LivingHellfire

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One, it's not the same cop. There's a new cop on the beat, who seems more inclined to hand out tickets for minor infractions than the last one. Guess you'd better learn to slow down, signal your turns, and not floor it through yellow lights.

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Uhhh... you don't get to twist his analogy to suit your purposes. Old cop left, new cop comes in, these comments are about the way the rules are being enforced by the new cop. The old cop has nothing to do with it.

Again, it's not how strict the rules are, it's the fact that their application seems sloppily enforced, at best, and at worst completely random.

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Two, perceptions of things like your example are notoriously flawed and biased, often unconsciously.

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One person ranting about it, fine.

A large number of people who are very familiar with the community and the culture all noticing the same things... that's a little different.

See, your argument makes sense, but only if you were applying it to comments that were in opposition to a strict ruleset. That's not what's being said and therefore you're arguing the wrong issue.

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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.

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This is true, but it's not topical.

This particular discussino isn't about whether or not the rules are too strict or whether or not Lighthouse likes to poop the bed, it's about the fact that the rules are enforced in an uneven and hap-hazzard way.

It's about the fact that some posts containing personal attacks and profanity and/or clearly confrontational, provocative trolling are left unmolested while posts containing relatively harmless commentary is smacked.

And it's about the fact that it is so blatant, so common and so unmistakeable that there are those of us who've picked up on it and are saying something about it.

We don't care what the rules are, we'll follow whatever NCSoft decides to toss up there, but we need to know what they are for sure and the best way for us to know is for those rules to be enforced evenly across the board.

Yah, Cricket's alright. I really didn't like her much when she first took over for Cuppa, but I don't think the reasons for my dislike were very fair at that point. I think she's okay and have even apologized to her for thinking badly of her for things that we outside of her control.

I DEMAND MY PM TRIBUTE!

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Valk was in there too. According to another poster who claimed to actually speak French, it sounded like the OP used a translator to begin with. Dunno, I don't know enough French and I don't know the person who said that well so, maybe.

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Damn, can't believe I missed that.

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Me too, I'd have loved to have seen it.

From now on I want PM's with links to all interesting threads like that.

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What's in it for me?

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The same in return?

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Valk was in there too. According to another poster who claimed to actually speak French, it sounded like the OP used a translator to begin with. Dunno, I don't know enough French and I don't know the person who said that well so, maybe.

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Damn, can't believe I missed that.

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Me too, I'd have loved to have seen it.

From now on I want PM's with links to all interesting threads like that.

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You do realize that I'm talking about what I THINK will happen in the near future correct?

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No, I hadn't realized that. I was fairly certain from the tone of your posts that you were talking about what was occuring now.

You might be right, but I hope otherwise. I'd rather see them actually apply some effort to the problem than merely slather the forums with Draconian law.

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


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It's a principle issue.

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Which is why I went on in my post to talk about what I expect to happen, which is all of us getting the smackdown laid down on us in a very heavy-handed way for at least a few weeks until we can no longer complain about "fairness" because we'll all be given the same amount of wiggle-room...namely none.


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Not true. Again, that would imply a fair moderation across the board to all parties at all times, but there isn't. It's not "heavy-handed", it can't possibly be because that would mean that there was consistancy in the application of the rules.

What we're saying, and I'm not sure you get the distinction, maybe I haven't been clear, is not that some posters are being treated diffreently than others, we're saying that anything you post at anytime is a crap shoot.

Again, I point to Athyna's example. That post is still up.

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Unfortunately modding these boards must be like refereeing a football game. You have a set of rules that you have to enforce to the best of your ability, but you are still free to use your own judgement about what is "just barely ok" and what is "over the line".


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Right, but the comments being made by those of us who've noticed these inconsistencies are saying that there are some calls that are right over the line that are called fair ball and others that are well within that are modded. When the ball bounces off the head of some dude in the third row how much "judgement" does it require to say that it was foul? Likewise, when it lands squarely on the numbers of the reciever standing in the centre of the end-zone how much "Judgement" is required to say that it's fair?

This is what we're trying to to say. There are some posts that are so blatantly innapropriate that the poster should probably have a little vacation fromt he forums, let alone have the post deleted. Look at Athyna's example, for instance. Whereas, the other day I had a post deleted because someone was acting like a troll in the Justice forums and I had the gall, the temerity, the very audacity to ask him how many friends he had.

Why is Athyna's example still up by my post asking "How many friends have you earned using this posting style?" is gone?

Do you see what we're saying?

Nobody's quibbling about semantics or rule variances. In fact, that would be preferable because to do so would require a precedent of the rules being enforced in a consistant manner, which is something we do not have.

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I agree that the exact boundary line between acceptable and not acceptable may not be known, but is it really necessary to know exactly what gets modsmacked and what doesn't?


