Public Forum Posting Privileges $5 Nice

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Razimus, Jun 23, 2015.

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  1. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    You're right. Here's my impression though. Portalarium is a small company. They aren't Sony. The PlayStation Network can get hacked by a foreign government or a major hacker group, and Sony and Playstation still lives. In fact the culprits got caught in a major sting opperation some years back when they were first hacked. It took down Lulsec and nobody even heard as much as a peep out of Annonymous after that. They use to actually do more than talk before that.

    Now Portalarium is not Sony. If a hacker group is serious about causing trouble for Shroud of the Avatar there is no stoping it. IT won't even get press except for maybe an online gamer magazine that nobody cares about reading. So what could end up happening is that SotA becomes like a UO custom shard that gets denial of service attacks once every few weeks or so, and random downtimes. It probably won't be enough to bring down the game significantly but if it happens on a regular basis that will drive away many potential customers.

    That's why I see it as a problem. It isn't so much that people have to pay for the forums. The "reason" they have to pay might cause a thinking person to think again.
     
  2. Drocis the Devious

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    You say it is a problem because hackers and spammers might get upset that they have to pay $5 to post on the forums and now they can't spam anymore? Ok, so we should just let them spam?

    Look, I don't know how much money, time, and resources Portalarium (a small company) had to waste on this nonsense before, but I know it was too much whatever it was. That to me was far more of a problem (for a small company) than the risk that someone might get mad and start illegally attempting some sort of revenge.

    Hats off to Portalarium for putting a stop to the madness and getting back to work.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2015
  3. mikeaw1101

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    What if I were to tell you... The entire internet is a social experiment?
     
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  4. Heradite

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    There is a better way. Since I believe mods are a volunteer position, hire more of them. There are plenty of members here who I think would make valuable mods and I'm sure they wouldn't mind hunting down spam posts.
     
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  5. redfish

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    It shouldn't be hard to do.

    I was awake and watching the forums when all the spam started coming in. If there was a mod on at that time, it could have taken a minute to delete it all and ban the accounts.
     
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  6. Heradite

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    I run a forum with over 2 million posts. I just hired three staff members. I was only going to hire two staff members but one of my admins made the point that if we had someone in Asia, they could catch spammers and watch the forum at that time. Since we are an international community, we ended up hiring him. We now have mods in the USA, in Europe, and in Asia.

    I'd never charge people to post even though we do have "premium" account tiers to pay for server costs. That would limit our ability to grow a community. Considering how the primary selling point of SOTA at this stage is the community (the story for launch, the community for pre-launch) then I honestly think the $5 entry fee is a bad move.

    I have no idea how FireLotus hired the current mods but it shouldn't be hard. I mean, I like to do a unique practice where I ask for the current staff to nominate members. If I want to open the pool, I'll also ask for members to send in nominations. They can apply for the position but only if they also nominate three other people. After nominations are over, the staff discusses who to bring on. If someone who was nominated gets a single objection, even if I really like them, then I won't hire them. So it takes time for me to hire people and it can be hard to make choices sometime but it's not difficult to mask them!

    Hunting spam is annoying, sure, but it's not time consuming at all if you are able to get a jump on it.
     
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  7. Odyssey2001

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    Well, like others mentioned. we can always join the Chat or email the devs.. so I really do not see the big deal here.. if you are on this forum you have probably already pledged anyways.. ( and you do get a digital download of the game + current testing access ) And if 5 dollars is going to hurt your budget that much then perhaps paying for forum access is the least of your problems..
     
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  8. Heradite

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    There's a lot of responsibilities a volunteer forum moderator has: spam control, enforcing forum rules, and leading the community. Having said that, none of the things you listed are duties of a forum moderator.

