announcements

I've just posted the game's new Code of Conduct. This more comprehensive set of guidelines is now the definitive guide for community standards and replaces the previous shorter Player communication rules. The new CoC thread is locked to serve as a stable reference, and this announcement will be the official channel for feedback and discussion about it.

For many years, the game operated with a very loose "be civil" approach to moderation. While that worked for a time, I believe our community has reached a point where more explicit guidelines are necessary to achieve the primary goal: making bots4 a more positive, respectful, and welcoming environment for everyone, both our dedicated veterans and any newcomers who join us.

Many of you may have noticed an increase in moderation activity over the past couple of months. This wasn't arbitrary; it was the first step in a deliberate effort to curb the toxicity that can sometimes make our forums an intimidating or unpleasant place to be. This new Code of Conduct is the next step in that process. The goal isn't to be heavy-handed, but to be consistent and transparent, providing a clear foundation so everyone knows what is expected.

To be perfectly clear: This is not an attempt to eliminate conflict, rivalry, or "spicy" discussion. bots4 is a competitive game, and the rivalries that form are a core part of its history and fun.

The Code of Conduct explicitly outlines the difference between acceptable, game-focused trash talk and unacceptable personal attacks or hostile goading. My aim, and the aim of these rules, is to moderate toxic behavior, not to stifle competition. You can still work to defeat your rivals, but you must treat them with a baseline of respect as fellow players when you communicate.

I believe these rules are a vital step towards ensuring the long-term health and enjoyability of our community, and I am committed to upholding these principles.

That said, this thread is an open channel for you to share your thoughts and feedback on this new direction. I am interested to hear if you are supportive of this renewed focus on a more respectful environment and any constructive thoughts you have on how we, as a community, can best uphold these standards together. While the core principles of respect and civility are non-negotiable, your feedback on the application and clarity of these rules is valued.

Thank you for taking the time to read the new Code of Conduct. I look forward to your constructive feedback and to working with all of you to build a better bots4 community.

With all due respect I think that close forum moderation in bots is a losing battle and a waste of admin time. I would rather see more time spent on higher yield activities eg. anti-cheat measures, new features etc. Even minor bug fixes are more important than some locking some thread where there is some heated discussion. Personally I have not seen anything over the top recently to justify such close scrutiny. Everyone on bots is a grown up even if they don't act like it, so we don't need some higher power moderating every word we say for fear of hurting someone's feelings. Next thing you know, all posts will look like AI generated drivel, and we are already heading in that direction.

Agreed. I certaintly feel like the forums have always just been an endless cycle of the same things, rehashed over and over.

It feels like these changes are in direct connection to very recent events in our current political climate.

You run the risk of pushing us from open and fair to closed and authoritarian (as what I consider good fun and teasing and light hearted can be taken as bullying) because we can't determine someons reaction to things we say.

I get that you are wanting to foster a respectful environment and to do so certain community guidelines need to be established. But as was stated, I'd follow that I'd much rather see your activity geared towards the game rather than the policing of the community. That alone is a full time job.

I'd say to that extent the forums could use some overhaul. Remove the sections of the forums that don't foster gameplay discussions. Limit them to game related only aspects (with your guidelines still in palce). And push all "personal" discussions to either bmail or guild forums, where the individuals can moderate themselves (would be a great time to have a turn off bmail option or block people option) (as well as clan forum moderation in permission matrix).

I think this is good, if people can't behave then they shouldn't be playing tbh. Just be nice and you got nothing to worry about.

Basically what Myriad said. For quite awhile until recently I've actually refrained from posting as much on the forums because of what I thought was over-zealous squelching. Not because I'm afraid of a mute, but out of disapproval. I don't remember the specific instances as it's been a hot minute, though likely it was just the usual banter stuff that rehashes in the manner nos mentioned. Lately I've only been more vocal because of your activity regarding game updates/fixes/changes and I quite enjoy finding and seeing even the most nuanced fixes.

I think this is good, if people can't behave then they shouldn't be playing tbh. Just be nice and you got nothing to worry about.

Behave =/= be nice. I'd rather know through somebodies words that they have a problem instead of having a compliant masquerade.

I can understand the intent; when investing time into improving the game, I'd imagine filtering through the same old barrage of nonsense gets old fast (feels like it has been fairly unrelenting recently).

Maybe this could be seen as groundwork before getting stuck into something bigger on the horizon?

I'd imagine filtering through the same old barrage of nonsense gets old fast

For sure, I wouldn't take away from that. But there's dedicated sections for bugs, suggestions, and announcements all of which are probably the most deserving of a stricter form of moderation and have been. Something like the miscellaneous or complaints section though is a bit asinine to police heavily imo.

Come to think of it, maybe threads that get too unruly should just be moved to the complaints section if it's not from the announcement section or anything else that's more pertinent. At least then it would be contained and it wouldn't resurface via a new thread from being locked. Leave the animals in their barnyard and anybody who doesn't want to get into it doesn't have to.

Strongly agree that this feels like a waste of time and counter-productive, as has been said we are all adults and most players have enough common sense to know what is crossing the line and what isn't.

Heavy policing of an already quiet forum would certainly put me off posting for fear of getting it removed or wasting time, I also don't think it would remove any hostility you could argue it would make it worse if players don't get what they need to say off their chest or keep getting their posts removed.

Had a quick read through and was shocked to see these examples "If you keep hitting my clanmate's bots, expect retaliation" which is basically a threat and acceptable yet "Are you going to do something or just cry about it?" (would be a reasonable response IMO to "acceptable" sentence) which is a simple question isn't?

Personally find this bizarre and dissapointing.

