Reporting Abuse

It is necessary to voice your concerns if you feel you are being unfairly treated or abused by other players or even GMs in the game, as well as to find "live" help within the game environment. This page will detail the steps necessary for reporting in-game problems or abuse. Keep in mind that there are some issues that Game Masters won't help you with - such as game/quest hints, or development plans. No matter how much we would love to have a GM for everyone as well, it just isn't possible. Depending on the situation a GM may become involved, but just asking for a GM will not always get you a GM.

Q: What is considered abuse?

A: Abuse is defined as any activity that is exercised with the intent of disrupting the over all play environment of one or more players.

Examples of Abuse:

• Hate Mongering - participation in or propagation of hate literature, behavior, or propaganda related to real-world characteristics.
• Sexual Harassment - untoward and unwelcome advances of a graphic and sexual nature.
• Attempting to Defraud a PlaneShift Team Member - Petitioning with false information with the intention of receiving benefits as a result, or accusing other players of wrongdoing without basis for it.
• Using Threats of Retribution by GM Friends - attempting to convince another player that they have no recourse in a disagreement because favoritism is shown to one of the parties by the PlaneShift staff.

Q: What is considered as a disruption?

A: Disruption is defined as any activity that is disruptive to the game play of others, though not necessarily with the intent to do so. Disruption has been sub-categorized into major and minor types.

Examples of Minor Disruption:

• Non-Fantasy/Offensive Names - Names that are not appropriate for the medieval fantasy genre of PlaneShift (See Player Policy).
• Excessive Spam - Continued overuse of OOC chat, /shout, or /auction over time such that many players complain.

Examples of Major Disruption:

• Foul Language - excessive use of foul language in an inappropriate context, including swear words, real-world racial slurs, and other language that is not consistent with the fantasy environment and designed to hurt.
• Stalking/Harassment - following a player around after that player has asked to be left alone, continually bothering and kill stealing from the same person, and in general focusing unwelcome attention upon another player over time.

For ALL complaints regarding players and GMs, it is not appropriate to post on the PlaneShift forums. Any threads/posts regarding issues or disputes between a player and another player or GM will be removed. Please continue reading to find out how you should go about getting your voice officially heard about these matters.

Petitions

If you have a problem that cannot be solved with the aid of regular commands or other players, or if you need to report a bug, use Petitions to get in touch with Game Masters for further help.

There are two ways to send a petition: You can type /petition in your chatbox followed by a short explanation of the problem. For example, you might type the following:

/petition There's someone called Booby who follows me everywhere and keeps swearing at me! Help!

Or you can open the Petitions window through your top menu bar, and click on "New", typing your text there to appeal for help.

Please be patient with this option. This message will be sent to a petition queue that GMs read through, and they will help you as soon as possible. If you don't receive a reply, it doesn't necessarily mean that the GMs are ignoring you. You can always check the status of your petition by typing /petition_list.

If your petition is still in the list, it means that no GM has seen it yet. If it's gone, it can mean that either the problem has been dealt with, or the GM was unable to contact you in regards to the problem, and so deleted the petition. Feel free to re-create it if you continue to experience problems, but please limit yourself to 1 petition on a problem at a time, to avoid flooding the petitions window. In order to get the best possible view of your issue, we ask that you write all needed information in the original petition.

Please do NOT:

• Use the petition system for anything but help requests either for technical problems or issues with other players - begging for items, making nonsense petitions or asking questions about the game world that should be asked elsewhere will give you several warnings, then a kick, and then a ban.
• Request gender changes or other aesthetic changes to your character. GMs do not do this, and the developers won't.
• Request compensations due to bugs - i.e., "I lost this item/exp after reboot/crash." We cannot be replacing everyone's lost item or experience/progression points after every crash that happens. We do try however give a notice for every reboot that is being done with ample time to log out before it happens. Please realize that you are a tester of a game in early development, so bugs may happen.

Petitions are available for you in emergency situations - i.e., things you cannot fix yourself through other means, such as bugs reports, stuck characters, and major game disruptions. When you are sending a petition in-game, you are speaking directly to the entire GM team. Curse there and a ban may be enforced. It is NOT to be used as an information channel for things that you can find out easily through the /help channel, forums, PlaneShift website, or other players.

Complaints Against Other Players

If you wish to report a player for inappropriate behavior, please read the following.

The first thing you should do is try to alert a GM. To see a list of online Game Masters, type the command /who game and the system messages console will return a list containing the names of the GMs that are curently online. If the returned list is empty or no Game Masters are available to help, then you can try joining the IRC Server: chat.freenode.net, Port: 6667 channel name: #planeshift and ask a GM to come online and help you. Read our IRC guide for further information on how to join.

You can also send a Petition detailing the problem and a GM will try to get back to you when they see it. Please keep in mind that many times we may not contact you directly or immediately on harassment issues. GMs will monitor the chat as well as the situation before making any type of contact. They may also not disclose what action, if any, was taken against an offending player. Know that the PlaneShift Team does take harassment seriously, and matters will be fully investigated.

You should also use the /report [name] command to have the incident officially recorded and stored for GMs to analyze. This command is retroactive, storing on the server the last 50 lines of text you have received so that the GMs can understand the situation, knowing no logs have been tampered with.

Please read these guidelines for the command.

Whenever possible, GMs try to give players the benefit of the doubt in questionable situations. We hope players do not attempt to take advantage of this trust, and provide their full cooperation. However, if it is later found that an attempt was made to defraud a GM, the offending player may have action taken against them. Attempts to defraud a GM include but are not limited to misdirecting a GM's attention, withholding information, providing false information, and any attempt to "trick" a GM. At times it may be necessary for a GM to ask a player to perform certain actions or refrain from performing other actions. In addition, if a GM contacts you regarding a violation of policy, please try to be as cooperative as possible. In any situation, the GMs will be attempting to preserve the enjoyment of the game for the majority of players and any interference with this work may result in warnings, kicks, and possible bans.

Complaints Against Game Masters

If you have any complaints about GMs, whether you feel they are abusing their powers or treating someone unfairly, please read the following.

You can join the #PlaneShift channel on IRC and speak directly with a developer or administrator. This requires an IRC client; if you do not have one, download mIRC. Use IRC to connect to the following:

server: chat.freenode.com
channel: #planeshift

Speak with either Vengeance (Venge), Acraig or Talad. Venge primarily, if you can find him - they are the only three people who have access to do anything about GMs.

When speaking with Vengeance or any other dev about the problem, give as much information as possible, and provide chat logs that can back up your claims. Chat logs are located in your PS folder's "logs" directory.

If a developer is there but doesn't respond, please don't bug them. In this case you can either wait until they are not idle (they're all extremely busy people!) or email Acraig and he will get back to you about the problem. Acraig's email address is acraig at planeshift.it

You may not make threads or post replies on the PlaneShift forum or discuss publically in IRC with the intent of arguing over GM decisions, rules, or activities. These are not valid topics of discussion for any public area. You must discuss the matter in private with the GM(s) involved and/or game admins only.

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