Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?

[BlackYps]

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

The fact that something is bannable in games where "no one asked" (as in: a closed community (like my example earlier), a 1v1 between 2 players and so on) is just crazy to me.

I think it's important to distinguish games that were streamed and games that were really private. I can get behind the idea of not wanting to have the knowledge spread how exploits work in detail. And on top of that, people will inevitably imitate what they see streamers do, especially if it's unusual stuff. They might not know that it is an exploit, do it in a game, get banned and then be pissed, because they perceive it was ok when the streamer did it.
So when the game is streamed it's really not a "no one asked" situation, because it has ripples into the wider community. The easy way out is to just not stream games where you want to do dumb shit that is against the rules.

I do agree though that it doesn't feel like a good situation that the current rules are that every game is considered public because a replay file exists. The answer that practically there is a really, really low chance of getting reported by someone not involved in the game, is not really satisfying in my opinion. Personally, I would say that games that were not streamed or remarkable in some other way (like being a tournament game) should not be reportable by external people. Or, better worded: there must be an identifiable harm, that the behaviour in this game did to the community (for example rating manipulation or spreading exploit knowledge in a stream), to make a report by an external person valid.

[IndexLibrorum]

@Tersto said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

f someone really wants to get another player banned, I'm sure he could search through enough replays to eventually find a reportable offence for almost everyone that happened a long time ago. This can be abused to get people banned before or in tournaments so you don't have to play against them or also just if you don't like them.

We're aware of this possibility, which is why as a general rule we do not accept reports from players who did not participate in the reported game. We are also extra suspicious whenever we get a large number of reports for a specific player. Consequently, we haven't gotten into a situation where such report trawling has lead to a ban, to the best of my knowledge.

To name a very recent (this month) example of this approach working as intended: we received a report against TheWreck. The reported game was more than a month old, and was reported by someone who did not participate in the game. We investigated the reporter and found it was a random player with no history of playing with TheWreck, nor a history of filing other reports against TheWreck. The reporter did near-exclusively played the map that the report resulted from, so we have now assumed that this was happenstance following from this reporter looking at high rated replays on that map. The report was discarded both for the age of the game, and the lack of participation by the reporter.

Therefore I suggest a timelimit of how old a reported "offence" is allowed to be. Maybe 1-2 month? Serious offences like cheating should be excluded, however I don't see an issue to apply this timelimit to most other FAF rules e.g. base ctrl k, griefing, exploits...

This is a decent enough idea, but I want to reiterate that this is a solution looking for a problem. It addresses a hypothetical that has not happened, and is already well covered by our current methods.

@BlackYps said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

Or, better worded: there must be an identifiable harm, that the behaviour in this game did to the community (for example rating manipulation or spreading exploit knowledge in a stream), to make a report by an external person valid.

You describe the exact approach we currently use to cover non-participant reports. Because we cannot cover each hypothetical, we've consistently phrased it as "we do not generally accept reports from people not participating in the game". Even with this type of phrasing we already frequently get attempts at rule-lawyering (for this and similar rules), where people argue that "well, it's not exactly against the rules as written, so you can't ban me", which is why we have to resort to these more general phrasings. But the situation you describe is the exact protocol we now adhere to.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

So the definition of griefing is "the act of deliberately annoying or disrupting other players' enjoyment of a game" (generally).
By having the consent of your team, you are not annoying or disrupting your teammates enjoyment of the game. Furthermore, by having the consent of your team, they have clearly decided the game is over, so the enemy can't really argue that the guy stole their enjoyment. While the offender did "steal" the enjoyment of the opponents, its with the consent of his team, so no different from recalling or quitting in their own way.

Correct, but as the game logs do not record the vibe of the team at the time or their support of someone ctrl-K'ing their base and we feel disinclined to use an Oujia board to check, we're going to insist that you use the recall option instead. That one actually leaves the necessary logs and does not later result in a discussion on whether or not everyone in the team was on board with the decision. And since the end result is the same, the continued insistence of some select players to use Ctrl-K instead, followed (inevitably) by a forum post or appeal asking why they were banned, mostly just signals a preference for plausible deniability over accountability. Which is not a standard we’re interested in accommodating.

