[Petition/Discussion] Harassment and Off-Site Evidence

[The Land of Lil Bunnies]

While I understand to some extent the mods' concerns as to how they could take offsite evidence and enforce onsite punishments, I simply do not understand at all how they can say that and also force concerned players to stay silent onsite about serious offenses offsite. If moderation refuses to actively protect our community through whatever means necessary, they ought not to prohibit and even threaten punishments to those who try. I believe there is a clear difference between defaming someone and stating a fact about their self-imposed infamy.

[Grand Britannia]

I simply do not understand at all how they can say that and also force concerned players to stay silent onsite about serious offenses offsite.

Because they're not internet police and don't have to punish people here for things they do out of the website they're supposed to cover.

[Frisbeeteria]

When those of us without the full means to protect ourselves are told by those who can protect us that they won't

Just to address this single point:

There are over 21,000 regions at the moment. More than 1700 of them have 10 or more member nations. I have no idea how many of them have offsite forums, or how many of our 20,000+ individual players use private channels such as Discord, but I can be absolutely certain that the 10 or so active NS Moderators can't cover all of them. Sure, officially we have 22 mods and 5 admins, but the actual fact is that most are in various degrees of inactivity.

I don't know from whence came the idea that we "had the full means to protect everyone", but I can assure you that the numbers simply aren't there. I'd be delighted if they were, but we've never had a team strong enough to take on this additional massive role in the more-than-a-decade I've been on the team. Expectations are quite simply exceeding reality at this point.

[Luna Amore]

One of the better lines of comparison I’ve seen. You can go to HR with even say, texts of someone’s behavior and have it addressed, much less a group chat somewhere focused specifically on company work.

If NS doesn’t want to help here, or take any responsibility at all for the effects of the offsite community it has fed, then it logically really should promote them less. A “You are now leaving this site” Banner with a couple bullets and a link to another page somewhere like the FAQ or OSRS that goes into more detail, discusses that offsite generally are a thing and safe but what the risks can be, and some general internet safety/what to do if you feel uncomfortable tips would be...something, at least.

It's worth noting that too, that the official gameplay explanation thread posted by a former NS staff member promotes offsite forums as a way to engage in gameplay.

So, basically, NS staff is encouraging people to create/join offsite forums, get harassed, and then are claiming they have no responsibility for the predators who are unrooted because those properties are not related to NS (??).

I'd say more, but I think it's all been said.

If you want to host a huge party at my house, but I tell you I can't accommodate you and point you in the direction of a Best Western, is the bill going to come to me if someone at the party trashes the hotel room? No, that's ridiculous.

We point to offsite specifically because it would be a logistical nightmare to allow 21k (ok, I know reasonably not every region would use the feature, it would still be large enough to be unfeasible) separate regional forums on site.

*ninja'd by Fris

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I simply do not understand at all how they can say that and also force concerned players to stay silent onsite about serious offenses offsite.

Because they're not internet police and don't have to punish people here for things they do out of the website they're supposed to cover.

Have to?

I don’t think anyone is saying they *have to.*

We’re saying they *should,* and that these are their users, on websites that they not just condone, but promote as peripheral to NS, in official mod posts and pinned guides.

These are not completely unrelated things.

Is it within the range that were expecting them to take proactive actions? Nope. But given the above, the request is that that cooperate a little in return with administrators of these places that again, they promote. Or, logically, though I don’t think anyone is a huge fan of this end logic, that they stop promoting them.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

It's worth noting that too, that the official gameplay explanation thread posted by a former NS staff member promotes offsite forums as a way to engage in gameplay.

So, basically, NS staff is encouraging people to create/join offsite forums, get harassed, and then are claiming they have no responsibility for the predators who are unrooted because those properties are not related to NS (??).

I'd say more, but I think it's all been said.

If you want to host a huge party at my house, but I tell you I can't accommodate you and point you in the direction of a Best Western, is the bill going to come to me if someone at the party trashes the hotel room? No, that's ridiculous.

