I refuse to read through the thread.

Because in these final, swirly days of BSN, I don't want to know which of you are crazy enough to say anything but collectors.

"Now that factions are emerging, which community will become the go-to-Bioware community?! Stay tuned!!"

 

Drama, baby!

The forum is providing plenty of drama these days, but not really of that particular variety.

People are all sharing information, providing resources to help people to connect to each group. Somewhat less exciting than the Mad Maxian battle for control of the dwindling desert space one might expect.

Now I wanna convince everyone to start having armed dunebuggy races.

I'm still working on figuring out imports, but if successful I'll be needing everyone's help to spread the word around that users may recover their post history. As it is now I've only been posting on this less-frequented subforum, so I am not sure how many people are even aware of this project xD

I have a thread updating people on the offsite BSN.

There's not much too it, at the moment, but as the testing progresses, I'm going to keep them informed. And as I hear back from Malloc, I will post in here to let people know how things are progressing with his efforts.

Is there a story Mark, why you wont join cyonans site?

I understand the curiosity (I don't know the answer.)

But I have a soft spot for the thread, and the airing of grievances has been known to get threads locked. As pointless as it is, given the inevitable fate of the thread, I'd prefer that he didn't answer (at least, not in here.)

Lame.

The reason why I wrote "How intriguing." is not because I have any opinion on the perceived censoring of forum members. I was referring to the aspect with BJ's response about how they, the employees are censored. That's how I interpreted his response. That they can't say things here on BSN. If I am wrong I hope I'm corrected. If I am right, it's confusing.

If they are censored here on BSN by their own company why would they then be allowed to go onto fan sites and say anything as a respresentative of Bioware? Or is he saying the employees are censored by the forum membership as what ever messaging they present will be met with negativity? If so, then going onto fan sites that keep a handle on the tone of the forum membership would make sense. That's intriguing to me.

I am beginning to wonder if the powers that be see the forum as a problem to be dealt with as its getting in the way of their messaging versus "we don't like the forum or our customers" which is the prevalent point of view.

Looking back at the response of his you quoted, I think it was a misunderstanding. He was referring to the likelihood of accusations at an official BioWare site versus an unofficial one where he has no moderation powers activated (rather then simply choosing not to use the ones he has.)

If you meant something along the lines of NDAs, there are aspects that the developers have mentioned from time to time that they aren't allowed to talk about, but it isn't censorship, exactly, so much as elements of software development that you can't disclose due to employment agreements.

There was then a long apology thread from the fans

I remember a few days later when every thread on ME multiplayer's front page had a BioWare tag on it.

 

I don't think Dev's should ever be moderators unless they really like it.

Brojo can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the system works (and in the past more or less worked) like this:

The developers have moderation privileges activated on their accounts, and certain administrative privileges over forums associated directly with their purview (In Brojo's case, as QA for ME 3 MP at the time, that would be the ME 3 Multiplayer forum.)

Their role as moderators is functionally similar to that of the volunteers, but they are not required to act as moderators as part of their duties. For some, doing so would be an inevitable byproduct of their involvement in the forum. For the majority, though, it was their preference not to.

I believe that has been true for the 4 or 5 years that I've been around.

How intriguing.

On a small or large scale, he's actually referring to an inevitable consequence of moderation.

There's probably a bit of a formula to it. Something along the lines of: The greater the ingrained political or emotional power at the core of the statement; the greater the intensity of the moment of creation; the greater the offence at the position opposed; Then the greater the likelihood of moderation being perceived as censorship.

A collection of probabilities that will reinforce each other in ways that go beyond what each might individually cause.

So, whereas you could understandably interpret that there might be one, or a few specific stories that would be at the core of what he said, at the scale of BSN, the odds of that accusation resulting from moderation actions rises to the place where it becomes an accepted byproduct of the activity. If that's not something someone is comfortable with,  one is going to find moderating others' behaviour to be unpleasant.

For what it's worth, all other opinions about the moderation on BioWare's sites aside, I have traditionally seen very little of what I would perceive as "censorship."

I don't recall seeing it from Bryan Johnson or Conal Pierse, and with the numbered mods, my experience is that there is a plethora of other explanations at the heart of moderation actions that are simpler, more direct and more likely than formal censorship.

Looking back at the named moderators, I would say Raen did not censor people in my experience, and what many people interpreted as Ninja Stan's tendency to censor was more of a combination of two related probability fields: The post being directed at BioWare specifically, and any measurable rule violation/hostility in the post. I don't actually think Ninja Stan spent much time censoring opinions, but rather equitably distributing his very strict and consistent interpretations of the rules.

