Update to our Game Moderation Strategy

[Nima.]

That sounds like a good decision, thanks.

[partyaap]

22 hours ago, Foobrother said:

First, I think he/she meant the moderation rules/strategy and not the team itself.

But it's fairly simple to understand:

- Phase 1: we had more new bad players during COVID for many various reasons

- Phase 2: TMP became less attractive, and it has been decided to reduce the punishments, cancel the existing permanent bans, increase the speed limits on EU SIM2 & Promods and organise more racing events

- Phase 3: this new blog message whining there are too many reports. And announcing TMP is making it harder for people to report with bigger limitations (number of reports and age of offenses) and new reporting ban rules (which are harder than bans to prevent you playing)

But none of this has anything to do with the toxic side of the web reporting system.

 

So I am not sure what he meant with it. Sounds like he just wants to trash talk the team for whatever reason and can't be bothered giving anything constructive.

 

 

[Foobrother]

1 hour ago, StateCA [NL] said:

But none of this has anything to do with the toxic side of the web reporting system.

He/she wrote "this toxic culture that your moderation team has let develop"

"toxic culture" = reckless driving and racing which is becoming more and more the norm in TMP. And, as a result, does generate more and more reports

 

And the 3 phases I described are showing how/why it happened. And why he/she says this blog announcement & changes are felt more like a "blame" to people reporting rather than something to really stop this "toxic culture".

[ZachSkinner02]

while they're at they should bring down the ban term from 3 months to at least 1, because its just way too ******* excessive within a few weeks any bad blood between players is already gone and by then the ban is just completely pointless, especially if it was for a small mistake (see my most recent ban for just how power hungry some of these mods are in-game) another suggestion: if banned you should the very least still be able to play on the arcade server (which has no rules)

[Kiezkickerde]

4 hours ago, ZachSkinner02 said:

especially if it was for a small mistake (see my most recent ban for just how power hungry some of these mods are in-game) another suggestion: if banned you should the very least still be able to play on the arcade server (which has no rules)

You are hiding your ban history so it's not possible to see your last ban. But anyway, you got 5 bans in only 9 months.

And the arcade-serrver has of course also rules.

[Nan sheng]

I don't understand.

[Foobrother]

8 hours ago, ZachSkinner02 said:

while they're at they should bring down the ban term from 3 months to at least 1, because its just way too ******* excessive within a few weeks any bad blood between players is already gone and by then the ban is just completely pointless, especially if it was for a small mistake (see my most recent ban for just how power hungry some of these mods are in-game) another suggestion: if banned you should the very least still be able to play on the arcade server (which has no rules)

5 bans in 9 months. You're a very unlucky player 

[partyaap]

11 hours ago, Foobrother said:

He/she wrote "this toxic culture that your moderation team has let develop"

"toxic culture" = reckless driving and racing which is becoming more and more the norm in TMP. And, as a result, does generate more and more reports

 

And the 3 phases I described are showing how/why it happened. And why he/she says this blog announcement & changes are felt more like a "blame" to people reporting rather than something to really stop this "toxic culture".

I disagree that's what he is refering to with toxic culture. But no point in discussing it with you anyway because neither of us knows what he truly means.

[CLUSTERTRUCK]

On 9/12/2023 at 5:51 AM, StateCA [NL] said:

How exactly? I don't understand this statement.

 

Why am i not surprised...
... If you don't understand the problem how do you expect to fix it

[partyaap]

Just now, CLUSTERTRUCK said:

 

Why am i not surprised...
... If you don't understand the problem how do you expect to fix it

> Walks into forum
> This toxic behaviour is due to your own GM Team!
> Refuses to elaborate

 

"Why don't they understand the problem and fix it?"

 

10/10 my guy, keep it up!