We point to offsite specifically because it would be a logistical nightmare to allow 21k (ok, I know reasonably not every region would use the feature, it would still be large enough to be unfeasible) separate regional forums on site.

*ninja'd by Fris

Well...if I set up a public event on facebook and invite the world to some random pub, they can ask me to pay up if my huge group trashes the place, according to the law.

[The Black Forrest]

Where is the police matters need to be handled by police and not moderation, button?

Sorry. I had it. Here you go.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

When those of us without the full means to protect ourselves are told by those who can protect us that they won't

Just to address this single point:

There are over 21,000 regions at the moment. More than 1700 of them have 10 or more member nations. I have no idea how many of them have offsite forums, or how many of our 20,000+ individual players use private channels such as Discord, but I can be absolutely certain that the 10 or so active NS Moderators can't cover all of them. Sure, officially we have 22 mods and 5 admins, but the actual fact is that most are in various degrees of inactivity.

I don't know from whence came the idea that we "had the full means to protect everyone", but I can assure you that the numbers simply aren't there. I'd be delighted if they were, but we've never had a team strong enough to take on this additional massive role in the more-than-a-decade I've been on the team. Expectations are quite simply exceeding reality at this point.

Seems like the ability to expand the team is something that lies within your hands, if the current team is not sufficient. As noted a bit above, there has been an open pin about doing so for what, about 1/4 of a year now with no results?

If you need more moderators, add more moderators. Though as I also stated above, people are gonna be a lot less likely to accept if the vibe is that they can’t do shit to improve the community in that position.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Because they're not internet police and don't have to punish people here for things they do out of the website they're supposed to cover.

Have to?

I don’t think anyone is saying they *have to.*

We’re saying they *should,* and that these are their users, on websites that they not just condone, but promote as peripheral to NS, in official mod posts and pinned guides.

These are not completely unrelated things.

Is it within the range that were expecting them to take proactive actions? Nope. But given the above, the request is that that cooperate a little in return with administrators of these places that again, they promote. Or, logically, though I don’t think anyone is a huge fan of this end logic, that they stop promoting them.

Exactly.

I've not had the best relationship with ns moderation in the past, and I still don't trust them enough to give them access to the acp on any forum I administrate. But I'd certainly cooperate with them if they were participating into an investigation with other communities into a players activity when it concerns something so damaging. I'm not asking them to sign up to anyones forums, just to act on offsite evidence and cooperate with offsite moderators.

[USS Monitor]

If I were a mod, I would resign today.

I’d also look at it as “you’re making it a lot less likely that anyone from GP accepts an offer to be a mod whenever you get around to it, if they feel that they can’t sufficiently act to take on the issues more serious than a bit of forum flaming.”

And if people take that attitude, it will only make the problem worse since one of the obstacles is a lack of manpower.

[Northwest Slobovia]

While I understand to some extent the mods' concerns as to how they could take offsite evidence and enforce onsite punishments, I simply do not understand at all how they can say that and also force concerned players to stay silent onsite about serious offenses offsite.

That's not what NERV said:

Acting on off-site information: We do act on off-site information to the extent that when we receive such information we often start our own investigation here. Anything we find that supports the information from off-site can and will be acted on here. This has been standard practice for years and will remain so. Any such information can be submitted via Getting Help.

Acting on off-site actions: The NS Moderation and Admin teams simply cannot take action on the NationStates site based on something someone did on another site. We are not the internet police. Facebook does not punish you for what you may have done on Twitter, Twitter does not take action against you for something you may have done on Instagram, etc. [...]

