I say absolutely NO to player volunteers. Can you say "power trip"?

My suggestion is no limit to the ignore list. When I actually get around to logging in, I am testing the one in Neverwinter. I run around town and /ignore people with stupid names.

Have trusted people in your guild be able to blacklist people, so you can /ignore people before you hear their crap.

That and report them. Get your friends to report them. If they won't, get new friends (assuming you aren't being an overly sensitive wimp).

I've always found the ignore tool to be a lot more helpful than the report tool.

Well see that is the thing... This is the response I get whenever I bring up this problem in the gaming community. "Just ignore it" or "Grow thicker skin"

But the problem with ignoring it is that by not challenging this person who's behavior is uncalled for, you are in turn giving him the green light to act this way.
By not saying anything to contest him, you are virtually telling him, "Go right ahead and say whatever you want" whether you know it or not.

By reporting and showing the community that this behavior is unacceptable and will be met with swift justice you detour people from acting that way because they know they will get punished for it.

This is why I think we need to be more proactive in our approach instead of taking this docile "I'm gunna roll over and die and let him do whatever he wants" approach that we have gotten so used to.

It is so easy to sit back and do nothing, but its the real heros who stand up in the face of adversity.

If you watch the video I mentioned you will understand.

Go to Youtube and search:

Extra Credits, Season 4, Episode 11 - Harassment

One game I played had players get responsibilities in the game, and often we'd see them abuse their powers. It happened all the damn time.

Indeed I am aware that these privileges can and are abused.
But this is not the subject of my post. It was just a minor suggestion/question that was part of a larger problem.

The main subject is what is going to be done about it so that justice will be met to those who choose to be immature racist or sixist jerks.

Gaming is mean't to be fun for everyone, of all races, ages, creeds and genders. There is no reason why people should be allowed to use the online gaming community as a platform for unmitigated hate and get away with it.

I agree with this.

In my experience, cyber bullying is just as likely to come FROM volunteer moderators. Some people get high with power if you give them the smallest amount of authority.

Its best to have a team of experienced and professional (paid) administrators and a report button.

Please stop derailing the thread, this is about what to do about online Harassment so that we can mitigate and stop it.

This is not a thread about moderators abusing their power.

Stay on topic.

It seemed to me that we're on topic just fine.

Control should only be in the hands of people PAID to moderate the game. If you're job is on the line for abuse of power, you mitigate the abuse of power almost completely.

Now, I think to stop harassment? Ignore and report buttons would be easy. Right click someone or their name in a chat box and maybe when you right click a pop-up would appear and allow you to choose either. That seems like the best options to me.

I'm a bit confused. You mentioned volunteer moderators for ESO in your OP. A few of us thought that would be a bad way to deal with "online harassment so that we can mitigate and stop it." I also offered my opinion on a superior alternative, paid administrators and a report button.

We were also mentioning that online harassment can come from volunteers as well.

Just my opinion and you're free to disagree with it, but I thought it was clearly on topic.

You are correct sir. He's just probably embarrassed because everyone is disagreeing with him, but it's okay, Llama. Everyone has a bad or uninformed idea every once in a while.

Report buttons work -very- well. It's quick and easy. So easy even a noob can use it.

I will use ignore, I hang with friends, I don't spend a lot of time reading chat, I just avoid ahats how ever I can, I for the most part don't have any real problems, and if I do I move along quickly. I think once the 30 day exodus happens ESO will have a pretty good community, of Elder Scrolls fans, but there will always be the one.. I agree with others here no player's should be givien any kind of special power over other players, never works out well, which is sad..

Sure you can't get rid of all of it, but an aggressive moderation team can go a long way towards cleaning things up.

I've been playing Halo since Halo 2. Back then, the community was a cesspool. Swearing, insults, vulgarity, sixism, racism and all other sorts of nonsense. Since then they have gotten better at responding to complaints and harsher on repeat offenders. I forget her name but there is some executive working on Halo 4 that has made it her mission to make the servers a comfortable place for female gamers (who have traditionally been harassed for no reason.)

There is a trade off though. Aggressive moderation also drives away a chunk of your community, and not just the bad ones. Back in the day when you joined a Halo match, every single person except maybe one would have their mic on. Now almost no body does. When people do have mics on, they're usually in party chat. Its really hard to find cool people to play with now and I think that's because of the attempt to end harassment. People don't like being excessively monitored and censured, even if they aren't doing anything wrong.

