An Open Dialogue Regarding Forum Moderation

Keep in mind, right now we are all being contradictory of ourselves right now in regards to the forum rules by discussing moderation at all on the forums. Please give Radar slack in this department with this thread. This is not something that is normally done.

We are in contradiction of the forum rules to some extent and that is at the behest of the Community Manager. I personally do not believe I have contradicted myself a single time up to this point in my posts on this thread, whereas RadarX has done so more than once. When people are as upset as they are now there is going to be much less slack given to the people/company they are upset at. You may disagree with that and that is your right but honestly trying to tell people they are contradicting rules in a thread basically started to allow contradiction of those rules is ridiculous. I seldom post overall. Just me coming on here and posting as many times as I have on this thread is way beyond what you would normally see from me. That is due to me, just like everyone else here, being upset about the way things are being done. I am not saying RadarX is lying but he seriously needs to think before he posts and says something contrary to what he said previously in the same exact thread.

I'm not sure that's their intention, to be honest, Between board closures, moderation and Reddit the message seems to suggest the opposite. We've pretty much been told here that for staff official forum management is time-consuming and unproductive. The fact that it's the shop window for the company's games and a pretty good demonstration to prospective customers how existing customers feel about both the game and the developers seems to have passed them by!

By way of background, I don't log into the game much these days, but I am a subscriber and only recently renewed my 6 months subscription by way of giving my backing to the team after the recent takeover and layoffs. I've played SOE/DBG games since EQ beta in '98 and have always been impressed at their ability to develop great games. Unfortunately, as a British player I have also been especially unimpressed at their inability to manage their communities. I've been through the Ubisoft and ProSieben debacles and sundry other moments of madness. This switch in emphasis to Reddit seems to be yet another one, and that is certainly a site I have no intention of ever visiting. I'll be 65 in a couple of days time and from all I've heard here and elsewhere it's a level of discussion there that I can well do without at my time of life! It means, of course, that I won't get to see most if not all of the developers' contributions to the discussions, and that will probably end up making me progressively less interested in the game.

The answer to the question "Why not Reddit?" is simple. It's because this is the company's forum, it's where their players meet and discuss the game, and it should be where the company also meets the players and discusses the game. It should be the first place for all official announcements to be made, and there should be an effective two-way dialogue maintained here at all times between the company and its player communities, or customers if you prefer.

As for moderation, my only concern is that it should always be professional, open, and consistent. I think I may have had a single temporary suspension probably during the ProSieben mess but that would likely have been from one of the anonymous numbered Mods, the Community guy whose name I sadly forget (Piestro or something like that?) but who fronted for SOE on the forums when the ProSieben nonsense was at its height was supremely professional, open and consistent in his dealings, and he had my profound respect at the time. I hope this thread is a genuine attempt to emulate his standards and engage in a genuine two-way dialogue.

Honestly, sometimes it feels like the people in this thread can never be pleased. From suggestions to a "number of times banned" icon to listing who has been moderated / banned and why, what he did there is Exactly what some of you have been asking for. Now, do you see, why it's such a bad idea?

Anyhoo - from the list of things you mentioned RadarX - the one thing I do see missing is ensuring there is a valid, working email address for someone who has been banned to write to, since they are not able to enter their message box. EDIT : I see your response about the overwhelming tide of irrelevant vitriol. I get it - and I guess since we are doing the Reddit thing (please just don't close these forums, mmkay? I beg thee, DBG!) there's always that avenue.

I wouldn't think so. What it does do is it allows for the posting of threads to discuss anything (within the rules). Derailing threads is still derailing.

I think these are very good and fundamental questions every forum admin should be asking themselves. I also agree that those at DBG need to go beyond those simple kinda of questions.

I think that there does need to be far more focus on the atmosphere of these forums. They do not engender a feeling of community or comfort in the community. They are to tightly bound by adherence to rules. There needs to be some kind of shift in how the forums are moderated so that it allows for balanced and fair debate. "Debate" is key here as it needs to be intelligently thought out and logical discussions of differing points of view. Not full on name-calling or supposition or unfounded statements.
Unfortunately, a more relaxed approach will still have people testing the limits and getting suspended/banned and they will still complain.

That's what dead horses are for.

It seemed to me a lot threads were being locked and possible deleted these last few months and I know a couple threads I made were just went poof.

For me a contributor to these threads I am guessing that any threads the DBG did not like were getting quashed and I want to know whats safe for me to say here or comment on in the future.

