Let's talk about moderation

ModCaptainMårvelous·Oct 18, 2013·40 votes·3,971 views

Mostly because one of the biggest issues with the previous forum was a moderation feel that overall made much of the community mad. So I think this discussion should shed some light on what might be best for the people in this new forum and how the Rioters can best handle this. So to start off, here are some of the hot button issues with the moderation system on the current forum:

First, and biggest, moderation seems invisible. There is rarely an active presence felt and there has never (to my knowledge/experience) been a moderator coming directly out of the woodwork and saying they are a moderator. This leads to a "hand of god" problem where things will happen without warning for many.
Wildly inconsistent rules/regulations that borders on bias. Certain posters will break the rules, "flame" other users consistently, cause many problems and overall make the community a more unfriendly place yet suffer rarely, if any, backlash. Meanwhile, other posters will slip up once and be hit with an instant perma-ban with only "Violation of the Summoner's Code", allowing for zero learning or repentance/reformation. Not to mention a distinct lack of adherence to the subcommunity movement. (90% of what's on GD shouldn't be there, only about 5% of that is moved and sometimes not even to the right forum).
Lack of presence most of the time. Several extremely rule-breaking threads (Porn threads being a major point) will remain open for hours and garner hundreds of posts and views before someone notices. Yes, GD is a hard forum to follow but shouldn't there be a sort of red flag if there are an influx of attachment posts and views?
Forum users have little-to-no say in how things are done on the forums. While attempts had been made to discuss and talk with the moderation, all of these have fallen on deaf ears and even major user attempts to overwrite something the majority consider an unjust decision are ignored or pushed to a barely seen subforum to die a slow death.

With all this criticism in mind, here are some of my personal opinions on how moderation can be better handled here, as well as ideas overall on how to maintain a civil atmosphere in the community beta even when the influx of negative/insulting users migrates here.

Moderators are known. Give them a tag, give them a badge, just give them a way to determine and stand out from the crowd. People can actively talk with them and this moderation will feel more like part of the community.
Appoint players as moderators. Keep in mind, there is no benefit and this is strictly volunteering, but many users would likely want to help moderate the forum for little/no cost (Even a small RP benefit might be too much). As they are under company regulations, it'd be very easy to ban/utterly block them should an abuse of power occur.
Have 1-2 moderators per subcommunity instead of several overall moderators. Giving "districts" encourages people who are more specialized in these communities a better grasp of what is acceptable and what is not, along with removing the error of spending too much time moderating one section vs. another section.
Have a clearly defined reason/notification system when someone is banned or a thread is moved. Not much, just a simple "You have been banned for: sjfiaosjoiasjf" or something akin to that as opposed to the blanket statement of Summoner Code violation.
Have moderators work closely with support or at least add a forum issue support tag. Currently if you have a problem with the forums or another user, there isn't a designated place to put feedback asides the general feedback, which is more akin to just a "How'd we do?" sheet.

Along with this, any red input would be great in shedding light on what your plans for the moderation are. Get some real wonderful discussions going on in terms of what your plans are for the beta as well as our personal feedback on the path you plan to take!

34 Comments

RiotKrylhosOct 18, 201310 votes

Thanks for taking the time to write this out Captain.

First of all, we're rolling out a "flag post as inappropriate" feature to help the community bring inappropriate posts to light if they happen to slip through the cracks. That'll be coming out in the next couple weeks.

Within this community system, we're wanting to shift a lot of the responsibility of conduct encouragement to each respective sub-community (while still maintaining global moderators). For example, you might get away with a little more flaming in a community that tolerates it more than another. We'll be seeing this more and more as the platform evolves.

As for ban messaging, I whole heartedly agree that you should be told why you were banned (even if it is obvious, which it is in some cases). We're also planning on presenting delete reasonings, so if a thread is removed the OP can know why. To help educate and advocate for change in behavior, transparency is a must.

Also, I hope you're recognizing with this community platform that community members have a huge impact on certain features that make it out to help improve overall quality of life for community members.

ModCaptainMårvelousOct 18, 20133 votes

Yes, so far I've been very impressed with how you guys have been handling the beta site and improving user functionality to isolate and remove negative community problems. As I said before, it's refreshing to see Rioters who understand myself and the community's disappointment in the previous staff and how you guys make it a priority to fix it.

