Hello folks.
I'm Canadian G
and I'm going to be here for the next 30 minutes uh for moderation office hours.
Welcome everyone.
I will be available uh to field questions on moderation, uh mentor program,
the guidelines more broadly or of course, as I always like to say,
anything resonate related.
Uh You're certainly welcome to ask. I'll give you the best answer I can.
If the off chance you give me a question, I can't give you the best answer too.
I'll try and point you in the direction of someone who can give you a better answer.
If you're interested in asking questions for moderation office hours,
I'd invite you to head up to the office hours questions for where we have a thread
labeled moderation, office hours and today's date,
if you're having difficulty running that down,
I'm gonna drop a link to it both in the office hours,
general uh channel just north of the community meeting stage
and then in the chat for this stage itself.
I hope everyone's been having a fantastic weekend and a lovely spring so far.
I know the weather has been a little bit temperamental around where I am
But what is April without at least a
little bit of snow?
Folks are asking if there's anything that's come up. The past couple of weeks.
I have things that have come up the past couple of weeks.
Uh, one of the things I'd like to bring a PS A to today is the community news channel.
Uh, this is not a moderation concern.
It's a PS A that's generalized for all of the things happening in Rein
Night.
They've asked me to bring to the moderation office hours just
to get that message out there a little bit more broadly.
Uh We have the uh new wiki page stood up giving information for all users,
all communities inside of Rezin Night
uh to be able to submit
to get into the community news channel in this
discord if you'd like to have your events.
And I'm sorry, I got sidetracked. I see Nadra
is saying they only hear music
that is
peculiar. Sorry for cutting my own PS A off here.
But uh looks like we have slight technical issues. Can I get confirmation?
It looks like other people can hear me talking.
Thank you very much techno for reaching out and asking them to come
back in apologies for cutting off the PS A Discord has been doing this
a number of times over the last few weeks, we've had users come in and not be able to,
to hear the speakers on the stage.
It, it must be a bug on their end.
That's it. Back to the PS A.
We have a community news channel here and it's something that we've been a
number of communities inside of resonate have
been making use for promoting their events.
Everyone can get into that channel.
Uh If you have a community that you free
run events for inside of resonate, you want to invite other people into them.
That's the sort of thing that you can get.
Uh you can use to advertise those events, broadcast it out to the community at large.
There's a new Wikipedia page or Wikipedia.
There's a new resonate wiki page, I should say
uh that gives the instructions on getting hooked up
to that channel if you'd like to do so,
I'd encourage you both to check it out yourselves
if you run a community event or of course,
let other people know if they run community events.
Nookie Raccoon asks how we make the
mentor gatherings a regularly advertised community event.
I'm frankly surprised they're not back when I was kicking around with the mentor
uh workshops we frequently put them
into to at least meet hubs. If not that other channel,
are they not, are they not putting any kind of advertisement up for
that? Anywhere
I will send that memo along to the mentor leads. Uh
just to let them know that they're, they're certainly welcome to contribute,
putting uh information about those events into them.
An ideal example of the sort of thing we'd like to see promoted there.
I'll just uh send a little note right now. So I don't forget,
sorry for going silent. I didn't want to
forget that one. So I went out to send the message right now.
Uh S
like asks,
when will the mentor applications form reopen or can be done to speed it up?
Well, you can provide feedback here and I can kick that over to the mentor lead.
So they can know that there's at least very
certain that there's a large number of folks in the
community who would like to make use of the mentor
program and had a keen interest in its reopening.
I can't unfortunately, right now give you an eta for that
beyond. They are trying to restructure the mentor program to make it less.
Uh
I don't wanna say busy work intensive,
reduce the the complicated aspect of certain bits of
it in terms of training and getting people ready
to be a mentor.
And that's uh while, while they're handling that restructuring,
they've turned off applications because there's a
lot of administrative overhead to deal with
both bringing people in and changing the process with which you bring people in.
I don't anticipate it to be a long term affair though.
And it's certainly something they're working away at presently,
Nookie Notes uh
that they talked to Wolfe
about putting announcements up on Friday and they said they should ask Veer Hi,
Veer.
Veer can't jump into the the call right now
dealing with technical difficulties or busyness in the background.
Uh But I did notify them.
