You're doing it wrong: Moderation

Welcome to my first and hopefully not last edition of “you’re doing it wrong”. The subject of this edition is moderation.

We all come in contact with moderators every day. Perhaps it’s in a game you frequent; perhaps you’re on BYOND Staff’s Most Wanted list. Perhaps it’s the supervisor at your work, your teachers at school or the police officer that keeps writing you tickets.

The first question we have to ask ourselves is: what is a moderator?

1. What is a moderator?

This question seems simple enough to answer. Many of you consider a moderator to be a middleman, a person that sits above the players and below the developers/hosts. Moderators are there to keep the players in check, and get their orders from developers or hosts in the form of “rules”.

What I find odd is that a lot of people nowadays consider a moderator to be “above” a player. Players have to take orders from moderators, and they damn well comply with it lest they get the boot. This is not the case.

I think a proper definition of a moderator is “a person who mediates disputes and attempts to avoid violence”, as kindly given by Google when searched for the definition of one. This definition however does not seem to matter on BYOND; people still consider moderators to be above players, and moderators tend to rely on their powers more often than they should.

This brings us to our second question.

2. How should a moderator behave?

We’ve established that a moderator is there to avoid violence and acts a mediator between disputes, but what does this mean for us?

For a lot of people, this seems to mean that if a dispute of enough magnitude occurs, a moderator is free to mute the channel the argument occurs on or to simply mute both offenders if the argument is deemed to go “too far”.

However what people seem to be forgetting here is that they’re moderators. Anyone with a “mute” verb can resolve a dispute that way, but is it the proper course of action? I’ve found that not to be the case.

Generally if an argument is resolved through a mute, the result of this is that anyone who is affected by the mute tends to get pissed off through some degree. The ones that were participating in the argument – especially the ones that didn’t get their latest counter-argument through – tend to be so mad for the abruption that they seek other means of voicing their opinion. The result is that either they try to bypass the mute somehow, or they harass the local administrators until they’re banned or they can speak again. This may well lead into another argument, one with the administrators!

The best course of action during an argument is to sit back and watch as it develops. If you deem that it has gone too far, you should first ask for both parties to stop the discussion. This should be done in a polite manner. Not being polite could worsen things by bringing the moderator into the conflict, but you need to remain in the background.

Another mistake that is often made is by saying that the argument has to stop immediately, that is, that any future messages related to the argument will be punished by a mute. If you choose that, you’re just as worse off as a mute. Instead it is better to wait for the argument to die down, which should happen within a minute or two. If it doesn’t, only then should you turn over to your “mute” verb.

3. When should I use my verbs?

Another question that may pop up is one of verb usage. When should you use your verbs? To tell you the truth, you should try to make sure you never have to use them. Unfortunately, things don’t tend to always swing in your way.

One of the things a moderator must be good at is to alter the behavior of players through words alone. A moderator should be respected enough that players will stop their bad behavior even if the moderator only types “stop” in the chat.

Although some players will not listen to moderators’ requests to stop, it is always important to state them in the off-chance that the recipient does not belong in that group. A moderator should always take the opportunity not to waste a verb on someone, no matter what they may have done in the past to deserve it.

A typical moderators’ arsenal consists of the following verbs:

• Kick
• Ban
• Mute
• Jail
• Warn

The “warn” verb should – though not present in many games – send a “formal warning” to a player. It doesn’t necessarily need to exist, since you can warn players over the chat. However in some cases it may be helpful to use a different font color to send out warnings. The “warn” verb, even if it’s just a request on a chat channel, should be heeded by players. You should always try to warn a player first before moving over to any other action.
Note that there is a difference between a warn verb and a warning over the chat channel. With a warn verb, there would be a special font and there may be a record of the warning. You should always try to warn over the chat channel before sending out an official warning using the “warn” verb.

The “kick” verb forcibly ejects a player from the server. The player can return, but being removed sends them a clear message that they should stop.
You should use the “kick” verb only when you want to send a serious warning to a player who is being unresponsive to your “stop” requests and warns.
This verb is probably one of the most abused. You want to send a clear message to a player, but you don’t have a special font in your game or a “warn” verb. So what do you do? You kick them. If not used properly or on the wrong people, this verb can have an adverse effect, causing the recipient to instead get more troublesome for you to handle.

The “jail” verb is used to remove a player from the game. The player may still have the ability to chat, but they can no longer interact with the game. The last thing you’ll want to use is a verb like this, since it prevents a player from playing and encourages arguments. In some cases, it may be handy to use this, for instance when a player is abusing a bug or harassing a player.
Over-usage of this verb could lead to players starting a lot of arguments over the global chat channel, and could cause players to leave your game forever.

The “mute” verb is used to prevent a player from having arguments with one another. This command is primarily used to stop arguments going on over the global chat channel, but a lot of people forget the power of a simple “mute” verb: it not only blocks people from the global channel, but from any local channels as well.
The mute verb should not be taken lightly. If possible, developers should add the option to mute players only on specific channels (i.e. mute them on the “ooc” channel but allow them to use the “say” verb to chat in IC).
Over-usage of the mute verb can lead to disastrous results. Players are not only prone to leave, but a lot of players may resort to taking their matters out within the game itself. If you fully mute a player on both the global and local channels, the result of the mute might be that the player starts to grief other players for the sake of getting enough attention.

Finally, there is the “ban” verb. In some games, it essentially jails you and prevents you from talking. In most, it prevents you from joining the server altogether. This is your most powerful tool, and it should not be abused. The ban verb should only be used if a player is so excessively uncontrollable that there is no reason to keep them around. If a player is banned they will almost definitely leave your game, or they will try to bypass the ban using whichever methods are available. In the latter case, be prepared to look for players with a similar behavior to the player you banned, but don’t chase that thought around too much or you might end up banning valid players.

4. Conclusion

The conclusion we can make from all of this is that a moderator is not there simply to enforce the game rules, but has a much bigger role: the moderator should stay in the background if a discussion arises (if there are multiple moderators, at least one of them should take a back seat in order to do their job), they should use their verbs sparingly and rely mostly on words, but especially a moderator should steer the behavior of the users they’re moderating so that problems are avoided.

A game with poor moderators usually has a very large ban list, and you will often see players getting punished for things. Good moderation can make your game much better, and will help you so much more since the ban list will be virtually empty (and so will the amount of people you have to watch if they try to bypass a ban).

I hope that this article has helped you to realize your job as a developer to pick the right moderators, and your job as a moderator in overall. But I hope most of all that this article will cause me to see better moderators in games, which see their jobs as how they should be, and not as some kind of elevated privilege or rogue cop.