Major forum changes

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I do think this would be great here too.

 

1: I'm not afraid at all. And I'm sure most of my moderators aren't. But just because we aren't afraid doesn't mean we should toss our power around carelessly. Just because you didn't physically see the person get punished, doesn't instantly mean someone was afraid to act. Often times we PM people without automatically deleting the content, warning them.

2: "Blatantly ignored." The worst of it only occurred in the most recent 48 hours, and while surprising, our staff does have other things to do. We've already admitted we're looking for more staff to fill the holes. But if you want to accuse us of blatantly ignoring it, I'm going to accuse you of feeding the fire, because you wouldn't just walk away. Walking away would have helped. Report and move on. Not "report and then reply in an even worse way." But if you want, I can go back over every single post in that thread and hand out infractions and warnings retroactively. Oh wait, oddly enough, infractions and warnings aren't the magical answer to everything.

Also, here's a timeline.

Thursday, 5:50 AM: The post you linked was created.
Thursday, 4:54 PM: You reported it. This is the starting window where a moderator could have seen it / moderated it, since reporting it helps bring our attention to it. (Unless they, by happenstance, stumbled across the thread or knew in advance that bad juju was going down.)
Yesterday, 4:28 AM: (Only 12 hours after it was reported) Grumpy posted and told you two to knock it off.
Yesterday, 43 PM: (12 hours after Grumpy told you to knock it off) You did not knock it off. You went back at Prophet first, after Grumpy told you guys to knock it off.
Yesterday, 9:17 PM: Prophet replies to you since you went right back at him again.
Yesterday, 112 PM: Prophet decides he's going to walk away.
Today, 2:06 AM: You make this post claiming moderators are ignoring this all.
Today, 2:18 AM: You go back at Prophet yet again, and in the same post, claim that you're not afraid of the moderators because you're doing nothing wrong.

What we learn from this timeline:

• We were blatantly ignoring it, even though Grumpy attempted to handle it only 12 hours after it was first made known to us via the report system. (It was first reported minutes after I go to bed, and then go to work in the morning, so I never even got to see it.)
• You ignored Grumpy telling you to calm down, claiming you were calm already, as you continue to provoke arguments with Prophet using passive aggressive insults.
• You made this post claiming nobody tried to intervene, or worse, that they blatantly ignored it. (While you blatantly ignored the intervention you claim never existed.)

Next time I suggest you report it and move on, not report it and then do nearly the exact same thing you're reporting. It's like hitting someone and then crying when you get hit back. I sure won't give you pity for that. Also, we're not going to see your report and instantly punish him because you provoked him enough to use insults. That's why it's not as black and white as you think.

And finally, to address point #3. The rules are black and white. But what happens is not always black and white. That's why there's not always immediate and accurate action when we get a report. We discuss things as a team, in order to find the best solution, in those gray areas. Discussing things as a team leads to less chance of power abuse by one individual. Just because you don't see immediate action doesn't mean there won't be action. This happened when most of our staff was alone, and Grumpy handled the situation well, in my eyes. It's a shame her initially peaceful approach was completely ignored.

So, to recap.

1: We're not afraid. By any means. We're just not going to act without thinking. It's not as cut and dry as people think.
2: No recap. See above.
3: There exists situations that fall outside of the realms of "black and white" as dictated by the rules. For those situations, we use teamwork and communication to decide the best course of action. Being stricter doesn't make everything better.

And finally, pieces of advice for you.

Learn to walk away. Whatever punishment I would have given Prophet is the same punishment I would have given you. It was a heated argument, and we have a warning for that. I like to handle situations without warnings whenever possible, but if you want me to be stricter, I would have given both of you a "losing your cool" warning. People are equal. Grumpy handled the situation well, and she was ignored, and she gave a much more stern warning after she was ignored. That's what I like to see. We're not going to immediately ban and hand out points the second a debate springs up. She tried to solve it amicably, and then she got strict when she was being ignored. That's a lot better than instant warnings / bans. And I know she's not afraid to do it.

So, while I thank you for your advice, no. We don't need to be stricter. This isn't a dictatorship and I've no intention of making it one. We're not afraid to act. That's the least of our concerns. My initial post was illustrating the point that whether we do act or don't, whether we ban or don't, whether we see or not, whether we lock or not, whether we delete a post or not, whether we speak or don't, our actions have reactions, and almost anything we do will please some people and upset other people. It has nothing to do with being afraid, it has everything to do with being responsible. Rules and guidelines do not make a moderator good. If it was as simple as "black and white rules," we could have robots moderating. But no two situations are exactly the same. And the best approach to moderating is moderation itself. Be gentle if possible, and strict when necessary.

Thank you for the criticism though.

 

They've got a rant/complaints thread for Civ 5 over at Civfanatics. Works pretty good.

 

I don't think we should have a complaints forum. While some complaints can be unfounded or just an attempt to rile people up, a lot of them are valid, and valid complaints should be seen by everyone, regardless of whether they hurt the dev's feelings or not. The truth hurts, but it's necessary, how can the devs improve or fix something they did wrong/missed if they're not told? Segregating complaints will only hurt us in the long run.

 

Maybe, but you can hit the same issue with 3 as with 2. Really, I'm not a big fan of making people do things a certain way through restrictions - I'd rather people just be educated to avoid the behaviour in the first place. I don't really see double posting as being a huge problem anyway, I have to say. It's not all that common, and it doesn't do much except mildly annoy people. I'd prefer to just remind them that there's an edit function and move on.

That forum isn't run by the devs or publisher of Civ 5, though, and that distinction is pretty important. I can easily see people whose complaints are shunted off to what they see as an out-of-the-way corner of the forum thinking that their criticism is being marginalised or ignored, and that would not be a good look for a dev/publisher.

