Hello.
Just a quick mic check. Can you guys hear me? OK,
if you don't know where to post your answer?
Uh I've got a, well,
Gits got a channel that he opened five minutes ago
in the uh forum just above the office hours stage.
So just uh to ask again, can everyone hear me?
Cool. I got two very uh conflated answers here.
Had to turn me down. Ok.
All righty.
Uh Just giving it a few more minutes before we start.
Uh
Oh my God.
Nice.
Uh Anyway,
to uh uh just let you guys know we're
doing the moderation office hours for reson night.
Uh We're gonna be answering questions regarding the uh guidelines,
the moderation team, uh and even the mentor team.
Uh We'll be doing so in the moderation office hours channel,
it's in the forum just above us.
Uh It's the one at the very top with default settings
hosted by get six minutes ago.
I hope you guys are doing wonderful this Sunday.
Glad to hear it. Peach.
Oh, yeah. Going to bed at a decent time is uh a
decent struggle.
Indeed.
We're approaching that starting time.
If you guys have any questions for moderation, uh,
feel free to ask them in the office hours uh
channel above.
I will be checking back and forth also with the uh the chat
here in the office hours stage just in case there's any stragglers
and there's a gift.
Oh, jeez. Am I coming through loud and clear?
You are indeed
good to hear. Just ran into some technical difficulties.
Always fun.
Oh, are we pinging the office hours role?
Just did was
had it set up before he old technical difficulties settled in. But uh
no, we're good to go.
Cool.
Yeah, I've given the spiel a couple times but now that it's five minutes past,
uh welcome everyone.
Uh This is the moderation office hours for the resonate platform.
Uh We'll be answering your questions in regards to the platform itself
but uh mostly around the guidelines and also the mentor program.
If you do have any questions for us, feel free to leave us a question
uh in the moderation office hours 2024 03, 24 channel.
It is in the forum just above the office hours stage
as always. Well, those are the categories we know the most about.
Feel free to ask us any old question about resonate.
If you have something outside of those categories, those are just the ones,
you know, we're, we're experts on when it comes to the team.
Uh If you ask us any questions, we will give you our best answer.
If it's on the technical side, it may not be the world's greatest answer,
but we will give you our best answer and then point you in
the direction of someone that might be able to give a better answer.
Jack leads us off with. Did you enjoy the M MC final?
I
certainly, I enjoyed the entire competition.
I certainly did as well. Um, I definitely like, uh, a
lot of the, uh, you know, submissions that have been coming through.
They're really cool. I haven't gotten a chance to explore them all.
I definitely need to go and explore the winners too.
Yes. To be perfectly truthful.
I, there's more than half left that I need to still dig through.
I didn't have the time to,
to contribute to judging this year and I'm still digging through the entries.
There's
so many valuable things that came through MC this year.
I will, I will likely be, be chipping away at that for a few days yet.
Oh, yeah,
we're finally past the stage where we,
as the team can give our opinions on some things.
Right.
Yes, I think so. The votes are through. The, everything is tallied up.
We can't, we can't influence anything at this point beyond,
uh, inviting people to check out cool places.
Oh, good.
Because there is this one facet that I found,
uh in my running through the M MC submissions
that I've been using ever since I found it
uh it's, uh, what was it called?
It's the one that, uh, toggles on name tags when you have your dash open.
I love that thing. It's been very useful for me.
Oh, it's a bit broken for you, Jack.
I'm gonna give the same recommendation I give every year of take the winners
list which I believe they published now in the M MC 2024 channel.
Uh, and stroll through all of those, of course,
uh including all of the honorable mentions, make a little tour of it.
Uh Even if you're looking at categories that might not have been
something you were immediately interested in dealing with or hanging out in.
Uh
If you're just interested in say game worlds or social worlds,
check out all of the ones on the list.
They're all excellent examples of the sort of things you can build inside of resume.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And Jack, you're saying it doesn't remember the setting?
Uh So like are you saying it defaults to uh only on when dash is open
because that would make sense for me because
that's the only setting I haven't set to usually
also do keep in mind while we're uh answering some non
moderation related questions.
Feel free to ask your question if you have one in regards to
either the platform moderation or any silly thing that comes to your mind.
We're just here to chat for the next 30 minutes.
Oh, actually at this point, the next 20
I think Revy is correct.
We've answered all the questions.
It is admittedly a quiet week. I will give the usual spiel.
