Moderation Team Blog

How many moderators are there in the moderation team?

How many moderators are there in the moderation team?

http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=stats&do=leaders

Hey there,

I took over moderating the CN Subreddit, r/Cybernations. If you guys would like to bring a member of the CN Mod Team over there, shoot me a PM and I'll set it up.

There have been a few posts over there that would have resulted in or directly constituted violations of the Game Rules or Terms of Service, and I have cracked down on those best I can. The latest was a dude who was trying to pay people IRL $$ to "destroy his roommate's nation." That was a fun one.

But yeah, thought I would mention it so that y'all know the goal of that subreddit is to be a compliment to the CN Forums, not a "rules free" replacement.

Hey there,

I took over moderating the CN Subreddit, r/Cybernations. If you guys would like to bring a member of the CN Mod Team over there, shoot me a PM and I'll set it up.

There have been a few posts over there that would have resulted in or directly constituted violations of the Game Rules or Terms of Service, and I have cracked down on those best I can. The latest was a dude who was trying to pay people IRL $$ to "destroy his roommate's nation." That was a fun one.

But yeah, thought I would mention it so that y'all know the goal of that subreddit is to be a compliment to the CN Forums, not a "rules free" replacement.

Thank you for your comment. This is under discussion and I will let you know the answer.

Received this pm and with permission am posting here with my response.

Hi Keelah,

I thought it was a great idea of you to post a moderator's blog to keep us informed and changing policies on the forums for the betterment. So I wanted to say thank you for your time and diligence to make the game more enjoyable and seamless. Since you pointed out if anyone has questions, they should message you or any member of the moderator team. Well, I got plenty of questions if you don't mind answering them?

How are moderators regulated? How often are they audited? What kind of audit do the moderators go through?

May I ask why the changes being implemented on the forums now? As opposed to... anytime in the past?

My apologies if I'm out of the line, let me know if I am.

My response:

I have no problem answering questions that I can of course.

Moderators are regulated in a number of ways. First way of course, would be that moderation identities are supposed to be kept confidential to players and even other moderators. Secondly, we pick moderators to make sure we maintain a diverse group of individuals from all political sides, big alliances, microalliances, hippies and war alliances to make sure that any discussions always has every point of view. Also a diverse team ensures that in cases where one moderator happens to be in an alliance with a forum poster or has a in-character political opponent then they are highly encouraged to pass it along to one of the other moderators so that bias can't be brought into the equation.

Of course with myself, most everything that I make a decision on in-game or even at the forums, I always include admin in the conversation to ensure that I'm being fair to the moderators, fair to the players and certainly so admin is in the loop so nothing takes him by surprise.

As far as auditing, that has been done previously once every few months. From here on out they will be done once a month. Things taken into consideration are moderation actions and reviewing them to make sure moderators are acting within the rules themselves. Also reviewed are their activity and ensuring we maintain an active moderation team to maintain the diversity. Those are the most important things we check in an audit because they affect the balance and confidence from the players on the moderation staff. In those audits, we certainly do monitor forum admin actions, in-game moderation actions, and forum moderation actions to ensure that one moderator will not be doing all of the work. This is important not in the sense that doing too much work is bad, but work needs to be spread out between different moderators to not have it appear that one moderator is targeting a person or an alliance just because they happen to be always active and doing all the work before other moderators can do it. This has recently been a problem with myself particularly and why the push right now for an active moderation staff so that I'm not getting all the reports or moderation actions and also to allow a chain of command for the player to question any moderator action.

The reason for the changes now would be reviewing what we have done in the past and seeing how we can improve things and make it better and of course fair. Of course, any time leadership is moved around, as in myself now being Head Moderator, there are always changes new blood brings to any organization. One of the most recent changes that was done was the changing of the moderation forums to being viewable by the players reporting and all mod staff. In my opinion, this was a necessary change that should have happened years ago.

Thanks for your questions and I hope my answers help some.

Could I possibly request that my inbox is increased so I don't have to delete any messages?

Could I possibly request that my inbox is increased so I don't have to delete any messages?

Man, how do you have 200 pms? You should clean those up. However, I did up the maximum to 250.

Since posts in the moderation sub section of the forum are now secret until approved are posters notified when posts are denied or approved?

In the moderation top level of the forum the threads have been set to be secret until approved for many years now. Yes, if we approve a thread for discussion we will send a private message to the OP letting them know that their thread has been approved for discussion out of courtesy so they can "make their case" per se.