10 hours ago, ZachSkinner02 said:

while they're at they should bring down the ban term from 3 months to at least 1, because its just way too ******* excessive within a few weeks any bad blood between players is already gone and by then the ban is just completely pointless, especially if it was for a small mistake (see my most recent ban for just how power hungry some of these mods are in-game) another suggestion: if banned you should the very least still be able to play on the arcade server (which has no rules)

Please make your ban history public and show the world how "power hungry" we have been with your bans.

I am sure people will agree when they see the videos.

[Rico]

On 9/12/2023 at 1:40 PM, [MCG] RedWolf [CZ] ~ said:

Okey, I didnt mean like thus answer should come only from GM Team, I mean it objectively about all the team. Game Moderators, some of them are afraid about to say something outside of the team in case they could be 99% fired from the team. 

 

I received few messages from my GM friends, and could say that situation has really changed and I would like to see the things back as it was before 3-4 months ago.. And only last thing, if you want to be like "have some things within the Staff Team" then there would not get any info outside the team, however it does. So playing like we have some private rules, having changed the GM names in report system I think, wasnt neccessary, anyway it's your goal. I can only say that many of people just Lost their motivation to be in the team due to fact that Managers did not gave them a chance. 

 

 

Thank you! 

RedWolf [CZ] 

Staff members will never get fired for expressing their own opinions.... they are free to say whatever they want to say on our platforms regarding changes that have been announced. So, I do not see where this is coming from. The other statements present a false misrepresentation, and definitely not the case and can be misleading to the wider public with comments such as these  

[Rico]

What is more ironic in this topic is the small amount of people who are heavily criticising this are the ones who do not have activity at all in game and talking about gameplay experience  

Also the big problem here is, which a lot of people seem to be missing out and quickly jumping on the bandwagon, is that BIG changes take time for you to see the real difference this has made. The report decrease and the reduction of days allowed to report someone are mitigators and will all play into a bigger role with new changes in the near future.

Another few points that were raised here, was that of course you are going to see a massive influx of activity over the summer period, and reports spiking up and the possibility of less Game Moderators/Report Moderators due to holidays and so forth. Let time do it's thing, and let's stop jumping to conclusions before you are able to see results.

[LordPaco]

I just think they should have an automatic system to auto-kick if the guy collides with the truck 3 times in the same match with another player, but of course only the one who collided will get the kick and have a kick limit like chance, hitting 3 times will get banned 1 day if you continue to have a 1 week ban and so on

[m 0 z 1]

Does nothing for regular players who get followed, sworn at in chat & ban threats from moderators who have banned us over minor violations and they remember our username.  

[Foobrother]

10 hours ago, Rico said:

What is more ironic in this topic is the small amount of people who are heavily criticising this are the ones who do not have activity at all in game and talking about gameplay experience  

And how did you come to that conclusion? Do you have stats on TMP gameplay time of each player? How many gameplay hours do you need to be able to comment? Please enlighten us!

 

10 hours ago, Rico said:

Also the big problem here is, which a lot of people seem to be missing out and quickly jumping on the bandwagon, is that BIG changes take time for you to see the real difference this has made. The report decrease and the reduction of days allowed to report someone are mitigators and will all play into a bigger role with new changes in the near future.

So if I understand you correctly, even if the decisions they consider non-productive and against the direction things should go, people should not complain because there is some obscure future plan that no player knows about, which will be the final piece of the puzzle which will solve the problem? 

BTW what are you calling a "BIG change"?

 

10 hours ago, Rico said:

Let time do it's thing, and let's stop jumping to conclusions before you are able to see results.

How long? These series of changes have taken place since COVID as I explained on this post (see the last paragraph with phases), maybe that's what you're calling overall a "BIG change" (which it is indeed, but not in the right direction): 

 Many small changes/initiatives have been implemented. None of them improved the situation. But today you're are telling us that some of these changes like the latest report system limitations have "a bigger role with new changes in the near future."? As if everything will magically solve in the "near future"?

Sorry but, I waited, I've seen BAD results. And I'm still waiting for GOOD results.

 

Many good suggestions have been posted by many players. None of them have been implemented.

