How To Treat Your Players Right

[Ganymede]

In my experience, complaints should never be anonymous to the person tasked with investigating such complaints.

On Victorian Reverie, I served as the player ombudsman and the third in a triumvirate of headstaff. The other headstaff didn't always agree on things, and I acted as the third vote to break ties. My duties otherwise only included investigating complaints. We didn't have many.

From that experience, I can tell you that player ombudsmen do not work the way you want them to. By the time a complaint is filed by someone with the wherewithal to raise it, the damage has already been done. Predators don't persist because they target people who are well-established or known to have the sort of courage to report problems. Problematic behavior has to be caught at an early stage.

In my other kinds of experiences, I've found that allowing your staff to play PCs allow them to get a feel for the player-base. I've seen staff pick out and remove problem players before they become too awful to extricate, but these were staff that I knew to be reasonable, responsible players too. Or staff was literally omni-present, and so involved with the game that it became impossible for predators to remain under the radar for long.

Here's a few suggestions for staff to keep the player-base happy, engaged, and feeling safe:

• No staff should be playing PCs that obtain any sort of status or power on the game. If the game involves territory, staff PCs should not be able to gain control over territory; if the game involves titles, staff PCs should not be able to have anything but middling titles or offices. Only non-staff PCs should have the ability to gain positions of power that can affect a game's social environment.

• Complaints about a PC's player should be sent to the head of that PC's sphere, if you have spheres, or directly to headstaff via @mail or e-mail. Staff should then open up a +request about the complaint on a +job system only visible to wizbits, or into a bucket only visible to wizbits. The matter should be investigated by a wizbit-staffer without direct authority to affect the PC at issue if possible, else by headstaff with control over the game.

• Logs should not be required. In my experience, confronting the behavior is usually enough to elicit some explanation or confession from the accused, else a counter-complaint.

• Action should not be predicated on a complaint. Staff should be keeping an eye out at all times for odd comments on channels or in pages.

No system will be perfect, but I think the modern practice of having minimal staff on a game is making it easier for problem players to fly under the radar.

[Tinuviel]

@Ganymede said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

No staff should be playing PCs that obtain any sort of status or power on the game.

I would add to this that perhaps headstaff shouldn't be playing PCs at all (unless they're the only staff). Or have a designated "complaints investigator" of some kind that doesn't play, thus isn't likely to have biases or to have conflicts of interest. It's only a thought, not a definite "you must include this in policy."

[Roz]

@Kestrel said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

I half regret that I didn't complain about him but at the same time ... I'd like to hear from staffers here. Someone you don't know joins your game and says 'your BFF here is making me extremely uncomfortable and wilfully ignoring the fact I've told him he's exacerbating my mental health issues, along with my polite requests to terminate our communications'. Whom do you believe? I didn't want to be a trouble-maker. I wanted to come to this game where no one really knows me, stay anonymous, have fun, no drama, and not rock the boat.

I've put my staff hat on with friends of mine in the past. I mean, your question isn't really "whom do you believe," because it didn't even get to a point where you knew if he was going to totally deny everything if it was brought to staff. Which he could have! But. I can say this: if someone came in with a complaint of that sort of content, yeah, I would absolutely investigate. Even if it were painful. Because if you tell someone to stop engaging with you and they continue to do so, that's a really clear boundary that's been placed and then crossed. And it's not okay. If he wholesale denied it and it became a he said/she said and nobody had logs -- well, honestly, at that point staff could still say "Okay well leave Kestrel alone in the future because that's what she wants" and then if you hadn't been logging before that point you could screenshot any further contact.

[Kestrel]

@Wretched said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

@Kestrel said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

He would regularly assume the worst of minor inactions and then go on the aggressive because of it. ('You didn't respond to my page or react to my joke on the channel within 5 minutes, therefore xyz'.)

So a lot of what you wrote resonated with me but this line alone just brought back memories... of myself. Before i was aware of my own issues (anxiety, self esteem, depression, etc) I have totally flipped out on people for... little things, and in a similar way. Especially if it was with someone who's Rp i was invested in for what reason or another. (OMG i wanted to RP with you today but i see you are already in a scenes with someone else... DO YOU HATE ME?! cringe) I dont know if i was ever this bad, but it rang some bells, and I genuinely feel shitty for how unaware/cringy I was. Not to defend this person, but that struck home.

