Username rules updates

I'd prefer the ability to tag someone like on steam rather than the implementation of this rule. It solves the problem of annoying renames for me and also allows people to rename as they please.

Course people got banned for them, I got banned for it once. I'm saying it wasn't some "wow we really are running into problems with enforcing this rule!!!" where making it 12x more restrictive is required

It's annoying when people are referring to someone in chat by their previous name and I have no clue who they are talking about, sometimes even impeding teamwork, but thats not really the fault of the person who changed their name, but the people who expect everyone to know everyone elses identity in their clan or whatever

This change sort of mitigates that, but doesn't really eliminate it, and the year duration is really onerous...

@FtXCommando Look at the situation that puts the mod team in:

1. Keep the current vague and unequally applied rule in place under which you and others have been banned.
2. Specify the rule so that there's no grey area.

Banning people for vague and unequally applied reasons is a shitty situation, so you want to specify the rule.

But, specifying it means it actually has to be specified: if you specify the rule and it doesn't include "you can't impersonate other people" then yeah, the wheelie buddies can have their good times, but any shitbrick can also come in and impersonate people, and there's no rule to stop them.

Let take a crack at some valid points (perhaps there are more!) to address in the OP:

• "Difficult to distinguish" is pretty straightforward, but what is "otherwise too similar". Could we get a couple of examples?
• Can the length of time between username changes be shortened?

Instead we got "remember when a member of the mod team said the n-word?!?". The fuck outta here. No wonder they want to remove ambiguity from the situation.

I really don't care that much about the defining of name ownership and whatever, I do care about the complete and utter stupidity of a year long rename interval

And no, the impersonation rule operated on: if the person being impersonated has a problem, he reports it and it gets dealt with. Nobody cares about the wheelie meme because farm doesn't. Mod team took action about the lichking meme because lichking did complain.

The name mimic rule operated on the premise that you just can't have names that are totally identical by putting stuff like a capital i in place of a lowercase l and the mods would ban you until a rename for it.

Steam, the largest gaming community of all time(?): Change your name as often as you want whenever you want with no restriction.

Clasic mods having mental breakdown over funny renames moment

I think a good middle ground solution that gives the best of both worlds would be to show two names in the lobby, one chosen freely changed name and another permanent handle. Here's a mockup of what I'm envisioning:

@archsimkat said in Username rules updates:

I think a good middle ground solution that gives the best of both worlds would be to show two names in the lobby, one chosen freely changed name and another permanent handle. Here's a mockup of what I'm envisioning:

This would solve a lot of technical problems in the long run.

@archsimkat that kinda kills the need for names, why even use them if theres a handle that wont change

@snoog steam is more of a alias as you can't changes the name you signed up with.

Thats hybrid not bully dude!¡!!!

I think having a user name that is use technical stuff that you can't change but then have the ability to have an alias that you can rename every month or what Evey is decided.

I think it's obvious the best solution is to just have a FaFID, something akin to a SteamID, or even use the linked SteamID. Obviously that means work for some contributors. But it doesn't seem like there's a solution that will please everyone without some work.

@ftxcommando I was ruminating on this, and I think the impersonation renaming fun times are worthwhile. Perhaps the rule can be amended to require a complaint against the impersonator when the impersonated player is active, but if the player is inactive then no complaint is required.

It's an instance where I think the community can be relied upon to pass that information around--"hey this one is impersonating you are you buddies or..?". If the original player can't be contacted, then it's obviously a problem.

@snoog Valve is a multi-billion-dollar company, has the moderation muscle to match, and most pointedly wouldn't give a single stainless-steel fuck about ~20 people complaining if they identified that a change like this needed to be made.

Re: permanent handle + display name--if it solves all kinds of problems then it feels like the best solution. Only thing is the lobby aesthetics with showing both are a little off ("you don't get it man I want to be TheWheeler"), maybe we could show the permanent handle in a tooltip instead of having it always displayed?

@archsimkat said in Username rules updates:

I think a good middle ground solution that gives the best of both worlds would be to show two names in the lobby, one chosen freely changed name and another permanent handle. Here's a mockup of what I'm envisioning:

This looks disgusting

Wow that was a lot of posts to read with very little actual discussion. Anyway here is my attempt to contribute to the parts of actual constructive discussion.

It’s even created issues for moderation, where reports for one person were meant for another player, or creating additional work because a user in a screenshot has changed their name four times since, or even it’s not the player they think but a username that looks identical.

FAF already uses a player ID, that's how you keep all the account info when you rename. When the mod team has issues, because there are ambiguous reports then we should talk about how we can base reports more on the account ID than the name. Whenever you make a report by rightclicking a username we could internally use the ID to prevent moderation problems with renames or similar names.