[CLUSTERTRUCK]

I was taught never to argue with an idiot, so i won't...

[Foobrother]

5 minutes ago, CLUSTERTRUCK said:

I was taught never to argue with an idiot, so i won't...

Even if I 100% agree with your general perception of the situation, I wouldn't say that.

[partyaap]

46 minutes ago, CLUSTERTRUCK said:

I was taught never to argue with an idiot, so i won't...

Not much of an argument anyway when you are just throwing random insults at people

[Interstate Nomad]

On 9/11/2023 at 8:15 PM, Leon Baker said:

It seems like you've completely missed the point of the blog text you quoted in your message. The text doesn't suggest that reporting rule violations is toxic; instead, it emphasizes how an excessive and unnecessary focus on reporting can create a negative atmosphere among players. It's crucial to distinguish between genuine reporting of rule violations and a culture where some players report every minor infraction they encounter, even if it doesn't impact their gameplay.

It seems you didn't read or didn't understand my post.

 

The TruckersMP team can't define if and to what extent a player's game experience has been compromised.

 

An inicident that one player regards as minor might be regarded as major by another player.

 

By defining the severity of an incident on player's game experience, the TruckersMP team disrespects a player's legitime concern and makes the outcome of a valid report look like gambling for the sympathy of the (now anonymized) report moderator.

[CLUSTERTRUCK]

3 hours ago, StateCA [NL] said:

Not much of an argument anyway when you are just throwing random insults at people

It's not an argument... I don't argue with idiots

[Kiezkickerde]

18 hours ago, Rico said:

What is more ironic in this topic is the small amount of people who are heavily criticising this are the ones who do not have activity at all in game and talking about gameplay experience  

Also the big problem here is, which a lot of people seem to be missing out and quickly jumping on the bandwagon, is that BIG changes take time for you to see the real difference this has made. The report decrease and the reduction of days allowed to report someone are mitigators and will all play into a bigger role with new changes in the near future.

Another few points that were raised here, was that of course you are going to see a massive influx of activity over the summer period, and reports spiking up and the possibility of less Game Moderators/Report Moderators due to holidays and so forth. Let time do it's thing, and let's stop jumping to conclusions before you are able to see results.

I have played a total of 1,062 hours of ETS2 TMP here on the servers since 17 May 2021 (849 days), 26.6 hours in the last two weeks as I have been in bed with a flu infection rather than playing TMP. So, subtracting the total of 24 days I was banned per day I played an averaged of 1.3 hours over the last 2,5 years (if I haven't miscalculated now).

 

I hope this is enough game time for you to have given me my own impression about the situation on the TMP servers. I would be very grateful to you in this respect, not to have to read such a non-argumentation from you again, because I have probably sufficiently justified in https://forum.truckersmp.com/index.php?/topic/113285-update-to-our-game-moderation-strategy/&do=findComment&comment=1114751 what my game experience was and how I got this impression.

 

 

And yes, of course, I also realize that the situation will not change from one day to the next. But I already see "High" as status in the web report system" again, even though people can now submit only half as many web reports as before - and it's still before the weekend.
I haven't submitted a web report yet (because, as I said, I spent the last week in bed) - so I can't report if the processing time of the web reports has actually improved yet. But what I can say already is that I watched a lot of ETS2 TMP twitch streams while lying in bed last week: In-game reports still time out unprocessed (I haven´t seen a single ingame report in the streams which haven't timed out), so obviously nothing has improved in that respect.
So, as soon as I start playing again, I will have to create web reports again instead of ingame reports, if I want to make sure that I don't throw the reports about traffic accidents etc. concerning me into a huge garbage can.

 

In this respect, at least so far nothing has improved or even changed for me, except that probably 50% of the people who made my gaming experience negative will continue to do so in the future because they don't even have to take time to think about their driving behavior because they haven't received a ban for it (so everything must be fine if they ram trucks of the road with their caravans - otherwise they would have received a ban..).

