Guidelines

Chat Staff Official Guideline and Rules


Firstly, welcome aboard of the Moderation team of:
The Netherworld: Open Rp Chat room

You have been carefully picked out and selected by the Administration and you have passed through the interview process very well.

You are now a Moderator, an Enforcer of the chat’s rule, a general guardian over the balance and wellbeing of the chat, it’s users and the roleplay of the chat.

*You are NOT some cop or grand supreme court justice. You are just as much a normal user as everyone else. So, while you are expected to do your job and act accordingly, just be yourself, relax and be with the people, lurk, or engage in their roleplays. The hat does not mean you are suddenly an important person. So, don’t act like you’re above others.*

 General rules to be followed -

1  -  As a Moderator, you are still a user of the chat, like it was mentioned, act like one. Mods, you are not exempt from any chat rules. You have to follow them just like everyone else. If you break them, you’re subject to scrutiny, kicks, silences, and bans, just like any other regular user. Even more, as a moderator, if you break the rules, you’ll be called out by the Admins to explain yourself.

2  -  Moderators are Enforcers, individuals of Justice, fairness, and the right of way. In instances where your intervention is needed (This ranges from minor incidents to complete chat disturbing situations) You are always to remain impartial and respectful. Fair and proper judgement is crucial and critical. You can feel free to toss all bias, emotion and favoritisms right out the window, none of that is needed ‘nor will it be tolerated when trying to make a proper judgement. If you’re the only Mod present in the room in the case of an incident. Use your head. Use wise and quick judgement. Do not wait for shit to hit the fan. The users can have up to two warnings before being silenced, kicked out, etc...

[The Standard Mod/Admin protocol for broken rules, incidents, conflicts, etc.]

>Step 1: Ask the user in question to stop doing what he/she’s doing. Stating the name of the user and the rule that has been broken in the same sentence.

>Step 2: If the user refuses to stop or if the he/she turns against you instead, ask him/her again to stop and give your first warning. State the name of the user, repeat your demand, state the the penalty and say: ‘This is your first warning’ in the same sentence.
**(If the user gives an apology, the subject is dropped instantly. Say: ‘Apology accepted, thank you for your understanding.’ and resume acting normally.)

>Step 3: If the user refuses to cooperate, you can give your second warning. State the name of the user, repeat your demand, state the penalty and say: ‘This is your second and last warning.’ in the same sentence.
**(If the user gives an apology, the subject is dropped instantly. Say: ‘Apology accepted, thank you for your understanding.’ and resume acting normally.)

>Step 4: If the users refuse once again to cooperate. You now have to enforce the broken rule and act accordingly with what you stated as a warning. A silence, most of the time.

>Step 5: Once the user has been silenced, you must go in pm and talk it out with him/she. Explain that this is not personal, that you’re not angry, explain the reasons why the rule is important and what is the spirit of the room. Let the user let out some steam. Stay impartial and respectful even if the user is not. Once he/she has calmed down, ask if he/she is ready to return on the main. The user can leave, lurk for a while or come back. Once unsilenced, the user returns to normality and the subject is dropped for good.

>Step 6: If the User is not cooperating, and they’re either ignoring or disregarding all attempts at rational negotiation, and to explain to them their rule breaking and to have them settled and following the rules again. They then must be banned. You must screenshot the PM conversation you’ve had with the specific individual and immediately report to the Administration. Multiple offenders, those that have received one too many silences, kicks or all of the above, they must be banned as well, unless pardoned by the Administration.

>In Case of Ban Hoppers: Not every user will take a ban sitting down and not every banned user will be able to be kept out of the Nether 100% of the time. Some of them know how to get around Bans, but it’s not all that flimsy, as when they manage to re-enter they still remained silenced. When previously banned users re-enter the Nether, wait for an hour or two to see if the individual will PM a Mod for appeal, immediately report to the Administration and wait on their further instructions on what to do about the individual. If there is no Administrator at the time, and the individual has PM’d for appeal, note down their appeal, and inform them that the Administration will receive it and review it, keep them silenced, do not unsilence them. If the Administration approves, direct them to the Administration for the appeal process. If they re-enter into the chat and continue on without messaging a Mod or Admin or anyone after the short time period of waiting, immediately re-ban them, and report to the Administration.

[This protocol is the easiest way to make yourself understood by the right people. Naming them brings their attention to you and so they have no reasons or excuses not to listen to you. The easiest way to do this is by using the multiline function /m (not /me) as it makes you stand out from the other users.]

