Rants, Forums, Lighthouse
By
0zymandous,
Posted on: 2006-12-13 19:34 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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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.
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
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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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You do realize that I'm talking about what I THINK will happen in the near future correct? I see your point and I actually agree, and I think it's going to lead us to a (hopefully short) time period in the near future where they're going to say "OK, you want fairness, here it is." and give us all no grey area at all to play in.
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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?
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So I should be making all my posts in french when someone needs to be told off? Sweet. How the hell did I miss that post anyways? Wouldn't have even needed a damn translator.
�Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!� - Thomas Gray
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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.
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
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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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You do realize that I'm talking about what I THINK will happen in the near future correct? I see your point and I actually agree, and I think it's going to lead us to a (hopefully short) time period in the near future where they're going to say "OK, you want fairness, here it is." and give us all no grey area at all to play in.
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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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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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You do realize that I'm talking about what I THINK will happen in the near future correct? I see your point and I actually agree, and I think it's going to lead us to a (hopefully short) time period in the near future where they're going to say "OK, you want fairness, here it is." and give us all no grey area at all to play in.
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It's just really frustrating. The post I linked is still there. Still there. I think it's the one where he advised self mutilation if you find anything offensive. Truthfully, the guy made a lot of comments that were... there's no response to.
Yet, there's a thread in this section, Happy Shplekenfugheimer's Day, it started as a joke last year. There's a joke wiki page on it, linked in that thread. Pastry celebrating, basically. My post about stringing up streudel like garland got modded. The whole thread is a joke so it's not off-topic. It's not innuendo laden. If my post should be deleted, shouldn't the whole thread be axed or moved to games? If a post about streudel is offensive, why is a post advising self mutilation still there?
I'm so confused. I hope this gets straightened out, sooner than Statesman's patented soon.
And what's wrong with streudel?
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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.
Final point:
And if your post does get deleted for good or ill, what has it cost you?
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That's a really nice thought and all. But when someone uses the "notify moderator" button, that should likely send up a red flag saying "Hey look over here, somethings a miss". Yet for reasons unknown they are left behind even though they break more then one forum rule.
*shrug* Some sort of methodology behind the modding would be nice instead of just randomly picking and choosing.
�Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!� - Thomas Gray
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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?
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So I should be making all my posts in french when someone needs to be told off? Sweet. How the hell did I miss that post anyways? Wouldn't have even needed a damn translator.
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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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And what's wrong with streudel?
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I happen to love Streudel and am now tempted to go make some.
�Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!� - Thomas Gray
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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.
�Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!� - Thomas Gray
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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.
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
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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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Ahh, in which case this thread may never end.
As a side point, I started today with the opinion that MMOG's should always have official forums and the the tendancy of some companies to rely on fan forums instead of putting up their own was the wrong thing to do.
This thread is rapidly eroding the confidence I once had in that ideal.
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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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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?
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
Y'know, you could just do what a few others have told me they do to find the juicy topics. Do a search for all my posts.
Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
I DEMAND MY PM TRIBUTE!
Brother of Markus
The Lord of Fire and Pain
The Legendary Living Hellfire
Fight my brute!
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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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I DEMAND MY PM TRIBUTE!
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Git yur own cult.
Storm in teacup.
An aside.
One of the things about online communities, is their predilection towards stratification and elitism.
Let me cite some examples (at the risk of further boring everyone to death, and yes, I think it's relevant to CoH/CoV).
[*] IRC. Internet Relay Chat, the 'CB Radio' of the internet -- join a channel, type out a message, see if there is any kind of personal response. Profit!. IRC was my first real experience with -live- communications with others in a text medium. I'd used email and newsgroups, but it was a clinical operation, you had time to think through your arguments and post cogently in response to people's offerings. IRC was line-at-a-time instant messaging between many people. Just keeping track of the subjects being discussed was an artform, as was knowing all of the jargon being used, the 'shortcut' terminology that was peculiar to the medium. IRC has this channel police option, called Operator status. An operator can silence, or kick, anyone (including other operators). Channels would be 'owned' by a group of people who would attempt to be benevolent dictators; that would rarely last more than a few months. Eventually it would be a case of 'do as I say or else', with no warnings prior to kick/bans from the channel. The elitism game, where you were either a part of the in-crowd, or you were scum. The ONLY way to not be kickbanned if you weren't an operator, was to not say anything at all controversial.
