How would you "clean up" the site?

It’s no secret that user behavior has been degrading a bit on the site lately. Personally, I want a level requirement for users to chat and leave comments. I’m interested in hearing what you guys feel the pros and cons of that would be, as well as any ideas about what the level requirement should be, if you support the idea..

Feel free to voice any other suggestions you have as well!

Well, the level requirement would really drive away potential users… I continued using this site because I loved the chat! If I were forced to get badges I didn’t want, then I may not have continued using Kong!
Just one counter-argument…

Let’s see…

I would be fine with that, being level 24 and everything, but other user’s might hate it. I suggest that moderators could have the option to ban a person from chat or commenting, time depending on the behavior. Also, maybe what you said could be up to the developer or room owner. He/She could choose what level person can come in. Well, I hope you like these, but lunch is ready.

Oh my… Malachi and I both posted at the same time. Where’s my cookie?

I like retron’s ideas! GOOOO GREG!!! \(O_O)/

I like retron’s ideas!

Wow, glad you think so too. I also just got another idea: maybe the developer could also ban people from commenting on his game… or even playing it.

I think banning people from playing it is a little harsh, but I agree with commenting.

I think banning people from playing it is a little harsh, but I agree with commenting.

You can ban a person from the site, so why not ban them from playing a simple game? Also, I forgot to add that maybe the developers and moderators could ban people from tagging.

Greg, I admittedly do not have any suggestions per say, but I just wanted to commend you on actually taking the problems seriously and bringing this up to discussion, instead of just ignoring it, hoping it will solve itself, or just plain give up on it alltogether, like many forum/chat sites seem to do under my impression.

Well, new users tend to go to the chat rooms for help with navigating the site, game suggestions etc. So when you think about it like that, it would be weird if new users couldn’t access chat (which they might need to ask how they level up to access the chat) so unless they read the FAQ (and not many I’ve spoken to do read it) they wouldn’t really get anywhere. But having level restrictions for accessing chat would be a great way to stall/stop banned users coming back as alts to troll the chat again because they’ll have to earn points first (heh).

Well, it’s really a balancing act. As mentioned, on the one hand, new players may be taken aback by a level requirement to chat, yet older players will definitely have no problem with this regards. However, imposing no restrictions at all will allow the spammers to keep on spamming, driving away people as well.

But to give a case in point, Blizzard did do this (eventually) for World of Addictcraft (former addict here) and it did help cut down whisperspam and goldselling advertisements considerably. However, with Kongregate, it’s much easier to ”level up” per se. Unlike WoW or other online games, there’s many, many different ways t level up, not just one or two.

Some of the annoyances that spammers can and most likely will resort to using if implementing level restrictions and leveling up quickly are: Upload 2 games (a repeat, or of poor/inappropriate quality) Rate 50 games 0 Refer themselves (new accounts) 4 times quadrupling their spam power exponentially.

Now there are, luckily SOME prevention measures, but not many. These are things you can’t really prevent someone low level from doing in the first place (nor would you want to for serious developers and whatnot). So, unfortunately, I believe, implementing a level restriction would simply be an invitation for even harsher spamming.

I also refer you to Gabe’s Greater Internet Dickweed Theory http://us.st11.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/yhst-3…

However, and trust me on this one. I know for a FACT that making more badges… difficult badges… will help solve the problem.

(yar, Formatting got wierded)

One: Chat should be available to all

Two: Comments shouldn’t, you should be able to comment on a game by lvl 3 personally

Three: Allow us to flag abusive tags, allow us to be able to delete our own comments, o and level 8 tags, it would stop the abuse

Four: The mod call button thats been mentioned before in the mod forums, we need that in case things get out of hand..

Five: We want to be nice to the community but the community also has to respond in a good way, Digg Mark 1 for example. It is usually way too out of hand, that room needs to be cleaned, i.e. change the name of it and give it a owner, this will deter people trust me, Digg Mark 2 wasn’t that great when I took it over, now its fine, and always nice to be in (although now its called the valley)

Six: Keep bad eggs out, don’t bend to their will… all that will do is intice more people to spam, troll, and flame.. I think making new rules just because some users don’t want to follow them is outrageous.. Kongregate would be better off without them. I want to see casual people playing, not just HXC gamers.. I wouldn’t mind chatting with my mom while she plays a good game of age of japan, the casual gamer likes challenges too, they may not be as good but its still a demographic to think about and they aren’t going to want to stay much if all they see is.. LOLZ PWN!

Seven: Keep them talking about games, if people are playing here and they want help they’ll ask someone in chat, which will proceed to a conversation that helps that user most of the time. Although there are some which don’t help, saying things like LOL n00b u suck.. it doesn’t help anyone and only causes arguments and spam.

