An Open Dialogue Regarding Forum Moderation

I rarely post, mostly people say what I am already thinking but I would like to know where to post off-topic comments without being banned or having the post removed. Like for instance if I wanted to tell Rotherian that i love his posts but please provide a dictionary and some asprin next time or Feldon that I think his ideas and comments are great but i do not necessarily want to send a pm because whatever they stated is worth saying out loud so to speak but has very little to do with the topic. (sorry to use the two of you as examples) Also to RadarX i believe under the circumstances you have done a terrific job of being as professional as one can be with all the negativity here. I do not believe the customer as it were is always right. I think an email would be a good response to being banned and as Feldon has often pointed out there are other ways to get in touch with the dev team when this occurs. And can we please get some spell check. Thankyou.

Stepping over what line? Obviously they do more than stare at forums all day. They don't want to be stuck doing that the rest of their lives, and they'd like to get promoted to something else. But at the end of the day, that IS their job. And as such, they should be doing that to the best of their ability before ALL other things.

Thanks to /r/EQ2, I know for certain that this is directed at me. So, let me clarify my actions here as well:

... [a]s for your definition of a white knight, I have to disagree. I think that my stance and comments have been fair and reasonable. Consider me a Devil's Advocate of sorts. Not because I am taking the contradictory viewpoint simply to generate discussion, but because I am one of the few that is willing to challenge the "drama llamas".

One can certainly write me off as a "white knight" if it helps further their case, but it is far from the truth. I get the feeling that some of you are taking what I have to say personally for some reason or another. If that is the case, let me know (via PM as it really shouldn't be here).

If I were a true white knight, I very much doubt that I would have gone on record (as I have in this thread) about the level of moderation here and its negative impacts. I also would not have come anywhere close to agreeing with you on anything, Feldon. But, again, I have.

RadarX was right about one thing. This thread was pretty good til about page 16 or so. Then it started to self-immolate as those with an agenda contrary to a healthy community started spilling haterade everywhere. And that's on BOTH sides. Those defending SOE/DBG and those who just want someone to scream at.

Most folks even inside the industry aren't always sure what we do, What you describe is the common stereotype of a Community Manager. No our job isn't to sit and watch forums all day. In fact as an appeals process I've talked with a number of other CMs in various other MMO companies and we were the only company I could find doing this.

You've been really honest with me and I'll be honest with you. Yup. If you can't come here without insulting employees, this isn't the place for you. That isn't changing any time soon.

Once again I understand where you are coming from but the guidelines are clear. If you discuss moderation publicly you are saying "I don't care what your rules are, I'm going to do what I want." That also isn't changing.

That isn't the purpose of it. It seems like the whole "Don't discuss moderation" point seem to be your biggest concern so far. Unfortunately while a lot of things are on the table, that isn't.

I find this statement ironic. We've been building our filter for probably 8 years and yeah there are some outdated phrases. Is this really what you want someone here spending time doing? Making sure we aren't filtering out internet slang from 2005?

As you'll note in a post a bit later, I said I know that isn't all your job consists of. But it IS your main job. As for other CM's in MMO communities, you've stated before that we don't care what they do, or how they do it, cause you're DBG, and you'll do things you way (paraphrasing, obviously). You're not like them, and that's one of the things we like.

Thing is though, this is the internet. A place where people come to vent about things. You people are adults, not 5 year olds on the playground. There's a difference between saying "once again the incompetent are making the wrong decisions" while in a rage of upset over something, and "you're all stupid and should be fired for being giant pieces of cow dung" blatently for no reason. You guys aren't discerning which posts are more vitriolic than the others. You're just taking them all. And as you've stated, that post could be 95% productive, but if that last line is any sort of misconstrued insult, then the whole post goes. That's just not a good way to handle it.

Yes, this is a big concern of mine. Because if you don't have transparency, then pretty soon you're going to start taking every little thing as an insult, and ban on a whim. If not you, then your successor. You're held accountable to absolutely no one. And that's NOT the way it should be. Forums are like a mini government, and just like a government, you should be held accountable to the people in your community. If you're not, then this is a dictatorship. And I'm fully opposed to being involved in anything like that.

