Community Arbitrators

[sinewav]

The whole thing is starting to make me a little nervous. Not because I will wind-up on the list (although that's always a possibility), but because I think this might cause endless debates on ethics and what constitutes "good/bad behavior". Those arguments, of course, give me the equivalent of a sugar-rush and I have a hard time avoiding them. I don't want to fuel my addiction.

However, I really respect you guys and I trust that this is the right thing to do. After all, if it doesn't work as planned it can be abandoned.

[kyle]

I also have mixed feeling about the idea.
I really only have kicked 20 - 40 people over the last year. I think whoever are the Arbitrators Should really be conservative on who is banned / kicked. I'm not sure if CT will or will not participate. we will have to talk about this more when a more clear vision of the idea is available. it is a bit vague right now.

I do like Lucifer way of finding the best moderator, I'm not sure if it will work because rubber servers may trust different moderators than fortress players.

So I Abstain from voting until a clear plan comes along.

[Lucifer]

Well, the idea of giving a few players the power to ban users from many servers is scary. It's damned scary. Luckily, that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about giving server administrators the option to subscribe to published ban lists made by players, where each player makes their own ban list. That's the core mechanism in place. So just look at that mechanism.

Let's say that CT currently runs 8 servers, and they have 20 moderators that can authenticate and moderate the servers directly. Some smeghead comes into CT Wild Rubber **** Fight, spews crap all over the place, and leaves. There's a moderator in there, and he bans the smeghead from that server using armathentication. Now he wants to ban the smeghead from the other 7 servers. Jeez, what a pain. So kyle goes and sets up CT for the armatrator system and selects some of their own moderators to trust. Now CT has joined the system.

Ww is in the same boat, let's say they've got 8 of their own servers. However, where CT is generally pretty permissive, Ww tends to be a bit more strict. CT allows minor swearing, for example (I think, correct me if I'm wrong), but Ww bans immediately on swearing of any kind. Obviously CT doesn't want to share some Ww moderators. So like CT, Ww sets up their servers to trust a particular group of armatrators that come from Ww membership.

SP comes along and looks at them both and surprises everybody by saying "We like all of these moderators, and we have some of our own to contribute." So SP sends up a few of their own members, and trusts both CT and Ww moderators.

So at this point, we have three groups of armatrators that each have their own particular ideas for how people should behave ingame, and those ideas generally come from the, er, subcommunities in which they usually play.

So there's an example of one application of the system, administrators that run more than one server being able to somewhat consolidate their lists. Now, I'm sure some of you guys have already worked out separate solutions to this problem, but if you joined this system, you'd make your moderators available to other admins.

Ok, another application of the system. CT and Ww get together and agree on a common set of policies. Each can augment the policies on their own servers, but they agree on a common set of policies and go post this on the wiki, with the line added "Any armatrator who agrees to enforce the spirit of these policies may be trusted on CT and Ww servers".

Ok, so you see how groups can use the system, right?

What about individuals? Sine.wav has his server, and he wants to have some basic minimum "good behavior" on his server, but he doesn't want to police it himself and he doesn't have a large enough group of players that play often enough to warrant picking up individual moderators. So instead he looks at who's available on the armatration site and chooses from the list players he thinks are pretty fair. Some of them he knows, some of them he doesn't know. How did he make the decision that those players he doesn't know are fair?

Simple, really. Every time an armatrator puts someone on their ban list, they have the option to state a reason. Sine.wav looked only at armatrators that state reasons, and read through the reasons. He also looked at how many servers are currently trusting that particular armatrator and considered that in his decision. Each armatrator that is now trusted by sine.wav should hopefully receive an email notification that they are now trusted on sine.wav's server.

Now, those armatrators may never go into sine.wav's server. Quite honestly, they don't have to. If people misbehave on sine.wav's server, he can get the server logs and talk to one of the armatrators to get action taken. If people misbehave on other servers, sine.wav enjoys the network benefit that comes with choosing his armatrators wisely.

So, things are going fine, and then several armatrators start attracting a lot of attention for acting like fascists. The community rebels, right? New servers are setup that don't trust the fascists, existing server communities split on those lines, right? Well, maybe not. If an armatrator goes psycho, it will hopefully be noticed by other players. See, in the current player/moderator feuds, it's usually his word against hers, or vice versa, and players that were there tend to side with the moderator. In this system, when a player/moderator feud develops, server admins can pull out logs, the armatrator's actions are hopefully logged and can be read by the public (possibly redacting usernames for privacy reasons), and server admins can decide (as they always have) whether or not to continue trusting that person.

