Heya guys, apparently some of you are still uneasy about the Observer bot in chat and would like a thread formally detailing what it does, so here goes.
The bot (currently called "info_observer_point [Bot]" and sitting at the bottom of the member's list) simply forwards the group chat to our staff Slack chat. If the staff have opted in: if it finds their name, it'll send them a "mention" on Slack which typically results in some kind of notification (e.g. A mobile push notification or email). The staff currently opted in to this, and their trigger words, are:
Also if the word "staff" is mentioned, all staff will receive a notification.
The staff cannot add additional trigger words to their Slack Clients, as Slack currently does not support trigger words via a third party integration.
The last 10,000 messages from the chat are stored, based on the past week or so of messages you guys generate around 4,000 a day - so staff can read about 2.5 days back before they hit a limit.
Ultimately, this is a convenience feature for the staff. It allows us to monitor the chat and react to potential issues arising faster than before. We've had numerous issues with chat in recent months where we've had to be forwarded logs, or simply haven't been present and things have escalated, so we're also hoping this will bring an end to that.
If you'd like to raise concerns about a member of staff in chat, I'd advise you alter their name slightly from the trigger words, but remember that if any member of staff reacts disproportionately to criticism they probably shouldn't be staff and will be dealt with accordingly. The chat has never been private, just because someone hasn't been there, you shouldn't assume that it won't be forwarded to them.
Finally I'll leave you with a quick screenshot, just to show you how it looks to us:
Abuse and excessive intentional pinging of a staff member can lead to temporary bans from steam chat. Please don't be a jerk with it.
The bot (currently called "info_observer_point [Bot]" and sitting at the bottom of the member's list) simply forwards the group chat to our staff Slack chat. If the staff have opted in: if it finds their name, it'll send them a "mention" on Slack which typically results in some kind of notification (e.g. A mobile push notification or email). The staff currently opted in to this, and their trigger words, are:
- Crash (ueakcrash or crash)
- Geit (geit)
- iiboharz (iibo or iiboharz)
- Freyja (freyja)
- LeSwordfish (sword, swordfish or leswordfish)
- phi (phi)
- killohurtz (killo or killohurtz)
Also if the word "staff" is mentioned, all staff will receive a notification.
The staff cannot add additional trigger words to their Slack Clients, as Slack currently does not support trigger words via a third party integration.
The last 10,000 messages from the chat are stored, based on the past week or so of messages you guys generate around 4,000 a day - so staff can read about 2.5 days back before they hit a limit.
Ultimately, this is a convenience feature for the staff. It allows us to monitor the chat and react to potential issues arising faster than before. We've had numerous issues with chat in recent months where we've had to be forwarded logs, or simply haven't been present and things have escalated, so we're also hoping this will bring an end to that.
If you'd like to raise concerns about a member of staff in chat, I'd advise you alter their name slightly from the trigger words, but remember that if any member of staff reacts disproportionately to criticism they probably shouldn't be staff and will be dealt with accordingly. The chat has never been private, just because someone hasn't been there, you shouldn't assume that it won't be forwarded to them.
Finally I'll leave you with a quick screenshot, just to show you how it looks to us:
Abuse and excessive intentional pinging of a staff member can lead to temporary bans from steam chat. Please don't be a jerk with it.
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