Community News: New Forum Management

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KhelThuzad wrote:

There's a few things I's like to point out thou.

- It is well known that most PoE players do not use forums. A tighter, draconian rule will only lead to even more people leaving the forums for good (there are other alternatives like reddit)

- PoE forums have always been open about any kind of debate. Hell, even pro D3 players were allowed to post how their beloved game was better. While I believe offensive posts (flaming, troll) must be dealt with, this kind of freedom should be kept.

- We do not want a Battlenet like forum at any cost. We do not want mods to be offended and ban people because they got butthurt over a point. The point of Forums is for discussion and not act like a temple of prayer for GGG. that being said... Long live GGG!

- PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE have your own mods. Do not pick forum members for modding. I do not want to elaborate why, but you already know the reason behind.

- Toxicity is ambiguous. I stated above that people may have an opinion that greatly differ from yours. He will defend it with a passion. Take the beta key discussion where a few top tier supporters wanted beta access. They were immediately mauled by a host of GGG boot kissers (the worst kind of forum members, you should agree) that could not comprehend the simple fact that someone may have an opinion. They are the real toxic members. not the original posters.

That being said, let me congratulate you for your well deserved achievement. Few people actually do their dream jobs and I strongly believe you are the best one for this task. We might have had some kind of issues in the past (just like my 'Drink tears' meme was removed :). But these were dead and buried yesterday. GG GGG and GG BEX.

the man makes good points

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that healthy debate and disagreement should be allowed. However, I feel as though these kinds of conversations should be held without ostracizing the person who is in disagreement with you and done in a way that is constructive - by which I mean, is not purely a way of venting emotionally and always seeks to define or resolve a problem.

What do you think? :)

Posts need to only be removed if they contain pornography or are victimizing/harassing a user.

Posts that contain sarcastic remarks, or silly satire wording should be fine.. Let us argue to an extent.....

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that healthy debate and disagreement should be allowed. However, I feel as though these kinds of conversations should be held without ostracizing the person who is in disagreement with you and done in a way that is constructive - by which I mean, is not purely a way of venting emotionally and always seeks to define or resolve a problem.

What do you think? :)

I disagree, sorry - and as such this invalidates all of your previous and future posts.

Hi Bex! :) Good to see you've been given the chance to jingle everyones bells, looking forward to seeing the changes.

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Bex_GGG wrote:

What I'd like to address first is the toxicity of discussions and consistency in forum moderation. Over time, our guidelines have failed to keep up with the rate our community is growing and are no longer working as intended. We apologise for any hindrance to your forum experience that this may have caused. We will be working on this!

In time, I'll be creating a new set of forum guidelines and retraining the support team under these new guidelines with a focus on consistency and increased team communication. These guidelines should also address some of the concerns raised regarding toxic and aggressive posting. In addition to this, I will gradually be making other improvements to the experience of the forums.

So this is a "nothing to announce but we're making an announcement anyway" topic. OK, well congrats on your new position I guess

edit: this was a "I have nothing to say but I'm gonna say it anyway" post

Herd me O herder !

You heard my thoughts O hearder !

How about changing the "No Naming and Shaming policy" to a "no possible renuncation policy"


Threads like "[Removed by Support]'s Been a Naughty Boy" look silly everybody knows who it is about. But the policy forces us to describe.


I don't want to write "that guy with the 6linked Shavronnes incident", "that streamer that got banned for botting"


This should be limited "X is a botter/RMTer kind of post"

No naming and shaming got so silly that certain constantly nicknamechanging troll made people talk about him and then he reported every posting to get users probated for naming and shaming.


And as long white knighttrolling won't be punished there will always be toxivity between users.

Silly Example: "Thread I don't think EB and CI should be allocated in one Keystone"
Troll:"That was the best decision ever *nagging remarks*"
OP:"Defending opinion"
Troll:"*nag*"
OP:"Hostile remark"


Additionally the moderation should imo stop this annoying robotic copypasting like:"Thread has been locked due..... if you have any concerns regarding x email support@grindinggear.com"
and support will certainly only copy paste a response.