Bl3uOct 18, 20131 votes

I've used the gamefaqs forums for a while and they have good transparency in their moderations. If your post is removed it shows up in a section in your profile called "moderated messages". In there it gives a quick bit on why your post was removed and allows you to appeal to a moderator to have your post restored (idk about implementing the appeal feature... seems like a headache for moderators).

If you get banned you can still log in you just can't post (and for these forums, you probably wouldn't be able to up/downvote either). You can however look at your profile and see the reason you were banned, the ban's duration, and appeal to have it lifted.

Hopefully you guys can implement something like this. Its a nice way to be able to see why you were banned within the forum itself. Much better experience then not being able to log in and not seeing any email because you don't know what email address is tied to your account.

RiotHeintzerOct 18, 20136 votes

Great feedback. Moderation on a platform like this requires a vastly different approach from vBulletin, and I agree that our current moderation there can feel a little impersonal. To be frank, the scale of the community means that we've needed to focus on clear offenders like spam, porn, racism, and clear abuse - but there's a lack of a feedback loop, and that can lead to frustration and the sense that it's the wild west, with few rules and inconsistent enforcement.

It's something we're still working out and we'll likely need to figure it out as we build this platform with you guys.

In particular, I'd love to hear more thoughts about how a player moderation program would function. I really like the ideal of it, but I'm worried about the real life implications. What's the application and selection process like? How do we evaluate 'mod performance'? How do we evaluate what an "abuse of power" is? What kind of incentives are appropriate?

ModCaptainMårvelousOct 18, 20135 votes

I think part of the idea of player moderation is that...

A.) Players appointed are positive influences in the community according to the majority of players/community members (Rioter influence holds a bit more sway in this!)

B.) Moderator performance is moderated by players. If there are enough complaints about a moderator, perhaps an investigation is in order of the past things they've done. For this I'd keep a log/have the player keep a log of what they're doing. Moving <X> thread at 11:00 AM EST, Banned <Y> for posting porn at 11:15 AM EST, etc.

C.) Abuse of power is a wide term and it should definitely consist of a LOT of things. Smaller stuff, such as editing posts simply because a moderator dislikes a person, should result in a warning/temporary suspension. Further abuse or high-level abuse such as banning a player for no reason/editing a post so that it's ban-worthy would result in both removal of moderation powers and possible ban from the forums. Moderators should enforce rules, they are not above them.

D.) Incentives are not that appropriate/necessary. I mean, look at the tribunal. People who voted strictly for IP were wrong most of the time whereas people who actually cared about the community still do it and did it well. If an incentive is necessary (Which I doubt it is), it should be small/something not exclusive. A little bonus RP, unlock all champions for an account, etc. Something that is a benefit but won't skew it too much that people want to be a moderator JUST for the perks.

As for moderator suggestion, it should fall to both community and Rioter nomination. Post-nomination, they'd be given a trial run and/or sent through a short "exam" to see if they can handle moderating a community, but that's just my idea on the subject.

Solari EclipseOct 19, 20131 votes

Perhaps Player moderators don't have ban functionality. Regardless of if its abused or not, a ban isn't fun at all. Perhaps there is a "Higher Moderator Investigation" button for a player moderator, where it flags it for attention of a Riot employed moderator who has higher privileges. Then if a certain very high privilege is required, a player can perform his lower actions to keep the community functioning, and then flag it for Riot.

An example might be a porn thread. The player mod closes it, and flags it for Riot view, who can take higher privilege options that they see fit. Even in Tribunal, a player vote doesn't ban a player, does it? Riot still reviews it before issuing bans? Why not implement the same thing here? Surely forum bans come at a lower rate than in game bans.

Bubble Butt LuluOct 18, 20131 votes

I wouldn't mind volunteering. wink wink

Marv's ideas about the selection process are good though.

DaenOct 21, 20132 votes

Go check out how JaGeX does it. Seriously. They have a very robust Moderation system both in-game and on their forums, and it works nearly flawlessly. I'd love to discuss this with someone on the Riot team, as I spent a lot of time in that Moderator program and am really comfortable with how they selected people and how they dealt with their moderators.

