BellaStrega

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The reason some replies are deleted along with ones that don't look to be harmful is because any reply "chained" from that deleted one is deleted also unless you reply differently. Thats why harmless posts are sometimes wiped when a forum breaking post gets wiped.

I figured everyone knew that by now...

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ZOMG, we know that.

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Also, the fact that CuppaJo did not hold herself aloof and act solely as a traffic cop was not a flaw.

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I agree that Cuppa's involvement in the community was a good thing. I also dont agree in the slightest that Lighthouse is acting solely as a traffic cop if you were implying that.

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I'm not implying that at all. Read the post I responded to - it said that the Community Manager (Cuppa, now Lighthouse) should be here mainly to enforce the rules.

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I've had posts of my own disappear after only a few minutes simly because I asked "How many friends have you made with your posting style?".


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Hah! I had a post about streudel in a joke thread get pruned.

Streudel!



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If we joke about streudel, the terrorists win.

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Lighthouse is here to do a job. Being your friend is optional.

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This is important. What is his job? People seem to think his job is "forum moderator". Is it? I was to the understanding that his job was more than just the cheif moderator.

I was to the understanding that his job was to organize and hold together the City of Heroes community. There is more to this than just forum moderation. In game activities are part of this. Contests are part of this. People stay with a game in many cases because of the community and social environment that it brings, and his job is to keep that community together.

Can he do THAT without being friendly?

Zeus - god of differences

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All good points.

Also, this post and your previous post are pretty close to my own observation - I do think some random out-of-control deletions did happen after Cuppa left, which was when people started noticing things, but the forum was probably undermoderated otherwise.

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Creating new threads when the original gets locked is against forum rules. Sorry.

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And the other threads that get deleted despite not breaking forum rules? I once posted a link to an article about CoH with a somewhat satirical title - thread was deleted within a few hours.

There were no flames, no one was calling out the devs, the thread was about CoH, although some of it did get a bit silly (as they sometimes do). Since CuppaJo was still here when it happened, I asked her about it and she restored the thread because it did not break any rules. After that experience, I've been a bit sensitive to how the unnamed moderators handle things in this regard, and I can't say that I agree with the idea that every thread that gets locked or deleted deserves it, or that every post that gets deleted deserves that.

I'm also not completely certain that creating a new thread when the original is locked is against forum rules. I mean, sure, if you create a thread calling out Statesman to explain why he's nerfing the game to make you leave, and then make a second after the first is deleted...you're still breaking the rules. But if you make a thread about - for example - regeneration which degenerates into a flamefest over the great regen nerfs of issues 3, 4, 5, and 6, I'm not sure that making a second thread about regen in the hopes of dodging that bullet is really against the forum rules.

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And I disagree with your disagreement and say that, in my opinion, UnSub is absolutely right.

Lighthouse is here to do a job. Being your friend is optional.

When you have a stuck/bugged mission, and you /petition for a GM, do you want someone to come in and joke with you about it for a half hour, or do you want someone who will fix it?

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If we have to polarize things now, then Unsub - and by extension, you - are absolutely wrong.

There's a difference; GMs are there to smooth over your play experience when things screw up. CuppaJo (and now Lighthouse) are community liaisons. If you're not willing to be a part of the community, you'll suck at the liaising thing.

That's not the same as saying that he has to be my friend, but if he holds himself aloof and acts only as a traffic cop, there's no real connection to the community.

Also, the fact that CuppaJo did not hold herself aloof and act solely as a traffic cop was not a flaw.

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I believe that some people got used to a very lenient standard of enforcement and are now having to deal with a much stricter one. It's unfortunate that we've gone from one extreme to another, but I disagree that the solution is for the new moderator to unilaterally loosen up. Posters are going to have to learn to behave better, as they always should have.

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Oh, please. This isn't about stricter moderation. If there were any sign that thread deletions actually related to the forum rules in anything other than a random sense, this topic would not have even come up. Have you even been paying attention to how this stuff has been going down since September, or is this just an appeal to authority? "Since they're the mods, they've got to be right?"

Re-read the thread. You'll see that a large number of complaints have to do with innocuous threads getting zapped while offensive threads and posts remain for a long period of time.

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I'm not saying this stuff because I want Lighthouse to like me. I want him to keep doing his job. That's all.

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I would hope that part of his job is to not hamstring the CoH forum community by allowing haphazard moderation to continue, but it seemed to continue after he took over. It might be more sane now that he's been at it for awhile, but I'll wait and see on that.

