An Open Dialogue Regarding Forum Moderation

Sorry responding to posts as I read never really mastered the art of the Multi Quote.

The comment was not directed at anyone by name the term your was meant in the universal sense of all those moderating.
I get how it looks like I meant you personally since it was a response and quote to one of your posts.
That was not intended but really is a great example of how one persons manner of speaking can be misunderstood unless and until the question is asked and a dialogue opens. The point is asking for clarification may be better first rather then after the ban.

IMO good moderation would have been in a thread that is not as open as this one would have been for the mod to edit what they thought was an insult then send a PM to explain Why. That is what most game forums I belong to do in theses situations.

Thanks for clearing up the appeal process.

For the last paragraph, the same can be said in reverse for you. You are picking apart everyone's criticism of the system you and your company have in place. You've pretty much made it clear in your posts to me that your banning policies are infallible and there can't possibly be a better way to manage banning people and that is simply not the case.

Something as simple as sending an e-mail to the the e-mail address listed on the account stating which post got their forum account nuked to oblivion and why goes a hell of a lot further than saying nothing, which is exactly what happens. It's not my fault or anyone else who was on the receiving end of the banhammer that feature failed. The point is that it failed. Period. No one is really interested in listening to a person go "Oh well, it failed." What I'm interested in what DBG plans on doing to fix something that's broken. But given the tone of this entire thread, I'm walking away thinking nothing will be done. because this thread doesn't strike me as an open dialogue.

"Because I said so" doesn't work well with most children in this day and age. It's not going to work well with adults, some of whom pay money, for this optional product.

To set the record straight, I don't have old forum "nostalgia," which seems to be something you wish to toss in the air at me because I mentioned the whole upgrade. I see a company who believes upgrading the software and taking away features that are prominent on every forum ever (edit button, for example) will make all the problems magically disappear. Just because something is a little bit better than the older version (like performance) doesn't mean it's the best. And these forums and the moderation tactics certainly aren't the best.

NO! I just don't think Flames should be side barred. You know what else bugs me, it's called 'The Flames' what's that about?
The Flames, The Wiki, The Forums, it's just all very pre-school.

Some of the information available on Flames is against basically everything in the EULA. I will not go into more detail.
But you have sites like Zam and EQ2 Wire that provide legit useful info, that are not there.

Plus 'List of EQ2 devs and their verified reddit accounts? If we are not going to be given access to that, why have that link there at all?
I just don't get it. It's all so unprofessional.

Oh and just for future reference. I have a daughter that also plays, well when I say plays, she's a raid logger. It doesn't always pay to assume stuff.

And seriously, go and have your weekend.

A few maybe, but its pretty freaking rare for me to insult a specific person directly. Their argument and opinion, sure, but personal insults, pretty rare.

It seems the vast majority of warnings, suspensions, etc I've had over the years had little to do with insulting someone.

Okay I could go find more instances of this but I'm just gonna go with this one for discussion sake I've noticed you have been discussing the value of time needed for some of the old practices and those used in other mediums for moderation. I admit often times as a moderator you won't see the value added from these practices. Infact yes it does make the job more tedious BUT it's the invisible results that can't be gauged you get out of it. (Crazy magic net voodoo)

For example, Let's say since we're picking on Feldon on and off and I think he might be okay with this for my example. Feldon posts angrily about using Redit the bulk of his post is fine save for he takes a swipe at Smedly towards the end. Now the complaint portion of his thread IS valid, I think the point here is we are allowed to complain about changes we don't like infact these opinions are welcomed but what isn't welcome is, the personal attack. Because let's face it I believe the rules are here to protect everyone involved including DB employees from being personally attacked. Now let's change Smedley to say Nickstern(sorry nick your name was right above my post as I was writing) instead as the target of attack? We'd be much more "Oh goodness don't do that" then we might have been about Smed (sorry smed)

Now people would looking at the first post not see anything wrong with it because shots fired at someone viewed as associated with DB prolly doesn't register to people as an attack merely as a statement of opinion towards their work. But it is still as much as an attack so it does have to be dealt with right? I would even say that's fine to remove a post with a personal attack from the thread and give the person a warning etc for doing that. But I would say post on the thead "Sorry for the disrupt of flow guys, please continue to voice your opinions without resorting to attacks on individuals"

This might seem like a waste of time and ya it might even get the ire of a few people but, the invisible value here (see I came back to it) is that it gives clarity to the situation without calling out names. If people call out what happened to X post? As long as they aren't unnecessarily rude about it like "HOW DARE YOU REMOVE HIS POST YOU INSULTIVE ADJECTIVE VERB PRONOUN!" At which point they would have their post removed and another post of "Again guys please keep this civil we don't need to resort to insults" and a warning issued to that person.

