For most offenses, in-game bans should not be transferred over onto the discord. In the case that a ban is unrelated to undesirable chat messages(racism, sexism, toxicity, etc), I personally do not believe there is a reason for an in-game ban to remove a persons ability to interact with the community nigh-completely(until appealed) over an app/browser that is made for just that; chatting.
As people do not get removed from phase after an in-game ban, I do not see the justification behind it happening over discord, considering discord is less connected to the in-game server than Phase is, where the offense occurred.
Only ban ingame banned people in Discord if they broke the chat rules except S1#11 filters, because in Discord there is no caps/repetition filter and discord rules != ingame rules.
Why not the other rules?
In Discord you cannot break anything in /build
In Discord you cannot hack with terraria hacks like godmode
In Discord you cannot do (DTP) exploits
In Discord you cannot misuse dtp cmds, bots cmds only work in spam channel
Banning a spammer or racism enterer for example also in discord is imo ok because they are not so communicative.
They are intended to be. Unlike with Discord, this still has the potential of being automatic because the account is the same.
For bans themselves, the entire concept is that you are banned from our community, not the server. Once you are banned from our community, you must either appeal or leave the community.
To the counter, I’ve seen no situation where the suggested change would improve anything. Is there someone who was banned in-game have a positive effect on the discord server that outweighs their ban somehow? Why would they not just appeal? And if they fail to do so, why are they being allowed to continue existing in our community, do you want rule breakers in our community?
I personally cannot trust someone who violates the rules in-game, to the point of being banned, to not be a risk in being allowed to continue use of our other services.
This is what myself and others find an issue with. It is understandable for those who violate the rules to be punished in some way, but it does not make sense to completely remove all of them from the community. A lot of the rules that may get someone banned in-game are not applicable to the discord server, where chatting with others is practically the only thing you do. This is why I believe those banned for undesirable chat messages should be removed, while those who break other rules(unless done maliciously) should be shown some lenience. This is more so when you have members of regular status essentially get cut off from the community for days, often due to “minor violations”, because of the relatively lengthy appeal/wait time. If someone’s contributions to the community is solely reliant on their actions in-game, why have a discord server at all?
I wouldn’t know, because they tend to get banned before that could be determined. I severely doubt that those who get banned for rules un-malicious in nature would have a perceivable negative affect on the community, however.
The reason I didn’t address this is because most of the people that don’t appeal, are not affected by this to begin with. Those who don’t appeal are typically those who do not care enough to, or were blatantly obvious with their intent to spread malicious intent. These same people cannot be pointed out among the thousands of those in the discord unless they give themselves away or are regulars, which leads me to my next point. The people that contribute the most to the community, in-game or not, who happen to be the most and pretty much only ones truly affected by this are the most regular members of this community. These people tend to be the only ones banned, often for comparatively “insignificant issues”, because they are reputable enough to point out, and usually in a positive way.
Nobody wants rule breakers in a community, but the simple reality is that there is always going to be. The only problem here is that with the restrictions DG imposes as an attempt to offset that reality, it is doing more harm to the community that actually cares for the server than those who do not.
They’re not completely removed from the community, the forum is exempt from this rule, but only because it facilitates ban appeals. It still does, however, allow them contact at least.
Besides that, I don’t really understand your reasoning. You seem to think that just because something doesn’t work the way you want it to that it means it makes no sense. However, what I’ve stated before is, I specifically want the community to be considered as one thing, not in parts (i.e. there is only the DG community). It is and has always been about the Terraria server first and foremost, all services beyond that are an extension of it. Naturally different services require different rules as necessary, which is irrelevant to whether a ban should apply to one service or all.
Just as we don’t ban people from a specific dimension because they broke a rule that only exists there, we ban you across all relevant services because you broke the contract between you and the server that you will follow the rules. It seems odd to me that this part so far made sense to you but not the part about Discord.
I’ve not rejected this suggestion yet (and still won’t) precisely because there may be someone who has something to say that could be important to think about that does follow the intent. But simply taking what I say is intended and saying the opposite does not help, and if it is evident that this is all there is to say, then it will be rejected.
Now on a few points that are somewhat tangential to what I’ve said so far:
A ban is not for a minor violation. That is what a warning is for.
Those two sentences seem completely unrelated. If you’re saying something like:
“If what someone does in-game is the only thing that is important, why do we have a discord server?” then we have a discord server because that’s what people wanted. I don’t see why it has to be more complicated than that.
Seems like you have two things in there.
