Hello folks. I'm Canadian. Git.
Can someone give me confirmation that I'm coming through loud and clear?
Looks like I'm getting a couple of confirmations. So,
hello, everyone one more time.
I'm Canadian get, I'm going to be here for the next 30 minutes for moderation,
office hours.
If you'd like to ask me questions or
see where people were and giving that confirmation,
I'll invite you to head up to the office
hours questions for just north of the community stage.
You'll see a new thread with uh moderation, office hours and today's date,
I'm gonna be here for the next 30 minutes to field.
Any questions you have about moderation, the mentor program,
the guidelines more broadly or of course, all of resonate.
As I always like to say, you're welcome to ask me any question you can
about resonate.
Those are just the topics I know the most about
I will give you always the best answer I can.
And if I can't give you a good one point,
you in the direction of a better resource than myself.
Hope everyone's been having a fantastic weekend so far. I know I'm
in the middle of a heat wave, I suppose up here in Canada
it's been a bit of a scorcher the last couple days.
Well, apparently Ireland's having a bit of a heat wave too.
Well, I hope you enjoy the weather
for me. It is perhaps already a little bit too warm though. Maybe that's just a
yield. Canadian stereotypes flaring up
Kanda.
They're just stopping in to say hello and wishing us a good day slash night.
Same to you if you're already out for the day,
I hope you have a fantastic end of the weekend and
a week that follows if ever you have other questions,
if you didn't have any today,
uh I'll be here next week, same time, same location.
If you'd like to ask it then or of course,
you can always submit a ticket at the moderation ticket
system if you'd like an answer written out for you.
Speaking of which that is to say the ticket system as a sort of mini PS A uh this week,
I wanted to go over at least briefly how the moderation
uh team handles incoming tickets.
We actually have a variety of different help topics you're allowed
to use when you submit a ticket that helps categorize them.
Security tickets will go off to a uh sort of
coder,
uh specific group of individuals that includes some members of the DEV
team who might be uh more equipped to handle security concerns.
We have the ability to handle general inquiries which of course,
go to the whole mod team but are typically fielded by
uh the MOD leads. If there's some policy
related question, they need an answer provided for.
And of course,
there is the ability to submit a complaint about mentors
mod staff that goes to a much more closed down.
Uh number of individuals,
just the MOD leads as the case may be to allow us to facilitated as a complaint.
So if you want to submit a concern about some other mod,
you don't need to be worried about that ticket being visible to the mod,
you or somebody that ticket out.
Of course, most common is uh just reporting
guideline breakage or another user which is visible to the broader MOD team
when it comes to that most common category of reporting all individuals
as we've tried to highlight out here a few times before.
Uh It's something that's visible to the entirety of the mod team,
the whole whole of the mod team is able to see
all the tickets that come in as they are fielded.
And as they are uh restrictions grow out warnings grow up whatever resolution is.
And then of course, for the closing period,
what I mean by the closing period is when MOD closes a ticket,
uh it's given 24 hours where it stays open in the system and
visible to all other mods just as a sort of a notification period.
So that other mods are generally aware of what's gone out restriction wise
and of course, where they can jump in if uh anything they see has gone amiss.
What this helpful also provides the MOD team as a
whole is of course a sort of a uh ability
for collaboration because all mods can see all tickets and
B A sort of way to ensure that nothing,
uh bluntly, nothing suspicious occurs.
You can't do anything inside of the MOD team
in terms of closing tickets and handing out account
restrictions without it being visible to all other mods.
The,
the rest of the mods will be able to see whatever is happening inside of tickets
and the mod leads will be able to see all of the account restrictions handed out.
Helps keep us, helps keep us honest, provides a sort of
audit for the rest of the team.
I see we're fielding a couple of questions though.
LVO asks, can you answer some of
nie's questions that you didn't get to from last week? Yes, absolutely.
I will go back to that question, Pyle. We're having a bit of a quiet weekend.
That is an excellent suggestion. I will start pulling from there.
Uh Just after the next one
where Epic Easton asks, uh with resonate being such a tight knit community,
it's a possibility that every moderator is friends with the
user that gets reported and if the claims are substantial,
maybe even illegal, what would happen in that situation?
Well, we obviously try to remove bias as much as humanly possible.
Whenever an individual knows people relating to a given ticket,
we've instructed MODS as part of their training to make that, uh,
bias salient report that they're inside of the channel discussion that, uh,
there are,
they have some kind of past relationship with that
individual and kind of abstain from dealing with it.