Kudos for the self-awareness.

I get that this stuff comes from a place of insecurity. I mean, I have dated a kind of person who had this kind of behaviour. I'd be asleep, at work, with friends, and would check my phone a few hours later to find a slew of texts from him saying 'hey' 'hey' 'HEY' 'Not going to reply?!' 'So you're still mad about the other day?' 'Alright, I'll leave you alone for good this time, I can take a hint and I guess we're breaking up' 'If you don't reply I'm going to take a bunch of pills'.

The dude I was dating had issues he needed to work on. It was not good for either of us. His pressure exacerbated my anxiety issues, I felt caged and suffocated, and my need to have a life independent from our relationship exacerbated his abandonment issues. He was not a monster. I still love the guy. We went our separate ways because we just weren't a good fit. I still check on him now and then and we ask each other how therapy is going. I think this is a human experience that many people can relate to.

Tangential from this thread, a piece of advice I can give (much easier said than done) is try not to assume the worst of other people's behaviour, or especially their lack of behaviour. (Not responding promptly enough to a message.) In the case of the dude I complained about in my prior post, his demands, his chasing, his unwillingness to respect my boundaries did nothing to inspire me to lower my boundaries, but ended up being the reason I needed to put them up at all. If he had been more patient, I would have responded to him in my own time and we would have stayed cool instead of it resulting in me feeling pursued and consequentially, fleeing. And his constant suspicion that every little thing means I surely hate him ... well, that is precisely the reason I did end up ... strongly disliking him and wanting nothing further to do with him. He sabotaged any possibility of our friendship by jumping the gun.

You are not the dude in question but it's very refreshing that you would read something which may not paint someone with your sensitivities in a good light, and that it would give you pause to reflect rather than aggress. Much respect. We're all working on ourselves all the time and I wish you the best in doing so.

EDIT:

And you are correct, the presence of anti creepoing policy does not stop creepers. I feel that instead the policies should be there as an aid and starting point for those that are creeped upon, rather than strictly to warn people. A 'Here is what you do if someone is harassing you oocly/trying to force you into rp you dont want/etc. Here is how we can help, and here is how you can help us help you.

Does that sound right? Or at least as a start?

I feel like if the game in question had some clear policy on what happens when you report something — something a bit milder maybe than 'we will definitely ban/remove problem elements' — I would have been more comfortable complaining.

I didn't wanna feel like I was ruining the game for anyone else by 'trying to get [this person] banned' so I didn't complain. I didn't want to be accused of drama. Knowing my options, that would have helped. If I thought I could make a much simpler request, like 'we will tell this person not to page you any more, and not to interact with your character' — a sort of restraining order — I would have been more comfortable knowing that I can get the breathing room I wanted without it affecting anyone else or giving anyone reason to suspect I had unfairly caused trouble for someone out of some personal malice. Or ideally, without anyone else even needing to hear/know about it at all. (You know what, I just typed that last sentence and I already half regret it; I don't know if this is the right approach either. I don't have all the answers. Someone else with greater wisdom, do share your insights on how to combat this shit effectively.)

I think it's very important, as a starting point, not to put the majority of onus on anyone who wants to issue a complaint. It sucks that they should have to stick their neck out for the chopping board and be the one at most risk if their attempts to get some resolution fail.

[Kestrel]

Addendum, self-reflection:

I have also been on the other side of this coin. I was in an IC leadership position on a very large, populous game (Starmourn, by Iron Realms Entertainment, makers of Achaea) and stepped in against a creep after 10 female players all spoke up in unison about what a POS he was.

The guy was someone I had on Discord, who advertised himself as a woke feminist type, and my character and his character were buddies. I spoke often, ICly and OOCly, in praise of him. I'm ashamed to admit that when the first lady came out of the woodwork to complain about him, my initial gut reaction was disbelief. 'What, that guy? Are you sure? But he's so nice!' And it took her going into some much more grisly detail for me to react with a firmer, 'holy shit', along with other people backing her up on their own experiences with him.

