Community-driven moderation: Angel vs. Devil

Why let the community moderate?

Random video chat happens in thousands of one-to-one rooms at once. No team of moderators can sit in every one of them. The two people in a chat are the only ones who saw it, so they are the best placed to say how it went.

Most random video chat sites leave that to a Report button, which people press only when something is seriously wrong. Angel vs. Devil asks a smaller question in the chats instead: was this person pleasant to talk to? A few seconds of everyone’s judgment, added up over many chats, shows who keeps being unpleasant, long before anyone writes a report.

How it works

1. Two buttons, in the chat. A couple of seconds after a call connects, 😇 Angel and 😈 Devil appear on the other person’s video.
2. One private pick. Pick one, or neither. You can pick once per chat, a pick can’t be changed, and it is never shown to the person you rated or to anyone else.
3. It counts when the chat ends. Picks move each person along a slider of eight steps, starting at Neutral, and count only for a chat that connected and lasted at least 20 seconds. While nobody picks, a position drifts back toward Neutral by a quarter of a step every hour.
4. You see where you stand. After a chat, the waiting screen shows your own position as it stood before that chat, from everyone who rated you lately, so nothing there tells you what the person you just met picked. Nothing is shown while you are Neutral.
5. The ends of the scale have consequences. People you meet see a small badge on the very well and very badly rated, and Maximum Devil pauses chatting for an hour.

The eight steps

After the hour, the position starts again at Neutral, or at Devil for a second pause within a day, and the people you meet aren’t told. A pause from picks is automatic: it is the result of what people picked, not a moderator’s ban.

Built so it can’t be turned against someone

A rating anyone can give is only fair if nobody can gang up with it. These limits are part of the code, not just the rules.

• Once a day per person. One person’s pick about another counts at most once a day, however often they meet, and one person’s Devil picks count at most ten times an hour.
• Only real chats count. A pick counts only for a chat that connected and lasted at least 20 seconds, so nobody can rate a face glimpsed for two seconds before pressing Next.
• A pause always takes several people. Without picks added by hand, a pause always takes Devil picks from at least two different people. With the standard settings, going from Neutral to a pause takes seven Devil picks from seven different people, with no Angel picks in between.
• Limits on shared connections. Two people on the same connection, such as two windows on one computer, get one rated chat an hour. Picks from or about a connection with no address never count.
• Nobody sees who picked what. Not the person you rated, not other visitors, and not the moderators, who see only totals.
• It fades. A position drifts back toward Neutral by a quarter of a step every hour without new picks, so a bad evening is gone by morning. Positions are kept in the server’s memory only, forgotten after a day with no new picks, and lost when the server restarts.
• Nothing to win. Angel vs. Devil has no prizes and no value. Asking for, trading, coordinating or threatening picks breaks the Community Guidelines.
• When a pick can’t count, you’re shown no buttons, so nobody presses something that does nothing.

Said openly

The site’s owner can also add picks by hand for any connection. They count like everyone else’s, badges and the pause included, and each one is logged with the owner’s name. The Community Guidelines say so too, and every visitor agrees to them before their first chat.

The community and moderators, together

Angel vs. Devil handles the everyday: people who are rude or unpleasant. Serious harm needs people with the power to act at once, so it doesn’t replace them.

• Report works during a chat and for a minute after it ends, and reaches the moderators.
• Reports add up: when several different people report the same connection, it is blocked for a while automatically.
• Human moderators can look in on any chat and block a connection at once, and every look they take is logged. There is no automated scanning of video.

More in how ChatDrift.Fun keeps video chats safe.

Questions people ask