The removal of the rule against abuse and harassment

[Elucidator]

Any rule that is unnecessary and can be abused for bad practices should be removed to prevent the abuse of it. Such a rule can of course be reworked and then added in back later, but for the time being, I believe that a broken, abusable rule is simply wrong to have.

This is going to be a somewhat controversial topic. I hope that people are capable of respecting each other’s opinions on this matter. Please try not to be provoked.

The subject is about the “ability for a post to have content used to abuse or harass another steam user”, by directly or indirectly referring to a steam account that they use. It is a rule to avoid making such posts which can lead to a community account ban when it is interpreted as being broken by perceiver and consequentially reported by them. I shall name a couple of problems with this rule and perhaps mention an example use case of how it could be abused. Please do not abuse any loophole mentioned here. The rules are not there to be broken. They’re intended to keep peace on the community, but as I may point out, this rule specifically will not do this at all.

In this post I will try to explain the following:

1. According to steam, what is abuse?
2. According to steam, what is harassment?
3. According to steam, what is a steam user?
4. What are the problems with the way steam sees these things and the rule?
5. How are these things abused by abusers within the steam community?

In order to get to that last one, we’ll have to understand why someone would abuse loopholes in the rules and what their goals are with abusing them. We’ll also have to look at how these mechanisms work.

For those who are not interested in reading and need a TL;DR. The conclusion is Steam reacts with the rule and may deliver a ban upon any reported perceived insult. Anything can be perceived as an insult and as such, someone merely has to state they felt insulted in just the right way, create a nice cocktail of content within the report and it is likely the reported user receives a ban. As such, you can be banned for any reason, and since Steam is just doing its job, all of this banning power is now in the hands of the steam community users along with the consequences thereof. It also does not protect any user from any insult and those who are skilled will be able to get away with insulting regardless. The rule just harms the community and strengthens the harm done by abusers of said rule. Bans end up being weaponized. This is why the rule needs to go.

One more note up front: My message is written using direct language and communication. This means that when I use a certain term of phrase, I am referring to the direct meaning, goal or consequence of that term or phrase, and not the indirect meaning, goal or consequence. For example: the goal of advertising is publicity, not making money. Publicity is the direct goal, making money is an indirect goal and as such may not even be the goal. A good example of where it is not are safety messages and guidelines on products, or traffic rules. The word can be compared to thread bumping or update notifications. Your only job when reading the word is figure out in what context using what I posted and not to immediately assume something negative or any negative implication. Any implication is indirect. If I am implying anything, I will let you know directly. In this example’s case, I would for example say ‘advertising to make money’. I hope that clears things up on the front, if not I strongly suggest you look up what direct communication is.

Also, due to Steam errors, I will have to split it into multiple posts. (see below)
I thank you for your time and patience with reading my message in advance here. Let me know what you think of this suggestion later on.

[Elucidator]

So first, what is harassment and what is abuse in the eyes of Steam, and why is this important? To answer the question, we’ll have to look at the rules and guidelines, as well as the online conduct code.

https://store.steampowered.com/online_conduct?l=english&snr=
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6862-8119-C23E-EA7B

The Online Conduct code is essentially the main rulebook that Steam Support will use to decide whether or not to take action towards a reported post, as described in the Rules and Guidelines. The Rules and Guidelines themselves are an attempt of Steam at explaining what these Online Conduct code rules mean, and provide some additional rules in the specific spaces described.

We can change the language of both of these pages in the top right corner of the webpage. English is likely being used as the main language, due to Valve’s location in the US, however that may not be necessarily the case. A problem with English, is that it is formed as a systemic, accurate and detailed descriptive language, but isn’t used that way by at least two countries, the US being one of them. Instead, within the US, it is often used indirectly and in indirect communication, there is basically no limit to the meaning of any word or phrase, or their use case thereof. Luckily, Valve realizes that not all languages work with indirect English. Even countries that use indirect communication, will use English in a more systemic, direct manner. I will come back to the problems with indirectness later on, as it becomes important then. For now, what you need to understand from this is that, sometimes, to get more clarity, it helps to change language to one that is more direct, and see what they mean exactly.

