Additional protocol for chat related account bans

Agreed. I wasn’t there when it happened, so I won’t pretend to know every detail. But from what I’ve heard, it sounds like something was taken out of context, and the relationship between the players involved wasn’t considered. That kind of response makes it harder to feel safe speaking in GC.

I’ve already been given a one-hour chat ban in the past for a joke that made perfect sense in context. It wasn’t offensive, and no one took issue with it at the time. Still, it was punished without and a warning given, even though given the context there was no lesson I could learn from it. Since then, I’ve seen other players make openly toxic or insulting comments without any sign of consequences.

Since then, I did bring up other comments directly to Duran, he told me that he does not always apply the rules the same way. That kind of inconsistency opens the door to bias. It means players are not being held to a shared standard, and decisions can depend too much on a single GM’s judgment. That creates an uneven playing field where some get silenced for nothing, while others are allowed to push boundaries without issue.

This isn’t how a healthy community functions. If a joke between friends can lead to a ban, but targeted harassment is ignored, people stop feeling safe to participate at all. A better system is needed. Whether it’s a player petition, a voting process, or a requirement that more than one GM agree on major decisions, something has to change. At the very least, moderation should be consistent and fair.

GM Duran — 2025-05-24 5:20 PMSaturday, May 24, 2025 5:20 PM

Although I understand your point, Smopecakes, I'm strictly against the idea of letting players vote. I mean, we aren't in "The Werewolves of Millers Hollow" and although that isn't the intention of your suggestion, it is quite likely that certain players would at least try to get rid of unwelcome opponents if this opportunity arose. (Even the supermajority does not change this, as votes can be obtained through blackmail or simply through eloquence.)
In my opinion, anyone who has to make decisions will occasionally make the wrong ones, but this applies to groups of people just as much as it does to individuals.
Please also bear in mind that bureaucratisation of the process within the group of developers would definitely mean more work, which could then not be put into the development of the game.
Perhaps there is a way to publish the exact reasons for old chat bans in anonymised form in order to provide insight, but I think the developers have made it very clear that they do not want to and will not publish the reasons under names.
Last but not least, I would like to refer to the code of conduct. Even though there is still some room for interpretation within these rules, as I think has been shown in detail here, it does set out some very clear red lines, which can help each individual decide whether what they want to say could have unpleasant consequences for them.

To describe the voting concept in the positive form that I'm thinking of, it's not players voting someone out. If someone is nominated by the Dev process for an account ban for chat behaviour there would then be an opportunity for a sufficient petition to trigger a vote. It should be a reasonable bar to avoid the extra process and administration when unnecessary.

There do seem to be only a few potentially similar cases I can think of, like Russ and Brian. Even if I might have just GC silenced Russ myself there can be no doubt he serially busted TOS. Brian I disagreed with more but he certainly invested great effort into his ban, entirely derailing the announcement of the biggest stat update in a decade