[IMPORTANT] - Be sure to write down the name of all Offenders of the rules. If it’s their first offense, simply write down the name, their misdemeanor or crime, the severity of its disturbance, and the penalty received. Small, not too bothersome misdemeanors will be addressed in the form of “Civil”.

3  -  As a Mod, your duty is to ensure the balance of the chat is not disturbed. That doesn’t mean you poke your nose into every little thing, and that doesn’t mean you just sit there for hours on end and do nothing. Use your common sense to discern whether something in the chat is an argument or is drama that can be disruptive, or just people joking around.

4  -  This one is very crucial. Regardless of who you are perceived as in the chat as a person, not all Moderators will always be liked by the people. And it might turn out to be you, a Moderator that people don’t like, and might feel the need to scrutinize or criticize. Understand that, not all criticism is people being mean for no reason. If you’re under criticism, take it and think about it with humility. Kicking, silencing, banning just because someone has points that you don’t like, is NOT a valid reason and will NOT be tolerated. You are a Moderator, the Administration assumes that you understand the difference between Criticism/Scrutiny and Insults/Verbal Denigration.

5  -  In certain times and incidents, there will be a moment where you will have to kick someone, or silence someone, or even ban someone. These moments are very critical epitomes of your sense of fairness and justice. Any and all silences, kicks, and bans that you do, must be reported to the Administration. Alongside the entire story grounds of the kick/silence/ban explained to the Administrators. No one sided explanations. The full incident with all of it’s details. You’ll also be required, if there is no Mod or Admin present to account witness, to screenshot this.

6 - The Ad/Mod Meeting room, as the name states, is a place of meeting for the Admins and Mods to discuss room matters. Things that are said in the room must stay in the room. This is not a suggestion. Anything that is hashed out, planned, discussed or generally run through our committee of Mod/Admin’s, is to remain in the meeting room. No exceptions.


7  -  What is our chat without the proper overseeing of a Mod or an Admin. The Administration knows, and understands that not every one of the Mods will be able to be on the chat every day, and sit in the chat for quite some period of time. Some can do this, some can’t. It is not required of you to pop into the chat, sit and  overwatch for prolonged periods of time every day. How ever, it will be required of you, to every now and then pop in, lurk around a little bit and check up upon the chat. Mysterious and unexplained disappearances and unusually long absences of Mods will be taken into serious account.


8 - The Adviser works second hand directly towards the Administration, they see all, hear all, and know all, do not think you can hide anything from the Adviser. They are a virtual extension of the Administration itself, and you are required to heed their suggestions and advice, as well as any important information or update they have. [Any Announcement made through the Adviser is to be taken as if it is from the Administration itself].


9 - The Administration has great trust and belief in its Staff and in its Moderators, that they will carry out their jobs, but at the same time manage to be themselves and have a good time. But most importantly the Administration trusts that its Moderators will be completely honest, upfront, and truthful with the Administration. Whether it is a small detail, or something a tad bigger, it’s in your best interest as a Nether Staff member to NEVER LIE TO THE ADMINISTRATION. Lying, covering up, hiding information or anything from the Administration will result in immediate consequence. You cannot lie, or cover up things from the Administration, as they will figure out whether you want to or not.


Got all that down? Swell ~ You’re on your own now. Save for the exception that you’ll at least be expected to work in a team like way with the other Moderators. All of you are the sole collective force of Justice behind our chat. And if you can cooperate well with your fellow Mods, and work in tandem, it’ll serve you better. We watch each others backs, just as much as we watch the backs of our folk. -


[Contingency plans for dangerous individuals]

[Individuals such as Kilroy]/[Trolls]

-- Individuals such as Kilroy commonly are known to be of great threat and detriment towards any kind of chat. These individuals know how to bypass bans, silences, anything. They speak in heavy sarcasm and generally enjoy to point out and harass the users they deem most annoying, childish or terrible. Frequent subject changing and conversation switching to make it seem like they’re in control of the discussion. One way found to work on them is to either overbear them with the help of other Mods, or other people. Not by using aggression or scary demeanors, but by simple indifference or casual, friendship like kindness. Individuals like Kilroy expect you to get angry, they expect you to argue back at them. That is something that they want you to do. And this is how they win. By resorting to an anti-thesis, by overbearing them with this anti-thesis, they’ll be forced back into a similar disposition as your kindness. Silences and Bans do not affect them much, as stated, but kicks seemed to still function as they should.

