Berek - Locking and Deleting Threads

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Oeneusc, Feb 1, 2018.

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  1. Tahru

    Tahru Avatar

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    There are some topics that will never come to a conclusion. I don't know what is right or wrong in those cases. But I could sum up moderation in the exact same light. But all and all, I think it is not so bad here. Before Berek, some would go on for what seems like months of unguarded bashing of the game or other comunity members. I favor no bashing at all. Voicing opinions is a YES! Voicing opinions to represent, so much as, one other person is a no! Attacking other members is a really big no no! I think Berek has been a positive influence on this forum and I don't kiss anyone's .... I ran an huge site with a sizable forum like this before. I know for a fact that there are some people that just don't get along and if they are not patient enough with each other... bad things always happen that not only affect them but the entire site. It is better for all of us to keep the peace as long as everyone gets at least a post or two to say how they really feel. We are here because of a common interest in gaming. But when it gets so bad that it is not fun, then it is better for everyone on all sides to just take a breather, try it later or move on. I have seen bad moderation, and this is not it.
     
  2. Tetsu Nevara

    Tetsu Nevara Avatar

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    Thats how good business works, we payed for it, we are customers. Around 60% of the topics have the intention to get n answer from the devs, how often do we get ignored vs a good answer? Talking about important stuff feels meaningless and people still try over and over again to get some answer or feedback from the devs.
     
  3. Andartianna

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    Problems are meant to be aired in private with the support staff not in a forum. Forums are meant for discussions on things in a civil manner under constrained focus.
     
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  4. Umuri

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    I respectfully disagree. When you are at the point that a player is personally insulted by a moderator[1][2][3], called a troll for voicing a concern with supporting evidence[4], had their account threatened due to their viewpoint[5][6][7], and repeatedly have instances where posts are moderated without a rule being cited[8][9][10][11][12][13], or even the moderation procedures being followed enough to give a moderation reason[14][15][16][17][18][19], you have bad moderation. As always with my posts, references and citations available upon request, as due to the forum rules I am not allowed to post them publicly as that is against the rules that prohibit both public discussion of individual moderations, and the naming and shaming rule of not being able to talk negatively about someone's specific actions even when in a historical context. The existence of such rules alone that stagnate civil discussion and accountability, are a point against the moderation being 100% "good".

    Same reason you can't discuss past scammers who are still in-game, which i still maintain is also a poor moderation rule as it leaves newbies wide open to them.

    But to maintain on topic, deletions serve no purpose but to pretend things never happen, and encourage more threads popping up as people will naturally want their opinion heard. Inline moderation is always preferable if done in a transparent, open, accountable way.

    It is also worth noting that if you notice a correlation between the behvaior that gets threads locked/deleted, and who the main perpetrators are, yet no action is taken against them for their actions, then you will notice another perverse incentive.

    The easiest way to silence any thread, is to have an agent provacateur start breaking rules in it, giving the moderators an "Excuse" to lock it, as it's now "too bad to clean up".

    Remember, the community is and always will be the final voice in the matter. Nothing is ever deleted for good, not anymore.
    We are the Avatars.

    That only works so long as people feel support staff both have their best interest at heart, and are willing to have a fair discussion. Constrained focus does not mean constrained viewpoints. Several civil threads that had no rules broken except their dissenting viewpoints were de-railed and locked, rather than the in-line cleanup that other threads that were less dissenting got.

    It's a rather curious statistic, whether a thread is locked vs in-line targetted deletion for the same offence.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2018
  5. Andartianna

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    Actually it would since it's a private business and not a public square. A business would want to constrained it to what is acceptable for their business.
     
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  6. Toadster

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    I don’t envy Bereck’s position of moderating the forum’s. Dealing with a lot of the same heated discussions over and over and over and over and over again....with no conclusion.

    I believe moderator’s need to have a very thick skin, and an un-biased view of the conversations in order to keep them civil and on point. Some things I don’t agree with being locked or moderated, and some I do. But that is not my decision to make. I just think things gets worse when people start to believe the reasons for locking threads are biased or have alterior motives.

