New ep:
Harassment
I liked this episode. The solutions they suggested, particularly the auto-mute for players who have been muted X% of the time is a good simple solution that can be easily implemented into existing services. There are detail to work out, like a viable avenue for the auto-muted to earn their privileges back for good behavior, but it's a good first step in the right direction.
Yes, it's a simple solution.
But in cases like me, it wouldn't work. I mean I would be one of the people that would indirectly confuse that system, because most of the time I mute everyone when playing a game. Uncharted 3? Muting everyone. Binary Domain? Muting everyone (besides maybe coop play). Why? Because I'm used to use sound to figure out enemy locations. If I can't hear them properly, I will play worse. So if that system existed, I would be sending out signals like "all the players that I play with are harassing", where actually most of the time they don't. I just don't want to listen to them.
Percentage detection won't work good enough or even at all because of this. Muting is done on harassing players, but it's also done because someone just doesn't want to listen to other people talk. What is even harassment? A child screaming insults? Yes. What about 2 friends talking to each other? May be harassment to some, some others won't mind - both will press mute - now those 2 friends will get auto-muted, great. They also need to think about the other side of the fence. Trolls will use that system against the regular players. Muting people often, so "normal" players will get auto-muted by the system. That's especially problematic on a free network like PSN. Trolls can create 20 accounts, join a match with each, mute everyone and disconnect.
I mean even giving out scores for playing won't work properly. I played Demon's Souls a lot and in that game, the players will give each other ratings after finishing a level. If a player gets rated high, he will get more souls. If he won't, he will get less. Now theoretically this would have worked. In my case it worked sometimes. But some other times, I beat the boss almost by myself, the other player (that I actually helped beating the boss) didn't play properly. And what do I get? A bad rating. Although I helped him and did almost all the work. Why? Because he will get more souls that way.
What works is the GAF-method. Create an account. Wait 1/2 year. Get it approved. Be on trial for a time. Still bannable by a human at anytime. Works perfectly especially against trolls, because they get bored of waiting and troll somewhere else. But this of course is not usable for multiplayer gaming.