So,
Veer certainly got the message uh and will clear out any
roadblocks between uh the mentor leads and making those postings.
We have many mentor questions today. Draconis
asks, would it be a good idea to have a role for mentors in the resonate discord?
All I can say on that from my personal
knowledge is that we previously allowed mentors to display
as mentors in the discord and have a help
channel where they could jump in to help users.
We still have the help channel, of course.
Uh But I don't know what the status is on the current roles for mentors.
Whether they wanted to restrict that to people who have certain training perhaps or
maybe have spent an X amount of time inside of the mentor program, I could not say,
but I can certainly raise that question to them.
And hopefully next week,
we can get an answer uh from veer who will either
pull it back from the mentor leads or of course,
give his own take on it.
I can certainly myself see at least some value in having the mentor role,
identifying users as helpful individuals inside of the discord.
Though it's,
it's worth noting the same process I think
happens regardless someone comes into our discord,
they go to the questions channel,
they post a question that they're interested in getting answered.
A mentor, green name or not jumps in to help the user out.
The user asked questions the user got helped. We don't generally have people
that are bad actors,
giving bad advice that we need to differentiate with a
green name or a lack of a green name.
We just have people who have questions and people who help them
that said, I understand why folks would want to be identified as a, a mentor.
It's always nice to be able to at least show off, hey,
you're here to help out new users and have
some kind of indicator of that being the fact
general like asks, how are security moderation tickets handled?
Are they going to moderators and then passed on to the DEV team or some other process?
Uh It really depends on how you submit them.
Uh Generally speaking, yeah,
the moderation team in terms of like the volunteers that handle guidelines are
ill suited to deal with security concerns as they roll down the line.
If we get one of those in our inbox, we just tag the appropriate DEV, send it over there
though. There's the, the possibility of course that you could submit it not through
uh a broken guideline help topic and that'll get
categorized individuals who are best suited to handle it.
We do have a number of devs that are in the moderation side of
things have uh access to view the tickets and those are individuals that are,
are interested.
Well, A to more broadly help the moderation as a whole.
And B Yes, devs interested in focusing on security related issues.
I see that Madrasa
still has has difficulty hearing me.
Right? Hm
Sin
like clarifies a better word of a support ticket in the security category,
not moderation.
Yeah. So when you submit a ticket inside of
the ticket system, you have the ability to check or choose the the help topic.
One of the help topics you can pick is put
it under the support category to report a security issue.
If you use that one, it will tag the appropriate devs.
They will see that there's uh whatever you've reported to them.
And of course, they can and put it into the queue to fix.
If you don't use that, we still send it over there
essentially. Yes, no matter what it'll get to where it needs to go.
Uh But if you appropriately categorize it, uh when you submit it, it,
it just makes that process a little bit easier.
Alex
uh two P I asks,
I'm wondering if you know of any planned changes when it comes
to rewarding active mentors from a really long time of helping people.
Uh For example, access to more memory,
I assume storage without having to pay on the patron
uh to my knowledge right now. No.
Uh we don't have plans to uh provide compensation to the mentors.
It's a strictly volunteer program for folks who'd like to self identify
uh as people who'd be interested in helping new users to the platform.
Of course, we're always very thankful for the mentors that help out in this regard.
We want to make sure that they get recognized on platform with different name,
colors, badges,
things that identify that they have provided this voluntary service.
But
uh I don't,
I don't believe we have any plans at
this point to loop compensation into that system.
Uh Nie
asks uh going back to consider
and I brought a couple of weeks ago.
Is there any progress on making the 16
plus age requirements better known before they join?
This is modifications for folks unaware of the context
while registering an account uh allowing people to be aware of
the restrictions that exist inside of resonate as a whole.
So they're not otherwise baffled uh if they loop around it
but run into that restriction further down the line.
I don't think I have a progress report for changes coming out of the line.
I can't provide ETA S here generally,
but it is something that is noted as a known concern
as a couple of other people are noting yet, we,
we definitely do not have storage compensation for
folks volunteering for the mentor program right now.
And again, we don't generally have a plan for any sort of compensation
going forward. It's a volunteer thing if you'd like to be a mentor.
You're more than welcome to be identified as such through a badge or name color.
Uh But generally, we don't have monetized benefits tied to the role.
Of course, the future is long,
I don't like to ever say never because of things like that.
