Changes to the Code of Conduct

Over the past few years, from time to time various moderators and users have noticed points of vagueness or inaccuracy with the community Code of Conduct. We've made some changes to the Code of Conduct to address these shortcomings.

The new version of the Code of Conduct is here. The previous version is here.

This revision is NOT intended to signal a change in how the community is actually moderated; rather it is intended to be a clearer description of how the community is currently moderated.

If there are typos or points of concern with the new formulation of the Code of Conduct, raise them in this thread.

The following points out some of the more notable changes and the reasons for them.

Initial Summary

quote: Treat other members of the community with respect. Don't be a dick.

As compared with the first sentence of the previous Code of Conduct this has one thing added and one thing removed.
* "Do not lose your temper" has been removed since it seemed like an overreach. Getting angry or frustrated is not against the rules and is quite understandable, ZK can be a stressful game. Taking it out to an unreasonable degree on other community members is the actual problem, and the new wording emphasizes that instead.
* Adding Wheaton's Law to the end of the one-line summary just seemed like a good idea.

quote: Be patient with new players and help them where you can.

The previous wording of the Code of Conduct implies that "Help new players" is mandatory, which is a bit ludicrous. You are not obliged to seek out new players and help them, but if you do engage with new players you should be helpful.

quote: Kick and exit polls are powers on loan from moderators. Do not misuse them.

This point is broadly implied by the previous Code of Conduct but the new version makes it much more explicit, since there seems to be a fair bit of confusion about when kick votes are appropriate and when they are not.

quote: Play team games as if you will play to the end. Go all-in against the wishes of your team.

These points in the previous Code of Conduct summary have led to misunderstandings in the past. In the new version they are covered more explicitly in the later parts of the Code of Conduct. As far as the summary is concerned they are covered by "Play in a way that is respectful to your team".

Section One

quote: 1. Respect Other People

This has been changed from "players" to "people" since people who are not currently actively playing still deserve respect.

quote: Blaming other players for a loss can easily become hostile and abusive.

Previously this line read "Don't blame others for a loss" which seems overly strict. Some amount of discussion of mistakes which people made in a game is at least permissible and has in practice been permitted, even if it is not particularly desirable. However it can very quickly become unacceptable.

quote: We do not tolerate language or any other form of communication that is abusive, bigoted, racist, or sexist.

This part has been made a bit broader to cover our bases.

Section Two

quote: You are not obligated to interact with new players, but if you do, offer them friendly advice and help with any issues they may have.

As noted above this point has been clarified to make "helping new players" a condition on interacting with new players, not on being in the ZK community at all.

Section Three

quote: Pursuing all-or-nothing strategies without the consent of your team, or resigning on your own because you faced an early minor setback, is disrespectful to your teammates. A pattern of such behaviour may result in moderator action, and in any case you will be damaging your own reputation in the community.

This has been rewritten to more explicitly lay out expected repercussions for actions of this kind. We do not in practice hand out bans willy-nilly for individual instances of early resignation. Patterns of such behaviour, on the other hand, do attract modactions eventually.

Section Four

quote: Custom widgets that control your units, sound warnings, place marks etc. are generally fine; widgets which perform tasks a human could not reasonably replicate or essentially play the game for you should be discussed with the developers first.

Widgets have become a bit more of a concern for the community since the writing of the previous Code of Conduct, so some amount of safety checking seems like a good idea.

Section Five

quote: Respect Moderator Actions

"Abide by Moderator Actions" seemed a bit narrow.

Section Six

quote: 6. Use Polls Responsibly * Several tools available to players (including kicking players and exiting a game) are ordinarily moderator powers but are available to users by means of a poll for cases when a moderator is not available. These tools should ''only'' be used in ways that a moderator would use them. * In particular do not kick players for failing to play or cooperate to your standards. Kicking players for griefing is acceptable, but in the heat of the moment it is often very difficult to distinguish between griefing and unintentional poor play. If you demonstrate poor judgement when using kick polls you may be prohibited from using them in future or banned outright. * Do not start polls excessively. A poll is unlikely to pass if it failed decisively a few minutes ago, barring large changes to the situation, so spamming polls is a form of disruptive chat. Do not use polls as a heightened means of expression, such as starting a kick poll to express your displeasure at a player rather than out of any belief that the poll will pass.

