On Forum Improvements & Moderation

Hello to all you forum-goers. In this thread, I will be addressing some serious issues I’ve noticed on this forum. And that is poor structure and lack of moderation. Namely, the forum at the moment is a literal mess, and is in DESPERATE need of good moderators.

The main concept in people’s minds that goes with official forums is that they’re a cesspool of unmoderated madness, but it doesn’t need to be the case with these forums. You can develop a thriving community if you take good care on what goes and what doesn’t with threads and posts. As this game is a P2P title, it wouldn’t be a good business model to hire professional moderators in my opinion. Instead, what you can do is find volunteer moderators within the community, someone who would work for free just because of his love for the game. I’m speaking from personal experience, as I moderate such a forum. The criteria for such moderators would be, of course, a high level of activity, consistency and contribution, previous experience with forums and moderation, a good sense of rules.

And yes, there’s a need for rules as always. You need to recognize what this forum in particular needs, but it’s almost exclusively: no inflammable content, trolling, spamming, double posting, advertising, one-liners. The largest problem now are DNC and OT threads and posts, and I see no one’s really “dealing” with them. It clutters up the boards unnecessary, and the thread rotation is careened due to the CB. I’ve noticed a yesterday’s thread being on the 6th page by the end of the day. There really is something wrong with that. You can’t have a proper discussion if in between there is a lot of spam.

If you decide to go in this direction I am suggesting, then what is needed is the regular bunch of tools (in case they aren’t available already). Such as: editing and deleting posts, and deleting, moving, closing and renaming threads. You’d need a list of forum leaders, for users to easily contact a moderator if the need arises, and a warning & infraction system (that can lead to temporary bans from the forum, but not on the game).

Another issue I wanted to address is poor infrastructure. As it goes, the General Discussion forum is most used and there is a need to “break” it down to appropriate thread categories. There’s a multitude of new forums that need to be implemented. As it’s generally ill-advised to expand forum sections too much and too fast, a gradual expansion is usually better. What forums are most needed at the moment in my opinion is:
• Question & Answers – I’d suggest is to develop a similar tool as to Yahoo! Answers, where the opening poster can choose his or her best answer, or the forum users can vote for the best answer.
• News & Announcements – I’ve noticed the Path of Exile Announced! forum on the bottom (I do hope this is a temporary name), but I don’t see it is used for PoE news; instead, there’s General Discussion of course. But it can’t all be held together, as you need a place to discuss the beta and release, interviews, patch notes, your own plans etc.
• Site & Forum Feedback

Some other forums that would be nice to have but can come later are: Guild Recruitment, Fan Art, Class & Skills (not referring to the sub-forums for each class), and separate PvE and PvP discussion forums (the most latter one is needed right now).

Another suggestion unrelated to the above I have is to implement a wiki on the official site. I’ve noticed a thread suggesting this, but the thing is to integrate a fan-ran wiki and make it into an official wiki. We still need to see what PoE wiki in particular will develop enough content in order to be deemed as official though.

What is also needed is a more reproachful and accessible forum interface, with an access to additional BB code options.

Basically, what I’m suggesting is to let the community run the community, and you guys at GGG can worry about the game alone (and your player’s suggestions for improving the game of course).

Anyway, that’s that. I hope you like my ideas. :-)