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Blocking Players
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@Faraday Most Ares games seem fairly small. Forum blocks (and even in some cases channel blocks) pose the risk of players missing out on key game information/context. But we’re adults, so if somebody wants to roll those dice… they should be able to, I guess.
If it’s an issue of not wanting to hear that person over there breathing or somebody you don’t vibe with taking up a lot of space, an easily undone/temp ignore option seems reasonable.
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My preference would be as such:
A single universal block that notifies the blocked individual in the case they attempt to directly contact me (be it page, pm, mail, whatever), but in all other cases does not notify the blocked individual. For group pms/pages, it would strip me from the group for all of the others, and issue the notification to the blocked individual.
I could see situations where blocking someone limits access to certain plots / plot information, but in those cases, I’m willing to make that sacrifice to avoid someone I’ve decided is worth blocking, and if it looks like the person I’ve blocked is central to a large amount of the plot on the game, then it’s time to discuss my options with staff / consider leaving the game.
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I don’t have a lot of thoughts on how overall blocking someone should function. I just avoid people I don’t like and usually the games where they play, so I can’t actually think of a time that I page-locked someone.
But a command that just squelches a person on a channel would be a welcome addition.
channel/ignore <someone>to clip the oversharers out of the conversation.I don’t think there needs to be any notification or any way for someone to see if they’re being ignored. People don’t need to be aware how often I want to mute them.
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In the case of forum and/or channel blocks, a feature I would recommend would be something akin to how these forums work (or at least MSB used to work, I haven’t used the feature in some time): One is alerted to the blocked person posting something, but not what they’ve said unless one clicks through to see what they’ve written. This would only work on the portal, though, so I’m not sure if that’s something you’re of a mind to implement even if it’s possible.
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@Pavel said in Blocking Players:
In the case of forum and/or channel blocks, a feature I would recommend would be something akin to how these forums work (or at least MSB used to work, I haven’t used the feature in some time): One is alerted to the blocked person posting something, but not what they’ve said unless one clicks through to see what they’ve written. This would only work on the portal, though, so I’m not sure if that’s something you’re of a mind to implement even if it’s possible.
I would disagree with this in the case of a channel mute: if I’m muting someone because they are just so chattery or I’m BEC about them, the last thing I want is a stream of notifications about them talking.
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@Roz
Same, this is ultimately why Discord blocking drives me nuts. It doesn’t help to see a thousand notifications about a person I’m putting myself in a little mental time-out to not want to punch in the goddamn face. Just erasing them from channel history would be pretty sweet, though. -
@Roz said in Blocking Players:
@Pavel said in Blocking Players:
In the case of forum and/or channel blocks, a feature I would recommend would be something akin to how these forums work (or at least MSB used to work, I haven’t used the feature in some time): One is alerted to the blocked person posting something, but not what they’ve said unless one clicks through to see what they’ve written. This would only work on the portal, though, so I’m not sure if that’s something you’re of a mind to implement even if it’s possible.
I would disagree with this in the case of a channel mute: if I’m muting someone because they are just so chattery or I’m BEC about them, the last thing I want is a stream of notifications about them talking.
While a fair concern, I think it’s the only design choice that makes sense given the conversational nature of channels. Not everyone will be okay with constantly missing context, or not understanding what people are responding to, etc.
ETA: Though perhaps a difference between muting and blocking? So if you’re absolutely sure you 100% don’t want to hear from this person, you can block them on channels. With muting being more akin to Discord’s solution.
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@Pavel said in Blocking Players:
@Roz said in Blocking Players:
@Pavel said in Blocking Players:
In the case of forum and/or channel blocks, a feature I would recommend would be something akin to how these forums work (or at least MSB used to work, I haven’t used the feature in some time): One is alerted to the blocked person posting something, but not what they’ve said unless one clicks through to see what they’ve written. This would only work on the portal, though, so I’m not sure if that’s something you’re of a mind to implement even if it’s possible.
I would disagree with this in the case of a channel mute: if I’m muting someone because they are just so chattery or I’m BEC about them, the last thing I want is a stream of notifications about them talking.
While a fair concern, I think it’s the only design choice that makes sense given the conversational nature of channels. Not everyone will be okay with constantly missing context, or not understanding what people are responding to, etc.
Idk my feeling to that is…they just shouldn’t mute, in that case? LIke, that’s just part of gagging someone on channel. It’s how the functionality worked on older codebases.
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@Roz said in Blocking Players:
@Pavel said in Blocking Players:
@Roz said in Blocking Players:
@Pavel said in Blocking Players:
In the case of forum and/or channel blocks, a feature I would recommend would be something akin to how these forums work (or at least MSB used to work, I haven’t used the feature in some time): One is alerted to the blocked person posting something, but not what they’ve said unless one clicks through to see what they’ve written. This would only work on the portal, though, so I’m not sure if that’s something you’re of a mind to implement even if it’s possible.
I would disagree with this in the case of a channel mute: if I’m muting someone because they are just so chattery or I’m BEC about them, the last thing I want is a stream of notifications about them talking.
While a fair concern, I think it’s the only design choice that makes sense given the conversational nature of channels. Not everyone will be okay with constantly missing context, or not understanding what people are responding to, etc.
Idk my feeling to that is…they just shouldn’t mute, in that case? LIke, that’s just part of gagging someone on channel. It’s how the functionality worked on older codebases.
