Red Thumbs are now advisory only, causing no Karma drop

[cigma]

I found this crucial change in the latest release notes https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 9&start=60 and would like to bring it to your attention. Maybe this is a reaction to this thread about misusing red thumbs https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32442, but it seems more likely to me this was a long considered change. However, I would very much appreciate an official statement on this. For example, I am wondering if there is any difference left between private and public red thumbs.

[nik592]

I haven't seen someone who has an excess of red thumbs but it seems to mention some kind of banner for this case - so that banner will still appear on a player's profile I think? And I assume the banner would only be driven by public red thumbs. So that may be the only difference now?

[xate]

Release 13th September 2023 230913-1000

• reputation: Red Thumbs are now advisory only, causing no Karma drop and
  the personal display banner for high Red Thumb percentage players has been reworded

Receiving a large percentage of public Red Thumbs has always caused a banner to be displayed in the Reputation area of your Profile, viewable only to the account holder and Admins. This only concerns public Red Thumbs.

The wording was based on the main reason chosen by the players when giving the public Red Thumb. However, sometimes the reasons given did not entirely match the players behaviour, causing confusion. (For example, it might read that the reason most often given is for leaving a game in progress, yet the player had no recent leave penalties.) We have removed this wording, leaving the generic message instead.

BT banner.png (437.07 KiB) Viewed 865 times

This banner went hand-in-hand with a Karma drop to 60% or 30% depending on the percentage of public Red Thumbs attained. This was affectively punishing the player repeatedly for the same behaviour, as they were already receiving penalties for the behaviour that caused the public Red Thumbs (such as Moderation penalties for inappropriate behaviour or time-out penalties for leaving games.) We do not want to punish players repeatedly for the same actions. In addition, we determined that this was being abused by some players to purposely drop their opponents Karma by giving a public Red Thumb dishonestly.

We want to respect your rights to give any player a Red Thumb and avoid receiving messages from them for any reason. You will still not be eligible to meet each other at game tables currently unless you are both entered into a Tournament.

[AmongMajesticRuin]

This good to know. Thanks!

[GTSchemer]

I really like this change as well. It still preserves the player preference aspect of red thumbs, but removes the potential for abuse.

[gmrsmrt]

I really like this change as well. It still preserves the player preference aspect of red thumbs, but removes the potential for abuse.

However it also removes the only handle against any kind of "misbehaviour" which is not reportable: kingsmaking, unsportmanship, rudness (without insults), ...
Are there really strong evidence that the system was so strongly abused? A few unmotivated public red thumbs are harmless.
To abuse it you need massive coordinate public red thumbs, was it so widespread?

[GTSchemer]

I really like this change as well. It still preserves the player preference aspect of red thumbs, but removes the potential for abuse.

However it also removes the only handle against any kind of "misbehaviour" which is not reportable: kingsmaking, unsportmanship, rudness (without insults), ...
Are there really strong evidence that the system was so strongly abused? A few unmotivated public red thumbs are harmless.
To abuse it you need massive coordinate public red thumbs, was it so widespread?

There were specific cases where multiple players agreed to target someone to tank their karma -- moderators had looked into it to verify, and I believe multiple cases happened.

"unsportsmanship" is so vague that it's nearly impossible to define, as is being "rude" without breaking rules in an international, multilingual, multicultural chat environment. Both of these cases are completely suited to the current red thumb system (I did not like that person and do not wish to play them again)

[Jellby]

What is now the difference between public and private red thumbs? Is it only that with a high enough proportion of public red thumbs the player (and admins, but nobody else) will see the banner in their profile?

[Lumin_S]

While I'm always happy to hear that avenues for feature abuse are being removed, I am of the belief that some behaviors aren't punished heavily enough by karma in the first place. So while I still think this is a good change, repeat quitters (as the main example I can think of) are now punished even less for their "style".

I raised 2 relevant suggestions last year and they've gotten a good amount of support, would someone on the BGA team be able to comment on how realistic these suggestions are to ever be implemented (in terms of upvotes, logistics, etc.?)
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=66049
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=66050

[RobScape]

It was my understanding that ‘red thumbing’ was anonymous. However, a player noticed that I’d thumbed them (they were annoying to me with constant chatter) so i wanted to avoid them) and now they are harassing me across multiple table chats. I also thought that red thumbing block their chats.

Is there a way to block soneone or do i have to continually tolerate their juvenile behaviour.

Note that they do not quite qualify under the ‘report a person’ criteria. I was hoping the red thimb would just remove them from my life and its only made it worse.