[Contingency plan for The Left-Aligns (e.g: Iris, S.Y.S.T.E.M, C, Q)]

So far, few if anybody has had that much experience with these specific individuals, considering that when they do appear, they are swift, they are cruel and they have the capacity of producing large amounts of damage to a chat, to completely closing one down for two full weeks, without even leaving a trace of themselves or having their presence be detected. These particular persons are to immediately be considered dangerous, and crafty. The Left-Aligns. A group of computer nutjobs, and their members are people that worship men like Zer0_Code and Archangel, men that frame people and send them to Guantanamo for fun, and clean out major bank accounts as paid jobs. These two now are active only in the deep web, and are nothing short of Ghosts. The Left-Aligns strive everyday to achieve status closer to these men. They’ve got deadly tricks, they can track you right down to your House number in a matter of seconds, they can swipe personal info, they can attain IP addresses, they are capable of deadly stuff. Our standard Moderator and Administrator powers granted to us by Chatzy are almost defenseless against them as they know ten different ways to get around this and do damage in the process without so much as blinking. There are only these current defense measures in place, observe them and be aware of them.



DEFENSE LINE 1 - GUARD CODE:

Guard Code is a very rigorously tested piece of software that has been compiled together by very talented and very proficient IT technicians, two security analysts, one Encryption specialist and a software engineer. Guard Code is essentially the Nether’s shield against these computer nutjobs. It protects against massive attacks, such as DOS’s and DDOS, it guards against SQL Injections and other server data manipulation based attacks. It is our first line of defense and our shield, it keeps the snakes out. Guard Code is active at all times and is never disabled, in certain cases some updates and patches will be applied to it in the future, but Guard Code is active 24/7.



DEFENSE LINE 2 - HAT STRAP

Hat Strap is an alarm mechanism against individuals of the Left Align’s such as Iris, who have the ability to steal Moderator and Admin powers in the blink of an eye. A scary thing to know is that creating a program that has this capability is not all that incredibly difficult. Hat Strap is a defense mechanism against this. It acts on alarm sensor, everyone who should be a Moderator and Admin is logged as a regular user, all others are marked as ‘plain’ users. In the event that a user not registered as a Moderator enters in as a Moderator, or Admin (The registration process is updated in real time) Hat Strap’s alarm goes off, and the present Apostle will immediately notify in main chat in bold “ALL HATS STRAP IN”. Once Hat Strap initiates, your Mod or Admin privileges will be dead-bolted to the current account any Moderator is using or have their Moderator privileges registered under. So long all Mods and Admins do not log out during Hat Strap, it will run and remain active until the crisis is averted.


DEFENSE LINE 3 - SAFETY NET

The Safety Net is a defense property more oriented towards our regular users, but Moderators and Admins also fall within its protection. Safety Net is a Security detail, and Encryption protection program for the personal info or any other detrimental personal info of the users and Nether Staff. There are Phishers, scammers and Info Rats that crawl along all corners of the Web and look for places that have anything useful to steal and extract. Safety Net hashes and encrypts any and all personal and detrimental info of the Users and the Staff, and have it rendered unextractable. There’s only so much that Info Rats can look up and commit to memory or paper, that is a much more harder process than simply extracting the info. The Safety Net prevents this.


DEFENSE LINE 4 - THE SCRAMBLER

The Scrambler is more so a safety precaution oriented around personal security of Users and Nether Staff. All fall within it’s general protection but this one is very lightly used as it’s alongside Hat Strap an emergency only defense line. Scrambler’s root scanning keeps track of Users IP addresses and the status of these addresses, as well as personal locations. Should any user or foreign individual attempt to try and extract or trace or pinpoint any Nether User or Staff members location, or extract IP info, the Scrambler immediately engages and redirects both input and output connection, the location and the IP info of User or Nether staff member that might be being attacked.



ABSOLUTE CRISIS DEFENSE LINE - THE LAST RESORT

[REQUIRES APPROVAL OF BOTH ADMINISTRATORS TO BE ENGAGED] THE LAST RESORT IS FULLY UNDERSTOOD BY


[The Black List]

These Users have accumulated mass offenses and repeated punishments, and have been banned and re-banned multiple times, they have ignored appeal and continuously ban hop and go against the Nether and its Administration. They have used up their chances, the Administration has no more tolerance or mercy for them.

BAN, ON, SIGHT.


LUDWIG - Multiple counts of Harassment of users, Verbal abuse and bullying, Multiple attempts at Phishing of close, personal information, multiple ban evasions, disregard of the Administration’s offer to Appeal. Chat disruption and disruption of Users peace.


BRIDGET - Multiple Rule breaking offenses, multiple rules broken in different successions, disregard for Nether Staff or Administration. Several accounts of user Harassment in main chat. Attempts at obtaining personal location of users. [ILLEGAL OFFENSE] Impersonating a Police Officer and staging a fake Investigation.