On the page of the Online Conduct, we read the following:
“Harass other users or Steam personnel”, which is listed below behaviors that a Steam user “shall not, or attempt to do”, to another Steam user, which suggests that there has to be some kind of clear intent involved, but in practice this is not the case.

Below that line we see examples of what Steam considers Harassment:
“trolling; baiting; threatening; spamming; intimidating; and using abusive language or insults.”

Notice insults is listed as well as abusive language next to each other, which is already strange since the meanings of both words overlap. When we change the language to German for example, we instead read there “intimidation or discouragement” and “insults”. On the Dutch version, we read “coarse language” and “insults”. On the Spanish version, we read “abusive language” and “insults”. The French version has “intimidation” and “offensive and insulting remarks”. Let’s see what the Danish version says… “hurtful language and insults”.

There is some inconsistency there as you can see, but basically we can conclude from this that Valve, Steam, defines Abusive Language as any language use that is perceived to be hurtful or causing them some kind of fear or wound. The only thing that can be wounded is one’s profile’s reputation. Considering each steam user can create multiple steam profiles, there are already a number of these things that simply will not “prevent another steam user from enjoying and using steam” listed there. If one account receives spam, they can simply move to another account after all.

Trolling, baiting, threatening and intimidating also has an overlap. A troll post is often also bait, and a bait post is often also troll that contains something that one perceives as an insult or harm to one’s profile’s reputation.

So we can basically boil harassment down to just two things: “the reader perceiving threats or perceiving the one referred to being threatened” which maybe or may not be there, directly or indirectly and “the reader perceiving insults or perceiving the referred to as wronged or insulted”, for which the same goes. Notice how this is a rule pointing to Harassment at Steam Users or Steam Employees and not their accounts or profiles.


So next let’s look at the Rules and Guidelines which attempts to go into more details on these rules.

Below the rules for the discussion boards and comments, we read that the intent of the rules is to be respectful to other users, and to remain constructful. Then we read the following line:

“Interactions with other players should not be abusive, disparaging, or inflammatory, nor create an environment that is unwelcoming.”

And below that, we see a list of what Steam called “disrespectful content”. “Insults and harassment”, “Threats”, “Trolling or baiting arguments”, “public accusations towards others”.

It’s the same stuff really. It doesn’t explain much. I mean we already figured out what valve means with harassment, which could be summarized as “threats and insults”, and yet, they list both “Insults and harassment” here. Not to mention that they use the word “Abusive” here again. So what do they mean this time?

Like, any accusation is likely an insult towards your public reputation, so it’s in a way hurtful, it’s also an insult. Trolling is either a lie or insult, which also makes it bait. The point being, there is a lot of overlap here, and instead of calling it harassment, here they call it “disrespectful”, even though it’s practically the same list as the stuff they called “harassment” earlier.

We can due to this confusing way of defining things here, be almost sure that this is, likely aimed at those who are native in English, and use English indirectly. So let’s see what other languages say.

In German, abusive got replaced with “insulting”, disparaging got replaced with “devaluing”, inflammatory got replaced with “riotous”. It gets weirder. ”Insults and harassment” got replaced with “insults and pestering”. “Trolling or baiting arguments” got replaced with “Trolling, baiting and flaming”.

In Dutch, abusive got replaced with “insulting” as well, disparaging got replaced with “belittling” and inflammatory got replaced with “riotous”. “Insults and harassment” got replaced with “insult or pestering”, “trolling or baiting arguments” got replaced with “Trolling or provoking fights”.

By the way, Dutch and German languages are primarily if not only direct in their language use. Notice how Spanish, which is more indirect, has words there that are a lot closer to the English variant, which in like all examples I’ll mention is probably the most indirect and vague in the rules.