Edited September 14, 2023 by Kiezkickerde
Fixed some typos

[[Интегра] ResTed]

It was fascinating to read the comments for this announcement. I would like to give my response to many commenters as there are many I agree with and many comments I disagree with. But this will take a lot of time, so I'll leave a general answer to what I see. 

 

1. many commentators write as if they know exactly what will give a good result. But this result will only be good for you, so in your opinions you do not take into account thousands of other players and hundreds of other circumstances. 

2. Also, many of the comments contain things that I agree with, but the methods will not be as effective due to specific circumstances that you are not aware of.

3. some of the comments look quite funny, but these comments completely fail because they completely ignore the scale. For example, some idea will work for the city of London in the game, but will no longer work in Calais.

 

Being on this side and criticizing is perhaps the simplest and most widespread thing that happens here. Yes, definitely many of you are saying the right things, but I assure you, you will change your mind if you join the moderation team for 3-6 months. Everything is much more complicated than you think, don't forget about it. And for this reason, as you can see, many new moderators cannot withstand the stress that they teach, and if you add to this persecution and threats due to a kick or a ban, it is difficult to bear. So I partially support anonymity, but I would leave this choice to the moderators: be public or hide yourself.

 

As for reports, the situation here is also not simple. This is probably a problem with any online project where it is very difficult to find a balance. When you are allowed to send an unlimited number of reports, sooner or later this will lead to some kind of race of reports, which also becomes a problem. But solving this problem provokes another problem and this is a cyclical process here. Alas, but this is a fact. And it's really difficult to find a balance. so when you talk about solving one problem, you forget that this solution provokes other problems that may be more global.  

 

I'll be humble and say that I was very loud a while ago when I started shouting that we need to move from working with reports to working in the game, since reports are the consequences of not being active enough in the game. I'm incredibly glad that this actually happened. Although I talked about broader actions that are necessary to improve the player experience and make the work of moderators easier, this is still internal information. In any case, I'm glad that one wheel of the project came out of the mud and stopped slipping )

 

In conclusion, I would like to say that the number of hours you play in the game does not matter, no matter how many reports you send - it all does not matter, because if you do not have respect for other players, then no matter what the moderators and managers do or the developers - it will still be a slow process to improve the atmosphere of the game.

Here's the secret to playing well:
practice your skills in safe places, every time you play, think that you are being watched by a GM xD

[Leon Baker]

Hey, for those who think nothing has changed since the update, here's the scoop: We've scaled down the report system load from Heavy to High (just a reminder, there's a Very High status in between). Back in the Heavy days, it took an average of 12 days to get a response on a website report. But now, we've got it down to 8 days and it's still improving. About those comments concerning the in-game report view rate after the announcement, remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. This has been an issue for years, and one change won't do a complete 180. Change takes time.

[RedNub]

31 minutes ago, Leon Baker said:

Hey, for those who think nothing has changed since the update, here's the scoop: We've scaled down the report system load from Heavy to High (just a reminder, there's a Very High status in between). Back in the Heavy days, it took an average of 12 days to get a response on a website report. But now, we've got it down to 8 days and it's still improving. About those comments concerning the in-game report view rate after the announcement, remember, Rome wasn't built in a day. This has been an issue for years, and one change won't do a complete 180. Change takes time.

Thank you for your answer!  

 

[IgorTMT]

1 hour ago, [Интегра] ResTed said:

Serei humilde e direi que falei muito alto há algum tempo quando comecei a gritar que precisamos passar do trabalho com relatórios para o trabalho no jogo, já que os relatórios são consequências de não estarmos ativos o suficiente no jogo.

This is the best sentence I read in this entire thread.

We need more moderators in the game looking at the reports, and it requires changes to the in-game reporting system, for example, perhaps a ranking where a player who is reported several times appears at the top with priority over the current numerical order, for this, It should be allowed for a player to be reported by more players, this system is very bad where you try to report the player and can't because it has already been reported before.