How does moderation work?

Moderation starts with the players and the soft “social” tools available to them.

Players have the ability to ignore other players via in-game controls and can even vote to remove other players from games using the _!kickban <player name> command. If nobody wants to play with a toxic person, they may well realize they’re in the wrong and move on. 

In-game: Ctrl-click on a name in the playerlist.
In-lobby: Right-click on a name and pick ignore from the drop-down menu .

The relationship system enables you to specify people you’d like to not just mute/ignore, but also avoid playing with or block altogether.

So you can set your level of avoidance, per player, which will help you to play more with the people you like.

Unfortunately, these softer options aren’t always enough. If needed, you can Report other players to the moderation team. To do this, right-click their name in the lobby, click Report, and follow instructions.

Another way to report a player is to go to the server page, find the relevant match, then click the "players" tab and report the user from there. The BAR team will see any info submitted with the report, and the system can cross-reference reports to spot patterns.

Reports for in-game actions (griefing, trolling, non-participation…) are also sent to the Overwatch team. This is a group of community members who graciously give up their time and energy to review these reports. Once the reports are reviewed and the match is summarized, that summary can then be acted on by a moderator. There is a second tier, called Reviewers, who represent established, proven, and trusted members of the Overwatch team. They also help process and filter out reports about chat-based infractions.

Moderation is usually based on a “correspondence” principle - if someone chooses to abuse boss mode, or make spurious reports, their corresponding permissions can be taken away. If they choose offensive or inappropriate usernames, they may be required to change them, and their account renaming permissions can be suspended. Finally, login suspensions are used in cases where people abuse others via their in-game actions or chat, such as griefing or hate speech.

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We start small, often with simple warnings, and work our way up. In extreme cases, we will even make use of a permanent ban. 

It is worth noting that we also have an appeals process. If you feel you’ve been moderated incorrectly, wish to apologize, or want to supply further information, you can appeal by opening a ticket on the official BAR Discord. Note that we don’t accept proxy appeals - you cannot appeal an action on behalf of someone else. The appeals team has some overlap with the moderation team, but to ensure unbiased review, the decisions on appeals are never made by the same party that actioned the user in the first place.

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What do we moderate

Primarily, we moderate on the contents of the code of conduct. If a rule is listed there, we try to act on it where possible. The two things we most frequently moderate on are hateful content (e.g. abuse, racism, homophobia etc.) and griefing (e.g. team killing). These are almost always very clear cut and universally unacceptable within Beyond all Reason.

In general, we try to consider the spirit of the action by asking two simple questions:

• “Is this sabotaging the team?”
• “Would a malicious player...”

Example: Self-destructing your units before resigning in a team game.

This is considered griefing, as it removes the ability of your team to _/take your units once you leave.
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Abusing new players

We also take a strong stance on making BAR welcoming to new players. This means abusing people for not knowing “the meta” or “the correct way to play” is unacceptable. In general, even if you see an extremely silly play, try to laugh with the player, rather than at them, and help point it out in a constructive way so they can learn.
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Vigilantism

Vigilantism is also never okay.

Please don’t take matters into your own hands.

Just report the person after the game. Use de-escalation, _!stop and _!kickban, over griefing back “to stop the griefer”. The latter will often result in yourself getting suspended as well.
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Smurf and Alt accounts

We also act on "smurf" or "alt" accounts. Typically these are used to stack games (a skilled player fighting newbies will make for a very one sided game) and evading moderation action. Given other games often don't penalize smurfing, we typically start with a warning while banning the smurf account. However, if you’re, for example, getting your family into BAR, all power to you! Feel free to give us a heads up through a ticket on the BAR Discord to prevent us from flagging your little bro’s account as a smurf.

Attacking contributors

Unsurprisingly, we will also act on attacks against our team. Nobody should be attacked for contributing to the game.

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What isn't moderated

There is plenty of "bad" behavior we can't moderate, either because it's not actually bad behavior or because it's within the limits of what we think should be expected in a public place. 

Plain rudeness

Generic rudeness is something encountered in everyday life and doesn't always indicate a toxic person. In these cases, while we aren’t happy to see it, we leave it up to anybody offended to avoid or ignore the person being rude via the in-game controls. The system tracks this, and people ignored by large numbers of people will be known to the system. 

It's also always possible someone is having a bad day, making poor plays, getting agitated and the like. We've all had it happen to us. Losing streaks, “tilt” and annoyed tone are not something we moderate on either - as long as the player is not crossing the line into abuse of other players.
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Risky stratagems

Controversial plays (e.g. commander dropping) can go badly. They can also go well. In any case, it's not against the rules. This is not to be confused with throwing games on purpose. If an ally does a risky tactic that doesn't pay off, this by itself isn't a cause for reporting. However, if you are reasonably sure someone is trolling, please do notify us.
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Accidents

General mistakes that are not obviously done with malice in mind are perfectly fine. If you accidentally D-Gun your cluster of fusion reactors while trying to stop a raid, don’t sweat, you’re in the clear - just aim better next time!
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Unmet expectations

A good number of issues that escalate to reports result from misaligned expectations of players in team games. Let’s imagine a new player who lands on a spot commonly considered as an air spot, yet doesn’t know that to be the case. It’s not against the rules for that player not to put up a “satisfactory” fighter screen, though it may cost that team the match. Or, let's say a player claims map resources (such as metal extractors) that are usually taken by a different spot. Unless they very clearly go out of their way to do this, it's not against the rules either. "Roles", "lanes", and meta strategies are an emergent player-mandated phenomenon, and it’s up to the players to reach a consensus on who’s doing what.