If the entirety of the MOD team knows a person,
we're likely to just repetitively have people meet the refrain of saying yes,
I know this individual and trying to put that bias to the side,
but being forced to still deal with the ticket in some capacity,
you're likely to see the,
the mod leads get involved at that point quite substantially because of course,
everyone else is going to want to step back if they can
on a hypothetical where literally every single person,
including every single mod lead happens to know a person.
We would still field the ticket just because we all
know the individual wouldn't stop us from taking action.
Uh But we're trying parse, of course,
uh the ticket is neutrally as impartially as we could
and take some effort before we got to uh handing up restrictions and completing
the investigation to find if there was anyone who had a more impartial view.
Uh If the claims are substantial and maybe even legal uh with a few times,
we've had a situation where we've needed to deal with a legal side of things.
It's typically just passing on
uh relevant information
uh to the relevant information to the relevant authorities as necessary.
And it's pretty, pretty rare,
I would say looking at the entire history of resonate uh and platforms proceeding,
but that certainly doesn't change based on
uh knowing
the user or any sort of relationship.
Of course, if you want any more clarification on that, please ask follow ups.
I think that's just sort of a very broad overview.
Let's get back to that other question. Pyle,
give me a second.
I'm going to have to scroll for a bit, try and figure out where we left off last.
If you have a specific question from the, uh,
question pile from the last thread that you'd like to bring up by all means,
feel free to just quote it and drag it into this thread.
I'll make sure that gets answered
otherwise I am going to try and
highlight
where we were.
I think we have a,
a hypothetical here that's pretty extensive and has some
other mods weighing in that Nki wanted elaboration on,
uh,
raising a,
a hypothetical such as if a user says I don't
want to interact with you because I think you're a queer
phobe or COVID denier or mean or under 18 or
I just don't have anything in common with you.
That's OK.
But a second hypothetical if they've given a reason such as
because they're queer or because of their speech impediment annoys me.
That's not OK. And then provides a couple quotes from other mods. I think
uh we're just gonna rehash this here in perhaps the most straightforward fashion.
Uh And
there are guidelines as it relates to intolerance. Don't
provide protection under the basis of um the person
you wanting to harass someone. God. That's probably the worst way to say it.
If you were trying to exclude individuals in
a way that triggers our guidelines concerning intolerance,
you're still in trouble.
Even if you use
uh uh the defense of, of something relating to harassment to try and justify that,
you could certainly run into a scenario where I think we went over last week where
two users are both doing things that are wrong and at different levels of wrong,
perhaps one user is being harassing and the
other user is triggered our guidelines on intolerance.
And there's a possibility both users could run
into problems with moderation in that scenario.
Uh But it certainly doesn't wash away any concern relating to
our guidelines on intolerance because there are other factors in the scenario
that is at best a bit of a broad brush to apply to the entire scenario.
So I'm going to say,
uh this would be an ideal time for follow up questions, but I, I don't know if we have
Auki with us today or anyone else that would be interested in
getting a little bit more of a fine grain answer on that.
If anyone's curious though, I will drop a link
uh for that thread or those questions inside of today's uh link.
So you can wander up and see what we're talking about.
I drop that into today's thread again.
If you're looking for that, you can go to the office hours, questions for thread,
just book uh just above the the community stage where we're here.
Will you find threads with uh labeled moderation office hours today's date?
That's where the questions are coming in for today.
I've just put a link in there for this other
bin of questions we're going through when things get quiet.
Epic Easton asks, does the content team have their own office?
I assume this is office hours though. They don't have a physical space.
Uh They may at some point in the future have additional streams coming down the line,
showcasing material arriving.
Of course, if you're looking for a generalized stream that's going to
a lot of the content team's actions,
I'd recommend putting an eyeball on the recap stream,
which is the first stream of every single month.
I see that there's also an
wolf who's our content team lead typing away inside of that channel.
He might have additional information on that.
Hyson has a follow up on the hypothetical we just went over.
So if only one of them files,
uh one ticket could both of them end up with moderation action.
Yeah, if we become aware of guideline breaking behavior through a ticket.
We'll certainly take action on it.
We don't need an independent ticket for every single incident.
If we're just something's brought to our attention, we're,
we're going to take action.
If we're just aware of it.
There are obviously certain guideline breaking behaviors like harassment
that almost always come from the person being harassed,
submitting the ticket because of the nature of harassment.
Usually the person feeling harassed is the one who wishes to submit a ticket.
Uh But there's certainly no obligation for a user
that is having guideline breaking behavior occurring to them to
be the one that uh reaches out to us.
I see a slight follow up to the other series of questions.
Uh And I, I now, I imagine this is part of the broader framework for like,
are there ways you can tell people
uh
when blocking them
that you're going to block them
that uh triggers our guidelines on harassment rather than intolerance?