[*] [censored] gaming zone, Hearts and later Spades. A card-gaming community where the client included the ability to interact with others and have 'IRC-like' real time communication whilst playing cards. At first it was a great way to play a fun game, but then it became striated, with 'elite' player groups only playing with other 'elite' players, and unknowns languishing with other unknowns, engaged in endless squabbles about online behaviour. There were endless rules about harassment etc, with GayMops coming in and spanking anyone who infracted the rules, leading to account bannings. It was so easy to get multiple accounts that such things were done just to stir the pot. Chaotic, anarchic, and eventually it died because Up With This People Will Not Put. The game (Hearts and later Spades) was secondary to the incendiary in-fighting in the communications medium. It went to pot when some of the worst 'elite' gamers managed to get respected Operator privileges, and then went on harassment campaigns of their own, booting and banning people across the gamut of games, to 'punish' them for speaking out about poor sportsmanship etc.
When communities are TOTALLY unmoderated, there is a rapid decline of signal and a concomitant rise in noise. The 'kiddy forums' (and I'd cite Planet of Crufting fora but that might get me modsmacked) are full of the absolute worst of any communications medium, the mindless babble of a million ill-behaved monkeys, spewing their tiny pile of disingenuous cuss words at each other, and going out of the way to make "elite" avatars/graphics to lord it over everyone else. Since anything goes, kids will splatter -any- thread with their childish genitalia-fixated comments, scream and laugh and pounce around like cretins - very much Lord of the Flies mob-behaviour.
Here on the NCSOFT CoH forum, there is excess modification. That serves a purpose in keeping things cheery and bright so that paying customers won't be inclined to have 'bad' forum experience and thus cease to participate in the game itself! It's all about revenue streams. So strongly worded arguments of -any- kind are quickly nipped in the bud by a constant large team of 'moderators', who have carte blanch authority to modsmack any non-red-name post. We don't know what their mandate is, the precise wording of 'the rules' -- it's left open to their interpretation. Which is why insane situations where people discussion things rationally and sanely get deleted arbitrarily, but endless quote-cascades are allowed to propogate for as long as posters are interested in that kind of childish behaviour. The excellent example of an inherently abusive message, disguised in French, being left unmoderated, whilst the people decrying their outrage at the content of that post, were moderated into non-existence. The moderators didn't care about CONTEXT, only CONTENT that they could understand, or cared enough about to understand.
With power and authority, there comes the price of "corruption." Which might be a lessening of the 'core values' of a particular organisation, a lowest-common-denominator approach to what is allowed to 'live' and what should die. Anything that speaks negatively about the system itself is automatically modsmacked. "Who watches the watchers?"
At the end of the day, you and I are paying to access a game, and part of that access happens to be a forum system. We get very little say in what goes on with the game mechanics or with the forum mechanics. The people who provide the service have given low-paid menials the power to DO WHAT THEY LIKE to messages in the forum, and since public dissent is almost automatically deleted, there is no 'problem' to be solved anymore.
Another word for this is censorship.
Look at the situation in Fiji at the moment, where the military coup has declared that any 'anti coup' discussion is an offense and will be dealt with harshly.
Fortunately, in the forum it doesn't matter to NCSOFT. Your expenditure of minutes/hours/days to craft a post worthy of quoting, is nothing to moderators who are told 'just delete stuff that doesn't look right'.
Nothing.
"Too much nothing, can make a man abuse a King"
I fully expect this post to be modsmacked, even though it isn't directed at anyone, or contain any "rude" words. It rails at the system itself, and little lord Fauntelroys with their bytesticks are eager to pounce on anything that can be cited as 'proof' of the fickleness of the board itself.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Ex
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Ex.
Part-Troll, who used to be Excession777, now playing pantomime with people's mindlets.
--
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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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That's an awful broad statement.
�Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!� - Thomas Gray
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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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Again, it's not the moderation that is being complained about. It's the inconsistency with which it is applied. Inconsistent application of rules should NOT be a fact of life. Or at the very least a fact of these forums.
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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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Again, it's not the moderation that is being complained about. It's the inconsistency with which it is applied. Inconsistent application of rules should NOT be a fact of life. Or at the very least a fact of these forums.
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My Name is Tiny, and I Endorse this Message.
My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
"The tip of a shoelace is called an aglet, its true purpose is sinister." The Question
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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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/signed
/signed (on the OP)
I wonder why it took so long for this thread to get started. I understand that its a difficult job, forum rules, etc etc ... but the almighty hand of the mod(s) has been exceptionally present lately. and honestly, when this is all coming from someone "new" to the team it leaves a somewhat sour-er taste in my mouth
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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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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.
Final point:
And if your post does get deleted for good or ill, what has it cost you?