Have chat moderators outlived their usefulness to the Dark Orbit community?

Let me preface this discussion with a brief disclaimer. I am in no way attacking any chat mod personally. This is purely an academic discussion on the practicality of having players regulate players.

I personally do not feel that they are necessary for many reasons. Here a few:

1. They are human beings and not perfect, hence, prone to succumbing to their emotions and making mistakes.

2. There is already an effective, albeit overly harsh, automatic chat ban system already in place.

3. Alienating paying customers under the guise of protecting the innocent is a terrible business plan.

4. Players who get banned by an unpaid, fellow player will hold a grudge and spend less. It's hard to be mad at a computer, or at an actual employee of BigPoint.

Players can police the chat themselves and already do when big brother isn't watching. On the rare occasions that the auto ban system is circumvented by ignorant players, a simple screen shot and a quick report to support should suffice. What do you think?

 

The automatic system more than perform the function. We all have been banned by the "machine."
Chat moderators sometimes are not forceful enough to foul people and the chat goes on too long.

 

The system is really, really easy to avoid though.

People could say some really terrible and personal things, they could be advertising bots, trying to scam others and players would have to email support, wait for action to be taken which normally takes hours or days for the user to be chat banned. Then as a result support would have a huge increase in emails which would then mean that the reply time would take even longer, in which more emails would mount up unanswered etc.
Then would you be asking for the support teams to be replaced with automated systems as well? They are also volunteers who do moderation work.

It would cause such a huge chain a problems, if you removed chat mods then you might as well remove any chat ban system in general. Just because something isn't absolutely perfect with no flaws doesn't mean it needs to be removed to make the situation better.

 

Ever heard of the ignore function? They added that, but overlooked the fact that it made a cm obsolete. Players already police the chat, warning players not to use foreign languages, etc, when big brother isn't watching. My point is the majority of players are adults who can afford this expensive game and they don't need to be disciplined like school kids over technicalities and trivialities, especially by one of our peers. This has undoubtedly turned more than a few players away from DO. The game needs all the players it can get. My server is a ghost town.

I haven't seen ad spam in the longest time so I assume they have already patched that into the auto ban system. A big problem over the years was we players felt no one cared or was listening to our problems with the game. That has changed, I am very happy with the progress they have made to the contrary. I have no issues with support, they have always treated me with the utmost respect and have been very helpful with the few issues I have had over the years.

We don't need a cm to tell us to contact support with our gripes, use English, change the subject, etc.

"...if you removed chat mods then you might as well remove any chat ban system in general. " This an emotional response with no basis in logic or reality.

I'm asking that players not be allowed to regulate over players. Period. Makes no sense other than to save money for BP.
After nearly five years, I've reached the limit of my patience with the volunteers who have inflated egos for whatever reason and are extremely vindictive towards any bit of criticism. I pay to play. Myself and the community at large deserve better!

~Captain Trips US East 4

 

The ignore function is pretty useless. They can relog to get rid of it, you can't just relog to get rid of a chat ban.

I don't think you have the best understanding of what you are asking for, you haven't really thought through the consequences of what would happen. You make a lot of assumptions such as thinking the system gets rid of ad spam and not the moderators.

As a rule of thumb mods are not allowed to mod their own server, the ones who are those who have done it for a very long time and to be honest, hardly actually play the game anymore.
So this whole idea of mods getting emotional about gripes they have with certain players is just stupid, since they do not even know the players they are moderating.

Putting the text in your post a few sizes bigger doesn't make it anymore important either ...

 

well i can't imagine why you were chat banned

 

Gotta agree with okapi. Chat mods get things the system misses/doesn't recognize as spam/trolling/insulting. As a added benefit CMODs tend to be nice and helpful and can answer questions while on so I say no they have not

 

I fully understand the consequences of turning the whole ban thing over to a program. Having unpaid volunteers police the chat is bad business any way you slice it. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't imply that I'm stupid, I am aware of the rules pertaining to cms(for the most part). Mods can easily be offended and overact to someone they don't know, this is simple common sense. Large text is easy on the eyes, is it not?(rhetorical question)