Addressing the Continuous Rule Violation (CRV) ban...

Here's the thread https://www.brawl.com/threads/61717/ where @Lord_Roke clearly explains on why it is essential. I would personally be down to lower it to the past 3 months because people change drastically. If I look at myself I used to have a lot of mutes and and warnings until one day where I just stopped completely, I am unsure if it is like this for everyone. I recently spoke to a player who continues to be mean and use a tremendously inappropriate language against other players in chat.

After explaining to him that other people will try to control him and that the best way to get respect is to be quiet he stopped disrespecting other players which is another example. Also, the change may be a step to becoming mature, meaning that you might stop doing one part but have to work on other things which results in mutes.

However if we go back to this rule I will have to say that it becomes easier for Brawl staff since some player just wont stop. I believe that we should not remove it but rather change it and only punish extreme cases meaning that we could either change it to the last 3 months of punishments or make it 50+ mutes, any suggestions?

- Warrey

 

The thread doesn't necessarily explain why the CRV ban is necessary as much as it simply lays out the protocol. Also, simply increasing the amount of mutes needed for a CRV isn't going to help anything. I have seen multiple instances where players have gotten to around the limit of mutes then stopped using chat entirely. Raising the limit would only lead to more flame in chat.

Tdaddy's argument for a permanent mute makes more sense than a ban, as most violations happen in chat. A mute circumvents a punishment as extreme as a ban while accomplishing the goal of the original protocol. +1 for a permanent mute to replace the CRV ban, because it is vague AND extreme.

 

Agreed with the idea of replacing the ban for a mute. Honestly, in my opinion, a CRV should become a ban only in extreme cases. So lets say you've been crved before and you are on your second chance and you meet the CRV quota a second time then I feel a ban would kinda fit the situation then. Great suggestion.

 

Agreed. GommeHD.net mutes you for ANY Insult. (For example when i call sb a Cvnt i immediately get a 30-60 day mute but you NEVER get banned for Chat rule violations.)

I think brawl is unique in that way

 

A ban from several months ago will also count towards a permban you get. Please elaborate why the "fact that punishments from so long ago are still counted against players" does not make any sense?

"4-5 punishments per month" means 4-5 reminders every single month for 8 months that their behaviour is not acceptable and that they need to change. Everyone deserves a second chance? We currently give 30. The claim that this isn't much for WarZ players says much more about the wrong attitude of WarZ players towards the rules than it does about the CRV rule.

There is no such thing as a "statute of limitations" on Brawl. The minimum time before punishments can be appealed depends on the punishment (1 month for bans and 6 months for permbans) and the history of the player. Previous bans of a player count towards getting permbanned forever.

I don't see how automatically banning for CRV would "eliminate biases" - CRV is one of the most clearly defined and thereby least biased protocols we have. Whatsoever, we already have a simple tool for finding players with many punishments. An automated system could be created and would be useful. But there are very few unique CRV bans - maybe 1 per month over the course of several years. Since these players are continuously punished by staff members, we are also usually well aware of who they are and it is just not worth the effort to create such an elaborate system.

The punishment for CRV is a regular ban. This ban might add up with other bans to a permban. If a player gets all bans from CRV, it will take three bans to get a permban - if they have previous bans e. g. from hacking they will add up quicker.

A few months ago, it was implemented that bans for CRV are across accounts, but only as regular bans. I am not too fond of this either as it is incompatible with our usual way of handling regular bans/permbans. We are already looking into fixing this.

There is certainly a difference in how disruptive hacking and flaming are. That is why one is immediately punished with a ban and the other gets you a soft warning with no punishment whatsoever. When a player reaches a total of 30 or more minor rule violations, they have been muted a lot - with apparently no impact on their behavior or deterrence from breaking the rules again. A punishment is not just about making it impossible to break the rules again - it is also both a deterrent and - obviously - a punishment, so it needs to be more than just prevention of further rule violations. And a ban is in my opinion the adequate punishment/deterrent for a player who has shown such blatant disregard for the rules AND the mutes they already received.

 

Bans are a bit more significant than mutes.

 

You are completely missing the point. I am not arguing against a "statute of limitations"; nor for it. I am simply saying that we currently do not have one which you could compare to the 8 months of CRV. The 1-3 months which you base on appeal times are not a "statute of limitations".

