Moderation policy needs some iron-fisted changes asap

[vesseblah]

Blizzard did the right thing two years ago when they increased bans and thread deletions. It actually got rid of most of the trash in their forums which subsequently moved here. The reputation of MMOC forums is already at the rock bottom like Blizzard forums was before they did major cleanup, and I'm actually embarrassed to tell in my guild I'm regular here.


There are several repeat offenders on this forum because it's safe haven for any and all kinds of trolling, you get 7 days ban no matter what you do or how often. Forum policy needs to be changed to be much stricter towards these repeat trolls so that moderators will ban them instantly instead of letting their latest crap threads go on for 20 pages entrapping bystanders who deservedly point out trolls or flame the flamers and gain undeserved infractions from it. We all know who in WoW general and WoW R&D forums deserve special repeat offender rewards but instead they get the blind eye and pandering.

Some people actually start their first post here with words such as "I got permanently banned in Blizzard forums for posting this, so I came here instead". Moderators here should instantly slap ban on these people who came to stir shit here after they got punished for stirring shit in other forums.

[Arganis]

I agree!!! .... euh wait... :P

[Howard Moon]

Well, don't know if you can expect the same quality in moderators here as in the Blizz forums. Mods here are volunteers, whereas the Blizz ones get paid, I assume.

But yeah I agree that well-known trolls have essentially free reign here. They might get a ban for a few days now and then, but they are always back.

[Hyve]

A simple community moderation system I feel would be beneficial, but not essential. I've been infracted before (several times) for what I feel are opinions, not issues with the forums themselves. This is where I feel a Up / Down Vote System would work.

Very similar to the World of Warcraft forums, you simply allow the community to vote on each post. The more negative responses a post gets, the less chance it has of being seen. Links within the post get disabled and images are removed. Once it reaches a certain threshold it is completely hidden from the entire community.

Obviously, there are people who would abuse this system and troll it. But there are far more people who would use it to community moderate the forums. This means while you can keep the infraction system, you're also having the whole community pitch in because it is at the click of a button. I'm more then certain there are times when something / someone should've been infracted, but wasn't because people can't be bothered to type a simple one line report.

[Zogarth]

Then i think they should change some of their policies. Especially in the religion department. You are not allowed to post ANYTHING negative about religion what so ever without getting a ban. And lets be frank, a lot of people are negative towards religion for good reasons.

Also, the moderators should be able (I dunno if they are already) to remove posts by people. That could help remove some of trolls.

[Remilia]

Then i think they should change some of their policies. Especially in the religion department. You are not allowed to post ANYTHING negative about religion what so ever without getting a ban. And lets be frank, a lot of people are negative towards religion for good reasons.

Also, the moderators should be able (I dunno if they are already) to remove posts by people. That could help remove some of trolls.

Issue isn't talking negatively, but it's when people are just negatively talking about it in a very unconstructive manner. Such as "people still believe in fairy tales? ahahaha". These aren't what are constructive and are what causes a lot of issues with religious topics.

Yes we are able to delete posts. However the point of putting an edit in is to show that we are moderating and generally does discourage some people.

Also calling out others as trolling in itself is trolling. If you have any problem with some posts, general rule of thumb is to report and move on. We're all humans still.

You are actually able to get permabanned for enough infraction points. You'd have to do some rather crazy stuff to achieve that, but still there.

[Deleted]

Very similar to the World of Warcraft forums, you simply allow the community to vote on each post. The more negative responses a post gets, the less chance it has of being seen. Links within the post get disabled and images are removed. Once it reaches a certain threshold it is completely hidden from the entire community.

These are some responses from Sunshine about the up/down vote system.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post13186824
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post11666585
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post10644579
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...=1#post9748162
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post10267729

Then i think they should change some of their policies. Especially in the religion department. You are not allowed to post ANYTHING negative about religion what so ever without getting a ban. And lets be frank, a lot of people are negative towards religion for good reasons.

Religion is forbidden for obvious reasons. If it wasn't, all you would see in Gen OT would be hate threads towards religion, atheists related stuff, and what not.

We don't want this, it doesn't bring any discussion and this isn't a forum to spread hate towards religion. That's why it's forbidden to bash religion/countries/populations/etc.

