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Visitor
Character: Zzzzz
Posts: 82
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Re: Gnobrin bans people in the official forums for unwritten forum rules
Here's my latest adventure in forum naziland:
I posted this under the general gameplay discussion, under the title : Dear forum administrators
I will try to put this as objective and diplomatic as possible, not because i fear a ban, but because i beleive that some people just do their jobs and don't deserve to be insulted openly.
Compare SoE to a major car manufactory.
They run an official forum, whits several subforums regarding various extras that you can buy. Now compare, for example, the navigation system section with a ranger. The navigation system is not working properly for over 18 months now, and every few weeks new problems are discovered. One problem has been acknowledged, while several others have been ignored for months. The customers get angry and start to post suggestions on how to fix the nav system. Nobody from the car factory is answering. People get angry and start to complain more and even threaten to demand refunds for the defective sytem. Still, nothing is done. Then, people start posting on the official forums warnings to new customers that intend to buy the navigation system, or even buy a car from the company. These posts are being deleted for being excessively negative.
Here#s a quote from StrollingWolf regarding the "I cancel my account" post :
If you would like to provide feedback on your class, please do, provided it has some sort of relevant discussion about what you perceive as shortcomings. Merely posting "I quit! Everyone else should quit and post here!" adds nothing of value to the forums.
Feedback has been made. Feedback has neither been acknowledged nor denied. The navigation system remains broken. Instead of discussing the problems with the customer base, these threads keep being deleted and the posters banned. Most of theses threads even have self-censoring active, meaning the posters stick to the code of conduct and not swear, they just indicate what happens. They give Value to the forums by stating the current state of the product.
So, i'm asking, who is protecting US from deliberate censorship of consumers stating their disregard for your product fragment? I am pretty sure that you will point me to your code of conduct of the forums, but tbh deleting and censoring non-hostile, informative posts just works against any moral and business conduct that is supposed to be one of the bases of human ethics. Signing a virtaul contract does not mean deprivng the customer an any information if the product is getting repaired, refunds are being instated or, heck even a basic consumer/ developer communication esteblished.
Oh and by the way, please change the name of the forum section "Developer Roundtable" to something more realistic like "feedback input", because its anything but a roundtable.
response was :
deleted in a few hours, here is the PM of Forum Nazi Echgar:
I removed your "Dear forum administrators" thread.
While your post did forgo the use of profanity, which I am thankful for, it was still inappropriate for a few reasons. The fact that you had to question a couple times in your post whether you might be banned or your post might be deleted makes me think you knew what you were posting was probably a bad idea.
I understand from your post that you are frustrated and that me moderating you probably won't make you a heck of a lot happier. The thing is, we have forum rules we expect posters to abide by. Every moderator, myself included, has foot-in-mouth moments and rather than creating an angry post to reopen a moderated thread, the better approach is to contact the moderator via a private message and discuss it calmly and constructively. You may not get the answer you wanted, but we don't bite. SMILEY
In any event, a thread like yours does not belong on the Gameplay Discussion forum. The Gameplay Discussion forum is intended for EverQuest II gameplay issues lacking a dedicated forum.
In addition, your topic is addressed to "forum administrators" -- that would be Gnobrin. If you wish to contact him, send him a private message. Posting it on a public forum as you did pretty well fits the definition of trolling as stated in the forum rules ("posting with the intent of stirring up trouble or to incite disruption"SMILEY;).
Moderation is a funny thing. I hear people like yourself upset that we're overmoderating, though everyday I also have people complaining we let posters blatently violate the rules (not that I'm able to see how after looking at the posts they report). It's a balance and while you may feel we are incredibly unfair and "censor", you are likely just disagree with some of the things in the forum rules.
Based on your feedback and the direction it is going in, I'll give you some tips. Constructive criticism about the game is not bad. Where most posters go wrong is they use (or likely overuse) profanity, unleash personal attacks on the developers, and things like that.
If I were to say "I really don't like some of the recent changes to my class, here's why ..., and here are some changes I suggest ..." that would be fine. Taking it to where I say "I HATE the change to my class and the devs should be FIRED" takes it to a level that is probably going to be moderated. Insults, personal attacks, namecalling, and general trolling just aren't something allowed here and if that is more your kind of thing, there are other forums/websites that cater to those kind of discussions.
The developers are interested in feedback -- good as well as the bad. You just have to keep it constructive. As for the moderators, we're interested in feedback too and always happy to have a discussion, but it's usually best to just send a private message.
my answer :
Thank you for proving my point.
It looks like you haven't been listening to any of my points. Setting up rules that are enforced with arbitrary and repressive vehemence is not helping you at all. I feel like 1984 here, you can say things, but they all have to be happy merry-ins. Guess what, feedback has been made for months on certain topics, many with a friendly and informative tone, yet the results are not happening, this makes you wonder what these forums are for, after all.
I don't think you realizy it, but this game is in a sorry state atm, mostly due to bad designs and decisions around/after RoK. I've never seen so much uproar since DoF, and i fear that many more of my friends will leave the game , as already lots of them have done. I suggest that you stop acting so much in vain and do proper damage control as fast as possible, because right now this game feels like a product done by some middleamerican dictatorship ruled country : blunder after blunder after blunder each LU wihtout any signs of correction.
Oh, and btw : seeing that any forum moderator can and will delete threads made me post this general topic, as it's not addressed to only 1 admin, and all these little bugs and imbalances ARE affecting my general gameplay, hence the general gameplay forum.
I'm done with that mockery of a forum.
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