On Moderation, Forums, and What's Allowed

[Rgizil]

Edit: Nvm :/

[Akamhara]

It's getting more and more frustrating to see people jump on the hate bandwagon at trion here.

Why people are getting so mad about being banned for posting a video in TRION moderated channels when it blatantly hates on the games' staff. Trion aren't mad about the video being posted but keep it away from their channels. I think that's fair. Post it in your guilds TS/mumble whatever. No issue whatsoever

For people who don't know Apoth aren't entirely innocent in this - Did Oria or Yobi explain to the community what they were doing on Dark Genesis in any of their videos/posts?
Both parties ****ed up and one decided to make a salty video.
I'm really starting to wonder if Apoth killed the boss would they have left the game and kicked up all this fuss

This is not a bandwagon. I don't know you personally or know much about you, but if you look at the issues raised across the board, and read the forums, much of them have been commented on for quite some time.

I believe Apotheosys were attempting to raid at the time of recording. That is generally the point of being in there, I am told. What were Fires of Heaven doing on Dark Genesis? Do you explain to the community what you do in there as testers?

Whilst the video is certainly salty, some of the behaviour noted in there is poor if that is true. It reminds me of private server admins of other games who haven't quite understood that its not a personal playground.

Granted, in this case it is a company's game, and they are entitled, just as the private server admins of tiny little havens elsewhere, to do as they please. But just like those server admins, sooner or later your behaviour comes back to bite you in the posterior if it does not mesh with the expectations of the service you provide. Because ultimately, it is a service that is being paid for that they are providing.

I like the game, have supported it for a long time. Currently it feels like too long. But there seems to be an air of panic from some people that to deviate from The Plan, or whatever their personal view is, might risk rocking the boat. The dimensions might get taken away... The, the... Whatever their hook is. Get over it.

[Solaxys]

If anything, the ratio of likes, for:against, is pretty telling.

[Gurgi of Prydain]

If anything, the ratio of likes, for:against, is pretty telling.

I am actually afraid to "like" posts now. We don't get banned for liking posts that are... salty, do we?

[Jabberrwocky]

I highly doubt people would be banned JUST for linking that video. Finish the sentence: Look at this link: link here. / It could finish with, I think that's complete BS and the creator of that is full of it or Wow that's accurate etc.. One supports Trion, one doesn't. What would happen to the person who was linking the video in defense of Trion and that person got banned.. I don't think they'd be appreciative of that.

[Solaxys]

I am actually afraid to "like" posts now. We don't get banned for liking posts that are... salty, do we?

Shrugs. I am not sure of what things are still ban-free to do here.

[Rgizil]

I'm afraid to post now, my rant on the 1st page makes me nervous anymore will go overboard.

[Liandell]

I am actually afraid to "like" posts now. We don't get banned for liking posts that are... salty, do we?

I feel like everyone shares this fear, which is a real shame that I don't think the mods intended. A community forum should be a place of open discussion on matters important to the community.

[Ookamikawaii]

Shrugs. I am not sure of what things are still ban-free to do here.

This is an issue when people aren't sure of what is or isn't allowed. Yes Ocho made a post to re-read a section for some rules. But some things vary from Mod to Mod or Developer to developer.

Visibility from Tion is needed.

One of the things I have complained about Rift for long time (Half-birthday cake time and earlier) is that there is no posting week prior of what the next patch will have in it. Also half the time it is hours after the servers are back up when finally patch notes are posted (or the launcher patch notes updated)
This causes a lot of grief as we have no idea what is going to be changed and when. We cant do any planning, People miss out on things (raid before patch instead of holding off raid time), etc...

Communication isn't only lacking in the patching department. The silence of what you guys are working on is aggravating.
I was surprised when finally after months the patch notes had the iGP spawn/hard-mode toggle has been updated so we didn't get stuck in it.

I believe the majority of your customers would rather have Trion communicating on a lot more things. Even if you don't put a set date for when to expect it, or even if that date gets changed. most of us understand complications could arise, etc. We rather be in the know then in the dark.