The Spanish version has “aggressive, derogatory and provoking” in the top line. It also mentioned ‘hostile behavior’ interestingly. Yeah, Spanish is also a language that is used indirectly by their natives. “insults and harassment” got replaced with “insults and bullying”, “trolling or baiting arguments” got replaced with “Trolling or picking fights”.

The French version has in the top “offensive, derogatory or provoking”. “Trolling and baiting arguments” got replaced with “Troll >> and deliberate provocations”.

The Danish version has in the top “offensive, damaging, belittling”. “insults and harassment” got replaced with “Insults and bullying”, “Trolling or baiting arguments” got replaced with “Trolling or inciting a fight”.


So what does this mean?
Well, at least what it means is that it isn’t clear. Since Valve is a US company and Steam’s control and moderation team are US based, there is a huge case of miscommunication going on here. Each language seems to slightly alter the direct meaning of the words, yet the US uses English indirectly.

We can see in the Rules and Guidelines that Harassment is not defined by Steam, so they attempted to translate this indirect word to something more direct in other countries using a dictionary translation. Because of that, suddenly we have ‘bullying’ or ‘pestering’ there, an action that must take place multiple times with the target being the same person. A single post’s content cannot achieve such a thing and because of that the word is extremely vague to be used as a rule in a post. Either way, it doesn’t matter what a person from a different country may do, since instead of taking this into account, Steam Support will use the English variant of the rules and Online Code, which has too many indirect meanings that are not described. In order to comply without confusion, all they can do is use the list of items that Valve actually stated officially in the list. And so we see Insult and provocation or intimidation here.

And we see a repeat of this pattern in the Guidelines as well. And so… the conclusion of this all is that Abusive language is simply Insulting, or rather “making the referred to seem wronged, less worth than average or insulted, or the reader perceiving those things as aimed to themselves”, where abusive content, could as such simply be something that was perceived as ‘an insult’.

Harassment pretty much follows the same meaning seemingly, with the only exception being that this one also includes ‘threats’, and ‘content that somehow causes the reader themselves or whom they think you maybe referring to, according to that same reader at least, to become angered or provoked, or afraid.’. (Keep in mind that we’re still talking about “posts”, as this is below the rules and guidelines for the steam discussions and comments, and that you can get banned for a single post that has such content, at least according to the eyes of the reader.

One of the many problems with this perception, is that it is based on how the reader sees things, or rather how they imagine things are. It is not about the intent of the writer, but how the reader takes it in. And this correlates to indirect language and indirect communication.

[Elucidator]

The problem with indirect language and communication, as it is used by a lot in the US, is that the speaker can say whatever, and the listener has to figure out what they meant. Whatever meaning the reader finds, that becomes what is the case. It is up to the listener, or rather in case of online messages at least up to the reader to decide what it says practically. The writer has no obligation to make anything clear for the reader, and can just leave them guessing endlessly. Normally, the reader tries to get close to the writer’s intentions, because we’re social creatures, but the problem is the loneliness and anonymity. We do not see people, we see profiles. This, and the problem of those intentionally wishing to abuse, causes issues.

We cannot see any unspoken things going on. We cannot read the intent by for example listening to how soft or how loud something is spoken. We cannot see if someone is stressed or relaxed. It therefore makes no sense to use indirect language online, but it happens everywhere anyway, as you can see with the examples of the rules and guidelines I mentioned. It is very heavily prone to miscommunication due to this and it creates an unwelcoming online culture; something Steam doesn’t even want according to the Rules and Guidelines.

