I enjoy helping people so the Help Channel is a room I’m probably in when I’m online. I’ve helped countless amounts of people and have received just as much help for questions of my own. I’ve seen a very productive room to the entire room trolling an ISD member, which lead to a shut down of the channel for some time, and then when it opens back up those mystical fairy tale creatures we weren’t really sure ever existed called GM’s appear to make sure the room stays in a productive state. With all of this being said I know the chat room pretty well and things, for the most part, go pretty well I’d say. The only thing that I cannot ignore any longer is people going into the help channel to whine and complain about something. They ARE there for help, but they lose their minds over some update ccp did, losing a ship, getting scammed, etc and just disrupt everything and everyone in the channel while they won’t even take constructive feedback from people. This whining, complaining, ranting behavior is so childish and disruptive. I don’t see how this type of behavior belongs in the help channel. So I’ve laid out the problem. Now for the solution.
Block them: No because like I said, they are almost always there to get help, they’re just really frustrated about something and taking it out on the room. If everyone that helps out, blocks these people then they don’t have anywhere else to go to have their questions answered and this is not what I want. I’m not sure how others that regularly help out in the help channel feel about it, but I doubt most of the regulars want to ignore those in need of some assistance.
Submit a ticket: An ISD member recommended I did this, but again, it goes along with what I said about blocking them. I didn’t make the help channel, but I imagine CCP wants it to be a welcoming place. I know I sure do. Pushing people away from that channel is the last thing I want.
Make a new rule: Specifically, “people cannot go into the help channel to vent their frustrations in anger.” So I’m not talking about the guy that goes into the room and says, “omg alpha’s can use x, y, and z now? That sucks!” Yes, it’s off topic, but I really don’t care because that conversation will die down shortly after a few people agree with them. I’m talking about the person that say’s, “F*** CCP, they changed the carrier’s! I come back after a year and they messed everything up! Why did they do that? Why did they make the changes? That makes no sense! etc. etc.” That’s the person I’m talking about.
Train Overlooking Nonsense to at least level 4. 5 if you’re a serious helper. Its hard and i will admit i get sucked into some of the off topics. But, Its a public channel. You will see the rules getting broken all the time. Begging, Recruiting, Fancy text. All rules that get broken multiple times daily. No amount of rules will stop someone from ranting. Its part of the territory. All you can do is ignore them and not feed them the food they seek to keep themselves in existence. The rule you propose would need someone to be present nearly all of eve’s up-time to enforce. If you are still very adamant about policing the help channel ISD are always recruiting.
We have a rule that’s already like that in place. Being off topic is a violation for the Help Channels, the problem you’re describing is that we aren’t online 23.5/7 to enforce all of the rules. We do the best that we can but we can only do so much.
While blocking will help you get through the problems it’s better to send in tickets so you can assist the GM team with letting them know about problems that are happening. As stated by StonerPhReaK, if you would like to do more in the channels you’re more then welcome to apply to the ISD Program and help assist further.
I mentioned that the people aren’t off topic though. Is there are place where these rules are written? Maybe there is something under “off topic” that I don’t understand.
While you can enforce the rules yourself and ive seen players tell others that its not the place for things such as recruitment for example. ISD and CCP are the only ones who can do actual moderation (mutes/removals) within the Help channels, which is why the need for somone online 23.5/7 comment came from.
Gotcha. I did notice in the MOTD there is an open ended part about “disrupting the room otherwise” (I think I’m paraphrasing). That, I suppose, covers what I’m talking about. Should we (non-ISD/CCP/GM’s) report this behavior in a ticket? If we do, what would be the punishment? I would like to see something like a reminder of the purpose of the room and a highlight of the MOTD section I mentioned before. Could I expect something like this or would the punishment be more severe? Thanks!
The entire internet is dealing with this issue. Some cultures concept of freedom of speech is different than others.
Being overly restrictive on a game chat will only make things worse. Saying bad things about a game company on a gaming chat is almost a right written in stone. When you have no players complaining you have no players. Be careful what you wish for. No players-no game or the jobs it provided.
the game needs online GM’s at all times. I don’t care… im just used to paying for quality and that I will pay if I can see they care about the quality of their game… simple as that… that excuse we just cant have someone on all the time is crap… sorry it is… perhaps get more bro’s in the ISD to do it… perhaps umm… hire like a full on community team where their job is to focus on the community… that seems like a bright idea right?? right???
The short answer is, yes you can file a support ticket about disruptive behaviour here: https://support.eveonline.com. I can’t go into detail about how the Game Masters respond to these tickets, but they are reviewed.
@Ebony_Texas, we (ISD Star) do our best to provide coverage as much as possible but we are volunteers. Players are welcome to apply to the ISD team if they would like to give a helping hand to new players or any of our other programs: https://volunteers.eveonline.com/
Current Teams:
ISD STAR: Help Channel support
ISD CCL: Forum Team
ISD ECAID: Bug Hunters
ISD NEC: Fiction/Lore and News Articles
ISD LOC: Localisation Volunteers