You, you can
uh perhaps not so much as a feature request but
see if there's other users interested in this more broadly,
but it's, it's
not something we're planning at the moment
to like asks that service as a question though,
do moderators or any other volunteers other than mentors get benefits.
Uh And unless you consider the uh powers associated with being a moderator,
ie the privilege of occasionally issuing account restrictions
when the need arises to be a benefit.
No,
uh volunteer roles are,
are strictly volunteer roles recognized on platform through bank
through name, colors,
of course your presence inside of this discord for at least some
of the roles your presence in other discords tied to volunteering,
sort of the the volunteer break room as we occasionally like to frame it.
But
no monetti,
things are associated with those volunteer roles right now.
A master master says one of my friends sent in
a comment on uh github issue a few days ago,
but after 10 hours went by from their initial posting
and their comment was marked as spam. How does that happen?
As from reviewing the comment? It did not look like spam.
I am just mainly confused with what is considered
spam and what is considered constructive criticism on github
and the issues within.
I should certainly say that we always want to receive feedback.
But it's quite possible if the feedback isn't relating
to the uh necessary information to deal with a bug or uh it might be
considered irrelevant to the topic like it
could be placed in an incorrect location.
I
don't of course, have the message in front of me right now.
And so I, I have to make a guess,
but the,
I could see one of the most expected ways for something to be
labeled as spam is simply being in the incorrect location on the guitar
whip raises. I think the, the follow up concern here, github
marks comments of spam automatically.
It doesn't matter what the repo owner is doing if it's related to github
itself. I,
I, I can't help you there.
Github does things above and beyond my ability uh to comment or fix on
if you were running into issues unrelated to github,
one of the uh people you will want to
reach out to if you're looking for further clarification,
if they've done something would be shifty.
Of course, all of the devs that work on the code as well would be viable candidates.
But Shifty typically manages the github and organization
there in above and beyond everyone else.
If github
is doing something where again, I, I
please bring that to Shifty's attention too. Perhaps you can make github
be less weird though. I, I won't give you guarantees in that regard. Github
might be doing something above and beyond what we can assist with.
But if it's on our level, uh focus with, with Shifty
Nikki Veras,
I've looked for the recordings of previous mod offices,
but I can't find them in Discord or some of them missing.
Some might if there was a week because we had
a week where there was a technical difficulty that just
uh I just did not record properly,
missed half of the communication going out,
which that week unfortunately happened to be most of the answers.
Uh
But generally speaking,
you should be able to find all of them eventually on Prime's archive,
prime has been away for a couple of weeks.
So it might take a little bit to update.
But your primary resource would be putting an eyeball on Prime's archive,
see what he's got there.
Of course. Then I like to post them in the office hours.
General channel following the office hours of a given day.
There was a mildly frustrating period
uh where I was skipping between putting them in the
thread itself and putting them on the channel itself,
which may have hurt discoverability,
which is why I'm at this point pointing to moderation or rather uh the prime archive,
which sounds much more official than I thought it was going to.
Oh, yes, it looks here's the
NIE the link to the prime archive though. It looks like the moderation.
Office hours have not been updated on there for a little bit of time.
I will give a poke to Prime again. He's just come back, give him
a little bit of time
putting an eyeball on the archive there.
It looks like Prime has caught up to the beginning
of March for both their own office hours and moderation.
I imagine once he puts eyeballs on it, the rest of the recordings will follow suit
again.
If you want to get them earlier every single week, I try to get a recording put on to
the office hours,
general chat following office hour shortly after or the
next day within 24 hours is my goal.
We're going to try and keep it consistent to putting them in the office
hours general channel rather than their individual
threads just for searchability going forward.
He says not that the specific 15 minutes or so,
I'm looking forward to your deep dive on the 16 plus rule.
Understandable.
Uh I am, I have found that uh
I rather, I found that recording.
So I'm confident that's not the week where we had technical issues.
I'm going to uh just to make things a little bit easier to find,
post that along with the recording I post today after this office hours.
So just keep an eyeball on office hours general and you
should be able to find that just a little bit later today
as they can hear now. Congratulations. Welcome to moderation. Office hours. I hope
whatever weirdness discord is doing
stops being weird in the future.
That's it. Glavin says hello.