[Giebmasse]

@Tersto said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

@Giebmasse said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

We even ask that only players participating in the game generally should report events from games. Big part of the responsibility of "is this reporteable" is up to the participating players who are most closely affected by potential events. The moderation team does not crawl through replays for fun, we have plenty to do otherwise already. Circumstances where a non-participant report of a ctrl-k event in a game would have to be something special for us not to just discard it.

The fact that FAF doesn't have a big playerbase means, that high rated players constantly play against or with the same players. If someone really wants to get another player banned, I'm sure he could search through enough replays to eventually find a reportable offence for almost everyone that happened a long time ago. This can be abused to get people banned before or in tournaments so you don't have to play against them or also just if you don't like them.
Therefore I suggest a timelimit of how old a reported "offence" is allowed to be. Maybe 1-2 month? Serious offences like cheating should be excluded, however I don't see an issue to apply this timelimit to most other FAF rules e.g. base ctrl k, griefing, exploits...
Because if it really was an issue, that was affecting someone in a negative way, then it would have been reported in a timely manner.

I'll be direct, this is not really a problem, we don't need to be chasing ghosts.
Sure, theoretically if you stretch the scenarios as far as possible and assume reports are processed blindfolded or completely isolated from any other data points we take into account when processing reports.

We've had people thrawling through reports just trying to cause problems for another user, this is easily spotted and dealt with accordingly.

Basically in any case if a report is not made by a game participant and in a timely manner, faint warning bells are ringing in the background when checking the report for its validity and if the reporter had any malicious intent.

[BlackYps]

@IndexLibrorum said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

You describe the exact approach we currently use to cover non-participant reports. Because we cannot cover each hypothetical, we've consistently phrased it as "we do not generally accept reports from people not participating in the game". Even with this type of phrasing we already frequently get attempts at rule-lawyering (for this and similar rules), where people argue that "well, it's not exactly against the rules as written, so you can't ban me", which is why we have to resort to these more general phrasings. But the situation you describe is the exact protocol we now adhere to.

I feel that it would make sense to spell out the reasoning of rules more explicitly in the rule page. Currently we have the rules that explain what is allowed or forbidden and we have moderators stepping around specific questions by saying "we don't generally do X", but if we leave the discourse at that it keeps being frustrating for both sides. As a player you don't get a clearcut answer, only vague statements that don't help you to gauge when you risk a ban. As a moderator you don't want to be too broad with your statements because some smartass will abuse the statement and find behaviour that should be punished but that would be against the wording of the moderator.

If we instead spell out the reasonings and goals in the rule page, then it becomes clearer for everyone. We could add statements like "A report from a person not in the game will only be considered if it explains how the behaviour in the game is harmful for the community at large. Otherwise it will be discarded." This would also make it clearer what reasoning the mod team uses to interpret the rules.

[Gorton]

@BlackYps said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

@IndexLibrorum said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

You describe the exact approach we currently use to cover non-participant reports. Because we cannot cover each hypothetical, we've consistently phrased it as "we do not generally accept reports from people not participating in the game". Even with this type of phrasing we already frequently get attempts at rule-lawyering (for this and similar rules), where people argue that "well, it's not exactly against the rules as written, so you can't ban me", which is why we have to resort to these more general phrasings. But the situation you describe is the exact protocol we now adhere to.

I feel that it would make sense to spell out the reasoning of rules more explicitly in the rule page. Currently we have the rules that explain what is allowed or forbidden and we have moderators stepping around specific questions by saying "we don't generally do X", but if we leave the discourse at that it keeps being frustrating for both sides. As a player you don't get a clearcut answer, only vague statements that don't help you to gauge when you risk a ban. As a moderator you don't want to be too broad with your statements because some smartass will abuse the statement and find behaviour that should be punished but that would be against the wording of the moderator.

To be fair here, the players do absolutely know what risks a ban: breaking the rules on that page. Not being reported for it, (and that we do not proactively seek out, nor (generally) ban people based on the reports of those not in the game) does not change this. Technically, they are only "getting away" with it by virtue of not being reported by players in the game.

So it really wouldn't change anything to spell it out more, and as has been said previously by you and Index, spelling it out too broadly is unhelpful because we can't cover all edge cases, and it only invites a situation where a specific edge case hasn't been written down.