I'd wish the kind of moderation on y'all that you guys so clearly seem to want, but then I would like to find this forum at least moderately pleasant to hang out in. I feel like I'm conversing with people begging for food rations and a maximum wage limit here.

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I think "Lighthouse & Friends" (Good name, huh?) are doing a fine job.

Granted, I've disagreed twice on the Mods choice of thread deletion, although, side from that, there's not one mistake I've seen them make (concerning moderation).

All the closed threads have been a load of nuts and bolts.

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It only takes one exception to disprove all, yes?

Miss_Kitty's followup "the tails are clipping" thread. The first thread got out of hand, got locked, Kitty started a second one, it did not get out of hand...it got locked.

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I would welcome that. I got a warning for echoing a playful jab at another poster (using the same exact words he used). I got a warning, he did not.

Inconsistency is the problem, not the moderation.

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Actually, the guy who retaliates is always more likely to get pegged than the guy who starts it. It's a fact of life.

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This is a fallacy. Not the observation that life is unfair - that's true. Rather, using that to justify further unfair behavior is a fallacy.

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Personally, I'm not sure I've ever seen a large gaming forum survive as a "nice" place without heavy moderation.

I've also seldom seen that sort of heavy moderation required for other large hobby forums not related to gaming.

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We're not talking about weight, we're talking about consistency.

Also, nice jab at gaming fora. It's not true, either - I've never seen an active forum that didn't eventually need moderation, regardless the subject matter.

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To take the counter point - there are likely thousands of posts made in a week. It would be incredibly difficult to read them all, so it's likely posts get skimmed and if something catches the eye then it might get trimmed (and sometimes, trimmed too extensively). And sometimes threads go very quickly from good to bad, so it might get away from them.

On top of this, I have to assume that mods have other responsibilities over just reading the forums all day. So "heaven forbit" that some posts, out of thousands per week, get missed. If anything, it suggests that mods should get a lot more delete-happy, because that will catch all problem posts.

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Now you're implying that all the posts that do get deleted need to be deleted, and that is so not the case. I can understand them missing posts, and I'd be okay with that if they weren't also deleting posts that simply do not cross the line. You're excluding possibilities here to make it sound like consistent moderation is a pipe dream.

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Final point:

And if your post does get deleted for good or ill, what has it cost you?

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The time spent posting it, as well as the people who might have read it and their reactions to it.

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After ironically having my pro-Lighthouse post deleted because I attached it to another post that got squished, I'll start at the top.

To reiterate - Lighthouse is doing a better job than CuppaJo. Yes, stealth-mods and stealth-deletions still occur, but when Lighthouse acts he tells us why. CuppaJo occasionally did, but usually she just threw a black bag over the head of the offending thread and had it dragged into an awaiting van.

I didn't (and still don't) get the fandom that surrounded Cuppa. She was nice enough for a voice on the wire, sure, but nothing special. But that's all she was for 99% of the forums - a voice on the wire.

But then I don't actually want the mods to be my friends. I don't want them to be friends with players because I think it creates the chance that they will let too much slide from certain people. I want the mods to be efficient, to be open about what they are doing / why they locked a thread and to show a steady hand. Lighthouse is doing all of this.

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I disagree with pretty much everything you say here.

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I can live with that.

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Awesome.

Also: People like Cuppa because she did communicate and related to the forum community. She'd been here since the beginning, and people know her.

One of the most effectively modded forums I'm on has multiple moderators, some of whom I consider friends (or at least friendly), and I'm sure lots of other people feel the same. They actively participate in forum threads all the time without being moderators. When they do post as moderators, the posts are clearly marked as such. Somehow, this does not make it impossible for them to function fairly.

CuppaJo was not a bad moderator, and she wasn't too friendly to function.

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I have a question for the people saying that they see apparantly unofffensive threads getting deleted, while other clearly rules violating posts stick around.

Do you guys actually report the offensive threads that aren't deleted? Or PM Lighthouse or Cricket about them?

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I have reported threads that clearly violate the forum rules - sometimes they get deleted, sometimes not.

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After ironically having my pro-Lighthouse post deleted because I attached it to another post that got squished, I'll start at the top.

To reiterate - Lighthouse is doing a better job than CuppaJo. Yes, stealth-mods and stealth-deletions still occur, but when Lighthouse acts he tells us why. CuppaJo occasionally did, but usually she just threw a black bag over the head of the offending thread and had it dragged into an awaiting van.