That was the purpose behind
the,
the mentions in our previous hypothetical of saying things like
because they're queer or because they have a speech impediment,
I apologize. Uh more, more broadly. Yes. Yes. You could absolutely tell someone,
uh when you're going to block them or engage in some sort of uh,
self moderation against a person,
tell them of the reasons behind it
in a way that could trigger our guidelines on harassment,
but it'd have to be rather particular our guidelines on harassment, of course,
are always persistent unwanted interactions.
So you have to imagine you've decided to block user a
uh
for whatever reason.
And then, rather than just blocking user,
a you continuously needle them with that fact, even after they, for instance,
tell you, hey, please stop talking to me.
I don't want to talk to you anymore. And then you just persist in providing
uh insult after insult and then give a block.
Perhaps you could find yourself slipping into
a category where you have also harassed
the person that you are blocking because you thought they were harassing you.
Uh
I went to the intolerance place because they used a mention of queer
phobe in here.
And of course,
if people are talking about certain groups that
we are protecting under our guidelines on intolerance,
that could also potentially trigger some
issues under guidelines there,
that's it.
I think we've talked that a bit to death between today and the last session. So
I'll rely on follow up questions to get into more nuance.
Let's see what else we got?
See that
Aris here has said just for those who might only be listening in
a just says too soon. Tm
I have to create a schedule for it in regards to, to office hours for the content team.
Uh gonna probably not do streams but do prerecords videos for tutorial content,
documentation
and live office hours Q and A all of that could be very exciting coming down the road.
Thank you very much.
S
whip says the moderation team has previously indicated
individualized description being a possible target for harassment.
How is this defined as not the resonate guidelines but
definitely should be screenshot taken from the ticket response.
Yeah,
that certainly gets to the broader idea of inciting harassment against someone.
Uh One of the things that we have taken action for that is not,
I think an explicit subsection inside of the,
the guidelines on harassment but has shown up a few
times would be things like walls of uh shame,
public shaming enticing harassment to go after another user.
If you decide to publish a world that has a big wall of shame where you say you,
you're indicating this user A or B are bad for whatever
reason that might entice other users to go after them.
We will consider that harassment
uh
individualized description would perhaps be the typographic version of that.
We often think of it in terms of a picture right?
Here's the user, here's the user's name, go after Bob user, Bob.
Uh If you are describing a user to A t to the point that we can reasonably infer, oh,
they, they mean to target Bob, then we might be able to go after them for,
for a similar case.
So it would certainly be something where it would have to be very specific.
Whip says I'm asking this because a specific ticket was dismissed,
whether there was a target harassment,
Teresa with a specific individualized description.
So I have limited capacity to go over the details of a ticket inside of a public for,
I'm not going to provide details for what was reported to us.
I'm not going to uh
hand out that sort of information we hold in confidence
if you want further details on a specific ticket,
my recommendation of course is to always just back to the ticket system,
crack open a general inquiry and start asking questions.
We'll give you a response written out in text.
If you don't like our response, you can of course,
give further questions inside of there and we'll try to elaborate where we can
nie
falls up with the reasonable.
Uh If you have a list of people who are banned
from a world somewhere in that world as a transparency measure.
At what point would that be harassment?
Yeah.
If there's an idea that this could be uh I mean,
any kind of big public display of people you've decided
to take actions against could certainly run into the situation,
what we perceive it as a, a wall of shame and at the very least lead with a
reminder or warning through the resonate bot that that
sort of thing should perhaps be taken down.
I understand the interest in transparency here,
but we're obviously sensitive to the possibility of uh that being
not deliberately used, but certainly encouraging
and
incite enticing uh harassment against the individuals that are, are labeled on it
with as a follow up.
Uh,
wouldn't it be better to set a standard
providing detail in the initial response for tickets?
I have seen plenty of tickets get dismissed without
a proper reason being given and in some cases,
a reason why action should have been taken, but it was still dismissed.
Yeah, we certainly want people,
uh,
when we provide our first response to any tickets
to give as complete an answer as we can.
But I'm going to acknowledge we're not perfect.
There's always the possibility we'll miss a
detail or that the person that we're responding
to will have not liked a certain aspect
of our ticket and want additional clarification.
In that case, we always want them to ask further questions.
I'm assuming in this case, we attempted to provide
the best reply we could to the given scenario.
Uh But it was one that didn't clarify everything
that you'd want highlighted here in that case.
Yeah,
I encourage you to come back to us and point out areas that
we could have provided more detail on so that we can do so.
Uh Nook he's asking,
did he answer some of the questions leftover questions from
the list I compiled last week before I came in.
And the answer is kind of we uh basically just started
on the question that we were wrapping up last time.
The hypothetical a couple of other mods had weighed in
on and we were going over it one more time.