There is a fine line to tread with moderation. Especially in a game which is based on clan competition. Barbed comments, snipes & jabs are what fuel competitive energy & keep the game alive for some players.

We need to be careful to not squash this spirit & alienate the playerbase in the process. Heavy handed moderation is never a good thing,

What is not ok is when free speech edges into hate speech, discrimination and/or personal attacks at this point the line is crossed.

Additionally, countless threads on the same whiny topic adds nothing. I think players have been posting about the death of the game for over a decade. I for one am tired of these pointless diatribes.

Additionally, countless threads on the same whiny topic adds nothing. I think players have been posting about the death of the game for over a decade. I for one am tired of these pointless diatribes.

I think these are generally where we see most of the personal attacks from the majority of the player base (I for one am guilty of this, though I try not to attack the individual specifically, I do comment on it being their tried and true post every winter).

Either these or post about someone making a thread about being attacked "again" and the community bonds together to redicule said person for making his feelings about being hurt by being targeted public in a game where mostly toxic masculinity runs rampant (not to say we're all toxic men but we are on the internet :P)

Thanks for all the feedback, I've read it all. I appreciate that this feels like a significant change, but I think it's probably smaller and more reasonable than most people realize. I'll share some more context of the current state and my thought process:

• The extreme end of "no moderation" is not an option: Most people likely are unaware of the kind of content that gets removed because...it gets removed, creating an illusion that moderation is unnecessary. I agree that the PG examples in the CoC are kind of lame (they're more to illustrate the point rather than be taken literally), so to give everyone a better sense of the type of content that game staff regularly has to clean up, here are "real life" examples of content that's been removed recently. From these, I argue that moderation is absolutely necessary. I have no interest in leading, let alone being a part of, a community where this kind of content goes unchecked:

  • Usernames/botnames: NiggerPooper, Ku Klux Klan, GayRetardCosby, Fuck Israel, Faggot12222, homoasfuckname, Nazi Lover, kkk bot thenigakilla, STFU you fag, Fuck Palestine, apex invented gaynes
  • Clan names: NOSISABIGBITCH
  • Forum posts: "Go down the beach, and walk out into the ocean you whiney faggot", "Fishwick does gay for pay", "All you haters can fuck yourselves", "Go fuck yourself", "First off, hyp suck a dick"

• The other extreme end of "total censorship" is being consciously avoided: I really do get it. People don't want to feel like they can't fully express themselves, especially when moderation has historically been fairly lenient. I'm very conscious of this and feel the CoC strikes the right balance of not being so stifling as to lead to a "toxic positivity" culture where we all have to fake get along. That's the motivation for "Section 2: Acceptable Conflict and Rivalry" - conflict, competitiveness, and banter are absolutely welcome. Personal attacks and hostility that come at the cost of someone else's enjoyment of the game are not.

• The CoC will not affect the vast majority of players: If you're capable of engaging with other players like a functioning adult and don't feel compelled to write things like the examples above, you'll be fine. There are also a very small number of persistent rule-breakers (who sometimes practice malicious compliance) who operate in the gray area of the previous player communication rules. They are much more subtle than the overt cases above because they test and push boundaries and are here mainly to troll others, waste staff time and energy with theoretical debates about rules, and cry wolf about abuse when punished. It is also the behavior of players like this that the CoC is targeting.

• The current state negatively impacts staff: I have burned out before from the community aspect of the game. Moderators have as well. As covered in the first bullet, not policing the user-generated content of the game is out of the question. The CoC is ultimately a tool to protect my development time and energy so that I can focus it on things that more people care about. Being able to take action sooner on bad behavior will alleviate some of the current burden. Having clear guidelines in place will let staff more quickly and more consistently enforce rules, while letting everyone be on the same page of what to expect.

• The current state negatively impacts players: I'm confident that there is selection bias at work in this thread. You wouldn't be here, active on the forums, if you weren't at least somewhat comfortable with the current level of accepted toxicity. If it made you uncomfortable enough to not be here, then by definition, you wouldn't be here. I know for a fact that there are players that actively avoid the forums because it has historically been such an unwelcoming place. My goal is to support these players too. A healthy community is a feature just as much as a QoL change.

• This change is not coming at the cost of gameplay features: It was intentionally sequenced after the past couple months of QoL updates, bug fixes, clan race experiments, my increased forum presence/engagement, etc. I knew this change was needed for the game to be sustainable, but I also knew the optics would be bad if it was the first thing I did after a period of relative inactivity. When I became more active again back in April, I focused on things that more players care about first in hopes of demonstrating this isn't a "focus on moderation or focus on gameplay" choice, but rather something that can (and has) been done in parallel.

• This change is needed for the game to retain new players: In the medium-term (hoping next few months, but we'll see), I want to give the game a marketing budget in the hopes of attracing new players. Having community guardrails in place before a potential influx of new players (wishful thinking, I know, I know) will be really important to ensure we're welcoming and inviting. Think of all the awful Twitch/Kick/YouTube/etc. communities that run unchecked because of lack of moderation - as steward of this community, I recognize that the policies I put in place (or don't) play an important role in setting the tone.

• More moderators can be brought on if needed: Right now, the moderation load is manageable. If it grows significantly, then I will recruit additional moderators. I agree that the majority (or even significant portion) of my time cannot go towards moderation (and it currently does not).

Hopefully that gives a better sense of what I'm trying to achieve and why I feel the CoC is necessary. I hope it also gives some reassurance that the vast majority of you have nothing to worry about. We're not entering an era of censorship, but rather an era of what I hope is a more engaging and productive community experience for the game.

Some of those bot names and that clan name made me giggle. I get why those were removed but still made me lol.