The 8 months time frame and the high amount of punishments was actually picked to make CRV bans more rare; they should only be given to players with a long history of rule violations, showing an inability to change their behavior. I would personally have no problem with changing it to 4 months + 15 punishments or something alike, although I believe that would lead to more players receiving CRV bans.

Brawl is one server network, moderated by one staff team and has one rule set. The majority of our rules and protocol are focused on Brawl as a whole and we are not going to treat WarZ players any different.

With this mindset and disregard of the rules, any discussion about changing rules or lowering punishments becomes pointless. With these points, you could also argue for not making hacking against the rules since WarZ players don't care about the rule, will break it and banning them would lower our income.

I am not the ban or appeals manager; nor in charge of CRV bans. I am not aware of most the thousands of bans we issued last months.

As explained above: The punishment for CRV is a regular ban, not a permban.

As explained above: He likely had bans for other reasons as well as his first CRV ban, accumulating to a total of 3 or more regular bans and thereby leading to a permban.

Again, I was not involved in these cases and these are my assumptions; but you can't just proclaim these punishments as biased without taking other factors into account which lead to permbans.

As explained above, there are on average about one or two unique persons banned for CRV each month, which is a tiny fraction of all the punishments we issue. And if it isn't an effective deterrent, I feel like we should increase the punishment rather than lowering it.

Punishment, "the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offence.".
The disciplinary measures we hand our are a combination of prevention of repetition, penalty for the broken rule and deterrence to the punished and all other players.

The end result is the same only if the players ignore the 30 punishments and likely more warnings they are given; yes. I think those are enough chances, minor punishments and warnings.

CRV covers all offenses: flame, racism, harassment, threats, bug abuse. If you look at the warning system, the punishment for repeated offenses in these categories is already often a temporary ban. So you could also consider the CRV ban the logical culmination of the punishments attached to these warnings.

And again, you argumentation is based on the idea that a punishment should only remove the capability to break the rule again - which is not the case, as explained above.

 

The punishment should be a perm-mute, not a perm-ban.

Logic:
If I get 29 mutes 7 months ago and I apply for staff after being helpful and active, I'm very likely to make it on the team after citing that "I've moved on from my flaming days and I want to contribute to the staff team". Yet, I'm literally one warning away in between getting a trusted staff position, or a ban and a potential perm-ban. This makes no sense given the severe differences in a ban and a mute, especially when permanent. The timeframes are also extremely inconsistent. It should not be 8 months, it should be 3-4 months given how often warnings/mutes are handed out for such little things.

The automated system, +1. Brawl more than ever needs a million things automated because of how small the staff team is. WarZ XvX events, CRV bans, WarZ Free-fridays ranks + boosters -> all need to be automated. Arguments against this are just bouts of laziness; arguments suggesting that an automated CRV ban wouldn't consider invalid mutes/warnings is also futile since a system should be in place anyway where warnings/mutes can easily be removed from player histories.

CRV bans should be converted to global mutes on that account that work similarly to a ban. If the player gets 3+ perm-mutes, they get perma-muted but not banned. Brawl never looks at the bigger picture, we do not need to permanently remove someone from the server because they flamed fellow flamers on WarZ (which by the way, warnings are given for no reason in a lot of cases -> just block racist words from chat for instance -> if I type the n word, say, "We didn't send your message because it contained racist material" PREVENT THE PROBLEM BEFORE IT BECOMES ONE.) As long as they are not hacking, a player should never be removed just for using the chat function incorrectly. Take away their privilege to chat, not to play. Not at all saying this is why Brawl has lost a significant number of players in recent times, but the perm-ban of Heads was extremely necessary and they lost a subscribing member of the community.

 

I don't understand why his suggestion isn't a punishment given your definition.

Punishment, "the infliction or imposition of a penalty as retribution for an offence." Taking away their ability to chat, which is a privilege, is certainly a penalty given as retribution for their offence of chatting against the rules. If a CRV consisted of all minor flame mutes, then according to your argument, a CRV ban would be the culmination of the punishments attached to all offences under the CRV umbrella. This obviously should be treated more specifically than it is right now.

Flame, racism, harassment, threats, bug abuse; 4/5 of which are chat-specific violations leaving bug abuse. These shouldn't be lumped together for reasons above.

Again, if I get 30 minor flame mutes, why am I banned alongside someone who gets 30 mutes consisting of like 10 racist mutes, 5 threats, 10 bug abuses and 5 harassment mutes. It makes no sense to lump these all under one punishment. A mute would suffice for chat-related issues, have a CRV ban for separate things like multiple temp-bans for racism/harassment/bug abuse RESULTING in the ban.

