Chat Moderation Update: Part 1!

This post is part 1 of a Chat Moderation breakdown that can hopefully answer the question of 'How does DE and the Community expect the in-game chat to be Moderated?'.

There are an inherent amount of issues when a game is free to play, and account creation leads to fairly quick access to in-game chat. We wish to keep the chat free of language that is offensive, uncivil and disruptive. We also understand that a balance must be struck when people are simply there to have fun. To this end, we automate most chat moderation, and manually moderate some. In the perfect world all moderation is quick and effective, getting rid of the previously mentioned disruptions. But that isn't always the case - thus, Update Part 1 begins!

Today, we are starting to push out some of the systemic changes that affect how Chat Moderation will be performed and managed in-game. While this is not the full extent of our changes, some in-game systems need to be updated before completion to mark the way for other, more policy-related, changes.

To that end, we have to address the internal issues that have occurred with an ever-developing program, and correct the problems that have arisen from our lack of communication, or failures to deal with changes during our learning curve. With that in mind, we wish to give a level of transparency, systemic change and internal review that both serves the community and protects everyone involved from miscommunication in the future.

What is changing now:

• In game messages about chat bans and kicks will be displayed clearly as system messages, rather than overlookable PMs.
• All actions performed during moderation will be better logged in-system for review.
• We've hired a player that's been around since October 2012 - [DE]Bear - to oversee Chat Moderation full time to help with moderator and player concerns. His first day was November 19, the day before the Switch launch.

What is coming:

• Our Chat Moderators are players first, and they fall under the same rules and guidelines we expect from all of our players in Warframe. But we have not been upfront about that. To demystify the concerns that Chat Moderators are exempt, a full draft of a Chat Moderator Code of Conduct will be posted in Part 2. In posting the Code of Conduct, we are setting a new and improved standard of expectations for our Chat Moderators moving forward.
• Communication from DE staff will be addressed to make sure that all Chat Mods follow a set of guidelines that are fair and defined.
• DE staff will be looking at our internal policies, addressing issues where our communication to the community, and our Moderation Teams may have caused conflicting messages as to what is considered actionable conduct.

Thank you for bearing with us as we introduce these changes, and as more progress occurs, we will keep you all informed with updates.