@BlackYps said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

If we instead spell out the reasonings and goals in the rule page, then it becomes clearer for everyone. We could add statements like "A report from a person not in the game will only be considered if it explains how the behaviour in the game is harmful for the community at large. Otherwise it will be discarded." This would also make it clearer what reasoning the mod team uses to interpret the rules.

I would think something similar to this, - i.e a statement to give a few examples, but specifically not be an exhaustive list around why we would sometimes do this, is reasonable to add, but i'm not entirely sure it will change much.

[Nuggets]

I'm not really looking to clarify the rules here. I think it would be an improvement what @BlackYps mentioned but the main issue is what is even considered to be a bannable offense.
(Not to mention people are actively laughing at how broad the rules are written. It literally includes everything - and by that i dont mean just bannable things)

[KnownSniper]

@IndexLibrorum said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

Correct, but as the game logs do not record the vibe of the team at the time or their support of someone ctrl-K'ing their base and we feel disinclined to use an Oujia board to check, we're going to insist that you use the recall option instead.

I'm sorry but why would you need any vibe check here? If nobody in your team reported you do a base ctrlk then it should be de facto assumed that nobody in the team had an issue with this.

I simply don't understand how someone on the enemy team can ever, EVER, report you for a base ctrlk. They should have no saying on the matter imo.

[magge]

Base ctrlk can still impact the match outcome, and enemy players might report it if they believe it undermined fair play. If you believe the match is lost, simply leave or use recall. It is not up to players to destroy the entire base or a significant part of it just because they feel like to express, "I will take away the toys, because I am done".

[KnownSniper]

@magge said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

Base ctrlk can still impact the match outcome, and enemy players might report it if they believe it undermined fair play. If you believe the match is lost, simply leave or use recall. It is not up to players to destroy the entire base or a significant part of it just because they feel like to express, "I will take away the toys, because I am done".

I'm sorry but who is the faf moderation team to tell us how to act when your team deems the match as lost? The enemy team doesn't like it cause they can't have fun killing my base now? well tough luck it shouldn't be on them to decide this to begin with.

It impacting the match outcome has nothing do with the conversation. If the enemy players report it because it " undermined fair play" then the ban shouldn't be for base ctrl k but for manipulating rating or something similar. Recalling from the game also impacts the match outcome because you can theoretically still win. It's 2 sides of the same coin, you just choose how you go out. You can use the exact same arguments against any 'allowed' way to leave the game as well.

I also think the argument makes zero sense anyway because the polar opposite is allowed. You're allowed to recall with your team, the entire team is allowed to just leave (without base ctrl k), you're allowed to play turtle until the last moment, even hiding your acu in a transport in a corner of the map on 1 mass income, but if your team decides to do a quadruple base ctrlk while flying into the enemy on t2 transports so you go out with a bang then your entire team can get banned if they report you because you somehow ruined their fun??

The enemy team should not have a say on this, period.

[magge]

I understand your concern that this action may fall under a different category, and we can review the rule wording or the ban description itself to improve clarity.

The issue is not, if the match is "technically" winnable, or "already lost" or if you/the enemy players are "having fun" - The rules are in place to ensure fair play and sportsmanship for all players in all matches.

If you/someone else disagree with the rule itself, then the issue is not about the wording, description or phrasing - it is the core of the rule itself.

And if you/someone else are aiming to propose a significant change to the rule core, then it is important to support it with a well-reasoned argument.

Players have the tool recall, or as last resort, quit manually to exit a match within the rules. If the team agrees the game is lost, recall lets everyone leave in a clean and fair way.

If you have suggestions on how the wording or descriptions of the rules could be improved, please share your ideas so we have material to work with.

In case you/a group/someone else fundamentally disagree with the rule itself - I am not entirely sure how best to proceed here.

Perhaps an official proposal to the board would be the next step, or a general vote for the association group before that? If someone is familiar with the process, please let us know.

To underline, the reason why the rules are written in a generalized way - rather than focused on specific scenarios - is because players come up with made-up "if"-situations, which are not practical for fair enforcement.