We're gonna be here every single week for
the entire duration of the moderation team office hours
uh because we want to be in a
position where we, we've made ourselves available to the community to come po
it's not necessarily a matter of making sure there's so many
questions uh to fill a 30 minute block and we,
we will shrink it if there's not enough.
It's, it's a matter of making sure we're available for a set time every single week.
You should always have an opportunity to come by and yell directly at us if you want
to pass on feedback or just have questions and
you'd like to hear us uh respond directly.
Indeed.
Funny enough. I feel like you uh summoned a bunny by asking that question,
Jack
favorite vegetable.
I don't know. Like, honestly, I really do love a good fried eggplant.
I think they're pretty tasty.
Yes. I just unironically said eggplant.
I'm pretty certain garlic counts as a vegetable which
oh, just breaks this question. I feel so outside of that, I'm gonna say asparagus,
favorite fast food.
Hm.
You know, there's this place that's called Kava that I've been to a few times.
They do like
uh
a lot of Mediterranean stuff. It's kind of like a Mediterranean
uh subway slash uh
Chipotle.
That's pretty cool. If it was closer by, I'd be going to it more often.
I'm going to relentlessly cheat and say Darienzo,
which is not a typical chain but it, it's, it's, it's fast and it's food.
It's a sandwich shop inside of Ottawa.
Uh, that does excellent sandwiches.
It does sound good.
I do love a good sandwich.
Eggplant, parm. Yep.
Love eggplant, parm.
We have a meme.
So that's what that part of Oklahoma is for.
That seems likely
never visited Oklahoma. I will just assume this is what's happening there
uh For all my days until I happened to visit that weird section of that state
favourite, gardening slash farming equipment.
I don't know. I'd probably enjoy driving around a little tractor.
Be fun
pot.
It's really hard to have a garden inside your home
without pots.
I mean, true.
I live in an apartment.
I am nine stories off the ground. Having a garden out out back
is just throwing plants out my window.
People tend to get offended with that pretty quickly
sell pots. It's the closest thing I can get to that
since git has a question, uh directed at them.
I'm gonna answer the non directed question. Yes, absolutely.
I would sleep in a bunk bed.
People are asking if I have a favorite flower. I don't think I do.
I, I don't typically have many flowers,
flowers rather larger inside of the apartment.
There's a whole bunch of like spider plants and plants.
I've just like,
nabbed off the shelves from IKEA that have
names that I can't pronounce and don't know,
but look nice.
And that's essentially the only
uh metric I use to determine whether I'm gonna pick him up.
I think I have a bit north of a
dozen potted plants lowering around the apartment these days.
I like to have a little bit of green
in my home space. It helps out.
Now, peach is just this uh
discovering and uh describing my uh childhood uh bed. Actually,
I had a weird little bunk bed as a kid.
Uh that did actually have a little side desk uh set into the side of it.
The bottom bunk was a queen though.
Was it queen? Maybe it was a full or a double or something?
I loved that bad.
Our opinion is the best place to find mentor,
help outside the Discord and resonate itself.
That's a good question.
I don't think that there really is another resource uh that
I can name right off the top of my head.
You know, besides maybe the wiki
uh providing uh where to find mentor assistance.
However, I'd like to offer that there is a,
a decent way to get some mental help in world without touching the discord.
Uh
You would simply make a world, make it public uh and
name the world something along the lines of like
need help or need assistance
or need a mentor.
It's only one rather important caveat here.
Uh Ensure you either a have a rather
robust internet connection prior to putting that in
as your title or b uh limit the number of people that can join your world.
Oh, true.
You might get a flood
uh productivity says Reddit. Uh possibly.
However, I don't believe we currently have a, an official Reddit.
It is now 20 minutes past
uh will be around for the next 10 minutes to answer any of your questions.
It has been an exceptionally quiet Sun Day today, but of course,
always feel free to keep the questions coming. Even if they're just random.
A ma s about, uh,
any old thing from us you would like to know.
Yeah.
Well, don't worry. Nooky. Uh, we're, we're gonna be around for the next 10 minutes.
Oh, good. There's an unofficial resonate VR on steam. Um, I'm sorry, on Reddit.
Unofficial means I don't have to moderate it.
Very good.
Zidane asks, uh, a very technical question
on that topic. I've got 100 out of 100 internet. I don't know what that means.