This may seem like a waste of time but making sure the REST of the people who are in the conversation who did not violate rules knowing what is going on as far as why the thread disrupted is helpful without having to call out names. Cause let's face it, we know who gets their posts deleted we watch for it.

I understand a lot of the policies that exist are there for our benefit and for the benefits of a better community for all of us but lacking the understanding of execution is causing great concern.

Also going back to the whole one temp ban usually solves the nere-do-wells. This reminds me of an old job I had when in college I worked at a Juvenile Court and parents always want to lock their kids up overnight to teach them 'lessons'. Mind you they are asking us to let them lock their kids up with children who have mental issues, have stabbed someone, or are sexual predators. I've always been against this scared straight mentality, of inflicting the worst punishment to stop bad behavior. It either leads to people becoming insensitive to the consequences such as how many people have we seen post in this thread that they have been banned multiple times? Perma banned? It clearly carries no weight to some of those people. And others are scared to talk anymore because they don't want to be 'bad'. I'm sorry but I'm not sure I agree with the practice despite the results because I can still remember the woman bringing me the 8 year old thinking this was the best way to scare them into doing their chores. Not saying we are children but I'm saying using a punishment that should be reserved for severe situations to curb behavior early may be having other effects on the crowd mentality.

Cause I think that's what this thread is about, trying to bridge the gap of understanding for people who don't understand what's going on and I hope to help you understand how we're coming to these conclusions and possibly give insight on how we can each be met half way.

This is the internet and perception is everything on the internet, we all ready text with our own tones in mind and expectation for how our words are carried. This doesn't mean we're always right (except for me I'm always right) but it does mean when we share our opinions it is difficult to judge if we are stepping that boundary into insult. I've noticed from watching this thread you have a strong grasp of what could be construed as an insult but most folks wouldn't even bat an eye at it. Some would say you need to get a thicker skin but, if I was the one feeling insulted and sent a report? My tune would likely change.

I am curious tho of threads you get involved in I believe earlier you mentioned unless something is reported it's unlikely you folks get involved? Do you receive -a lot- of reports each day then? I really never even thought to hit the report button before. I mean that might be another dimension of this conversation we need to think of as players, if we are being reported by other players for our actions on here and we blame the mods for jumping in like no one asked them? I mean yah they have to gauge if it really was an issue and not if someone cried wolf because they didn't like X person.

Anyway I can understand the boards are run some of the way they are but my main concern goes back to keeping us educated and knowledgeable of why these things happen.

Anyway again thank you Radarx for taking your time to spend talking to us here about these issues it's been very informative at least for me

This. Why?

Saying we get a PM in our inbox explaining a ban is useless. For warnings, fine - we can read, digest and try hard not to be naughty again, but for a ban we can't actually SEE the PM until after the ban is served. Not understanding a ban causes frustration and anger, and can cause people to rant/attack the company or game on other unofficial channels for all to see.

The comments & experiences related in this thread (from a tiny subset of people willing to post here - imagine if you extrapolate it up to the whole forum-using player base...) show that the reasons for bans are NOT always obvious or clear-cut to the posters (even if the Mod thinks it is) - people often have no idea why a post broke rules or even which post it was in some cases. They can only find out AFTER they have served a ban, which is currently difficult to appeal or discuss given the sadly reduced staff and ways to contact DBG.

A courtesy email quoting the post, explaining the violation & including a functioning email address to contact in case of appeal would solve that. It could even be generated automatically on a ban being imposed. Then you have a way to explain to a probably very upset player what has happened, reduce possible anger/tension/bad-mouthing and open up a functioning communication channel for the dialogue that is supposedly wanted.

The fact you have to point out no one has been moderated in this single thread speaks volumes on your moderation policy. It doesn't bother you at all you have to highlight this?

I do have to thank you for allowing folks to communicate their displeasure with your moderation philosophy without fear of moderation.

If there is one thing I've learned this week, it's that our moderation practices are pretty vague to some folks and I want to ensure there is some scope. So in this case, no it doesn't bother me.

I think the point was that being the thread is supposed to be an open dialogue there should be no need but with recent excessive moderation practice, you felt it needed to be pointed out there there has been none in an Open Dialogue thread.

It is a clear indication of the disconnect between the player base and the moderation team.

Charlice, you seem to be under the impression that anyone from the development team has access to change the side bar links. Unless one of these three is secretly a dev, I don't think that any of EQ2's developers or CS personnel have administrator access to change the links:

I'm under the impression that someone can change them. I don't really care who does it tbh.

I'm just saying that your message might get to the moderators quicker if you click on the link on the EQ2 subreddit that says "message the moderators" - or you can click this link right here. (It goes to the same page as the link on the subreddit.)

