Poll: What type of in game moderation/rule enforcement would work best?

Stemming from the "lack of accountability = poor behavior in game" thread, I create this poll to get a better feel from the community regarding what action would be best to handle player violations of the EULA and general upswing in negative behavior.

-Please do not argue your view point here, this just a "numbers" thread.
-No flaming, if you follow the above rule that won't even be a problem.
-I'll try and give enough options for all parties.
-There will be no option for "I don't think action needs to be taken." because if you believe that and you're in this thread, it can't be for a good reason.
-I expect that if anything A.Net will mix and match, so vote for the option you think works better then the others overall. I.e. a general model to follow.
-Votes are easier to log if you simply put the number of your choice.

-I will show the basic pros and cons of each option, but these are mostly my opinion, so take them with a large block of salt.


POLL OPTIONS:

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1.) Faster, simpler means of reporting violations.

-Pros:
Relatively simple to accomplish, low manpower requirements.

-Cons:
Does nothing to alliviate and may increase the number of cases A.Net must sort through.

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2.) A.net employed official GMs in game at peak hours, or working in shifts.

-Pros:
Company presence during peak hours may have decent effect in countering poor behavior and EULA violations. It would also bolster the confidence of those player for good nature who are in the area, making them feel taken care of.

-Cons:
A force of Official A.Net GMs large enough to patrol enough territory or time frames requires a good increase in manpower, which increases costs to A.Net which ultimately are beared by the consumer in various ways. (Higher cost, lower quality product.)

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3.) A large force of Player GMs (200k+ people) deputized with the ability to give priority reports directly to A.Net.

-Pros:
Manpower is not an issue as many players would like the opportunity to aid the community.

Such a large coverage would mean that few violations would escape attention. Limited power reduces the amount of damage a bad egg can do.

-Cons:
Oversight would be an issue with such a large force of players. A.net would have to set guidelines for set players and monitor their actions in order to make sure they are not abusing power or creating frivolous reports.

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4.) A moderate force of Player GMs (approx. 50-75k people) with expanded moderation powers including:

i.) Insta-Report (Same as the above feature.)

ii.) Mute (Turns off the violator's ability to paricipate in chat for a set
duration. Deals with excessive swearing, racism, biggotry, sexism, etc.)

iii.) Blacklist (Not an actual command, nor controled by the player GM. Simply a "listing" of players who have multiple "A.Net confirmed" complaints against them. GMs would be compelled to keep a closer, but quiet/non-confrontational eye on the behavior of said players.)

iv.) Request investigate of user "XYZ" (Used for more serious cases such as obvious botters, selling accounts, ebay advertisers, etc. Sends a report to A.Net with a priority marker.)

-Pros:
Excluding the initial stages of recruitment, corruption would be low as A.Net only has to watch a "handful" of powered players.

Expanded powers allow these GMs to "walk the walk" if they find an unmanagable player who won't decist from inappropriate behavior.

Having a designated "force" through which violations are processed has the potential to reduce the number of cases and the time required to attend to them.

-Cons:
Rules and regulations on weilding powers would need to be strict, due to the increased amount of potential damage a bad GM can do.

5.) Positive Re-enforcement through community voting. i.e. voting towards a "Good Person" title when someone does something positive.

-Pros:
A low manpower passive approch to encouraging good behavior.

-Cons:
High corruption, friends vote for friends, people doing "insincere" acts of kindness in order to grind their way into the title, etc.

6.) "Kick" option for parties in any mission" and "panic button"

i.) The "Kick vote" has been proposed in the past, offering a team the option of removing a negative player from the group.

ii.) The "panic" button would be used in cases of scamming, undoing the last trade committed by the player.

-Pros:
Having consequences for behaving poorly in a team would render some lesser miscreants into doing better.

A panic button might save players costly mistakes

Cons:
The kick vote feature has a good amount of potential for favoritism and abuse, and would not discourage true-blue jerks.