If that the case as its like playing with the deck is being stacked and I would love some feedback on those thoughts.

I didn't want to mention you personally when talking about sock puppeting because I didn't wanting it to look like I called you out but yes I do remember you reporting them. I do know at least one case we kind of let go on the main forums because the guy was talking to himself and no one was reading it. In general however we really don't like the practice here.

I'm not sure I agree with your first statement. I mean if you want to get really technical our forum guidelines state your should always post on topic. Obviously enforcement of this is as effective as we can make it which is far from perfect because we depend mostly on the community to report it happening. Traditionally off topic posts were left alone and the subforum existed for the purpose of stuff we didn't want in General Discussion. If you really want to share pictures of your cat with the EQ2 community, in my opinion do it.

This is where I thing tagging may work better and I've been neglectful in getting those done quickly.

Unique avatars? Someone make some. We don't have as many artists as we used to and it's hard to say "Hey can you guys stop working on that important project to make some avatars for one of our game forums?" If you or someone you know wants to make them, Maybe it's as simple of someone resizing existing assets or maybe we just need to make some generic ones. I'll be honest art is well outside my wheelhouse.

I don't think we view forums as a whole as a problem, but because of my role I tend to fixate on the problems. This is one of multiple feedback loops so we have to ensure everything fits into the puzzle.

Folks at DBG have spent more time responding to posts about giving us more avatars than it would take to go flip the switch to allow Gravatars.

TTobey has already created avatars for all races/genders. The art work is already done. All it takes is someone to upload them. This was done months ago - before DBG existed.

At this point, with your response, I'm insulted. DBG has insulted our intelligence on the matter. That's all there is to it.

If only there were switches....

If art is made then that's obviously something I need to follow up on.

Insulting your intelligence over something I'm out of the loop on or obviously may have even forgotten about? That seems a bit overdramatic.

If you are so far out of the loop that you didn't know the art was already made, perhaps there needs to be better communication among the team at DBG. There have been several threads on this forum about it. Afista was part of the team at that time that tried to get the avatars installed - her and ttobey worked together. Why was this not communicated to someone else? Do y'all not have a way to track open issues?

Any response to this? Was posted on Page 1 but got missed/ignored.

Really? They guy doesn't know everything that's going on in the office and he's insulted our intelligence?

A lot of things happened in beginning of this year and I'll apologize in advance for how blunt this is, but issues impacting a fraction of the EQ2 community and an immeasurably small size of the overall DBG customer base weren't a priority. I do vaguely remember conversations with Afista about this so maybe this is an easy fix. If it is, I'm happy to make it.

And no Katz I'm not saying the forums are insignificant.

Try this one... screenshot taken from a Xenforo admin panel.... Home->Options->User Options

I never post in these forums for the simple reason is that you people in charge move the goal post as and when it suits your cause. You are setting a dangerous precipitant by not sticking to the rule as they are set out. Why should you favor someone because they have contributed more than I have to the forums in my opinion that's a JOKE and abuse of the rules you set out in the first place. So it's okay for you to use your position to favor someone who it appears is constantly abusing the forums then leave them banned they know the rules. Also I feel if you spent more time fixing bugs and working on the game it would be in a better place and not be time wasted writing dribble.

Being honest that's a systemic problem of using forums. Threads honestly shouldn't last for months at a time. Being honest once a thread gets past 20-25 pages do you read all the posts? I typically do but because it's my job.

Instead of "This is what is wrong with Scout classes" mega thread, maybe it needs to be "This is what is wrong poisons" or "How you can improve mezzing." More bite sized topics.

Reddit supports those very easily. If something has been talked about in 3 months and is still an important issue, people bring it back up. I'm certainly not attempting to sell you on Reddit (at least in this particular post) but what you are describing is a long term issue we've seen across many of our games.

Gravatar support isn't and won't be enabled on our forums.

We have several of those threads in the class sections, and have done for Months. The problem is, they very rarely get responded in unless its something that can be fixed instantly.

The Feedback threads were started by yourselves, so is it too much to expect some kind of response on them? It doesn't have to be much, just a few bullet points on the stuff the team took from those threads and plans to try implement in the future.

We don't need Reddit to support more of those threads, we just need people to respond to the already started issues.

I completely agree we shouldn't start threads like those unless we plan to respond to them.

If you are not sure how or what to say not to sound insulting don't say anything. Silence is golden. Remember?