Promote healthy communication is also a 2-way street. It takes only a few minutes to type out decisions. I'm sure there is a note taker for Trion meetings. Posting meeting notes (maybe summarized, etc) shouldn't be too hard.

If you fail to change to what your costumers would like; then the game or company going lose a lot. +4 year old policies/etc of how to handle things need to be updated. There is always room for improvement and there are many players/customers that still would love to support Trion or even just Rift.

Some Visibility on Trion's part would go a long way.
1) to clearly define/state what are exploits compared to features. Some thread where we can go and see it all listed in one place.
2) Why people were banned. Doesn't have to be the finding of any investigation but the reason and username(s) of the person and the offense would go a long way. This allows the community to actually assist in not letting the behavior from that person continue.
3) On forums - respond more. Also when closing a thread; leave a post stating why the thread is closed. Just Randomly closing a thread that seems to have no issue and should still be open is aggravating and makes us wonder why.
4) In game have report violation and ignore be separate. Lots of people don't want to ignore others to keep on top of their bad mouthing or to report future violations. Having to manually un-ignore is a pain and ignoring should be a separate action. Hard for the community to help Trion with holding up to a better community standard when 3/4 of the game population is ignoring the bad 1/4.

People want more visibility from Politicians/government. We also want more visibility from things we love like a company of our favourite game. Please take the time from this "issue" to learn from it and enact change.

[Warfyre]

It's good to see Ocho has been so active on the forums today, but I can't help but feel that some of this could have been avoided if Trion didn't have such a lengthy holiday break. Here we have a product, a service which is being used every day, yet Trion basically shuts down for 3 weeks (hotfix 2.5 doesn't really count - there hasn't been a real patch since 12/16/15 and won't be another until 1/6/16). How much of this mess could have been avoided if Trion had just skipped patching on 12/23, given everyone a long weekend and had all the devs back in the office the following week and resumed business as normal, releasing a patch on 12/30 and making more of an effort to stay on top of some of the more serious issues? When you're maintaining a product that is used 365 days out of the year there's no excuse to be shutting down the office for 3 weeks straight. Sure, all the devs and other staff need a little time off. Close down the offices for 5 days or so, let everyone spend some time with their families for the holidays. But 3 weeks with a total lack of updates for your product? That's just negligent.The CS staff and moderators who have been on hand during this time can only do so much without the devs and more senior Trion staff having a hand in things.

[Stihl]

At the top of the forums there is a post labeled "Announcement: Official RIFT Forum Rules". Please read and review it and if you have any questions please post them to this thread. The intent of the rules is to promote productive conversations that provide actionable feedback and a healthy community.

A few key take aways for those that don't want to read it at the moment:

• Don't call people names
• Don't troll
• Don't try to get around a ban by creating an alternate account or posting on a different account

As to the current kerfuffle, I've watched the video (obviously unacceptable for the forums) and while I think there are some fair bits (mostly relating to bosses being unavailable due to bugs, something that's never acceptable to us) most of it is hyperbole or a distortion of the truth. We're not going to discuss it further, because of the content we can't really have a full discussion, but we are happy to answer questions and talk about RIFT. That will pick up more as the holidays end and we all get back in office.

To address this need, we have compiled the following list of rules.

1. Do not attack others. A few examples of typical attacks that are not allowed are:

• Insults (against individuals, groups, companies, or countries)
• Comments that attack or disparage a Race/Ethnicity/Nationality/Religious Belief/Political Affiliation/Gender/Sexual Orientation or Identity
• Harassment
• Naming/Accusing/Calling Out: Do not accuse or call out other players for misbehavior. This sort of issue is not resolvable on a forum. If a player has violated our Terms of Service, please create a support ticket.
• Posting Provocatively: While we frequently have strong opinions, it is important to phrase things in a manner that is as constructive as possible.
• No Threats Allowed. This includes both physical threats and threats of legal action.

