Asherons Call: Ken Karl on the CoC

While this could not be further from the truth, I wanted to take a moment to explain a few things and just paint a larger picture. If nothing else, give some data that I Think you will find interesting.

In AC1, we have no retroactive chat logging. This is no new news. What this means is, we have no way as an admin to tell what you said PRIOR to a call being placed. We do log everything that is said afterwards both public and private.

Admins are NOT allowed to take action unless they witness the violation. No screenshots or hearsay allowed (something that will never change in AC1 or 2). The admins can not see what is being said in private chat either, which makes things difficult. YEs, they will tell you to squelch them, and you should. Instant solution. However, we know there are some people who just go person to person to person abusing them in @tells.

False Rumor #1: They will never do anything about @tells, even if the person is really abusive and threatening in real life.

Fact: We do enforce @tells, its just the Admins do not do it real time. We keep track of how many times people complain about a certain person abusing them in @tell. Yes, we will tell you to use squelch, but we also are tallying up complaints. If they do it often in a short period of time, we will go and look at logs. The logs are as good as seeing it to me as there is no way to spoof the logs. From that, we DO ban people. We simply do not make a big deal about it, or publicize it.

Here is the trick though... If you want to catch a person that is abusing this, you MUST file a report abuse. The use of the report abuse function is what starts the logs to be captured. If no one starts a call (thinking that the other person did), we have no log to check.

We are and will continue to become more active in banning from logs. Just know people do get banned more then you realize. It sometimes just takes a day or two for us to read logs.

Rumor #2 They dont care

Fact: We care a lot. For AC2, we will have a system in place that allows us to capture and look at retroactive chat when you place an abuse call. So when you place an abuse call, the Admin will instantly see everything both you and the other person said in any capacity for the last X minutes and be able to instantly take action.

One of the reasons right now it seems like the Admins sometimes do nothing is that they are observing cloaked, waiting for a violation, very uneffective (and unlikely to change for AC1 given how difficult it would be to retrofit the system). This all will change in AC2. Expect much swifter response to abusive natured players, even in private tells.

Bottomline: People do get banned for @tell abuse. If you feel someone is continually getting away with it, send me a PM here. Make sure to include your name, the name of the other character, world and time you FILED THE ABUSE CALL (VERY IMPORTANT). I will have someone investigate when they can (can not guarantee 10 minute response hehe).

And for AC2, we have learned a lot and are build a set of community enforcement tools that will put us at the TOP of MMP Community Support!

Just thought some insider information would help you guys see that more goes on then you might imagine and also some of the difficulties we have to work with.

I will be posting this on the Zone shortly too.

Ken