Wasn't meant to be ironic. Was just a musing after I'd posted. Again, we're adults here, so saying sex is okay, but random internet slang isn't. It's really a giant metaphor for my whole argument.

I whole-heartedly agree.

I think the challenge with flames was, far too few people could stomach sifting thru the **** to find the few gems.

Conversely, the challenge with the official forums is, you can't tell people they are wrong so there is so much ambiguous data, the reader is unable to distinguish the gems from the noise.

Perhaps flames is better, since a reader can more easily distinguish gems from ****, It is simply the signal to noise ratio being so high...

yes and when i got banned, i didn't even get a reply back when i emailed from my email account to the proper email address. it i was like i was suddenly on ignore. i even called the office and they said take it up with the moderator. but how? no one would answer my emails and any form of communicating on the forums was out. i finally had to make a new unknown account to get in touch with a dev to have the ban lifted.

another thing, why are we being banned just because we quoted someone in our answer. in my case, i was really answering someone who complained about the company's prices and explained that the company had every right to make money and suddenly, with no explanation - banned. the only thing i could figure out was you didn't like her comment and banned me because in my answer i quoted her. doesn't seem very fair to me

for me when i went there, reddit seems like mass confusion. i have enough confusion in my life. i don't need it added to. i prefer the forums. if you don't post it here, then i simply won't see it. if i don't see it and need to know it, you will find a thread by me on the forums

The class forums were typically fairly good. You'd get the "lrn2play" garbage, but the stickied threads with AA set-ups, rotations, etc... were very good.

It was, however, a site that was dominated by the min-maxers and theorycrafters. Not really the same demographic as the official forums.

I've seen people point out mistakes. It's not that it can't be done here, but many people like to jump in with "That's completely wrong, scrub!" kind of thing. You can get material of the same quality and depth as you would on Flames. Eg. Maergoth posts his stuff here and on Flames and fairly decent conversations are had in the Paladin sub-forum here.

That's up for debate. Even with it's sparse traffic, I think the Official Forums get a lot more action than Flames (unless things have changed recently). So, the likelihood of finding up-to-date information is somewhat better here.

I nearly fell out of my chair and spewed coffee all over the place when I read this. (Literally). First of all his job title is VP of Community Svc. If you cared to check it out. Secondly, RadarX, Roshen, and the rest of the team in no way get paid to "just" constantly sit on these forums and wave a magic wand. Btw, Do you have any idea of the thousands of players they have to deal with? I wonder how long you could sit here and be constantly pelted with insults and boulder sized, ambiguous insults. I imagine not very long. In my opinion it is nothing short of miraculous that they are able to do what they do on a daily basis and not go completely postal.

Also, if things aren't open to change, then what is the point of this thread? If it's not to point out our concerns as a community in an effort to get some policy change, what's the point? EVERYTHING should be open for change. If not, then the community team are no better than the "not see"s or Castro.

I have this sinking feeling that this whole thread is a farce on your part. You presented it as an "open dialogue", yet you're not receptive to any changes. This is supposed to be a debate on the merits of moderation policy, and yet you've flat out said these aren't changing. So what was the point of all this? So that you could come out as a hero and say "I placated the forums and game them an open thread."? I'm just trying to determine what it is that the community is going to gain from this.

Holy crap man, keep reading the rest of the posts. GD keyboard cowboys over here. And honestly, I could sit here and take quite a bit. I'm not as thin-skinned as others, and don't need my ego stroked, or worried about my pride being bruised. But again, "Community Service" is their job, and it was they get paid to do. My job title is web developer. Know what I do with the majority of my time? That's right, develop the web. If I did anything else for the majority of my time, my title would be revolved around that. I'm not the IT guy, I'm not the multi-media person. I'm the web developer. I don't know anyone who spends the majority of their work day NOT doing the job that is described in their job title. If they did, wtf were they hired for?

This is a very snipped post, I know. And it is only an example, not intended to be specific at one person who I do not know, but more about a general feeling I have gotten from the last 5 or more pages on this thread.

There are so many posts like this from a very small number of people, and it is strange watching RadarX trying to politely reply to this in a myriad of different ways. To some extent, he is constrained by company policy of course.