From what I recall, there were no built-in channel blocks in older codebases, so it depended on whatever softcode people wrote up. And most games didn’t bother to have any.
Regardless, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest more options over fewer. Especially if the alternative is “just put up with it.”
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
BE AN ADULT -
As someone who uses ignore functions a lot, I’m with @Roz on this.
If people are seemingly all “that sucks” or “wow crazy story” on a channel out of the blue, I can piece together that it’s in response to someone I have blocked.
It happens on the forums all the time.
If you don’t know what I mean, I have to imagine you won’t use this function much anyway.
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@Pavel said in Blocking Players:
From what I recall, there were no built-in channel blocks in older codebases, so it depended on whatever softcode people wrote up. And most games didn’t bother to have any.
Yeah that’s why I’m struggling a bit, because there was no established paradigm on any MU codebase I’ve ever played on. You could gag an entire channel and you could pagelock somebody (which made the command itself fail) but you couldn’t selectively mute a single person from a channel.
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It’s so funny how people’s game experiences vary so much! For me it was a common game softcode feature on the games I came up on, so my brain naturally assumed it was common everywhere.
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Kind of a stream of consciousness reply to @Faraday in her original post:
I think there should be “tiers” of blocking, but I’m not going to propose something consistent here:
No contact blocking.
- Informs the other party that they have Crossed A Line
, and also alerts staff that this player is absolutely not having it. - Would require “ARE YOU SURE?” type confirmation to make sure this is not “for the lols” and is not to be used lightly. Also carries a warning that it cannot be removed without admin intervention.
- Prohibits contact from the no-contact-blocked player in any way (as much as possible).
- Perhaps even an IP or domain block as the filter, to catch some of the (non-VPN) abusers.
- Either party trying to get around this after it’s in place could potentially auto-report to staff. Again, not to be used lightly.
- Unsure how this could work in the case of a roster character, though, since auto-removing it on rostering opens the door wide to obvious forms of deceit and abuse.
Specific player and/or handle blocking.
- Not exactly a no-contact, but “I don’t want to listen to them.”
- Basically suppresses everything from that character/handle (pages, post notifications, emits, mail, etc.), but the initiator of the block can still see if the blocked person created a post (by manually going to the forum/board, such as when the blocked person is the author of the thread).
- Optional addition to notify the blocked party that they have been blocked. To make it really clear.
Muting.
- For lesser or temporary silence, such as a specific person on a specific channel, or when you just don’t want them paging you right now (“not a good time” “but…” “DID I TYPO?”).
- Informs the other party that they have Crossed A Line
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So my actual fuller feelings are this: blocking someone from having direct contact with you is different from wanting to mute them on channel. I think the overall philosophy of the existing pm/ignore is correct in giving the other user some sort of feedback when they attempt to page someone who’s blocked them; I don’t think the message should go into the ether.
I think that a channel/mute or channel/ignore feels like a separate thing. When I block someone, it’s serious. If I make it so that someone can’t page me, that’s a step towards No Contact. When I want to mute someone on channels, it can be a much less serious thing: I just need to not see their chattering for a while. It could very well be just a temporary breather. I don’t think that there needs to be a notification to the other party that someone’s put them on channel/ignore or whatnot.
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The idea of me blocking someone and them receiving any notification other than “X is not receiving OOC pages right now” stresses me out.
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So you can please some of the people some of the time…
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Appreciate all the feedback from everyone. Like @Pavel mentioned, there’s no system that will please everybody, but I think the consistent theme is that people view channel blocks very differently from page blocks, so there needs to be a way to differentiate.
The current prototype defines a generic “blocks” system, managed via a single settings page/command. This lets systems define different block types. It’s extensible, so plugin designers could potentially hook into the blocks as well.
PM blocks will give a failure message if they try to PM you, but it’s indistinguishable from the “do not disturb” feature (to @helvetica’s point about not broadcasting the fact that you’re ignoring them.)
Channel blocks will just silence the messages. No one will know.
Forum blocks could work the same way as channels and Mail blocks could work the same way as PMs, though I haven’t decided if it’s worth implementing those yet.
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Here’s a question to add to the discussion:
Should staff be able to see information related to blocking, such as a list of blocks?
I can both see arguments for and against it, but I’m curious as to what others think.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@MisterBoring said in Blocking Players:
Should staff be able to see information related to blocking, such as a list of blocks?
That… is a damn good question. Yesterday, I was thinking about it as part of this conversation, but I couldn’t settle my mind on the idea one way or the other. I’m usually in favour of providing staff more information rather than less, but Ares definitely seems to lean more towards ‘no more information than is strictly necessary.’ So while I might prefer that staff have said information, I think it goes against the overall design philosophy.
Perhaps it should be a configurable option? I don’t know, I’ve not tried setting up Ares to fiddle with it, even though I keep meaning to. I can’t make my Victorian vampire game if I don’t fiddle.
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@Pavel I feel like the arguments against it are mainly just privacy related and also those situations where a bad actor might be on friendly terms with staff and staff could go “Oh, you just got blocked by Player X. Do you want me to tell them not to do that?” or something.
The argument for it that I can see is it gives staff the opportunity to spot problem players and remove them faster. If suddenly 17 people have blocked the same player, maybe that needs investigation and remediation or that player needs to be shown the door.