In MMOs that I've played though, there usually isn't much abuse. The biggest problem is spam and advertisemants.

Voice chat seems to make things worse since people will just yell at whoever is listening.

Fixed it.

Exactly.

Its striking that balance that is the hard part.

But heck, this whole game is a balancing act: Balancing between an MMO and a TES game.

In reverse order.

I don't need to watch a video, I've been online since before the Intarwebz

I said in my post to report people and get your friends to report etc.

If you think you can stop trolls, then you haven't been online much. By all means tell them to stop before you ignore them, but it just feeds them. They want the attention, they enjoy knowing they aggravated you since it gives them a sense of power, ie they MADE you mad.

The best way to combat this is to report it every time. Then /ignore the person. If it's really bad, report it to your guild. Encourage the guild to post a blackball list, to share it with allied guilds.

The flip side is know what is truly inappropriate and what is harassment. I once got kicked for a day because a mod didn't like that I said "/ass" in a sentence. In case that gets censored, and for those who don't remember MUDs, I used the shortcut for assisting, ie attack same target as the other player. That is the kind of thing I referred to when I said don't be overly sensitive.

That's actually a great idea. If trolls were ignored by a sizable portion of the game population, rather than just a few select people here and there, they would be much more likely to behave.

Thanks for the idea. I will definitely have a list for my own guild to share with allies.

Ya, that is definitely excessive. Did you explain that you weren't using a swear word, but an abbreviation?

I don't have much of an issue with anyone, to be honest. Yeah, there are those who insult for no reason, but I'm often the one being ignored; I rationalize a situation they made up to the extent that they don't feel in control of their initiated harassment anymore.

That, and I generally take what people say with a grain of salt, unless I've known them for awhile and respect their opinion to a degree. Basically, everyone is 12 years old until proven innocent.

You are quite welcome and please do. Will help us all out!

My first reaction to being told not to do that again was "Huh?" Even when he pointed it out I was confused because I read it as /assist, so when I finally caught on he had muted my global chat capability so I whispered "you gotta be kidding" *kick* Fortunately he was a relatively new mod and most of the old timers knew me (like my brother for instance) and it got reversed.

I usually get in trouble for "bad words" that aren't, like [censored], you know a female dog? Or the word that means to sentence someone to the Christian version of Hades, which is another example in and of itself.

Not sure we are on the same page. We aren't talking trash talking or being a snot-nosed jerk we are talking about the morons who use racial, homophobic, gender-based slurs etc.

That said, I don't care if you are 12 or 42, or 92, act right or /ignore.

*edited because my fingers are dyslexic and English isn't their 1st language*

As others have said, use the ignore list. I don't even do that myself. I dont care if some clown says something racist or whatever. Doesnt bother me in the least so this whole issue is mostly irrelevant to me.

So you are ok with tacitly condoning said behavior?

Most people who harass others on the internet use those slurs just as a 12 year old would use a word they just learned.

racial, homophobic, gender-based slurs, eh? As stated by others, yes, moderation is needed, and those who harass need to be dealt with. However, there are also people who look for any chance to be offended, and I personally find them to be more annoying.

Yeah, I know, your brain just exploded with preconceptions of what that means. No, it does not mean I use or condone any of the aforementioned slurs, but I find those who blow these things into a larger proportion than necessary to be the ones who feed these detestable people (racists, etc...). I don't know if you're taking this post personally or not, but I don't know what kind of person you are, so I'll just say that I'm not speaking about you in-particular.

At the end of the day, we want a safe place for everyone to play. Slurs can be thought up on the spot, but it is the immature mentality which will act upon using these slurs, whether or not the individual is an advlt or not. The reason I said "everyone is 12 until proven innocent", it means that I am willing to respect them as a human being, but I will also take what they say as though it were from an immature mind which has a limited grasp of what's right or wrong. If they are proven innocent, then I will expand my vision of them, and treat/respect them as such.

Key point? Don't give undue attention to those who harass. Report them, ignore them, and move on; that is ALL you can do, unless you are comfortable with reasoning with them. Insulting them will only egg them on, and make them want to bother more people....you haven't helped anyone.

The end.

Either take a stand against them, or ignore them. But to be bothered by it without doing either appears to me as an act of utter redundancy.