Eight: Help incentive, add a feedback option entitled.. Responsive/Helpful user, this would be a good way for people to share a friend that helped, although it would be most used by mods and such when they see someone being nice in chat.. It will make the moderator choosing easier, and also will promote positive behavior if points were awarded for helping.

tagging ability depending on level

uploading spam games (which is not some horror issue but still occur) – just quickidea: before game show for all users some higher level users or those with lotsa gameplays(dunno if kong keeps this stat per user) must approve/review it

chatting depending on level – at first its good idea but as was mentioned new users would have hard time gaining it, too hard even for “high quality chat experience”. so my vote would (unfortunately) be no.

part solution for “hellchats while mods not there”: another just idea (but i imagine it could be easily overused) – vote for kick(time ban) for higher level users.

level requirement for users to leave comments – maybe based on sth else like games played. maybe some time interval between posts based on level

i think that to leave tags and comment u should have to be a certain level but to chat that should be 4 every1 because it would really suck if i couldnt talk to my friends just because they dont have a high level and mods shouldnt have an orange “M” it should be like a secret so that people wouldnt spam because they wouldnt know if a mod was in the room or not

here’s what i would do:

1. become more strict with the moderating. one warning before a ban instead of three. minimum ban would be for a day, not just an hour.

2. better education. mods and other responsible users should remind users that they can mute people who are annoying them instead of arguing with them. a lot of the abusive users just crave attention anyway so encouraging muting is more effective than banning.

3. if a user has been muted by x number of users, they are banned from chat.

4. have some chat rooms open to everyone but have others with level requirements. for instance, one chat room could require at least a level of 5 to enter whereas another could require at least 15. just an example though.

5. tagging only by the developer who made the game instead of everyone. tags are useless right now.

other ideas:

1. each banning also drops the user one level

2. chatroom moderators also have the power to moderate game comments

I have a solution! Instead of making users get badges to chat, simply make it a time constraint. say, 1 hour before you can chat. It’s not like there’s nothing else to do. (Games Site anyone?)

What I’d like to see cleaned up most are tags. There seems to be a lot of people who seem to think that a tag is a one-line review, i.e “unorginial”, “sucks”, etc. Maybe you could make some kind of filter that prevents tags like that from being entered? Although I do appreciate how hard that would be to implement, seeing as there isn’t really any limit to ‘bad’ tags.

I think something like this would be a good idea:

- The first time a new user tries to chat, they should be redirected to a page with all the rules/guidelines for chat.

- The first time a user tries to tag, they should be redirected to a page with rules/guidelines for tags.

- The first time a user tries to comment, they should be redirected to a page with rules/guidelines for comment.

- rinse and repeat.

Also, maybe you could also have certain chatrooms which are level-restricted, for example, “only people who are level 10+ are allowed to chat here”. A developer’s-only chat would also be nice.

1. become more strict with the moderating. one warning before a ban instead of three. minimum ban would be for a day, not just an hour.

I don’t know where this rumor came from. I’ve never even mentioned a “3 warn” policy to moderators.

I have a solution! Instead of making users get badges to chat, simply make it a time constraint. say, 1 hour before you can chat. It’s not like there’s nothing else to do. (Games Site anyone?)

Again, that’s going to discourage a lot of people who come to Kong for the first time.

A lot of the other ideas are great, I believe, namely a level restriction on tagging. A restriction on commenting is a bit iffy. Maybe a low level requirement, 2 or 3. Or none at all.

Also, maybe you could also have certain chatrooms which are level-restricted, for example, “only people who are level 10+ are allowed to chat here”. A developer’s-only chat would also be nice.

That’s actually not a bad idea. It’d let newcomers free to chat and keep the oldies away from the spam. One problem, though, is with a segregation like that, the newcomers wouldn’t be able to get any questions answered that only more experienced people would probably know. Though, I’m sure not everyone at a certain level will be in the ‘private’ rooms, I do beleive a vast majority would.

Thus far I’m fairly convinced that the tagging issue can be dealt with with a medium-mediumhigh level requirement (6-12ish) It would be nice, though, if one could report tags without it looking bad (no big “REPORT TAG” button, it’d look bad)

yadda yadda

I thought i would weigh in on this topic. As you can see from my post count I don’t chat, i am just the average joe gamer.

When it comes to forums you can’t stop spam and flame wars you can only control it with reliable mods. And as for the chat, an idea that hasn’t been mentioned is having user created privet chat rooms that can be invite only. Therefore if you’re sick of someone you can create a chat and only invite who you want to talk to. Another idea is instead of trying to stop the spammers and trolls give them a space to annoy each other have an almost anything goes chat, if you don’t want to be apart of it stay out of that chat anyone who acts up out side of that chat should asked to take it to the proper chat. Lastly when something is out of control it means you need more mods online more often. I know that’s easier said then done.

Just my two cents.

How about a way to report inappropriate tags?

There are so many inappropriate tags that the mods would have their hands full. Why not let the developers remove tags?

How about a way to report inappropriate tags?

Well, now all moderators can delete tags, so if you ever see a game with inappropriate tags, just tell a mod in the chat…

We’re thinking of letting users thumb up or down tags as well, but we could let mods & game owners delete tags pretty easily so we decided to put that in quickly.