I've wanted a system like this in League ever since I joined, and I'd love to be able to discuss it with someone. Feel free to add me in-game, because I'd be incredibly excited to talk about a system like this!

I'll attempt to do a brief explanation, but it's hard in a single post.

Application and Selection

The only way I think this would be feasible and successful is if Riot hand-picks members of the community. If there are certain people that are consistently good posters and are very good at dealing with people, maybe it's worth having a discussion with them in-game or seeing if they'd be willing to help moderate the forums!

In general when choosing people it's kind of important to differentiate between what were called WBMs (wanna-be mods) on the RuneScape forums and people actually just being great posters. What I mean by this is that if someone finds a rulebreaker and says "This is against the Code of Conduct. Please remove your post or edit it. Thanks." that's relatively questionable, as they aren't actually adding anything positive to the forums and will likely just annoy people. Something that might be better would be "Hey man, this kind of stuff is against the forum rules, might want to get rid of it before a mod shows up and takes it by force!". This is a much more positive sort of post, since it actually shows the personality of the poster and doesn't make it seem like the person is trying to act like a moderator.

Having players vote would be a decent suggestion as well, but keep in mind some of the favorite posters may not be the best suited for moderation and could skew the voting.

Evaluation of Mod Performance

The way JaGeX does this, they look over a sample of the decisions made by their moderators and determine whether there's a net positive outcome to those decisions. If there isn't, they warn the offending moderator and keep a closer eye on them. Normally the moderators are picked extremely well and are very positive influences on the community.

Something that could work equally well would be to have a system where players are able to dispute moderator actions or otherwise "complain to a higher power" so to speak where they question the action of a moderator.

Abuse of Power/Incentives

In the case of JaGeX, the process for determining abuse of power is relatively simple. If a moderator has an overall negative influence on the community or they make an extremely egregious error, they are stripped of their mod privileges. In extremely severe cases they were muted or banned entirely, but that has been extraordinarily rare overall.

As for incentives, I don't believe there should be any aside from the basic tools required to moderate effectively (privately warning, temp banning from the forums, allowing people to read but not post, banning them from the forums entirely, etc.). In general the moderators should be volunteers hand-picked by the company, and the honor/responsibility of the position should be a sufficient incentive (imo).

Anyway, that's pretty much what I'd say in a nutshell!

ploki122Oct 21, 20131 votes

Their censor filter is the worst one to have been creted ever...

Also, they keep on ruining their game for no reason...
#BringBackWilderness

DaenOct 21, 20131 votes

Haha completely agreed, it's why I quit.

Regardless, they have one of the most (if not the most) successful moderation systems I've ever seen or heard of. If there's any chance of Riot implementing a player moderation system I would love to somehow be involved in helping it get off the ground or at least just suggesting how to implement it.

In RuneScape/FunOrb the moderation system they used dramatically improved the community just by virtue of the fact it was always possible JaGeX was watching you to determine whether you'd make a good moderator or not.

RiotHeintzerOct 22, 20132 votes

Great food for thought. We'll look into it some more!

I'm personally most interested in finding a highly scalable, community-driven approach to moderation. I don't want Riot to necessarily be the bottleneck that prevents things from getting done (moderating inappropriate content quickly, recruiting and vetting new volunteer mods, etc.), nor do I want Riot to be the dictator (I'd prefer a more democratic approach).

DaenOct 22, 20132 votes

I admit I'm relatively biased from all the time I spent with JaGeX's methodology. I'd love to see a democratic system for choosing, though I can't help but think about the potential for candidates that may be better suited than others to get thrust from the position because of a popularity contest.

Otherwise I think it's a great idea yeah!

RiotHeintzerOct 22, 20132 votes

It's just a thought, in any case. I'm not completely opposed to a more hands-on, Riot-curated approach. Just need to understand what that would mean in terms of resources and time for the various community teams around the world.

But philosophically, the community should have the power to shape itself as it sees fit - that's kinda the whole point of surfacing content/discussions based on votes instead of chronologically. How does moderation/curation fit into that philosophy?