[Badpaladin]

Then i think they should change some of their policies. Especially in the religion department. You are not allowed to post ANYTHING negative about religion what so ever without getting a ban. And lets be frank, a lot of people are negative towards religion for good reasons.

Not gonna happen.

It's also a curious thought to adopt stricter policies. It used to be more strict a few years ago, but as the forum population has increased a lot of changes have occured. Ultimately it's up to Boub, and if he feels the same then it'll change.

[Boubouille]

vesseblah, you reported 2 or 3 posts in the past month, which leads me to believe it's not that bad. If you see an insane amount of bad stuff, I don't see why you can't report it, we'll act accordingly.

[vizzle]

Then i think they should change some of their policies. Especially in the religion department. You are not allowed to post ANYTHING negative about religion what so ever without getting a ban. And lets be frank, a lot of people are negative towards religion for good reasons.

Don't you have enough places on the internet for that?

[Deleted]

I'm more then certain there are times when something / someone should've been infracted, but wasn't because people can't be bothered to type a simple one line report.

Not all infractions and bans are from reports - a lot is done directly by the moderation team without it being reported first. Of course, there will always be the odd post that slips through the system, but we are always working hard to maintain the rules and policies that the administrators have put in place. Even if you don't see a moderator posting in a thread, you can almost be certain that they have read through it.

The up/down vote system could be helpful, but in the long-run it will only have a very minor impact and only remove the posts that the moderation team would take care of anyway. It would realistically have very little real impact on today's system and the community assistance would be negligible.

The real issue (the way I see it) is that some posts can really be on the fence regarding if it is within the allowed posting guidelines or not. These are often the toughest ones for us to decide upon and usually takes a blue or a red to conclude properly. A vote system would do very little for these posts.

[Tziva]

There are several repeat offenders on this forum because it's safe haven for any and all kinds of trolling, you get 7 days ban no matter what you do or how often. Forum policy needs to be changed to be much stricter towards these repeat trolls so that moderators will ban them instantly instead of letting their latest crap threads go on for 20 pages entrapping bystanders who deservedly point out trolls or flame the flamers and gain undeserved infractions from it. We all know who in WoW general and WoW R&D forums deserve special repeat offender rewards but instead they get the blind eye and pandering.

Some people actually start their first post here with words such as "I got permanently banned in Blizzard forums for posting this, so I came here instead". Moderators here should instantly slap ban on these people who came to stir shit here after they got punished for stirring shit in other forums.

It's important to remember that the moderators here are to facilitate appropriate discussion, to keep things on topic, to squash flame wars, and to prevent abuse of our other members. Our rules are made with this in mind, and we enforce based on that philosophy. We are not the censorship department. It is not our job to silence people for making controversial statements, for having bad reputations, or holding unpopular opinions. One might find this to be an unfortunate fact when they see someone they think is trolling get away with it unscathed, but the same approach protects them in another thread where they might be the one person who speaks up to disagree with a popular argument. As soon as you start arguing that people should be banned or censored based on things like posting history or reputation, you venture into a very grey area that basically proposes putting moderators in an authoritarian position where that can issue bans on completely subjective criteria, which might feel awesome when the mod agrees with you but I think we can all agree is miserable if they don't.

Do I like infracting otherwise good posters just because they don't have the self-constraint not to scream "troll!!" every time they see a controversial post? No. Is it frustrating when someone appears to be trolling but is technically following all the rules? Yes. But that is the tradeoff for having an open forum that tries to moderate using a fair, objective-as-possible ruleset.

Very similar to the World of Warcraft forums, you simply allow the community to vote on each post. The more negative responses a post gets, the less chance it has of being seen. Links within the post get disabled and images are removed. Once it reaches a certain threshold it is completely hidden from the entire community.

It's a popular system, but personally I don't think this would result in a positive forum climate. Already we regularly receive reports for perfectly acceptable posts because people happen to disagree with the position it is taking or because they don't like the person that made it. A lot of people have a very hard time distinguishing between posts they simply find disagreeable and posts that actually violate the rules. This system might work for some community sites, but I would worry that here it would just silence the minority opinion in whatever the thread topic was, leaving the majority to just circle jerk.

I'm not against self-policing in principle; I would love it if people could do it: in the form of ignoring the terrible posts and taking the high road.