This wasn't exactly a staff position but when you consider the game has 500+ players, and my org had 100+ active, my position as leader of this org was pretty influential, so my friendship with him, looking back, was something that could have been very intimidating to other players if I hadn't made it a point to speak with his other female 'friends' one-on-one afterwards and ask if they'd ever encountered unpleasant behaviour from him (to which the answer was in almost every case an overwhelming 'yes').

A small thing I think staff, and by extension, other players who enjoy some influential status in the games they play can do is don't play favourites. You can have people you like more than others. That's fine. It's natural, it's human. Just don't advertise it. If there's a player on your game who's constantly letting everyone know that they're in good with staff (as the dude I was complaining about in a prior post had a habit of doing — the dude I for this reason never complained about), brush them off, and don't encourage them. Maybe even have a chat with them, if they're really your friend, and let them know the behaviour makes you feel kind of used. As staff on other games I have had to do this in the past, and I'm always wary of making other staffers uncomfortable by doing anything that could be seen as exploiting their position, or our friendship. As a rule, I don't ask for little 'favours' of staff friends, or even ever acknowledge their position as staff on this game when we're talking outside of it on Discord/Skype/Facebook/whatever. When we're on the game, and they're acting as staff, I address them only as staff, through proper channels like +request, and don't make references to us being friends. Separation is best for everyone and makes needing to tell your buddies 'no' a lot less awkward.

Conversely, reach down and out to the lil' people in your game who aren't really that well connected and help make sure they feel comfortable and like they're every bit a part of the gang as everyone else.

I know I, looking back on my stint on Starmourn, greatly regret all the little public head-pats I gave to the game's biggest creeper, and often feel guilty, wondering if I may have made him feel like he was safer behaving the way he did, because he had backing from myself and other leader players. Or worse, if his victims would observe our public schmoozing and as a result feel afraid to come forward, suspecting his influential friendships would mean their complaints would be ignored.

[faraday]

@Kestrel said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

I'd like to hear from staffers here. Someone you don't know joins your game and says 'your BFF here is making me extremely uncomfortable and wilfully ignoring the fact I've told him he's exacerbating my mental health issues, along my polite requests to terminate our communications'. Whom do you believe?

As @Roz said, belief usually isn't the issue here. If you say someone is making you uncomfortable, I'm going to believe you because they're your feelings.

When it comes to taking action though, it gets a little more complicated. My main question to the accuser is: "What do you want me to do about it?"

• "I want them to stop paging me." Done. "Hey, you're making Susie uncomfortable; back off." It really doesn't matter if they did anything "wrong"; everyone is entitled to their personal space.

• "I want them to stop saying things on channel that make me uncomfortable." Well, that depends on whether I think that what they're saying violates game conduct policies. Something blatantly bigoted or mean? Absolutely. But there's a lot of gray areas. I have to use my judgment and you might not be happy with it.

• "I want them banned." I'll be honest - I have a high bar for what it takes to ban someone. I'm never going to do it based on one person's "he said/she said". What I look for here is more a pattern of behavior that persists even after I tell the person to knock it off. I suppose it's possible for somebody to do something so egregious they get banned on a first offense without a warning, but I've just never encountered it.

• "Please don't do anything; I just wanted you to know." OMG this one drives me nuts. Why tell me if you're just going to tie my hands? Now you've put me in a position where either I let a potential creeper continue creeping, or I violate your confidence by taking action against your wishes. IT SUCKS. Please stop doing this, people.

But like Roz said - I have no problem putting on my staff hat with friends. Since I mostly play on games with people I've known for ages, it's kind of my default position. Those who know me know that I'll tell my friends when they step over the line. I even had to ban one once because they wouldn't stop doing what I told them to stop doing. It sucked, but it was necessary.

What also sucked in that situation, though, was people who were all: "You're just protecting Joe because they're your friend." Uh, no. There was no protection. It just took awhile between the first complaint and Joe getting banned because mostly what I got was Vaguebook comments like: "I know someone who left the game because he bothered them too much" or "He was banned from another game" or third-party "He's bugging Susie." complaints that I felt were too flimsy to act on. Once I got specific, actionable reports, I acted. I can understand how some folks might take the "Where there's smoke there's fire" approach and act on less solid evidence; that's just not my style (whether I know the accused or not).