2. Do not spam or post non-constructively.

• Posting "+1," "First," reposting topics with existing threads, and posting threads not germane to a particular subforum are not allowed.
• Bumps, or posts simply to manipulate the order of thread display, are not allowed. All posts need some form of constructive content.

3. Do not post about, mention, or discuss moderator action. Discussion of moderator action is not productive. Instead, if you have questions about or wish to appeal moderator actions, please contact a member of the Community Team.

4. Official threads: Do not disrupt or go off-topic in threads started by an official Trion representative.
Official threads may contain additional instructions; please heed them.

5. Content not permitted on Official Forums

• Excessive Sexuality or Violence: Discussion of excessive sexuality or violence is not allowed. These sorts of topics are best shared between friends, not on public forums.
• Personal Information: Sharing of others' personally-identifying information is not allowed. If you wish to share your own social media addresses or game network tags (Xbox gamertags, PSN names, Steam Handles, etc.) you are allowed to do so for yourself only.
• Obscenity/Vulgarity: Do not make excessively vulgar statements on the forums. Do not avoid the profanity filter by changing the spelling or substituting alternate characters in place of specific letters. The profanity filter on the forums does not contain every word not allowed, and cannot be used as a defense in this case.
• Pornography: The posting of pornography is not allowed.
• Illegal Activity: Do not promote or discuss illegal activities on the forums.
• Cheating/Exploits: Do not post about or discuss cheating or exploits. If you suspect a player of cheating, please contact Customer Service. If you have knowledge of an exploit, feel free to contact a member of the Community Team with details via a private message or a member of Customer Service via a support ticket.
• Exchange of in-game items or services for real-world currency other than those items and services sold by Trion Worlds is not allowed.
• Advertisements or direct links to pages encouraging commercial transactions on our forums. This includes overt promotion/astroturfing/recruiting for other games.
• Religion and Politics: These are not topics for official game forums. This includes Off Topic forums.
• No calls for firing of Trion employees. This is a zero tolerance area.
• Infringing Content: Do not post anything that supports or encourages IP or copyright infringement.

6. Sockpuppeting and the use of multiple accounts to evade a suspension are not allowed.

• Suspensions are for individuals, not accounts. Creating additional accounts to avoid suspensions is not allowed.
• Users who connect from the same location or computer may be subject to suspensions taken against other users from the same location/computer. In these cases, the moderation team will make their best efforts to determine the identity of individuals, however this is solely at the discretion of the moderation team.

7. Direct links to images, pages, or sites with content that violate the forum rules are not allowed.

In cases where moderator action is required, moderators may edit, move, or delete posts containing violations of the forum rules. Moderators may warn, suspend, or permanently ban accounts from posting on the forum in question. These actions will be based on both the frequency of required moderation for a specific user and the specific rules violation in question. In extreme cases, action may be taken against game accounts for forum violations.

Not all situations can be covered by these rules, and Trion reserves the right to moderate at our discretion. Failure to follow these rules, or any direction from Trion Worlds representatives, may result in action being taken against your account.

Baiting/Trolling and Toxicity are frequently cited reasons for moderator action, yet neither of these terms appear in the current forum policy. By their very nature they are extremely ambiguous and overly subjective, and have given Crouching Tiger Hidden Moderator carte blanche for removing any content they don't personally approve of. While "Don't be a dick" is a wonderful guiding principle, a fair bit of leeway needs to be given (in both directions) for quality discourse to develop.

For instance if I see an individual make a post stating that Ranger is a better DPS soul than Marksman

is my initial reaction, though that individual may truly and honestly believe that. If I were a moderator I would be well within the "guidelines" to remove that post. It takes a certain amount of discretion to enforce a "play nice" policy without going overboard, and if we're going to be honest at this point these forums are Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russel standing on the bow of a yacht.

I also personally have qualms with the use of "prior misconduct" as an excuse to dole out punishment. While I believe repeat offenders should face stiffer consequences, their past histories should only be used to tailor their punishments, not to decide whether the actions they've taken are punishable offenses. That should be decided by the guidelines, not by the fact a certain individual is a "thorn in your side."

