Minimal

Quoting DevilChilde

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10. Avoid using profanity.

Profanity in any form is discouraged. Using any means to bypass the profanity filter (for example: partial masking, such as asterisks or punctuation marks) is prohibited.

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Could you clarify this more specifically? Is typing [censored] disallowed? Is there an actual "limit" to profanity? At times I tend to be slightly profane, but I never circumvent the filter and typically confine myself to hells and damns, or at most a [censored] or two.

(Sorry if this was already clarified, but I didn't see it...)

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Their moderation of posts using [censored] has been completely inconsistent up to this point.


If I do it, it's bad. If others do it, it is sometimes ok.

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While it usually doesn't hit me, this is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about when I asked for a copy of the actual guidelines and rule restrictions used by the moderators for their duties.

Enforcement of policies in the past has always been inconsistent in many ways. Several people that I know, and myself a good while back, essentially seemed to be being tracked to the point of having their posts moderated with little or no provocation due to statements that some staff may have taken offense to previously. At the same time others, usually being insulting and rude to forum posters concerned about changes or actions on the part of the NCSoft staff, specifically devs and moderators, have been allowed to make personally insulting remarks and profane statements blatantly against rules.

DevilChilde and I certainly bare no love for each other I suspect, but I've seen the same thing he's implying when reading his posts. (Gender in this statement was not assumed. The English language defaults to the male pronoun.)

Note: QR used because the forum keeps telling me I have no right to post in this section of the forum

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Clarification: If I'm having a conversation with a Dev, Community Manager, or Moderator and they give information that I feel would be useful to the community: IE a technical issue workaround, news of new content, etc. --wouldn't it be appropriate to post that? Or do you want us to ask first? Thanks.

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If you ask, and an NCsoft representative gives their approval for you to post it to the forums, and you state such in your post, that is acceptable.

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This actually did not clarify the reasoning for the restriction unfortunately. Could you please continue onwards and do that as well? The reasoning for the restriction is actually what I'm having trouble grasping here.

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Lets look at the rule first from the case of moderation.
If you receive a warning PM from a moderator and then go post that warning PM into the forums, a few things can happen.
1) A flame thread can start, targeting either the moderator or the person posting the PM, depending on the action. That type of post is generally made to act like a petition thread, to generate sentiment, be it positive or negative, and usually in an antagonistic way towards the Moderation team. This is hugely non-constructive, and can result in us here getting lots of angry PM's saying "Why did you ban our friend, etc."

2) From a developer standpoint. If you send a PM to our developers, who, bless them, are incredibly active with this community, and they respond back. Lets say for example you ask them about changes to a certain power set. They reply back saying something vague, maybe giving you a hint about possible changes, to keep you interested and discussing it, without giving it away.

If you then post that PM to the forums, without their permission to do so, that PM can get over-analyzed, and where it was a possible, it now becomes recognized as fact. So if down the road, they decide to go a different direction with it, we then get posts of "You lied to us when you said ...."

Communication posts can get taken out of context, or release information that is not yet ready to be released. If you get that sort of useful information from a dev, or say from LH or EX, and request their permission to post it, they may let you, but without permission is a no-no.

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That is perfectly understandable. Honestly, my main other question regarding moderator responses is whether there is a guideline covering which questions they respond to. As stated, I've asked for some clarifications on moderator action previously to the moderator who had taken such action. They've responded initially without answering the question, and when restated the question in a different manner for clarity I receive a read receipt of the restatement and then no further response.

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By having these rules in place, if it ever becomes an issue, it allows us to reference a broken rule rather than make our moderation seem like an arbitrary decision.

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In my case I've actually had moderation staff break the rules posted (at the time) and been able to use them to defend myself at one point. I cannot, of course, share this incident with you except in private and of course only with NCSoft staff due to the rules related to that action. This was a rather long time ago and is not a statement of poor action on the part of the current moderation staff in any way.

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Clarification: If I'm having a conversation with a Dev, Community Manager, or Moderator and they give information that I feel would be useful to the community: IE a technical issue workaround, news of new content, etc. --wouldn't it be appropriate to post that? Or do you want us to ask first? Thanks.

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If you ask, and an NCsoft representative gives their approval for you to post it to the forums, and you state such in your post, that is acceptable.

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This actually did not clarify the reasoning for the restriction unfortunately. Could you please continue onwards and do that as well? The reasoning for the restriction is actually what I'm having trouble grasping here.

