Board Game Arena

I would like to propose a way to alert a LIVE MODERATOR on the site. It can be a team working from home, each responding to an alert of bad behavior and can quickly intervene. I'll be honest, this shook me. Someone coming at me "with both barrels" when all I did was at "What's TIPS?" in reply to them writing "Tips". You can see the full chat below. If this happens more as the world gets more stressed, I'd REALLY like to see a LIVE EMERGENCY SUPPORT mechanism.

I write all of this because I was just in the most disgusting game of Hearts of my life. Everyone was playing along, all from different countries (as we often see on here), and my being from America apparently disgusted a player from France. They call everyone at the table terrible things, and then when I suggested everyone report him and initiated to abandon the game (a game the French player was actually winning, btw), he started saying I came from a Nazi country. I wrote "NOT ALL AMERICANS LOVE TRUMP!" but he kept coming at me. Now, I might love Trump and be offended by being called a Nazi, or I might hate Trump and be offended by the assumption that I love him. Either way, it was wholly inappropriate (not to mention against the rules of conduct of the site) to attack anyone on the site.

To give you an idea, here's a copy of all of the chat text of the game with all names but mine deprecated:

MIKE CROSLEY (Me): What's "TIPS"? 04:58 PM

FRENCH PLAYER: Bises sur vos fesses joufflu losers 04:58 PM
Loooooosers 04:59 PM
Love poor coutries 04:59 PM
FRENCH PLAYER: Heiiiiil Trump 05:00 PM
Still pooors naziiis 05:00 PM

MIKE CROSLEY (Me): Reported you. 05:01 PM
MIKE CROSLEY (Me): I recommend everyone else do the same. 05:01 PM

FRENCH PLAYER: Je m’en wank naziiiii 05:01 PM
Is this provocative or an insult? Please do NOT engage if it is. You may want to block this player with a red thumb and/or report them to the moderators.
Take his win away. 05:01 PM
FRENCH PLAYER: Naziiii fucking country 05:02 PM
Heeeil 05:02 PM

MIKE CROSLEY (Me): PLEASE REPORT HIM! He has no business on this site. 05:03 PM

FRENCH PLAYER: Please shoot that unbrain nazzzi 05:03 PM

MIKE CROSLEY (Me): Setting my screen so I can see your bile. Everyone else, NOT ALL AMERICANS LOVE TRUMP! Report this person and get him off the site! 05:04 PM
MIKE CROSLEY (Me): Setting my scereen so I can't see your trashmouth. 05:04 PM

FRENCH PLAYER: Bisous ma konne 05:04 PM
FRENCH PLAYER: NAAAZI COUNTRY 05:05 PM

THIRD PLAYER: reported as well 05:07 PM

MIKE CROSLEY (Me): Thank you. 05:07 PM
MIKE CROSLEY (Me): Again, NOT ALL AMERICANS LIKE TRUMP! 05:07 PM

FRENCH PLAYER: Tips 04:58 PMWhat's "TIPS"? 04:58 PMFRENCH PLAYER: Bises sur vos fesses joufflu losers 04:58 PMFRENCH PLAYER: Loooooosers 04:59 PMLove poor coutries 04:59 PMFRENCH PLAYER: Heiiiiil Trump 05:00 PMStill pooors naziiis 05:00 PMReporte 05:08 PM
FRENCH PLAYER: Je m’en bats les balles NAZZis 05:08 PM

MIKE CROSLEY (Me): Worst experience EVER on this site. 05:08 PM

FRENCH PLAYER: Bye les kunts 05:08 PM

THIRD PLAYER: well this one will be banned 05:09 PM

FRENCH PLAYER: Looool 05:09 PM
Naissance a’d losers 05:09 PM
Stupids dumbos 05:10 PM

The amount of work it takes to handle issues like this live is huge. Moderators would need to be available 24/7 and know how to handle any given issue on the spot. A lot of the issues would be tedious arguments, some that may even be ambiguous to answer that they might have to make a judgment call on. A lot of issues would be things that could be handled a bit later at the mod's leisure with more time to make an appropriate decision. Some would be over basic things that could be handled by checking the rules or asking a simple forum question that don't need a moderator for every instance. Others might be game-specific stuff, and there's no way a moderator would have the knowledge to handle all of the possibilities for all of the games.

From experience elsewhere, I'm talking thousands of such issues over time per moderator. You could handle dozens a day and not have the calls run out. I don't know what the exact translation to BGA would look like, but I don't foresee it being easy to accomplish, the dedication to pull that off is likely beyond what they have right now.

They will be moderated, but it takes some time. The moderators also get exhausted reading an endless stream of slurs and abuse, plus dealing with personal threats.

If playing on desktop, I recommend https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30509 which adds the standard feature of muting an abusive player, live.