Username rules updates

[snoog]

Guys, I have an idea.

Lets makes a rule that all FAF usernames have to match Discord usernames, the community wants it because it will be easier for us to communicate with each other and not get confused because we're 7 years old and I'm sure the mods would love making things easier for themselves at our cost.

[TheWreck]

How many people have to tell the moderators they are completely wrong before they listen?how many people have to or uninstall before you realize this is total garbage?

[FtXCommando]

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

@ftxcommando said in Username rules updates:

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Example of name inconsistency being a problem

Recently Sladow (trainer team lead at the time) asked me to fix the trainer team avatars.

I'm going to skip most of this because this issue is insanely easy to solve. Give Sladow a screenshot of both of the screens you posted and have him figure it out, because he will know who is on his team and what their names are. I can do it for you right now and I play like 1-3 games a week max.

Another solution which I also did when I was cleaning up avatars as PC. Remove all the people that have said avatar, announce it to said group, and wait for people to message you to give it back or give it if they never had it. This is even easier now that Discord exists. Coordinate with the Team Lead over people that may not be on Discord and to double check everything is kosher.

These solutions took me 5 minutes to think about.

Just a small comment as I find some of the arguments already funny at this stage.

In a store, at the cashier, would you like the cashier to manually radio check 30% of all the grocery prices for all the people in the queue? No? Would the cashier like to do it, probably not. Would the store like it to be that way, no? Would anyone? Maybe a new person who gets a job out of solving those price checks all day in and out.

Then give team leads avatar access in the mod client if the “job” bothers you so much. I really do not understand the problem here beyond moderators wanting to keep their fiefdom but being angry at it requiring any brainpower.

Punishing the whole community because you can’t be bothered to do a like once every 3 years job of resetting some avatars and working through with a team lead? What?

[Nuggets]

Why are we even commenting on that fact that he Index is comparing faf-names to discord names? Did Index already create a discord-ticket to remove renames? Otherwise this comparison makes no sense

[boom-]

@deribus this is a quick response to your first reply, I will save a proper treatment of your 2nd reply for its own post.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Take a look at BlackYps screenshot, I have absolutely no idea who any of those people are. I assume "TheWheelie" is Farms, Sladow is one of them... and that's it.

My point is this: why does it matter if you don't know who we are? It would matter only if there were some moderator action to be taken. I won't comment on this right now as you go into a bit more detail in your 2nd post.

From a player to player perspective, I don't think I've ever seen you in game, so if we weren't in this thread together the chances of me knowing who you were (or vice versa) would be close to zero. If I gave you a 4v4 replay with an average rating of 400, chances are you wouldn't know who any of those players were either. This is why I think this update would affect higher rated "known" players disproportionately, and why it's flawed to use "player identity" in a player-player context as an argument.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

A lot of the arguments against this policy have boiled down to "I want to change my username more than every 6 months because it's funny." And then we reply "we might even agree that it's funny but it causes all these issues". "Nuh uh!"

I think this is where we need to get to, help us understand how much of a problem this is! All we have at the moment are vague mentions of impersonation, and the obvious "TheWheelie" renames which are the prime example of it being used as a joke, and not problematically. I think I can speak for a lot of us that the proposed changes were a big surprise, I am definitely not aware of rename abuse being a major issue in FAF. If it is, please let us know the scale of it, otherwise most people are just gonna assume you're killing a fun feature because of a few annoying cases.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

To paraphrase TheWheelieNoob (because rather appropriately, I don't know who that is):

See above, why does it matter if you don't know who I am, outside of taking moderator actions? My points stand on their own, I hope.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Why do you need to rename so often? Imagine you had a coworker and every week they went by a different name. Do you seriously not understand how that would be problematic and bother people?

The example here would be referring to nicknames. In the same vein, no matter what I rename myself the people who know me already will call me boom, the people who don't know already me will be confused either way as to who I am.

To reiterate, if I rename it doesn't bother the people I play with regularly, because they call me boom either way - my identity in game is not affected past a second or two of confusion. This only even applies at higher ratings where it's fairly important to know who people are to judge their performance.

Your second post is more extensive so this was just a quick reply to the first one, @IndexLibrorum I will respond to you as well in due time.

[NOC-]

I mean if naming ourselves all variations of Wheelie fucks it up this hard why cant we just go back to barcodes?

Same thing will happen regardless.

[Nuggets]

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Why do you need to rename so often? Imagine you had a coworker and every week they went by a different name. Do you seriously not understand how that would be problematic and bother people?

What a (to use a polite term) stupid example. Yes I'm sure a coworked will suddenly turn up with a new name every month (i like how you used every week to try to get a valid argument even though renames are monthly and "apparenlty" now getting increased to 6 months).
Try thinking of any ONLINE plattform regarding renames and you suddenly don't have an argument - what a shocker

[Nuggets]

Just to comment on these 3 "main problems"

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

For convenience, here is a list of problems the reduction in rename frequency is meant to address:

• In-game communication

As FTX said, who asked? But also lots of people when not knowing other players refer to the color (or maybe just use a marker??)

