Global Chat Moderation
This document outlines how to moderate the global chat, both in terms of technical features and policies. This document is subject to change at any time and should not be considered as official or policy. The two documents linked below are official policy.
link How does Global Chat work?
- When a message is sent in a global channel, the bot first checks if it is allowed to be sent.
- If the user is banned or the message contains any filtered content, it is deleted immediately and logged, and nothing more happens.
- If it is allowed to be sent, it will be copied by the bot via a webhook message to all other connected channels.
- If a message's source is edited, it will be edited everywhere.
- If a message or any of its copies are deleted anywhere, it will be deleted everywhere, including from the origin server.
link What features/commands are available?
- Right click / long hold a message and select Apps > Get Author or use /global author to identify the user that sent a message.
- Right click / long hold a message and select APps > Purge or use /global purge message to force-delete a message and all of its copies, even if an attempt to delete it already occurred.
- Use /global ban to ban a user from a global channel, preventing them from sending messages to it from any server. You (and individual servers' moderators) can also ban them locally, which prevents them from sending messages there and blocks their messages from being relayed to it.
- Use /global help to show a help modal about how global chat works in case people are confused or asking why everyone is a bot.
- Delete a message anywhere to delete it everywhere.
link Moderation Philosophy
When guidance can be given, it should be preferred over warnings and penalties. When a user should know better and/or has demonstrated that they are not changing or improving, they should be warned. When a user has been warned enough times that they should know they are not allowed to do what they are doing and/or has demonstrated that they will not change or improve, they should be banned.
link Policy
- For minor offenses (generally, when you believe a user should not be penalized because it was not severe enough) or if it was a conversation that went a bit too far on behalf of many users, verbal warnings can be delivered in the chat itself, serving also to remind everyone else of the rules. However, be careful not to allow the chat to devolve into a witch-hunt or berate the user.
- For more significant warnings, DM the user instead (it may still be a good idea to leave a reminder in chat about the specific rule and to follow the rules).
- Once a user has demonstrated inability to change and comply with rules and regulations (within your reasonable judgement), ban them, and if you believe they deserve an explanation, DM them the reason (e.g. for scam bots, just ban them and don't bother doing anything else).
- If a user has caused significant or grievous harm, feel free to escalate to to discuss a banshare.
link Watchlist
- Log any offenses in a user's watchlist entry in . If multiple users were involved, make sure you add them to all cases.
- Refer to the watchlist when dealing with an offense to see what level of sanction should be applied.
link Common Offenses & Sanction Level
- NSFW/NSFL
- If it is borderline or non-graphic text, start as a minor offense.
- If it is more explicit or graphic, start as at least a formal warning, or if it is significantly disturbing or obviously intended to be harmful, this warrants an immediate ban.
- If it is substantially explicit or graphic or disturbing, or is spammed, escalate it to a banshare.
- Harassment
- If it is banter that was taken too far, start as a minor offense.
- For "heat of the moment" random attacks, start as a formal warning.
- For clearly targeted or repeated attacks, start as at least a formal warning or ban if it is notably repeated and premeditated.
- For cases of doxxing, death threats, encouragement of suicide, etc. this warrants an immediate ban in most cases, or escalate it to a banshare if it is particularly severe.
- Spam
- If it is a bot (hacked / compromised) account, just ban it.
- If someone is flooding a channel seemingly non-maliciously, start as a minor offense.
- If someone is flooding a channel deliberately, even if the content itself would not be harmful in isolation, just ban them.
- Self-promotion is not allowed and should start as a minor offense.
- Promotion of servers is not allowed (and invite links are obscured by global chat) and should start as a minor offense.
For everything else, use your judgement and discuss with your fellow moderators. If a user is causing trouble repeatedly and not stopping and requires your immediate action without time to discuss, they probably can just be banned.
Do not be too hesitant to ban! Global-banning a user does not ban them from any servers, it just forbids them from participating in global chat, which does not really have resources like servers do, and it also does not prevent read access. Global chat is much more so a privilege than a right and it is more important to keep the environment safe and clean.
link Appeals
- Appeals can be submitted to TCN Hub modmail. The modmail is only visible to hub moderators by default, but global mods will be added to the thread if it pertains to global chat.
- Warnings can be revoked under the following (non-exhaustive) circumstances:
- The initial warning was not valid (the user did not do anything, the offense was not a rule violation, etc.).
- The offense can be justified under some circumstance (this will rarely happen).
- Bans can be overturned under the following (non-exhaustive) circumstances:
- Any of the reasons for revoking warnings.
- The user was not sufficiently warned before being banned (for offenses that do not warrant immediate ban-on-sight).
- The user can demonstrate that they understand their reason for being banned and acknowledge those problems and show that they are apologetic and have a desire to change.
- The user has demonstrated that they have changed elsewhere, tangibly (e.g. in another TCN server outside of global chat).
link Responding to Inquiries
- You may answer members' questions about rules and policies, but feel free to ask for another mod or an observer (you are not required or expected to publicly explain rules).
- If members inquire about other member's punishments, tell them to ask the member themselves. Do not share member cases, and we will not answer those inquiries through private modmail either.
- If members ask for other users to be unbanned, tell them the member may appeal through modmail but asking for unbans through another member is not allowed.
- If members ask for direct mod actions (e.g. "ban this user"), act as you deem appropriate but if the action would not be appropriate, inform the member they can call for mod attention if they believe there is a problem but to not ask for direct actions (backseat moderating).