Moderation Tools for World Creators
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Lucifer MStar
Allow world creators the ability to moderate their OWN worlds and issue their OWN bans. I'm tired of seeing crashers and exploiters in my worlds and kicking them is nothing. I want the ability to ban certain individuals from my worlds.
There is absolutely no harm in doing this. Who is it going to hurt? The exploiters and cheaters.
What if world creators abuse it and ban people from THEIR OWN worlds? Well it's their fault their world fails to gather a population.
What else will this do? Allow world creators to suit the needs of their wanted audience.
it will also help take the stress off of the actually game moderators.
Thank you,
Lucifer MStar - Creator of 30+ worlds including church of marriages.
P.S. Communicate more with your community on what you are doing about these crashers and exploiters and maybe the heat and stress will die down. Honestly this is the most annoying thing communication.
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Lucifer MStar
This is very outdated and now with the group system I think this is irrelevant now!
Chirping_Cat
Lucifer MStar: Just need the ability for 'Public' instances to be associated to a VRC Group, and to be renamed 'Official Public' to distinguish from 'Groups Public'
Then you'll have all the tools needed, whether or not we should is a another matter however.
Whaddageek
This is a bad idea. People are astoundingly petty and possessive about their creations, and this is ripe for an incredible amount of abuse.
DAG-XR
World creators should be the absolute decision maker on how moderation works in the spaces that they took the time and effort to design. World bans are available on Rec Room, Horizon Worlds, and probably other platforms too.
Sasha Mason
DAG-XR: Disagreed. It can create complications in how users are able to hang out with their friends or attend to events if they got banned by a world author. World creators often also know each other, so it is very possible for one person to get banned by several authors at the same time via ban lists. This can potentially make the game outright unplayable for certain people, depending on which group of authors banned them.
Unlike VRChat account bans, world authors wouldn't need any justified reason for why they banned someone. It can simply be that they heard something bad about them or they just generally don't really like your face, or maybe you did something in the world that is tied to an automated report system to ban you when you, for example, dare to cheat - regardless of instance type.
This wouldn't really help make public spaces safer either. If someone's goal is to be nothing but annoying, they can keep creating as many alt accounts as they want. A world ban won't change that. There's already more than enough moderation tools available to deal with bad actors. World bans are just going to disconnect social groups, for them to move to a completely different world or certain communities just have to deal with some people being left out at all, potentially just because of some petty drama they had somewhere.
So, TL;DR, depending on how this ends up being used by world authors, this comes dangerously close to what VRChat Developers can do when they ban someone.
Chirping_Cat
Sasha Mason Correct, there are already well-documented cases of this occurring on a much smaller scale. For instance, a handful of world creators formed the United Moderation VRChat Group to run 'official' group public instances for various worlds, and there are well-documented cases of egregious bans being issued by one of more of the individuals with moderation abilities, to which public apologies on Twitter/X had to eventually be issued. Whilst it's one thing to say "We removed it eventually, our process worked!" one cannot guarantee that such will occur in every instance, leaving potentially innocent users unable to join friends in a bunch of fairly popular worlds.
Sasha Mason
I don't know if allowing something like that would overall be a good thing to do. Sure, honest world creators would be able to ban bad actors from their world, but it also enables anyone who is making a world to randomly ban any person they see fit for any reason.
Imagine if my friend group was hanging out in a world that I can't join because of some drama I had with the world creator, or one of the world creators friends, if I were banned from being in certain worlds or playing certain games permanently, even in my own instances.
How would VRChat combat world authors abusing this, banning anyone they feel they see fit, regardless of whether they're actually bad or not?
I feel like there is a very good reason for why VRChat won't allow something like that. Having people being left out of hangouts and community events because a world author decided to ban someone just cuz they felt like it would be awful.
EDIT: The only way I see this being okay, is if it would exclusively affect public instances. Friends+, group instances ect should be moderated by the instance owner / group moderators. As the instance owner of a public instance is the world author, I'd say it would be more than fair for these types of instances.
But I wouldn't want to feel like needing to change to a different world because one of my friends had some issue with the world author at some point and got banned, or when communities hosting events feel pressured to go to a completely different world from the usual ones because someone in the community got banned for a random reason.
This is a dangerous thing to allow.
Deantwo
Sasha Mason: Totally agree. I literally had this happen a couple months back. A world author had me on a blacklist using an Udon script, if I joined the world (even in non-public instances) I was instantly teleported to a prison-box far from everyone else.
This stupid drama kept me from hanging out with some friends for a while when they were in that world. It was not a fun experience.
The issue has since been resolved though. Since such blacklists are against the Creator Guidelines, the world author was forced to remove the blacklist script.
I am sure the world author will still instantly kick me if I happen to be in the same instance as them, but I guess that is technically still allowed.
Sasha Mason
Deantwo: Yeah, if certain individuals, groups or communities do not want you around, by all means, power to them.
Deantwo
I would actually like to take the opposite stance here.
I don't understand why a world author should have moderation powers in a public instance. If the world author wants to be in control of the instance they are in, they should make a friends+ instance or a group public instance.
Basically, the new group public instances solve this issue in the best way possible. Anyone can make an instance with the level of moderation they want. If you want the world's "official" moderation you use the world author's group. If you want you and your friends to moderator your own instance, you use a group you created yourself.
Pure public instances should not be subject to weird moderation from some random person just because they happened to to be the world's author. Some world authors can be really weird and controlling, even in an instance that is supposed to be public for everyone. If you don't want specific people to ever use your world, don't make it public.
