Moderator's Guide

By Patrik

MODERATORS

The primary job as a Moderator is to monitor the chat rooms, looking for meaningful discussions that we can engage in, and help players that have questions, suggestions or concerns. The most important job as a Moderator is to make sure our players are not only following our Terms and Conditions but having the best time possible!

When a mod pulls up a player's profile, they will see this under their company name:

BANNING ABILITY

Moderators can decide whether the player should be given a warning, or for extreme cases apply a chat ban right away.

Chat bans are temporary bans that are removing the ability for players to use chat rooms.

In most cases a resolution can be found before we have to ban a player. Many "offenses" are just players testing out boundaries and if called upon it they stop.

To allow fair and cooperative bans, the system automatically determines the ban length based on the number of previous offenses. Repeat offenders are getting ever increasing ban lengths:
The progressive system starting at 2 hours; and follows this pattern: 2, 2, 8, 16, 32, 64, and so on.

System also automatically determines when to ban the whole IP and refuse new registrations based on multiple bans given to players on the same IP. The goal is to stop offenders that create a 2nd account right away to circumvent a ban.

There are a few more tricks up in our sleeves for difficult cases that are not made public. These are applied when we no longer feel the player's offensive behavior can be altered and are just trying to block him/her from using chats altogether.

COMPANY IDENTITY IN VIOLATION OF T&C

Moderators can decide whether the player should be given a warning, or for extreme cases the identity cleared right away. If warning is selected, the user gets a PA message that is asking the offender to update their profile info. Personal Assistant will also remind the MOD chat after some time, so MODs can check if user complied. Here again, the system determines when to send warning and when to ban, based on history of offenses. Low level offending companies can be deleted right away.

MODERATORS CHAT ROOM

Moderators have access to both the Moderators Chat Room and the Supporters Chat Room.

In the Moderators Chat Room we discuss the offenders, what ban should be applied and whether the player was warned already. We also discuss whether the logo or company description is over the line in regards to Terms and Conditions. The pressing technical issues are also brought forward. Moderators also have access to the Supporters Chat Room (this is a courtesy that Patrik has granted them). New ideas, upcoming projects, and opinions on many things that Patrik asks us about are discussed in the Supporters chat.

Moderators have the ability to see other player's hash IP addresses. This is a handy tool, especially when dealing with schools that utilize our game. They do NOT to share this information with anyone else! Player privacy is very important to us!

MODERATORS ARE APPOINTED

There is no application process to be a moderator. Moderators are selected after being nominated as a candidate and discussed in Mod chat.

The following list is not a checklist that once passed you become a moderator. There are many experienced players that are helpful to the community that are not moderating. When we consider expanding the moderating team we discuss possible candidates in the MODs channel. We try to find candidates that:

Are active players and understand the game - this is easy to see when helpful replies are posted in the Help chat room
Have great relationship with existing moderators
When audited, there's no record of prior cheating having multiple accounts - we are more strict here than Fair Play Association
Are level-headed and with stone skin ;)
Have contributed a good article to Sim Companies times
We tend to prefer more veteran players
Speaking more languages is a big plus

Note: Writing to me, Patrik, directly doesn't help. As in many cases I simply ask in the MODs channel about you, and if nobody knows you .. it's hard to make a case for adding you in. I also ask other moderators to suggest candidates for moderators when we need more coverage. I can recommend you becoming a supporter, which also gets you access to great discussions related to game features.

Please do not beg/bother/annoy current moderators to be nominated to be a moderator. The moderators will certainly vote “no” if you are nominated.

At the moment, we have good coverage in terms of moderating our English rooms. We do not need more moderators, even though senior players are reaching out. We may still be looking for moderators to help out with the growing communities of new languages that we added.

I hope this has given a nice insight, feel free to contact one of the moderators at any time.