This section is entirely new. Since the use and misuse of polls has been a larger issue in recent years it seems like a good idea to lay out the rules really explicitly. Most of this should be self explanatory, hopefully.

Section Seven

quote: Avoid inflammatory discussion topics

Previously this was "forum topics" but a lot of discussion happens on Discord now.

quote: Note that even in [Asylum/#off-topic] the other parts of the Code of Conduct still apply. Furthermore, especially contentious or distasteful subjects may be restricted even in these channels on a case by case basis.

The second part of this is technically a recent addition to the previous Code of Conduct. Basically we are coming to grips with a reasonable and sustainable way to manage #off-topic discussion.

quote: Posts or links to pornographic content/sites or similarly unacceptable material are forbidden and will result in bans.

This might as well be reiterated here.

Section Eight

[Spoiler]
The rules surrounding alternate accounts are made more explicit. Not too exciting.

Exceptional Situations

[Spoiler]
This final section makes a little more clear the previously unwritten principles of how the moderators approach unusual and unprecedented situations in practice.

I think ZK is pretty leniently moderated. People really have to go out of their way to be a dick before they get penalties. Most of the player base is pretty chill, too, which I guess helps.

quote: I'll put a basic statement in for now but a specific statement of policy on what is or is not acceptable probably requires a fair bit of thought on the part of the moderators as a group.

This would be very helpful. Thank you.

quote: ...where you ban a user from starting another poll for 15 seconds after one of their polls fail. There's no way this would take longer then investigating a single poll spammer.

I think something like 60 seconds would be more appropriate. As I am thinking mostly of resign polls, if some people still want to play - so reject first poll - don't think they would change their mind after just 15 seconds.

quote: Infrastructure development is not as easy as it might sound.

I was under the impression that for repeated in-game polls (thinking of kick, exit, resign) spammed by the same player an interface/gadget change would suffice. This might also avoid the need of the bans as spammers might get bored and just resign themselves, thus not annoying anybody anymore (I find it much less disruptive to just resign if you do not believe the game can be won, rather than continuously try to make everybody abandon).

A "hack" (not ideal, but working implementation) would be to call "voteresign" command "someverylongresigncommandthatcantbetypedeasily", and the effect will be similar. I don't have a statistic but my feeling is that people spamming resign votes are not willing to put a lot of effort to start it, unless it's a one click button in the interface.

Or even better, call the command "voteresigndirectlytypingthisisagainstcodeofconductpleaseusebutton <XXXXXXXXXX>" with XXXXXXXXXX being a not used parameter that is a hash computed for player (like md5 of player id and name and time), such that later an admin can easily detect simple abuse (just check if that command appears and hash is wrong, then is for sure abuse).

Both changes above will imply just changing the string in the infrastructure and the command send by the button (plus the code to disable the button for some time).

EDIT: also changing chat console not to send "!voteresign" commands directly is probably yet another, more elegant solution. (yes, you can replace it, but we are talking about making harder to abuse some ingame votes, not make it impossible for skilled players to do it)

Indeed, the utility of such implementation for different people is highly subjective, was just commenting about options.

I do not have numbers to back this up, but I feel that in some team games, as soon as it does not go "great", there are guys that will initiate a vote resign again and again (3-4-5 times).

So once floor(N/2+1) players have resigned, the team is automatically resigned? That would be enough votes for instant resign.

quote: Edit: so in case it's not clear: I find the idea of counting resigned ones as "yes" for future votes really bad. I have seen many battles in which 1 or 2 players resign quite fast and then their team eventually wins.

I also tend to fight on longer than most. I almost never resign personally, but you shouldn't be in the position of having one person with a few scattered units on the map holding the entire room hostage because half or more of their team resigned, got bored and went afk or disconnected. I doubt the this would make many more resigns pass when they otherwise wouldn't and it would prevent this scenario. Alternatively you could change the resign vote to resign when more than half of the non disconnected or afk players vote to resign.

We'll continue the discussion here: http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/32899