Mod action necessary for repeat flaking

[lilith2013]

We do penalize people for excessive flaking or replacing out - if you search the ban thread for "replacing," there are several results detailing restrictions we have placed on users for excessive replacing out in the past. unfortunately we are not omniscient and have to rely somewhat on reports of this occurring in order to be aware of a large pattern emerging. on my end, I try to keep an eye on the replacement request queue for any names coming up a lot, which is admittedly not a perfect proxy; as far as I'm aware, there aren't any players in recent history who would be penalized for excessive replacement. if you see people flaking out or replacing out of games repeatedly, then please report it so we can take appropriate action.

[lilith2013]

Game mods are already able to prod and force replace basically at will, and it’s unlikely that listmods would become aware of someone flaking before game mods so it doesn’t seem very reasonable at the individual game level to depend on listmods for action. Game mods are the first line of defense, essentially.

I don’t really think that we need to or should treat flaking out differently than someone being replaced out. First, what constitutes “flaking” is very subjective - is it X days without posting? Then the game mod’s ability to force replace and excessive replacement penalties should cover this. Is it making fewer than X posts within Y days? What if those posts are full of content? Then is it fewer than X posts with content within Y days? What do we consider to be valid content? It’s much more straightforward to determine that someone has been excessively replaced than to try to make a value judgment on whether or not they have met the criteria of flaking, and because of that I think excessive replacements is, although not perfect, fine as a proxy for flaking. If someone has flaked out of games and is being penalized for excessive replaceouts, how much harsher is the penalty supposed to be or how would the penalty be substantially different to such an extent that we need to consider flaking as an entirely different offense from excessive replacements? And why should someone’s personal circumstances change the severity of the penalty?

Finally, I haven’t seen any reports about a player flaking in my time so far. So it doesn’t really matter what discussion we’re having about flaking if no one is reporting it.