How so, you may wonder. It’s because indirectness isn’t the goal of English, it is a consequence of culture. Since the speaker is assuming you know what they mean, and are not trained to try and explain things, the speaker will get bothered or even annoyed if you ask for clarification. This is an indirect consequence of the indirectness culture. Should something have happened and people are upset with you, because of indirectness culture, these people will assume when you say “I don’t understand” that you’re trying to avoid blame, avoid to do what they want, trying to be right, argue, fight, upset people, cause even more problems, ruin their day, etc. They thus assume that you’re trying to make manners worse. The result of this miscommunication as such is that you get banned of any social platform, forum, chat group, game session, etc. The only exception is when they can see your face or hear your voice, because that allows them to consider the possibility that you are serious in not understanding what they meant. And yet, they will likely still get annoyed and upset with you. The reason for this is, even when someone from indirectness culture tries to explain to you what they mean, they will not be able to, simply because they keep being indirect about it. They will use words or phrases that may make things even more confusing to you. A consequence of that is that you ask them too many times “What do you mean?”, and consequentially they just get extremely angered about the whole situation. Instead of seeing it as miscommunication issues, those in indirectness culture most often see these problems as trolling. They indirectly look at the situation, so instead of looking at the question, they see that they get angry, they see that the other person keeps asking them the same thing over and over and imagine that they must realize that they are getting angry and frustrated with the question. Indirect people will assume the other knows they are getting angry as a result of the questions and aren’t listening to them. In fact they will likely, very harshly assume others aren’t listening to them, and so they assume that they’re being trolled. As such, I don’t think that those who live outside of the hive are automatically welcomed; in fact it seems more likely that they get rejected.

The biggest problem with indirectness though, is that through indirectness everything can have any meaning and those who wish to take advantage of this will do so. Since English in the US is used primarily indirectly, this opens up a lot of loopholes in the rules.

After all, you can now mean anything, so anything can be an insult and can be made to believe to be an insult in the eyes of others thanks to indirect communication. And if you dare, try to defend yourself, then you are indirectly claiming guilt of the insult. This is also a feature in indirectness culture. The funny part is, if you’re not doing anything, people will also assume you’re guilty of the insult, but this time are proud of it. It’s a no-win situation, and this power is in the hands of the writer.

Indirectness is in its nature, extremely controlling. It creates an environment where people are all part of a hive, and within this hive, one understands one another and plays by a book. The rules are not spoken, often vague. People react to some vague cues, making people conform with society, causing them to do what the cue giver wants them to do, without the cue giver being up front about it. Those outside of this hive will not understand it and in a way will, as I tried to explain before, be discriminated against simply because of miscommunication. They cannot understand, so either they’re isolated or they are a source of anger. Rather than allowing them to learn and try to communicate, people indirectness culture find that people already have to be part of this hive culture and understand them up front. They don’t, so hostility happens. Ironically, those who are within an indirectness culture themselves, yet not part of this hive, they too will feel that they’re being isolated. It is however much easier for someone like that to be accepted into the indirectness hive.

Those who are in an indirectness culture will feel as if being direct is rude, brutal and like commanding, threatening and controlling people, not allowing them any freedom or choice. This is apparently why a lot of them avoid using directness. It feels wrong to them. And yet, the irony lies in that they don’t see the hive mindset around them. For those outside of the hive, it seems that those who partake in its indirectness are really the ones who have no freedom. They’re too afraid to express themselves, they have to go along with others instead of the choice of walking away without the need to lie or wear a mask and they lie but cannot get caught about it or else.

When someone who is direct in their culture reads a board where there is indirect culture, they’re not going to understand what is going on at all. It will be vague. They may get an idea, but they don’t get anything. Someone who is used to indirectness yet not from the same region, they will experience the same issues. This all makes it extremely odd to use indirectness online. Indirectness, being prone to miscommunication and its consequences thereof, simply shouldn’t be used. And yet, it is used. It’s in the Online Conduct, and in the Rules and Guidelines.

In order to understand how this Indirectness quality of English is abused by those who wish to abuse, we first have to look at what Steam considers a Steam user. We now understand that English is used indirectly, despite the terms that Valve employees uses.

