Yo. Bowser's delegated the job of setting specifics of dealing with chat violations to me. Things have been pretty hazy around the details recently for both players and staff, so we figured I could just set things straight and make something that you don't need to take a four year course in Bowser-ethics to follow or enforce.
Here are the rules, from a thread you should find rather familiar:
Chat Violations
- Excessive caps
- Spam
- Insensitivity/rudeness
- Act of Impersonation/Mimicking
- Profanity & Vulgarity
- Server Advertising
- Racist, Sexist and Homophobic terms/slang
So, let's go through each one of them with a little more specificity (keeping in mind that punishments may stack if multiple types of offenses are committed, e.g. spam and vulgarity would warrant a worse punishment than each one by itself):
Excessive caps
Excessive caps is when a player displays multiple consecutive or near-consecutive uses of all-caps chatting, especially when each message is long. Mods are trusted to make exceptions to this rule when individual situations fit into this category but do not require punishment - we trust them. However, mods are advised to take care to not overreact too much to caps-related offenses. As Bowser says, they're just having fun.
Punishment: A number of warnings or kicks depending on severity, then a temporary mute between an hour and a couple days.
Spam
Spam is excessive unnecessary text. It can be split up further into the following:
- Chat flooding -
This is when someone says things very quickly several in the chat, drowning out what anyone has to say. Usually it's done by saying the same thing, using Minecraft's up-arrow chat function.
- Letter spam -
This is when someone repeats the same letter over and over again. Usually less severe than the other types, although it can be combined with chat flooding.
- Random character spam -
fn47ufon4789fg9pfn7eas9fnesfneuf0n489o!! Usually also less severe than other types, although it can be combined with chat flooding.
Punishment: A number of warnings or kicks depending on severity (may be 0), then a temporary mute between an hour and a couple days.
Insensitivity/Rudeness
A little teasing is ok, but sometimes people go too far.
Punishment: A warning or two, then a temporary mute between an hour and several days.
Act of Impersonation/Mimicking
It's usually fine if you pretend to be CaptainSparklez or something - no one will believe you. However, sometimes people will pretend to be mods or friends of mods and threaten to lay down the law, despite that they cannot do so. This is against the rules.
Punishment: A few warnings/kicks, then a short tempban.
Profanity & Vulgarity
This is the offense that's generally meant when people kick for "language". A specific mod's mental list of bad words or subjects may be different from another's, but that's why we have warnings. If you think you were warned, kicked, or muted for a word that is not "bad", you may contact another mod and explain the situation.
Punishment: a warning/kick depending on severity, then a temp mute of between an hour and a couple of days. In extreme cases, offenders may be muted for longer, and do not require a warning or kick. Staff are advised to watch these extreme offenders in case they're doing something other than just these types of offenses.
Server Advertising
Although the title may be self-explanatory, it can really be split into the following:
- Flood advertising -
This is when the advertiser floods the chat with advertisements. This is an instant permanent ban across all servers.
- Hinting -
Two people can set up a situation to talk about a server in a way that advertises it. This can be warned or kicked 2-3 times, and if they really don't get the message, then they're really just there to advertise and can be permabanned across all servers.
- Mentioning -
"Hey, does anyone here play on ______?"
Warn/kick a couple times, then tempmute, then permaban if they do it again after the mute time. They probably don't mean to advertise, but we have to be prepared in case it's something similar but less sophisticated than hinting. However, this one has more punishment steps because it's more likely for some people to accidentally do.
- Non-server advertising -
If it's, say, a YouTube channel and it's not related to our server, warn a couple of times, then tempban, not perma - it's just some dude with a YouTube channel, come on. If it's, say, kitchens in NYC, permaban across all servers.
Racist, Sexist and Homophobic terms/slang
Self-explanatory, but often goes hand-in-hand with Profanity & Vulgarity, and the punishments really do stack.
Punishment: Mild offenses may be warned or kicked, but stronger offenses should be tempmuted right away. As is the case with profanity & vulgarity, staff are advised to keep a watch on extreme offenders even after they are muted.
Note
We found these guidelines necessary both for the good of the players as well as use by the staff due to unclear circumstances involving recent odd policy changes regarding punishment severity and their subsequent... well, not reversal, but, shall we say, boomeranging.
That being said, we also trust our staff to be flexible with these guidelines and use them as a tool to aid them, not a box to absolutely confine them. If we wanted something to just do things to a T constantly, make no exceptions, and not read into context, we'd do away with any player-moderated chat entirely and just get a chat filter. Obviously, we're not doing that.
There's more to it than that, though. Bowser and I both think that there's something to be said for diffusing a situation before it escalates to a mute or a ban, sometimes through witty banter, other times through kindness, and other times yet through providing a stern voice. We have yet to find a chat filter that can do those things, so we rely on mods to make following rules like having a nice talk with a friend. And that's what following these chat rules should be - a nice talk with friends.
