Rants, Forums, Lighthouse

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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.

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And I have said in a later message that I completely supported the right of people to complain.

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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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When I posted my comment that you quoted above, it was in reference to the number of people comparing the moderation policy (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view) to gross Human Rights violations like Slavery and Racial discrimination, and saying that the fact that they don't like the moderation policy (or lack thereof) merits civil disobedience. It is the people who are making the comparisons that my comment was being directed at.

I was in no way trying to say that people have no right to complain. Like I mentioned above, in a later post I made I explicitly stated that I support people's right to complain. As a customer of Cryptic/NCSoft, it is your right to complain when you see something that you don't like. At the same time, it is Cryptic/NCSoft's right to ignore your complaints[1], label them as whining[2], or consider them serious. They are the ones that are running the company/managing the game, it is their right to decide which complaints are serious, and which complaints are not.

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.



[1] At the risk of ruining their relationship with you and losing a customer.

[2] Note I am not saying that all complaints are whining, nor that you are whining.

A note on consistency vs other issues:

I agree that consistency on deletion/lock runs quite low, and that that facet is not ideal. But I've never seen consistency run terribly high except in relatively mature, smallish, self-policing forums where action was virtually never taken or, really, needed. And we don't have a situation like that here.

And really, if consistency were upped a notch at present, it would mean more completely unreasonable deletion of threads. Which I don't really favor.

From my PoV, what the forums critically need is not consistency so much as a more surgical approach to dealing with offenders. I've seen mods edit individual posts. Seems like highlighting the entire text of an offensive post and typing "[modsmack]" or the equivalent, to replace it would be easier than a couple of the hunt-thru-the-post-and-delete-sentences-that-offend-in-a-way-that-preserves-the-post techniques I've seen on these forums at least once or twice. (There's a small chance I'm misremembering where I saw it, but I'd swear I've seen that done here.)

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

Maybe it is because my posting style is different from yours and his, or maybe it is some other reason, but when I am typing out a post, if it is something that strays close to the modsmackage line, I don't post it and move on to the next post.

shrug

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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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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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Personally, I think most people know approximately where the boundaries are. The majority of people post without their posts ever getting attention from a mod. The majority of threads never get mod visits.

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?

Personally, I don't think so. For me, knowing approximately where it is is good enough. For others it may not be.

edit - PS, your attribution is wrong. The quote you have is from me, the post you replied to is not.^

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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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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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Your right it won't. But I have decided since I had MULTIPLE posts deleted without an actual explanation, and was not able to defend myself against flame posts, or EVEN DELETE the post that caused the flames, I figure I can change his moniker in a fun fashion. I have had my ID lampooned, I didn't sulk about it. And I don't want any favours. I want even handed and judicial use of the modsmack. If he nails me for crossing a line. Fine. No prob. But nail EVERYONE that crosses that line, and for Mod's sake (like that joke?, little play on the ol' power trip) TELL PEOPLE WHAT THEY DID WRONG!!! I don't mean some namby pamby BS answer, I mean an honest one.

So yeah LIGHTBEER can expect to not get a Christmas card from me.

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This is such a perfect shining sample of teen angst/problem with authority figures, just thought it should receive some sort of special award.

So here you go, this golf clap's for you.

It reminds me of a bit of wisdom once imparted to me by several cops I worked with. Frequently, when you get pulled over or stopped in a car, it's for something minor (taillight out, five miles over the limit, whatever) the officer just wants to point out and then send you on your way.

But a percentage of the people they stop for such minor incidents open their big, obnoxious mouths--work up an argument, talk themselves right into a ticket, or take a pop at the cop and talk themselves right into a night in jail.

I guess it's easy to talk tough in a message forum, sling antagonizing comments at the mod, DARE him to do something.

And sure enough, they will, and then you get to complain about it some more. What a deal!

Not sure what kind of victory you consider that, or why it is worth the time and aggravation to you, but whatever floats your boat.

Look up the term Pyrrhic Victory, it's very applicable to this situation.

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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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Yep.

Oh No! I have teen angst? Doctor please tell me, what can be done? For the love of Mod, am I going to live (sniff, sniff)

That for those of you unfamiliar with sarcasm or an inablity to determine that I AM KIDDING, was not to be taken seriously.

Yes I made fun of his name. It's called a rant. Dennis Miller made a lot of money from those. And for the record I know what a Pyrrhic victory is.