The rule regarding user-impersonation in particular has been criticized as vague and applied unequally, which has prompted us to review it with the moderation and administrative teams.

The attempt to remove ambiguity from the rules didn't really work, because we still have "Are difficult to distinguish from other usernames or otherwise too similar to other usernames" in the rules. That's still ambiguous. I seriously don't know where this rule draws the line. Is TheWheelie and Wheeler too similar or not? How can I as a user determine if I am breaching the rule?

Usernames that are difficult to distinguish from other usernames may no longer be used. This includes usernames that exploit visually similar characters, such as 'l', 'I', '1', 'O', and '0', or are otherwise intentionally designed to be difficult to read.

I think I understand the intention of this rule, but the way it is worded is not optimal. I am not sure what the "designed to be difficult to read" part is supposed to mean or which problem this is trying to solve. Maybe change the rule to something like

• Usernames that are visually identical to other usernames by exploiting visually similar characters are not allowed.

We will be limiting the ability to change your username to once per year. We will maintain the current policy of making previously used usernames unusable for six months, meaning that another player may not immediately pick up the name that has now been freed up. This grace period will give the community some time to get used to seeing players under a new name, and helps mitigate player-impersonation. Be aware that this means that changing your username might mean that you lose that name permanently: your old username will become available several months before you are able to rename again.

I understand the 6 month grace period and I agree with it. However the increase of the rename period to 12 months seems overly drastic and lacks good justification. Why do we need this change that you run the risk to permanently lose your original name? I don't see any reason why this would help anybody.
The rename period seems to be the main thing people have an issue with in this thread and increasing the period can only ever mitigate issues, but not eliminate them. There is some explanation, but it is quite vague. From the given explanation I don't really see why a change that affects the players so much is needed. Can't we limit rename confusion with the other rules for example the banning of identical names?

In general the rules should specify better when action will be taken. From what I read on discord it seems to be an unwritten rule that derivative names (like all the wheelies in this thread) can be punished, but only if the original name owner makes a report. This seems like a good rule, but I don't see this in the new rules. This is also relevant for other areas, for example that in-game misbehaviour can only be reported by people in the game and not outsiders.

One last thing: Discussion along the lines "do you need this feature to have fun" doesn't lead anywhere. There is hardly anything that is required to have fun. I couldn't justify why we need a faf-memes channel, but it would be sad to see it go with the justification that there were people not behaving in the channel so it is easier for moderation to remove it. It's a similar thing here. If the current situation creates issues for the moderation team then we need to talk about it, but I didn't see much of that in the justification of the change, or not detailed enough to be able to discuss possible alternatives to the current rule change.
The ability to have fun interactions with others is important for a community and the rules that we have should have clear justification why they are needed, so we can have the minimum of rules required to have an enjoyable community. "We think it is very important that usernames are unique and easy to read" is too vague for me to justify a rule that limits everyone in choosing their name.

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

Usernames can be renamed:

Once every year

Once a year seems too long. Was there a reason it's not once a month?

We'd like feedback on:

When renaming an account is required due to rule breaking, should the account be locked until the account owner contacts the moderation team, or should the account be reverted to the last used acceptable username?

Revert to last used seems easier for everyone involved. And lock it for a short length of time (a week perhaps?), to hopefully prevent them further abusing the ability to name themselves.

@arran said in Username rules updates:

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

Usernames can be renamed:

Once every year

Once a year seems too long. Was there a reason it's not once a month?

We'd like feedback on:

When renaming an account is required due to rule breaking, should the account be locked until the account owner contacts the moderation team, or should the account be reverted to the last used acceptable username?

Revert to last used seems easier for everyone involved. And lock it for a short length of time (a week perhaps?), to hopefully prevent them further abusing the ability to name themselves.

That is exactly the logic before this change (username is reserved for 6 months though IIRC)

I was considering writing a lengthy response but @BlackYps summed up everything I wanted to say basically.
If there are issues with distinguishing users, we should use the user ID anyway. That's what it's for.

The rules regarding impersonations and making similar names to somebody else should be more clear.

• You shouldn't be allowed to create a name that is indistinguishable from Admins/Mods etc.
• If you create a nickname that is copying/attempting to impersonate another player and said player has an issue with it and reports it then mods should force the player to rename.
• Other than that you should be free to choose whatever (unique) nickname (that isn't breaking standard rules) you want.

The limit of 12 months is IMO pretty insane and doesn't solve the underlying issues anyway. It should be reverted to the original 1 month.