMS
We have on occasion received reports from players that they have been targeted by other Star Citizen players outside of the game and Spectrum, such as through direct messages on Facebook, Discord, Twitter, or other social media platforms. While we empathize with the situation, a player experiencing this will need to report the harassment to said social media platform to address.

CIG does not host any official Discord servers. Any harassment in Star Citizen related Discord channels should be reported to that channel's moderators.

So it looks like they are very much sticking to enforcement of there moral code only within their platforms.

But back on point what I'm attempting to point out is the ambiguity around an attemp for moral justification.

Take for instance this phrase from the tos

otherwise inappropriate as determined by RSI


With in that phrase is a lot of personal bias that will fluctuate from mod to mod as they review claims. When you cannot codify the exact line as a binary decision then it becomes a judgment call based upon the moral compass of the judicater. And we both know how I judge a joke would be different then how you judge a joke and where we would draw the line of inappropriate worthy of action being taken. In fact I'd go so far to even say with in an individual it depends on their given mood in that moment.

And so I stand by my conclusion that it's perfectly reasonable for rsi to enforce any policy they like. Their stance of only enforcing content created on their systems is the prudent method.
 
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NaffNaffBobFace

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As for the employee that's a good question and I'm not sure what the answer would be
I do know going back over the tos and supporting documents they did say this


So it looks like they are very much sticking to enforcement of there moral code only within their platforms.
That's the current stance, yes.
But back on point what I'm attempting to point out is the ambiguity around an attemp for moral justification.

Take for instance this phrase from the tos

"otherwise inappropriate as determined by RSI"

With in that phrase is a lot of personal bias that will fluctuate from mod to mod as they review claims. When you cannot codify the exact line as a binary decision then it becomes a judgment call based upon the moral compass of the judicater. And we both know how I judge a joke would be different then how you judge a joke and where we would draw the line of inappropriate worthy of action being taken. In fact I'd go so far to even say with in an individual it depends on their given mood in that moment.

And so I stand by my conclusion that it's perfectly reasonable for rsi to enforce any policy they like. Their stance of only enforcing content created on their systems is the prudent method.
You are quoting the current setup... you appear to be fearful of your own personal actions from yourself toward other backers outside the game being misinterpreted and getting you banned from the game, I understand that but the stance you have taken with wording is one which will still get you banned from the game today if you were taken to perform an action of unsanctioned aggression such as doxxing in the game between you and another player.

The ambiguity you see in these lines are just as ambiguous under the conditions you have agreed to and are beholden to right now in the game - what makes you able to accept the possibility of that misunderstanding happening to you in the playground but can't tolerate it outside the school gates?

I feel at this point I have to repeat the thread title: "How should CIG deal with toxic players and harassment outside of the game?"

"Deal". Ignoring something it is not dealing with it. Some could argue the option to suspend/ban is also not dealing with it, only exhiling it, but it's the exact same set of rules, conditions and punishments which already exist for the same actions commitment in game.
 
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