When you receive a ban, Steam Support will let you know “This Steam Account was banned.” It was never your account, nor your ban. The account was banned. The ownership if the account belongs to Valve and you have received permission to use it. This is due to the Steam Subscriber Agreement. This comes with a problem, because now you don’t get banned, an account gets banned. This means that you can evade bans by swapping accounts you’re allowed to use. A profile is user generated content, much like posts, which are associated with a profile, which is associated with an account. Steam claims ownership over the account, and therefore the profile, which means any addressing done towards a profile, a steam username, or profile name, cannot refer to a Steam user. A steam user is just someone who was given permission to use the account that belongs to valve.

So we see yet another use case of indirectness here. When you refer to a profile, you can only indirectly refer to the person who was controlling it at that time or sometime in the past. It is filled with a number of indirect assumptions. Do you actually refer to the user, or do you refer to the profile? When you talk about behavior you see, do you simply show the behavior, or are you criticizing it, exposing someone or belittling them socially? That is the problem with direct versus indirect. Now again, keep in mind, people can just make another account, but the Steam Moderation team will not accept such possibility.


People with the intentions to abuse will twist everything and English as it is being used indirectly allows for such twists to become reality. Instead of questioning it, in indirect English assumes the writer speaks the truth. The shorter it is, the more truthful and honest something may seem and is believed to be. The longer, the more bloated with lies and reasons for defense it must be. Indirect English puts the stress on the reader and listener. This makes them imagine and feel along, far beyond what was written. Indirect English is due to this in cases of an accusation dispute by nature unfair as it does not allow as such for a proper defense. Indirect English assumes the speaker speaks the truth, and that the speaker, which is in this case whoever makes the report and who plays victim, must be leaving things out. Indirect English readers assume there is more going on as such. There is sensitivity and stress on empathic, controversial subjects; anything brought into media spotlight, and people with the intentions to abuse will use anything and everything to their advantage.

Anything you say will be used against you. All of your behavior will be used against you. Anything you didn’t say but might be a possible implication, even if you are unaware, will be used against you. Psychology will be abused, the fact that the moderators have no time to investigate stuff properly and react late, will be abused. The fact that they are just doing their job, will be abused. The fact that the system doesn’t save the timestamps when a post was deleted, but only when it was made, will be abused. The fact that the system doesn’t have an edit log, will be abused. The possibility that you posted a lie, will be abused as well. Literally, everything you can think of, will be abused by those who wish to get you banned, and unfortunately, that power lies in the community’s hands.

[Elucidator]

I’ll try to explain why this rule doesn’t do anything to protect users:

Steam Support receives many reports, and so they don’t have time for everything and cannot react quickly. Steam users can therefore break the rule against Abuse or Harassment simply by posting, waiting till the target reads it, which they will in all likelihood. The bad doer still have time to remove their post themselves afterward. Though real bad people will wait till someone else quoted their post, and then remove their own so that they cannot be reported for it and their target still gets to read it regardless. This rule is just there to ‘punish people afterward’, it is revenge. And revenge just causes grudge and more revenge. Never mind that, it doesn’t matter how long you jail someone, criminals who got jailed will just continue in their path. Why? Because there is no one there they can talk to about it, explain what they did wrong, convince them it was wrong, etc. There are many studies that prove jail time doesn’t work. The less humane you treat someone, the less likely they change their behavior positively.

By banning someone, they instead of becoming less likely at breaking the rules, become more effective at getting away with it while still being able to do what they want. The time off is used to think of strategies to take revenge, to build anger, to find a way to punish the one who got them banned, or to avoid getting banned, not by not insulting someone, but by making it less noticeable.

And so they think of ways to avoid their post from being reported, such as removing them or only the insulting content after the target read it. The punishment, the bans actually teaches bad doers how to be better at harming users.


