[curtsolo]

This message is directed to BBO staff as well as service users who have insight to contribute.

First, let me say that I appreciate the BBO service and the fact that it is available for free. I should also add that I realize playing on the service is a privilege - not a right - and I have read the terms and conditions of use in detail.

That said, I have some serious concerns about how BBO chooses to resolve (or ignore) disciplinary problems, and I would like to highlight an incident from a couple of days ago. Since people can use the service in mostly anonymous fashion, many are not afraid to be extremely rude and abusive to other players. I have basically gotten to the point where I will only play with and against people I know personally because (1) the abuse has gotten out of control and (2) in my experience, BBO has done absolutely nothing to discipline these people. I have given up sending email to the abuse@ address because I've never even gotten the courtesy of a response, let alone any reassurance that the abuse has been investigated.

The other night, I was playing with a friend at a private table. We were playing against two GIB opponents. There were no other human players at the table, nor were there kibitzers. As the two of us were playing, we were joking around making comments about the very strange bidding by the bots, and we used profanity in our chat. Neither of us would ever use this language at a public table or with people watching.

The following day, my friend was suspended from the service for "being rude and hurting other people." Unless the robots have developed feelings and learned how to send email to the staff, this is impossible. So apparently someone on the staff was privately monitoring our conversation and - in spite of there being no complaint from any other user - suspended my friend from the service. This action, while certainly within the rights of the staff according to the terms of service, is unreasonable.

Have we officially arrived in the Orwellian era? Does BBO stand for Big Brother Online? I must say that I am deeply concerned that the staff is using its time and resources to randomly go after people who are having fun using the service who are NOT being hurtful to other players. This invasion of privacy is quite scary and not at all within the spirit of fostering a fun environment in which to play. It is even more bothersome when you consider the fact that people like my friend - who always treats other players with respect - are being banned while BBO refuses to discipline those who really do make playing on the service less enjoyable for the rest of us. I do not understand these priorities at all.

Has anyone else run into a similar problem? I would like to hear from those who have had similar experiences, and I'd certainly like an explanation for this particular decision from someone who works for BBO - as well as seeing my friend's account reinstated.

Thanks,
Curt

[inquiry]

curtsolo, on Feb 16 2009, 06:26 PM, said:

That said, I have some serious concerns about how BBO chooses to resolve (or ignore) disciplinary problems, and I would like to highlight an incident from a couple of days ago. Since people can use the service in mostly anonymous fashion, many are not afraid to be extremely rude and abusive to other players. I have basically gotten to the point where I will only play with and against people I know personally because (1) the abuse has gotten out of control and (2) in my experience, BBO has done absolutely nothing to discipline these people. I have given up sending email to the abuse@ address because I've never even gotten the courtesy of a response, let alone any reassurance that the abuse has been investigated.

Well, I can address some of this. First, you state that you stopped reporting bad behavior to abuse, because "BBO does absolutely nothing" to discipline these people, and "I've never even gotten the courtesy of a response, let alone any reassurance that the abuse has been investigated."

I can assure you two things. The first is that abuse does take action, ranging from a warning to a full site ban on bad behavior reported to abuse. Second, you will never hear from abuse the result of the investigation. The reason for the second is the BBO's privacy policy, they will never share with one member the action taken against another. If you need a thrill of seeing someone you report punished, the best you can do is watch to see if they disappear for a week or longer, and draw whatever conclusion you can from that.

I think the week long ban on your friend shows that abuse can, and will take action. The only reason you know about the ban is your friend told you. If someone turned your friend in, they will not know.

Quote

[ [ stuff about playing in private room, inappropriate chat, and a ban ] ]

I am not entirely sure that the chat between you and your friend had anything to do with the BAN. abuse is very busy, and it takes time to check the various allegations that he/she gets. Perhaps the bad behavior predates the robot game you had yesterday.

Or perhaps your friend has been warned in the past several times and was on an automated watch list for profane public language (to a table.. btw I don't know if such list or such tools exist).

You asked, "have we officially arrived in the Orwellian era? Does BBO stand for Big Brother Online?"

I doubt it. But BBO does have an active abuse program, try to avoid getting caught in it.

[uday]

I'm uday@bridgebase.com -- if you send me your pal's bbo username, I'll be able to tell you why he or she was blocked from the site.


It usually takes a complaint before disciplinary action is initiated. This action ranges from ignoring the complaint to warning the perp to calm down to doing our best to ban the perp. Occasionally we scan the public chatlogs and hunt down users who use too many profanities at too many tables.


U

[curtsolo]

In response to inquiry's post:

I understand that if disciplinary action is taken due to a complaint, the person who filed the complaint will not get the specifics regarding how the matter was resolved. That's fine - I'm not looking for any "thrill" knowing that justice has been served. The reason I quit reporting to abuse@ is because I never once even received an acknowledgment that the complaint had been read or was being investigated; perhaps in these cases BBO was, in fact, investigating the complaint and simply neglected to confirm this with an email reply to me.

In response to uday's post:

As I mentioned in my initial article, there could not have been a complaint from another user in this particular case because there were no other users at the table aside from my partner and me. When my partner was notified of his suspension, he received a reply with the chat log included (which, as I mentioned, did include profanity used in a joking manner not directed at any person).

The problem is that he was suspended based on an (apparently random) scan of chat without any consideration of the context. If BBO can go to the trouble of looking for occurrences of profanity on a random basis, should not the context be considered? If the person who conducted the scan had actually bothered to read the chat or notice that we were at a table with robots, it would be patently obvious that this was simply two long time friends playing bridge and having fun with the bizarre and sometimes inexplicable bidding and plays of the robots. The idea that there was an ounce of malice or hostility in this is absurd - yet that's exactly the accusation that the staff member who emailed my friend leveled when he said my friend was "rude and hurt other people" (exact words from the BBO representative, as my friend forwarded the message to me). Moreover, my friend responded with a detailed explanation of the circumstances and was ignored.