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

• "Please don't do anything; I just wanted you to know." OMG this one drives me nuts. Why tell me if you're just going to tie my hands? Now you've put me in a position where either I let a potential creeper continue creeping, or I violate your confidence by taking action against your wishes. IT SUCKS. Please stop doing this, people.

I think it might be a good policy to put up front that staff will act upon information given for the good of the game. Under the circumstances, I don't really care what the informant's or complainant's desires might be.

Consider staff -- good staff -- to be like mandated reporters, people. If you ring the bell, they will act.

[faraday]

@Ganymede said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

Consider staff -- good staff -- to be like mandated reporters, people. If you ring the bell, they will act.

I think that's a fair policy to have on your game. In absence of such a policy though, I would feel it a breach of trust if someone came to me in confidence and I violated that. It also makes it harder to actually get the person to cooperate in giving you details/logs/etc. if they feel they can't trust you.

[Thenomain]

A lot of posters are going into minutiae as if people are generally that devious. They are not. If you talk to someone about what they did, they generally will be honest about it, even if it’s because what they feel they did is not bad and they’re defending it. This makes it easy to tackle the problem head-on.

People who are that devious will eventually cause a pattern, especially if people keep reporting them to staff. I was once stuck in a situation where I had to say “we know and are keeping an eye on things” which does not inspire confidence but once we did act, people were quite grateful.

[mietze]

What makes a complaint resolver trustworthy to me is pretty much in line with what Gany outlines, though I have to say that the only headwizzen that I've ever felt 100 percent comfortable with approaching about a problem of that nature would be Shav, Apos, and Faraday. (Though Apos and Faraday are theoretical, Shav is not, as I did have to seek her help with a very distressing and embarrassing situation though no rules were broken).

There are a few commonalities I see FOR ME that increase my comfort level:

1. they are invested in the game heavily but do not appear to play personal PCs.

2. they do not have screaming tantrums nor do they make snide remarks or crusading remarks on pub channels on the game.

3. I do not know them on a personal level, just a "professional" one.

It's possible that maybe they all throw fits and shade in private that would make TR's staff chan look tame. But they managed/manage to keep that shit zipped up so far as I know. I find it really hard to trust someone once they have gone on a channel tirade or who i know expresses their anxiety or stress in belligerence for public consumption, whether that's an ooc channel or a board post.

There are many people I like in the community who I think are very nice people, but the trust will never be there because of their temper/snarkiness.

It isnt fair I dont think, nor do I claim to speak for the One True Way or anything. But I do think personal behavior in public and how someone handles conflict themselves is a huge measure of what determines my comfort level with them for something major or potentially sensitive.

I adore many people that I honestly would not share a big hairy deal situation with because of the risk involved. I think that's why for me I gravitate towards those I respect but am not close to, so it will not hurt if they disagree, I do not get lazy about explaining things calmly and answering questions, and I do not have to worry about damaging a personal relationship.

[Botulism]

@Thenomain

Dude. This. All of this. I played on a cyberpunk game that was NO TS EVER!!!11one, and went back to a guy's place. He was friends with Staff. My character fooled around with his a little (it never got far, and I'm not sure it would have), but dude was being a dick IC (and OOC) and I had my character say as much and walk out on him. Suddenly I get yanked into HS's office and told I'm being banned for TSing. His friend? Totally fine, nothing happened to him.

As for complaints and how to handle them, there's no easy answer. It sucks.

One thing I've found helps - me, at least - is deciding that my game isn't a wide-open, everyone gets a character affair. I don't have a policy of 'You have to do X to be asked to leave'. I'm not paid to manage people and their shitty behavior, even if it's not technically breaking a rule. Act shitty? I may ask you to leave. I run a very active game with tons of plot scenes - sometimes I've run three scenes a day for weeks. I love it. But the moment I'm having to deal with shitty behavior, my enjoyment craters. At that point, it's them or my happiness. To be clear I don't boot people for coming to me with issues, I don't blame victims. But I'm no longer shy about booting an asshole who technically isn't breaking rules because it's 'not fair'. Being a regular asshole is reason enough.