So in this story, then, several armatrators have turned fascist, and several prominent server admins agree that those armatrators are fascist. In order to solve the immediate problem, they quit trusting those people, which results in the 20 most popular servers immediately dropping the fascists from their lists. Now 90% of the community is saved from the fascists. In order to deal with problems like this in the future, these prominent server admins get together and form the Armagetron Council of Servers, aka ACOS. They form a series of guidelines to be used as a baseline for armatrators, and they poll their own players and generally get feedback from the community. These guidelines might be things like "Open play is enforced on servers that say they enforce it. On servers that don't say they enforce it, people who insist on open play will be asked to stop", "High rubber servers define camping as 'not dying when you're sealed'. Low rubber servers define camping as 'staying away from the action'. People who camp will be asked to stop," etc, you get the idea.

So what sort of specifics are possible? I'll try not to get into any hardcore technical discussion, but try to keep in mind two important things: we (the developers here) have always tried to support server administrators however we can to give them the tools to run their servers however they want, within whatever limitations we have to deal with, and also that nobody here can wipe his/her backside without generating at least 3 configuration options.

So, CT decides to trust Ww armatrators, but cut the ban time in half.

Ww decides to trust the player named "ImNotASmeghead", and only the ban list he maintains.

CT decides to trust the same player, and all players that ImNotASmeghead also trusts (this is the metamoderator role z-man was talking about), but only the ones that INAS directly trusts. This would be something like MAX_TRUST_RECURSION=1.

sine.wav decides to trust ImNotASmeghead, everybody INAS trusts, and everybody else that is trusted directly or indirectly by INAS. This would be something like MAX_TRUST_RECURSION=-1 (infinite).

So Durka is running another tournament, and he'd like to find some moderators for his tournament. He looks over at the armatrators and sees several players that make excellent moderators. He decides to have his server, where he will host the tournament, accept armathentication from the armatrator site and gives TOURNEY_MOD privileges to the armatrators he likes. He also goes ahead and accepts their banlist, which means anybody who's been banned can't play in his tournament.

Now then, bans are all well and good, but as you say, kyle, you don't want lots of bans. The best armatrators, in my opinion, are the ones who ban infrequently. A ban should be more like the implied threat. "Dude, you need to settle down, go take a break and drink some juice or something. Come back when you're settled." "Dude" looks at the armatrator and says "You can force me to take a break, can't you?" Armatrator says "Yes, but I don't want to. Just do it, will you?"

Of course, there's also "Hey, SP vs CT isn't an argument you should be having, and you guys are making this place terribly uncomfortable for the other 12 players that are here. Please stop this argument here, or take it somewhere else where you won't bother other people." The ban is an implied threat, it's possible that if the two players having the argument don't stop, they may get banned for a short time.

But the only way anybody will ever get to be a global armatrator is if they can win the trust of every single server admin. Considering how varied the values that each server admin has, I don't think any one or small group of people will do that. I envision a system where most armatrators can only operate within a subset of servers, and that by working together they may be able to take care of more business. So armatrator X is playing out of his "turf", and he sees a player wantonly teamkilling who just plain won't stop. He thinks to himself "I don't want that guy doing that in my servers either, who armatrates on this server?" He goes and looks, then uses the system to send an email to those armatrators for that server and gives a copy of his personal logs to show the teamkiller in action.

Does it make more sense this way? Or rather, does this help you to see where the power comes from, and how it is checked to prevent anybody from getting too big for their britches?

[compguygene]

That sounds like the kind of system The Server Pharm will need when i start to host tourneys! It seems to have a great balance of power!

[2020]

Let's evolve, people...
http://franc2.mit.edu:8000/ci/invite?KC ... RUFERVIiKQ**

forums suck for this kind decision making

ps
don't worry
i shall stop posting these soon
but i have make clear there is an opportunity here...

[fingerbib]

if someone/ some people are worthy of bans from multiple servers, it seems to me like that's what they usually end up getting.