My thoughts on a few things:

Moderation
I think now that SOE-MODs are out of the picture that will improve the scene dramatically. They could be overly zealous, and opinions seemed to vary between the various mods as to what constituted trolling. They were very unresponsive when questioned about actions they took, which was damned frustrating, but also understandable since they were contractors and wouldn't have been able to comment on SOE/DBG policies, only enforce them. Every SOE/DBG employee I've PM'd has responded promptly and politely, with only a couple of exceptions. (Zatozia was notorious for not responding to PMs while she was managing EQ1, but I didn't blame her cause she had thousands of unanswered PMs to sort through, and besides that she was awesome (should bring her back btw!)).

I've been suspended twice (on these forums, I don't remember if I was ever suspended on the EQ1 forums those years ago). The first I didn't think was justified, the second yea ok I deserved it. Never bothered with the appeals process, didn't seem worth the hassle for 5 days - not when I could just log in with my other account and continue participating. I'm curious if the SOE-MODs had the capability to suspend/ban people, or was that restricted only to SOE/DBG staff?

Anyway, my main issue with the way moderation has been handled on these forums is the deletion of an entire post when only a few words/single sentence offended. Sometimes quite long and well thought out posts were summarily deleted because one line was considered out of bounds. Those kinds of situations should just get the offending portion removed - not the whole post. Even if doing so makes the post sound weird or not properly progress it would still be preferable to complete deletion.

Reddit
Not a fan. I think it's a great place for one-off comments, reading others opinions, etc; but as a place for a back-and-forth discussion about (often) detailed topics - it doesn't work. The inability to jump straight to unread comments, and the changing order in which comments are presented based on being up/down voted makes it very frustrating to follow a topic. You end up having to skim read the entire thing over again to check for new comments, which is very time consuming. If comments were kept in chronological order it'd be fine, but they move around too much! Maybe upgrading to Gold would solve that, I don't know.

My other concern with Reddit is the moderators currently there - who are they? How and when did they get appointed moderators? I've seen you say a few times you want the community to moderate the subreddit, primarily through the up/down vote process. Does that mean the moderators have very little power? Do they have a lot of power? And are they a true representation of the community? Perhaps if a new focus is going to be placed on Reddit a new set of moderators should be selected (I realize you don't control that sort of thing, but who does?) from the community.

It is all about the process. As users, we are in a position where we can say what we think is not working well, but that only achieves so much. What helps even more, is to propose practical solutions, that are achievable with the tools and resources currently available. Some have done this, some have not.

Also, in a thread of this nature, Radarx has as much right to defend his ideas/position, as people have to speak against it. Open dialogue is more than a one sided verbal beat down, it is where both sides get to voice their opinion, and hopefully both sides take some of what the other has to say into consideration.

As for the forums dying off? *shrugs* It will always be subjected to influence from the population of the actual game, and the state of the game itself. From my game play experience, the population of EQ2 continues to shrink over the years, so it is no surprise the amount of forum activity reduces with it.

i have to agree with the person who posted earlier on in the thread about the reason so much moderation is needed here is down to how the community is treated by the company

the changes that are made (that are obvious people do not want) get us extremely upset yet we cannot express this emotion without our threads being locked or removed

it seems like the only responses that we are actually allowed to make are pacified ones that then allows the changes the company wants to make to march forward and leave us dumfounded

sadly, this is a bit of an abusive relationship because we adore the world created (now oh so many years ago) and we have to grin and bear it

yes we are all aware you want to move us to reddit because its free advertising but please remember that everytime you go ahead and do something that most people do not want a little bit of that love dimishes and eventually there'll be no more love left

everyone i know who has played everquest 1 and 2 have left because of changes and when i speak to them they speak of how much they adored the game back in the day

so please, engage with us more, listen to us more, let us decide the changes more

reddit is useless to me, i have spent countless days and nights reading the lore on the old forums, then being sad when it's been removed from the internet forever

now you want to remove it again because that change you made wasnt right, but this time we'll have to discuss lore on reddit where our threads will dissapear into oblivion and all for what? reddit advertising over your players who should be like family after all these years

i am being as honest as i can here and you have had many chances to come down onto our level and build something we all want (like less pay to win, subscription servers, progression servers, larger expansions, less milking of the eq cow which was genius when it first came out and now is a beaten old mule that we love damnit)

- Xiea

In case anyone missed this.

Oi vey, Nick. I have been sitting here trying to figure out just how to respond to this without coming across as fangurl or a know it all. I am not familiar with your situation personally as you know. So I really can't argue for or against what happened. But there are a few things I feel that I do know just from living as long as I have and applying my experiences to my experiences here.