Uh The possibility of potentially harassing users
were trying to deal with harassing users,
both uh users, potentially breaking the guidelines in these specific scenarios.
I'm gonna continue to chew through them
as we have quiet periods in today's session.
Believe we're at the uh broader question right now for there
was a discussion of users who have been as reported and,
or mass blocked for incidents behaviors, blocking systems, et cetera.
Bit of a background on this one.
A chunk of text,
I'm just gonna read through it because we're having a relatively quiet day today.
I know of a few users who have been mass blocked
into mass reported due to a common perception of them.
What are the rules around talking about users and incidents like that
pretty much falls in the same.
Do we have a, a question pack here?
I see that is a, another question from last time.
Well, we'll see if we can chew through down to there as well
when it comes to rules around talking about users in incidents like that.
When we're, we're talking about mass reporting or mass reporting users,
our line when it comes to harassment is
usually again, the, the very,
very straightforward when it comes to one on one interactions,
no persistent unwanted interactions.
If you're telling someone about blocking or,
or banning or some other action has been
taken through whatever context that lets you do.
So,
and they don't want you to be communicating with you and they've made
it clear any attempt to continue to do so could slip into harassment.
And we generally discourage, if a person tells you,
I don't want to talk to you, generally respect them.
That's, that's the best piece of advice I can give you as a, as a moderator.
Don't, don't push things. Uh If a person is trying to cut communication.
Now, when it comes to talking to other people, third parties,
entirely unrelated to that user,
just describing that there has been some sort of block that's gone out,
some sort of report that's gone out.
You're certainly welcome to talk to other people. Tell them what is happened.
You're not as we tried to highlight with our guidelines around
uh inciting harassment or walls of shame. You're not encouraged at that point
to
or you're not to ever direct people to harass that
user or take actions where you might harass that user.
If you encourage self moderation, we're not going to be grumpy about you.
If you encourage the use of the tools that we already have,
we're not going to be grumpy with you.
Uh It's just when that moves into something that could be harassment,
we could have a problem with everyone involved.
Nki has conveniently copied this subsection of the questions over
what might the rule say about giving Rock
block recommendations, the things I just said, I guess would be the answer to that.
What about situations where people have been ostracized
for publicly saying they are reporting someone?
I
mean, the nature of the ostracization could potentially fall into harassment,
but we need specifics for that.
II, I
couldn't really tell you if people just aren't talking to another person,
they have no obligation to talk to another person and
nothing about the guidelines is going to come into play.
If they're taking
again,
they're going to the steps where they reach communications or actions
that the other user is requesting that happened to them.
Yeah, the same standard,
that same rule of thumb could be triggered and
we could see some sort of guideline issues.
What about situations where people have encouraged others to report
something that happened to or in front of them?
That is universally fine.
That moderation is never gonna go after people for
encouraging users to make use of the moderation system.
It would be very counterproductive to our uh
way of trying to investigate these issues if we didn't encourage tickets coming in
and that alone does not meet the standard for harassment in any situation.
What about situations where people are mass reporting someone and
say it publicly as a reason to block them.
Uh If you're inside, if you're encouraging people to make use of moderation tools,
self
moderation tools, blocking the session, kick the session band, that sort of thing.
We're generally never going to have any kind of issue
if you are encouraging behaviors beyond and above that again,
you could see it slipping into a line where we have serious issues.
I tend to roll back to this, these rules of thumb as often as I can.
And there's a reason why they are rules of thumb that,
that persistent unwanted actions for harassment.
It's something that I'm going to use as sort of
the meter stick for a lot of these questions and
I bring it up as a rule of thumb so that users can try and apply it themselves too.
Uh
There have also been situations of mutual grievance
blowing over into larger
moderation seems to have been
involved. What are you guys doing to prevent the race to report situations?
Uh We're never going to stop people from coming to talk to us.
So in terms of preventing reporting nothing, we're doing nothing.
We always encourage you to come here and give us your tickets,
tell us what's happening so we can investigate and assist.
That's all right. When it comes to dealing with those scenarios.
Very often in the past,
we encourage people to make use of self moderation tools.
We hand out a number of warnings or reminders
to users involved if we have conflicting information,
telling them about where the line for harassment is,
encouraging them again to make use of self
moderation tools and highlighting repetitively
when behavior crosses into harassment.
Uh We, we know that those situations are often very messy and
typically involve nothing but a lot of testimony and often conflicting testimony.
So as a moderator can be a particularly difficult situation to deal with.
But that's when we lean back on dealing with reminders, uh and dealing with
uh
give, telling people, of course, the,
the lines when things become harassment so that there can
be more concrete cases pulled out of those scenarios.