Well-known members of the community are the only ones who will be banned outside of the server
No, not only. Yes, only people we know are banned can be banned if there’s no other way to tie them to in-game accounts, but it is not exclusive to well-known members.
Under the condition that they are well-known, then they are expected to know the rules and not break them. If someone is well-known and is breaking rules but is not banned, that’s a problem, they are intended to be unless those rules require warnings first.
I don’t see, if it is even true, that because we are more likely to know who people are on discord if they are well-known, and that means there will be proportionally more well-known people being banned on discord that way, that it is not part of my intent that rule breakers are not permitted to be a part of the community.
If you remove the well-known trait from this (it is irrelevant if they break the rules), what is left is that they broke the rules. So we are banning people that are breaking rules, that sounds about right to me. Obviously we ban people on the discord as soon as we know who they are if they are intended to be banned, but this is not making a ban, it is enforcing one, just like we do to people who ban evade in-game. Does not take away from the need to apply this to people just because we know who they are.
That the impact is often due to insignificant issues
What?
If people are breaking rules on the server and get banned, and then complaining they are banned on discord, I would not particularly describe these people as having cared about the community. Even if they do, but they just cannot help themselves but break rules that get them banned, then I simply don’t want those people to be a part of the community. None of this sounds unintended to me.
I personally feel users banned from the server should not be immediately banned from discord, just so they have an additional way to find out about their ban and how to appeal it. I’ve noticed on occasion a user will ask in #help-and-support why they cannot access the server, and they would not have found their ban link if not instructed to record themselves joining and to check the video frame by frame. If they were immediately removed from discord, they may never have found out their ban link or how to appeal, since many users are not familiar with the forums. This is my reasoning for not immediately banning users from discord. If they chat in the channels as if nothing has happened, then they certainly should be told to appeal and be banned thereafter. Am I wrong for doing this?
I say that it doesn’t make sense from the perspective of someone who is solely arguing for what they believe would make a better community experience, whether that’s speculation or simply looking at other communities, terraria and not.
Given your idea and application of what the community should be like however, I can understand where you’re coming from and why things are done the way they are. That doesn’t mean I agree with all of it, as evidenced by this post, but DG is yours at the end of the day and this isn’t by any means an objective topic- continuing this knowing what I do now would be pointlessly arguing over two differing opinions, which brings this nowhere. Both have their merits and flaws, but at the end of the day, what DG does is working and will continue to work as it has.
It makes sense to me because a rule broken on the server is a rule broken on the server. Dimensions exist for the space and the ability to separate different game mechanics that would otherwise make up the entire game. In that sense, it doesn’t make sense to have dimension specific bans because without different dimensions, the rules would still exist but on the same world, as “one dimension”.
That applying to Discord did not make sense to me because as you said, different services require different rules as necessary; A different contract. To me, a terraria server and a discord server cannot be one singular community because they are fundamentally different. Both of them host the same members, but for different reasons. When you’re on the server, you are there to experience something the game offers with other people. When you’re on the discord, you are there to communicate with people whom share similar interests/hobbies, as well as other interests/hobbies. This is shown in the form of the art, memes, and general channel. DG’s discord, admittedly, is primarily composed of channels made for the in-game server, so this suggestion isn’t as applicable as it could be otherwise.
Rather than “minor violation”, it was probably better to word it as lower in severity.
Fair enough. I honestly don’t understand the relevance of that statement myself after reading back on the point I was trying to make prior to it.
For me it also makes sense that a server rule break is on the server but e. g. if you were banned for hacks it is not so transferable to the discord because there you cannot hack to win a zombies match. Discord is for chat primarily and the server is to play the game. The game chat is a gimmick that adds communication.
Discord has other TOS than TShock usage. You can even join the server at 6 years old while for discord you have to be 13+. The forum chat was made also for those who could not access discord but needed a quick out of game chat e. g. to instant message PM mods. Even while reporting earlier I got told “Discord rules!=Ingame rules”. For example in game a singular all caps message can get you warned while in Discord you get only warning if you enter like 20 messages in all caps and also not always.
What if this happens:
User A gets banned
Another user B makes a discord alt says “Hi, I am A, I am banned under (ban link)”.
B also spams the chat and uses words like the N, B, F and A word then gets banned from Discord.
The real A who cannot get what is happening on mobile says “Help me, I have always Lost connestion, here is the video”.
A mod views that video and sees the same link and bans the real A.
Then the real A has disadvantages on their ban appeal and will get likely denied.