Planned The current status of chat rules, a review.

[SanCookie]

Hi there,

This thread will demonstrate a review, followed by my honest thoughts about the current status of the chat rules of CubeCraft.


Recently, I witnessed an anonymous case of a player calling someone fat. This got the mentioned player punished by their absolute disbelief. The player wasn't reported; their chat message coincidentally appeared in a screenshot. Nobody involved in that screenshot even knew that calling someone fat was a punishable action.
Upon hearing about the case, the first thing I did was analyze if the story was true. I looked up the player in question, and by surprise, they were surely punished for the exact words mentioned above. Next, I asked a moderator about this particular case, as it seemed incredibly peculiar. The moderator verified that calling someone fat was indeed worth a punishment under the 'bullying' track.

As an averagely older person in this community, I find it rigorous to punish players for calling someone fat. In 99% of the cases where this happens, the speaker is either salty or simply joking. Besides that, it's an online game, most people don't know what you look like. I do see the reason for this rule on other platforms like Discord, where you might know how the receiver looks, but the rule still feels too tough.

Microsoft recently deployed chat rules for Minecraft as a whole. These rules are definitely less strict as they allow you to call someone fat, for example.
I do understand that there should be rules when running a large platform, and that those rules must be balanced to adjust for the age gap between the sizable amount of players. But I also feel that the balance lies too much towards the younger generation. As proven numerous times by other instances (e.g. real life, other Minecraft servers, ...), it's not mandatory to apply strict rules to lead a large community.


Another matter that I want to review is the chat filter currently applied in-game. It feels like too many incorrect words or phrases are getting caught and blocked. This is not only annoying to the sender, as they don't know that their message was blocked, but it's also annoying for the receivers, as it might appear that the sender is ignoring them. There is a way to report incorrectly blocked sentences, but as I said, most of the time you don't know about your message being blocked. And if you do, it's quite unlikely that the word will be reported, as seen by the scarce amount of reported messages in the Chat filter word request thread.

There used to be a message that popped up when you tried to send a message with a blocked word, but it won't be a good solution to re-add such a system. The current chat filter did reduce chat spammers by a bunch but catches too many ordinary messages as well.


There are a couple of endpoints I want to propose with this thread:

1. Chat rules are overly severe as they are now. People like myself are afraid to speak up in the chat, in fear of unknowingly breaking any rule.​

​

2. Not all chat rules should be followed spot on, some scenarios don't require a punishment if you reconsider them.​

​

3. There is a rule for bullying when you send three toxic chat messages, and a rule for bullying when you send a single toxic chat message. Calling someone fat falls under the single toxic chat message. I believe that the three toxic chat message rule should be applied way more frequently, for a dozen more cases, instead of the single toxic chat message rule - even to a point where it's almost rare to get punished for a single toxic chat message.​

​

4. There could be a setting to toggle the amount of profanity you want to receive as a player. A higher profanity setting will more severely apply the current chat filter to the chat box you see. A lower profanity setting will only loosely apply the chat filter, to only the extreme messages.​

If you are willing, feel free to mention anything you do or don't agree with. I'll do my best to answer with an appropriate response.
Lastly, I want to mention that this thread was written from my point of view as a player, and not a member of Team CubeCraft.

San

 

[Egg🥚]

I am completely feeling the same thing. There are (from my point of view) a lot of players getting punished for the smallest things. In my opinion, the moderator should question thereself whether is message is actually hurting someone, or just (strictly) breaking the rules. Moderators should consider if they make the networks a better place with the punishment, or if they are just making the "rulebreaker" sad.
After all, rules are being interpreted by the moderator. There is not always a clear border between allowed and punishable.

To add to your list, moderators should be more careful with permanent mutes. I know quite a lot of people that are muted permanently or for a long time. Often, they have not done anything severe. They have only made too much small mistakes. Even if you add them all up, they are not enough for a permanent mute. Sure, penalties should get more serious, but why not giving the same punishments more times?
No matter of their punishment history, one should not be muted permanently by anonymously calling a player fat. (San's example)

4. There could be a setting to toggle the amount of profanity you want to receive as a player. A higher profanity setting will more severely apply the current chat filter to the chat box you see. A lower profanity setting will only loosely apply the chat filter, to only the extreme messages.