And a secondary computer with an I 740
numbers and 32 gigs of ra M.
Would that be reasonable for hosting a session into which I would join with my main,
have others join in.
I mean, you've just described just seemingly working computer.
Uh, and
I think it's probably powerful enough to host a session.
Then again, I think someone's hosted
a headless on a Raspberry Pi at one point,
it wasn't very good
but uh it still worked.
0, 100 up, 100 down. Ok.
100 100 should be certainly fine for hosting a decent crowd.
Uh I believe upload is still the bigger
problem one's gonna have for the hosting machine.
But 100 up is
while not perfect there, there's, there's more robust connections out there.
It is uh
enough to get you started.
N
he is gonna write a very, very long question about users under the age of 16. 0
What users under the age of 16
nie
electronics,
not say fourth gen I seven is 11 years old and we'll be able to vote in seven more.
Uh This is true and well,
CPU is fairly important for when you're wandering around inside of resonate.
It's at least enough that it would be worth testing and playing around with.
Uh Again, connection is probably the biggest thing you're looking at
uh when it comes to hosting.
So try it out, see how high you can get before things start to melt a little bit.
And then
uh knock a couple of people off and call that the cap for your session.
We have not more broadly mapped out or graphed out, I guess uh
approximate session size based on a given frame
weight of the success of the people inside
uh while looking at various
host metrics. But it would be something I would be fascinated to see
could be an MMC entry in the future.
I suppose you need a fairly robust set of old kid to test it out.
So Peach asks a question. This sounds insane.
Uh Sorry, this sounds insane.
But I would like instructions for renting a server for res hosting.
We don't have instructions for that because we don't
rent out our own servers every uh different um
server like renting company, you know,
for various games like Minecraft and Whatnot
are gonna have their own sets of instructions depending on how
they want you to interface with their uh their stuff.
Um It's usually best to get uh help on your individual particular uh
issues or troubles uh when setting up the server from our community members.
Uh We might have some stuff on the wiki.
Uh So I do urge you to check that out as well
more broadly.
Uh I will note we,
we have heard some interest in people being able to rent servers from us.
It's something that's at least at least somewhere floating around the uh the
not necessarily agenda, the thought process of the DEV team.
Uh No eta s no announcements, all the usual caveats in regards to that,
but it's something we're aware the community would potentially be
uh interested in
uh being available at some point in the future
and uh and who to contact.
I'm not gonna particularly point out a person, I'm going to point out the questions,
help channel.
I'd recommend uh making a forum post in there with your particular question.
You're gonna get a bunch of people that are gonna know a lot of stuff about that,
uh answering you there,
there's the big question
you Nicky says, OK, so occasionally run into new users who we later find are under 16.
This has at times come to our attention when someone that's a new user in the
middle of a group that pulled them in and they say that I'm 14 or something.
This is incredibly awkward as a bunch of people who are were
welcoming them have to tell them they're not allowed on the platform.
I don't like most users on 16 under on other platforms
because they are annoying but they get banned fast here.
What bugs me is the ones who are coherent enough to get through this whole
process of on boarding only to be told to wait up to three years.
This also wastes mentor slash help or time
this has happened in front of me and someone there is a
lot of new user greeting mentor stuff on a near weekly basis.
Questions. First one, what is being done to keep users under 16 from joining?
What is being done to make sure that they know they are too young?
I think the first one would be heart of
the registration process which makes it very clear what's required
wise to be on the platform,
but we don't have uh I think significant messaging to tell
you you're going to be banned if you lie here,
it is certainly a requirement as part of the registration for creating a new account
that they have to deceive us when it comes to their,
their age in order to successfully
be able to register for Reson Night.
Uh Note says your cur your current system is not informing
them at least beyond the inability to make an account.
That is certainly a note I can drag up to the DEV team.
So perhaps we can have a bit of uh dialogue there
that further illustrates
uh if they uh that all users are expected to be 16 years of age.
And of course, that line about your age would be grounds for account termination
that might be considered implicit when it comes
to stopping us from making an account.
If they have an under than 16 years old uh age, they try and put it in,
but it's certainly something we can drag too explicit.
So it's much more clear for them.
Uh Second question is what are we supposed to do about this if we
aren't comfortable with a situation where we're
expected to enforce your rules about this?
Uh For example,
someone just told us an emotional story which
involved them being under 16 asking for guidance.