At the same time, forcing teammates into roles against their will - and especially attempting to enforce those roles - can and will be moderated.

If you’re interested in the concept of roles and would like to learn more about them, take a look at this tutorial by Volshok.

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Democratic votes and lobby kicks

Players have access to soft "social" tools that they can use to sculpt the games they want to play and the teams they want to play them with. This includes democratic voting, such as voting to remove other players from the game using the `!kickban` command, as well as boss mode for lobby setup and curation. We want players to feel comfortable using these tools to improve their experience, which means we will almost never take action on the usage of boss tools in a pre-game lobby, or on the results of a democractic vote at any time. Players are encouraged to vote to adjust lobby settings or to kickban/spectate other players at any time for any or no reason at all. Bosses are encouraged to do the same in pre-game lobbies. If you are votekicked or spectated from a lobby, it's better to find a more compatible lobby than to file a moderation ticket: even if you broke no rules, we cannot force other players in a lobby to play with you, especially if a majority of them have already voted against that.

However, we recognize that these tools can be abused. We may take action if players break other rules in the usage of these tools, such as kicking players based on nationality or gender, or intentionally giving a false reason for a votekick. Repeated spam of pointless votes may also be actioned. Bosses must be careful when using their unilateral powers after the match has begun, and we may take action if boss powers are abused to spectate or kick rule-abiding players mid-match.

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Why do punishments vary for the same offence?

We have an escalation ladder for offences in place. As described before, repeated offences compound - we view moderation actions as “nudges” to how we’d like a player to behave with respect to other players, but if the player is unresponsive to a nudge, a stronger nudge may be warranted. If they keep doing the same and not changing their ways, we often escalate to a longer suspension even if another player may have gotten nothing but a warning for the same.

We understand that this may seem “unfair” to repeat offenders, but at the end of the day, all BAR contributors and members of the moderation team are volunteers, and we have limited time available. We would like to give everyone a fair chance to change their behavior, but if they insist on not doing so, we run out of options and fall back to at least making BAR a better space for other players.

We would thus like to remind everyone that if you get a warning, it’s not the end of the world, and you should not treat it as a “permanent strike on your record”, more so a:

“hey, heads up, this isn’t okay, don’t do it again”.

If you adapt and show improvement, all is well.

On this note, we want the system to give players a second chance - in many cases, the escalation ladder will gradually de-escalate for players who demonstrate positive change and avoid repeating offences over a long period of time. We recognize that it's in everyone's best interest to apply a gentler action to someone who slips up only once after a long period of improvement. However, note that we won't de-escalate for more serious or extreme offences, such as ban evasion or hacking.

Keep in mind that if you wish to appeal a moderation action, opening a ticket on the Discord is always an option - but it is not a replacement for improving your behavior.

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Does it work?

In a word: yes.

We are very aware of how the game is talked about both on our discord and on other platforms such as reddit. While toxicity, malicious behavior, and generally bad people will always be present, we see evidence of it not spreading, and in general the BAR community ends up being surprisingly nice, peaceful, and helpful! And that is precisely our goal.

We don’t want to be spending our time handing out punishments, we want to develop and play the game we love with other, like-minded people.

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How can you help?

When you see toxicity, abuse, griefing, racism, don’t just accept it as “the normal in gaming”:

Report it!

We cannot act on what we cannot see. We may not act on every single report - sometimes, people genuinely make mistakes that get misidentified as griefing, for example. However, reports add up, and over time, they help us have a better picture of a particular player’s tendencies.

If you’d like to make our job easier, submit reports that point to a particular game, with a description of the behavior in question and a particular in-game time stamp.

F.e. “My ally detonated a commander on top of my fusion cluster at 21:37”‍

These are the easiest to work with, but less detail is of course also okay. Remember to report the right player and the right match (through the website interface), and if you have doubts on what happened, watch the replay first before sending it over.

Please also make it simple for yourself, your team and ourselves. If you get abused, try to de-escalate the situation, or mute the player.

If you get grieved on, do not grief back.

Instead, pause the game and ask the players in game to either run the _!stop command to end the match without a result, or the _!kickban <playername> command to remove the offending player from the game. You can then use _/take to take control of their units. Many such games are actually perfectly possible to win until the other player decides to escalate and grief back.

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Finally

It is important to remember that moderators are just regular people like you.

We make use of computers and automation where possible, but at the end of the day, the moderators have feelings and emotions of their own. This implies two main points:

• If two different moderators review the same item, they may have slightly different opinions of it, we try to solve this with internal guidelines and the code of conduct but humans will always have opinions
• We are all people with lives on top of the game, which means we are not always awake and do not have infinite available time. This means not all reports will be responded to in the same time frame. The same goes for appeals.

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Did we already say to ''report it"?

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Report it.

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