Malachani

Just a heads up guys.... you can and will get in serious trouble for linking directly to this site. I am going to repeat it again, if you enjoy posting on EQ2players, and like this site as well, just DON'T do it! You only make us look bad when you go in there waving your virtual penis saying "Your site sucks, ours is better" you make us look childish, and that is not what we want to be.

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Arthais

For me, and I speak for nobody but myself, it wasn't DIRECTLY because of the addition of the mods, but rather that this addition was a symptom of the root problem.

Let me be clear in saying that I don't really have any particular issue with any one person. I liked Steve, I liked Ryan, I liked Faar, I like Joel, and I'll probably like whoever else they bring in.

I may have had some issues withs ome of the mods on a personal level if they are who it's claimed they are, but that's neither here nor there.

I think that some choices may have been in error and some may have been mistakes, but I'm hardly the one to cast the first stone on that one.

What bothers me is what i see as a systematic shift in operation and policy. I am seeing more and more a general decline in how the organization treats the consumers of its product. I think volunteer mods can work, if handled well, I don't think it was handled well. And I don't see much going in the way of fixing it, and instead told "everything is working as intended, trust us".

And maybe there were efforts, but they're kept behind closed doors. What I am seeing that concerns me the most is a growing sense that things are handled effectivly arbitrarily and without any real degree of transparency. Again I fault no individual, I fault the structure that allows it to take place. I think there's a very strong undercurrent of discontent growing within the EQ2 community, and this board and it's sudden popularity is indicative of that.

Once again SOE CAN do whatever they wish to do. I just don't think their current direction is a good one. I think more and more players (and just for the sake of noting Radar, I DO still play, just not my inq anymore and not on Kith..I died two nights ago actually) are feeling a disassociation between themselves and the company body.

And that disassociation seems to be growing. It's a feeling that "some people" matter more than others, that "some people" are allowed to get away with more than others and that "some people" are being held to a different standard than others.

Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but the EQ2 structure seems to be doing nothing to prevent that perception, and in fact only continues to foster it. The blue mods are just one example of it.

Savanja

I don't know how active you have been on gaming forums Arthais, but in all the MMOs I have played, and all the forums that I have participated in, these sorts of things have always gone on. Posters who frequent the forums end up becoming friendly with the staff, and precieved favoritism starts.

Prior to the game going live, and even after, there was, in fact, one single poster that was given "Sage" status and was given mod powers. He was a frequent poster and was buddy with the red names, so he was granted that gift. And as I mentioned before, EQ2 is not the first SOE forum that has used volunteers to help out around the forum, and these volunteers are almost always forum frequents.

So is this whole system, that MMO forums have been using for years, a bad system? They seem to believe that it has worked in the past, that it should work now. It may not be a perfect system, but that does not make it a bad one.

Nurta

So this is all about favorites then? *boggle*

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Savanja

I think that will always be part of it. But that spans far beyond anything regarding mods.

Arthais

Of every other system I have seen, volunteer mods/guides/etc have either:

1) been flagged publically on their typical accounts, so people knew exactly who they were dealing with

or

2) strongly prevented from having any overlapping interaction between their play lives and their mod/guide lives

And while I don't claim to know about every system, as far as I know, this has been the case in every situation I have encountered, either the mods are who they are (the halfling helpers) or there are strict, and PUBLIC prohibitions on intermingling.

I saw absolutly none of that here. And yes I will come flat out and say any system that doesn't enforce one of these two rules is a mistake in my opinion.

And this has nothing to do about favoritism. As I said, it has to do with transparency, and a system that, even if it may not be abused, is set up so that it CAN be abused.

I have no problems with volunteers, none. I have a problem with a system that puts volunteers in place, shields who they are, and then allows them to act with obvious conflicts of interest. Two things can prevent that, transparency or conflict of interest guidelines.

I have seen neither in place. That is my problem.