Here's what I know. I intentionally made about 2 posts that were COMPLETELY over the top and INTENTIONALLY crossed the line. I can see they have not be modsmacked even though I performed the most heinous of forum acts... PERSONAL ATTACKS! (dun dun, DUN - dramatic music effect) I fully expect ed to get them deleted.

Here's what I don't know. Why haven't they been deleted? It is a clear violation and considering Lighthouses previous deletions of my posts, I can only expect them to be. That is my point. Consistency. If I get someone flaming me, and I reply in a calm decent manner, explaining clearly my position with facts to back it up, why are my posts getting deleted, and the flamer's not? Why can I not edit or delete my OP that caused the ruckus in the first place. You can't win, you can't play to a draw, you can't even quit the game. You must lose. I launch into a tirade against the forum admin, in his house as it were.. and yet I am not smacked?

I don't even expect Lighthouse, who I am sure is very busy, to send a note detailing the reasons for the deletion of posts every time he deletes. What I do expect is when someone bothers to PM him asking WHY they were deleted to get an honest answer.

I can only assume my above posts where I fired a broadside, will soon be deleted. I am guessing Lighthouse is busy this morning or just isn't in yet. I am not going to PM him because I KNOW WHY they would be deleted. When I don't I want to be able to find out what line I crossed. Maybe I was being sarcastic in a post, and due to the limitations of type, it did not come across accurately. Then let me defend myself. Despite what you may think, I actually do respect the difficulty of Lighthouse and the other moderators jobs. I have not had more than 1 line of communication with Lighthouse, but I am sure he is a very nice person, and has a lovely singing voice. He probably helps old ladies cross the street, and always lets others in during heavy traffic. My problem is not personal.

Give reasons (honest ones), be consistent, be fair.

Is that unreasonable?

Frankly, people have been getting away with far too much for far too long. Yeah, sometimes a thread catches a lock and shouldn't have, but more often than not in the past, threads were allowed to live when they should have been put out of their misery.

The mods have been more lock-happy recently than in the past, but they really should have been from the start, and not gotten people into the habit of useless rants.

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Your right it won't. But I have decided since I had MULTIPLE posts deleted without an actual explanation, and was not able to defend myself against flame posts, or EVEN DELETE the post that caused the flames, I figure I can change his moniker in a fun fashion. I have had my ID lampooned, I didn't sulk about it. And I don't want any favours. I want even handed and judicial use of the modsmack. If he nails me for crossing a line. Fine. No prob. But nail EVERYONE that crosses that line, and for Mod's sake (like that joke?, little play on the ol' power trip) TELL PEOPLE WHAT THEY DID WRONG!!! I don't mean some namby pamby BS answer, I mean an honest one.

So yeah LIGHTBEER can expect to not get a Christmas card from me.

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I teach elementary school age children...which in all due respect, you sound like to me right now. You see they have a hard time with what I consider a basic concept of respect and authority...namely that when someone is in a position of authority you should give them respect until such a point that they prove that they are not worthy of it.

You cite a bunch of your posts being removed, and I'm sure they have been, but since I never saw them in the first place I cannot fathom a guess as to why. However, I must ask, as I'm sure Statesman will when and if he takes your PM seriously, what proof do you have that Lighthouse is the one modding or deleting your posts? I count at least 6 moderators on these boards at all times...any one of them or all of them could be doing it.

Coming on here and making a bunch of posts that make you and your position sound even worse certainly isn't going to go a long way in making anyone you could complain to take you seriously.

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It's called a rant. Dennis Miller made a lot of money from those.

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a) You're not Dennis Miller.
b) Even he can't rant on these boards.

Try to take a think before you post and your posts will stick around longer.

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Frankly, people have been getting away with far too much for far too long. Yeah, sometimes a thread catches a lock and shouldn't have, but more often than not in the past, threads were allowed to live when they should have been put out of their misery.

The mods have been more lock-happy recently than in the past, but they really should have been from the start, and not gotten people into the habit of useless rants.

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/signed

I also think it only served to add more fuel to the fire, so to speak. If a handful can do that sort of thing, and apparently get away with it, it only serves to encourage more to do it.

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

Maybe it is because my posting style is different from yours and his, or maybe it is some other reason, but when I am typing out a post, if it is something that strays close to the modsmackage line, I don't post it and move on to the next post.

shrug

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True enough, I know when a lot of my posts push the line. As it currently stands, the chances of being modsmacked have more to do with the post your reply to than whether or not the content of your post is offensive in some way.