[FtXCommando]

I see zero material difference between

Scenario 1:
“Do you want to keep playing X?”
“No”
base ctrl +k

Scenario 2:
“Do you want to keep playing X?”
“No”
flies acu into 100 asf on a transport

Scenario 3:
“Do you want to keep playing X?”
“No”
Puts ACU in corner, drags lines of PD, sams, shields, and goes to watch YouTube on 2nd monitor

X didn’t care in any scenario. Team’s morale was 0. Game was over. Enemy team having a say in how you decide to implement your give up is ridiculous. We don’t even ban people for doing the most malicious actions here which would be intentionally prolonging the game or alt+f4 to cause a disconnect screen as both involve time waste for the same conclusion. They’re strictly the worst options and yet they don’t have any sort of rule beyond the vague “game ruining” one.

[Gorton]

There are a few other concerns we have regarding ctrl-k vs recall which are:

-Players may feel pressured to agree that there was a consensus to quit, even when they didn't want to, because of the possibility of moderation.

This situation is hopefully very rare, but it's one we don't want to happen.

-Players may report for ctrl-k for whatever reason later, even if they originally agreed (or did not care at the time)

We are especially concerned about the second scenario because we don't want a situation where a banned player states that at the time it was agreed... but we've received a report for base ctrl-k.

The ambiguity causes us problems that I think we would all rather avoid.

[FtXCommando]

That exact same ambiguity exists for any other way of ending the game (left without consulting the team, flew his ACU into enemy air, went afk) except these are not defaulted to a ban but base ctrl+k is.

If you ask your team if they want to play on and nobody does, who cares how you ended the game? If somebody says they changed their mind, why didn’t they say they wanted to play on in the chat when asked?

Shouldn’t the ban be for leaving a game without asking anybody? Isn’t that what recall ultimately is built on? Why are you banning a hypothetical person that achieved exactly that but decided he wanted to end it with base ctrl+k instead of hitting the leave button? Is that really the thing to be prioritizing here?

[IndexLibrorum]

@TheWeakie said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

I'm sorry but who is the faf moderation team to tell us how to act when your team deems the match as lost?

We don't want to make this decision. It was been made excessively clear last year, and the year before that, that there are players who feel it is not the moderation team's place to determine when a game is over. The resulting discussions about such decisions have taken a lot of time away from more important things.

Two developments last year have made it possible to remove this issue entirely:

1. The recall function allows players to vote to end the game. The moderation team no longer needs to check to see if a game is over, the team members can determine this among themselves.
2. The rule about leaving a game-mid game being considered griefing was changed after an association vote. Players that want to leave (after the first 5 minutes) can do so, so when a recall vote fails and a player still believes the game is over they can quit.

With these two changes we've given everyone exactly what they wanted: players get to decide for themselves when a game is over.

However, we also still have people who want to Ctrl-K their base to force the decision to end the game on the other participants, or to simply grief. This we do not allow. Ctrl-K'ing base will remain as a bannable offence for this reason. And now that we have multiple easy ways to handle situations, there is no room to argue whether a Ctrl-K base should have been acceptable or not. The answer, for now and all future cases, is that it is not acceptable. Ctrl-K'ing your base will get you banned.

@TheWeakie said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

I'm sorry but why would you need any vibe check here? If nobody in your team reported you do a base ctrlk then it should be de facto assumed that nobody in the team had an issue with this.

I simply don't understand how someone on the enemy team can ever, EVER, report you for a base ctrlk. They should have no saying on the matter imo.

I've floated the suggestion internally before that only teammembers should be able to report base ctrl-K. There are some arguments against it, such as that many players do not really know how to report someone. This is mostly the case for lower rated lobbies, of course.

If you want to adjust the rule so that only players from the reported player's team can report this offense, then handle it in the same way the rule change for leaving the game was handled: write a nice proposal for it and get the association to vote for it. I don't feel strongly about this change, whether in favor or against it, but will help you with setting up your proposal if you'd like.

[Tagada]

In the coming days I will be creating a thread in the Associacion part of the forums to discuss the ctrl-k rule and suggest potential adjustments to it.
Therefore I would ask everyone to cease discussion in this thread regarding that specific rule and its implementation and wait for that thread where we hopefully can reach a consensus and make a positive change.

If you have constructive arguments for keeping the current rule as is or for changing it please reach out to me and share them. I would like to include both viewpoints in my initial post.

If you aren't yet part of the Associacion and would like to partake in this discussion this is a good moment to join! Check out how to join here: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2346/how-to-become-a-member-of-the-association

Please note that this post as well as the coming thread are my own view point and do not represent the stance of the Board.