I didn't mean to go on that long, but what I'm saying is that there is an inevitable perception on BSN - as there would be on any site like it - that moderation actions equal censorship. It doesn't need to be anywhere close to a majority for the probability to make it a near-constant element of moderation.

I have little doubt that actual "censorship" has taken place through moderation, and have seen some examples. Similar to the probabilities at play with the community at large, similar tendencies to be guided by one's own politics to the point of moderation (at least partly) based on them is also inevitable, beyond a certain point in size. Similarly, this doesn't need to be anywhere near a majority for it to present itself with some consistency.

In my experience, the accusations of censorship outnumber the likely instances of it by a factor that I expect goes well beyond 100 to 1. And that is largely what I would expect on site hosting a community of this size.

And I still didn't mean to go on this long, and shall stop now.

Hi everyone. 

 

Could someone please list the alternaitve threads that are popping up so it is easy for folks to compare and make a choice for their new home?  Is there anyone on here who is really keeping track of who is doing what? Apologies if this already exists somehwere...

 

Maybe something like...

 

Creator - Group name - Site Link (if it is up)  - purpose of the site (since there seems to be some different appraoches to what is important to preserve).

 

Is that possible at this point?  I am just a bit lost about who is doing what and where folks are going once this place shuts down...

 

Thanks! (and hope I don't sound like a complete rube)

Others have linked you the current index, but I'll mention that the individual sites also have each other indexed somewhere prominent, as well. Or, rather, they are in the process of doing that, I'm not sure how many already have. So as we go forward, any one of them will serve to link you to the others, as well.

The more annoying part about this is that Priestly said this in response to the Joe guy asking a legitimate question about what platform fans should use now that the BSN will be closing. 

 

Ummm, okay. Obviously the guy hadn't read the official post yet or he would have been scoffing over the suggestions in it like the rest of us have, so there was no reason for Priestly to even respond in the way that he did. I think he should just keep his nose out of this before he gives this whole thing even more of rank smell than it already has. 

I encountered him a few months after joining BSN. In that single experience, utterly unprovoked, I discovered that I was toxic, responsible for 90% of BioWare's problems, and that I was a bad enough human being that it justified talking down to me despite knowing literally nothing about me.

Strange experience when meeting your community manager for the first time.

I'm "that Joe guy." Didn't realize at the time who Chris Priestly was. Even knowing that, wouldn't change anything, including my response, which was: 

"Chris Priestly So... should Steam also close their forums to encourage users to look for "new opportunities", discourage them from dwelling on negatives and discourage them from criticizing without factual basis? How about Ubisoft, should they close their forums for the same reasons?"

I hope you're happy. You're the reason they had to close the forum!

Also, your post was more than 140 characters long.

As much as I would prefer not to undermine my own joke, and as much as I believe sarcasm that is explained is ruined, I must point out to any who are inclined to moderate this as a personal attack that "Joe" is very aware that I am being sarcastic, and is extremely unlikely to feel personally attacked. I can't speak for the person I mention in the upper part of my post, but he made it clear he didn't like me, anyway, so the point doesn't likely matter.

For a name that evokes the origins while still sounding like it's own, independent thing, maybe something like:

BioNauts

BioKnights

I'm a bit partial to the first one in the sci-exploration sense.

I was thinking of something along "The Refuge"... it might be treated as a joke and it's in now wa related to Bioware at all, I'm in no hurry anyway I have until the 26th of Aug (probably launch a week or so before that).

That's actually a great name. There is a forum born from BSN called "The Shelter," a name inspired by a similar process.

The main issue is that there is no way to notify users that their accounts are somewhere and that they can create a password, because we (of course) don't have access to email addresses. I am thinking that any users created before the import will easily get their posts, and people who notice afterwards we'll have to do manually on-request.

If there turns out to be a way to do it manually, afterwards, that would certainly be great! I expect that in the grand scheme of things, most of the total membership is almost certain to find out the details later in the process, rather than earlier, so here's hoping they'll still have options.

Looking at the Bioware's official facebook profile....This shitstorm is worse than the ME3 one. People are ANGRY.

I was under the impression they wanted people to use other social media because it was easier for them to control the flow of negativity?

I mean, don't get me wrong, that theory is obviously flawed, but are you telling me they made this decision, but have decided to continue having an official facebook page that doesn't allow them to delete comments?

