Hello folks.
Welcome to Moderation Office hours.
My name is Canadian Git and I'm going to be here for the next
30 minutes to field any questions you might have about the Moderation team,
the mentor program
and the guidelines more broadly.
If you like to ask questions about those things,
I'd recommend you kick up to the office hours questions for just north of
the community meeting stage where you can find a thread with today's date.
There's a link for it that I've posted in the office hours general
uh channel just floating above that. If you'd like an easy way to get to it,
I'll also drop it into uh the chat for this stage.
As I always like to say,
I'm going to be here for the next 30 minutes to
field any questions you have of course about those topics,
but anything on resonate that you'd like to ask me at all,
those are the things I know the most about and I
think I'll be able to provide the best answers for it.
But you're welcome to ask me about anything you would like.
I'll give you the best answer I can and occasionally if I can't
give you the best answer point you in the direction of who can
hope everyone's been having a fantastic weekend so far
up here in Canada,
winter can't figure out whether it's finished or
not hope the weather has been better elsewhere.
Hello. Hello, Veer. Welcome.
Thank you.
Am I coming through? Ok.
A little bit quiet, but I think you're coming through pretty good. Oh,
good.
Hopefully not too many crackles this time.
No, crackles at all. Just going to adjust your volume on the recording a little bit.
Cool.
Can you give me a 123, Mister Veer?
Uh Certainly I ate a whole bunch of spicy nugs.
So I'm sniffly right now. 123.
And now that's permanently
ingrained in the recording.
Whip asks the best question of this week.
Whip are the office hours being recorded and archived somewhere. Yes.
Right now the office hours are being recorded just for a moment and the last
few we've been recording since uh the request
started coming back out from the community at
this point. I am actually today. Objective is to upload all of the previously
recorded ones
to the wiki.
You'll be able to find those recordings by heading to the
wiki and going to the office hours page dedicated to it.
There's both timings for the office hours, dropping
a link for that in there
in the, in the,
the questions channel and down below you'll find a notes in recording section.
There's nothing under the moderation team subsection of that page right now.
But yeah, give it an hour and I aim to change it that
unfortunately our upload limit for the,
the wiki is generally looking for file size is a little bit
smaller than the recordings we often produce for these office hours.
Audio just takes up a bit of
space.
But I,
I imagine at the very least we're going to link back either to uh prime's repository
for broader office hours or of course perhaps
just uploads dropped in this discord here.
Message links. Oh,
we got a question from you fee uh
for analytics.
Are there precautions I must take if I were to implement an in game system
of tracking how an object is passed around the game
by adding saving uh the saving user to a string,
the entire system would exist only in resonate and would only be
visible if the object were to come across at a later time.
Uh As it currently stands,
I don't believe that we have any sort of uh data tracking uh guideline in place.
Uh I know that uh there was one on the old platform
but uh that one was causing some problems and confusion
and uh wasn't necessarily solving a whole lot of problems.
So currently I'd say your systems OK
for now.
But at the same time,
I don't know what the context of the system that you're creating is uh
is.
So,
uh if it's being used to break the guidelines, then of course, you know,
that would be a problem.
Uh If it's not and it's some sort of game or whatever, uh It's probably fine.
Of course,
if you are always interested in updates to future guidelines coming down the line,
we recommend keeping an eye on these very office
hours or if that's not working for you,
the de vlog channel,
uh we will drop updates for things coming down the line in the future.
Uh Dreamer asks what are the guidelines when it comes to
the whole boobs being allowed to be during public sessions?
Because I've seen that some that have allowed it.
Are they been being sessions where they have been somewhat sexual with it?
Is there a way we could clarify it at all?
And uh yes, certainly this is the place to clarify that.
Thank you very much for bringing the question.
Uh Right now,
the guidelines make essentially no reference to nipples uh or
the whole boob as 11 refers it in this question.
Uh We don't consider that covered under adult
contact and the moderation team is not looking
to penalize individuals for simply having nipples present
regardless of the the gender of the individual uh
in in, in session, in public sessions
uh under the rules associated with adult content,
what we do have guidelines surrounding, however,
is activity if the individual is uh engaging in sexualized activities
then that certainly falls into adult content and is something that you
could of course ask them to stop and point to the guidelines.
But if that is not working, we would encourage you
to submit a ticket to the moderation
team
uh with any evidence associated with it and we will look into it ourselves.
What provides further clarification?
I would prefer if the office hours are archived somewhere public,
not by uploading them as files and Discord,
discord media is not suitable for long term archival.
I agree that's why we're probably going to
lean on prime's website for long term stuff.