[Nuggets]

The ctrl-k rule is just one part of a bigger problem. Its the enforcement of rules in games where no participant asked them to be enforced. I'm not trying to say you should just exploit or whatever in your average teamgame. But what I am trying to say is that anything that happens (lets take my example) in a 1v1 game should not be held accountable to some rule where BOTH / ALL players in that game know about it AND are fine with it.
I didn't know these kind of changes had to go through the association, and was expecting to get more done here. I will be looking to make a proposal, but have to think about it myself first how exactly to form this idea into words

[Nuggets]

But lets talk about another rule; the sharing of resources / reserved mex.

This is a previous statement from the moderation team:
“Sharing resources — Resources such as reclaim and mass extractors do not have to be shared evenly, but be open to sharing them fairly with your team.
There are no reserved mass extractor slots or reclaim. Teammates taking available resources does not constitute as griefing”

At first look it seems fine, but then you try to apply the rule to maps that have been played forever. Take Seton's or even dual gap or astro. This rule says that if a mex from a different slot gets taken and the "supposed owner" reclaimes it to get it (if the other guy didnt give it on request) means he can get banned.
Lets not come out with the stupid response of "be open to new strategies" or "there are no reserved mex". If you think thats the case, you haven't played faf for more than 3 games. If people know about mex distribution and they still knowingly take a mex from a different slot, it should be allowed for the "correct" slot to reclaim and build his own.

The only reason there isn't a massive clowning going on about this rules is because most people don't know about it.

[Deribus]

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

If you think thats the case, you haven't played faf for more than 3 games.

Hi, 2694 games here.

Specific slots having specific mass extractors is not a rule, and even attempting to make such a thing very quickly breaks down because in essence you're asking for different or differently enforced rules depending on the map.

• How would new players know? If I joined FAF and got into a Seton's game, start making mexes, and then my teammate starts reclaiming some of my structures, that's a terrible new player experience.

• It would require every moderator to know every assigned mex on who knows how many slots, and also keep up with the meta on those maps. Yeah every moderator probably knows what slot gets what mexes on Seton's, but how popular does a map have to be for these rules to kick in? Does Open Wonder have assigned mexes? I don't know.

• It would force un-optimal gameplay in weird situations. Let's take Seton's as an example. Beach gets nuked and air swoops in to rebuild quickly. Except beach is reclaiming their stuff because technically those are beach slot mexes.

• The current implementation immediately solves all mex ownership arguments. If your teammate built the mex, it's theirs. You can ask to have it, but they are also free to say no.

• It's about a crystal clear rule as we have right now. "Do not reclaim allied units or purposefully fire on allies." Your proposed solution would require a flowchart to even answer if you're allowed to reclaim a mex.

[BlackYps]

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

The ctrl-k rule is just one part of a bigger problem. Its the enforcement of rules in games where no participant asked them to be enforced. I'm not trying to say you should just exploit or whatever in your average teamgame. But what I am trying to say is that anything that happens (lets take my example) in a 1v1 game should not be held accountable to some rule where BOTH / ALL players in that game know about it AND are fine with it.

I think it has been well established now that if someone uses exploits in a streamed game, even if everybody in the game is fine with it, the done harm is the spread of exploit knowledge, because the game was literally streamed to an audience. I think everything about this scenario has been said already. Is there any other case where external reports happened that led to a ban?

[Jip]

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

I didn't know these kind of changes had to go through the association, and was expecting to get more done here. I will be looking to make a proposal, but have to think about it myself first how exactly to form this idea into words

They don't have to go through the association. It's only encouraged that you do so. As an example, this is a discussion about when one is considered leaving a game too early, and these are the corresponding votes on Discord. It's one of the best ways to have a meaningful and transparent discussion with people that are all sympathetic to the objectives of the association, as described by the statutes paragraph 2.2.

Note that if you want to discuss this with the association, it's encouraged to use the association section of the forums. It may also be interesting to collaborate with @Tagada, as what he's writing up is also a suggestion on adjustments for this rule.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

The ctrl-k rule is just one part of a bigger problem. Its the enforcement of rules in games where no participant asked them to be enforced. I'm not trying to say you should just exploit or whatever in your average teamgame. But what I am trying to say is that anything that happens (lets take my example) in a 1v1 game should not be held accountable to some rule where BOTH / ALL players in that game know about it AND are fine with it.

