It started happening almost immediately after we banned FWeddit wholesale for shitting up the channel with trolling nonsense, so it was a safe bet. Whoever ended up causing the subsequent problem was doing it with alts so we'll probably never know for certain, but we found how/where they were doing it from (recruitment channel) and nuked the alts who were actively responsible. The only trouble since then has been from our
usual suspects.
I'd also like to say that it's less that the standards of behavior for the channel have been tightened, and more that the active moderators have started enforcing the existing standards and stopped letting people ignore them. We have enough issues retaining people in the Summit and OOC thanks to people constantly causing trouble, useless drama and what could be construed as RP shitposting.
The most frequent complaint I get about the Summit or OOC is that there are certain people who are always making trouble, or being excessively annoying that make them not want to be in there. (Blocking isn't always the answer, either, because then you have people talking to that person, and half a conversation is more irritating than the whole thing. There's a reason people who talk loudly on their cell phones in public are so annoying to most people.)
As a mod I'm inclined to act in the best interests of keeping people visiting the channel. If that means sodomizing repeat troublemakers with the modstick so that they aren't causing people to leave, I don't have a problem with that, and I doubt most of the other moderators do either. But I disagree with the notion that we've actually
tightened standards or rules when we haven't. As I said before: all we did was start enforcing the ones that were already there.
Are there some new-ish rules and policies? Sure. But they're designed to cut down on the stuff that is disruptive and causes people to not want to be in the channel.
- "No parading of slaves." Self-explanatory, really, and a policy that predates myself being on the mod list. The mods have nothing against slave-owning capsuleers/Holders with this rule. It's simply to cut down on the stupid, thousand-times-overdone drama and disruption that occurs when Holders make a show on the channel about their owning slaves. Want to avoid it? Don't have slaves or servants on screen, let alone ordering them around.
- "Holders will suffer the same consequences as their slaves, should the slaves cause trouble and earn the ire of the moderators on the Summit." This one's new, but also self-explanatory. I'm not going to go into my personal beliefs about 'capsuleer slaves', but if you're a Holder, you are responsible for your slaves' behavior. If a slave earns themself a mute or a ban, that punishment will be carried over to the Holder as well. Want to avoid it? If you're going to insist on having slave characters connecting to the Summit, make sure they stay on their best behavior and don't cause trouble.*
- "No shirt, no shoes, no service." Again, self-explanatory. Act like an adult. If you're going to connect via a visual medium, put some clothes on. This had already been enforced for a long time with female characters, but now it's universal out of fairness. Want to avoid it? If your character isn't wearing a shirt, keep the visuals to shoulders and up or just connect via audio. Easy!
- "Non-capsuleers are allowed on the Summit by the grace of Mod alone." This one also predates me being added to the moderator team. If you're going to insist on having a non-capsuleer character connect to the Summit, you've been warned: keep them on their best behavior, because if a moderator decides to hit them with the modstick you will have no right to appeal; they're not even supposed to be connecting to the Summit in the first place.
Also, the majority of mod action being taken these days is on the previously-mentioned repeat offenders who have had multiple warnings for their behavior. The vast majority of new players (note I said
players, not characters) have not run afoul of any of these rules or standards. The same can't be said for the characters of players who like to be disruptive on multiple alts.
* As an aside: my
personal opinion is that slaves should just be banned from the channel wholesale both as background NPCs and as player characters. Outside of deliberately attention-whoring, interrupting whatever was going on before they showed up, and general drama-mongering, there is no reason for a character that self-identifies as a slave to be on the channel in any capacity, capsuleer or otherwise, and removing their presence entirely would cut down on the vast majority of the pointless drama and disruptive behavior that they cause. This rule is a compromise so that we don't have to ban one of the moderators who happens to technically be a slave, but who also never ran afoul of the rule simply by never making a point of telling people they're a slave.