And yes, I try talking to them first. It takes repeated dicketry to get booted.

[Arkandel]

@mietze said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

3. I do not know them on a personal level, just a "professional" one.

This is something I've had issues with in the past.

While I played on The Reach I didn't want to approach @EmmaSue about issues because I knew her personally. It felt... awkward, like I was going to be leveraging a personal friendship in order to get some kind of preferential treatment out of it, and even if no such thing existed or the problem I was having was pretty clear, it still didn't sit right with me.

It's easier when there is a more formal relationship between me and staff so I can go, present the facts as I know them, make my case and see what comes of it. In some ways it gives me the opportunity to gauge staff's ability to handle larger issues by observing how they handle smaller ones.

[Saulot]

@Tinuviel said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

The only real way to unequivocally "prove" that an interaction occurred is to log everything server-side and have someone go through it all. Then that becomes a freedom vs security debate, which is older than time.

This is something I found to be new on MUSHing when I first came in. On Java and Add-On things were logged server side. The biggest thing is that staff would constantly beg people not to talk about anything private, major, or overtly sexual on the game. Especially TS. Even when a specific player was asked to just do their sex outside of game they'd still do it after being told point blank that it's logged, and we don't need to see it.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

I think that's a fair policy to have on your game. In absence of such a policy though, I would feel it a breach of trust if someone came to me in confidence and I violated that. It also makes it harder to actually get the person to cooperate in giving you details/logs/etc. if they feel they can't trust you.

What you described, though, is similar to a Vincent Vega request. And Mia Wallace responded perfectly:

No, no, no. You can't promise something like that. I have no idea what you're gonna ask me. So you can go ahead and ask me what you're going to ask me, and my natural response could be to get offended! Then, through no fault of my own, I would have broken my promise.

If a player makes a complaint and then asks that it would be confidential, that is a patently unfair request that I have no obligation to follow. Suppose, for example, that the complainant describes to you a method by which a staffer or player is cheating or gaming the system. You have a duty to the game to fix that problem, and that duty supersedes the complainant's request. I would say the same about any complaint about someone running other players off the game through a whisper campaign.

There is always an element of discretion -- most complaints aren't so dire -- but I think that any complainant who wants some level of confidentiality or non-action would make that request before informing me of a dumpster fire.

In my experience, you are more likely to receive legitimate, honest complaints than illegitimate complaints calculated to harass privately.

[faraday]

@Ganymede said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

There is always an element of discretion -- most complaints aren't so dire -- but I think that any complainant who wants some level of confidentiality or non-action would make that request before informing me of a dumpster fire.

I understand your point, and like you said - it kind of depends on the situation. Some things you can act on without compromising the confidential source. What I usually get is something like:

"Harvey is harassing Julie but she doesn't want to cause waves and would get mad at me if she knew I said anything so let's just keep this between us." There's a few things going on here. One - I have no details to support this accusation. Two - This is coming second-hand and could all just be a misunderstanding. Three - Julie is a grown-up and if she's having issues she should talk to me directly (which is what I would encourage the white-knight friend to tell her). I will keep an eye on what Harvey says on channels and keep this info in mind if future complaints are leveled against him, but it's not going to be enough by itself for me to take direct action.

[faraday]

Kind of tangential to the discussion but I thought it might be useful to highlight some of the tools I've added to AresMUSH to help players report abuse.

I want to stress that this is not global logging of all pages (for the aforementioned privacy reasons), but highly targeted and limited logging that can be activated when someone is harassed to provide a verified log directly to staff via job.

Channel Reporting

If someone is behaving badly on channel, you can bring it to the game admin's attention - along with an automatic, verified log of the channel recall buffer.

channel/report <channel>=<explanation>

Page Reporting

If someone is harassing you via pages, you can enable page monitoring. This will keep track of the last couple dozen pages to and from that person. The other person will not be notified that you are logging pages.