Uh Occasionally flipping him the recordings just so it can be put up there too.
I may also as an alternative to that,
see if I can get an exemption
uh so that I can upload things to our good wiki of a
little bit larger file size and just store it on the wiki.
Uh Either way. Yeah, I don't want to keep it exclusively in the discord to myself.
We will find an alternative
that link I provided though the the wiki office hours page
will provide direction to wherever we end up sting of them.
Uh Jack responded to someone.
Uh sexual interaction in public sessions is definitely violating guidelines.
Uh just having exposed breasts by itself is not an issue,
uh breasts, you know, nipples, et cetera, you know,
those are definitely not necessarily an issue.
However, like sexualizing anything in public uh is an issue
as stated.
So if you see it, please report it.
Uh and also evidence goes a long, long way.
Uh Sometimes it's really hard for us to make decisions based on just pure testimony.
Uh But uh still, if that's all you've got, please still send in a ticket.
But uh like I said, it just always helps if we have some form of evidence
in a lot of cases that involve just simple testimony,
we might have to just file that ticket away uh
and maybe not utilize the information immediately and then wait for
uh a follow up ticket, maybe from someone else or even from the same user.
If they have evidence in this uh
circumstance, that helps a lot
just kind of a mini PS A about evidence.
I do always like to lean on the the recommendation to submit a ticket
whenever uncertain.
Though I think one of the more common things uh are users
who may not understand what is and is not against the guidelines.
And one of the things we can do even in a world,
low evidence environment is sent out a
reminder to users clarifying the guidelines.
I'm not saying moderation is here necessarily to,
to solve every argument
users might have about what is and isn't against the guidelines.
But those reminders can clarify.
And of course, since it's coming through the resonate bot from moderation,
it is fairly definitive
indeed.
Of course, as we always emphasize here, we like to encourage people to make use of the
slowly expanding tool kit of user tools
to deal with issues on on platform.
Uh You of course, can block users, you can when you're hosting your sessions,
kick or ban users from your sessions.
These are the sort of things that can deal with a
number of problems in a much more timely manner than moderation.
Will we always try to get back to you in cyber 24
whenever we can?
But of course, investigation sometimes take a little,
takes a little bit longer and if evidence is lacking, we're limited in what we can do.
The fastest,
quickest tools you have at your disposal
are those block features and session moderation features
with asks is the following line and the rest night guideline still
being looked at to clarify what exactly an identifying trait is.
It's currently still unspecified the line just so everyone listening can
uh know what we're talking about is hate
or discrimination towards users based on age,
gender, sexual orientation, spiritual beliefs,
disability or other identifying traits
is what we would consider covered
uh under our, our guidelines on intolerance. Just to provide the broader context.
At this point,
we provided all of the things that are very obvious useful categories to identify
things that are rather identified is probably not the best word there but to,
to highlight to users how this guideline is going to be employed.
Uh we certainly want to keep, at least we're willing to receive feedback and
suggestions to improve the language going forward so that users always
have a clearer understanding of what's being covered this one,
especially when it comes to intolerance
or intolerant actions against users, intolerant uh
activities. Be it the uh
some kind of targeted harassment that might be following that?
We certainly want to keep the language there uh broad
enough to allow us to assess case by case scenarios
right now.
Every now and then we receive, for instance, tickets where people are,
uh for instance,
worried that they're being targeted based on fandom Association.
And we've had to clarify that that isn't going to meet identifying traits.
And I understand how that could be confusing
looking at the language inside the guideline itself,
but clo closing the door firmly there and
saying it's just tied to the things we've identified
as a specific categories, age, gender, sexual orientation, spiritual beliefs,
disability could allow for, of course, people to try and rules lawyer,
uh intolerance against users.
Moderation certainly wants to be able to while we've identified the
biggest likely problem cases that are coming down the line,
be able to at least review things inside of a case by case basis
using a tiny bit of subjectivity inside of that line
that guideline.
Of course,
I apply the asterisk to literally all of
this highlighting that we might improve the language.
We might take suggestions to improve the language going forward.
But a a piece of subjectivity present in
that line certainly seems beneficial at this stage
as I was like to encourage users at this point,
if you are uncertain about what might or may,
may or may not meet certain guidelines criteria.
This is why we have office hours. You're welcome to come in here with hypotheticals.
You're welcome to even send tickets into the ticket system itself asking about
hypotheticals and we'll usually try and give you the best answer we can
there
apologize if I've uh
uh gone a little bit quiet. I'm dealing with something uh a little external.
Give me one moment.
Uh What makes clarification that uh
just about anything could be considered an identifying trait? I agree.