Arthais

Without repeating too much the other thread, what I mean by that is this:

If you're going to hide who your mods are, so that the public can not immediatly be aware of their particular stance, bias, and perception, then you should do a few things:

- NEVER let that mod participate socially in a thread on a mod account

- NEVER let that mod moderate his/her server boards

- NEVER let that mod moderate his/her class board

- NEVER let that mod moderate a thread he/she posted in on his/her play account

The fact that i haven't seen any evidence of a policy like this enforced suggests that it doesn't exist, or isn't enforced.

What have we seen? We have mods talking in threads socially, sometimes in threads that they, themselves may have started on their play accounts, we have them on their own server boards, on their own class boards....

If the list posted before is correct I can think of at least 3 mods that actively participate on their own server forums, as moderators. That's a conflict of interest, and I have yet to see anything done to address it.

THAT is my problem. It's not that there are mods that bothers me, it's that it seems SOE doesn't respect the integrity of their own system enough to bother enforcing that setup. And that's just symptomatic of a larger problem.

Savanja

I think there is a benefit to not sharing the mods identities, the biggest of which being that who the heck would want that kind of attention? It's not as if mods get treated nicely. Anywhere you find mods, you will find assholes who will scream, yell, call names, and otherwise abuse. It might be a known risk that mods take on, but if you could save them that, wouldn't you?

Its as I said about the developers. When they are in game, they want to play, not be confronted and bitched at by the playerbase in their off time, which is why most developers don't share their in game identities. I don't see how saying "Hey there, this here poster moves and locks your posts!" helps anyone at all. It doesn't change the fact that this person has that power, and it just opens them up to attacks for something they do to help the community.

So there goes a great witch hunt. People work hard to out people that they wouldn't otherwise care about, and what? Nothing changes. People preceive things as they wish. No one really knows anything except those involved, and no matter who people suspect of holding these positions, that simply will not change. The only thing that was accomplished by this particular witch hunt was that now, people that may or may not be involved might be harrassed by other players. Score?

Malachani

No one is saying that they can't have anonymous mod accounts. The problem is that as an anonymous mod, they shouldn't be putting themselves in a position for potential conflict of interest. They shouldn't be allowed to post socially as a mod. At all. Sorry, but they have player accounts for that. They shouldn't be allowed to moderate any forum they actively participate in (server forum, class forums, NGD, what have you). And they shouldn't be allowed to moderate ANY thread which their player account has posted on.

Its not alot to ask, but its something that is NOT happening.

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Arthais

You know, I can even agree with you on anonymity, that's not my problem. As I said, my problem is not with people, it's with policy.

In virtually every other profession I can think of there exist stringent conflict of interest policies. And they exist for a reason.

They exist not only to protect the customers and consumers from inappropriate pressure and undue influence, but they exist to protect the staff person himself, in that it prevents temptation.

These policies exist everywhere, yet I have seen no real evidence that they exist here. It doesn't take much to write up a simple conflict of interest policy, I can do it in 5 minutes (and, in fact, did, in the other thread). It is not complex, it is not difficult to create nor particularly difficult to enforce.

Hell, I can see, even on this cheap php that LFG set up, exactly where anyone is, and what they're viewing, at any time. I doubt that SOE's expensive board software would make tracking any chore at all.

But the fact is that the EQ2/SOE team has by all appearance intentionally, willfully chosen to simply to ignore tried and tested methods to prevent conflict of interest, and seems quite content to not enforce policies that would protect not only their customers, but their staff as well.

It's willful indifference, and it is, in my opinion, a VERY bad policy to have.

Again this is a matter of policy for me. I care not that there are mods, I care not who they are. I do care, and I care very much, that a company policy appears to be either total indifference, or extreme laziness when it comes to enforcing guidelines that virtually every other profession has found necessary, and found necessary for good reason.

It shows fundamentally a lack of respect to me, to you, to their entire consumer base, and to their staff. They chose not to take the steps necessary to ensure a fair system, as a matter of company policy. When a company makes it clear that they are simply unwilling to enforce guidelines that exist soley to protect us, and to protect themselves, that is VERY troubling for me.

THAT is what bothers me.