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There is a toxicity in MHOC which has been permissible in the past under the guise of being 'political debate'. For example, these have at times come in the guise of ‘joke bills’ or genuine bills, which can be discriminatory or derogatory in their framing and in the ‘debates’ they encourage.
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MHOC elects its own leadership structure, who have additional authority in the game (eg. party leaders, speakers, etc), and as such can be seen to have authority on the site. This sense of 'authority' from a safeguarding perspective is of concern in a community of young people, and also can require those in leadership to have technical permissions (eg opening/closing polls) which others don't (without being vetted by the Community Staff).
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MHOC operates party sub-forums which create a closed environment for party discussions. There is a perception that the community guidelines don’t apply in these forums, and user reports are lower than average. This closed and exclusionary environment where users aren’t reporting (assumedly due to party ties) creates a moderation and safeguarding risk to those users who are part of these subforums.
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Members of MHOC have created a Discord channel based on this game, which causes risks to the onsite community by: diluting the conversation and reducing engagement on TSR; allowing members banned from TSR to continue participating in the game and influencing those who play; presenting risks around young/vulnerable members being unfairly drawn into conversations off TSR where TSR guidelines/moderation can't support them, creating an environment where activities like doxing, bullying and harassment occur, which introduce a high level of complication to the TSR moderation process
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Where MHOC has functioned at its best is when there is a TSR Volunteer in place (in a non-political role) to manage logistics and comms between MHOC and CS. This responsibility being placed on a volunteer isn't appropriate or fair.
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MHOC requires a very large amount of resource and time to run. This resource comes in the form of Technical support, Data Team support (for validating of elections, dupe checks, etc), Moderation Team support (specifically in time-consuming reports in AtCS and troll management), and Community Team support (usergroup perms, Speaker/Deputy Speaker support, escalated moderation reports, general admin). The time spent on all these aspects is significantly more than what’s required elsewhere on TSR
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MHOC operates its own rule-set, which can be unwieldy in addition to the wider site guidelines and is controlled by the MHOC community, not Community Staff. Despite not being part of the Community Guidelines, moderation resources are often needed in enforcing MHOC rules, in addition to our Moderation Team’s sitewide responsibilities.
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MHOC requires its own bespoke forum infrastructure, which requires technical and Community Team support to create and maintain from a technical point of view
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