Restricting chat to premium

[JMBE35]

Agree with Brisdaz. Although I'm premium, I'd be very disappointed if Chat was restricted and even more if totally removed. Being able to chat with other players is a real added value for me. I never faced inappropriate messages.
Isn't our ability to blacklist players engouh?
Take care,

Jean-Marc

[sourisdudesert]

Fun fact: our moderation is actually harsher than your suggestion.

When someone is doing something really wrong in the global chat, he is usually ban immediately from BGA without any warning, because this is the chat with the most consequences.

We were also restricting the global chat to players with more than 10 games played and 10 days seniority on BGA.

However, it appears that it is not enough... we cannot be here 24/7 to watch this chat, and moderate players afterwards is not satisfactory in situation like last night when a group of players decide to hijack the chat.

[Sugs]

Seems like my suggestion for a 10 minute cool-down for every user's global chat is what you want then sourisdudesert. Can you arm certain trusted long-time users as "global chat community moderators" with the power to push the red button and shut down chat? You may not have enough admins to be here 24/7 but you may have enough users spread across the world's timezones who care to keep up the chat system hygiene.

Perhaps the kill switch need not shut off chat write access to every user either, but just limited to a super restrictive set (e.g. >100 games played or >1 year history) until the cool-down expires. Were all the players in the group last night relatively "new" users?

[fafa-fr]

I agree with Sugs that a global chat moderated by 2 (or a few) admins is definitely not enough, and will certainly lead to over-restricive decisions. Giving a limited power (e.g. preventing a user to post in the global chat for 1 hour) to a lot of "trusted" users (long-time and/or number of games played) seems a good option to me. You could limit the risk of power abuse by requiring several trusted users to ask for moderation.

Example: a tiny icon (cross or red thumb or face with duct tape on the mouth) could be displayed next to all user names in the global chat. In case of rude language or spamming, any "trusted" user could click on this icon to ask for moderation. If a certain number (20? 100? depends on what is required to be a trusted user, I believe) of users ask for moderation, the moderation is triggered immediatly (no global chat for this user for 1 or 2 hours, or more). Then, when they have time, the admins (and maybe a few chosen moderators) can review the chat messages of a moderated user to see if they want to ban (or something else) this player.
The "shut up" icons in the global chat could be displayed only for "trusted" users.
And if you see some cases of power abuse from trusted users when reviewing messages, you could remove them from trusted users.

[sourisdudesert]

@Sugs, @fafa-fr

I think this suggestion is great.

For now our "emergency measure" is appropriate because it is simple to implement, but we will discuss yours and may implement it.

[polettix]

Before this whole Coronavirus madness, most messages I saw for the global chat falled into two categories:

- people advertising tables (e.g. tokaido table?xxxx please join)
- people asking for tables (e.g. non-premium members asking to play Carcassonne)

Maybe you might add one/two buttons in the game pages to preserve these interactions only, as a sort of "emergency" mode (or even as the new standard in the long run)

[Diannika]

What about a combination of methods?

1) Restrict full access to global chat to longer-term players (>6months maybe? with possibly earlier access for accounts that have had premium for 3 consecutive months but are younger than 6 months total)
(allow newer players to see chat still)
2) implement a button on games to automatically post to global chat to advertise your table, and another to ask for a table that all members can use.
3) Create the Trusted Users/ Volunteer Chat Mods system just in case

I am a newer player, and wouldn't be able to use global yet under these restrictions. But I would still consider them fair.

[Cheery Dog]

I realise this is a temporary measure, but I would like if you gave me the notice I'm not able to post in the global chat before you give the pop-up explaining the rules of the chat.

I'm not one that's actually likely to do anything with, I tend to only ever use it to find a game I don't know anything about yet being advertised on it as an open table.

[DressToKILT]

This is kind of funny considering this site blatantly refused to take any action against a player who was peddling dangerous disinformation about the current pandemic, claiming that it "didn't violate the TOS" (spoiler alert: it does).

[N_Faker]

This is kind of funny considering this site blatantly refused to take any action against a player who was peddling dangerous disinformation about the current pandemic, claiming that it "didn't violate the TOS" (spoiler alert: it does).

What portion of the ToS were they violating?