I think it's already been explained. If the breach of rules is minor (like a CTRL + K), and nobody of the game makes a report about that then you're 'fine'. If you are still moderated because of a minor infraction then it clearly means that someone in your game was not actually fine with it. Or you gave them the perfect way to troll you. Think about that.

Meanwhile we specifically introduced the recall feature to allow you to end a game gracefully. We even took the effort to refine it. This was often also based on feedback. The request for such a feature originates from the same group of people that are now again complaining about CTRL + K. Now, the recall feature is not perfect. But it is transparent. The intentions of everyone is recorded in the replay. It's clear what is going on.

Which brings me to you @Nuggets . Let's say that the entire team wants to concede in a full share game. This is the assumption you make throughout this thread. Then why do you insist to use the one method that's not transparent about everyone's intentions? The one method that is against the current rules? If you CTRL + K in a full share game you, as an individual, force the game to end. It doesn't say anything about the intentions of your allies. Why not just recall and make it transparent that it's the whole team (minus 1) that wants the game to end? Or just leave on your own, and let full share run its course?

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

I'm not trying to say you should just exploit or whatever in your average teamgame. But what I am trying to say is that anything that happens (lets take my example) in a 1v1 game should not be held accountable to some rule where BOTH / ALL players in that game know about it AND are fine with it.

I personally would strongly be against allowing exploits to only be moderated when there's a report. Or rating manipulation for that matter. Or other issues that may have long term implications to the community. And above all - I would definitely not approve to streaming how it is done to a wider audience.

Because we can't fix the majority of the exploits they rely on what is called 'security through obscurity'. It's a common term used by security engineers stating that we're not really protected against it, but because nobody knows it is 'okay'. This is the only defense we have against these exploits because - as I started this paragraph with - we are unable to fix them. That makes obscurity our first line and often only line of defense that involves no labor to prevent a wider adoption of exploits. Our second line of defense is moderation, which is very labor intensive for exploits. You have to start the replay to analyze whether the exploit was used, which can be 45 minutes in a slow running game. And before you know it you'll miss it, having to start the replay all over again. Great.

I hope that now we can both agree that it's not in the best interest of the community to create more exposure to exploits. Regardless whether everyone in the game is 'fine' with it. And that we should take moderation action against such exposure.

---

It feels to me that there's a shared miss conception in this thread by some participants. As if there's a 'good way' of enforcing rules. To make it very clear: there is no good answer to enforcing rules. And when enforcing rules, there's always the risk that one party feels wronged. I don't know who of you got in touch with the police in real life - I can tell you based on experience that the feeling of being wronged is (initially) unavoidable.

One of the objectives of the association is to 'maintain a healthy community environment'. For contributors this responsibility is managed by the board through the contributing guidelines. The responsibility of the wider community is delegated to the moderation team, and is managed by the rules. This is why we have rules: we want to create a healthy community environment.

Late 2024 the moderation team spent their time on reworking the rules. Early 2025 @Giebmasse made an announcement about this. You can read about it in this announcement. These changes originate from feedback from the wider community over the years.

One goal of the changes was to make rules less ambiguous. Less ambiguous means more objective. Objective here should be interpret as 'context free'. This makes the system a lot easier to reason about:

• A user does X.
• A user is reported for X.
• Based on (replay) data, user did indeed do X. If relevant, and reporter was part of the game.
• Moderation keeps track of the infringement, based on the history of the user it takes action accordingly.

The rules depict that doing X does not contribute to maintaining a healthy community environment. And because X is objective, any additional context of the situation is ignored. If you do not want to get moderated again, then don't do X again. The simplicity makes it transparent. It being transparent makes it harder to feel wronged. Everyone can understand it. And, when necessary in an appeal for example, everyone can confirm it.

In practice these rules are the best type of rules. They're easy to understand for the user. They're easy to process for the moderator. It's a win-win for everyone.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

This is a previous statement from the moderation team:
“Sharing resources — Resources such as reclaim and mass extractors do not have to be shared evenly, but be open to sharing them fairly with your team.
There are no reserved mass extractor slots or reclaim. Teammates taking available resources does not constitute as griefing”

As @Deribus points out - this is as objective as we can make it. Objective as in, context free. It's easy to understand for all players. It's natural to new players. And for more veteran-like players such as yourself, I'm sure that you're in the position to talk to your peers about it. After all - as is often used as an argument for 2k+ players - you're playing with the same group of people all the time. You know one another. Why should this be an issue at all? Why do you bring it up?

