No Chat Reports violates a principle of Fabulously Optimized

What config to change

Please change or remove your statement of principles for Fabulously Optimized, which includes this line:

Neutrality - the modpack should only give you the essential tools and fixes to customize your game, not include any opinionated extras itself (e.g. a mod that adds more environment sounds). https://fabulously-optimized.gitbook.io/modpack/readme/principles

It would be acceptable to either remove this section entirely, or to change it to say that your principles are:

Not Neutrality - the modpack will give you the essential tools and fixes to customize your game, as well as those extra mods that the maintainers deem are valuable to them (e.g. a mod that is controversial but the maintainers like)

Or remove the No Chat Reports mod from the pack.

Why should it be changed

The No Chat Reports mod touches a highly controversial and opinionated topic in the Minecraft community. There are many people on all sides of the discussion who have their own opinions on whether chat reporting is a positive or negative. The mod itself has no impact at all on the performance optimization of Minecraft.

It is, therefore, a highly opinionated addition to the modpack and should either be removed, along with the “! Chat Reporting FAQ” page on the documentation website, or that line should be removed from the principles statement, or changed, as it is false.

If you should find yourself upset that I am recommending these changes, consider that this is my opinion, and your emotional reaction to my suggestion is likewise based on your opinion. With so many emotions and opinions being felt around this topic, it makes clear that the principles statement about being non-opinionated must be removed or changed, or the mod removed.

Additional details

A similar line should be considered for adjustment due to the inclusion of No Chat Reports. By including No Chat Reports by default, you take away autonomy from servers who wish to encourage users to use Fabulously Optimized while also using chat reports as a backup for their own moderation processes if they agree with the chat reporting feature and want to use it.

With No Chat Reports added by default, this principally is arguably false: Consistency - Fabulously Optimized must be sustainable, 100% server-compatible

[Madis0]

So, your core point is still that NCR inclusion is opinionated because it changes to Again, as I previously mentioned, I understand this, but I just don’t currently have a better idea what these icons should be like, in order to be informational, yet neutral. Removing NCR altogether would regain the neutrality - yes - but at the expense of losing transparency and privacy added by the mod, which vanilla does not currently provide.

[Madis0]

It labels servers that have chat reporting enabled with a scary ⚠️. Hover over that and you can learn that chatting on that server puts you at risk for being permanently globally banned under false-reports.

A ⚠️ does not mean, “This server has chat reporting enabled so you can feel safer (if you believe chat reporting makes you safer)”. That would probably look more like a ✔️ if true. No, the ⚠️ means, “Chat reporting makes you unsafe no matter what you believe, and you should be afraid of this server for having it enabled”

That’s not “help”, that’s advertising for NCR.

I would bring two analogies to that symbol:

• Counter-Strike VAC-secured symbol - a symbol that indicates whether a server uses Valve’s AntiCheat and therefore if you get banned by that, you get cross-banned from a lot of servers. Since I have not played that game for a long while, nor have I cheated on it, I don’t know whether having it is a good or bad thing. All I know is that I am thankful that the icon is there, notifying me of its presence.
• A video surveillance sign in real life - the sign or lack thereof doesn’t really indicate whether any wrongdoing will get you caught, how wrongdoing is interpreted, what are the consequences etc. All it says is that you need to be aware that you are recorded when you enter this property.

Same thing in Minecraft. Previously, all servers were under the assumption that everything you do is managed by the server administration. Now, some servers have a new variable - your chat messages may be sent to Mojang and they can affect your chance of playing in all multiplayer servers at once.

Something that has not yet happened, but continues to be used to terrify players into fearing servers that have it enabled.

There have been bans. Whether they were rightful or not is up to anyone’s guess/interpretation by the provided data.

This is not “100%” (as your principles say) compatible on servers if some of those servers receive hate by encouraging players to use your modpack and then being judged by a warning icon for having chat reports enabled. Something that harms a server is not compatible with that server.

Not only is this fear-mongering itself (just in the direction your opinion believes is right), but, again, it takes away the autonomy of the servers to make their own decisions without judgement from the mod in the form of a warning, or your opinion on the matter (these go against two of your principles).

If you think the current icons are a problem, I can change them. With a bit more effort, I could change the tooltips as well. But for that, there should be a separate discussion about how should they look and be written as that somewhat goes against your idea that including the whole mod is bad.

It does not optimize performance

That’s right, it doesn’t. It improves privacy and transparency, and reduces visual noise as detailed in my first reply and even evident by the changes being introduced to vanilla 1.19.3.

The valuable features you mention in NCR that could be useful for players (and I agree that some would be useful) could also be packaged under a different mod entirely and remove the highly opinionated nature of NCR.

Well, that doesn’t matter at all. There have been somewhat controversial mods in FO before (e.g. one zoom mod was hated by some just because its code was taken from a hacked client) and as with any big project, there is bound to be some controversy in the future as well. I would even say those people “can’t see the forest for the trees”, with the analogy of a packaged, configured modpack vs individual mods with default options. For the modpack, it doesn’t matter what the default representation for any given mod is, as long as it can be changed.

I won’t be able to address the entire content of your reply at this time

Well, I’ll be waiting for your appendice to this reply then, maybe you’ll get a somewhat different perspective from reading my full response.