If you want to control who can use the world you authored, I suggest checking this Canny post or make a new Canny post about more options for making worlds only accessible to specific people/groups.
Deantwo
All that said. I think it is about time that world creators lose their "world author moderation powers" over all instances of their world.
CRiMSOM13
This would only make sense if there are VRC+ worlds or group + worlds, I do not support this unless worlds are marked as premium.
DarkGrey
My only concern with something along the lines of banning players from our worlds would be a tyrannical world maker banning anyone they don't like because they just have the power to do so under the guise of, "they are bullies," or "They were cheating I swear it.", basically gatekeeping their world.
Beyond
I'm surprised to see how old this request is, so here's my two cents on the topic considering we HAVE the ability to do this right now, it's just that it's against the current TOS.
This is mainly something I think game worlds really need, specifically ones with save systems.
If we as world creators have a valid reason with proof of why a user should not be allowed in our world, we should be allowed to lock them out of our world. If the reason is not valid or is considered discriminatory, then yeah, that's when the world creator should be punished for abusing it.
The TOS regarding it should combat people abusing blacklists/ban systems, not those who are utilizing it for actual moderation of their worlds. I am tired of receiving pictures of people cheating in my worlds like I have any control over it, so having the control expected of me would be nice.
LoppyDaCutie
Beyond: unfortunately, this would be breaching vrchats Terms of Service by preventing players from access to a server which as some may know worlds people want to join. also it may be better to prevent them from joining/creating any actual public instances. like they can create a group instance that is public but not able to create a public instance itself.
Chirping_Cat
Beyond: It would be better if VRChat deprecated Public instances as we know it, replacing it with a system where the VRChat SDK would allow a World Creator to associate the upload with a VRChat Group. Instances run by the official group can show as Official Public instead of Group Public, but essentially that's a vanity difference and from the back end perspective they're the same thing. Instead of worlds suggesting a Public instance by default, they'd suggest an Official Public instead. This change would:
A) Clear up any ambiguity between 'Public' and 'Group Public' instances by clearly throwing the 'Official' term into worlds that are moderated by the world creator/s group.
B) Allow World Creators to ban people from Official Publics via the pre-existing Group Ban functionality.
C) Ensure that these additional
banning' powers for World Creators are constrained to Official Publics and do not extend to Invite, Friend or Group worlds. (To do so would be enormous overreach by the world creator)
Scout
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Fax
You might be interested in a new feature we added in version 2023.2.3 of VRChat, 'Group Publics'!
They allow you to create VRChat instances moderated by groups.
Read more here: https://docs.vrchat.com/docs/latest-release
owlboy
Fax: this is group centric and not world centric. In fact, groups can take and have more moderation powers over an instance than the world owner now. An example is having more than one moderator with moderation powers in an instance when the world owner only has themself. A Group banning the world owner from their instances is another possible example. But I have not tested this yet, please let me know if this is in fact impossible.
It would be nice if this disparity was directly addressed fully somewhere publicly.
It’s still a useful tool in many situations. But requiring a Group+ instance makes this fall short of Lucifer’s request.
Frenetic Furryǃ
Fax: feels like you didnt read this post fully but this is about the world creator having the power to perma-ban someone from a world because the anti-cheat doesnt stop everyone from using 3rd party software or someone is known to be a nuisance inside of that world and the creator would want them to be gone/banned from it, this would/could make players want to be more nice (maybe) in worlds so they can be in a world that they like more often making the community experience abit better (in theory).
ofc there will be bad actors (there always is) just banning anyone for no reason but that is up to the world creator to choose good actors to moderate the game along with a good security system on it so 3rd party cheats cant abuse this system like other systems that the VRChat team has made.
Fax
Thank you for your feedback! We'll continue iterating on VRChat's moderation tools, and we'll continue to keep track of your feature request.
Group Publics are a huge addition to VRChat's moderation tools. They're not directly related to world creation, but we hope you'll find them useful.
CrossVadar
Fax: This is not any close to a fix for people be in a safer instance, since people usually just go public instances when they join a world, looking for people to hang out with. So far there are no Group Public instance happening in any popular world that new comers usually starting with. Group public will be also meaning who started the instance with that group will own the moderation power which doesn't aid the real problem we asking for.
Frenetic Furryǃ
Fax: thank you! and i hope that what you guys do & add will be good and secure for the game.
Chirping_Cat
Fax: It would be better if VRChat deprecated Public instances as we know it, replacing it with a system where the VRChat SDK would allow a World Creator to associate the upload with a VRChat Group. Instances run by the official group can show as Official Public instead of Group Public, but essentially that's a vanity difference and from the back end perspective they're the same thing. Instead of worlds suggesting a Public instance by default, they'd suggest an Official Public instead. This change would:
A) Clear up any ambiguity between 'Public' and 'Group Public' instances by clearly throwing the 'Official' term into worlds that are moderated by the world creator/s group.
B) Allow World Creators to ban people from Official Publics via the pre-existing Groups and Group Ban functionality.
C) Ensure that these additional
banning' powers for World Creators are constrained to Official Publics and do not extend to Invite, Friend or other Group worlds. (To do so would be enormous overreach by the world creator)
The term Official can be refined, but this is the most logical way of getting World Creators greater control over what is currently known as Public instances, without that resulting in massive overreach to Invite, Friend or Group Public instances.
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