GM Failure

Ticket 6740077.

Reported inappropriate usage of a public chat channel which I saw firsthand (regardless of who the offender was supposedly talking "to").

Received copy/paste GM reply saying that I can't petition on behalf of another.

Replied with the above reiteration that I was not.

Received copy/paste reply saying that I can share my feedback on the forums.

So, frankly, my feedback is the anonymous GM miscategorizing the tickets needs better training.

What was the inappropriate usage of public chat channels?

Also, I've never liked that "can't submit a ticket on behalf of someone else" thing. If someone's being a jerk, you should be able to report them and have it taken seriously, end of story.

I'd imagine the reasoning there is if the person on the receiving end of whatever the chatter is doesn't mind then there is no point taking action against it unless it violates some other TOS thing. It's kind of like the legal principle of standing and the GM concluded in this case that you had no standing to complain.

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

What was the inappropriate usage of public chat channels?

Also, I've never liked that "can't submit a ticket on behalf of someone else" thing. If someone's being a jerk, you should be able to report them and have it taken seriously, end of story.

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But the "jerk" thing could be two people who know each other and have a personal dynamic between them that an outsider may not know. That's probably why you can't report on someone elses behalf.

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Originally Posted by Jpec07

Also, I've never liked that "can't submit a ticket on behalf of someone else" thing. If someone's being a jerk, you should be able to report them and have it taken seriously, end of story.

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To a reasonable extent, being a jerk is perspective and more important to the receiver than the watcher. I could think of a number of phrases other groups use, or even my own to specific friends, that'd be unusual/significantly different meaning if wielded elsewhere.

Some things could be unacceptable regardless the situation, but one should be careful how big that list gets.. easy to be "anything that displeases me" - totalitarian dictatorship sort of scenario.

Of course in this given scenario I'm ignorant of the conversation that actually happened, but just suggesting that they may have some reason for that rule. I imagine that if it was some wild death threats*, aggressive stalking*, or doxxing that they'd take action regardless of who filed the claim.


*Non-RP

This is strange, considering I've gotten in trouble for bickering with a friend in chat before.

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

But the "jerk" thing could be two people who know each other and have a personal dynamic between them that an outsider may not know.

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If the way you joke around with your friends would sound like real insults to other people, then it shouldn't be done in public chat, where you're likely to offend those other people. Use /tells or a private channel for such things. (Of course, this assumes the offence is blatant enough that the speaker could predict strangers taking offense at it. I don't know if that was the case with whatever the OP saw without knowing what was said.)

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

If the way you joke around with your friends would sound like real insults to other people, then it shouldn't be done in public chat, where you're likely to offend those other people. Use /tells or a private channel for such things. (Of course, this assumes the offence is blatant enough that the speaker could predict strangers taking offense at it. I don't know if that was the case with whatever the OP saw without knowing what was said.)

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Or! You can realize that you don't need to be a white knight and protect people when there's a mute option or a report option for them to defend themselves. Whether it should or should not be done in public chat does not deter from the argument of the person not being harassed and people policing for them when it's not necessary (Or apparently even allowed).

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

Or! You can realize that you don't need to be a white knight and protect people when there's a mute option or a report option for them to defend themselves.

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But apparently, the report option doesn't work in this case. That's why it became a thread here.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

But apparently, the report option doesn't work in this case. That's why it became a thread here.

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The report button works, just not when you're reporting on someone else's behalf when they're perfectly capable of reporting themselves. Hence the limitations due to context, tone and dynamic.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

If the way you joke around with your friends would sound like real insults to other people, then it shouldn't be done in public chat, where you're likely to offend those other people. Use /tells or a private channel for such things. (Of course, this assumes the offence is blatant enough that the speaker could predict strangers taking offense at it. I don't know if that was the case with whatever the OP saw without knowing what was said.)

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According to ToS it shouldn't be done in public period.

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Originally Posted by Greedalox

The report button works, just not when you're reporting on someone else's behalf when they're perfectly capable of reporting themselves.

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But the OP wasn't reporting on someone else's behalf. She was reporting on her own behalf. Whatever is said in a public channel is being said to everyone in that channel. You can't specify that only a specific person is allowed to react to it unless they're the only one it's sent to.

This was just a case of a GM taking the easy way out to avoid enforcing their own rules.

To clarify, since this has garnered more interest than I expected...

1) The actual message transmitted in a public channel was gross and obscene. I will not repeat it here. It was because it was gross and obscene that it was reported. I don't care who the perpetrator supposedly intended it to be seen by, whether they thought it would be welcome, or whether the ostensibly-addressed person actually did like it or not.

2) The policy of being unable to petition on others' behalf totally makes sense. If the harassment was via /tell, for instance, only the person that actually saw it would be appropriate to report it. If they mentioned it to someone else, that other person ought only encourage the actual recipient to report it if so desired. It also doesn't apply here; the issue isn't that the policy exists but that it was erroneously applied to this particular ticket.

Greetings, EveK!

Thank you for bringing this concern with the customer service provided by the GM team to my attention. I will be personally looking into the report and how it was handled to make sure that our policies were followed and that any investigation that was appropriate was conducted. Since I will not be able to provide further information about this investigation, I will be locking the thread at this time.

LGM Enkrateia