Wasn't that a bit of an oversight?

Thanks to whoever pinned this thread.

 

I swear, Jeremiah is probably a wizard. He mentioned something about this thread being pinned this morning and presto.

Shh.

I'm not supposed to talk about that thread.

And I believe the request was actually asked later by someone else in the other pinned thread and answered.

I'm okay now.

This is ****ing gold, BioWare, and you're going to delete it all!!!

Sorry, that was basically the discovery of PBS YooToob series "Space-Time" resulting in me watching 21 hours of physics lectures over the last three days, simmered with years of unresolved confusion over nonsensical star trek and battlestar galactica technobabble, and seasoned with recent mild trauma over BSN evaporation.

SMR's form of protest: Testing the hypothesis that repeatedly reaching the "like" quota will break BSN at the code level, causing a schismic rift in space-time that will re-vibrate us and engage in a quantum-physical-sidereal leap across to a BSN wordline on a slightly different bounding plane in the multiverse in which the decision to delete BSN was never made.

Quite wisely, they have not allowed me to post threads in the announcements section. That will probably minimize the number of wiggling penis gifs in there, so I can hardly blame them!

But I did copy/paste the OP into the Forum Suggestions area, and I'm sure someone will clean it up and get a proper page for it going over there.

Which is why this thread is incredibly helpful. So helpful that I suggest that Lady Artifice select at least one of the new sites as a host for a copy of this thread, and going forward, as the meeting place for everyone to keep track of everyone else. Then those of us that have to visit multiple boards will have a roadmap for who went where that will survive after BSN gets zapped into the Fade.

I believe the plan is to have a section linking the others in each board. I'll double-check if there's one set up with Cyonan, and if not I'll put up a temporary one in announcements, at least.

I don't think it impacts what I was going to do much... maybe.

I was always going to be waiting for a substantial grace period to give myself a chance to assess what I was buying. The truth is, I probably wouldn't have hated DA 2 as much as I did if I had a concept of how different it was going to be from DA:O before I bought it on day one (the only time I had ever done so.)

But it's a lesson that is at least as much my own responsibility as anyone else's, so when I had a similar-yet-different experience with ME 3 being pre-ordered, I did finally get it through my head to allow some time to pass when a game comes out, which was what I had always previously done.

So I had always figured it would be a couple of months, with a decent chance of me choosing to wait until it came down in price before getting it.

I am still somewhat curious about the single player campaign, but any momentum for it was cut short in 2012. Had there only been the SP side, it's doubtful I'd be giving it much thought, as it was the MP of ME 3 that I ended up enjoying much more. But I admit, some of what I've heard has piqued my curiosity, so I'll be keeping ME:A on my radar, even if it isn't on my list of things to buy.

As to the multiplayer, they've essentially gutted any hope of that being much of an experience. Between the dissolution of the MP team's Forum QA and Multiplayer community, there isn't enough value left in MP to make it worth considering as part of the purchase.

So I'm still in a "I'll wait and get it later" expectation, but there's now a much higher chance that I'll be getting it used at a much lower price after a much longer waiting period, since there is little I'm inherently interested in about it.

I'm still going to buy it, but much less enthusiastically than I would have a week prior. Might even sigh dramatically whilst it downloads.

 

Hope that teaches you a lesson, EAware.

That's right, the pun is so terrible I have to spoil'r it.

Cyonan and others took it upon themselves to start their own competing post bsn communities. It is what it is. The new mods from these different forums will likely rally behind the community's choice. Talk of eggs & baskets is nonsense. Splitting the same amount of eggs into 5 different variations of a basket if these all persist is annoying and pointless as f--k.

This hostility makes no sense.

No one else is looking at it this way. If you're upset that everyone isn't flocking to whatever solution you think they should use, then I tell you again: the problem lies with you.

People are not obligated to do what you say. And none of us is upset by your choice of whatever it is that you want to do. People in here are, in spite of what you think, cooperating across boards and being supportive of each other. There is no resentment being displayed by administrators to each other, and they are, in fact, working together.

Your interpretation of the situation reads a lot like you projecting your own hostility on to others. That's not what the rest of us are here for. You disapprove of people not coming to your site. Fine. You've said so, we've acknowledged that you are upset, there is no further need to keep getting upset at people. They are busy working hard to preserve information and create alternatives. I applaud their efforts, and perhaps you might want to think about a more "live and let live" philosophy, but do whatever you like. It's only a suggestion.

I won't address your complaint further, if you choose to press it.