That said, per the site rules stating "Max and the Admins may invoke special rulings as they see a need," site staff has the right to remove a user for any reason not already outlined in the Terms of Service, the Frequently Asked Questions, or the One Stop Rules Shop. We try to avoid invoking that clause, but it is there and can be invoked when it is absolutely necessary for the protection of our players and the site. It should be noted that a DOS order is not a magic bullet however. The important part of "Delete On Sight" is "sight." While we have tools to help us identify DOS players trying to sneak back in, it still comes down to Moderators using their analog MK I eyeballs and making a judgement. There is no guarantee that removing someone here will keep them away and we certainly cannot affect that person's ability to join other sites.

With regards to the request to publicly announce when such individuals have been declared "Delete on Sight", that will not be happening as they often entail legal liabilities that we cannot comment on. [...]

Regarding the defamation rule: We feel that the rule is sufficient as written but we would clarify it to say that stating general factual accounts of things happening off-site are allowable. For instance, “Nationstan was removed from his admin position on the Regionboards for reasons detailed on them” is allowable. “Nationstan was removed from his admin position on the Regionboards because his thing about Hot Springs penguins is outside of nature’s laws” would not be, nor would “Nationstan was removed from his admin position on the Regionboards and you can read all about it at www.somedamnlink.somedomain.” Players are allowed to reply to such posts, again on general factual basis, in the thread. Behavior that can be seen as harassment (Mentioning it within multiple threads), flaming, or releasing private information is still against the rules.

So: concerned players can file a GHR with evidence and can post announcements saying "read all about X offsite". That's not being forced to remain silent. And, as bolded, they will ban people if they get good enough evidence. What they're not doing is saying "We'll DoS people just because somebody accuses them of something bad offsite."

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Just to address this single point:

There are over 21,000 regions at the moment. More than 1700 of them have 10 or more member nations. I have no idea how many of them have offsite forums, or how many of our 20,000+ individual players use private channels such as Discord, but I can be absolutely certain that the 10 or so active NS Moderators can't cover all of them. Sure, officially we have 22 mods and 5 admins, but the actual fact is that most are in various degrees of inactivity.

I don't know from whence came the idea that we "had the full means to protect everyone", but I can assure you that the numbers simply aren't there. I'd be delighted if they were, but we've never had a team strong enough to take on this additional massive role in the more-than-a-decade I've been on the team. Expectations are quite simply exceeding reality at this point.

Seems like the ability to expand the team is something that lies within your hands, if the current team is not sufficient. As noted a bit above, there has been an open pin about doing so for what, about 1/4 of a year now with no results?

If you need more moderators, add more moderators. Though as I also stated above, people are gonna be a lot less likely to accept if the vibe is that they can’t do shit to improve the community in that position.

And by 'add more moderators,' add a diverse range of moderators who still participate in the communities they're drawn from. Since dln retired their's only been 2 moderators who still participate in rp, for example.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

I’d also look at it as “you’re making it a lot less likely that anyone from GP accepts an offer to be a mod whenever you get around to it, if they feel that they can’t sufficiently act to take on the issues more serious than a bit of forum flaming.”

And if people take that attitude, it will only make the problem worse since one of the obstacles is a lack of manpower.

We hear “we don’t have the manpower,” and “they’re just volunteers” a lot.

You’re in the top 5k is websites, and top 17kish global websites. I don’t know how much your server costs are, but between the advertising on this site and all the stuff sold in the store (I know individuals that alone spend almost a grand a year on stamps), the public tends to assume that you’re in the Black here, even with some shutterstock image purchases thrown in.

Maybe it’s time to get some *employees* rather than volunteers? Or supplemented with volunteers?

[Frisbeeteria]

Seems like the ability to expand the team is something that lies within your hands, if the current team is not sufficient. As noted a bit above, there has been an open pin about doing so for what, about 1/4 of a year now with no results?

If you need more moderators, add more moderators. Though as I also stated above, people are gonna be a lot less likely to accept if the vibe is that they can’t do shit to improve the community in that position.

The community wants moderators it can trust to be fair and non-corrupt. The bulk of the nominations we get are from players with warning histories out the wazoo; or newbies who have been playing for a month or two. Others have been involved in RP or GP, and have large numbers of 'enemies' on the site, or are unwilling to give up their gameplay activities in order to accept this thankless job.