Except, in almost every case, it is clear that the person understood only too well.. they just DID NOT LIKE THE MESSAGE, so they pretended to misunderstand just to keep arguing, for the sake of doing so. This is just wasting everyone's time.

I mean, how clear does it have to get:

(1) Negative feedback is allowed. Or it should be. That is the subject of this thread for many people.

Feedback has a valid place here. SOE should not be trying to stop negative feedback on content.

Taking action against accounts for giving negative feedback is dubious at best.

(2) Insults, implied or direct, are not allowed. At all. Ever. Most of use accept this. Even those of us who have slipped occasionally and accepted it. A few seem not to accept it.

Calling devs "incompetent" is an insult. It is not constructive. It is just venting. Just because it is "not as bad as it could be" in terms of abuse, is irrelevant. There does not need to be any abuse here at all.

Language needs to be measured, and aimless venting should just go elsewhere.

Taking action against posters who are just being abusive something I am sure would improve the forums for most users, not harm them.

After all, there is a reason most people I have ever known in EQ2 would never ever go to sites like 'flames', because the type of people who took part in such a verbally unpleasent cesspit of a 'community' were exactly the type of people we would never have anything to do with in real life and wouldn't wish to in game either.

You can absolutely post in the General Discussion area and I'm going to make sure we get those forum tags put in as soon as possible which should allow you to designate something as off topic.

as for people posting and putting down the devs, i have only seen one time that a dev said something so off the chart that i felt compelled to respond and tell him what i thought, although i tried to be polite about it. but i figured that was him being human.

i really don't get why people feel it is appropriate to bash other people. not other posters, not devs, not anyone. how can anyone think that putting down devs or others and calling them names, attacking their competency is in any way constructive? i don't care if you think grown-ups should be thick skinned. how many times do you think it takes for a finger poke to become painful? People who post here should be grownups and not be throwing stones at them. we all live in glass houses as it were and words can hurt.

so sometimes anyone can get out of line and anyone can get mad. maybe instead of posting like crazy when you are upset, you should take a break and calm down first. isn't that the adult thing to do?

yes we all get carried away sometimes, even i do. but then you have to remember that if you said something you can't take back and it was out of line, that was your own fault and apologies should be immediately forthcoming. remember the old advice about sleeping on a letter before mailing it? so why not wait a bit and then come back to post. that post will still be there when you get back. this is the internet. it isn't going anywhere.

so yes, i totally get why disparaging remarks about anyone, especially employees, would not be tolerated.

however, there is a lot of inconsistency. when you see a lot of people saying things and you are thinking they are breaking rules but they are not off the forums, their posts not removed, you start to wonder if you have misinterpreted the rules. then you say something not nearly as offensive, or you reply to one of them telling them they are wrong about the company, and suddenly you are banned. not consistent at all.

Job titles and job descriptions are very different things. If you think you can glean everything that a person should be doing in their respective job based solely on their job title, then you're sadly mistaken.
I'm quite certain that "Community Service" is not the same as "Forum Moderator/Admin" and it does not seem to imply that Radar needs to be scanning these forums every hour of his work day cleaning up the forums.

Okay, it's not about being able to bash or insult someone. It's about there's a difference between saying something in the middle of a heated discussion, and saying something just randomly out of the blue. In the former case, some leeway needs to be granted and have the comment removed from the post, with a note saying why. In most cases, people would be open and receptive to this. But RadarX has stated they don't want to do this, so instead, they delete the post, even if 95% of it is constructive feedback.

In those instances I would ask...I would actually plead for you to report these posts so we can help make things appear more consistent. I cant stand here and tell you that there is ever going to be complete consistency until the day we have some Skynet AI scanning things and I for one will welcome our Terminator overlords. Until that day we still have the human factor.

Apologies, Prayos on missing a post. You had posted again before I posted my own reply. I have no argument with you on being responsible for your own job titles and what that encompasses. My problem is you really have no idea what all his job currently encompasses you are assuming and getting mad because it doesn't appear that he's doing his job very well. I disagree on this point. I think he's really trying and he's caught between a rock and a very hard place. My opinion.