Once you have the pages logged, you can bring the matter to the game admin's attention using the page report feature. The pages from the log will automatically be included as an official, verifiable log. You can report someone more than once if the problem happens again.

page/monitor - Shows who you're monitoring.
page/monitor <name>=<on or off> - Starts or stops monitoring pages from someone.
page/log <name> - Review your page log with someone. This is what will be included if you report them.
page/report <name>=<explanation> - Creates a report, including your page log with that person as evidence.

Mail Reporting

You can report an offensive mail to the game admin.

mail/report <#>=<explanation> - Reports an offensive mail message.

I realize these tools are not perfect (page reporting in particular requires the harasser to continue to harass you after you've activated the log) and do not cover every possible circumstance. I still think it's a heck of a lot better than what we have today relying on unverifiable plain text logs.

[Seraphim73]

@Kestrel That's a definite hard place to be in. I think that if I were in your shoes, I would probably try to get a feel for Staff in general, and if I felt that they were responsive to complaints from others, approach them directly, letting them know that the person in their friend-group had made you uncomfortable and refused to stop when I asked them to. I don't know that this is the best approach -- I don't even know if there is a best approach -- but it's probably the one I would take. My thinking is that if they take my complaint seriously, then I've got a great Staff group, and they're willing to take input, and if they don't take my complaint seriously, they're more concerned with the fun of their friends than that of other players, so I probably don't want to play there.

Sometimes friend-groups can forget that one of their members can be a Missing Stair, or can even not know that it's happening at all. The reminder, if the rest of the group is good, can be very useful.

It definitely would be good to be clear that there are intermediate steps between 'no action' and 'banning.' As a Staffer, I believe that there are always steps that can be taken -- sometimes an immediate ban is necessary, sometimes just a request to stop contacting another player OOCly, sometimes a short cool-down period off the game... a good Staffer can usually find the appropriate punishment for a player's actions.

On another topic, I'm definitely with @Ganymede in that I think Staff should be playing their own game. It's the rare duck that enjoys Staffing more than playing (rare and valuable, let me be clear), usually Staff opens a game because they want to play in that setting. I also agree with Gany that Staff should avoid taking positions of power on their game, it's something that I've struggled with myself. I think that the value of having Staff involved in what's going on between players is very, very valuable (as is having Staff invested in what's going on in the game).

Also, everything @Roz said about investigations and what should have happened as a result of them.

I also really, really, really agree with (and try semi-successfully to live) @Kestrel's point about not reading everything in the most negative way possible.

Also (yeesh, this is what happens when I respond to things from a day ago), I agree that Staff should dissuade players they are friends with from making comments about how tight they are with Staff. And that they should reach out to new players. I don't think this means that Staff can't be buddy-buddy with players (we're all players in the end), but there can't be other players claiming special privilege due to being friends with Staff -- and there can't be special privilege actually given due to someone being friends with Staff.

@faraday said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

"Please don't do anything; I just wanted you to know." OMG this one drives me nuts. Why tell me if you're just going to tie my hands? Now you've put me in a position where either I let a potential creeper continue creeping, or I violate your confidence by taking action against your wishes. IT SUCKS. Please stop doing this, people.

Truth.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Runescryer said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO TS ON THIS GAME!!!, which is how I've seen a lot of games phrase their policy.

Narrator Voice: There was absolutely TS on that game.

[deadculture]

@Kanye-Qwest said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

@Runescryer said in How To Treat Your Players Right:

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO TS ON THIS GAME!!!, which is how I've seen a lot of games phrase their policy.

Narrator Voice: There was absolutely only TS on that game.

ftfy

[TiredEwok]

I am all for reporting people for shit behavior. I totally am. But there are ways to deal with it on the player's end that can, and in my opinion, should be done first. Outside of extreme cases, reporting a person to staff should only be done as a last resort, in my opinion. So-in-so is doing something you consider harassment? Block them via client after telling them to leave you alone and that you'll be blocking them, logging you doing so. If they circumvent it or find other ways to bother you... then report them. Provide the log of you asking them to leave you alone and notifying you'll be blocking them along with the other evidence.

ETA: Staff usually has enough on their plates as it is. FFS, please stop adding to their work load. Do what you can on your end first before involving them.