Either way I believe the last few days have shown the community is not particularly satisfied with the current policies. While there are obvious examples of poor decision making on both sides, hopefully something good comes of it all.

[dizuane]

Either way I believe the last few days have shown the community are not particularly satisfied with the current policies. While there are obvious examples of poor decision making on both sides, hopefully something good comes of it all.

That's a point I was trying to make to someone in TS earlier. If a multitude of customers are upset with the way you do things.. maybe its time to re-evaluate the way you do things. Or are top guilds quitting not enough motivation?

[Liandell]

Either way I believe the last few days have shown the community is not particularly satisfied with the current policies. While there are obvious examples of poor decision making on both sides, hopefully something good comes of it all.

Honestly, this is really the central issue. If you look at that Reddit thread and the likes ratios on these forums, there's an overall sentiment of overmoderation verging into censorship. It's clear the community isn't happy. No offense, but on that reddit thread every post by an employee of Trion was downvoted almost to oblivion, and criticism was upvoted to the very top. I think that says something.

"Toxicity" and "baiting" are such nebulous terms I feel they deserve their own definitions on the forum Terms of Service. Those infractions are given out on such a wide variety of posts it leads me and most other posters to believe it's subjective and depends on the caprices of any given mod on any given day.

I really hope some reforms are made to make the community atmosphere more pleasant and less drenched in fear.

[Kiwi]

....

Liandell I have watched your responses and wanted to ask if you understand any of the legalities that face most companies for things such as moderation so they would not be able to get involved in conversations between individuals on other platforms ie Skype Youtube etc? However on their own platforms/channels using these tools they can and do especially to protect their staff which is what this is and rightfully so if you want people to actually dedicate their careers to you. Nothing more, nothing less.

The majority of people are not scared they are hoping that this drama is enough to

A) see something change that we all already know could've without this video going as far as it did to claim they were part of it

OR

B) use it as a catalyst to put their own problems forward for more exposure.

It is amusing how intelligent people tend to back peddle and take on a I just did whatever stance when they know their intention was to ensure as many people supported this video and took advantage of it to defame Trion as much as possible. You only needed to look at the most toxic chat in game which is no longer 1-29 to see everything that was said with or because of that video being cheered on by those linking it who 9/10 tend to throw themselves head first into the eye of any drama storm and really this is all just another blurry line scenario where gamers and testers are forgetting they are not developers. Won't be the first time possibly not the last but please do not take Reddit down votes as some kind of evidence - they are as important as likes on this forum.

[Jim1771]

We released content right before the holidays that had 2 bosses that needed to be disabled as we didn't have the right folks in the office to fix them is the extent of the truth. The rest is personal opinion, hyperbole and/or misinformation. That's all we're gonna say.



The total number of suspensions has been extremely small (less than 10), so they must have all been your friends. And none of them were for just linking the video, it was always for associated behavior that included linking the video. Things like posting adult entertainment in public channels in one notable situation. There's been maybe 1 ban, and that was for extreme behavior.

Think of it this way, the video is slandering distorting the truth about a number of people on the RIFT team and some folks think it's ok to go ahead and spread that slander in RIFT. It's the equivalent of going into an apple store and yelling about how Steve Jobs was a murderer. It's not gonna earn you friends.

If someone is credibly threatening violence (let alone murder) that's a serious situation we need to inform the police about. If someone is doxing, there is a serious penalty for that. Shoot me details in a PM and I'll talk to the CS team and get the backstory, and work with them to make sure the right thing is done.

Edit: changed a word in italics to something that doesn't get covered up by the forum filter

That's where the problem is. As community relations your job is to discuss the issues with the community however you chose to exploit your position to bypass that part of your job and went straight to suspending people.

For those who have an issue with the moderation complain to my friend Scott Hartsman : https://twitter.com/hartsman or for any issues that you deem worthy file a complaint with the BBB here as the Trion Worlds legal team and Scott take the complaints seriously: http://www.bbb.org/greater-san-franc...city-ca-373637