Uh If you're not comfortable with the situation, you have no,
no requirement to enforce our rules no one inside of the
platform mentor or otherwise is expected to enforce our rules.
We will request that you let us know when these situations come down the line.
But that is fundamentally an ask. I'm never going to
do anything to you or take anything away from you.
If you do not feel like uh passing on a
moderation report or notifying the user about the guidelines,
I will,
I will kindly request that you pass on that information when you
feel comfortable and you have the energy and time to do so.
But if you do not
just don't move on with your day,
no repercussions whatsoever from my side of things.
Uh Last one.
Is there a plan in the near future to allow users under 16,
perhaps 14 up could be allowed on a limited basis uh Presently, no,
there's no current plan to lower the required age to come in.
Uh As we continue to engage with laws in the various
nations that we interact with and are distributed to.
It is possible that will change at some point in the future,
but I have no announcements
to make at this point.
Last.
Uh how will this age limiting work when schools use this as an educational platform?
Likely through having independent universes that are uh fully segregated from
the main resonate universe that all users uh come online.
That was a gauntlet of questions veer. Do you have
any any additions
I'm thinking here. Um
So yeah, no, we're definitely not expecting you to enforce our rules.
Our guidelines like uh g had said that it would just be
very beneficial in general if you would uh file a report,
we're not gonna hold it against you if you don't.
Uh But you know, just please consider it.
Uh
And let's see,
is there any plan in the near future to allow users under the age of 16? Uh
Not quite, no. Um I mean, we're not necessarily by choice like raising it to 16,
but at the same time,
I don't necessarily think that a platform like this is very
healthy and safe for uh someone under the age,
let's say like someone 13 right at the very low end of the spectrum here.
Um
I don't think that uh being online, especially like away from parental like, uh
you know, observation is a good idea in general.
My mic seems crackly. Oh darn.
You were picking up the odd, the odd crackle as he continued to chat.
Gotcha.
See, bump the age requirement to 21. No, no,
that's uh you know, how can I put it people?
You know, you, you guys were all teenagers too. So as I,
you know, it, it's fine that there's some outlet for, you know,
some of that teenage angst to, you know, appear,
it's fine,
you know,
I'll be honest,
I really uh I feel like I needed the internet
and uh online platforms like this when I was 16,
it was uh pretty much one of my only ways of communication
just about everyone on my circle when I was growing up was uh
an octogenarian.
Uh Jack asks of the follow up is the 16 year
old restriction applying to the account registration or actual platform usage.
If for an example and a father would have an under
16 year old child letting them play in their account.
Would that be against the guidelines as well? Uh Yes, both at
this point.
Uh Technically, it's it's first informed through uh registration,
but it is for both registration and playing on the platform,
barring those very unique exceptions,
such as a school having a separate universe that
is entirely separate from the broader resonate usage guidelines.
That said we do understand a
person over 16 may have registered an account and then someone
picks up their headset at some point in the future.
If we receive a report that that account has someone clearly under 16 on it,
we might very well issue account restrictions, but that's what the
appeal system exists for people who come back and say no, no, no,
my my younger brother stole my headset for 30 minutes,
please un ban me and we're likely to be quite lenient in that regard
as it will quickly become very obvious if that is not a sincere appeal.
Peach Clover asks how can
resite be patched to connect only to segregated universes. I
I
that's a technical question.
I'm going to point you in the general direction of prime time.
If you want to bug him and the other engineers about how people or how we,
we develop and create universes for separate clients.
I can say it exists
and the, the technology underneath the hood that's doing it is nearly magic to me.
I can't provide further details on the technical aspect to it,
but I'm sure he'd be happy to run through.
Uh some of the more interesting uh technical half of
it if you bug him at his own office hours.
Yeah,
there's one other thing that I kind of wanna address. Um
Nooky stated as a queer welcoming platform.
I worry a bit from a queer community standpoint
when we turn away 14 slash 15 year olds who
may be seeking out trustworthy people who are queer.
I'd say that the internet is probably not a very safe place to do that,
especially when you are of that age.
You know, sometimes it really people can take advantage of your trust
and uh people are looking for people sadly,
within that age range to take advantage of.
So generally speaking, I'd say still that's probably not super safe.
And while I, I'm happy we've crafted such a,
a good community that people are viewing us as that sort of
trustworthy space that would be ideal for younger people to come in.
The primarily the reason we have that limitation. There is for legal requirements.