 

If we did have a way to submit complaints/rants, I'm not sure how well that would go. It could go really well, or it could get nasty with insults and flamebaiting and arguments in general. It depends on how it's done. But I feel it would be inappropriate to have on an official forums site for the game. Leave that to other sites...

Good point again. Even I would suffer from that since sometimes after replying, I may find another post to reply to but don't want to double post, so I hit reply and copy the contents and edit into my post like I just did. Not sure if that notifies the person that they were quoted if I edit in later on, but oh well. Let me know if you were notified haha.

The only other solution that comes to mind is if the system detects that you are the last person to post, you could get a window that pops up warning you about double posting, or a bar that shows up above the reply bar mentioning it (less annoying). But I may just be beating a dead horse, here.

 

an auto spoiler for huge walls of text or pictures.

some just don't know how to format their posts.

 

Fix the names! It shouldn't be making my name look like

Yumyumkittyloa
f

 

Nope. Doesn't notify.

 

Oh, also I would really like a button to insert spoiler automatically.

 

Make a subforum for bitching and moaning. Maybe all of their cycles will sync and they will destroy one another in a fevered tornado. Then implement a bot that makes it so that you can't post anywhere other than the complaint forums for so many days if you use any of the following phrases: disappointed, over-hyped, clone, terraria, beta, release date, road map update, etc or are otherwise caught spreading misery and sadness throughout the forums.

 

Wanna know what we need? A waiting room. Somewhere where everyone can group chat and play little flash games while we wait for a daily update. Then when it finally comes out a little window will pop up saying something along the lines of "tiy just added a new daily update". Just somewhere where the community can relax instead of constantly refreshing the page waiting for an update.

 

IRC?

 

No, different. IRC doesn't have an update pop up window or games. Like maybe a basic little multiplayer flash tron game. The window is like the main part of this idea that's useful. With IRC you still have to refresh but with this you just wait and let it tell you.

 

One of the mod's created a "Current Dev Responses" thread. This was a great idea because a lot of users were running around screaming about how the dev's never answer questions. Quite the contrary, development has been very communicative in IRC and in the forums answering a variety of specific and general questions. Unfortunately, up until now those answers have been lost in the thousands and thousands of comments throughout this forum.

I'd recommend consolidating and efficiently labeling these topics in the FAQ section. People have commented on the excessive number of stickied threads... I guess my suggestion would be to organize that info in ways that users can find the answers they are looking for, as well as see the impressive level of communication the dev team has contributed to their community.

Edit: Also, maybe we could create a little help page for people who are new to Internet forums. Something like "How not to be a jerk, and become a successful communicator on the Internet". It might be a good way to diffuse arguments by passively sending links to people who don't realize they're instigating/maintaining unnecessary arguments.

 

Someone will always be offended by something no matter what it is. Example in a game like mass-effect some of the choices sound good to you but in actuality will cause problems. For people who don't like an idea and criticize it would be considered a jerk.

 

The worst of it occurred right when it was reported. I kept up the healthier part of the conversation by stating my side of the matter while still undergoing unnecessary personal attack. I actually can count ten plus infractions on several posts before the posts were even reported. I didn't ignore grumpy. I simply didn't respect him for not doing his job. "Hey guise calm down" does not suffice for someone who ignorantly throws personal insult after personal insult almost every sentence of their ten paragraph rant of madness.

When they can't formulate a chill rebuttal, they start trolling.

When they can't get you with trolling, they become a master psychologist and start picking apart your "behavior" and make off the wall assumptions that they know you..

IT SHOULD NEVER get that far.

At all.

So not only am i on the defensive because i decided to make a light hearted reference, i have to watch this community turn into something worse than the FACEPUNCH community in a split second when mods "Blatantly ignore" someone who obviously has a blatant disregard for the rules. Ten bucks says the individual in question probably didn't receive a single infraction, and if they did, not as many as the should have according to your rules. I am not trying to be disrespectful. OR confrontational. A lot of people take my posts that way even though its impossible to draw any tone from a wall of text. But you are right in one regard. You don't need to be stricter. You need to find people who have no lives that can do the moderators job. I can't say i personally respect someone's decision to do something 12 hours after the initial reports. What? No other mods could be asked right? Bad for business. And that's NOT INTERVENING. Thats not an intervention of any kind thats ever acceptable. "Hey guise calm down. Dohohoho" considering that it was way out of hand and off the wall with crazy long before that. At least Ordona can be asked to do his job. =/

Yesterday, 4:28 AM: (Only 12 hours after it was reported) Grumpy posted and told you two to knock it off.

Only twelve hours after? Am i reading that right? AFTER i had to endure a wall of personal attacks? Did you even read the conversation? I personally loved the line i got: "I am smarter than you because i am older than you and you are a shit parent for disagreeing with me" And if you took the time to actually read any of the conversation you would know that it should have been stopped not even an hour after it was reported.

And thats why we need more mods. Not because we are understaffed but mods can't be asked to do a simple job for fear of community backlash. =/

And if you said you would give him the same punishment you would give me then you clearly read nothing. If thats not the case then i really question who chucklefish has left in power on their forums as to date. I mean seriously. Saying that situation in particular is a grey area you must not have read it. I'll take that warning for losing my cool. It expire in a month and i can rack up three of them before i get a ban. Guess what? That won't do squat to alleviate anything. Read those posts. Put yourself in my shoes and think if that really just warrants a losing your cool warning. I used those as a prime example of moderation fail. Nothing more. If you want to analyze anything, Analyze the actual posts and not your "Moderator control panel."

 

wait what?... i can't see signatures.. weird..

 

They're invisible by default you have to change your personal settings to see them

 

oh, got it. Thanks.