• Tournament player recognition

This is impossible to be an argument. Who is the "complaint" / "problem" from? If the player wants recognition he will just not rename??

• Player reputation

You must be talking about bad reputation here, as otherwise the above answer applies here also. If somebody else complained that they don't recognize someone for some reason, the simple answer should be: Add a note to that player.
Yes, it can be expected of players to do this if its that important to them. It is no alternative to remove the freedom of rename (or in this case the frequency) because of this.

Do not get me wrong, i genuinely do not get the "problems".

[CaptainKlutz]

long time players are being way too elitist about this and the moderators are being way too tough in their proposals. constant renames and casual imitation with no persistent IDs are super annoying for the casual half of FAF and for those who don't play but still watch the game. let's be real, some people are dumb with respect to renames, they're allowed to be, especially if they happen often and imitate other users' names. I don't blame the 20% of people who have trouble keeping track of how many people WillowWisp, WillowNoob, FemboyWillow etc are and how many are just renames. But the reaction from the mod team is absolutely medieval. This sort of problem merits like, you know the thing that highlights which players spawn where with markers at the start of the game? Yeah, something like that, but with the unique username of the player. Like discord, steam, any serious gaming infra does, you have a name you signed up with and then a display name. You don't add nothing at all to the system and prevent people changing names for a full year. That's absurd

[boom-]

@deribus response to post #2.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In-game communication
Tournament player recognition
Player reputation

I believe I covered these already in my previous posts, but I'll go over each briefly here and outline why they either aren't problems, or are not fixed by this update.

1. In-game communication

I don't really see renames causing an issue here. Firstly, I've already outlined how player identity transcends renames, and people who regularly play together manage just fine despite there being 8 wheelies right now.

For players who don't regularly play with each other, they can always find a way to communicate what they need. For example, if a name is difficult to type, like "8o12s2s8j1j" (which is a totally allowed name), you can simply refer to a player by colour. You might even do this in the heat of the moment if you don't have time to type even a simpler name. Or, employ the dual gap classic and put pings on their base.

Limiting renames will not fix this issue, in my opinion.

2. Tournament player recognition

This is rather a silly point, as FtX pointed out earlier tournaments could simply force players to rename to their "tournament name" 1hr prior to start. Pretending for now this isn't possible, any player who wants to gain recognition could stick to a single name. But to be honest, the best way to gain recognition would be simply to win tourneys. If I were to win LotS every year with a different ridiculous name, I would be "that guy with the renames" and audiences might be wondering what I'll be next year.

My main contention with this argument, however, is that I simply don't think this is a problem. I remember before I even downloaded FAF watching a legendary bo15 between zock and blackheart. Blackheart starts off named as "Banana" and ends the bo15 as "Horse". He renamed mid tourney, and it was easy for me to follow, as a person who hadn't even played a faf game. I don't know of any instances where players have deliberately renamed in order to make casting or following games more difficult, so I think the problem solved by the rules update is almost non-existent.

3. Player reputation

I assume by this you mean the ability of players to track good or bad behaviour by others. Luckily, the friend/foe system as well as player notes transcends renames, so a player you foed can't sneak into your lobby by renaming.

The only arena where "reputation" is a significant factor, is the 1800+ arena where players who consistently under-perform can get blacklisted from joining lobbies. I'm sure it's a thing on gap too if someone keeps stealing mass or something. By making renames less frequent you're essentially trying to "brand" badly behaved players, so others can spot them and kick them from lobbies if needed. You're creating a system for a minority of players that affect the whole player base, when the simpler solution of just foeing players you don't want to play with already exists. You can even see the foe icon if they rename and are sat in a lobby.

Moderation angle

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In addition, there are some benefits specifically on the moderation side of things. I wanted to stress the ones above because it seems like there has been a focus on the benefits on the other side of the moderation curtain, which was not the intent.

Ease of reporting the correct player
Reduce impersonation (of moderators or otherwise)
Reduce the frequency of inappropriate usernames
Make it harder to evade moderation action by rapid username changing

I'm surprised to hear this, as these are the only reasons given so far that I considered legitimate. As mentioned in my previous post, I think we'd all better understand the scale of this benefit with any sort of stats - even approximate will do (e.g. rename abuse makes up about 1 in 50 reports, so about N reports per year).

I don't think many of us consider the three primary reasons sufficiently justify the rename changes, but if your lives are a living hell because of renames please share.

The discord example

Frankly I'm surprised this is even mentioned. In all my years as a personal trainer on the FAF discord, not once did my discord nickname align with my FAF username - past or present. In fact I doubt most people in here even know my discord username. I like the forum system that uses people's in-game usernames to make them recognisable, but this has never been the case on discord.

So this comparison is simply flawed, as any player could have different usernames on discord and FAF, regardless of any suggested update to the rename rules.

Response to my post

I don't know what the mod client looks like, I don't know the steps of actually processing a report. I'm not suggesting to use only player ID in reports, but it would function as the unique identifying token in the case that there was a rename. It's impossible to give any more suggestions without knowing how processing a report actually looks like to you.

Do we have any stats on how often the average player renames, or how often it poses a problem in a report? I feel like I've been asking for this the whole thread, but it would help inform all the people who don't process reports on the daily.