I think we need to work a little bit on the language surrounding that uh guideline.
But uh generally speaking, it's uh
anything that's uh a protected class, uh sort of identifying trait also,
just as a little reminder, we are about halfway through today's office hours.
Uh And so if you have any questions,
please feel free to ask us your questions uh in the office hours, uh moderation,
office hours, uh thread
in the office hours questions, uh
um
forum
uh Rexton asks,
do mods handle supporter tagging
uh or is there someone in accounting who does that
uh will supporter tears affect moderation speed?
Uh
So you say supporter tagging?
Um I'm, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by reporter tagging,
do you mean the tags that appear over people's heads in, resonate, uh,
the Patreon logo.
Uh, so that's automated.
Uh, it, uh, goes out every six hours, I believe that's how often the, um,
I'm not sure if it's on our end or if it's, uh, you know, just clarification,
not a technical, uh, part of the, uh, part of the team.
So I don't do any of the back end programming or anything like that.
So I'm not necessarily sure how it works.
I do know that there is a six hour period every six hours that
uh uh tags are applied and uh storage is applied, but that's automated.
Uh and supported tears do not affect our moderation speed at all.
Um We don't get anything that uh dictates to us that uh
uh either the ticket writer or reported accounts or anything like that are uh
supporters at all.
Uh And uh we'll never have anything like that necessarily speaking. Um
We uh like to try to keep all bias out
as much as possible on a related note as it has occurred once or twice.
Please don't tell us uh
how much one subscribes on patron when
submitting a moderation ticket about other users.
It does. Yeah, it does not assist.
It is not going to speed it up.
It, it doesn't put the ticket in a good light.
It's very rare I should say. So it's not a significant concern.
But if anyone was worried about whether that was a good idea or not, uh it's not,
I don't recommend doing so.
Same goes for ban appeals.
If you've been banned from the platform for breaking our guidelines,
I don't really care if you've been giving us $300 a month.
No,
Bass,
what are the future desired features for a session moderation
system overhaul or rework specifically to bring detailed settings,
custom permission tiers and a more easily
accessible slash exposed session settings to control or
meter the actions provided to and taken by
users in a given session headless or otherwise
all of this
seems to be talking about hard permissions,
which is something that I can say exists and is
planned for the future and perhaps point to the github
if you'd like to see some details present on it.
But isn't something I should try to provide in detail
off the top of my head at office hours.
It
is something that we're looking at though.
All the things you've suggested here having more detail as it suggests,
hard permissions is a more detailed look at permissions
that a host could set for a sin or world
for users coming in to more give a better fine
grained approach to what they can and can't do.
But how that's going to be implemented?
The act nuances of that implementation,
the potential headaches that should show up as it's been implemented
are all things that are going to have
to be discussed closer to its actual implementation
and will likely be covered better in a form
uh such as github
for now,
I do anticipate when that feature set is coming down the line that
we're going to see a number of office hours dedicated to it,
to get a lot of community feedback.
A lot of community suggestions help you guys help us by giving you an opportunity
to point out where things might go awry and see if
we can fix that before it goes out the door.
But today, I'm unlikely to be able to provide more detail other than saying, yeah,
that's something that we definitely want to do and it will be coming down the
line at some point even if I can't give you a date right now.
Uh
y
He asks a question that both of us I think can answer.
Uh
How did the weather,
uh how did the polar vortex last week affect the weather in your area?
Um
If it had affected my area, which granted,
I wasn't necessarily paying attention to uh anything like polar vortexes,
but it did get very cold here, very cold for a few days.
Uh And I'm in the northeast
of the United States.
So I'm up here, I'm up here in Canada as some people are able to guess.
And that means when this rolled down, we went from a day where it was 17 or 18 °C.
Uh above to the next day where it was 17 or 18
°C below freezing.
Uh, for Americans. I believe that's a jump somewhere around
low sixties to, like, near zero °F.
Dang.
Yeah, I was gonna say it's 61 degrees out here today.
I assume there was just a guy walking around the streets
in Ottawa who just like on a particularly warm day,
looked up at the sun and went.
No, I guess winter is done this year and took off his jacket and that was just winter
sucker punching that guy, just him.
Everyone else got the effect. But,
but that guy just got smacked. Catch you later, Jack.
Thanks for attending.
Hope the rest of the weekend goes better for you.
As I occasionally like to remind folks around this time,
we always sit it out till 430.
Uh Sometimes I get quiet days like today where it's been relatively quiet though.
I do see there's another question running down the line right now.
I'll just finish up. We, we always hang out till 430
every single time just to give folks an opportunity to give us questions.