Man, how do you have 200 pms? You should clean those up. However, I did up the maximum to 250.

Accumulation of 8 years of playing the game as well as engaging in CNRP which required separate messages as the forums at that time didn't support conversations.

Accumulation of 8 years of playing the game as well as engaging in CNRP which required separate messages as the forums at that time didn't support conversations.

Ahhh true point, indeed.

Could I possibly request that my inbox is increased so I don't have to delete any messages?

Or your could just be like me. Nobody sends me PMs anymore. A few years ago I was overwhelmed with the number of PMs I received, but then suddenly people lost interest in me. I do not understand why.

Is there any scope for Moderator Identities to be public if they also have active nations & in fact, require that moderators use their IG personas as moderators/ game staff.

Most other online games don't hide forum mod identities and it would mean better transparency of decisions, which in the past, have been accused of being politically driven.

Or your could just be like me. Nobody sends me PMs anymore. A few years ago I was overwhelmed with the number of PMs I received, but then suddenly people lost interest in me. I do not understand why.

You stopped playing CNRP.

Would there be a possibility of the repeal of bans after say 18 months of zero infringements with anyone who is allowed to come back be allowed one chance within a period of 90 days of which if they break it, they get instantly banned?

That is definitely something that can be looked at on a case by case basis.

The person in question can either post a thread in the Warn and Ban Appeal forums or private message me or Socrates.

The criteria that will be looked at on each situation:

• Length of time since banning.
• Whether there were ban evasion attempts and duration of time since last ban evasion.
• Behavior here at the forums (ie: anyone posting things intentionally to get banned like images, mod identities, and basically total disregard to forum rules in a deliberate manner).

Obviously the second and third criteria will eliminate many of the known persistent abusers, but I'm sure there are some that fall in the smaller group that did not try to circumvent rules.

What happened to Allan a Dale? I made an avatar for him like he requested and everything!

In addition to this, do you know if there are any internships currently available at Planet Realm Gaming?

I don't know what happened to Allan...according to records he self-retired back in July 2014.

As far as internships, I don't know. That'd be something to ask Admin.

Does Admin have a Skype that I can contact?

If not, do you have a Skype that I can contact? I am really enjoying this Q&A session.

I was banned a few years ago. My previous nation had an 80 percent warn and my next nation racked up a 60 percent warn. It was quite the surprise to me when the warns got merged and off with my head!

I rolled this nation and a member of the community, nice fellow, encouraged me to make an appeal to the GM team. I stated my case and one of them contacted me directly and told me I'm on double secret warn/triple secret probation so to speak. I earned off my warns and haven't had many problems since.

Getting unbanned is possible, just not for all, and I think that even if there was a general amnesty policy, there still needs to be an at the discretion of the Mod clause that they can invoke for particularly disgusting sorts of individuals.

Other than that, I don't pay too much attention to all the moaning about the mods, seems like everyone complains about the mods in every game there is.

Such is the way of things.

Getting unbanned is possible, just not for all, and I think that even if there was a general amnesty policy, there still needs to be an at the discretion of the Mod clause that they can invoke for particularly disgusting sorts of individuals.

By that, are you referring to those who commit LUEcide?

Is there any scope for Moderator Identities to be public if they also have active nations & in fact, require that moderators use their IG personas as moderators/ game staff.

Most other online games don't hide forum mod identities and it would mean better transparency of decisions, which in the past, have been accused of being politically driven.

While I understand the accusations, I don't see us breaking with tradition of keeping our identities private.

I believe, last time I looked, all moderators currently (not the Senior Staff of SoE and Andro) have active nations in game.

Any act by a moderator that comes in question as being politically driven will be reviewed by Senior moderation including Admin and dealt with immediately.

Course as long as we all (I mean me as a player as well) play by the rules and don't break the rules, then there is never any reason to worry about any false claims by players. Any player using mods as a weapon will be warned for reporting false reports.

As I said in the response to that private message I posted above, with the change of the moderation forums to being viewable by only mods and the players reporting this will stop any false reporting by players for political reasons. As far as the moderation, all actions are reviewed and if there is ever any question or concerns on a warn or action I am always available by private message and so is admin.

Does Admin have a Skype that I can contact?

Not that I'm aware of. He and I don't use it to communicate. We use other means.