Should we drop our standards and let just anyone be a moderator? We need viable candidates with a mostly clean history and a decent reputation for fairness. Adding team members isn't easy, or we'd have picked more than just Ransium from the recent submissions. It's not exclusively in our hands, EWS.

[USS Monitor]

Would that be genuinely helpful? If there ever comes a time where I am told that I am doing more harm than good -- and I believe it is being said in earnest and reflects the feeling of the community, not just one or two people speaking from anger -- I have no problem resigning. Right now I don't see that it would be good for the site.

it's not "just one or two people" speaking in—very righteous—anger about this. people aren't angry for the sake of being angry or contrarian, they're angry because this was a terribly cowardly stance to take on the part of this website's administration

Do you believe that it would improve the situation if I personally resign from the mod team? If so, why do you think that?

[Eluvatar]

We can find out who deleted the post, but can't get a copy of the text of the post.

I'm just wondering about the 'in the last few hours.'

I reviewed the log of deletions going back a few hours. I'm sure I could have searched for deletions of your posts instead, but you weren't asking if any post of yours has ever been deleted.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Seems like the ability to expand the team is something that lies within your hands, if the current team is not sufficient. As noted a bit above, there has been an open pin about doing so for what, about 1/4 of a year now with no results?

If you need more moderators, add more moderators. Though as I also stated above, people are gonna be a lot less likely to accept if the vibe is that they can’t do shit to improve the community in that position.

The community wants moderators it can trust to be fair and non-corrupt. The bulk of the nominations we get are from players with warning histories out the wazoo; or newbies who have been playing for a month or two. Others have been involved in RP or GP, and have large numbers of 'enemies' on the site, or are unwilling to give up their gameplay activities in order to accept this thankless job.

Should we drop our standards and let just anyone be a moderator? We need viable candidates with a mostly clean history and a decent reputation for fairness. Adding team members isn't easy, or we'd have picked more than just Ransium from the recent submissions. It's not exclusively in our hands, EWS.

Most people will have enemies if they've been active on rp or gp for a long time, one moderator has more than enough from before they were a moderator to raise a few flares, certainly.
However, it does seem like their is clearly something wrong with the moderator recruitment process, I have nominated people before with (I believe) very small warning records and heard nothing back. If we could be given clearer advice on what constitutes 'too many enemies' and the like you might get more useful nominations.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

Seems like the ability to expand the team is something that lies within your hands, if the current team is not sufficient. As noted a bit above, there has been an open pin about doing so for what, about 1/4 of a year now with no results?

If you need more moderators, add more moderators. Though as I also stated above, people are gonna be a lot less likely to accept if the vibe is that they can’t do shit to improve the community in that position.

The community wants moderators it can trust to be fair and non-corrupt. The bulk of the nominations we get are from players with warning histories out the wazoo; or newbies who have been playing for a month or two. Others have been involved in RP or GP, and have large numbers of 'enemies' on the site, or are unwilling to give up their gameplay activities in order to accept this thankless job.

Should we drop our standards and let just anyone be a moderator? We need viable candidates with a mostly clean history and a decent reputation for fairness. Adding team members isn't easy, or we'd have picked more than just Ransium from the recent submissions. It's not exclusively in our hands, EWS.

Then maybe don’t rely entirely on nominations? Maybe accept that everyone will have some enemies, and trust them to defer issues where they cannot be objective to another mod? A good candidate isn’t one with no enemies ever, but one that know when they should excuse themselves. Why should anyone have to give up gameplay activity anyways? RP sourced mods can continue to RP, etc etc, it’s long been said that moderators are still allowed to play the game. You can even consider going a bit looser on standards, using the forum mod trial period as exactly that, and accept that some people might actually not eventually get promoted up...but maybe others you were borderline about will surprise you with their dedication and fairness.