    Now on the other side... there are definitely posters on this forum that feel that their points are not being listened too, when truly they’re just not that many people that agree with them. Some of those posters resort to screaming louder, personal attacks and just plain rudeness. Now this could just be that tone can not be relayed in text and it is not as bad as it reads but after repeated, and repeated and repeated and repeated counter arguments resulting in the same outcome a certain amount of Bias towards individuals is almost guaranteed. We are only human.
     
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  7. Kpopgurl

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    @Cerus this.
     
  8. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    We are ? :confused:
    Wait..... whaaaaa.... :eek:
     
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  9. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    Rrrright.
    I see some people seem to think otherwise but moderation isn't something personal. If it would be Berek would hate me by now.
    I am aware that getting moderated can be a daunting experience for some people, but really, it is not personal and if you do not behave like a d**k nobody of the devs is out to get you.
     
  10. Spoon

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    Agreed that this is a private space and not a public one.
    Agreed that they can, will and should moderate anything they want.
    Agreed that they are in their rights to do so.

    Disagree that arguing about what should or shouldn't be moderated cannot be done publicly.
    Disagree that criticism about moderation should always be kept private with the one doing the moderation.
    Disagree that criticism doesn't change systems.
    This since how you handle criticism in general very much sets the tone and expectation of your product. Players don't trust a product if criticism is too heavily moderated.



    Also would like to point out that good moderation leads to better business. Where if your moderation leads to a decrease in revenue, then that is not good for business.

    Yes you need to censor the subversive elements that break the rules, but the current level of moderation drives out the fence sitters who used to remain with the community and contribute monetarily to the game project.
    We have even seen posters in good standing driven away, that is never good for business.

    Affecting the bottom line means you have an issue, where public discussion would be the best way to deal with such an issue.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2018
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  11. Senash Kasigal

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    The developement is agil and there ate so many changes that you do not like to read so old threads. If you „necro“ a thread, all other user will also read this possibly outdated information and the chaos is perfect. Its better you make a new thread. I think it would be best to autolock all threads older than one year. Thats what I will do when I reopen my new forum.
     
  12. Solazur

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    I agree with the sentiment however, I think there is an important difference here. This is a crowdfunded, open development project. This project required a new paradigm from the beginning. How many times have we seen Richard pointing into the camera as he looks right at us and says: " we work for YOU"? It is we the collective community that have paid for the lights to stay on and we continue to do so. Tomorrow for example we'll have another telethon. I'd respectfully submit that you can't ask me for my hard earned cash on Friday and treat me like a child on Monday. This is the place where our voices can be heard; where we can give feedback etc. I've definitely seen changes made as a result of the exchange of ideas on these forums. Hell what if I'd been banned for constantly baggin on Chris about polearms? I'll grant that some of the threads are just half baked notions that rapidly devolve into childish bickering. On the other hand I think we've all seen some threads where differing views have been aired and a civil discourse was being had; I know that I've changed my way of thinking on more than one occasion after considering posts with a viewpoint that I didn't share at the time. It's healthy to have a place to air our views. You can't have open dev with closed minds. As Umuri pointed out.. all it takes is one individual with an agenda to get an entire thread locked, and that's just wrong. Take the time to read the thread and figure out who the troll is, deal with them and let the rest of us discuss.

    thanks

    -sol
     
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  13. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    The problem here is in my opinion that a lot of people fail to understand that you means 'you all'.

    They can. They have to if you (i am ofc not talking about you) behave like one.

    If we want this to be a better forum it is up to us. We can not blame the mods for our short temper. We can not blame the mods for constantly claiming our rights and constantly forgetting other ppl here have rights too.
    No, blaming the mods is too easy imo.
    If we would all tone it down a bit there would be much less moderation.
     
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  14. Luca Xante

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    I agree.

    But also I did stop "airing" problems even in Private with support and well... for someone particular member of staff, when first I was threated like a child, then I was given false information and finally I was ignored....