Uh Epic says, if I'm in a world,
can I disclose that someone in the session or multiple users have blocked me?
This is mainly so that they are aware that I can't see others and others can't see me.
Yes, if you're just passing on information, no problem.
If you say Bob blocked me, go give Bob shit.
That's the problem. You've, you've incited people to go harass Bob.
Please don't do that. You didn't say you were going to win the question.
I don't mean to infer you would ever do that. But that's where the line is drawn.
If you're just informing people, it's fine.
I see that we have a couple of recommended questions. Rela
86
be here in two seconds. So this is concerning another question from the last
subset.
Just
scroll to the bottom bottom.
I see we have some discussion at the end of the previous thread.
I see. I think
the
guy's question is
the one I'm grooming.
Uh How do I tell the difference if someone is 14 versus grooming.
Uh generally speaking, the definition, moderation is going to be working on
as 14 is just uh it's two people
of age, flirting with one another.
Grooming is when that is happening between an adult and a minor.
If there's a more specific breakdown you're looking for, we can get into details,
but that's going to be the easiest, most concise thing.
I think I can give you adult on a minor uh is where we start concerning
grooming.
I
don't believe I see there's some discussion on a specific year distinction.
We're not following
uh necessarily that definition when it comes to grooming,
we're just looking between adults and minors
uh interactions that we would have problems with there.
I know that there are a number of countries that have
like gradients for when there's a problem between the ages of groups.
We're, we're not looking for any of that.
We, we cut things by,
by 18 adult minors and generally discourage adults from interacting
with minors in that regard across the board,
Epica.
The follow up.
Uh In addition, am I also allowed to disclose my experiences with that user,
positive or negative?
You are welcome to have opinions including negative ones about other users,
the moderation team, the staff, anyone on resonate.
If you then go as I continuously bring this back to
uh encouraging things that could be done against those users,
that's where we run into issues
if you were making a public display of all of the bad users and
posting it in your world and either
publishing the world or posting it continuously,
that could be a problem as well.
Uh But unless you're, you're taking that additional action,
you're just honestly telling people about what's happening
and not en enticing any further actions.
You, you can do that. That's fine. You're allowed to have negative opinions.
Red asks following up on the mast
report or mass blocking situation being fine.
Uh What about false allegations that cause
a perfectly fine user to be majorly blocked
by a large amount of users on the player base because on one hand,
it is self moderation,
but it's a large thing that can block a user that did nothing
wrong to be blocked out of a large amount of the game.
So our ability to investigate
uh
incorrect beliefs that one user might have about
another is obviously going to be somewhat limited.
If someone is inciting
uh again harassment against another user,
targeting them for things that are false.
You can certainly submit a ticket and we can try and have a conversation with you.
But generally speaking, we're quite willing to let people
uh engage in self
moderation tools
to whatever extent they would like,
if you think the reasons for why they've decided to block you are incorrect,
they might not agree with that.
And if it comes down to a subjective interpretation of certain events,
we're certainly not going to get in there and declare
that someone is not allowed to make use of self
moderation tools based on other people disagreeing with them.
If you have further follow up slat or specific examples.
Again, I always encourage a follow up question.
Nie
has a follow up to the uh previous one.
A race to report situation is when two
people with grievances could both report each other
and have to worry about whether the other
one reporting first will cause them issues.
In its worst cases.
This can be weaponized by a bad actor
to false report someone before they are reported.
Uh There is no they're asking, is there a safeguard for this sort of behavior? And
essentially,
we're certainly not going to treat a first report
as more credible than a follow up report.
And almost always when we get conflicting testimony,
we'll lean back on either well, a first trying to find more concrete testimony from
or concrete evidence from both people submitting tickets, but in the
absence of the ability to do so,
working more with reminders and warnings
rather than concrete account restrictions.
Uh And of course, encouraging self moderation tools to allow people
to better deal with that situation rather than just
handing out steep account restrictions at a first strike.
Uh Rolan
86 says I see that was the answer Mr
Rao
gave me. I would like more details, please.
I am uncertain on what details grooming again is going
to be flirting that breaks across minor and adult ages between
the two individuals. But
what bit of that do you want further details on?
I present a follow up?
So you shouldn't encourage people to block another person
if you are starting a witch hunt campaign,
a big poster inside of your world.
Again,
we're going to run into the situation that we might
treat this as harassment or inciting harassment even if it's
uh coded to identify it as,
as just block them or just ban them or
something because you're targeting the individual in institution you
have published on side resonate and that,
that could be a problem that we want to have a conversation with you
about likely leading with reminders and probably asking you to take it down.
But if you're just talking to people, again,
you're perfectly welcome to have opinions and
you're perfectly welcome to encourage moderate self
moderation.