A panic button wouldn't be able to work if the scammer rids themselves of the merchandise before the scammed player realizes they problem.

Bugs in such a panic button could cause counter scamming or new forms of scamming.

Neither option addresses most of the verbal violations.

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Now then, to the polls!
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1.) 2 votes
2.) 2 votes
3.) vote
4.) 1 vote
5.) vote
6.) vote

You pretty much summed it all up with the cons. Those won't work. Also, let people be scammed. They'll be much wiser later on. I've yet to be scammed in this game because I played the Diablo's when I was a stupid teenager.

I'd be happy with a larger ingore list or an infinite "enemy list" that makes my enemy's names red or something.

I like 1 through 4. 1 and 2 are the most attractive to me.

BTW, where's 5?

I like 4.

I do encounter "evil" acts pretty often when in one outpost for longer than a minute... there's always someone on local spamming harsh words or something. But only few times have I seen really irritating discussion - - - such that I have really felt that should be reported (and none of those have happened within last few months).

1 and 2

I'm happy with things as they are.

I’m assuming that anything below the number 2 is spots field with common players and not real Anet employees. Reminds me of what was it oh yeah Dot Hack you know the anime.

Anyways if this is the case it will never work, you would have more of a problem from those who will abuse their “powers” to be. Secondly everyone has their own interruption of “law” there it is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law two are very different things which will lead to a lot more hassle.

It’s the same with everyone’s interruption on “accountability/poor behavior” if you really want to start with accountability you need to start with yourself, if there is something you do not like you go to support link
http://guildwars.com/support/ and report the person. You need to get a screen shot, time date, your in game name and the name of the offender. Don’t be lazy and expect someone else to do it.

I'm sorry, I thought the very first rule I put up was...

"-Please do not argue your view point here, this is just a "numbers" thread."

As for what happened to 5...I lost it >.< (Goes to renumber)

1. is the most realistic

I enjoy the "Turn of Local Chat and do Trading on the Forums" option, myself. But yeah, I'm all for #1 and #2 (#2 being especially nice in LA 1 and KC 1 to cut down on the crap).

I like 2, 3, and 4, but I think there should be some sort of balance between those.

I think a combination of options 2 and 4 might work best...leaving it entirely up to the players without having somebody in place to babysit the babysitters could turn ugly.

Great idea Ken!

I like 1 and 2.

I also think if there was some way of making the world "smaller", that would help. Like localized districts you automatically went to unless specified, except PVP of course.
And I think theres lots of little things ANET could do. I.e. the communication in-game sucks. Its hard to talk to others. It's hard to just interact with the whisper box, they need to ckeck out some other MMORPGs to see how they could make this more user-friendly. Also, I can't do "look ups" to see who's in a certain area/guild. And I can't even see the whole name of a guild on a player, just the acronym. If we could see the guild names and have the lookup tool, we could look up whole guilds, to see if we could talk to someone in that guild about their player. Guilds should be doing more to hold their players accountable. And if they're all bad seeds, well... We can spread the word I guess.

Sorry Ken, I just thought these might fit in this thread.

In incremental changes option 1 is a good start. Anet could take the responsibility for increased player awareness if nothing else. Then players can take responsibility for the rest.

Option 6 needs a better structure than the limited one stated, but it too would be handy. Eventually, players are going to need to act immediately against other players. I can see this being done with minimal room for potential abuse. While without it, as we know, there is always maximum potential of abuse.

1. Quick, easy, gets my vote.

2. Gets my vote, however I doubt it will happen. Developers usually stay distanced from in-game moderation for good reason. Once they try to step in the middle, they become partially responsable for all that goes on in-game.

5. Another version of this would get my vote, as I have posted in the other thread:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...=1#post1655992

2 or 3 is my vote

its not much of a poll if you say that people with a certian viewpoint aren't allowed to vote.

1 +/- 4