Uh when looking at the diverse requirements across a bunch
of different nations that we distribute to 16 seem the
uh
requirement. We're going to have to land on
as much as it. I'm happy and proud that we've grabbed that good community.
It's, it's not enough alone
to overcome the legal obligations.
Yeah.
Nie follows up with what if someone under,
who was under 16 when they joined comes forward when
they are over 16 to tell me that they lied.
I would probably ask politely,
why are you telling me this?
But if they did tell me this, I'm not likely to do anything to them.
They are over 60
at this point. Uh
They're not actively breaking the guidelines anymore telling me of a
historic case that is no longer causing any harm to myself.
The platform, other users
is likely to just get me to quietly push them into another room
and ask them not to bring that up in front of me again.
They are marked as being over 18 when they are 16 or 17.
Uh So if we just found out that they are calling themselves 18
when they are, you know, between the ages of 16 or 17, I don't know,
I personally at least would talk to them and be like, hey, don't do that
and especially don't be trying to get into adult uh sessions, you know, using that.
Uh It doesn't mean that they have to identify themselves as under
18. However,
worth noting again, as we have the sessions rules dialogue box coming down the line,
which may also make reference to age uh uh
requirements for entering a session if hosts decide to use it that way
if you are lying on those things and violating session rules, that is a,
a guideline violation,
independent of the original problem of putting in an accurate agent.
And we will certainly treat it as such.
Indeed.
Also, we are
veering way past uh our usual shut off point.
I complained we had a series of nice uh
gardening related questions for the 1st 15 minutes and then
we ran 10 minutes long with real moderation questions.
It was a good discussion at the end. Nki. Thank you for bringing it to the channel.
Indeed. Yes. Thank you.
Uh And yes, Josh Veering
unironically.
So
sorry for bringing this in so late. I was sitting on this for off
I
quiz. I felt it was important. Well, that's the exact reason we're here.
Thank you for bringing it up. Nookie. She's had wonderful questions previously.
This is another in a long line of fantastic moderation
questions gives us both an opportunity to provide an answer to
you and speak more broadly to the community on these topics.
No worries.
We're not, we're not bent out of shape for having to loiter an extra 5, 10 minutes.
That's uh that's something we can deal with quite well.
Nie asks, are you all ok with talking more?
I'd like to hear more elaboration perhaps questions you're still asking?
Uh, I don't have personally questions.
If you have other ones that you're asking right now, feel free to type them out.
We will attempt to get to them, but we are likely to wrap up sometime reasonably soon
and then drag outstanding questions to the next office hours.
Indeed. if you have any more uh relating questions to that, then
go ahead.
Uh Nookie clarifies. I don't have any more questions of mine.
Would you all mind posting something about this though?
I think clarification is needed.
I've heard vastly different takes and a lot of confusion
as to what the rules are and our responsibilities here.
I think this is in regard to what mentors need to do
uh in terms of enforcing rules that I'm gonna kick to Vere and
I imagine feedback will fly in the direction of the mentor leads.
Uh
But when it comes to moderation, the main thing I want to or average users,
average users have an obligation to report guideline
breaking behavior or something that's been reported.
Uh Because no, no, there's,
there's no requirement under obligations that you work as spies for me.
Uh We always want to encourage it.
It's the only way we can really help with guideline breaking behavior.
But no, there is zero obligation for average users to act
uh as agents for moderation.
Uh There's zero repercussions that happen to your account. If you do not do that,
I'm never going to give you an account
restriction for just existing inside of resonate,
not continuously acting as someone who will,
who will report to me every bad thing they see,
I don't think I will be a, a
making a community announcement for that as a whole, but I will happily lead uh
that as a PS A for the next few office
hours until that spreads more broadly throughout the community.
If it's a concern that people appear to have and,
or rather something that's been confusing people recently.
But if that's most of the questions relating to that topic, then
I think uh me and veer are probably going to escape stage left sometime shortly.
If you're currently typing a question, please continue typing that question.
We will answer it.
Otherwise, if you have not begun, please hold on to those questions.
We are going to be here
uh next week, same time, same location.
If you would like to ask us things about, of course,
any of the topics we cover or resonate more broadly.
Indeed.
And we'll catch you guys next time.
I
hope you all have a fantastic weekend and a week that follows.
Enjoy the slowly improving weather.
Yep.
Have a good week, guys.