We see you making posts and discord, hey,
everyone should ban user Bob or making a world.
We've got a big monument in the world that says everyone should ban user Bob.
That's the sort of thing where again, we, we,
we imagine this despite it being coded in
terms relating to self moderation could be perceived
as a call to harass user Bob. And we would want to talk to you
idle conversations between friends where you acknowledge bad things happen
to you and you have a bad opinion about user
Bob is fine but materially different we think than enticing
harassment or inciting harassment in a larger group of people.
We have a broader conversation about the mass reporting going
on there but no concrete questions out of it yet.
Rag,
if I'm butchering your name, by the way, please tell me, uh Rag
says that answer was satisfactory enough. Thank you.
But I was also referring to if someone is flirting with me in general,
how do I tell which one?
I have been groomed by pedophile before.
And as a result,
depending on the person is sometimes difficult for
me to tell whether someone is grooming,
flirting or otherwise just being a cute.
Very
uh that's why I asked though,
everyone I've met in resonate thus far are the third option
I see. So the general concern is like, how does one identify this behavior
in short sort of get short of getting the the
ages of everyone involved and being very confident in cess
uh the difference between when a person is just being polite to you
or when a person might be attempting to entice behaviors from you.
That could be uh like adult content in nature.
I I would encourage you to simply make it what your preference is involved.
Very clear,
Rag,
Rag.
I'm sorry, I got clarification for a name halfway through that response.
User 86.
Who is the new name?
The person asking questions so far?
Uh
I apologize. Uh Does that cover the, the general distinction?
I understand that it could be very subjective,
trying to identify what a person's intentions are when talking to you.
And it's always going to be
difficult if you don't know their age and
you don't know what they're interested in doing.
It's a messy situation.
But I think if you make it clear what your age
is and what you don't want coming from other users,
that'll cut through 90% of the chaff immediately if
people continue to persist in a flirty fashion,
that's the sort of thing where you're welcome to
introduce moderation to the situation or of course,
make use of uh
uh user moderation tools either blocking the user,
cutting them out of your sessions.
I do not think off the cuff or even if I had
significant amount of time to sit down and write it out,
I would be able to identify
a concrete line in the sand between when a person
uh is, is just being nice versus flirting.
Furthermore, I'd probably slide down the line of enticing actions that be
adult content in nature for when I start identifying an individual
as engaging in behaviors that immediately allow us to engage in,
in
uh account restrictions with moderation.
The broader idea of grooming just being flirting
over a period of time with an underage user
uh would be the sort of thing that we'd have to see sort of patterns coming out
zipping back up to the top here, we have hyper
asking.
So is there uh So there is a
considerable distinction between user content and public speech
uh When it comes to those sort of instances of inciting public harassment.
Yes, I think so. That would certainly be a
clear line that we could identify when it comes to published worlds when it comes
to worlds that are hosted in a public view uh versus just talking with people,
there are certainly, it's easier to imagine uh the latter as inciting harassment.
Uh do the persistent broadcast as opposed to an idle conversation.
You could imagine public speech falling into the
same category if a person went into every world that did nothing but
have that conversation in every single world repetitively for days on end,
but it would be difficult to, to see them
fall into the same sort of range.
Uh NIE
follows up with an, an interesting example as a response to user E six
where they're, they're talking about
repeated uh invitations towards adult content when it's been made clear
uh that one of the users or the user that they're
trying to get this out of is a minor and that,
that immediately is guideline breaking as it relates to,
to everything we have written concerning adult content,
which you're not allowed to do in any capacity with anyone,
including just bringing it out or having it in the same session as
you uh unless you've confirmed that people are 18 years of age,
this is going to trip guidelines long before we have
a conversation around grooming but is also very obviously bad.
We have a broad series of questions
uh saying there was discussion on the current paradigm of moderation, activity,
transparency and the perception thereof.
Has the moderation team ever considered a
more hands on approach to conflict mediation?
I just had everything slide out of my view by a picture. One second
uh ever tried a more hands on approach to
conflict mediation and problem redirection of the community.
Even just talking to the US in these situations might
uh or might help with the feeling that moderation ever does anything
I'm seeing a couple of quotes here framing that in a broader sense.
Moderation as I've occasionally like to highlight previously, don't
act like beat cops, they don't come into your session as moderators until you
how you have to behave and spot or something that we've
uh done previously or really want to encourage at this point.
I understand the use and interest of having people to come into uh
complex social situations and try to get everyone
to calm down and have cooler heads prevail.
That's not something that I certainly currently employing moderators
to do
our response.
