An Open Dialogue Regarding Forum Moderation

This is where it starts getting difficult.

There is actually nothing intrinsically wrong with two people disagreeing. Generally speaking, two passionate players may strongly disagree with each other often, not due to being vindictive, but just simply because they have such different perspectives and opinions, and they both genuinely want EQ2 to be modified in the direction they each feel is best for the game ... and when players care, it can get very heated. It shouldn't really be the moderators task to make them start agreeing....

.... but once it becomes insults, baiting, trolling... then I understand. I know the line is difficult. Been there, done that. As you may or may not remember from long ago.

I agree and the goal is for us to appear as a mediator, not a pre-school teacher telling people to stop touching each other.

Disagreements are fine, but sometimes it's best to just yell at each other in PMs versus hash it out on the forums or use the ignore function.

Lots of players are quite passionate about their games. Some of us have spent 10 years of our lives playing this "game". It's not surprising that from time to time, that passion leads to parts of a post crossing a line from time to time.

I've had posts modified and I've had them deleted. Personally, I much prefer them to be modified.

You type up a well thought out post that makes your points pretty well, but for one reason or another, you end up with something in there like "I don't know what they were smoking when they came up with..." or "do they even play this game..." or "insert other comment here that represents something that should be moderated". I'd much rather have the post modified for me with a comment sent to me saying "You post [here] has been moderated due to trolling/whatever. Please review the forum rules [here]..." That's much better than the whole thing being erased or even worse, the whole thread being removed.

Note, this is both an example of what I mean and another point I'd like to chime in on:

As for "User experience should be consistent across our products" and "EQ2 won't have special rules", when it comes to the forums, [Edited for Trolling]. The user communities between H1Z1/PS2 and EQ2 are quite different. Anyone that has been to an SOE Live since 2012 will know this first hand. The PVP crowd is different than the mostly PVE crowd of EQ2. Saying that you need to treat both communities exactly the same just doesn't make sense.

If you don't have the manpower to edit posts and that's why you've decided to just delete them instead, then say so. Maybe you really think that deleting the entire message is better than compromising the integrity of the original posters message. I disagree.

See, that's where I beg to differ. A non-constructive, dismissive reply to a post is very different from a non-constructive thanking the Dev team for a requested change. I think it's pretty self-evident.

In your example. If say I disagree with you on something and both of our opinions aren't going to change. We need to respectfully disagree with each other and move on. Otherwise our voices are going to be the strongest in the threads and others are drowned out or less likely to participate.

It's ok to have conflicting opinions. But going back and forth over and over is not going to do anything but create a two way conversation in the thread when both are very set on their opinions.

How is it you are fine with deleting an entire post but no okay with editing out the 5%? Also, where is this general policy stated at that a mod can't edit someone's post? That just makes 0 sense to me. You probably missed my last post but that is where I had my main questions.

I don't believe I said it was fine or not fine. I said it was the policy we have. I'm fairly certain I've said I'm open to modifying this policy but I'm not going to do it without talking with my team. Some of you think it's ok to have this rule just on EQ2 and I'm going to respectfully disagree. I'm happy to continue to discussing it but this won't change until I talk with folks.

Also I'm sorry I missed your last post. This is post...86ish of mine in this thread and I'm not able to hit everyone's concerns. The policy has been, as long as I've been here, to remove the post entirely because it doesn't require the moderator to decide which parts of the post are worth keeping or even if the entire thing is worthwhile. I'll fully admit it's killing a fly with a hammer but I have to point out, if there isn't anything non-constructive in it we can't touch it.

so if i report someone i haven't been arguing with but who is posting across several threads making abusive remarks that would be ok? can i report in each thread so you see the pattern of the remarks? i have noticed that some people do this. i don't know if they are simply trolling or if they are targeting someone in particular. also sometimes in one thread we get a stream of negativity from several different people all commenting on the same line. shouldn't there be a way to bring to the dev's attention, not so much to stop the negativity, but to make the point that this seems to be something a lot of people are really upset about? in other words, something other than reporting the person?

lately when i see something i think needs attention i send a pm to a dev. shouldn't there be a better way to do this?

Maybe I am totally and completely wrong, Nick. I DO understand that the player base is very different. But I bet the "basic" rules still apply even in the games you allude to. The thing is, Radar doesn't make all the decisions on his own. He consults with others to come to an agreement on what they are going to do and how it will affect those "different" player bases and still remain within company standards and appease the differing communities. There is a bottom line that will remain the same across the board.

Two different companies owned by the same people. Sony backed SoE because Sony was NOT a game developer. They created SoE for that very thing. This doesn't apply in that instance.

