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Moderation changes in-game
It's pretty obvious at this point that something has changed. There have been threads about chat moderation in Rift for quite a while, and a lot of people have said a lot of things. Some of those things, I think, can now be established to be true or false.
I don't know the exact scope of the changes. I am pretty sure that there were very few, if any, bans or GM-given squelches happening prior to around November 22 or 23. There seem to be some now. Assuming people are being truthful about what they report, at least a couple of people have gotten at least one account permanently banned. I don't know whether they're making new accounts, or just already had multiple accounts. On the other hand, they spend a lot of time not chatting with people.
With this, I think a few things can be conclusively stated to be false:
- "This is just what chat is like in every MMO." Well, maybe it is now, but what it's like now is totally different from what it was like then.
- "Moderation won't change anything." Definitively false. Whatever they're doing has had a huge impact on the tone and quality of Faeblight's 1-29.
- "If you just put the people on ignore, there's no need for moderation." Watching chat now shows a large difference in tone for lots of people, not just the absence of a few trolls. Many people who were noticably hostile much of the time before are much friendlier now.
- Specifically, there's a user on Faeblight (I'm sure many people can guess whom) that has been a go-to example, and I am at this point obliged to retract my claims. Because once the trolls stopped baiting her, she became not merely sort-of-calm, but actively engaged and helpful to other players. I would have had her on my list of "people who should be banned". I was, I think, just plain wrong on that. Glad the GMs were being more careful.
Some things I think are probably false:
- "It will take less time to moderate if they get rid of a few troublemakers." I'm probably wrong on that; it looks, at least so far, like it does require some ongoing maintenance. That may change, though, because some of the troublemakers are going to get bored with making new accounts and re-levelling. But right now, it does seem that moderation is slowing GM responses in general down a little.
- "They are doing things, you just don't notice." Pretty sure that's wrong, because now it is very noticeable when the trolls get shut down.
- "If the GMs moderate chat, it will be boring and not funny." The GMs have been doing this for a while, and the trolling that's actually intended to be in some way funny, and doesn't get too spammy, seems to be continuing just fine.
Things that seem to have turned out to be true:
- Even a small amount of moderation massively changes the tone of chat. Some of the "trolls" have gone from racial slurs to at least occasionally-funny video game trolling. The overall tone of chat is now friendly.
- You can't totally eliminate all the abusive behavior. (Not that I think anyone ever suggested you could, but it's pretty clearly supported. There's still some.)
- 1-29 chat can actually make the game experience more fun when it's lighter on abusive trolls.
- Some people really did leave over the chat, and at least some seem to be coming back now that it's better.
Overall, I think it's very clear now that something changed. And that, if you want to use chat, it's for the better. The GMs don't seem to have any objections to people being funny or silly. Indeed, the GMs themselves are at least a little silly in chat, which I think indicates that they are totally fine with that.
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Originally Posted by the_real_seebs 
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