Another form of harm that this rule causes is the victim troll. They bait someone into defending themselves, remove the post, and then report whoever replied to their bait in order to get them banned. Heck, they may just end up posting and removing post to generate the idea that the target of their bait post had read the previous posts in the thread in order to strengthen their report.

For example, someone may post that they don’t like it that others used ‘he’. They post their gender identity, and their preferred pronoun, then they remove that post. No one saw this post. That is how quickly it was placed and removed by the same user. Now next they let their target user post. They post something more, then remove their post. The target questions why, and now they have the target where they want them. The target went off topic, used the wrong pronoun, therefore insulted them and they have evidence for this in the thread. It happened more than once, etc. The target can validly be reported. Thanks to the controversy behind the topic, it is impossible for Steam Support to investigate the truth behind the claims; since questioning whether it was just posted to get their target off the platform or not is going to cause wildfire everywhere. And so they successfully get a user banned.

Now, why would an abuser go through this trouble? Power and status obviously. To maintain the perfect imagine, while also thinking that they can get away with report avoiding, breaking the rules and controlling Steam’s moderation. Unfortunately these practices are supported by the rules and the system.

But it gets worse, because there is no need to abuse a controversial topic. Anything can be an insult, or seen as harassment within one post. You say you like a screenshot? Are you stalking them? You say you didn’t like a game (in a review or not). Are you harassing the developer? You disagree with achievements. Are you insulting achievement hunters then? Like, good luck not insulting anyone. It’s impossible.

All you need to say is “Yes”, “No”, “You”, someone will feel hurt. And now you can use the Indirect Nature of English, to just make it something else entirely or make it point to something unrelated, convince people it is related and boom, you can ban someone. Also add more flavors to the cocktail in your report to make it worse. It helps.

That is how broken this rule is.


And we all know the problem when mere insults are being policed, since people are more and more prone to seeing themselves hurt and victimized.

Rowan Atkingson showed the problem in his speech on ‘free speech’.
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=xUezfuy8Qpc


The conclusions we can make from this are that the rule doesn’t protect. The rule is designed basically around insults, with only a small tweak around causing fear or anger, and the rule diffidently doesn’t protect users from this. The rule seems to only cause harm to the community. The rule doesn’t prevent anything. The rule instead makes people smarter at causing the harm. The consequences of banning based on the rule incite violent thoughts, anger, grudges and finding exploits within the rules instead of peace keeping, as well as abuse of the rule. Punishment doesn’t work. The bans can be evaded with a second account, therefore the target user of a steam profile isn’t protected at all from the steam user who gets reported, since only accounts get banned.

Bad people will use the rule to their advantage to harm people much more severely and effectively than that they could have done without the rule being there, by controlling through manipulation tactics the Steam Support team’s response to a report. Bans result in inciting anger, seeking out fights on the discussion board or elsewhere on the Steam Platform. It promotes the behavior that the rule is supposed to help prevent.

The rule prevents certain speech, decreasing freedom. It promotes victimization (victim playing or being perceiving oneself as victimized), it promotes people getting more easily hurt by perceived insults (again, anything can be an insult) due to a lowered tolerance, a tolerance that just keeps lowering due to decreased exposure. Things that sound normal now will sound harsh and brutally rude in the future and will get you reported and banned so long this rule is in place. The rule promotes abuse. For example when people wish to use specific words and are being reported for it, simply because of indirect English which allows for the easy twisting of the meanings behind a specific context. It promotes increasing the amount of terms and phrases that are used for profanity. (If something isn’t allowed, it just gets replaced. People will use other non-standard tricks to insult instead.)


Anything can be seen as an insult. Anything can therefore be seen as harassment or abuse. Policing against it, just creates an authoritarian culture on the steam platform, where those in charge are the ones with the least empathy and interests in others, the ones who are the most easily insulted, who wish to harm other users by baiting and reporting them. Reports to which the steam moderation team has to react by just doing their job, like some kind of robot that despite seeing these things, cannot change anything because the administration is slow to realize things.

