Hi,

the public game server is repeated target of abuse. Sometimes by fascists, sometimes by trolls, sometimes by people who just like to bully for no reason and likely a lot more characters I’m not aware of yet. I don’t want to go into details, but the regulars and game chiefs surely know what I generally refer to.

Now, the game admins already made some efforts to keep out the worst, and I’m thankful for that. However, there needs to be a constant presence of some form of moderation. Ideally, with a basic set of rules.

This could be realized in the form of an ongoing backlog only admins or specific trustworthy people have access to when being asked, or also by granting moderator rights and insights to trustworthy players. Ideally a combination of both, maybe.

Another option could be to type a command like /abuse or /report or something into the chat, so the above lines are then immediately sent to the admins so they can look into it and see all data (IPs) in context.

Of course, it is also possible to just not care about whatever is happening on the public game server. But aside of new players repeatedly being driven away from playing Hedgewars online when they see abuse happen or become target of the same, there is also a risk of worse things resulting from trolling or purposeful abuse alike.

And the number of times I’ve seen people say really rude things of illegal nature on the Hedgewars server, without any apparent consequences, isn’t funny at all.

Now, I personally can’t code, my vision plays tricks on me when staring at a text for an extended time. In fact, my eyes are losing focus while I type these last lines of text. Yes, I’ll get some glasses soon, but they’re pricey and other things are fancy too. *cough*

So, long story short: I beg everyone who is able to do so to invest some time into finding solutions for the lack of tracking abusive people/bots/events on the public game server. Not just in the main lobby, but also inside the rooms when needed. Ideally not constantly for the latter, but at least being able to sort details out when asked would be really required.

Maybe some of you guys can discuss this further and make actual changes in context happen, so the public game server is no longer subject to repeated, unmonitored and really undesirable abuse of any kind.

PS: Obviously I’m not referring to banter or emotional cursing, we’re all humans. But those things happening to intentionally hurt other people, including those things hurting Hedgewars as a whole, really need to be stopped one way or another. Because otherwise they’ll keep backfiring on Hedgewars, like notable in the numbers of players giving up on the Hedgewars community over the years.