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That's impossible. You're assuming that when I use words like "boundary" and "rule" that I'm talking about a razor's edge. It can be a broad grey zone where acceptable and unacceptable overlap to a small degree.

We know that, and you should probably recognize that we know that. What many of us are saying is that the variance between what is sometimes modded and what isn't modded is so great that there is often no indication as to where the boundary is.

I'm telling you, and some others have seen it as well, some of the stuff that gets mod'smacked makes no sense and then there's other great long flame wars that go on for paaaages. I've seen some really innocuous stuff get drilled with the mod-stick while other stuff, obvious attacks on certain posters or groups of posters gets left alone.

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But you know if a post that you make *should* be smacked or not, or at least I do.

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It would be more accurate to say that I can usually say if this post might get mod-smacked over that post... but you never know.

I've seen some threads where the least of the offensive posts were deleted and what was left might not make any sense because of the loss of context, but they were still the more offensive posts.

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Lighthouse is in a difficult position. He is replacing CuppaJo, and he is doing what he can. Personally, I like the way he is doing his job.

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I find this a difficult statement to lend credence to simply because the way he does his job in terms of enforcing the rules seems to change so frequently.

This thread isn't about people protesting the rules, it's about people protesting the fact that nobody actually knows what they are. Nobody's talking about whether or not a person's whining about this mechanic or complaining loudly about that policy, we're talking about the fact that we have no idea what to expect in terms of whether or not any given discussion is going to be deemed "unworthy" of being on the forum.

In short, we don't know what's going to be smacked and what isn't. It's not like we know what the rules are and we're complaining about them because we think they're too harsh, we're complaining that we don't know what the gorram rules are in the first place.

Tell me what the rules are and enforce them consistantly and I'll either follow them or I'll find some way to live with them, but the first step is knowing where the boundaries are.

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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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And similarly, the inverse mindset (that freedom fighting must go forward on every battleground, large or minute) is similarly toxic. And probably is less than applicable in a private forum (where your first amendment guarantees don't even apply).

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He didn't say that. Being that he didn't say that the argument you use is flawed and innapropriate.

He's also not arguing from a first amendment point of view. He's saying that we're customers and that while we should respect the rules of the forum, we shouldn't shirk at the chance to yelp if we feel that, as customers, we're being curtailed unreasonably or overly-much.

"It's my store and my rules!" only goes so far.

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Unfortunately rules are rules. They have to be enforced.

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All of them? Even questionable ones, or questionable interpretations of them?

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Since NCSoft owns the space, yeah.

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I am a by Gods customer and the amount of control I am willing to give a vendor has significant limits.

I am not particularly annoyed by the staff or the rules, but Christ and Horus in a crap game, folks, do you really go through life bowing to "the rules" this way? Accepting the dictates of authority because it IS authority, and telling others to do the same?

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and there you have it, that's what I think too. It's not like I don't know what the EULA says, or what the conditions and terms of agreement are on the forums, but that doesn't mean that if they do something that's not fair or that I feel, as a customer, is a failure to deliver a service that I've paid for I'm going to yelp about it.

Alright, so;

1. People have let you know how they feel about your moderation style
2. You regret that you can't post in threads in a conversational manner (which no mod ever does to any real extent anyway).
3. The rules exist for a reason and they include no "bashing" of the game or other posters
4. Topics must be about the game.

Tell me, Lighthouse, at what point have you actually told us anything? This doesn't actually adress the OP's concerns, it's just more white-noise framed to look like an official response about a concern.

You should run for office.

EDIT - Thinking about it... I guess it's better than no response at all. I mean, really, what can you say?

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What? No Succubi sucking?

I expect better from you guys...

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Only if we could have Incubi inking.

On the Tenth day of Christmas, the gaming gods gave to me,

Ten Sappers Sapping!
Nine Tsoo Sorcerers!
Eight Madness Mages,
Seven Fiends Fighting,
Six Morts a-rezzing,
Fiiiiive Super Arachnoids!
Four Master Illusionists,
Three Nerva Spectral Lords,
Two Air Thorn Casters
And a Sapper in a Devouring Earth Treeeeee!

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Praise the lord and pass the amunition!

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7.62 mm, 5.56 mm rounds or 155 mm howitzers? Hollow Point, Full Jacket, or Teflon coated?

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Yes please!

Praise the lord and pass the amunition!

Good job, Phant.

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why not just make icon free and be done with it?

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This is about the most logical, sensible thing I've seen suggested in a long time.

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Personally, I could care less.

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No, you mean you COULDN'T care less.

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Touchée

Although, what I might be saying is that I could care less, if I cared enough to care at all... which I don't... because I don't care.

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Also, theres probably going to be a comment about the value of the veteran reward costume tokens in relation to these free ones any minute now.

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Personally, I could care less. I have, like, 40 costume changes on my older characters. I'll never go through them all.