So if someone makes a trolling post, you can often troll right back if you just Reply to someone else and mention the content of the offender's post. In fact, I've even seen where Troll A has their content removed and Troll B is untouched because he didn't reply specifically to Troll A's post.

I think the issue really comes back to nobody knowing why things are changed, deleted, or locked in the first place (or that it even happened). You can guess, but having a place where people are told, "This post is offensive," would go a loooong way to curbing the garbage posts we see here.

Also, for the love of Pete, can we get some mods on all of the horrible off topic discussions? Whenever I see a thread about costume pieces turn into catnip recommendations, I die a little inside. You would all hate me if I ran this place, because people who do things like that would be the first ones I banned. You can insult my mother, but don't start talking about muffin recipes in a thread about the effectiveness of Snow Storm.

I also wish the forums had a emote since that's the exact reaction I have to a lot of the posts whenever there's a change around here. I'm sure that it's because a lot of people would find constant single emote replies of:



offensive, but a rule banning single emote replies would go a long way towards improving things around here as well.

I have a simple rule: If I'm not adding something constructive, interesting, or funny to a thread, I'm not going to post in it. If my response is devoid of any real content, I'm also not going to post it.

This is why I have 1K posts instead of 10K+ posts.

Elementary? Dang, I was aiming for preschool. There goes all those method acting lessons.

I know it was lighthouse because when I pm'ed him, he said he did.

I don't expect Statesman to discipline Lighthouse, I just want to know what if any recourse we have when we feel Lighthouse has treated us unfairly. Is there a mechanism in place?

Also if you view my last post, you will I was illustrating a point. They aren't getting pulled when they should and ones that shouldn't be are.

Fairness.

I am really not trying to get lighthouse to hate me, I am pointing out inconsistency through example. Would you prefer interpretative dance?

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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.

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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".

If you had only one referee doing the job, that would be ok, things would be consistant, but unfortunately when you have to have a bunch of them at all different times, one persons "strict" line is going to make another persons line look "leniant", and then people will start to think that there is no definite right or wrong.

When that happens, a global tightening of the rules is usually sent down and a lot of stuff gets smacked, just like the occasional week in the NFL where every game has 10-12 penalties called.

Its the powers-that-be saying "Hey, we know that sometimes we vary a little in our rulings, but remember the rules are still there." I expect that global modsmack rule-crackdown to commence shortly if it hasn't already with Lighthouse coming onboard.

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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 am really not trying to get lighthouse to hate me, I am pointing out inconsistency through example. Would you prefer interpretative dance?

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Only if you can do one of the scenes from West Side Story.

If I was unable to understand your point in your post, I responded to, then at least some others won't either, and those others could be moderators.

Yes, in your later posts you calmed down and explained yourself better, glad to see it, I thought my poinst about authority and respect still stood though. Going out into the public forum and calling the Head Mod names, even "funny" ones, when you could have simply kept the discussion private with him (since you say he answered your PM) is quite rude in my eyes, and I can see why it would be deleted.

As for fairness...fairnesss is a concept, and therefore pretty hard to enforce consistantly from one person to the next. See my post on the whole referee thing. However if you still want to point ou the incosistancies in the modding of the boards then try doing so in a non-emotional, rational manner and I bet you'll get a much better response next time.

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


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Precisely. I understand that some things are a judgement call, but come on. Read the link, good grief, some guy proclaims that anyone who /petitions for any reason should go in a bathroom and cut their man bits off because they've been <bleeped... well no, it wasn't, but it should've been>

That thread, the posts in it, it boggles. It seriously boggles the mind.

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


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It seems that they are just randomly looking at posts and going "Oh, I see something bad" and then use their magic mod buttons. Heaven forbit they actually remove other posts that are worse, that would require reading.

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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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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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I've got a better example. Thankfully, it finally got pulled but... No, let me just explain it.

There was a post in Player Questions, in French. If you ran it through a translator, it called the sh** and the devs should be killed, or something like that. Pretty much, French was used to bypass the profanity filter. So, a few folks posted the translation and asked the OP what their question was, yada yada. Every post with the translation was modded but the OP remained. Finally, myself and another posted explaining that OP should be run through a translator because it was offensive and we both notified our own posts. Instructions for the mods kinda.

Our posts were modded out but the OP remained. At one point, that thread had every post except the OP deleted.

I am seriously confused by that. Posts explaining what the OP said were modded but the OP, full of profanity was fine? So, if I decide to cuss out everyone, if I run it through BabelFish first, it's ok?