A dialogue on the spam rule, and its application by moderators.

aite to kick this off, YES i know i am absolutely the last person that should be making this. I get gagged often, and most of the time i deserve it. this however does not invalidate the issues i'm going to be bringing up.

i'm making this thread due to inconsistencies on the application of gags by the moderator team. for most gags, they make complete sense and i'd think everyone would agree (peaking microphone volume, playing music). but often, a gag is applied to harmless voice chat depending on the mood of the offending moderator.

as an example, here is a clip of me, angie, AND ryanhighman (a moderator), participating in a "whisper round". if you've never been on when we do a whisper round, it's as it sounds. everyone just whispers in voice chat the entire round. extremely harmless.



Nuno gags me and angie for whispering, but doesn't gag ryan. props to him though, as he gags himself right after:



Nuno then clarified the reason for the gag later on:



this is where it becomes muddy. one moderator does not find it annoying, and even participates. but because one moderator is on a mood, suddenly its a gaggable offense? the discrepancy is extremely irritating. no one wants to play hot potato with how they use voice chat depending on which moderator is on the server.

the gag itself doesn't even follow the rule as it is presented in the extended rules.
"Spam is irrelevant or inappropriate messages sent (by any means) repeatedly."
all the whispering was appropriate to the gameplay. we were not saying random shit, we were playing the round as normal, just while whispering.

another example here, -Vader- was camping in the t room as the last t, so i blew a single raspberry at him. i then proceeded to get an 8 hour ban for it



prior to this i had two gags applied to me for quacking repeatedly, which is fair. but blowing a raspberries is a legitimate jeer, and to be banned for one is asinine.
(forgot to add this, but the ban was removed because ryan messed up his vid proof)

I guess the reason i made this thread is to get the moderators point of view on this rule. is there actually a guideline that the moderators have that the players are not aware of?

regardless, i'd like to advocate for an update to the spam clause. in its current form, it does not even cover legitimate gag reasons. but someone being "annoying" is an extremely subjective application by moderators, and should not be a thing in the first place. being on the server with multiple admins and mods and doing a whisper round with the entire server, only to get gagged for it the next day by a different set of mods is insane. people being goofballs on voice chat should not have to fear a ban from the server.

 

The problem for me with whispering is a lot of the time it makes the voice much airier than normal and since the voice is lower it makes it sounds more like blowing into the mic which is very annoying

 

whispering and raspberries are nonos

ted talks about cinematic tropes/anaylizing the plot and thematic components of hit underappreciated hollywood movies such as happy gilmore/blades of glory are fine tho since they bring intellectual discussion

 

this is a good point, should be noted the mod knew this was whispering rather than just microphone air intake

 

A couple of people told me about this situation lol, I talked to my admin and he said it really depends.

For me if it's more disturbing then yes, I'll gag. I normally don't get to harsh on gags unless they're ear rape, excessively loud and or disturbing. Otherwise if it's apart of gameplay and stuff, I don't get anal about it. Depends on the mod, sometimes you have to play hot potato with mods unless a orange person says otherwise

 

Yes, I am also one of the last people that should be saying this but...
please define "micspam" in more thoroughly and in depth. It's really annoying for one mod to consider this micspam but that not micspam

 

if you spam its mic spam
if you use a vc its micspam

 

very broad definitions in many ways

 

Disclaimer: haven't watched the videos
If I was the mod on duty at the time I would probably reach out to an admin before gagging but I'd ask the server en mass to stop before issuing any gags. It's something I've done before if a bunch of the server are doing something kind of annoying like they're all singing or something is just ask them to stop a couple times first before starting to gag.

 

Also it's not as simple as black and white, it's more of a spectrum

 

Whispering isnt micspam lol. Micspam is considered loud (contestable), earrape, or prolonged periods of time when the mic button is being used. I probably forgot something, but it's usually very case by case.

 

Look idk anything about the spam rule, but if you whsiper into your fucking mic I will personally find you and collapse your godamn windpipe. That shit makes my ears feel gross.

 

i dont really care what yall say it's not spam unless it's spam, and spam is defined as such:
"send the same message indiscriminately to (large numbers of recipients) on the Internet."

talking, so long as it pertains to the game or the ongoing conversation, is NOT spam. i've been gagged for talking in a different voice/tone without it even being a voice changer, just because mods didn't like the way i was talking, but thats not spam
if you gag for people talking in a different voice than what you're used to, and mark it as "spam" when it's not, you're actually retarded and should be demoted.
if whispering or naturally changing your voice is against the rules then put it in the rules, but rn, only spam is against the rules, and those aren't inherent examples of spam

not to mention that literal kids play this game and some have to whisper to not wake their parents from slumber, then they get gagged? what a joke lmfao

 

by the way, if people don't like the way someone is talking, there is this thing called client-side mute that everyone has access to. being annoying isnt against the rules and is not a reason to gag/ban someone

 

Micspam is nearly impossible to have a specific definition for. It's up to the mod making the gag whether something counts as micspam, and I'll admit sometimes mods might be a little too quick to gag. My rule of thumb is that if a player stops talking before I finish typing out the gag, then I won't give it unless they start to spam again. There's definitely less obvious cases that gags can be given for though. I once played with another player who kept yelling "waaah" over his mic. He never did it too much at once, but 2-3 times per round for multiple maps he would yell it, and I gagged him because he wasn't using his mic for anything else.

Mods should gag anyone who bothers other players or disrupts normal communication, and I think those two traits are too vague to set concise definitions for. Different players are going to be bothered by different things, and the staff have to adapt to what the majority of the server is telling them (Provided it's something reasonable to gag for of course).

 

I try not to gag anyone for spam unless they're being intentionally disruptive. IMO if someone is making random sounds that arent blatant spam and nobody is complaining about it I might pm them a quick "hey could you give it a rest?"

Evidently, this changes when people are having lengthy discussions about non-ttt topics. I'm usually a bit TOO lenient on this kind of thing but I believe this is spam. It disrupts normal gameplay and is not relevant to TTT, so it's a gaggable offense (I know I let people get away with this too often)

 

But shouldn't the mod want to create a more desirable TTT experience for everyone?

 

the mod's job is to enforce rules. being annoying is not (inherently) against the rules. periot.

 

I thouct being toxic was against the rules and that's annoying

EDIT: Removed the last line it was kinda harsh and I've been drinking

 

again, being annoying is not inherently toxic nor is it inherently spam. fact is that being annoying is not against server rules. if it was, we'd all be fucking COI'd lmfao