 

I was only pointing out why I don't agree with his arguments for changing it to a permanent mute. A permanent mute is certainly still a punishment; it is just less of a deterrent and less of a penalty than a ban, which also plays an important part in punishing someone.

Again, I am just providing an opposite example to show why the CRV ban is actually NOT the culmination of the previous punishments and independent from them. It was designed to cover the very few players who are continuously breaking the rules and for which the escalating punishments from the warning system are no longer adequate. Earlier, these were handled on a case-to-case basis, which is of course always somewhat biased and unreliable.

 

@Lord_Roke What about perm mutes instead of a permban?

 

Tbh I think it just depends on the severity of someone's behavior. There have been times where people have been sexually harassed and/or preyed on in chat by players (say repeatedly inappropriate jokes on CTF that make someone seriously uncomfortable) or maybe have been threatened irl with specific, violent actions, that sort of thing. You can debate about how serious that is or whether it's even meant seriously but the overall point is that they're terrible comments reflective of a pattern of behavior to make people feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. Also regarding a permanent mute, wouldn't this still allow people to dm someone? As in, if somebody was personally targeting someone in game couldn't they just continue to do that? Yes they can block them but say if someone sexually preyed on you, I definitely would not want them in a minecraft game or any space with me (least of all with other players) - which is why a CRV ban should not be lowered to a CRV mute across the board.

On the flipside, there's yorei's point about people getting muted or warned repeatedly for doing relatively minor or stupid things although even then its still reflective of a pattern of behavior just a less serious one and in that instance a permanent mute rather than a permanent ban would make more sense. But the issue with that is it's also based on a person's perception of behavior. On one extreme you have sparrowx or whoever getting muted for something ridiculously minor (imo) and on the other someone might have to be explicitly hateful to even get a warning although I don't know how big the discrepancy is there but I'd imagine enforcement would vary from one staff member to another.The overall point being that while we can all agree that certain behaviors are bad there is no consistency in 'how bad' those behaviors have to be to warrant a ban instead of a mute.

Also I agree with flame being generally less disruptive to the game than hacking but how bad is the flame? What's being said? How serious is it? Blah blah blah, all said above. This isn't that different from how it works in League. You get several chances if you're flaming or saying bad **** in chat (chat restriction for x number of games at first) gradually leading up to a ban. There are just too many variables to account for to evaluate it on a case by case basis.

To use another extreme example, if someone is a pedophile I don't really care if they've got dough. I'm still calling the police. (you don't have to hack to prey on kids/teenagers, it just takes some creepy dms/in game messages... and sexual harassment is a chat offense

Agreed with shortening the timespan. That would catch the most egregious violators, who are also the most problematic and least likely to change - and that is possible within 7 months to some degree.

I'm not really sure why the chat filter was largely removed, regarding your point about racism. That said, it is what it is. Also I obviously can't speak to WarZ but I wouldn't want constant toxicity on any server which is the point of CRV. You can argue about what defines 'constant' and that's a fair point to make but you generally want a somewhat welcoming environment (not PG or even PG-13 rated but I guess 'chill' would be the word for it).

 

I'll read everything later but I have to go make my homework now, but there's one thing that everyone seems to forget about, the only way to check if you're close to the CRV is through checking the brawl.com/history/player/[name] which most people don't do. When you get a warning/mute you don't think that much about it. This comes now from a guy who has over 50% of mutes from Excessive Caps, goddamn I hate caps.



My point is: I don't care that much about how the CRV is aslong you get a message in-game that says that you're close to 35 mutes. Since alot of players don't think about checking how many mutes they have gotten and absoulutely after months of not playing (Getting alot of mutes before they stop) and then they come back and flame maybe 1-5 times and suddenly WHAM you're banned for CRV when you think that you're mutes have expired. (Since when you do /warnings it says that they expire after 1 month not 8)



GOD I ****ING SUCK AT WRITING TEXTS EVERYTHING IS SO MESSY

 

Unless it was changed recently, if I remember correctly a mute does not stop you from messaging other players, which is why so many people disregard it entirely when they're muted. If a perm-mute CRV was put in place as it is right now (assuming players are still able to use /msg, team chat etc while muted), then it would not be affective whatsoever. If it hasn't been done already, change the /mute system to where you can't use ANY form of communication, or at least for a perm-mute.

 

Agreed. This would resolve some of my concerns.