Hey folks, we made a couple changes recently that you can read up on here. We wanted to go a little further into the why of these changes. In both parts, what we aim to accomplish is consistency of how we try to both moderate our community, and keep a semblence of "light-touch" lore on our Conquest Scene.
Town Name Approvals
We already require Alliance names to be pre-approved by Mag/Crypt. This is simply to try to keep memes out of the greater story of Loka's past, present, and future. It's inconsistent that we don't do this with Town Names. The real issue is exacerbated by the fact that the process of Town Creation is already somewhat rushed. You finish a fight, you're excited to start your town, but now you gotta stop and suddenly put thought into your New Town's name. For brand new players, this just isn't a really fun thing to do right off the bat. Even for veterans, they use the 24hr free rename as a crutch and make meme names with the intent of changing it later. The change to naming your town later is really just meant to give towns more time to think of a cool name, but also lets us maintain consistency of Alliance/Town names.
The change to stop allowing real-world references to places/cities/countries is simply because they bring real-world drama to Loka that we don't want, and frankly nobody really wants. We're not an Earth server, nor should we try to be. Frankly, we think it sounds cooler if it's at least vaguely RPG'y, or Minecraft/Loka-related. However, if the real world place name is obscure enough there is every chance we will allow it. Let's be honest, even if you make up a name there is a good chance there is a tiny place in the world which shares the same name.
Profanity Filter in Town/Alliance chat
On Loka we do our best to try to keep unnecessary or hateful language and the like out of public chat. We recognize, being a PvP-centric server, that we can only be so "PG13". There will always be conflict, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to tackle hate speech and racism on our server. Most of you reading this already know we take these issues far more seriously than most other servers do.
By allowing an "anything goes" attitude in private chats, we are allowing people to be openly racist, hateful, or toxic as long as it's not in our public chat. We're not naive. We are well aware this kind of behavior happens all over the internet and in private discords. However, that does not mean we can't try to prevent it on our platforms. It gets to be a much bigger problem with recruiting and getting new faces on Loka. We've heard of players joining towns/alliances/religions only to be shocked by the kind of language and behavior within those places. We should at least do our part to try to keep that kind of language out of "our chats" even if they're private to Towns and Alliances.
Now there is a very big difference between "Profanity" and racism/hate speech. This is why there's a distinction in the new /profile setting which is that it only allows you to see profanity. We still don't care if you cuss in your own channels, that's a far less serious situation and something a lot of people are used to. What we will censor 100% of the time is hate speech, racism, etc.
Racism has no place on Loka
For us to say this should surprise no one but we're saying it all the same. We are going to do everything in our power to keep the community as positive as possible. As with the introduction and use of permamutes, we will continue to keep a watchful eye out. Adding a filter to private channels just ensures that we are doing the most we can on Loka to provide a safe environment.
Of course, our power to keep things kosher stops outside of our platform. We realize that everybody has a private Discord and there's nothing we can do, nor intend to do to go policing private Discords. It's in nobody's interest for us to do that. The only time we care what people are saying in other places is when it follows a pattern of harassment we are already involved in looking into. The kind of evidence we're sent via screenshots is taken seriously, but also measured with what we already know about a situation. If somebody is being harassed on Loka and it continues to escalate outside of Loka, we will do what we can to resolve the situation.
To provide some clarity on where the boundaries lie:
What we will/can do:
For the Future of Loka, we stake our ground on the side of a positive community, even if we're a majority PvP server. Many have pointed out in the past that we're shooting ourselves in the foot by having such strict policies on public chat, etc. To that we say "So what?" Why shouldn't we try to be a place people want to play, rather than hate to play on. If it means a smaller, more positive community, we are okay with that. It is not our intention to sacrifice the integrity of Loka for more bodies on the server. It's not a smart move for our future and it's the right thing to do. We're a small community still, but we're going to try our hardest to affect change however we can, and we hope you guys are on our side with this one.
As always,
Go Forth!
-Cryptite and Magpieman
Town Name Approvals
We already require Alliance names to be pre-approved by Mag/Crypt. This is simply to try to keep memes out of the greater story of Loka's past, present, and future. It's inconsistent that we don't do this with Town Names. The real issue is exacerbated by the fact that the process of Town Creation is already somewhat rushed. You finish a fight, you're excited to start your town, but now you gotta stop and suddenly put thought into your New Town's name. For brand new players, this just isn't a really fun thing to do right off the bat. Even for veterans, they use the 24hr free rename as a crutch and make meme names with the intent of changing it later. The change to naming your town later is really just meant to give towns more time to think of a cool name, but also lets us maintain consistency of Alliance/Town names.