There's a conversation that is taking place in the office of topics.
Uh channel thread about communities and sessions that are
actively hostile to certain types of users and resonate.
Could you take a look at it and send some? She shed some light on your thoughts on this?
If it's not the place for such a thing, uh please feel free to read it with your team.
I'm perfectly happy to dig through that thread though.
If you're looking for questions here in moderation, office hours, I,
I generally want something more specific
a question about something that is allowed, something that isn't allowed.
Why are the standards are reading through an entire
thread? Just takes a little bit of time?
I otherwise might not have inside of the, the half hour sessions
for moderation office hours.
So if there's like a specific standard that they are our kids,
they find contentious in that thread, please clarify and ask.
Is this OK? Is this not? OK? And I can give you an answer here.
I will.
After uh moderation office, I is done,
go back and read through the thread just to see if there's any
significant problems there maybe lead off with a PS A next week.
If I think there's something that needs to be clarified right from the get go.
But uh those specific questions would be a good way to get at it too.
Oh
Trump
asks,
I noticed that hidden worlds are not mentioned in
the adult guidelines and this has caused some confusion.
For example, a friend has a head list that is marked registered users,
uh that is marked registered users and it hit and is hidden
and uses a cloud variable and a link card for access.
One of the systems I have I tried to use in that world
and deleted itself when brought out. So
their craters of said systems said they did that because
the hidden was not mentioned at all in guidelines.
So I I think a word or two got dropped somewhere in the sentence.
But the idea here is that there's a hidden
world that was open to registered and up users.
You brought out a system that immediately deleted itself because it's,
it always deletes itself if it's not.
And I assume a private only world,
if that's the case, I understand how that could happen.
We certainly don't want to give you a,
I guess a specific set of worlds that meet the criteria for adult content.
So much as the criteria necessary
to be acceptable. Hidden can be fine assuming you're vetting the people coming in
what you need as we've always tried to clarify is that your
world is not visible to the public which could mean hidden,
yes or private.
And that everyone present is 18 years of age
and consents to view the content.
If the way you're bringing them into the
world gets that consent and verifies their age,
then you're fine.
That's all right.
Now, if people are making systems, I, I guess the general question is,
can we clarify this inside of adult content itself?
We can try and include some language that acknowledges that hidden
counts as not being
uh publicly viewed. But I, I do like the perspective of providing criteria.
If the people who made that system are confused about it,
I would encourage pointing them towards moderation office hours
where we've gone over this question a few times.
But I,
I can certainly consider adding a draft to the
adult content guidelines to try and include some language.
There are highlighting that hidden
worlds meet the criteria or may meet the criteria
necessary to keep things uh out of public view.
Nie
asks, how should mentors enforce the 16 plus rule?
Is it OK for us to just ask every new user uh mentors don't need to enforce anything.
You're certainly welcome to let people know that the
uh incoming or that the platform is only good for people 16 and up.
If they mentioned they're not 16 and up do let them know you don't have to.
But I would ask that you let them know
as for instructions on what you have to do.
There are none because you do not have an obligation to fulfill this.
I don't want to hand out an instruction to mentors saying please
ask every user who comes onto the platform what their age is.
That's not something I want to be handing out as an order.
Mentors don't have that as an order. Mentors have no obligation to do so.
If you become aware, someone is not 16 years old, I would like,
it would be convenient to let them know that
this platform expects people to be 16 and up.
But you, you're again not obligated to do so.
Kuki is also interested in a post in that thread.
There is a, a fairly long post here is
what, what would the, the short f
question of the discussion be
is I I guess how I should ask this
whip clarifies the question is about a
conversation regarding the furry free zone session.
The session itself has that title and a
description explaining that Furry Avatar isn't allowed.
Anyone is allowed to join.
But if someone wears a furry or related avatar, they will manually kick them
uh from their avatar and request them to equip an un
furry avatar. If they don't comply, I will usually result
in a world kick.
Is the question is that session allowed because yes, well,
we do have rules relating to intolerance.
They're tied to very specific groups that you would uh
express intolerance toward and fandom does not meet that criteria.
You are allowed to have a world that doesn't allow anime avatars.
You're welcome to have a world that doesn't allow furry avatars.
You're welcome to have a world that doesn't allow robot avatars.