True, but it's a slow and inefficient process. On each server, the misbehavior needs to be noticed and acted upon individually. It would be easier to put someone on a more widely used ban list after they misbehaved on two or three different servers. Give the first ban a timeout of a couple of days to give that person a little demonstration of what to expect if they continue that way.

well, i've only been playing for just over 2 years (i know many of you have played for far longer) but in that 2ish years there has only been one time where i believe this system might have come in useful. in that instance, i believe the perpetrator pretty much wound up getting banned by everyone and moving on anyway...

...however, putting an end to this:

Then we've got other issues people want solved, like how to stop people from kicking every newbie that shows up on a fortress server. When fortress servers are the most popular at a particular time, then kicking newbie players from the server essentially kicks them from the community.

i would wholeheartedly support. although, perhaps the recent move towards making people spectate for few rounds, rather than impulsively kicking them, is going to begin to solve that problem.

[compguygene]

I did that in my dodgeball server the other day...
With my new servers, i am establishing no stated policies about cursing, nicks, etc. I am trying to do the "self moderating server model" described in the wiki. I immediately picked up on the idea of explaining that i own the server and can kick but would prefer they spectate a round or two. People calm down. It works!
I understand peoples argument with Wild West's policies, but it's their servers. BTW, I am not an admin, just a clan member. I am occasionally a tourney admin, that's it.
I like Z-man's basic philosophy of allowing the chaos of the community to make it's own decisions, period. But, I can see the value that Community Arbitrators would bring to the community as a whole. Particularly, with the model that has been discussed! Obviously, a lot of details need worked out. But, as a Server Admin, I want it.
Simply put, It could make it a lot simpler really, really bad behavior. Like what I saw last summer. Such a thing could have made tron a much happier place when some kids had nothing better to do than cause trouble!

[Phytotron]

Participation in real-life Civics: much more important, valuable, and fulfilling than vain, pathetic attempts at elevating a little video game's miniscule "community" into significance that it's not. Entertainment is not meaningful. Stick your heads out the window.

[sinewav]

Participation in real-life Civics: much more important, valuable, and fulfilling than vain, pathetic attempts at elevating a little video game's miniscule "community" into significance that it's not.

But not quite as important as being a part of that same small, meaningless community and voicing your completely off-based opinions, all of which fail to enlighten or inspire? Here's something you might not have grasped yet. Even though participation in a community such as this lacks a face-to-face element, it's no less "real" than any other activity. Maybe if your real-life civics included hugs, you wouldn't feel the need to dribble nonsense all over the forums. Now bugger off.

Entertainment is not meaningful.

Prove it.

Stick your heads out the window.

You first.


@the community: sorry for feeding the troll. I used to think his opinions had a certain valuable perspective (occasionally), but now I see he really doesn't have a clue.

[Word]

@the community: sorry for feeding the troll. I used to think his opinions had a certain valuable perspective (occasionally), but now I see he really doesn't have a clue.

I think the community will forgive you
this is one of the few moments I can understand sine and agree with him.

Phytotron: if Entertaining isn't meaningful, why do so many people earn money for it? Why do you and I and all others here waste their time on tron..?

and with the "stick your heads out of the window"-line you seem to underestimate the intelligence of the community members (which you are part of). If you want to enlighten someone, start with yourself.

in general i support the idea but i think every owner/admin/clan or whoever has a server has to agree that someone he can't "control"/he doesn't know can ban people. The only problem i see is that you have to think long about who you chose as Global Moderator/arbitrator

[KamP]

and a whole new group of people meets Oscilloscope

[Word]

ty KamP and sry Phytotron i called you louvre before...lol

BUT I STILL DISAGREE

[Corn1]

I have a suggestion to this idea. Whenever someone is kicked from the server via polling, a message is sent to the moderators of the server upon joining the server. This would give the name of the kicked player, the time they were kicked so that the moderator can look at the logs from that time to investigate, the player's ip and who made the kick poll.

This would allow moderators to be aware of players that are either abusing the kick poll while they are not present, or players that are breaking the rules while they are not present.

[Z-Man]

Apart from the difficulty of the implementation (the server would have to memorize those events), a small flaw: moderators don't usually have read access to server logs. And if they do, they can just as easily grep them for kick vote events.

[epsy]

He probably meant server operators in general.