The change to stop allowing real-world references to places/cities/countries is simply because they bring real-world drama to Loka that we don't want, and frankly nobody really wants. We're not an Earth server, nor should we try to be. Frankly, we think it sounds cooler if it's at least vaguely RPG'y, or Minecraft/Loka-related. However, if the real world place name is obscure enough there is every chance we will allow it. Let's be honest, even if you make up a name there is a good chance there is a tiny place in the world which shares the same name.
Profanity Filter in Town/Alliance chat
On Loka we do our best to try to keep unnecessary or hateful language and the like out of public chat. We recognize, being a PvP-centric server, that we can only be so "PG13". There will always be conflict, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to tackle hate speech and racism on our server. Most of you reading this already know we take these issues far more seriously than most other servers do.
By allowing an "anything goes" attitude in private chats, we are allowing people to be openly racist, hateful, or toxic as long as it's not in our public chat. We're not naive. We are well aware this kind of behavior happens all over the internet and in private discords. However, that does not mean we can't try to prevent it on our platforms. It gets to be a much bigger problem with recruiting and getting new faces on Loka. We've heard of players joining towns/alliances/religions only to be shocked by the kind of language and behavior within those places. We should at least do our part to try to keep that kind of language out of "our chats" even if they're private to Towns and Alliances.
Now there is a very big difference between "Profanity" and racism/hate speech. This is why there's a distinction in the new /profile setting which is that it only allows you to see profanity. We still don't care if you cuss in your own channels, that's a far less serious situation and something a lot of people are used to. What we will censor 100% of the time is hate speech, racism, etc.
Racism has no place on Loka
For us to say this should surprise no one but we're saying it all the same. We are going to do everything in our power to keep the community as positive as possible. As with the introduction and use of permamutes, we will continue to keep a watchful eye out. Adding a filter to private channels just ensures that we are doing the most we can on Loka to provide a safe environment.
Of course, our power to keep things kosher stops outside of our platform. We realize that everybody has a private Discord and there's nothing we can do, nor intend to do to go policing private Discords. It's in nobody's interest for us to do that. The only time we care what people are saying in other places is when it follows a pattern of harassment we are already involved in looking into. The kind of evidence we're sent via screenshots is taken seriously, but also measured with what we already know about a situation. If somebody is being harassed on Loka and it continues to escalate outside of Loka, we will do what we can to resolve the situation.
To provide some clarity on where the boundaries lie:
What we will/can do:
- Prevent hate speech on our platforms. (prejudice against a particular group, especially on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation)
- Our platforms include the in-game server and network, our Official Discord, and Forums.
- Prevent younger members of the community being exposed to swear words on our platforms, while still allowing mature members who wish to see/use that language in their private chat channels.
- Punish those who bypass chat filters with racist/hate speech, even if that is in town/alliance chats.
- We will not monitor the town/alliance chats but if it is reported to us we will take action.
- This will result in an instant permamute or perm mute+ which prevents chatting in town chat too.
- This includes books, named/lored items, signs etc.
- Deal with bullying wherever it takes place, even if it's outside of Loka's platforms.
- Victims should come directly to Magpieman and Cryptite and we will work through the issue with them.
- For those not familiar here is our policy on bullying.
- Prevent bad language outside of Loka's platforms (such as personal discord servers)
- Prevent hate speech outside of Loka's platforms.
- Unless it is targeted at you specifically and we can deal with it under our bullying rules.
For the Future of Loka, we stake our ground on the side of a positive community, even if we're a majority PvP server. Many have pointed out in the past that we're shooting ourselves in the foot by having such strict policies on public chat, etc. To that we say "So what?" Why shouldn't we try to be a place people want to play, rather than hate to play on. If it means a smaller, more positive community, we are okay with that. It is not our intention to sacrifice the integrity of Loka for more bodies on the server. It's not a smart move for our future and it's the right thing to do. We're a small community still, but we're going to try our hardest to affect change however we can, and we hope you guys are on our side with this one.
As always,
Go Forth!
-Cryptite and Magpieman