You're welcome to have a world that doesn't allow skeleton avatars,
but I am unlikely to attend the last.
I understand there's some contention here and because you put a
world that says I don't want X type of fandom in
it, please don't, please don't show up and, and talk about anime here.
Please don't show up and talk about uh furry fandom things here.
Uh might cause some, some obvious concerns or arguments,
but that doesn't justify the host perhaps harassing users who come in.
But they're,
they're more than encouraged assuming they're not harassing them
to simply exercise their rights as a host,
remove them from the session, ban them if they continue to come in session,
moderation tools.
Are there specifically to be used in that fashion?
A master master asks, I do have a super specific question on your terms of service.
So those can be fun.
Uh because I was rereading it to make sure what was allowed and not allowed.
I just wish for clarification on this line and the prohibited activity
action.
Use a buying agent or purchasing agent to make purchases on the services.
What does this mean exactly? Does that mean people can't buy things on my behalf?
I am going to wave the white flag on this one that is specific enough legally.
I don't want to just make a guess off the top of my head
if you'd like clarification for that in writing, where we can get a firm answer.
My general recommendation is to direct an inquiry
uh to let's say the business email at Yellow Dog Man studios
uh asking about that terms of service and then see
if we can get you clarification over there in writing.
That will be a better answer than uh my best guess in
this, this uh office hours.
So having spent a couple of seconds to dig through the
conversation happening
uh in the office of topic, oh, we have questions, might, might narrow down.
Nki says to point something out that I think is an issue.
We're dancing around certain groups like queer people
tend to have certain traits like being a for
which are more common than the general population.
These traits have been weaponized in a way to exclude
them without directly excluding them or to gain the system
that
is applied more harshly to that group
if we're aware or it's, we become suspicious that someone is misusing
session tools to target a specific group that we would protect under
intolerance guidelines.
We will respond to that
quite seriously.
That's certainly something we were aware while crafting this. There's the,
the old thing where where the session host is kicking people seemingly at random.
Uh But it becomes apparent when you look into it,
all of the people seem to have one singular trait,
be it relating to race orientation or otherwise?
And that's the thing we're going to come down
on quite harshly if we become aware of it.
But in the absence of that investigation bearing fruit,
if a person is simply looking to remove a particular fom
from their session,
uh they're, they're welcome to do it. As the go to example, I tend to lean on a lot.
Uh is a session that bans politics talk because I know some people will find it
just exhausting as the electoral season drags on
and they might want to have sessions where,
where no politics happen in their session.
Given resonates particular demographics,
I anticipate that would be prohibiting one
particular side of the political spectrum from talking
a lot more than the other one because
we're just probably pretty heavily tilted in our
uh community here. But if the person just doesn't want politic talk,
that's, that's fine.
We might put an eyeball on it to make sure again,
it's not just a veneer for other behavior that could be problematic.
But if we don't find anything that suggests, that's the case,
you are more than welcome to have a little sign at the front of your session that says,
please keep politics at the front door.
The election cycle is exhausting.
And if you don't follow that order
or that session rule the host is more than welcome
to kick or ban as applied or as is appropriate.
Nookie Notes uh noting that politics can range from screaming
Nazi slogans to saying I like bo boys though.
Uh Yeah, I've, I've addressed that generally
again, if they're, if it's targeting individuals, if it's a veneer,
that's something
that we're going to look into, do,
submit a ticket if you think that that's happening in any case and
we will do our best to try and figure out what's going on
and act accordingly.
Uh But I, I do do want to reiterate again, you, you are capable of removing phantoms.
You are capable of removing politics more broadly as a topic from your session.
Glavin notes, politics,
talk is different from segregating people because of
how they look or what species they are.
Assume we are talking about avatars here if one was targeting individual,
well as our, as our guidelines are now being updated to note
certain immutable characteristics of an individual that is certainly
something that we're going to be
treating under guidelines relating to intolerance.
And we would take
very serious response to that sort of behavior on platform.
But fandoms,
even fandoms that people find very important to
them are not something that we're currently protecting.
I understand there are users that
only want to be in one avatar. They only want to be in an anime, Avatar.
They only want to be in a fair avatar. They only want to be in Xy or Z avatar.
I'm one of those, frankly, I typically stay in one avatar,
the overwhelming majority of the time I'm present on platform.