Backlash, mod hate

I'd like to say that I never suggested that the number of upvotes/downvotes should be used to dictate policy. I understand the mods are people too, so I include the upvotes on the original post from mods as valid opinions. If most of the people in support of the change are mods, there must be some reason, right?

I think another factor that fuelled the fire was the lack of discussion - after the initial post, weeks went by without any moderator providing an opinion. As a player this really offended me, as this change was made and it looked like feedback was essentially being ignored. The first mod response then stated :

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

Therefore, the moderation team believes that user identification should not be compromised for the sake of having a humorous name.

Which to me reads "ok, but we're pushing this anyway." Bear in mind this is still is all from a single mod at this point. I understand FAF runs on people's free time, but it does feel difficult to halt a change once someone has decided it's going to happen. You can stick your arm into the cogs of the machine, but the wheels are just gonna keep turning - I'm currently thinking of weighing in on the area reclaim issue, but I'm not sure what good it would even do.

If rename abuse really makes your lives miserable, let us know the scale of it so we can actually understand the reasoning behind this change. The other points - tournaments, player impersonation etc, I don't think any of us players consider an issue currently.

Who cares anyway?

A common sentiment I've heard from people supporting the change is the idea that it's not really a major change, renames might be fun but all in all not much is being lost by this update. For the most part, I would agree - it's not a huge change, it doesn't even touch gameplay.

The problem most of us have is that if you shave off 1% of the fun of the game enough times, eventually you are left with a game and community you no longer want to be a part of. See Sladow and Terari both leaving - neither of them are ragequitting purely because of this change, but both have stated that there have simply been too many 1% fun reductions in the past, and they've had enough. Especially when trying to stop or even discuss changes before they are implemented can feel feel so futile, as an overwhelmingly negative response is dismissed by referring to the invisible silent majority who must be ok with it, or by ignoring posts that aren't dissertation length.

Sladow summarized it quite well:

@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:

I also dislike the "we're gonna do change XY and THEN wait for 10 user pages of good reasoning in order to revert them" mentality.

I've made the effort to voice my concerns this time, but there will come a time and change where I'll simply log off and never look back.

To Wrap Up

I don't think the issues in player to player interactions warrant these changes at all, for reasons I've outlined. The moderator side, which you've said are actually just "additional benefits", have some merit - but we still don't have anywhere near of a complete picture of the scale of this issue to justify limiting renames in this way.

[Gorthaur]

This post is deleted!

[Nuggets]

As i read what Gorthaur said i would be interested if it got removed by a mod or by himself lol

[TheWreck]

Now we have to wonder...

[IndexLibrorum]

@nuggets As far as I know, Gorthaur has removed the comment himself.

[RudePlayer]

Why do we feel the need to want to micromanage this? I get that renames may cause confusion, but as others have stated, it gives us the freedom to change something. The rest of the game is stale as it is. Now we are making a fuss on something simple as a name? Provide a solution that provides some flexibility please.

[ObliiLaCybrance]

Suggestion:
Add pronouns to faf names!
such as "Oblii (she/they)"
them pronouns can be changed every minute (to fit the faf player base's ever changing mood)
Your name will stay the same, but you can identify as whatever you want !!
Subscribe to my OnlyFafs
Oblii

[Strydxr]

@obliilacybrance Genius! I need my T3/GB pronouns

[BlackYps]

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Please, I'm genuinely asking, help me understand why a 6 month rename period is unacceptable to the point of having a 157 post thread on it.

It's a conceptual issue. I believe that a community should be liberal in nature. That means that by default everybody should have as much freedom as possible. Obviously you need some rules that decrease individiual freedom to ensure that other people can have a good time. We don't allow grieving of all sorts because that negatively impacts other people even if some people might have a lot of fun doing it.
I don't want to turn this into a lecture of obvious stuff, I'm just using this as introduction to make it clear how I mean my message: All rules that limit what we can do need proper justification. Yes, nobody will be unable to play the game just because the rename interval is increased to 6 months, but when there is no good justification then why do it at all? I think that's why there is so much discussion. The way this rule was announced possibly hints at a severe conceptual problem about how rules get created in this community and that warrants a thorough discussion.

[archsimkat]

@noc said in Username rules updates:

In terms of tournament recognition I personally would love to see a stream where TheWheelie (Farms) in this case would have to figure out who the 8 players are as they all have the same names.

Think it would make rather good casting.

The wheekienoob is attacking the wheekie while the ThewhekieNoob is fighting TheWhekeNoob

A preview of the tourney:

https://clips.twitch.tv/TangibleBraveCrowMcaT-EIcbNo1RgClv4JX7

[Karl-]

I think its to be expected that people (moderators in this instance) who give their time for free for a thankless job would want to make said job less painful/long/complex.

I dont know the effort they put in, the hours to understand each individual report. Coming from someone who doesnt know I obviously dislike the year long name change. But I understand where they are coming from. And if it helps ease the workload of having the track every shitposter/report ticket/etc than so be it. Maybe in the near future the timer could be reduce, or another solution all-together might come along.