Trust me, I know finding new community leaders is no walk in the park. But it’s also a self-sourced issue. The one complaining about being unable to find them is generally also the one with the power to put more work into finding or raising them.

[Luna Amore]

Split off a post as bad faith. Come on guys.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Split off a post as bad faith. Come on guys.

How in gods name was that post bad faith?

[Frisbeeteria]

Then maybe don’t rely entirely on nominations?

We don't. We've made offers and some have been rejected. Still, we're a small team, and we don't know everyone on site. If you don't post on NS forums, we have no real basis to judge your actions.

Why should anyone have to give up gameplay activity anyways? RP sourced mods can continue to RP, etc etc,

Are you suggesting that active raiders or defenders should have the ability to use back room data for an in-game advantage? That's not a problem with RP or GA or Issues - it's purely a gameplay advantage.

You can even consider going a bit looser on standards, using the forum mod trial period as exactly that,

We do use the forum mod trial period, but FM tools are pretty toothless. The activity requested in this petition require access to the Game Moderator toolbox. You also need to be an active forumite to be a FM, and my understanding is that a lot of potential candidates have no real interest in the forums, much less moderating them.

[The Land of Lil Bunnies]

While I understand to some extent the mods' concerns as to how they could take offsite evidence and enforce onsite punishments, I simply do not understand at all how they can say that and also force concerned players to stay silent onsite about serious offenses offsite.

That's not what NERV said

Isn't it, though?

Acting on off-site actions: The NS Moderation and Admin teams simply cannot take action on the NationStates site based on something someone did on another site.

It sounds like that's exactly what they're saying.

Regarding the defamation rule: We feel that the rule is sufficient as written but we would clarify it to say that stating general factual accounts of things happening off-site are allowable. For instance, “Nationstan was removed from his admin position on the Regionboards for reasons detailed on them” is allowable. “Nationstan was removed from his admin position on the Regionboards because his thing about Hot Springs penguins is outside of nature’s laws” would not be, nor would “Nationstan was removed from his admin position on the Regionboards and you can read all about it at www.somedamnlink.somedomain.” Players are allowed to reply to such posts, again on general factual basis, in the thread. Behavior that can be seen as harassment (Mentioning it within multiple threads), flaming, or releasing private information is still against the rules.

So: concerned players can file a GHR with evidence and can post announcements saying "read all about X offsite". That's not being forced to remain silent. And, as bolded, they will ban people if they get good enough evidence. What they're not doing is saying "We'll DoS people just because somebody accuses them of something bad offsite."

What I was advocating for is public announcements of such findings to inform other gameplayers. We can't even link to an explanation offsite to warn others. It literally says you can't talk about what they did or even provide a link to it without getting called out for defamation.

[Frisbeeteria]

How in gods name was that post bad faith?

It wasn't your post that was removed.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

Then maybe don’t rely entirely on nominations?

We don't. We've made offers and some have been rejected. Still, we're a small team, and we don't know everyone on site. If you don't post on NS forums, we have no real basis to judge your actions.

Why should anyone have to give up gameplay activity anyways? RP sourced mods can continue to RP, etc etc,

Are you suggesting that active raiders or defenders should have the ability to use back room data for an in-game advantage? That's not a problem with RP or GA or Issues - it's purely a gameplay advantage.

You can even consider going a bit looser on standards, using the forum mod trial period as exactly that,

We do use the forum mod trial period, but FM tools are pretty toothless. The activity requested in this petition require access to the Game Moderator toolbox. You also need to be an active forumite to be a FM, and my understanding is that a lot of potential candidates have no real interest in the forums, much less moderating them.

It's called trusting people a bit.
You say all the time about how good your logs are at preventing abuse, if the logs are sogood then an active raider/defender wouldn't be able to use that backroom data as you'd know they were doing it straight away.

[Greater vakolicci haven]

How in gods name was that post bad faith?

It wasn't your post that was removed.

I know. It was so recent though I could tell which one it was.