    I agree, but still I am giving at least that 5$ in every Telethon :rolleyes: (and @Earl Atogrim von Draken, I weren´t acting like "one";))

    I learnt my lession, I leave adressing problems for others who hopefully are threated more respectfully and I just play SotA and have fun doing so.
     
  15. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    Jajajajaja.
    I never said that this forum never saw really terrible attemps in moderation ;-)
    Mistakes happen.
    Non the less, i stay with my above statement.
     
  16. Verit

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    I believe that part of the problem is people keep debating topics about mechanics that are in the game and the devs have no intention of changing. Take decay or consensual PvP for example.
    The company doesn't want to seem unresponsive to backers but these decisions are final and it is ridiculous to allow us to keep bickering over them.
    Perhaps they should just declare that certain things are now set in stone.
     
  17. Kpopgurl

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    And yet things change anyhow. The card system is not gone completely but has been improved a lot by constant criticism of the combat... Things can change. While the game has done good improvements, a lot of the moderation and other issues keep coming back and coming back... Sure you can blame the users again and again.. but to solve the issue Portalarium needs to questions themselves.

    Of course this is largely an issue of perception, but forum user numbers have been getting less and less from what you can see when looking at the forum's main page, communities like reddit and even raw are getting more and more attention.
     
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  18. StrangerDiamond

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    Except we have numerous examples of the contrary, and decay has been adjusted twice after critical threads on the subject.

    But yeah that was my first complaint for moderation, how can a moderator do his/her job well if there is no place with official definitive statements from the devs ? And I mean an organized space where other players can quote and point to, in order to save some job to the mods.

    I don't think the mods are acting on a personal agenda at all, I would also be banned if that was the case because I get "trigerred" both in too positive and too negative ways. But I think some ideas that have been discussed internally by devs and probably ALSO debated strongly by devs are still too fresh of a wound to be discussed on the boards, and noone is willing to admit it.

    This is whats really bad with this model... the devs have JIRA to organize things in priority, follow up and all that we want to save us time in participating to this forum, we don't.

    We're left guessing half the time... oh I think the devs said that, oh I think you're wrong they said that afterwards... and we're left using the search function, filtering through threads and often drama, to reach a dev comment that after the whole process we often think is probably the last thread that should have been answered by a dev (it happens often that it feels wrong).

    It's a question of priority, but also of respect... its like after all this time they didn't want to admit that we're in fact beta testers...

    are we still in alpha or are we active beta-testers, VOLUNTEERS ?

    When that is clear and honest, then its MUCH easier to spot the trolls and have a sound moderation.
     
  19. mass

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    This is true, but narrowing the scope of community management to simply 'keeping the forums on message' misses a bigger picture of the business impact of the forums. Feeling like you are part of a community has an impact on player interest and retention. If your message is so constrained that only a stark minority of the potential player base feels like they can be part of the community, you are losing customers. The goal should be to widen the net as large as possible, to make the community as inclusive as possible, while weeding out those outliers that are actually harmful to the community (e.g. people who threaten or bully). I'm not saying anything goes; I remember a few years ago Bioware had a severe problem on their forums with people being really grotesque to their Devs. That stuff is clearly over the line and can't be tolerated. But when people see that too much message control is taking place, it may make them question whether or not that is a community they can be a part of.

    In observing these forums for the last 5 years, I think the 'bad' moderation (e.g. sweeping locks, deletes, without much consideration to the action) comes in waves and happens when the mods get busy, see a problem, and need to figure out how to fix it in the 5 minutes they have to deal with it that day. It's unfortunate when that happens, but I can sympathize with what I think are the underlying reasons. But to the quoted point, community management is important to this business, and should be directed at bringing as many people into the fold as is possible.
     
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  20. Mykll

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    I agree moderation seems to be a bit heavy. And I better just not say much more than that. Although I am surprised, and very glad to see, that this thread remains open and unlocked.

    Part of the moderation comes from seemingly what the forums themselves should be able to handle. Duplicate thread? No move dupe into original thread or a merge options? Things like that. See the many goodbye bag posts as the most recent example. I wish a topic can be brought together in one place instead of pieces left locked or deleted here and there.
     
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