Board Game Arena

For one month now, we have had the pleasure to have a moderator team on Board Game Arena

Almost every player on BGA is polite, respectful and fair play, and we want things to stay as they are. We designed this service - with penalty and reputation system - in such a way that players with negative behavior are naturally excluded by the community. Less than 1 game on 2000 goes really wrong, and in these cases we need moderation.

However, with the growing number of games played on BGA, it became obvious that we needed a dedicated team of moderators. This is why we asked for help to the most respectful players of BGA. Four players volunteered and we would like to THANK them a lot!

From the last month to March, the moderator team of BGA is composed of: Tyfo (Denmark), Divundu (South Africa), Skean Dau (USA) et Pizus (Italy). They are doing a great and useful job and they deserve our gratitude!

This is another occasion to write that this community website exists thanks to all the people who help to make it work. Most of them are listed in the "Board Game Arena team" page.

About moderation, two small things:

• Insults are really really taken seriously by the moderators. If some player insults you, stay calm, do not answer (and do not insult or you will receive a penalty too) and report the player. We have a zero tolerance on insults and your opponent will receive a penalty (or will be banned) soon.
• This is rare but from time to time we find some players that are playing against themselves to boost their ELO. This is a total waste of time, and it is absolutely useless. There are many tools on BGA (ex: game history, game replay, ...) that allow anyone to find these players in just few clicks, and as soon as we detect one of these players we reset ELO to 1500 and close all accounts. It is way easier (and fun) to get better at a game than to try breaking this system, so don't waste your time and don't do this.

I don't do this (yet), but often want to - is it ok to play *non-rated* games with yourself, for purposes of 1) figuring out the rules, or 2) attempting to reproduce bugs?

thanks

I once reported a player who had a wrong behaviour (and I noticed he had that behaviour with several other users) but my report was filed as 'notguilty'.
I find this a bit too tolerant.

@beri: this is exactly the point of this evolution:
We did not process your report within 15 days so it has been closed. We did not process it because of lack of time / some other urgent matters / holidays / a combination of all of that.

This is why this is so important to have a team dedicated to moderation. In addition the members of this team are from very different parts of the world, which mean they speak many languages and understand many cultures.

So the next time you'll report a player, there is 100% chance that you won't be disappointed

Thanks for setting this moderator system up and thanks to the moderators for volunteering.

Once I wanted to report a player that insulted in public. However, there was no such an option that exactly described what the reported player did. I hope the option would be added in the future, described as "made inappropriate comments in public" or something like that.

yami-sakana wrote:Once I wanted to report a player that insulted in public. However, there was no such an option that exactly described what the reported player did. I hope the option would be added in the future, described as "made inappropriate comments in public" or something like that.

In such a situation I would report for "behaviour" and specify that he did so in public.

infomage27 wrote:I don't do this (yet), but often want to - is it ok to play *non-rated* games with yourself, for purposes of 1) figuring out the rules, or 2) attempting to reproduce bugs?

thanks

Good question. I tried playing a game against myself to learn the rules because it was going to take me really long between turns I didn't want to inflict this on anyone else. I can't remember if I set the game to unrated but I did concede/cancel the game after a few hands so that no scores were recorded. A person doing this to boost ELO is just so foolish I didn't even think of that. Anyway, I noticed that the system then put a note beside me for a while that said "Plays games against the same IP" or something like that. I suppose it handles the valid case where two people in the same household want to play against each other since that would show as the same IP? For this case there are probably other characteristics that can be used to distinguish the two people from sock puppet accounts such as playing against other players...

I do hope that this detection system can make an exception for unrated games so that we can learn the rules by playing both sides just like we do with the cardboard versions.

Thank you for putting this in place. I had stopped using BGA due to rude people. I decided to give it another look and viola! We will see how it goes from here. I had reported people before and it did not seem to make any difference.

anycolorilike wrote:

infomage27 wrote:I don't do this (yet), but often want to - is it ok to play *non-rated* games with yourself, for purposes of 1) figuring out the rules, or 2) attempting to reproduce bugs?

thanks

Good question. I tried playing a game against myself to learn the rules because it was going to take me really long between turns I didn't want to inflict this on anyone else. I can't remember if I set the game to unrated but I did concede/cancel the game after a few hands so that no scores were recorded. A person doing this to boost ELO is just so foolish I didn't even think of that. Anyway, I noticed that the system then put a note beside me for a while that said "Plays games against the same IP" or something like that. I suppose it handles the valid case where two people in the same household want to play against each other since that would show as the same IP? For this case there are probably other characteristics that can be used to distinguish the two people from sock puppet accounts such as playing against other players...

I do hope that this detection system can make an exception for unrated games so that we can learn the rules by playing both sides just like we do with the cardboard versions.

Multi-accounts (which are most often seen playing from the same IP) are only a problem when it has an effect on other players, for example by playing against each other to get the ELO of an account up, or going to play a 3-player game and teaming up against the third person. As long as you don't do these things, it shouldn't be a problem. Beware of king-making if you intend to play with others.