Boards›Player Behavior

Riot, please respond

KORGtuners·3/17/2017, 8:08:45 PM·5 votes·1,630 views

Have you ever heard this saying: "sticks and stones may break my bones; but words will never hurt me"?

That is not a silly nursery rhyme. It is valid real world advice. Want proof? Try it out on me. Try to insult me. Give me the abosolute worst words you can imagine. I guarantee there is not a single thing you can say that will hurt me. Seriously, try it. It is impossible for you to hurt me with words.

Why are you punishing people for harmless words?

Did you know, you are actually making things worst by punishing chat related offenses? You are giving power to the powerless. When people insult you, they are trying to upset you. If you simply ignore the insults, they are harmless. When you punish/report the insults, you are verifying that the insult was successful. Did you catch the wisdom?

Reminds me of another saying: "Give a man a fish. Feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish. Feed him for life."

Report/punish a person and you temporarily solve a problem. Teach people to never get offended in the first place and you solve all future problems as well.

I understand you want people to be nice to each other. That is a noble goal. However, even that has some problems. Have you ever heard of sarcasm? Through sarcasm, I can be insulting while saying seemingly nice things.

Now consider that report/punish is not a preventive measure. It is a reactive deterrent. The true preventive measure is the chat filter. Yet, Riot allows the player to opt out of the preventive measure. Why are people allowed to be offended when they purposefully chose to see offensive speech?

This leads into the mute button. This quote is directly from the Summoners Code:

"If someone's really starting to bother you, the mute and ignore commands are always there to resolve the situation."

Notice a particular word, "resolve". If the situation is resolved, why are you escalating it? Punishment is not needed when a situation has been resolved. This points out the reactive nature of punishment. Aswell as, gives a hint at the toxicity behind punishment. It also leads into behavioral sciences. I don't have sources prepared. So, I won't go into that aspect. Let it be noted though, that the current system is not endorsed by behavioral sciences.

What should be done by Riot?

Stop all chat related punishment. Encourage use of the mute button. If deemed beneficial, expand on the in game chat filter.

41 Comments

FurriesAreHot3/17/2017, 9:02:41 PM10 votes

Every day, hundreds of people commit suicide due to words.

Timethief493/17/2017, 8:50:12 PM8 votes

ha no. it is riots game. you have to play by their rules if you want to play the game. you agree to those rules with every update and when you install the game. they dont want it so they punish for it. if you want to flame you have to live with the consequenzes.

EvilDustMan3/17/2017, 8:11:12 PM7 votes

Because you shouldn't start shit in the first place, mute doesn't resolve things, the original offender isn't resolved.

Magical Player3/18/2017, 1:47:23 AM5 votes

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/tech-support/201308/why-words-can-hurt-least-much-sticks-and-stones

http://classroom.synonym.com/words-hurt-people-12104.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j6YA03hm4k http://www.livescience.com/6285-words-hurt.html https://www.getcybersafe.gc.ca/wrdshrt/index-en.aspx

Azure Hamster3/17/2017, 8:10:18 PM4 votes

No™

Caitlyn

Mcloved3/18/2017, 5:12:00 AM3 votes

mech in understand where Timethief is coming from, but I'm also an advocate for freedom of speech, so im kinda torn between the two arguments, yes it is there game the run how they want, but its an online game, things are sometimes outta your hands. However words are just as effective as weapons, if used in the right way. ie (mother/father telling their child they're not their child, people telling you that you're useless everyday will eventually start to wear people down and they start believing it...) There's little things that we as a society can do to help end the hatred, however i do not believe it should come at the cost of freedom of others. It should just be an empathetic understanding, but very few people like that anymore, I do believe that some people have very "thin skinned" which dose set them up for future failure. There are times people need to step back and consider the words of others( either to improve themselves, during a debate, certain bills that that are being passed in your country, ect....) yet they also need to understand not to take things so seriously( ie: in a game someone has a bad game and says " you're a DA"(words that might not be much liked on the boards so some editing) or people lashing out in rage, learn to ignore it and move on). It's up to you entirely to either drop to the 2 year old tantrums or to be the mature one and just keep playing, trying to win, and regardless of out come keep on going, playing into others rage and traps pulls you down, its up to you to rise above it or let them pull you down.

higura3/18/2017, 3:13:14 PM3 votes

see the thing is, riot isn't banning you because "you hurt someones fefes ;( ;( ;("...they are banning you for intentionally creating a negativ expirience for the other players in the game .

OnlyYouCanHearMe3/17/2017, 10:06:20 PM2 votes

{quoted} Now consider that report/punish is not a preventive measure. It is a reactive deterrent. The true preventive measure is the chat filter. Yet, Riot allows the player to opt out of the preventive measure. Why are people allowed to be offended when they purposefully chose to see offensive speech?

  1. It's very difficult to simply expand the chat filter for offensive speech, when quite a bit of what players find offensive is not based on the specific words used, but the context in which they are used. With racial and homophobic slurs, those are very easy to filter out, but if you spend a lot of time in this section of the Boards, then you'll see that most of the logs people post that got them banned are not that clear cut. Many people are reported for calling for reports. Would you expand the filter to block the use of the word report? It's a harmless word by itself, and there are situations where it would be a needed one, so it's impractical to block it. People are also reported and punished for constantly listing their teammates scores to highlight feeding. The only way to stop that would be to filter out numbers, which is equally impractical. There's a reason why many of the things that are not on the filtered list are NOT on the filtered list. It is updated periodically, adding words as they need to be filtered out for the benefit of players.

  2. As far as your comment above... that sounds dangerously close to blaming the victims. The idea of expanding the chat filter, and forcing the players who abide by the rules to utilize an additional muting function, so that the players who are actively breaking the rules can continue to do so, is somewhat backwards in my mind. Why should the rule-breakers be given special permission to do and say whatever they want, and the players who are conscientious of the rules be saddled with restrictions? It really is not that hard to play a match without screaming at your teammates, cursing at them, slurring them, or flaming them with any of the various other methods of breaking the rules via chatting. Hundreds of thousands of players manage to do it every single day. We should not be punished because the toxics cannot be bothered to follow the damn rules.

Randomonium3/18/2017, 7:43:02 AM2 votes

If you act like an ass in real life you get thrown out of a public place. Start screaming and insulting people in a restaurant and you will be asked to leave. Insult people at work and you'll be fired for harassment. Riot is doing the internet equivalent of what we already do in real life. It's not that the insults affect us, it's that we don't want to associate ourselves with toxic people. Punishment for toxicity is our way of ostracizing people in the league community in the same way we would ostracize them in real life. It's Riot's way of showing you the door.

Bettnachleger3/18/2017, 7:51:35 AM1 votes

What about stfu? Wtf is wrong with you?

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au0cemUHTGA You have NO fucking idea about the state of the person you talk shit about. Like seriously .... maybe there is a person like Amanda who's fucked in real live.
And with your words ... you just make it worse .... Shut your ugly mouth if you talk to stranger and treat them like a normal human being.

Edit2: Sorry, but you're an asshole.

Kitty Cat Tosha3/18/2017, 9:04:39 AM1 votes

Do you consider mental illnesses such as depression an actual illness or just something people made up to get attention?