If you look at any popular forum in the history of the internet, you can pretty much guarantee there's been some manner of mod-related controversy or some grand debate over rules and enforcement. That's normal and healthy to an extent, but I think there's oftentimes a lot of unnecessary friction. How do we enable healthy debate around the rules and individuals governing a given community? It's some combination of transparency, processes/design, and human judgment.

DaenOct 22, 20131 votes

I feel like the Riot-curated approach is somewhat significant in some respects. If it were to be done democratically I feel like it would need to be clear that all candidates/mods were cleared through Riot to give it a hand-picked feel. I have no idea what sort of resource sink it might be, but depending on the methodology it might be relatively insignificant. If Rioters every so often just happen to notice players that are consistently great posters and actively contribute to discussions, it could be worth looking into that player. It doesn't necessarily require a team dedicated to it, just a passing glance at the players that contribute really great things.

It's hard to give the reins of something like choosing moderators over to the community in a way that would be accurate and unbiased. People are creatures of habit, and players they see more often would gain precedence in a voting scenario. In addition if it were a public vote between two candidates it would always result in one candidate being rejected, even if both were suitable for moderation.

In general I think moderator choice should be more heavily Riot-involved while moderator capabilities/operating procedures should be very heavily democratic in nature. Having a bad moderator could potentially be a bigger deal than policies that people don't agree with, because in theory moderators would be sort of like a gap bridged between Riot and the general playerbase. Allowing policy to be almost completely decided upon by the players would fit right into the philosophy Riot currently has about the community shaping itself.

It'd be much easier (imo) to allow the players to decide on how they want their community to be run rather than who they want to run it. There's a lot less bias when selecting methodologies rather than specific people, which could result in less friction than democratic moderator choice would.

ploki122Oct 22, 20131 votes

This time, can we have 1 multi-server community instead of a few messy ones?

MadLockOct 29, 20131 votes

The forums would be flooded even more so.

Hyrum GraffApr 9, 20141 votes

What if the current mods invited new mods? Riot can still do quality control over the mods, as Daen described, of course.

KidroOct 18, 20134 votes

I agree with alot of points made here but I do not agree with player moderation. Well I don't agree with it completely, in my opinion player mods would be okay as long as they couldn't ban anyone or edit players posts. They should only be able to delete attachments, and bring the attention of a post to a mod for deletion, moving, or banning a player.

silverbaconOct 18, 20133 votes

Most of the forums I have been on with play moderators, there are different ranks and they work their way up and gain privileges as they prove they are reliable, unbiased, etc. They start off with only being able to notify real mods of inappropriate content. Later on they can start closing and moving threads, editing posts. Banning is very rarely given to them, although sometimes they can take away posting privileges temporarily.

TheVoiceofExileOct 18, 20133 votes

I completely agree. Just having posts randomly disappear and whatnot is a bit off-beat so to say. I'd like to see it go one step further as well, instead of just removing the post and telling the user why it was removed I think we should leave the post location there and clear the post but replace it with the reason it was removed. That way we can make examples out of players that have their post removed by publicizing the reason it was removed, which should in turn increase the knowledge of the community as to what an appropriate and inappropriate post is. Also I'd love to become more entwined with the community, especially since I plan on seeking a position one day at Riot :D

ltachiOct 19, 20133 votes

Who is CaptainMarvelous?

ModCaptainMårvelousOct 20, 20131 votes

Answer to "Someone who's work a lot of people enjoyed" in Jeopardy. You would have gotten 1600 points had we been playing that game. :(

AuryielOct 19, 20132 votes

Still don't understand why you're banned.

Meanwhile, just browsing GD, I can find you 5 guys who deserve a perma-ban in 10 minutes. And they're still posting every day.

TBH I don't expect Riot to be any less shady with their moderating in the future. They like to keep it unreasonable it seems.

ModCaptainMårvelousOct 19, 20133 votes

I don't agree with it but the guys I've spoken with on the community beta actually have taken knowledge from things like my ban. Specifically they said it was one of the examples of when Moderation did not work with the community for it's betterment and instead acted against the community.

I'm very confident in these guys so time will tell.

COBRA C0MM4NDEROct 19, 20132 votes

I'd like to add this, player moderators is a good thing, but they should be voted in by the community.

