In Regards to Moderation Recently

[Kirbyrocket]

@macdguy

This is several years ago and this has never been our policy. Socks has not been a moderator for several years now.

We don’t want you to publicly report issues. We request that you use our email and the in-game report system. We don’t want users using the support ticket for reports.

I’m going to counter this statement with two things.

1. The point of me bringing this up was to say that the “Discord Report Ticket” suggestion was made before. You can view this ticket yourself here, Mac. I can’t really agree that 1 year, 1 month, and 26 days is “several years” exactly.
2. The reason why it was suggested is because what we have currently clearly isn’t working enough to where all these people are coming from left and right to speak about their poor experience. For those who can’t read the ticket, you can find the active logs of this ticket both here and here.

@macdguy

Was this reported? I’ve not seen any reports of this nature. Do you know what causes the crash, who is doing it, etc. If you can, email us.

Crashing AGC? Abso-freaking-lutely. In fact, I ended up taking some flack for making the report because there was a level of urgency that can never be conveyed outside of just one singular in-game report that gets solved with both patience and a prayer that it’ll get addressed sooner.

As for crashing the Condo Hub and my own condo, it’s a bit more complicated because I can’t see the crash logs of the Condo Hub. I do have an idea of what caused this issue, and I’d be more than happy to share it if it wasn’t for the fact that I nearly have to write an essay to explain a report like this.

@rythian

The report website accessed via the in-game Report button contradicts some of this as well (behavior in condos is listed under “WE DO NOT MODERATE: SO DO NOT REPORT”). It also does not say anywhere that you must record voice chat for reports, or that certain rule violations need screenshots for evidence. It seems very outdated in general (still mentions vote kick, which was removed like 3-4 years ago).

edit: Actually it does mention recording voice chat, although it can be easily missed if you’re just skimming through. If there were was a “YOU MUST RECORD VIDEO EVIDENCE FOR THESE RULE VIOLATIONS” section that’d be a lot harder to miss, and hopefully would help reduce the amount of voice chat reports without evidence.

Stuff like this makes in-game moderation feel more like an after-thought for Tower Unite rather than viewing it as an important part of the product. It’s a social game after all, and the lack of awareness on this matter seems to speak more than anything else on the matter.

@macdguy

• Taking screenshots of bad behavior in Condos.

Part of this is contradictory. On one hand, it’s very easy to report a condo that contains hate speech or anything of that matter. On the other hand, your own Game rules state and I quote:

@bot

Illicit materials should be reported to law enforcement - not to us. We will remove Condos with illegal content or activity.

The problem with this is that condos containing illicit materials have been reported before and have been unbanned in some cases simply because an investigation wasn’t properly done. If an investigation wasn’t done properly and an appeal went through because of that, then it’s a very different issue altogether.

@macdguy

Everything mentioned in my post has been the status quo for a long time now. This isn’t reactionary, but if there’s feedback I listen. We don’t talk about moderation actions publicly.

If it’s not reactionary, then why are people who were reported in January only now getting muted? It seems like there are a lot of easy oversights that keep repeatedly happening, and that is posing a greater problem to the already existing concerns that we have with the current systems. It means that we need something to change, be it the system or something even greater.

@macdguy

We’re a small team, we’re doing our best when it comes to moderation and we handle reports all throughout the day, but we don’t have activate moderators other than staff right now.

This excuse can only get you so far. If you’re a small team but don’t have any active moderators other than your current staff, what’s stopping you from expanding your team? Finances? Trust? Perhaps a combination of the two?

A better question: how much do you believe it costs to hire people who are experienced in that field?

@macdguy

I know I haven’t addressed every concern here, but I’m actively trying to.

I value all of this feedback greatly and will discuss this more with the team. We’ll continue to improve on our rules and look into better ways to handle moderation to make Tower a safer place each day.

My biggest concern was one of those that weren’t addressed yet, and it brings me no comfort sleeping at night knowing that people can get away with doxing other Tower Unite players so as long as they specifically do it off the platform. As for the concept of “reporting them on their respected platform”, you can’t report someone for something that wasn’t sent directly to you nor in a place where you specifically can see it.

This suggestion and statement is moot and overall helps nobody as I feel like my concerns of safety and privacy are being deflected when this is the place that these people are specifically trying to get me off of.

@macdguy

• Using in-game report tools. These get logged immediately and let us investigate the situation as quick as possible.
• Sending us emails to bans@pixeltail.com to help combat harassment.
• It is totally fine to bump an email asking for more assistance or an update on the situation. Oftentimes we take action and don’t always reply to the email, which is something we’re working on
• Ensure you give us all the evidence you can, we need evidence so when we issue out bans we have evidence to back up the claim. Also double check the attachment or link is functional.

I’ve used these systems enough times and have reported enough people to say that this is a very inconsistent system. The number of times I’ve reported those for ban evasion or even just general harassment and didn’t get addressed properly or got inconsistently addressed is surreal.

For example, I reported someone for actively harassing someone and for transphobia, something on the zero-tolerance ban policy, and only one of the person’s three accounts got banned.

Another example, I reported someone for ban evading their temporary mute as well as a condo ban using the in-game report system. Only one of their accounts was banned for muted ban evasion and it lasts exactly as long as the main account.

Now I don’t know what could have possibly gone wrong on either one of those accounts, but it most certainly shows to me that these systems are flawed and inconsistent on a good day.

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Look, I’m not here to flack on everything that is being done on the moderation side overall because there are some good things that have been done, but this is a problem to me and my statement on not feeling safe still applies. I’m asking for these answers:

1. What is going to change to help prevent bad actors like these from festering in the Tower Unite community? When will this happen?

This means no blanket statements of “We’re working on it”. This is just as good as saying “We’ll get there eventually,” and only justifies my feeling of moderation being a mere after thought. We need to know what is going to happen and when this is going to happen. Henceforth, we’ll hold you accountable for this.

2. Do you plan on expanding your team to help create active moderators? If so, when and how?

If there continues to be no active moderators for Tower Unite, then infractions—like it or not—are being created reactively by definition since I’d argue that it’s rare to see an active moderator on Tower Unite in any capacity. If you truly want to own the claim that this game is proactively moderated, you would need active moderators in-game.

3. How will you address the elephant in the room that is those who are specifically dancing around your rules in order to harm others on Tower Unite?

Be it with an adjustment to the Game Rules or something even greater, what are you going to do to help prevent this. Right now, nothing has been said on it as of me posting this. To me, I still believe nothing is going to change unless somebody says or does something.

4. How are you going to address the inconsistencies with your current system?

In my humble opinion, this system sucks. It is not only flawed in the sense that you can remove context depending on how much or how little you clip, but limited in the sense of who can actually use it. Not everyone can actively record their screen and some Operating Systems don’t even have programs that can support any kind of feature as such. Even if you can report it to the proper venues, that guarantees no certainty that it’ll be addressed properly, consistently, and timely. How are you going to fix this problem?

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You don’t have to answer all of these questions right away, but I can say at least for myself that I would like to know when can we hear answers to all of these questions? Be it in a bigger post of some kind or just in this thread, something needs to be said and it needs to be said soon. If you aren’t going to answer these today, it’d be better to just give a rough estimate on a time when you can create a more coherent and constructive response than what you can do right now.

I just want answers, and I just want to get a better idea of when I can feel safer playing Tower Unite.

EDIT 1: With the way that “holidays” and “breaks” are treated, it feels like moderation is treated more like a 9-to-5 office job more than an actual passionate community that’s proud to be managed.