And yes - the reclaiming of allied structures is against the rules. Because if your ally wants to give you something, then they can do that! Just like recall, there's an in-game feature to share units. By sharing the unit you clearly communicate your intentions. By reclaiming your allied units you're making the whole situation vague again.

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Last, but not least I want to have people understand a few things. This is in particular relevant for association members or those that contribute in general.

Moderation is by far the most thankless job there is. As a moderator you get to deal with things that are absolutely ridiculous. With people that are trying to manipulate the moderator. With people that want to do you, or your loved ones harm. With people that are outright gaslighting you. They take the worst of the worst of the community, and filter it out for us. They are the 'maintaining' part of the 'healthy community environment' that we are talking about.

Maintaining it is not trivial. Moderators are humans too. Not only does this mean that they have feelings, it also means that yes - they too can make a mistake. They process over 400 reports each month. This is time that they spent on sustaining the 'healthy community environment' instead of literally anything else they could be doing right now.

They also process over 40 appeals each month. The process to appeal can be found on the website. Based on what I've seen as owner of both Forums and the Discord - if you are truly on the 'right side' of the argument then you will win the appeal. But often that is just not the case. It's not the case because a lot of the rules are objective. They are context free. You did X. You got reported for X, usually by someone playing with you in the same game. If all boxes are checked, moderation action is taken. It's not difficult, as I tried to ask @Nuggets in this topic: to me it feels you make it difficult for yourself. Just don't do X. Nobody can report you. Nobody can troll you. Problem solved. Why are you so hung up still wanting to do it?

When the rules are discussed it's often not really about the rules. It's about the decisions of the moderation team. Those are done by the moderators. And therefore it is often about the moderators themselves. About how much wrong they do. And about how awful they are. About how unfit they are to make such decisions. About how they don't understand the game. 'Complaints' that are written in such a way that they're at the edge of the rules, but definitely long past the spirit of them.

Let me be quite clear: if it were up to me I would have banned some individuals of this community a long time ago. No appeal process possible. Just get out, do whatever you're doing somewhere else.

Spreading miss information, (practically) harassment of moderators and/or other contributors, miss representing facts, attacking the board, creating conspiracy theories, making 'silly' lobby titles - it was fun the first time. Especially being the target of a conspiracy theory that is about one self. Now, as president of the association that represents the community I have access to all the data. I am owner of the forums. I am the owner of Discord server. I see everything. With all this data reality hits. And it hits hard. Some of the people that I would like to outright ban are not just being silly, they are being ridiculous. Downright damaging the community in the long term, and the 'trust factor' between the players, various teams and the association. Outrageous in my opinion.

Sadly, it is not entirely up to me. According to the statutes 3.3 expelling a member of the association requires 3/4 of the board to agree. And I assume that dismissing team members based on the Governance structure would be similar, al though the procedure is not described there. I do not (yet) want to go through this.

Time and time again, the greater majority of interactions by* the moderation team abide to not just the letter, but also the spirit of the contributing guidelines. I want to thank them for that. Not only do they filter out the worst of the worst for the rest of us. For some reason, they are still decent enough to respond to these topics in a civil manner. Topics that I feel are less about the rules themselves, and more about moderators enforcing them.

In response to @Deli, @Giebmasse described the 'normal' approach to discuss rules. See also his response here. If you truly want to discuss rules, then please read the contributing guidelines and make sure that you understand it. Then proceed to actually discuss the rules - not the decisions. Not the moderators. But the rules and its implications. Why does it (not) contribute to a more healthy environment, according to you? I hope you'll soon find out that it's actually really hard, if not impossible to make (a set of) rules that 'just work' all the time, for everyone involved.

With all of that said - I look forward to the suggestions by @Tagada and @Nuggets to try and help make the rules better.

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If you want to show a token of appreciation of the moderation team, then please take the time to upvote the response of @Giebmasse about how to actually discuss the rules. Or just any civil response from a moderator in this topic, or the topic of Deli. It's a small gesture. But sometimes it can be really meaningful to show some appreciation - even if it is just an up vote.