If they post a lot of good topics and help over a course of time. (no bans/misconduct over a 3-6 month period as example)

I'm not going to go into RP rewards/incentives here. you pay nothing for the game & you shouldn't be rewarded for volunteering with cash-like incentives. (maybe after a bit of service [6 months-1 year] this could be implemented in form of unlocking a top tier champion with a skin...maybe an exclusive skin specific to moderators with NO CASH VALUE or a client UI skin only they have access to)

And with player moderators, I'd think having a performance forum would help keep power abusers in line. We as players could report on the person in writing as to their performance seen by ALL within that forum, visible only by accounts of certain level (20 is a good base, it'll show you not only like the game but have invested enough time to help out the community as well if that's what you done along the way).

I'm mostly saying that if you're wanting to become part of this community to help the game and the players you should at least have a decent track record...I'd have no respect for this system if we just let any level 3 Tom, Dick or Jane jump in to spam posts or disrupt things within.

But mostly I'd like to have this Hand Of God thing removed...this ain't Dungeon Keeper here, if you get slapped...you should know who done it, why and any other reasons other than for the sake of watching the imp scurry to off to Banland or Suspension Town.

responding to he RED, the flag post as inappropriate is a good thing to have. STAY ON TARGET!

that's it, that's my wall of text on that. The idea is great

General ElephantOct 18, 20131 votes

I approve. Well put. + 1 :)

silverbaconOct 18, 20131 votes

Agree with everything said here.

Player moderators are a really good idea. It has worked on a number of communities I have been in over the years and takes the heavy load off the other moderators. One of the biggest problems forums have is that it is not reasonable to always have someone online. Player moderators can eliminate that problem.

ploki122Oct 18, 20131 votes

Unsure if you've seen Pendragon's PoV about this, but if you look at his profile, you may be able to find it.

As for me, after reading his thoughts, I must say I'm leaning toward that side...

Basically, I'll give my feeling point by point :

First, and biggest, moderation seems invisible. There is rarely an active presence felt and there has never (to my knowledge/experience) been a moderator coming directly out of the woodwork and saying they are a moderator. This leads to a "hand of god" problem where things will happen without warning for many.

I never really had a problem with Deus Ex Machina moderation. Basically, I only believe that if Moderators were known, it would lead to both brown nose'ing and free hate'ing. The fact that right now, apart from Reds, if there are any, moderators are hidden means taht the blames always fall down on Riot, which is pretty much to expect.

Wildly inconsistent rules/regulations that borders on bias. Certain posters will break the rules, "flame" other users consistently, cause many problems and overall make the community a more unfriendly place yet suffer rarely, if any, backlash. Meanwhile, other posters will slip up once and be hit with an instant perma-ban with only "Violation of the Summoner's Code", allowing for zero learning or repentance/reformation.

I believe the problem here isn't the consistency of the punishments, but the consistency of the frequency of the visits. Basicaly, you can't moderate faster than a few million users post. That means that there will be slipups, and like everythign else, negative experiences outweighs the positive ones.

Lack of presence most of the time. Several extremely rule-breaking threads (Porn threads being a major point) will remain open for hours and garner hundreds of posts and views before someone notices. Yes, GD is a hard forum to follow but shouldn't there be a sort of red flag if there are an influx of attachment posts and views?

Like I said above, it's at most a few hundreds vs at least a few hundreds of thousands. That's why the -15 system was created. Unformtunately, it failed since people didn't downvote innapropriate topics.

Forum users have little-to-no say in how things are done on the forums. While attempts had been made to discuss and talk with the moderation, all of these have fallen on deaf ears and even major user attempts to overwrite something the majority consider an unjust decision are ignored or pushed to a barely seen subforum to die a slow death.

This one is basically simply a cluster of all previous things. The users didn't use the tools at their disposal, which lead to seeking moderators. The GD had a plague because of lack of self-moderation, which lead to people seeking better courses of action. The GD getting plagued lead to more people going to GD, which made subforms die. subforums died, which made people not use the tool at their disposal, out of disbelief.

As for the solutions, I'm at least skeptical (since they overlay, I will reword them...