Especially keywords like "investigate further" "mail support@grindinggear.com" are something that piss off several players not only me.

Here is an example that ended up in karma oblivion on reddit:

"

The intention is in no way intended to protect scammers. The policy is in place to protect possibly innocent players from false accusations as this can be unfairly damaging to their gameplay. We prefer that these accusations are not made publicly, however, we welcome you to contact us privately at any time at support@grindinggear.com with any information you may have about the situation and we'll investigate it further.

2 simple changes and the posting wouldn't have ended in Karma Hell.

This e-mail support is utterly useless because the response is always. "We can't tell you how we deal with RMTers/Scammers/status of our investigation"

Q: Why isn't X banned?
A: X received a warning /The evidence was not enough.

Is something players want to hear.

I know from certains cheaters mock you on certain forums for unbanning them because they promised to "never cheat again","Didn't know botting was forbidden", "It was the little sibling wanting to test a paid bot" and other lies.

But even in such cases deserve a response like: "We have faith that X will not bot again. We keep a look on his account[and do it for real if he transfers everything he should be banned because he possibly attempts to bot with a VPN] or cashes out"

I still remember the case of a botter Alea(?) found in standard who got banned unbanned banned unbanned banned for max 2 weeks(I didn't actually check but saw that he was unbanned again) unbanned-->Cashed out switched account?At last he became inactive on that account.

This guy couldn't be more guilty he used the same name like everywhere(everything older than his PoEaccount) and the onlinetimes weren't humanly possible. 18hours a day for 3 months.
With a pattern of dying at the beginning of a bot run collecting ~70million experience dying again.

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I'll believe it when I see it. One of your new "moderators" just created new forum rules today out of thin air. I also don't believe for a minute you will react one bit against the toxicity certain "contributors" are CONSTANTLY allowed to post without consequence.

Necroing was always an active rule. Create a new topic instead of reviving a dead thread.
When the report function got introduced trolls bumped topics created before the "no hateful posts" rule existed getting users probated for stuff they posted up to 1 year ago.


Powerabuse looks like that:

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I've looked over the account history and some postings were removed for misinformation. We don't normally remove these unless there's a chance the misinformation can cause more harm than good.

another power abuse it "postings that are useless"

Examaple:"ClapClap"

FYI yes that happened I was the target of powerabuse because of the official "There are no dupes in POE, dupes will be deleted" stance. The mods didn't even know that there was a bug in CB that allowed players to dupe if you had CI allocated and commited suicide in town and the exploiter abused it a few times till he received a tempban and there is even a thread about it.

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that healthy debate and disagreement should be allowed. However, I feel as though these kinds of conversations should be held without ostracizing the person who is in disagreement with you and done in a way that is constructive - by which I mean, is not purely a way of venting emotionally and always seeks to define or resolve a problem.

What do you think? :)

As long as the soul of these forums are kept safe, i.e. we maintain our right to agree or not with the flow of any given conversation without being banned... I'm fine.

Feel free to use your Karui Maul on scammers, extremely offensive members (swearing etc) and their ilk.

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monkuar wrote:

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Bex_GGG wrote:

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that healthy debate and disagreement should be allowed. However, I feel as though these kinds of conversations should be held without ostracizing the person who is in disagreement with you and done in a way that is constructive - by which I mean, is not purely a way of venting emotionally and always seeks to define or resolve a problem.

What do you think? :)

Posts need to only be removed if they contain pornography or are victimizing/harassing a user.

Posts that contain sarcastic remarks, or silly satire wording should be fine.. Let us argue to an extent.....

I tend to agree

Me thinks you have to use your intuition alongside the rules. You have to sense if things are getting out of hand and deal with it accordingly in most cases, while in other cases there are rules which should simply not be broken, such racism or religious discrimination etc.

Some things have to burn out on their own, and some people have to battle it out to resolve things, then i think moderation should be there to prevent things from getting out of hand. I reckon the goal is for people to feel free to express themselves, while at the same time externally-destructive behavior is not accepted.