If BBO is going to be censoring private chats between two people and banning specific words, this should probably be included in the terms of use so that users are aware that using profanity for any reason - even in a harmless dialogue with a friend - is grounds for suspension. This seems a bit over the top, but at least that way people are aware that their speech is being limited when they choose to use the service.

[matmat]

what about scanning in other languages? does that happen too?

[uday]

The only way to know why someone was blocked is to ask . I tossed out some possibilities. For all you know, and for all I know, this guy was barred for something else. My email is above. w/o a username or email address or ticket #, I'm in the dark ( and disinclined to grope for much longer ).


Public chat is logged. Private chat is not logged. Still, some chat doesn't belong here.

[dkharty]

Hello,

I am "this guy" to whom uday is referring, also referred to in an earlier post as the "perp." (To uday: my username is daveharty) Perhaps I can clarify a couple of things, although my friend Curt's post was complete and accurate.

The reason I know that this particular conversation (that between Curt and myself, at a private table, with bot opponents) is the reason I was suspended is because it was cited and quoted at length in the response I received from ABUSE. Here is the text of the response:

<<There is only one requirement for membership in BBO--be nice to others. You were rude and hurt other people, hence your membership was suspended. I include snippets of chat that is not allowed in BBO. Please don't do this again.>>

<<followed by snippets of the conversation referred to earlier, which I will not quote--suffice it to say that F-bombs were flying thick and heavy>>

So the only conclusion that I can reach is that indeed, certain words--or a certain number of instances of certain words, or whatever--are taboo on BBO. "Chat that is not allowed on BBO" was the EXACT phrase used by the person responding to my query about the suspension. As Curt said, and I reiterate, we understand that BBO is free to set policy as it pleases; if censorship is the Law Of The Land, that's fine, but BBO should be upfront about it.

As for whether I was being specifically targetted, I really can't say. I was suspended one other time from BBO; the reason was that I was apparently creating "absurd results" at the table (I was playing with a bot partner against bot opponents, and decided to see if I could lose all thirteen tricks despite holding a lot of values and a lot of trumps...I did this on several hands, occasionally redoubled, creating some truly outlandish numbers, never realizing that my results would be used for comparison at other tables...silly, I know, but hardly felonious). Was this sufficient to place me on a "watch list"? I don't know. Uday says "Private chat is not logged. Still, some chat doesn't belong here." I'm not sure what that means. I can respond to Inquiry's post by saying, No, I have never been warned by BBO about anything. Inquiry further states "Perhaps the bad behavior predates the robot game you had yesterday." Well, yes, it's true...yesterday was not the first time I have ever cursed. In fact, I am rather prone to use salty language...AS LONG AS IT IS IN PRIVATE. I would never have spoken the way I did at a table with live opponents, or with kibitzers I didn't know well enough to know they wouldn't be offended (not a factor here, because there were none). I try to be as respectful of my (human) tablemates as possible, whether live or online.

If anyone had been truly "hurt" by my words, I would apologize profusely. But I just can't see how that is the case.

Thanks,
Dave

[uday]

I've lifted the ban while we investigate.

Some phrases (even words) are absolutely taboo on BBO and in most civilized discourse. Email me if you want samples of such phrases.

Getting rid of people that say things like "Die, you stinking Indian" is not quite the same thing as getting rid of people who say "I believe that democracy is a good thing, and I wish my country would embrace it."

"perp" is a convenient word. Find me another and I'll use it

Our procedures are designed to minimize the harm caused by abusive users, not to control what they say beyond that. I'm sure I'm going to hear from the 'freedom of speech' crowd

Our scans are sporadic and I don't scan for anything but English. Perhaps Gerardo scans for Spanish, but i doubt it.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with opening a table and cursing away, or discussing democracy, dog-breeding, or whatever. However, it is incumbent upon the table host to make sure that civilians don't wander in (by setting the permissions of the table to "no kibs" ).

My guess is that someone wandered into the table in question and complained.

[dkharty]

Uday,

Thanks for the quick reply.

The conversation in question, while certainly crude, was decidedly NOT vicious toward any human being (I'm sure there were more than one "Die, Bot, Die!" thrown in).

Also, it was impossible (as far as I know) for any kibitzer to have wandered into the table, as I had it set to "permission required". The language being used was my primary reason for setting up the table that way.

I wasn't offended at all by your use of the word "perp"--in fact I found it rather funny.

Dave Harty

[glen]

holy ******* ****!

[rona_]

glen, on Feb 17 2009, 09:30 PM, said:

holy ******* ****!

Except for three or four people that are part of BBO admin, I don't honestly understand why yellows are allowed to enter any room on BBO and be invisible. When people play with their friends they occasionally have private conversations, which are just that. Private. Yellows should be able to enter any room and be Visible. When they are visible in kibs they are more effective in controlling the crowds. I have no objection to my private or public conversations being recorded, but I do very much mind the idea that someone could be in the room where I am playing bridge without my knowledge. I am only guessing that this might have happened and frankly that isn't the point of this post. The point I would like to make is that maybe it's time for BBO to think about changing this policy.

Rona

[UdcaDenny]

Curtsolo is right about how Abuse works. See my story "Banned for life ?" in Tournament Direcors Forum. I never had an answer or explanation nor a warning or a second chance which Im told is a customary procedure. Some yellows told me to contact Fred or Uday but they say its not their business to interfere. So where do u go if u feel abused by Abuse ?
Anyway I love to play on BBO and will go on doing that as I have many friends here but cant understand that my crime was so bad being banned as TD for life.

Love and Peace to all members

Udcadenny