Our goal as it comes to guiding the community in this regard is to try and provide
you with tools to self mediate these situations as
we expect the user base to wildly outstrip,
moderation's
capacity to engage with uh day to day conversations if we ever grew bigger.
And even right now, it would be quite difficult to keep up.
And in addition to that, of course,
provides you with an avenue that you can seek additional assistance
if our tool kit that we've given you so far,
the the session moderation tools, the blocking tools are insufficient
to deal with it.
That is unfortunately effectively a no.
At this point,
there's not really a plan for moderators to go in
and try and resolve tense social situations among friend groups.
It's not really a role where we're planning for the volunteer team. It's not really
the broader direction for moderation as a role in the community.
At the moment,
we want to give you the tools so that you can curate your experience on platform.
We want to give you
an option to come talk to us if those tools are insufficient at handling it.
And we want to encourage you to try and
mediate wherever you can conflict that you encounter in the community on your own.
But we're not providing
counselors, mediators or beat cops to come in and do that for you.
Sorry, as we have a follow up question from panda. OK.
So if a non furry like myself were to ever wear any form of
avatar that is more than this and I get people coming up to me to
touch me say things that I may not want to hear et cetera, especially if I don't
know them well or at all.
What rights do I as a user have to stop them from doing shit to me. If I am
a, the session host
or B A user in the session, I'm,
I understand I slash the World House can remove them if need be.
But what if, what other options do I have?
Like uh if I make a system that prevents people from doing stuff to
me unless they're on a white list and they report me for that,
am I liable in any form because they've decided to trigger my systems?
Ah The use of self moderation systems to defend yourself? OK.
Moderation's general encouragement in this sort of instance is always going
to be to make use of the tools we've given you.
Yeah,
you highlight that there's session moderation tools for kicking and banning,
but there's also a blocking system in place that can
remove users ability or at least severely limit
the user's ability to interact with you.
Uh
If you, you block them, of course,
communication is the first step when it comes to involving moderation.
If people come up to do things to you and you tell them, hey,
don't do those things to me and then they keep doing it,
feel free to submit a ticket screenshot, give us a little bit of video,
we will take action.
That's pretty black and white uh harassment.
If the moderation tools we've given you like
blocking are insufficient or they're attempting to circumvent
a blocking to continue to go after you.
That's certainly an indication of harassment. Feel free to submit a ticket.
We will step in
when it comes to making tools on your own.
There's certainly the possibility that tools you make could be problematic
if the things that
you've put in place to stop people from interacting
with you are very disruptive to an entire session,
perhaps it plays blaring loud noises when they do a thing you don't want to do.
And this inadvertently affects the experience of other people in the session.
Yeah,
you could run into a problem with moderation yourself and we
tend to discourage those sorts of systems for that reason.
We want you to make use of the tools we give you and
you want you to come to us if those tools are insufficient,
if you've designed a tool that simply makes it impossible for people to
interact with you in a way,
uh You don't want them to, that's very unlikely to be a problem.
But I'd certainly discourage retaliatory measures built
into one's avatar that can become problematic.
Sys
asks,
how does moderation keep track of how
decisions are made to ensure consistency and precedent
guidelines have uh some amount of interpretation of them.
So does moderation cite example tickets
alongside guidelines to help moderators stay consistent
in their decisions or identify where guidelines
should be adjusted to resolve discrepancies.
Yes.
Ok. That's not sufficient. Uh, we, we have precedent.
We have something called the Mod manual.
It has a number of previous decisions baked into it.
Certainly ones that were contentious and had a lot of back
and forth and weren't immediately clear inside of the MOD team.
Whenever we get that sort of broader discussion surrounding the ticket,
uh, we don't tend to provide a exact link to that ticket.
So much as the mod manual will describe the hypothetical and then the decisions made
in that hypothetical going forward.
We, we just use precedent exactly what you'd guessed.
Uh Easter asks, can I make a system on my avatar that will say I have been silenced.
That will be a recording of my voice whenever I get silenced through the session tab,
I mean, I'd be faintly worried, uh, about that, uh, that,
that system breaking and just repeating
noises. But
at its most basic, if it's just your,
your level
of, uh speaking, it's not repeating.
It's not something that could be disruptive to the session,
then that might not be a problem. Again, the, the same rules that apply
to a user in a session will apply to any system you make. If the thing you make could be
just like a user disruptive or harassing or problematic,
we will treat it as if you're doing those things.
Even if it's a response to something else the or the world itself is triggered in you,
right?
Like I, I don't imagine you designed it this way,
but a particularly bad version of that would be
uh your avatar repetitively saying I have been silenced.
I have been silenced.
I have been silenced nonstop if it ever detects that you have been silenced.