Good idea, but I think that it is not executable. The chat filter file contains so many words from all the different languages, that it would be a very hard and time-consuming process to sort them in extremity.

 

[Aratic]

I think it’s due to many of the moderators wanting to get people in trouble more than wanting to help, salty shadows, has gave a reason why he believes there are so many helpers and it’s just for perms, I believe if cubecraft decides to be more strict with there employees and volunteers as in what they do this could be fixed, filtering out people with this idea of not helping will support the community

 

[xHappyMood]

I think it’s due to many of the moderators wanting to get people in trouble more than wanting to help

that is a weird, baseless statement? i don’t assume you are able to read anyone’s mind (correct me if im wrong) so i very much doubt you can say that

salty shadows, has gave a reason why he believes there are so many helpers and it’s just for perms

if you had read that correctly you’d have found the thread was about people who want to be helper not people who are helper. recruitment is supposed to filter those people out so only the ones that actually want to help remain

 

[Deleted member 347571]

+ going undercover like the buurtpolitie in discord voicechat even though everyone is having fun or laughing.

 

[Deleted member 347571]

There is no need to punish people for having fun and like you said, you can build something without punushing people. Obviously there are rules but sometimes the rules are too much!!!!!!!!!! I always hear staff say toxcity is normal it's still a game, the rules don't make it seem like it at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Aratic]

that is a weird, baseless statement? i don’t assume you are able to read anyone’s mind (correct me if im wrong) so i very much doubt you can say that

if you had read that correctly you’d have found the thread was about people who want to be helper not people who are helper. recruitment is supposed to filter those people out so only the ones that actually want to help remain

I see what you mean, but basic psychology shows that lies exist and trials made by humans and decided by humans are not perfect, also it’s work, if you work you know you usually don’t care if the burger is right or something you just care if it’s done enough

 

[Egg🥚]

also it’s work, if you work you know you usually don’t care if the burger is right or something you just care if it’s done enough

There is a big difference between moderation and the example you have given. Moderators are volunteers: they don't get payed. Fastfood workers do get paid for every hour they work. Why would moderators rush their work, if they don't get paid for the hours they make?

 

[Aratic]

There is a big difference between moderation and the example you have given. Moderators are volunteers: they don't get payed. Fastfood workers do get paid for every hour they work. Why would moderators rush their work, if they don't get paid for the hours they make?

It’s not as big of a difference as you think, which is disappointing, many moderators want cubecraft be have less rule breakers or want to be good in the eyes of cubecraft, both ways benefit the moderators too, the problem is deciding the most ethical possible decisions, that benefit all sides, a good example was I necroposted, not knowing I did I just was warned and told not to do it again, the most ethical way, they could of just punished but they did not.

 

[fazeoul]

Hi there,

This thread will demonstrate a review, followed by my honest thoughts about the current status of the chat rules of CubeCraft.


Recently, I witnessed an anonymous case of a player calling someone fat. This got the mentioned player punished by their absolute disbelief. The player wasn't reported; their chat message coincidentally appeared in a screenshot. Nobody involved in that screenshot even knew that calling someone fat was a punishable action.
Upon hearing about the case, the first thing I did was analyze if the story was true. I looked up the player in question, and by surprise, they were surely punished for the exact words mentioned above. Next, I asked a moderator about this particular case, as it seemed incredibly peculiar. The moderator verified that calling someone fat was indeed worth a punishment under the 'bullying' track.

As an averagely older person in this community, I find it rigorous to punish players for calling someone fat. In 99% of the cases where this happens, the speaker is either salty or simply joking. Besides that, it's an online game, most people don't know what you look like. I do see the reason for this rule on other platforms like Discord, where you might know how the receiver looks, but the rule still feels too tough.

Microsoft recently deployed chat rules for Minecraft as a whole. These rules are definitely less strict as they allow you to call someone fat, for example.
I do understand that there should be rules when running a large platform, and that those rules must be balanced to adjust for the age gap between the sizable amount of players. But I also feel that the balance lies too much towards the younger generation. As proven numerous times by other instances (e.g. real life, other Minecraft servers, ...), it's not mandatory to apply strict rules to lead a large community.


