Changes could be done to COC, but as far as im concern, i don't bother anyway. i must have read it a bit once, and then never again. why? cause this is a video-game. I got enough CoC's PoH's FCOM's and all kinds of guidelines IRL, to bother with even more of em' in a game.
I just follow common sense: play my game and that's all. If i get too carried away,although, very rarely, i can always spec for one or two games, calm down, then maybe play a bit more. It's not a job that compels me to play.
Now, we are humans. We all lose temper sometimes and get funnel-vision on things we shouldn't and get carried away, thus why i also usually don't report such behaviors. It can happen to anyone, and no, words on a screen won't "ruin my day", unlike the guy who wrote them, who might have had an awful day at work, home or anything. It might, in the moment piss the hell out of me, but 5 mins later, i would realise how stupid i am to ruin my game for some words that were typed.
Zero-K is a small community, so that's good for this reason. We can remember a bit some players and see patterns. If a guy have been playing for months, and only once or twice went off-road with insults and such, it was probably a very bad day and shouldn't be banned IMO, but if a guy does this every week, then it falls into the toxic category and should be penalized.
I serve as a mod in an other gaming community, with is also fairly small, so we also use this tactic. we watch and see how users are usually. Constant trollers and toxic-players can be banned, but the others can get away with something mildly bad if it happens once, with maybe a dm to ask kindly not to happen again or an explanation as to why, as sometimes, users don't even realise they broke the CoC, but that doesn't mean we'll have to use the banhammer or immediately go for the "warning" route. a simple exchange of DM's are enough to clear out such unwilling mistakes.
That for me is a huge advantage of zero-k, the small community, as it permits the mods to be much more friendly and understanding of the situations that can unfold in the game.
Usually very strict CoC's and penalizing methods are used where there is a huge mass of people and matters can't be resolved using the above method.
IRL examples could be our workplaces or our mil.service. Im sure some of us have had experiences both in small and big companies/units. the differences in methods of control, rules and discipline's enforcement are like day and night. there's a difference when you superiors have to manage 10 people, and know you by your name, and when they have 1000's on the lines and you're just a number that broke a rule and should be punished to avoid the other numbers doing the same and creating chaos.
I guess that's all i have to say for this. I hope i got my point across clearly (English not being my first language, and not very good at explaining my ideas sometimes).
*edit*: On the matter of communication. this is a hard yes for me in terms of strongly encouraging it in a teamgame. Responses such as "i do what i want" while doing something really trollish or stupid should not be encouraged. You got 1v1's if you want to do that. In a team-game, you are expected to help in the team-effort, one way or an other. Some focus front, other eco, other late-game tactics, other raiding...that's the beauty of it. As to how to enforce this, i don't know. I really don't. I mean, even the word "enforce" might be too strong here. Some people not only are not communicating at all, they even lack awareness. Ive seen lost games, where on team would rush 2 DRP's at the same time, where one of the 2 would constantly ignore the pings that one is already on the make. But again, i got no answer or opinions on how to deal with it as a CoC. and such situations usually lead to some tensions rising.
