Suggestion: Add a mute button for ROs with Communications

[Drew Durrnil]

Premise:
Allow Regional Officers (ROs) of a region with communications power to mute and unmute a player on the RMB (maximum of three mutes per day per RO). These mutes will prevent a nation from posting on the RMB much like site mods can temporarily lock an RMB or issue RMB bans to offending players.

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Pros:

• Spammers can stop spamming
• A good punishment for players who break RMB rules
• A RO can lift the punishment whenever they want to
• Much more efficient than suppressing every post a spammer makes
  

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Cons:

• Can be misused
• Can be used for petty purposes

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So, what do you guys think?

[Jar Wattinree]

Pros:

• Spammers can stop spamming

Cons:

• Are limited, making it less useful in a spam attack

So, what do you guys think?

These cancel each other out. I don't like this. Not a fan as it currently stands.

[Minskiev]

Hasn't Cormac suggested this?

[Kors]

Premise:
Allow Regional Officers (ROs) of a region with communications power to mute and unmute a player on the RMB (maximum of three mutes per day per RO). These mutes will prevent a nation from posting on the RMB much like site mods can temporarily lock an RMB or issue RMB bans to offending players.

---

Pros:

• Spammers can stop spamming
• A good punishment for players who break RMB rules
• A RO can lift the punishment whenever they want to
• Much more efficient than suppressing every post a spammer makes
  

  ---

Cons:

• Can be misused
• Can be used for petty purposes
• Are limited, making it less useful in a spam attack

---

So, what do you guys think?

Could be a tool for actual moderators. The moderation in nation-states is so unorganized, this could help NS on a better path

[Frisbeeteria]

Could be a tool for actual moderators.

We already have the ability to mute players or even whole regions.

The moderation in nation-states is so unorganized, this could help NS on a better path

I have no idea why you think that. The only issue is that we depend on player reports. If you don't report regional issues, we have a very small chance of stumbling across it.

[Katganistan]

So, is this an idea people think could be useful, or not? I can't suggest it to the admin if there is little to no interest in it.

I can see why ROs might want to mute disruptive posters. What would be the cons of doing this?

[Katganistan]

viewtopic.php?p=38763272#p38763272

Drew Durrnil made this suggestion in the Comms idea thread. I am interested in seeing what players think the pros and cons of such a feature would be. Is this something that we want to add in the RMB upgrade? Why or why not?

[Kathol Rift]

It seems like it would be a decent way to slap players on the wrist without ruining their residency by sending them to TRR. Or a decent way to cool off an RMB when things are getting heated enough that something needs to be done, but not heated enough to warrant ejections or bans based on the rules of whatever region it's in.

[Orostan]

I too support new features that will not be abused by mods at all.

This would be abused by mods - if a region owner can mute me a mod can too. Region moderation is fine the way it is.

[Kathol Rift]

I too support new features that will not be abused by mods at all.

This would be abused by mods - if a region owner can mute me a mod can too. Region moderation is fine the way it is.

Literally any moderation ability can be abused. The ejections and bans can be abused, but we still have them. I assume most regions with a stable government wouldn't see any more power abuse than they ordinarily have.

[Orostan]

I too support new features that will not be abused by mods at all.

This would be abused by mods - if a region owner can mute me a mod can too. Region moderation is fine the way it is.

Literally any moderation ability can be abused. The ejections and bans can be abused, but we still have them. I assume most regions with a stable government wouldn't see any more power abuse than they ordinarily have.

The issue isn’t region people it is NS website moderators.

[Kors]

So, is this an idea people think could be useful, or not? I can't suggest it to the admin if there is little to no interest in it.

I can see why ROs might want to mute disruptive posters. What would be the cons of doing this?

Usually these posters are banned, so they pretty much just make a puppet to go into the region and "continue their legacy". TWP has severe issues with people doing that. It's so severe that often moderators have to do multiple puppetsweeps.

[Kathol Rift]

Literally any moderation ability can be abused. The ejections and bans can be abused, but we still have them. I assume most regions with a stable government wouldn't see any more power abuse than they ordinarily have.

The issue isn’t region people it is NS website moderators.

This isn't talking about NS mods, it's talking about giving Regional Officers mute powers. NS mods already have those kinds of powers, I believe.

[Frisbeeteria]

This isn't talking about NS mods, it's talking about giving Regional Officers mute powers. NS mods already have those kinds of powers, I believe.

Correct. NS Mods have lots of mute and ban tools already, and have had them for years. This is about ROs.

[Flanderlion]

https://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?p=38763272#p38763272

Drew Durrnil made this suggestion in the Comms idea thread. I am interested in seeing what players think the pros and cons of such a feature would be. Is this something that we want to add in the RMB upgrade? Why or why not?

Wrote up a big post on this but dumbly didn't back it up before I clicked post, which deleted it all when the duplicate topic was merged back.

I'm against, the idea has popped up a lot in the past, taking various forms. Almost exclusively has been posted by players who can't face their region members seeing viewpoints other than their own, but also don't want to eject the nation posting. Thankfully, despite this, admin/moderation has held strong until now.