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4. Private communication between Customer Support, NC Interactive, Inc. (“NCsoft”) members, moderators and administrators of the forum and the forum users is not to be made public on these forums or by any other venue.

You are not permitted to publicize any private correspondence (including petitions, email or PM correspondence, in game chat logs, etc.) received from any of the aforementioned without permission. As such, warnings and bans are not to be discussed on the forum. Such matters shall remain private between the NCsoft and the user. Questions or comments concerning warnings and bans will be conveyed through e-mail or private messaging. Likewise, discussions regarding moderator actions are not permitted on the forum. If you have questions regarding a post or thread that has been removed or subject to other moderation, feel free to contact a moderator to discuss it.

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Please explain the reasoning of this rule if the communication is from an official representative of the company and given as an official response from such a representative in regards to policy and rulings of the company. If I am given a response by a community representative of named moderator I would assume that they are professional enough that this response is a reflection of the company stance on an issue. Why then would this not be for public consumption as long as presented in context and without misleading editing?

Also, what are the chances of getting the actual guidelines for the actions of community representatives and forum moderators for this game? I notice whenever I ask for a clarification on moderator action I often get a read receipt and no response whatsoever from certain moderators.

Edit: I've had a couple other questions that are appropriate here I just realized

What are the policies on drug and illegal activity references in forum names and locations or signatures? I understood references to illicit drug use were considered verboten by the board and yet I see an endless (yes, this is hyperbole) stream of names in game and on the forums with the marijuana reference 420 in their name and comments about 'smoking out' or similar in their signatures. I also see constant sex references in locations which I understood to be against forum rules.

How specific does a comment have to be to fall on the ill side of the trolling laws? I've seen repeated posts calling people paranoid nut cases when they express concern about things. These are usually not moderated. However, I've also seen the posts then accusing them of being trolls moderated. Neither seems more offensive to me. Is this a case of the moderation staff not doing basic research into reported posts in the case of only the second being reported or is this a case where accusations of lunacy are considered acceptable while statements accusing others of inappropriate action are not? If the second I believe I shall alter my posting style to accuse people of lunacy on a more regular basis.

So... the hero pre-order items are given at the first year and the villain ones are the 51 month reward?

That seems rather full of fail to me. I'm glad my pre-order bonus for picking up the original game before release is somehow implied to be inferior to picking up what was essentially an expansion to the game before its release. Luckily, for the 54 month reward they recycle two older vet rewards in a new and more combined version!

Oh well, not like vet rewards cost me anything that I'm not already paying *shrug*

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Edit: Also, if you think it's a waste of time for devs to improve PvP, than this isn't the place for you. Feel free to start a new thread to discuss why PvP isn't worth it, but this is a thread for PvPers to consolidate their hopes and suggestions for the game [u]they[u] play.

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If you had actually read the linked post you would note that I do PvP casually so this is part of the game I do play. Besides, I've seen too many 'surveys' in this game that created a false urgency because they were placed in specific places where only those who felt the entire issue was worthwhile would see and respond.

When given a list of options, "None of the above" is a perfectly valid answer.

As far as it goes? Duplicate PvE rewards in PvP zones with equivalent effort and I have no issues. However, a large group of the populace would not consider those 'meaningful'.

Base teleporters for PvP zones? I need those for Nukes and Shivan runs as well as running PvE content in those zones.

Duplicate already existing powers or accolades with PvP content? I'm fine with that but I don't think that's what most people have in mind when they say 'meaningful'. I'd be fine with say... a version of the Atlas Accolade that took an [x] time in PvP zone badge, a kill [x] targets badge and maybe a kill [x] npc sets in PvP zones badge that added up to equal effort to the Atlas accolade. Good going and it now has a reason to PvP without forcing people to go there. They can always go get the Atlas accolade instead. I don't think it would match most people's concept of 'meaningful' though because it wouldn't be a shiny only they could get.

I do not feel that dev time should be spent on PvP personally. My reasoning is over here for the curious but this thread is not the place for it.

That said, there is one suggestion here that I feel would be actively detrimental to the overall game if implemented. Specifically this:

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4. There aren’t any meaningful rewards to encourage participation in PvP. Add zone rewards that are for PvPing, not for doing PvE activities in PvP zones.