    Investor: What? They might invest their time in helping develop a community around a game but it's a bit hard to ask people you don't pay to spend money to invest in the company. Having said that, since many of us are backers, I'd say many of us would meet this requirement.
    Testers: I mean we all test the game if we play pre-alpha even if we are just providing data to Portalarium.
    Developers: No. Nope. Not at all. The forum moderators are not developers. Developers make the game, forum moderators give their time to the forum.
    Event Creators: I see the normal members, not the moderators of this forum, creating events. I can't name a single moderator-created event.
    Word of Mouth Marketing: I guess they could help with this but word of mouth marketing is generally generated by consumers.

    As for Gem of Ideas? Well the developers supposedly read every idea anyways and I'm not sure that this should be a moderator responsibility. It kind of goes against the idea of a community developed game if a select few who aren't developing the game itself are the arbiters of which ideas even make it to the developers.
    Topic creation? It's hard for me to find a post by a moderator, much less a whole topic at the moment. A community who depends on moderators to create topics tends to struggle. A moderator should only create a topic if they desire. On my forum, the staff creates topics all the time but so do the members.
    Yes, they need to be up to date with all the FAQs but frankly a moderator can familiarize themselves with the data they need to know after the fact. Having said that, I see the members not the moderators providing answers in public 95% of the time.
    I heavily disagree with neutrality. They should have an opinion-a moderator is someone that the community needs to inherently respect and that usually means they present ideas in a respectful way. Removing them from having an opinion also means that you are losing a voice that could help provide great ideas to the game. Also the Gem of Ideas is kind of at odds with having them be 100% neutral.

    Now obviously if the forum moderators are PAID employees that's different but you do ask a lot for people who are volunteers.

    They do need to represent the values or Portalarium but once again, it actually shouldn't be that hard to find these people if you are paying attention to the forum and are attracting the people who have those values.

    Oh, and my system isn't a fast poll. I took a week to gather nominations then about another week to discuss them. Also there was no poll: it was a discussion among staff members. And the reason I said that is actually in the last part of the post: it wasn't an easy choice. It was actually a hard one but not for the reasons you think: if you have a good community then the problem is trying to find good people who follow your values but rather there are too many good people who follow your values. Trying to narrow them down should be the hard part. If the hard part is you can't find enough good members then you have a whole other problem.
     
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  9. Isaiah

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    Why do you assume that some madman started illegally attempting some sort of revenge?

    To hear that some other sites also were attacked could mean that it wasn't targeted at all. We can come up with all sorts of conspiracies but that leads to nothing, especially the truth.

    If we have a tendency to feel life is good when things are going good, and then we feel life is bad when we perceieve things are going bad then we don't know where going? There needs to be an anchor for the psyche. Sanity doesn't proceed out of the mouth of madmen.

    Truth is only true if it is true for all people. What brings peace for all humanity is better than what brings peace to one group.
     
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  10. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    Take a look at what I wrote because it is probably the best thing that's come out of my mouth on this website in a long time. ;)
     
  11. Drocis the Devious

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    I was responding to what you wrote previously. I don't assume that - but I thought you did when you wrote....

    Then you wrote this....

    What? o_O

    I like you, Isaiah. But I'm not sure what you said here makes a lot of sense. I agree that we can't silo ourselves to new ideas...but a $5 entry point to a game forum is not a big deal. They still have read access, and there's still a number of paths to "ask questions" that don't require $5. Email support, Chat, Video Hangouts, Friends, Family, other social media, a search function...
     
  12. Fionwyn Wyldemane

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    So devious! LOL! I guess people really do that crapola, but dang. I never would have thought of it. :confused:
     
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  13. Isaiah

    Isaiah Avatar

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    LoL Oh I'm sorry I wasn't more clear that I shifted gears in my last post, so the first part was commenting on your comment. That last part I was talking about a long running theme in my personal posts going back years. :rolleyes:
     
  14. Woftam

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    HAHAHAH, This was worth reading! :)
     
  15. Lord-Galiwyn

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    WELL, since crtain peopl have spammed us they were removed as soon as they were reported.
     
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