That uh that could quickly be disruptive to a session and yeah, could,
could lead to issues if you get a, a report on that.
Nie
provides a beautifully succinct version of the previous conversation uh that
we were having with panda regards to self defense tools.
Uh Too long. Didn't read personal space bubble shields.
Good Ubers that make you go flying bad. And yeah, that's,
that works
uh passive things that prevent people from doing things that you don't want.
Absolutely excellent.
But make sure the things that you're
you're doing to other players aren't disruptive.
Could it be harassment of their own writer will
certainly treat it like such if we become aware
that said
I uh I do think I'm going to have to slowly bring this to an end. I'm, I'm
at this 0.17 minutes passed when I should have told you I'm cutting this and uh
I have to, I have to call it at some point.
So I'm gonna say if you're already asking a question, typing away at it,
please continue to ask that question.
If not,
I'd encourage you as always bring those questions to next week's moderation,
office hours where I'll be available, same time, same location,
uh, probably for 30 minutes at that time.
But we'll see how good I am at time management.
He asked,
I think we got everything from last week and I believe we did chew through most of it.
But of course, if there's follow up questions or other things,
uh come out of further discussions in the committee.
This is a wonderful form to go over them.
I do quite like getting those sorts of questions compiled and brought in.
It gives me a lot to chat
as opposed to sitting here
sipping coffee uh in relative silence for 30 minutes
and ask sort of a logical follow up here.
Uh What if I don't want people touching me at all?
If they go for the boo that either right exists
uh that or, or b doesn't,
then that just shows people going to touch people no matter what, which is my issue,
my recommendation. If you don't want people to touch you at all inside of this sort of
uh medium is to make that very clear.
Of course, you could just tell people, hey,
don't touch me every time you meet a new person because you're just not comfortable
uh with uh virtual
physical physicality. But
if repeating that nonstop is kind of irritating, my next recommendation,
of course would be some sort of obvious signage, part of your name tag,
perhaps part of your avatar perhaps some notice provided to people.
We draw the line for harassment at
persistent unwanted interactions because that first one,
in a lot of these instances, we're going to give them a bit of a pass on.
They may not have been aware, they might not have meant any ill intent.
But of course,
if you've made it clear to a person you don't want to be touched and they persist.
Yeah, we're sliding into harassment.
If he asks another question relating to user 86.
Again, I'm very sorry for not being able to manage names.
Sometimes they get away from me. But
if a minor somehow sneaks or lies their way into an 18 plus situation,
how should this be handled on our end?
How would it be handled on yours if you become aware of them?
Of course, remove them immediately.
If you know that someone's deceived their way into a session like that,
you can kind of assume that they've immediately violated,
what would be the rules of that session?
And you're welcome to tell us under that sort of
uh, guideline breakage.
Uh, a person stuck into your session when your session has made a very,
very clear that the only people allowed and that should be
18 plus presumably of some sort of mechanism in place.
Let us know about all of those things we would want to be aware of that,
that context is important.
And how would we handle the on ours.
Uh assuming we found out about it in some third party fashion,
we would likely try and reach out for
additional clarification or of course whoever notified us,
we would tell
them to tell everyone else in the situation to provide additional details.
They can so that we can become aware of what happened and how it happened.
And uh
a user asking you're talking to me when you say user 86 right?
Uh Yes,
user 86. I am.
I'm just gonna call you R
how are you doing, Ral?
I apologize. I'm uh not great at names sometimes.
Thank you very much for coming to my office hours.
I appreciate you and the questions you brought here
and as a follow up saying get I understand,
but these people would be outside in real life.
No one would just go up to other people and touch people.
Uh Yeah,
there's certainly different standards that we find inside of VR in real life.
And we're still trying to navigate that space from an etiquette perspective.
I would encourage no user touch another user unless first making
it clear that that user is all right with being touched.
But when it comes to harassment,
I do allow for guideline breaking behavior
before I'm gonna start issuing account restrictions.
That one Mulligan of the other user saying, hey,
do not do that.
And if the other person persists, let us know,
you tried to be straightforward,
you tried to clarify things and they didn't get the message.
Few people are bringing up the idea of consent bracelets
right now highlighting how you might not want to,
which allows users to highlight if they might not want
to have any sort of interaction with other users.
Certainly something that I could recommend in that way as well.
Some sort of notification,
I
can understand the frustration with different
sort of social standards inside of VR
in real life and wanting them to push closer to real life.
That's the sort of thing I expect to develop over time
as people build these proper rules of etiquette inside of VR uh until then,
those are the tools you have though,
uh speak to them, provide notice if there are issues,
uh
reach out to us
that said with that,
I think I am going to close the office hours for the day
because I think we've run through all the questions people were typing.