Another matter that I want to review is the chat filter currently applied in-game. It feels like too many incorrect words or phrases are getting caught and blocked. This is not only annoying to the sender, as they don't know that their message was blocked, but it's also annoying for the receivers, as it might appear that the sender is ignoring them. There is a way to report incorrectly blocked sentences, but as I said, most of the time you don't know about your message being blocked. And if you do, it's quite unlikely that the word will be reported, as seen by the scarce amount of reported messages in the Chat filter word request thread.

There used to be a message that popped up when you tried to send a message with a blocked word, but it won't be a good solution to re-add such a system. The current chat filter did reduce chat spammers by a bunch but catches too many ordinary messages as well.


There are a couple of endpoints I want to propose with this thread:

1. Chat rules are overly severe as they are now. People like myself are afraid to speak up in the chat, in fear of unknowingly breaking any rule.​

​

2. Not all chat rules should be followed spot on, some scenarios don't require a punishment if you reconsider them.​

​

3. There is a rule for bullying when you send three toxic chat messages, and a rule for bullying when you send a single toxic chat message. Calling someone fat falls under the single toxic chat message. I believe that the three toxic chat message rule should be applied way more frequently, for a dozen more cases, instead of the single toxic chat message rule - even to a point where it's almost rare to get punished for a single toxic chat message.​

​

4. There could be a setting to toggle the amount of profanity you want to receive as a player. A higher profanity setting will more severely apply the current chat filter to the chat box you see. A lower profanity setting will only loosely apply the chat filter, to only the extreme messages.​

If you are willing, feel free to mention anything you do or don't agree with. I'll do my best to answer with an appropriate response.
Lastly, I want to mention that this thread was written from my point of view as a player, and not a member of Team CubeCraft.

San

My opinion is that CubeCraft is much stricter than Microsoft, that should change right quick, it's annoying that I am talking to a friend and that some of his messages are not sent and others are. The moderators should punish only in cases where it's clearly seen that the issuer intends to hurt, in the report the context of each situation should be seen, for words such as N-word, F*ggot, etc. then I would agree to punish them instantly. I have more things to say but I'm lazy.

 

[Capitan]

Hello!
Thank you all for your feedback on this suggestion! In the next few days we will discuss with the entire Moderation Team the possible changes we will make to our chat rules based on the comments in this thread and the reports we receive on a daily basis.
Regarding our chat filter, we continue to update it frequently and also correct the false positives we find. It is a difficult task, but I want you to know it is always under maintenance and we have improved the way we update it so the number of false positives is minimal (ideally zero) in our new filters, and is being reduced in the old ones.

 

[DarkStray]

Hi there,

This thread will demonstrate a review, followed by my honest thoughts about the current status of the chat rules of CubeCraft.


Recently, I witnessed an anonymous case of a player calling someone fat. This got the mentioned player punished by their absolute disbelief. The player wasn't reported; their chat message coincidentally appeared in a screenshot. Nobody involved in that screenshot even knew that calling someone fat was a punishable action.
Upon hearing about the case, the first thing I did was analyze if the story was true. I looked up the player in question, and by surprise, they were surely punished for the exact words mentioned above. Next, I asked a moderator about this particular case, as it seemed incredibly peculiar. The moderator verified that calling someone fat was indeed worth a punishment under the 'bullying' track.

As an averagely older person in this community, I find it rigorous to punish players for calling someone fat. In 99% of the cases where this happens, the speaker is either salty or simply joking. Besides that, it's an online game, most people don't know what you look like. I do see the reason for this rule on other platforms like Discord, where you might know how the receiver looks, but the rule still feels too tough.

Microsoft recently deployed chat rules for Minecraft as a whole. These rules are definitely less strict as they allow you to call someone fat, for example.
I do understand that there should be rules when running a large platform, and that those rules must be balanced to adjust for the age gap between the sizable amount of players. But I also feel that the balance lies too much towards the younger generation. As proven numerous times by other instances (e.g. real life, other Minecraft servers, ...), it's not mandatory to apply strict rules to lead a large community.


Another matter that I want to review is the chat filter currently applied in-game. It feels like too many incorrect words or phrases are getting caught and blocked. This is not only annoying to the sender, as they don't know that their message was blocked, but it's also annoying for the receivers, as it might appear that the sender is ignoring them. There is a way to report incorrectly blocked sentences, but as I said, most of the time you don't know about your message being blocked. And if you do, it's quite unlikely that the word will be reported, as seen by the scarce amount of reported messages in the Chat filter word request thread.

