In-Game Report Reputation
Without a doubt, staff has a ton of reports coming in at all times. It has also been said that a lot of them have been false reports such as being scammed or a custom being stolen. I'm sure a lot of these false reporters tend to be repeat offenders, too. So, we should start keeping track of who makes good reports and bad ones.
I propose an in-game reputation system for reports. After a staff member reviews a report and investigates the situation if needed, before going on to the next report, the staff member will decide to give the reporter positive reputation (+1) or negative reputation (-1). By accumulating a positive or negative reputation, various things can happen.
A.) Time between reports can vary. Those with a very high reputation can have the waiting period between reports lowered from the default 3 minutes to something much lower like a minute or 30 seconds. Lower reputation will increase the wait period between reports to up to maybe 10 minutes. This would help reduce repeat offenses on false reporting while promoting good reporters.
B.) This stat can be used as a metric in reviewing PR applications. If people really cared about promoting a safe community as a PR, they would first do their part as a player by making proper reports. Higher reputations would be more favorable when reviewing applications to show that they do know the rules of iEra.
C.) (Optional) Rewards could be offered for extremely good reporters just as a thank you from staff. (EC, hats, gralats, etc.)
With this system, staff may be able to act faster by not having to go through as many false reports. Staff may also be able to scout for potential PRs. Finally, we may be able to reward people for their help in keeping our community safe.
Concerns and discussion
Regarding rewarding reporters
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Beta Frisko
Plus adding to that this will just cause a non-ending event which will cause people to just hunt one another and cause trouble. Each one will report his friend or enemy just to make good use of it. Everyone will leave everything and just start reporting. Would cause a chaos.
This is a good reason for not offering rewards. As someone else had said, there wouldn't even need to be an announcement of this being implemented. Though, if this is added unannounced, how will we not find out about the report timers I suggested...hmm
Anyways, if a lot of good reports are made, then we would at least catch more illegal activity. If people just spam bad reports, the system will eventually slow it down enough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Beta Frisko
In my perspective if this is actually implemented, yeah it shouldnt be announced and the rewards would be money + ecs. not any items to not cause publicity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Matt McKinnon
I like this idea. But I don't think people should be rewarded by reporting people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Viguetas
I do agree with this 90%, but this might give PRs the idea that they don't have to review every report. In some situations one might be telling the truth, and not lying like his previous reports say. A player might be telling the truth and when the staff member shows up to the report the player stopped harassing, swearing, etc. Also, being a new player you might not know how the report system works and recieve a lot of negative points while you were just learning how to play the game, and it might effect you in the future. This idea is good, but there are also a lot of possible negatives that come with it.
Reputation could be kept hidden from regular PRs as the system will sort of filter reports with the different wait times. This way, they wont discriminate between reports from high and low rep players. Maybe only high admins that partake in the hiring process can actually check reputation.
There could be a no reputation (±0)button for those cases where the suspect can't be caught in the act. +1 can be for good reports where appropriate action was taken, -1 can be for definite false reports.
Players could start with a set amount of reputation, much like how we on Era-go have 10 rep by default. That way, penalties only start to apply after a good number of repeated false reports.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Timothy Rodgers
I like the idea but you should keep in mind that there are staff out there that dislike certain players and give them a bad reputation for the hell of it.
Ideally, reports should be kept anonymous if possible. Although, abusing the reputation system would fall under abusing staff powers and they should get punished for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Beta Frisko
The idea is kind of good but snk currntly as i was told is the only scripter available. And he has been busy with countryside for its release this year. Keep in mind that such thing might actually take a capacity from the server and would cause a bit more lag more than the lag we already got. When the orcs were released in era, the server packed and had to be restarted each 50 hours, the same thing will happen. No new ideas like this would be good for the server. But i assure you if this wouldnt cause lag and the server gets upgraded, its a great idea.
For the most part, I don't think it'd cause a whole lot of extra lag than now. There really isn't much to implement. There'd mainly be an extra variable for keeping track of rep, a way for staff to adjust rep, and the new proposed timer system (Actually not sure about how the timers would impact server lag). Where this falls on the priority list would depend on snk and maybe other staff. If he deems this more important than countryside, than it'd be put at the top. If not I hope at the very least it'd be put on a to-do list for the near future.
Unaddressed Concern
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vacci
I was thinking, what if a player with an extremely negative reputation makes a good report? Should the system allow players to get out of the negatives quickly with good reports like +2 or more with a good report and -1 with a bad report in extreme cases. Also, should the cooldown timer be reset to the default 3 minutes for that one report only since they made a good report? This way, good reports are rewarded even to people with negative rep.
What about the inverse case where extremely positive reputations make false reports? This would be unlikely as they should know the rules if they have a high rep, but, should bigger rep penalties occur with a false report? This would be because in society sometimes it's really easy to tarnish a good reputation but, it's hard to build up.