Appoint players as moderator

I honestly believe this won't solve a thing, as explained above.

Appoint moderators to specific communities

Once again, this will probably only force people to elect an "elitist" community, the one with the best mods or something like that.

Better conveying bans

Can't say I've had much experience with it... but that's a given. I'm also pretty sure they already know it's lacking.

Better forum support for players

Once again, I do believe that their PS is lacking o na few facets, this one is one of the biggest offender.

All in all, I believe that the best case would be self-moderation. however, old forum proved us that it won't always work out well.You then come to a fork :

Do you

Put more effort into making self-moderation easier and more fulfilling?
or
Put more effort into enforcing an external moderation?

VsinOct 19, 20131 votes

I don't have an issue with mods being unknown entities. I do have an issue, however, with stuff vanishing into the ether without any trace or explanation. The League forums are literally the only vBulletin board I know of that has such little feedback with regards to what the mods are actually doing. Heck, the Guild Wars 2 boards on launch day had comparable traffic to the League ones, yet they were considerably more consistent with their sentencing, gave clear statements as to why they acted as they did, and consistently cleaned up threads that matched their criteria. And mind you: I hate those mods and their extreme intolerance, but I can at least call them consistent.

None of those elements apply to League of Legends moderators. It's as though Riot hired your average minimum wage tech support team and then told them to get to work.

For crying out loud, I can spot each porn thread from the OP alone, and they get bumped so fast that they're extremely difficult to miss. Yet, several of these threads stay alive for upwards of 24 hours - heck, Trundle 56 wasn't even spotted for 48 hours until a companion thread showed up with flashing neon lights and notified everybody.

Yes, this is negative feedback. But what else can I say? I can't pick out individual factors when I cannot see ANYTHING redeeming with the present moderation team.

ZodaiOct 19, 20131 votes

Great post Captain~

Maybe you'll continue posting your stories on the Community Beta ;p That said, I do hope some of these moderation improvements make it over to the main forums - It's sounding as if the new forums won't have an actual 'general discussion' tab at all; and it worries me D:

mambawarrior0Oct 30, 20131 votes

In all honesty, why is it exactly that support is not allowed to tell you why you were forum banned? I was permanantly banned from the forums with no prior warning, and was banned on a second account for asking why I was banned. I then Emailed support and was informed that they were not allowed to discuss reasons for bans, and I was wondering why exactly that was? I can accept my ban, but I would really like to know why. I think it was because of a parody thread (copy-paste with a few words changed, I thought that was a great technique for making humorous posts back when I was new to GD, but in all honesty it's been so long I don't really remember the exact content of this thread. I have remained on the forums for well over a year now on this new account, and was never forum banned or warned on it, so I feel that my content isn't necessarily all that bad.

ModCaptainMårvelousOct 30, 20131 votes

Well that's one of the main problems: There is no checks and balances. People can be banned for "Violations of the Summoner Code" and when questioned? Well, that just means you did SOMETHING wrong the disliked and that was enough. My best guess is that the support and moderation don't work closely and/or at all, so that when you're banned by a moderator they just go "Well I'm not going to try and track down this moderator for proof I'l just take his/her word for it."

Shro0mieDec 31, 20141 votes

"Appoint players as moderators. Keep in mind, there is no benefit and this is strictly volunteering, but many users would likely want to help moderate the forum for little/no cost (Even a small RP benefit might be too much). As they are under company regulations, it'd be very easy to ban/utterly block them should an abuse of power occur."

This, also, on the red flag part. Is that the reason why when I posted something SUPPORTING RIOT against the VAST MAJORITY on the post CALLING RIOT GREEDY MONEY MONGERS but used a couple "inappropriate word" in reply LIKE MANY MANY OF THE POSTS ABOVE CALLING RIOT MANY AWFUL WORDS but because I was a MINORITY saying Riot was NOT GREEDY MONEY MONGERS (hence this game is free if you choose it to be) PEOPLE GOT PISSED OFF and FLAGGED my post CAUSE THEY DIDN'T LIKE IT that thats why it got deleted in about 2min while people calling other people things like "greedy F$$$s" got to stay since no one red flagged them cause they AGGREED with their message?