I didn't (and still don't) get the fandom that surrounded Cuppa. She was nice enough for a voice on the wire, sure, but nothing special. But that's all she was for 99% of the forums - a voice on the wire.

But then I don't actually want the mods to be my friends. I don't want them to be friends with players because I think it creates the chance that they will let too much slide from certain people. I want the mods to be efficient, to be open about what they are doing / why they locked a thread and to show a steady hand. Lighthouse is doing all of this.

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I disagree with pretty much everything you say here.

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For the love of jelly beans.

It's a freakin internet message forum.

Get over yourselves.

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It's an internet message forum where we try to socialize, discuss the game, and have some fun. When that socializing, discussion, and fun is disrupted because we simply cannot tell what standards are being used to determine which threads have to go, it's well within reason to get annoyed or frustrated and ask why this is happening.

Trying to shut down an argument by exclaiming how irrelevant the topic strikes me as something that must be formally defined as a logical fallacy somewhere. Maybe you should reconsider that gambit, if you want to convince us that we have no business criticizing the recent moderation activities. This forum is not irrelevant or unimportant or we wouldn't be here discussing anything. It is true that this forum might not be of paramount importance in our lives, or relate to critical matters of national security. However, this forum is here for discussion of City of Heroes and tangents related to that. If you're unwilling to acknowledge that this forum is important and relevant in that particular regard, maybe you should find someplace a bit more important to post.

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As it is now, there's no sign telling us what the speed limit is, but we can tell it's a two lane highway in the country, so we can assume it's 55. Suddenly, out of nowhere we hit a speed trap and get ticketed without any warning. I'd like some clearer road signs and stricter enforcement, personally.

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You can sit there and tell me that you don't know if what you write will or will not get mod-smacked.

boggle

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Actually, he's right.

I've seen posts that were obvious attacks on other posters go off scott-free and others that contained nothing more than a reference to underwear get delted entirely.

It's not necessarily anarchy, but to a fairly significant degree nobody really knows for sure where the line is.

And i'm sayin this as someone who likes to skirt the line... I don't actually know where it is.

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Repeated for correctness.

There's no standard; threads get locked and deleted, subthreads get axed...no idea why. There's not always an obvious reason as to why thread A got axed but thread B did not. I've seen polite discussions about mechanics (and some wish lists about mechanical changes) get sent howling into oblivion while the umpteenth thread in a single week about how tankers who don't take taunt actually cause puppies to die from puppy-killing rays continues unabated.

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I never said that everyone who chooses to break rules they don't like is always a hero and all of society should back them up every time. It's even possible that someone who objects to a given law may be wrong to do so! I still don't think that means we should accept bad, stupid, or unjust rules.


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True, but there are ways of protesting that don't involve 'protesting' or angry rants. You could probably say just about anything to anyone depending on how you say it.

Then again, my personal goal is to be able to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip, even so far as spending all their frequent flyer miles.

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I gave up on such a goal when I came to terms with the fact that if I did that, my intended target would miss the point.

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Another problem I see is that there are people that break the rules over and over again, but they never end up in trouble. All the mods ever do is delete posts and lock threads with little to no consequences. When all that happens is your post being deleted, this isn't going to improve your behavior. All it does is make the individual thread fit the rules more closely.

If I have a post deleted every day, there should be consequences. The only person I know who was ever banned from these boards posted slasher fanfic with extremely graphic sexual content. Twice. Did he deserve to be banned? It's hard to argue against it. What about the guy who posts inflammatory comments about a specific supergroup every time there's a Hamidon Raid? Every single time. The posts are deleted, but then the next Raid occurs and there's a whole new crop of posts to delete.

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If it helps, I am personally aware of two bannings, and I think there's a third and a fourth as well. They do happen, although I think it helps to go to Lighthouse and point out the behavior problem. I recall pointing out a particularly problematic poster to CuppaJo, who later PM'd me and posted to the thread in question about how I'd got the gestapo to modsmack him (his words), so I know it used to work. If it's on the scale of the stuff that I PM'd Cuppa about, I would be completely unsurprised if Lighthouse were to take action in similar circumstances.

No, I won't name names. That's against the rules.

Edit: Just to be clear, I only know of the bannings because the bannees told me about it. Except the one who hated me, but he abruptly stopped posting after an extremely nasty misogynistic post and has not been back for well over a year, so...

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I guess it's just me, but it seemed to me that the forum locking hadn't gotten more frequent, but rather than Lighthouse happened to just post when he did it. I remember just a while back when I posted very infrequently and read a lot and I often saw threads being locked with no explanation as to why: people just knew.