I think it is best if people are exposed to the things that they feel insults them, because normally, insulting is almost never the goal of the writer. Instead they attempt to make a point, a point that is skipped over because of a perceived insult. It blinds them due to the lack of immunity against critique. The rule allows these people to continue being weak and fragile, despite being an adult and dismisses any conversation, simply because anything can be seen as an insult, so even replying and questioning things they may have said. It also allows malignant people, to get someone banned and laugh at them, knowing up front they will, announcing that even, witness it happen, confirm it happened and feel in power and control, gaining recognition and admiration for it instead of therapy. Bluntness? Oh that must be an insult. Critique? Is that even allowed?

I hope I made the point clear. I have no clue why Steam would even implement this rule. It’s simply wrong, especially with these systems in place. The issue is that the rule wasn’t designed with the system in mind. The system wasn’t designed with this rule in mind, and the system and rule conflict. They can only make and should only make rules that are in line with the systems on the discussion boards or comment sections. This rule isn’t that.

In order to make a good rule, the rule and the system must be build together and must properly realize the global consequences of it being there. This rule doesn’t do that. It might as well not be there, in fact it would be better if it wasn’t because then people wouldn’t get banned for no reason simply because someone wanted to get them banned because they felt insulted.

I hope Steam may recognize this. Let me hear your thoughts and comments. Thank you for taking the time to read my message.

[Thermal Lance]

I'm definately not reading all of this on a phone but I'll take a shot in the dark by saying that some rules are somewhat vague on purpose.

[Anxiety]

Just be nice.

[Brian9824]

Yeah not going to read your giant wall of text, but steam isn't going to remove rules that let people abuse and harass others... So a giant no. The overwhelming majority of users, over 99.99% seem to be able to identify what the rules are without issue.

[Elucidator]

They can do that anyway, but with the rule in place they can also get you banned easily.

I believe that people who don't 'abuse and harass' people are not doing so because of a rule and the threat it carries, but because of their human nature. You're going to receive some hurtful commentary whether the rule is there or not. Steam Support is slow and people can swap accounts when they do get banned to continue the conversation, or just follow you around on any thread you speak onto with their multiple accounts and continue harassing there. You're not protected.

The rule instead just enables people to get you banned for any reason, which maybe part of their harassment campaign, since anything can be viewed as insult.

[Mad Scientist]

That's a lot of big posts.

Anyway, those that have previously tried to weaponize such rules have been hit in number & length with bans for abuse. There's a reason some abusers hardly post anymore, because they know claiming "harassment" does not make it so, especially when that is thrown around whenever any one user disagrees on anything they write & they become uncivil about people disagreeing with them.

Abuse is punished. Sometimes the moderation history of a user can tell moderation everything they need to know - including abuse - to the point that reports made by people with extreme hatred of other users & trying to report them via lurking, will no longer ever have any effect & can result in temporary or permanent restrictions. Those demonstrating bad faith individually or as a group, eventually wear out their welcome entirely.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

They can do that anyway, but with the rule in place they can also get you banned easily.

I believe that people who don't 'abuse and harass' people are not doing so because of a rule and the threat it carries, but because of their human nature. You're going to receive some hurtful commentary whether the rule is there or not. Steam Support is slow and people can swap accounts when they do get banned to continue the conversation, or just follow you around on any thread you speak onto with their multiple accounts and continue harassing there. You're not protected.

The rule instead just enables people to get you banned for any reason, which maybe part of their harassment campaign, since anything can be viewed as insult.

Not remotely true. Insults are blatant, and reviewed by a neutral party. Also the argument that people can bypass punishment is a massive fallacy. I mean with that logic every law sohuld be outlawed and we should entirely rely on human nature for people to pay their bills and behave....