There used to be a message that popped up when you tried to send a message with a blocked word, but it won't be a good solution to re-add such a system. The current chat filter did reduce chat spammers by a bunch but catches too many ordinary messages as well.


There are a couple of endpoints I want to propose with this thread:

1. Chat rules are overly severe as they are now. People like myself are afraid to speak up in the chat, in fear of unknowingly breaking any rule.​

​

2. Not all chat rules should be followed spot on, some scenarios don't require a punishment if you reconsider them.​

​

3. There is a rule for bullying when you send three toxic chat messages, and a rule for bullying when you send a single toxic chat message. Calling someone fat falls under the single toxic chat message. I believe that the three toxic chat message rule should be applied way more frequently, for a dozen more cases, instead of the single toxic chat message rule - even to a point where it's almost rare to get punished for a single toxic chat message.​

​

4. There could be a setting to toggle the amount of profanity you want to receive as a player. A higher profanity setting will more severely apply the current chat filter to the chat box you see. A lower profanity setting will only loosely apply the chat filter, to only the extreme messages.​

If you are willing, feel free to mention anything you do or don't agree with. I'll do my best to answer with an appropriate response.
Lastly, I want to mention that this thread was written from my point of view as a player, and not a member of Team CubeCraft.

San

Sounds like you ate a lot of words and got fat :/

JK but seriously muted/warned for calling someone fat?
If we look at what the word "Bullying" is not we get this

What bullying is not

• single episodes of social rejection or dislike
• single episode acts of nastiness or spite
• random acts of aggression or intimidation
• mutual arguments, disagreements or fights.

Now let's look at the EXACT definition of Bullying from Merriam-Webster.
Prone to or characterized by overbearing mistreatment and domination of others
notice how it says "Overbearing mistreatment"
Again let's look at the definition on Merriam-Webster
1
a: tending to overwhelm
b: decisively important
2: harshly and haughtily arrogant
Again as we see here it is meant to be something of "greater" significance.

Looking at the cubecraft rules it states:

"In order to maintain a chat suitable for all players, inappropriate language is not allowed on any platform, including our appeals and reports sites.
The inappropriate language rule covers the following situations:
- Extreme toxicity and bullying. Sending offensive messages to the same user more than 3 times may result in a punishment, this depends on the context."

Looking at this it says "Extreme bullying" simply calling someone fat is nowhere near extreme, I've personally called people fatherless and unloved(back in like 2019, all where using hacks like killaura/fly) which is far more extreme than such but still not "extreme bullying" personally I see "extreme bullying" more like harassment, I can see it being bullying, but not so much as "extreme"
But we all know that cubecraft has a very biased ruleset which all comes down the the last statement on the page

"We reserve the right to change our rules at any time and under special circumstances, the moderation team may issue bans or mutes at their own discretion."

 

[Egg🥚]

Looking at this it says "Extreme bullying"

I think they mean "Extreme toxicity and (just normal) bullying"

 

[DarkStray]

I think they mean "Extreme toxicity and (just normal) bullying"

it says and.
If I say "It was extremally fun and exciting" I would assume extreme would be used for both those words as if I were saying "It was extremally fun as well as extremally exciting"
If I wanted to not apply "extreme" to the second word I would say something like "It was extremely fun but wasn't as so exciting"

If it doesn't apply to "bullying"
I would have worded it as
"Extreme toxicity or Bullying" or "Extreme toxicity and/or Bullying" or something along the lines or "such as Bullying or extreme toxicity"

 

[Komodо]

Honestly, as someone who has been called fat my entire life, i have to disagree with this one.
On the overall, i'm in favour of this suggestion. It's sort of ridiculous how fast you can get punished. More lenient rules should be applied.

Though, getting called out fat is really different when it comes with strangers. My friends joke around me with me being fat, thats alright, they're my friends. But when it comes to strangers they may not know how you look like, but it's more the pain from the past that comes above. Also, at this moment, it doesn't do that much to me, if any.

But i remember back in the day when i had my own face on my profile picture, I got called out fat and i was literally in tears. I feel like the same rules should be applied to that.

Nonetheless maybe making the punishment track more lenient would be a good idea (not the amount of toxic messages, but the result of the infraction), since the objection of the rulebreaker isn't always clear nor does it affect everyone.


I don't think a profanity filter would work, people are very creative when it comes to creating swearing words