Scaling auto-mute function to target toxic behavior/ foul language

OhNoItsLeona·10/28/2013, 9:31:31 PM·1 votes·562 views

Here's an idea. This is aimed at those toxic players who like to insult, harass, and flame.

A simple script that monitors chat both in-game and in pre/post game lobbies would work for the idea.

The script would target socially unacceptable words as a base defense against racism, and verbal abuse of minorities/ethnicity.

(Excuse my language, but I am listing these as an example)

Words such as: Fggot Ngger C*nt

Racial slurs, etc. The acceptable word list would of course be up for debate, but seeing as this game has many players who are not of an appropriate age for mature discussions, phrases or combinations of words could be taken into account.

Use of these words , whether as isolated incidents or repeatedly ( Again, up for debate) , would incur an automatic mute, be it instantly or at the end of a game, and would scale with repeated offenses. I.E 30-minute mute, 2 hours, 12 hours, 24, 72, week, etc. You could scale up to time bans if the issue stays persistent enough. A simple warning message such as "Warning, repeated use of insulting or racist words can result in disciplinary action!" Could be displayed when the language is used.

This could help to streamline the tribunal review process, and eliminate huge numbers of extraneous cases that obviously require no voting at all. I.E Shen used the N word 15 times in a ranked that he lost, and 25-30 times in the previous 5 games.

It would be fairly simple to log offenses , take up relatively little storage space to do so (Let's say offenses are stored for 90 days before all offenses going over the time limit are considered null.

Using a scaling system like this would encourage players both to behave respectfully in-game, and to improve their behavior if they incur infractions.

I know the system as I have described it will initially have flaws, but I just wanted to see what the community though of this. Has this been suggested before? Why was it not implemented, if so?

Thanks for reading !

2 Comments

MackleDoge10/29/2013, 2:21:12 AM1 votes

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to this for racial/ethnic slurs or slurs against sexual orientation. But I don't want to get muted when I'm playing with five of my friends and I say something like "Fuck I missed the smite, such a dumbass." just messing around with my friends. Simple swearing would have to be excluded from the system entirely. I'm sorry, I do understand that there are minors who play the game or just sensitive people, but there is a language filter and a mute feature for a reason.

OhNoItsLeona10/29/2013, 2:24:34 AM1 votes

Of course not! The idea I had is that this would target the non-negotiable, totally unacceptable areas of communication in-game. Saying "Shit, look at that burst" , or "Fuck , you almost had him man, GJ!" would preferably not be included in the filter.

I'm talking about words that even us adults do not like to see, as racism, sexism, and harassment due to either sex, sexual orientation, or race is never okay.

Definitely not bad words in general, that would be silly, haha. Just those words that fall into the "Never acceptable" zone.

Good point though, I did fail to clarify that!