To make this short, I'm really not seeing a problem with what Lighthouse is doing. He's just letting us know that he's doing it, so we're considerably more aware of his presence.

At least, that's how it appears to me.

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Thread locking and deletion frequency increased noticeably once CuppaJo left and continued to increase. I've seen people comment on it here and on other forums, and it definitely started before Lighthouse came around.

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Like it or not the mods are final arbiters on interpretation of the rules. If someone disagrees with that, it should go on PM.

And yes. All of them. The rules are there for a reason, as usual some of them seems very restrictive, but they are there because of that minority that always abuse them otherwise.

Remember always, it is always the few that ruin it for the many.

That being said, I am completely on Lighthouse's side here. There are many threads that have been allowed to go on way longer than they should have. But he is just one man, and he's gotta have time to play as well...

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It's unfortunate that many mod deletions bear little resemblance to applications of those rules. Not all, but enough for people to notice.

You've seen threads go on longer than you think they should have. I've seen threads deleted for no discernable reason.

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I just had an Invul Scrapper's Invincibility aura take the aggro of Vandal away from my Ice Tanker. Looks like either respec time for my level 27 Ice to get Taunt finally. I wish I didn't remember when Tankers were not required to take Taunt to tank an AV.

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I would point and laugh, but I am just too saddened to hear of a scrappers aura taking agro away from a tanks aura, especially CE.

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I used to do this in issue 2-3 all the time.

I'd say "Use provoke or taunt" and the tanker would say "But I have invincibility!" and I'd say "Just trust me" and they wouldn't, and I'd get aggro from the tanker.

Really annoying.

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Prior to this point, Kali, the only way I could ever take aggro from an Ice tanker was by using Taunt. The fact that a Scrapper can take AV aggro from an Ice tanker with Invincibility is appalling.

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Well, this was in issue 2, and it wasn't an Ice Tanker with Invincibility.

It never happened in BOSS, if that helps.

So, your scrapper has pulled aggro from an ice tanker using CE recently?

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I just had an Invul Scrapper's Invincibility aura take the aggro of Vandal away from my Ice Tanker. Looks like either respec time for my level 27 Ice to get Taunt finally. I wish I didn't remember when Tankers were not required to take Taunt to tank an AV.

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I would point and laugh, but I am just too saddened to hear of a scrappers aura taking agro away from a tanks aura, especially CE.

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I used to do this in issue 2-3 all the time.

I'd say "Use provoke or taunt" and the tanker would say "But I have invincibility!" and I'd say "Just trust me" and they wouldn't, and I'd get aggro from the tanker.

Really annoying.

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Actually, States, this comment here shows me that you have never been part of a true Super Group in the game. An SG is much more than just a chat chain; it's one of the keys to the game's long term survival. (I am writing from my experiences on the Champion server. For those of you on other servers, YMMV. )

A Super Group is much, much more than just a bunch of people that are connected by a window. SGs draw people of similar goals and outlooks and allow them to form social bonds within the game. Yes, there are many that form and collapse over time, but the ones that remain are due to the bonds created by the SG’s members. Anyone that has been exposed to this type of environment will know what I am talking about. The social bonds formed in a quality SG are strong and are often times the primary thing that keeps many players in this game. And here’s the point I am going to hit you right across the forehead with, States. Whether people are logging in just to chat a few minutes with friends or to finish a 17+ hour “Insane Shard-a-Thon Task Force” event, they ARE logging in.

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BOSS (Myrmydon's and my SG) is one of the reasons I renew after letting my subscription lapse every so often. Having social ties is a pretty strong thing, and SGs should reinforce that.

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That's what the point of the talk was. I completely agree with many of the suggestions raised in the Base Construction forum, as well as one's mentioned here, would improve Bases to some degree or another. Posi and I go through them at length; really, it's just a question of time & resources. Some things would take astronomically long to do - or perhaps there's something else even more requested or popular.

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Thank you for clarifying all this. It really does help.

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Fact: writers/celebrities/etc. are real human beings. As such, they can have bad days, good days, off days, be taken the wrong way or just come across not how they want.


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Yeah, this kind of thing is transparently obvious.

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Gaiman's a tool, I've met him. You're righ on the money there. King's a freak, completely off his rocker, then again, I like that in my horror writers. Barker's my favorite so far, Margrette Weis is a close second.

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Weird, and completely unlike my experiences meeting Neil Gaiman. He was fairly polite and personable. Also, witty.