I totally agree with this, Griff. I guess that is what I was trying to say. But I do hope you and everyone else can pick on the fact that I was not really attacking Nick in my opening. I believe through all of our recent back and forths that he knew that too.

Wouldn't that be the parts of the post that don't violate the forum policies? If you can't determine which parts do or do not violate forum policy, then why are you moderating the post?

I'm just going to throw this out here as a concern that I feel some of us have. There are certain posters that feel the need to humiliate other players and discount their opinions in a distasteful manner. They do so in a manner to indicate that they know, through their alleged associations with the company, far more than the average player knows about the inner workings of the company.

Someone will put forth a suggestion that they feel is well thought and reasonable and it's quickly retorted with " It won't happen, I know for a fact that the company stance on this is...(followed by some snark remark) " The followup is usually to the effect of them being a vocal liaison of the company saying what the company is unable to say directly to the players.

It really squelches the voice of a player who, like other players, wants what they feel *might* be best for the game. Not saying their idea holds merit, but it does certainly have a right to be put forward. It's baiting in a so called "polite" manner, yet it has the same effect.

"Let me tell you why you are so very wrong and uninformed" is not the same as saying "In the past, this has always been their stance as well as reasoning on this issue". One has the effect of discouraging me from discussing future ideas, the other gives me a reasonable explanation and leaves it open for dialog.

Never viewed it as an attack on anyone. I also tend to read the previous posts of others so I can view things in context. It's one of the reasons I use <snip> so reluctantly. I try to only <snip> when it's a full wall of text with only one point I wish to address or respond to. Otherwise it's far to easy to take things out of context.

i understand the removing of the entire post. in the past i have really liked it when i got a pm from a mod telling me that a portion of my post (usually where i quoted someone in my reply) can't stay but i am welcome to repost certain parts of it if i choose. that to me was way better than going in and editing. and i do know that sometimes a post is removed because when they removed the post you responded to, your post no longer made sense.

that being said, there are times i wish they would have just removed the part that wasn't right because to come back and repost later would have been a little late in the chain of response. and on the reply part, i often forget to eliminate the part of the reply that copies someone else's post. what i would like to see when i hit reply is a reference to the post i am replying to but not a copy of what was said there.

Any chance we could have Kander/Gninja do it instead? As much as I love Roshen, he isn't suitably placed to advise on the direction going forward with class feedback etc.

Heck, stick them on a Sofa in front of a Camera for 60 mins and make a stream out of it

i so very much agree here. i have seen this repeatedly from some players. although granted they may know more than i do, is it really necessary to go with the more knowledgeable than thou bit to squelch discussion? and then there are those who think certain people shouldn't have a voice on the forums and go out of their way to say so. shouldn't the forums be open to everyone? and there are those who think it is ok to be snide and rude because they think they somehow have anonymity behind a forum handle. is it really necessary to be condescending and rude to other people?

this really bothers me. some people take it so far that it becomes a form of bullying. shouldn't bullying and abuse in any form have no place in a public forum?

You may not have said you were fine with it but with it being the general policy, it makes it seem like it is fine. Talk with your team about it though. I would like to see this changed to where you are able to edit someone's post and take out what is 'not okay' but leave the rest of what is 'okay'. After that, message them telling them why it was changed. What is the harm it that? Can't be any worse than fully getting rid of a post that had constructive parts in it just because of something non-constructive.

As to missing my post, no problem. I didn't have anything quoting you from here to grab your attention on it, so I understand.

I want to know though, since you admit it's a bit of an overkill, would you personally like to help present this to your team for wanting to change this policy? Or are you going to take this to your team as issue #342356432 and hand it off as something the community wants?

A rule of thumb, and I realize we haven't communicated this, is reporting someone is getting our attention that someone's behavior is potentially problematic. If it's general trolling/insults the results between 2 and 7 reports is going to be identical. We are going to have a converstion with them. If the content needs to we will absolutely pull it.

I know some believe we do some ridiculous amount of moderation here but the number of reported posts isn't too high. My point is that it's small enough that we can see a pattern of someone being railroaded,

I wasn't trying to communicate we can't determine a violation or not. I'm saying if a post has a violation, it's moderated.

Can I get a response to this?

Right. But you implied that the reasoning for deleting the whole post instead of portions was so that the moderator didn't have to decide what portions were or were not a violation. That sounds kinda like that whole "I know it when I see it" standard. If one sentence violates policy, but the other 20 don't, asking the moderator to make that decision doesn't sound like a difficult request. And if they can't see that one out of 20 sentences violates policy, then how are they finding the one thing in the whole message that actually DOES violate policy?