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In my experience a reward that is 'meaningful' means a reward that is harder or impossible to get another way when it comes to PvP. This is almost akin to forcing PvE completionists to participate in a segment of the game they have zero interest in. Personally, I can skip any non-accolade badge that comes from a PvP reward. No issues with those. However, if you start adding powers, accolades, costume pieces as PvP rewards this turns into a problem. Honestly, the costume system and tweaking and experimenting with builds keeps me here second only to the social aspect. Putting segments of either of those into part of the game that I do not want to have to pay attention to as more than an occasional diversion would be discouraging to me as a player.

While the comparison to other games is not normally allowed here and I will not go into it for that reason, I can think of another game that linked 'meaningful rewards' to PvP while I was playing and how many of my PvE centric friends left within the following months because they felt non-competitive in the PvE game as they did not dedicate time to grinding out PvP rewards.

Just a clarification:

It's not 'getting a person to join the SG'.

The sushis are a humorous RP SG that is trying to 'recruit' Ghost Widow. Along those lines, it was mentioned that she would get a uniform *laf*

Uso, on the other hand, is completely and utterly nutbar.

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Duel blades = low damage slow activation junk.

Indom Will is basically invul with quick recovery & fast healing which I like but no heal, youll need aidself.

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Dual. There's two of them. Your fighting style isn't going to consist of walking 10 paces, turning and firing.

Sorry, pet peeve.

redoing the animation effects for custom color and particle effects is a lot more complicated than building some new meshes and adding code to swap them out based on a flag I would suspect dancer.

Stickied thread about the recent PERC event in the Virtue forums. A flame war erupted there. It was modded in a fashion that made one side look to blame and then LightHouse specifically posted that the attitudes of the Virtue forum were to blame for the entire affair and removed blame from the other side. Of course, he has since modified his own posts as well. He then encouraged us to discuss it, a thread was formed for that purpose which was condoned by Ex Libris. LightHouse had to leave town but assured us he would read it and give a full and honest response to all of the concerns. He has yet to return and it is now somewhere around 90 pages and has, of course, devolved into uselessness in the intervening weeks as it never got the promised response.

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Yes; having recently transferred my main Villain to Virtue (in an effort to improve my ability to team with the folks I'm on a Global with - none of them had high level ANYthing on Infinity, where my MM was made) ... I've been lurking the Virtue boards to see if I wanted to start yammering at you lot.

And I watched, unhappily, as those threads were ruthlessly stomped-upon. 8(

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We've been getting modslapped (and actually specifically insulted by LightHouse in one case) for a good while now. That's a lot of why our forums are quickly degenerating into PWNZ jr.

That said, the PWNZ forum is pretty amusing so I'm not sure if that's a bad thing.

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as far a a /yes goes... if the poster has detailed his idea enough to a responders topic and the responder agrees... what does he need to add besides the statment of agreement to support that he agrees with the topic - that would be an act of redundancy

If the responder only agrees with part; then he is inherently at a disagreement with something in the OP and if he responds as such... should detail the part he disagrees with

Example:

Topic: I like cats

Body: Cats are cool because they are furry.

Responder (Agrees):/signed

End of discourse... no followup neeeded


Responder (Partly Agrees): I like cats too but not because they're furry... I just like the way they purr

End of discourse. No followup needed

Responder (Disagrees):/no

Open ended. OP wants to know why the responder said no (Does he not like cats, does he not like furry... what?)



Responder(Disagrees): /no, this thread is stoopid

guess what you go on a watch list

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of course, the OP should go on a watch list too ((Off topic)) and if the 1st response goes on there too if he/she quoted him.

The final response you say goes on a watch list meets all the rules. It says

'no' and then provides the reason 'the topic is stupid'.

Note he did not say the poster was stupid or cast any personal insult. The opinion that that topic is entirely idiotic is perfectly valid. What is he getting reported for?

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Whether you are rude or polite matters only to the extent that other people matter. As it happens, other people matter a lot.

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I reject your reality and substitute my own.

People only matter when they bother putting forth the effort to be polite and generate valid arguments for their point of view in the first place.

Among these efforts to be polite is making sure your idea hasn't been suggested and shot down 30+ times before. There is no reason for me to repeat arguments made for several years before if the poster has not done this.

In that case, I'm giving the same respect I was given with a hearty [ QUOTE ]
/jranger

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Testing a response:

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I would normally just type NO as your idea/suggestion/existence is too obviously idiotic/total-fail/proof-there-is-no-god but current board policy states that I must add several words after that to explain what I mean. I'm either sorry or not sorry if this hurts your feelings/ego/digital-genitals but blame god/your-parents/new-policies instead of me.