But that category isn't protected
avatars or avatars relating to a particular phantom is just
not meeting the criteria we're looking for when it comes to
uh intolerant behavior on platform.
Our general encouragement is to stay away from sessions
uh where you're,
you're going to encounter individuals making a fight over that sort of behavior.
The overwhelming majority of the sessions out there simply don't have
uh any kind of avatar restrictions in that regard.
Now asks a follow up question. Did I, did I miss an earlier question from you check.
Now, I I apologize if I did.
It has been a busy day and only one Canadian gets to field answers.
Uh They say,
can I get a clear answer to the I I am wearing an
avatar with full genitalia or blend shaped deform hidden in a public world,
but it's OK because I am covering it with clothes and clothing.
Uh
If people are suggesting that that is the case, it is not
our general rule of thumb.
We use uh intern in house in moderation
when it comes to assessing avatars that contain
some degree of adult content is no amount
of trickery suffices to make the avatar viable
in sessions that aren't rated for adult content.
If you obscure it with another mesh it's not enough. If you hide it, it's not enough.
If you have a fancy system to delete it when it detects someone,
it's not enough. You have one endorsed system that exists.
The resonate moderation team is all right.
If you have an avatar which has an adult content and
you load it out in worlds that are appropriate for adult content
and then you have a separate avatar that has none of that
and you load that one in public spaces that is good.
We endorse that everything else,
no matter what system you're currently thinking of
that might cover all possible use cases.
I am not going to endorse it.
Certainly not going to endorse.
It's just obscured by another mesh that is not sufficient.
As a couple of people are noting here,
it's not ok because you're still redistributing measures
that contain adult content potentially to minors.
Yeah, this is at least part of the reasoning for why we,
we absolutely do not consider that acceptable.
Do not have adult content in your textures,
do not have adult content in your meshes or anywhere else on your avatar.
If you're in a session that is not rated for adult content.
My genuine recommendation is to favorite an
avatar that contains no adult content whatsoever.
Use that in all the sessions you wander through on resonate and
if you go to a session that is rated for adult content,
then change into another avatar
that uh may contain it.
That's it. We have burned an extra 10 minutes
worth. Uh OK. Cobalts Scythe asks as I assume this also counts.
But even if the genitalia is un toggle, so this is why we lean on that,
that somewhat silly sounding colloquial uh rule of thumb.
No amount of trickery
because there's a lot of different. What if I did X? What if I did? Y what if I did Z
the answer to all of those is no,
no amount of trickery.
I have a really cool system. That means I could, no,
no,
that's not going to be endorsed by moderation.
Regardless of how clever the system is, regardless of how well it does its job.
I am not going to endorse it.
The one thing I endorse again is
an entirely separate avatar containing that content
that you load out when you're in a world that is appropriate for it.
New key notes, I have a system to auto
dilute the
assets if anyone wants it. And as much as that is a clever system,
it is not one that I endorse as a moderator for resonate
if that system breaks because some update came down the line
that makes it not work one day and we get a ticket
and you say, but the system should have deleted it.
I'm still going to hit you with warnings or account restrictions.
I do not endorse that system
again. We loop back many a time to no amount of trickery.
That's it. As I was beginning to say, we've flown past uh
10 minutes past.
So I'm going to say if you're asking a question right now,
please continue to ask that question.
But if you're not hold on to it,
I am going to be back possibly with other moderators next week.
Same time, same location,
we have to wrap this up at some point. Folks,
Alex
Tupi asks what defines an adult thing, the creator of the system? No, we do.
I've given you a link uh to the guidelines page where you will find
a definition for adult content uh sitting near the back half of that page.
And that's, that's the definition for adult content.
Uh If the creator of the system does not agree with that definition,
that is unfortunate, but we will still take action if it meets that criteria
as the conversation continues.
I there are a number of people who have done remarkably clever things on platform.
You're just not going to get,
I think the appropriate line to take is that you're
not going to get moderator approval for any of them
and you use them at your own risk
that said it does not look like we have any further questions
coming down the road and I hope I didn't miss any.
It has been a bit of a busy day.
Thank you all for coming. It has been exciting.
I hope you all have a fantastic weekend and week that follows.
I will see you next Sunday.
Same time, same location.
Goodbye folks.