Open Letter to Plato

Day 2,197, 11:07 Published in Ireland Ireland by Ian E CoIeman

I was told to address this to ********,

Several eIrish players have left the game over the last year unnecessarily - because of some especially abusive players in our national community who have made the experience of eR unenjoyable.

I believe that their behaviour is out of line with the rules set up by eR, and so I would like to do my part for both the community and the game by advocating that the following two players have their accounts banne😛

http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/4618955
http://www.erepublik.com/en/citizen/profile/4882110

I know that these two players will certainly show up as having an abnormally high rate of reported content. This is because they are regularly abusive toward other players in a way that goes beyond expressing themselves, into a sadistic desire to bully other players - and they actually take pride in the fact that they have bullied several players away from your game.

I believe that even if they buy gold, overall they must be costing eR a lot of money - a concern both to you guys at HQ, and to us players who enjoy the game and want you to have the funds for development and upkeep. This may seem like a small problem, but its an easy fix, and a start to a larger systematic problem of volatile internet culture having a negative impact on your game experience. An example made here in eIreland is a step toward people being more likely to get their friends involved, and more willing to build the real value of user content, because we wont have to deal with spam and sadism without reproach.

I know you guys can't just ban someone for no reason. I recommend you start by referring to the number of reported articles/comments these guys are generating. Also, have a look through their newspapers. They're prolific spammers who manage to bully their victims, while having learned to avoid getting reported etc. It's the behaviour that needs to be addressed imho, not just the pg rating of the content.

I've also extended a line to eIreland's largest party to stand guard for eIreland's community and report any vulgar or abusive content, to highlight that this isn't just a small number of people in our community - keeping in mind eIreland is only about 100 or so active citizens anyway. I've also recommended that they advocate as I have, because I understand the position that you guys are in where you don't want to seem like overeacting tyrants who suffocate their game with bans etc - this is a real problem that our whole community suffers under, and that we would all feel much better if it were solved.

Sorry for the wall of text, and I hope that you'll take all of this in the spirit of gamers cooperating with developers for mutual benefit.

I'll leave you with this, which is a video made by some game developers on the business aspects of this issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt9GwmOWoqo

Cheers,
Ian E Coleman