Firstly, I believe there must be open communication between us and the Mods/Devs. If there is a serious issue concerning your account and your access you should be able to contact them and receive a reasonable answer. Although, I also believe that some reasonable answers are not always going to go OUR way. It's just the way it is. My opinion on your opinion? I think all EQ2 players with an account should have access to these boards except FTP...BUT, I do think FTP should be able to post on one board, a newbie board so they can get their questions answered and decide if they want to progress to a sub. This is just my opinion. You may now throw your tomatoes.

I've never been banned. I cannot really speak to it I can only say what I think about it. I agree with many others and agree it should be saved as a last resort for truly serious transgressions. It is NOT a badge of honor. But it has become a joke to some because it appears to happen quite often. Well does it? I have no idea. I can only read and take many things with a grain of salt. So RadarX if you are reading this, and I think you are. This is something to take into consideration. I hope it has been added to your list to rethink. If it was done less, people would loosen up a little and truly try to avoid being banned because they would get the message (finally) that it's not something you want to happen.

Secondly. Plat sellers. Ugh. Ok, when everyone started really screaming about them a couple months ago I was scratching my head. I hadn't seen any. But since then I have indeed seen a few. Still, in all not that many. They are smart. Their whole purpose is to infiltrate to make money. It's their job and their life. It is also an adrenaline thrill I can imagine, for some. It had been a couple years really since I had seen a great many. But omg, in the beginning? When this game first started? They were like fire ants EVERYWHERE. I use the report button. Seems to work for me. I also make sure my spam button in my window options is UNCHECKED. Next, open a new tab and check only spam to go there. Seems to filter out pretty much all of it so I don't have to see it.

If it has started up again to a major degree. Something is broken obviously. Maybe they just found different ways around the filters because you do know they have people whose only job is to take apart programs and find ways in. It isn't always the fault of this company; Sometimes the other guys are just faster and we have to catch up again to block them. But you know what really works best? Not purchasing anything from them. Totally ignore them and they will go away. If they can't make money they have no reason to be here. So it's just as much the fault of some EQ2 gamers as it is anyone else. If you are offended by the spammers and what they do to our game and economy. Report the people who are buying from them.

That's about it for now..oh wait. I STILL think Reddit is a BAD idea. "Nuff said.

First of all, I want to say that I'm on the other end of the coin with mods here -- I've been treated professionally, even when the answer is no, and there is only one mod that I've learned who has absolutely no sense of humor (but is still a massive help) so I have no complaints there. Maybe it's just me... I feel like the odd man out in this thread.
My question is about the forums that got removed, especially Off-Topic Discussion. I know consolidation is great, and easier to read, but I'm at a point where I would love to post some things unrelated to EQ2 simply because the community is awesome, but I have no place to put it. I don't want to clog General Discussion with pictures of my cats. Why were those forums removed, exactly? And um... if I want to post pictures of my cats, where the heck do I go?

Also, regarding Reddit and the DLC and all that good stuff -- I dislike Reddit and won't be using it, I find it clunky to view and just generally messy, so I'm super confused why you guys are trying to move stuff there instead of, at the least, posting information in two places. The DLC is more expensive than I was expecting, and I can't afford it; I wish it were more along the lines of the old DLCs we used to get (Splitpaw, the vampire thingey) so I could justify getting it.

Why would I throw tomatoes that would be a silly waste of crafting materials...
All kidding aside your point is a valid and well stated one. The problem is there is no easy appropriate way to reach them.
When you are banned you can not even see the PM telling you about it. When you serve out the ban the link to challenge it wait you can not challenge as you have already served it does not work. When you try to log you are told you are banned to contact the team to appeal but the appeal process no longer exists as confirmed by RadarX.

So the issue really comes down to the team not keeping us informed in a timely manner and failing to keep info they provide up to date. That is an issue on their end not ours and we the players should not be forced to suffer through their inability to give correct information and appropriate links to get said help.

It has been confirmed again by RadarX that they know there are issues and limitations in the forum software they chose to use, a suggestion of sending proper information to the registered email has been made several times and that is a reasonable thing and simple enough thing to do to avoid the perception of excessively heavy handed moderation and help start that road to transparency they say they want to have.

I think that this is the whole purpose of this thread. And I hope, along with you and most everyone else, that some good changes can come of all this ranting and raving. But I believe its just time to list your discrepancies as you already have, and as reasonable people all over this thread have tried to do, and take a breath before we all turn as purple as Neriak. . It's not going to happen overnight. We all have to help each other. My suggestion to DBG right now is to fix that contact info. That is just ridiculous for a professional company. I'm not attacking I am stating a fact.