If you don't make it at the beginning, it doesn't matter.
We're not going to leave because it's been quiet,
come at any time during the office hours and
you should find a moderation lead hanging out,
fielding your questions.
Now on to the other question,
we got one from Whip saying as the host of the furry free zone.
So for work session, is there anything I am currently doing against the guidelines?
Uh Session is currently set up so that I the session host can select
whether to allow or just allow someone's avatar when they join or with an avatar
as per session rules for or similar anthropomorphic avatars are not allowed.
Users are informed of this when they
equip a for avatar,
whether it's automatic because of that of a set default
avatar or manual after loading in people are not kicked,
banned or otherwise denied because of their default choice
of avatar profile picture or other surrounding information.
Only after being informed of the session rules,
if a user does not fault the session rules,
would they be kicked or banned from the session?
So as a good example, we brought up earlier concerning the rules on intolerance,
fandoms and association with a fandom is not
considered one of the the protected groups that we
would be looking for under the intolerance rule
from the read of what you've described here.
That is not something breaking the guidelines and seems
like a a reasonable way to set it up,
letting folks become aware of your session guidelines as they come in
and then taking action after the fact, if they fail to follow them,
of course, if there's details outside of this,
that are in violation of other guidelines,
it might still have some issue and we might
have a conversation with you from a moderation perspective,
but from what I'm aware and this question
uh that does not appear to be an issue
Indian
uh Rexton as
uh to help avoid help. My avatar has been stolen style reports.
It'd be nice if there was a tutorial for
protecting one's assets somewhere easy to find in game.
I had to ask around to find that
uh while I agree, like, you know,
definitely we should be advertising that uh we at least
have a simple avatar protection uh system on the platform.
Uh You do have to kind of toggle that
off, I believe
uh in order to deactivate it when you are building an avatar.
Uh Am I, am i wrong in that? I, I think that's uh toggled on by default,
I do believe so
that it changed some time recently.
Uh For sure though, maybe some explanation surrounding what that feature does,
especially on uh
the panel itself. When you're creating an avatar would be helpful.
I do believe that we have a tool tip system, uh at least
somewhat talked about. Uh
So it's in our minds to have this in the future,
we have two minutes remaining for today's office hours.
Um You know, what you do bring up a good point.
Uh People tend to clone a base to mod for themselves.
Uh That is definitely true, especially if, say, you know,
if you have an avatar like Orex
Oum or something where you know, a lot of people have AEX
oum. Uh, people might ask, hey, can I have you pre set up base,
uh, you know, like here's my proof of purchase.
Uh,
I always recommend doing that. By the way, you don't wanna aid in avatar stealing.
Uh,
but, uh,
yeah, I believe at that point you would need to be instructed, uh, to,
I,
well, to add in the, uh, simple avatar protection,
we'll try to figure out some way to implement this uh this feedback.
I, I feel it's useful.
No guarantee when that might be though, but uh definitely helpful nonetheless,
as we're not content, team members. So uh whip asks
cheese. Uh I'll take provolone,
please.
What I usually say at a sub shop, I tend to maintain smoked Gouda.
Oh Yum, that's good too.
If he asks if someone does not have simple avatar protection on the
avatar or do they waive moderation support if their avatar is stolen?
So more broadly, you can't waive moderation support.
We're always willing to come in and help do what we can to
try and resolve the situation if you submit a ticket to us.
Uh But in this specific example, because it's not present, therefore, it
matter.
Uh no, someone could for instance,
have a copyright related to something they're creating on platform
and the fact that they failed to or were unaware of
a thing that they could put on to further protect it on platform doesn't prevent
them from submitting AD MC A takedown request if they wanted to go that route
more broadly, if their content is being stolen,
if someone's harassing them trying to get in to take their stuff,
they could certainly
uh set a session rules dictating, please don't take my,
my stuff without asking for question or without asking for permission to save it.
And if people join into their session, just start grabbing that sort of stuff.
Well,
that'd be under the one of the many examples
that we provided for what could constitute harassment and
moderation would step in there to assist.
Indeed.
Also, it is 431 est.
That means that we are one minute over and I
see that we are all caught up with questions.
So if you have a question and you're currently typing it,
you can go ahead and continue typing it now.
Uh We'll end off with uh let's see.
So that's not a question from what? Cool.
Then we'll go ahead and call it here folks.
Uh And we'll be doing this again next week, same time, same place.
Uh And you guys have a wonderful rest of your Sunday and a great week ahead.
Indeed. I'd like to echo all of that. I hope you have a fantastic time.
Uh We'll see you folks next week. Catch you later.