Thank you.

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;salute
;dance

I agree 100% with the OP. It's about time we have some constructive discussion going without worrying that your thread will be crapped all over by negative people who don't have anything to add but want to be seen injecting their insipid and pointless opinion without backing it up.

Yes, I took the time to type this properly. A thread of this magnitude deserved it.

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I'd like to note that defining words in your posts is condescending and indicates exactly the kind of posting you just claimed to be against. Sir, this was a complete failure at a constructive post.

On these boards, doing anything but stroking eachothers' egos is trolling Peterpeter. You should know that by now.

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So you see nothing wrong with what Sixy did?

OMG YOU'RE CONDONING IT REPORTED PMED

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I kind of expected at least one reaction like Sixy's.

The followups by (only 1 or 2) other PWNZ members acting like it was acceptable made the whole group look worse than they are though.

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Yep, although it was a wee bit more than 1 or 2 (more like 5 or 6 from what I saw before a certain thread, which turned blatantly congratulatory, was deleted). And I do think those direct supporters should join _Sixy_ in Banville.

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Gonna break one of my own recommendations and give qualifications here to justify my point of view. Why my viewpoint is valid or should at least be considered on this:

I was the 'social' admin (as opposed to moderator) for the A-Kon board for several years during which it had an active and regular user base of well over 500 people. (Registered was, of course, far far above this). Among other things I was largely responsible for instituting the multi-tiered mod system they moved to.

<ul type="square">[*]Mass bans beget (pointless) retaliation from those who would otherwise stay quiet. [*]Small numbers of bans of the actually influential and most visible people are soon forgotten by most of the populace while still showing that the rules are taken seriously.[*]Simply put, these boards are not staffed properly to handle a truly justified moderation style for the size of the userbase. [*]The past record of the Community staff will increase the sense of persecution in any mass banning. As Ex has interacted with PWNZ on a regular basis (including some posts which I imagine would result in temp bans if carried out by a normal user in a different forum) a mass banning action would strike many users as unjustified and as a sudden change in effetive policy without announcement.[/list]
I'm not saying that I'm right, but then I've always had issues with how our 'Community' staff interacts with the populace at large here and I can see a group banning making it an issue for others instead of just for those of us who have a jacked up form of 'White Knight' syndrome.

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So you see nothing wrong with what Sixy did?

OMG YOU'RE CONDONING IT REPORTED PMED

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I kind of expected at least one reaction like Sixy's.

The followups by (only 1 or 2) other PWNZ members acting like it was acceptable made the whole group look worse than they are though.

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I had my first post Modded after close to three years of posting here recently. Not a happy occasion, but something I accept because I care about the rules.

Let's make sure those rules apply to everyone.



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Indeed. Rules are important. The problem is that up until now I think we have a record where the idea of impartial enforcement has fallen very short.

Oh come on. At least toss a
"because I said so" in there.

When my daughter does this she gets:
No
why not?
Because I'm cooking dinner. You can see that.
but I want one! *now whining*
I might have given you one after dinner but you just lost that as well. Any other questions?
...no...

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i hope people don't respond to their children the same way they respond (as addressesd) to threads and would consider it as 'constructive'.

The '/no without explanation/constructive dialogue' (with the supposition of being constructive) does not hold up in child or criminal psychology... it doesn't even hold up in animal training or the tech behind subliminal affirmation programming

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By that reasoning why do they think it will work in controlling the forum population? All we usually get as explanations is some double speak and rhetoric which is no more valuable than a simple "no" would have been. Occasionally they contradict themselves instead.

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never said that it couldn't be discussed (have no idea where that assumption came from)...

just gave my take on it, reponded to a rebuttal, and then left it alone...

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Sorry Yogi, we got mod-slapped like red-headed school children back in the Virtue forum earlier and I'm still on the defensive.

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despite either of our opinions on the yes/no fiasco... the fact remains that the rules are in place... (as well as a rule about not petitioning -if I'm not mistaken)... it's up to you whether or not your opinion will affect how you you choose to act upon them

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True, but this is the 'officially sanctioned' discussion thread. I would assume that discussion is not only allowed but encouraged. I don't assume they read or care what we say about it, but this is the right place to talk about it is it not?