[Elucidator]

Originally posted by brian9824:

Not remotely true. Insults are blatant, and reviewed by a neutral party. Also the argument that people can bypass punishment is a massive fallacy. I mean with that logic every law sohuld be outlawed and we should entirely rely on human nature for people to pay their bills and behave....

You're not reading, instead you're imagining what I might be implying. I don't feel like going into repeat, but my counter arguement can be found within the text walls you skipped, including the part you find call a fallacy simply because you don't want to believe it, since I explained three methods.

Your last line makes no sense at all. I haven't seen a straw man this hugely exaggerated to be honest.
Laws get rejected if there are problems with them and normally do not get implemented. If there is a problem found with them later, then they let the law expire and rework said law, updating it.
Also:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-human-nature-and-discover-we-are-good-after-all/
quote from there: "our intuitive responses, or first instincts, tend to lead to cooperation rather than selfishness."
There is scientific evidence that supports my claim, that people may be just not insulting because they want to be nice, which is in their nature.
Any insult is more likely just perceived, rather than intentional. The video I posted also shows a reason as to why.
If you need a scientifcally analysed example:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.2067?journalCode=erpa
which is about a joke perceived as insulting, not just to a single person, but just something that people partake in.

In other words, people are prone to seeing themselves as hurt and feeling insulted. Some people advocate that people should grow immunity to deal with these perceptions, rather than keeping them fragile, because there seems to be no end to how fragile people can become.

But that is not what I was saying, what I was saying is that the rule causes only problems. Please read my text walls to find out why.

[Brian9824]

Nah if you can't make your point in less then 20 pages i'm not going to read into that.

They aren't going to remove a rule that simply says don't harass people. If people are inherently good then they should have no issue following said rule. If they aren't then the rule is needed because you need to inform people of the type of behavior that is not allowed on sites.

[Elucidator]

And with it, this circle starts over. The problem isn't the people who keep themselves to these guidelines, its those that do not wish to, and those who wish to abuse the rule to their advantage, weaponizing bans in their flavor.

It's fine by the way if you disagree with the suggestion. I was just trying to point out a problem and hoping you'd see it. I'll stop replying to you now. Maybe you have a very good point for me to consider that this rule should stay, but for now I am not convinced yet.

Small edit: It's really difficult to try and show the problems without going into detail on the mechanics, which is why these posts are big. Its difficult to understand when some aspects of it are 'normal' and so, ignored. It's kinda like trying to explain the air isn't clean, even though no one has trouble breathing it, and then they ask 'what is clean air', its going to become difficult.

I can understand people may find it funny, the thought alone, or even the suggestion. It goes against the very instinct one may have, which makes it all the more weird to suggest this. Because of that, it cannot be summarized shortly without understanding the mechanics involved. You're not going to understand it without reading and grasping what I am trying to convey in total. You can still disagree, much like Mad Scientist did, but-- you know. It's easier to get what I mean at least, so you wouldn't need to argue how dumb the suggestion is. xd

Small edit 2: One more note. Thanks for your commentary.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

And with it, this circle starts over. The problem isn't the people who keep themselves to these guidelines, its those that do not wish to, and those who wish to abuse the rule to their advantage, weaponizing bans in their flavor.

In that regards there is the option to not let the door hit you on the way out. You have to remember this is valve's forum, their rules. If someone came to my home and begged for particular rules to be changed, best case scenario they get laughed out. best of luck, etc.

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Thermal Lance:

I'm definately not reading all of this on a phone but I'll take a shot in the dark by saying that some rules are somewhat vague on purpose.

Indeed. It leaves room for mods to have discretion.

In my experience, when people demand to know the hard and fast limits of the rules, it's so they can get right up against those limits without actually crossing the line, like an annoying sibling who "technically" isn't touching you.

[Gwarsbane]

So short version of the OP posts is...

"I got moderated for a rule I don't like so that rule has to be removed."

Rules are vague to stop people screaming "the rules don't say that, so you can't ban me!!!"