Accepted Spam punishments (rule suggestion)

yeah cause you're doing it wrong

why are we giving spammers 5 chances to spam before properly punishing them? Might as well separate rdm against Ts and Innos too if you want less people banned

they break the rules that are listed upon joining (which shows combined) and they get the punishment. Nothing difficult to understand

 

You get muted & a warn with the mute, you get rmuted & another warn

If they're not following 2 warns, get rid of them

 

Lol severe spam. No wonder ,you guys cant even warn right for ppl saying the n word at ppl. Lazy

 

When this topic initially came up in staff chats before Cowcakes asked everyone about it, I had asked a couple of former leads what they thought of it, and so did Cowcakes. Every single lead we had asked agreed that spam is spam - if someone chat spams, gets muted, warned, unmuted, then they proceed to mic spam, they will get round gagged.
I had asked MangoTango/DocFox (The uh... the guy who wrote the rules), and wink. I believe Cowcakes asked Helix (former community manager) and then Falcor (another former lead) comes on here and says yes, option A is correct.

It seems to me there was just a mistake made along the way for Pacifist and Jabba, as they always thought option B was the correct route. However, the people who were leading the staff team at the time of them being on the staff team many moons ago should prove this to be the case. As of right now, we have been instructed to just do what we've been doing, meaning if I was taught to do option A, I'm going to do option A, and if Voca is trained to do option B, Voca is going to do option B. I think this is the worst possible way to handle this situation as it provides the most inconsistency to the players (a recently recurring theme when it comes to rules).

The solution is simple: Recognize that every single former leader of the community is probably not wrong about this, and make Option A the official ruling. The fact is... if Mango says spam is spam, then spam is spam. Mango literally wrote the current ruleset, I think he knows what is meant by it. It's not like the US where we gotta go "well shit what did Madison mean by this in the constitution..." because we can straight up just ask the guy.

Now, let's move away from the historical context and step into the practical context. Just because historically we have always done something and this is the "correct"/intended function of this thing, does not mean it is the right thing to do. Let's consider practically what makes the most sense:
Mic Spam:

• typically not just singing into the mic for 1-2 seconds, unless it is done excessively.
• usually some sort of music, soundboard, really really bad mic, screaming, and other legitimate no intention but to mic spam things.

Chat Spam:

• Usually requires several (4-5) messages before it is even gets treated as spam.
• Can sometimes be a repeated chat message that isn't being spammed in rapid succession, but just over the course of a longer period of time. Usually this is not considered spam in any capacity.

So it seems to me the forms of spam tend to be from legitimate spam means, and not just mistakes. If someone accidentally takes their singing into make spam, I usually don't even gag them. I'll tell them to please stop first, no sense in punishing them when they aren't intentionally mic spamming. For other staff members who more closely follow protocol like they probably should, the gag serves as the warning to stop singing. They'll stop then, because everything after that becomes malicious mic spam.
As for chat spam.... it's only really possible to maliciously chat spam. You can't send like 10 messages in a row and have it not be chat spam, it's hard to even do that since the server limits you to sending like 1 message per second or something.
Now, why should we give a player who both chat spams and mic spams 5 chances to cease that behavior before we issue a measly 8 hour ban? Seems counter productive to me. It makes me do more work as a moderator, and allows a troublemaker to stay on the server for longer. Practically speaking, ignoring all historical context, it makes sense to say all spam is treated as a singular count of spam (aka Option A is right).

Now... let's talk about what can happen in the future.
I am for adding a sort of timed gag/mute feature. Instead of an 8 hour ban, they'd get gagged for 8 hours. Something like this eliminates the issue all together and isn't too hard to get set up. You could even allow for a perma-gag/mute if you really wanted to.
But in the meantime, I think we should just go with Option A until such a feature can be implemented. It makes the most logical sense, considering both the historical and practical contexts. Also... the vote says Option A is what needs to be done.

 

Hello everyone!

I want to make the point clear that I am not concerned with where this misconception came from. I myself am not even sure. Nobody told me to do it one way or the other, and perhaps somewhere down the line I just started doing Option B.

After reading every post on this thread, and talking to Highwon to get his input, I have decided that Option A is the correct way of handling these situations. Effective immediately, Option A is protocol for all staff members to follow. Admins may still exersize discretion when they feel it necessary. Thank you for your patience.