There is a vast selection of prior threads on this, and I won't bother to rewrite my views on it again (as they're in old threads), but I'll just link a few below in the spoiler:

And here to be a buzzkill as to why it is incredibly unlikely that this would be implemented:

1) It hurts intra-regional politicking, as whoever has the mute power can completely censor/silence the opposition. With regular post suppression, players can still view what was written, and use that information to determine whether or not the suppression was justified, and respond accordingly.

2) Such a tool would be immediately used by raiders to censor an invaded region and perform reason #1 everywhere.

3) If someone is posting rulebreaking material (flaming/trolling/spamming,) silencing them is a moderation matter. We have the Getting Help page for that.

4) Completely muting someone's ability to post to an RMB is a game moderator power. That is not something that can or should be handed out to non-moderators.

CAPTAIN BUZZKILL AWAAAAAAAAAY!

(Image)
~Evil Forum Empress Rep Prod the Ninja Mod
~She who wields the Banhammer; master of the mighty moderation no-dachi Kiritateru Teikoku

You can already chose from which regions nation can post on your RMB, by selecting only those to exchange an embassy with those regions' nations you trust.

For RMB posting control we have the suppression mechanism, allowing a founder or delegate to suppress undesirable posts from the RMB.

The only option to prevent nations from posting to your RMB in the first place is to ban them from your region.

Note that the price for silencing others is it being public that you do so. This is on purpose.

Ballotonia

Just going to be a total Captain Buzzkill (I'm apparently good at that) and share the last "RMB ban" suggestion where Fris pretty neatly spelled out why that's pretty unlikely to happen, along with [violet] basically saying that it's a fix looking for a problem.

Above is Reppy's summary of this thread: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=358038#p26411781 - Fris/Blaat/Mouse against, Sedge posting but not expressing a view (just yelling at someone for contributing nothing), [v] saying it's feasible, but not much different from suppression/ejection.

viewtopic.php?p=32622035#p32622035 - Fris/Elu against in this one.

Obviously past views don't always represent present ones, but all current admins bar two (Pyth/Salusa who aren't super active), and all current Senior Mods bar two (Sedge who expressed no view, and Katganistan) have expressed views against this in the past. Obviously, they are all viewpoints, and Katganistan's view is the only one that counts here, but as the current idea stands, I'm against. Fine with auto-suppression, as the posts are still visible to players that are interested, but not with non-mods either deleting players posts/preventing them from being able to post at all on their own RMB.

[Kors]

This is pretty much not going to happen, because admins are literally human beings and require sleep, food and drink. adding code in HTML would require to rewrite the code for regions, and that could be temporarily disastrous due to people taking advantage of that, and unless the entire site is shut down for around a few days, this update is not going to happen. besides, there are much more useful things that could be scripted.

[Frisbeeteria]

This is pretty much not going to happen, because admins are literally human beings and require sleep, food and drink.

I don't remember adding you to the staff, so I'm pretty sure your blanket statement about what the staff can or cannot do is irrelevant. You've made several incorrect assumptions in this thread alone. Perhaps you should just read topics for a bit, and stop posting until you have a better clue about how things work here.

[Sedgistan]

There are plenty of players on NS who have contributed loads to the game, but were annoying and spammy in their earlier years and therefore might have been muted by over-zealous Regional Officers. A mute feature puts people off participating - particularly in the current age when people expect instant communication - and I feel it would be damaging to player retention to add one.

[Indusse]

This is a promising feature to the gameplay, we can find a lot of nations spamming in the RMBs of many regions. This could also be used by the ROs to mute "troublemakers". Would like to see this implemented.

[Les Claypool]

This is a promising feature to the gameplay, we can find a lot of nations spamming in the RMBs of many regions. This could also be used by the ROs to mute "troublemakers". Would like to see this implemented.

I think it would only be reasonable if it had a small time limit, but doesn't seem to be worth the hassle to me. Suppression and ejection already exist. Tools which prevent unwelcome posts and spam. Then there is reporting and mod intervention for anything well out of hand.

[WayNeacTia]

There are plenty of players on NS who have contributed loads to the game, but were annoying and spammy in their earlier years and therefore might have been muted by over-zealous Regional Officers. A mute feature puts people off participating - particularly in the current age when people expect instant communication - and I feel it would be damaging to player retention to add one.

I am inclined to agree on this. RO's already possess the ability to suppress and can report RMB posts via the link. That should suffice.

[Giovanniland]

I just can't see why this is needed if we already have ejections and bans. Furthermore, in Cormac's thread about replacing ban buttons with mutes there were some additional issues raised: such as the fact banjected players can immediately join another community (TRR) and talk there, while muted players would not have access to any RMB and would need to figure it out.

So, is this an idea people think could be useful, or not? I can't suggest it to the admin if there is little to no interest in it.

I can see why ROs might want to mute disruptive posters. What would be the cons of doing this?

Usually these posters are banned, so they pretty much just make a puppet to go into the region and "continue their legacy". TWP has severe issues with people doing that. It's so severe that often moderators have to do multiple puppetsweeps.

As a resident of TWP I also think this information is incorrect. One person doing this each few months or so isn't a "severe issue", especially since the last time this happened we were able to act quickly, banject the puppets and eventually report them for doing it in such a big scale that was deemed by the mods puppetsweep-worthy. Plus, I fail to see how mutes would solve it. It's not like a muted person wouldn't be able to move a puppet and challenge the mute, so literally nothing changes except that the muted nations now stay in the region instead of being banjected.