I think there are no BW employees who think in terms of community building.
Well, I couldn't help but take this personally. Apologies Jessica for a minor derailment, but I did have some observations about some of the issues that I, personally, do have with the social aspects of the site (which are very poor compared to a lot of other social aspects).
I currently have 153 friends on this site, and this is after a recent culling of some (primarily because of content that left me frustrated on my news feed). In most cases, invitations came to me and I tended to accept without much restriction. In some cases, I actually put forward the request myself because I enjoyed series of interactions I had with a fan. And despite initial accusations that I was a PR shill or whatnot in the wake of ME3's ending, I tried to continue to interact with fans.
But I also found myself in awkward situations, such as when I would go to my news feed to see what a BSN friend has to say in a particular topic, only to find that that person is basically tearing into BioWare for being a bunch of liars regarding a particular topic and effectively calling some of my colleagues (and real life friends) incompetent. Which is certainly not something I want to to really associate myself with, so then I remove friends. Now it's evidently a drama thing, because I would receive PMs going "Hey I noticed you removed me from your friends" with follow ups (because I didn't immediately reply because I tended to get a LOT of PMs) with various degrees of bizarre responses because I didn't respond within some imagined time frame that was considered acceptable. That if it didn't just end up on my news feed (or even just a friend's profile, because I did click on them...) and I saw some public discourse and drama because Allan removed someone from his friends list.
Or when I do think someone is being unfair, and I ban that person (typically a 1-5 day temporary ban). Though we have some mutual BSN friends and right on my news feed is a post among a common group of friends with laughing comments effectively celebrating the ban, or worse insinuations that I am unfair or unreasonable in enforcing the rules and have favourites because -clearly- I don't ban the actual problem people.
But to say that there are no BW employees who think in terms of community building is certainly a sad thing for me to read, and it certainly makes my attempts to try to interact with people feel like they've certainly been for naught. My entire reason for posting started simply to provide an outlet for people that were mad at ME3, and in time I eventually shifted over to talk more with the Dragon Age groups because that's the project that I actually work on.
I certainly wouldn't say I've been infallible. I pretty much just naively jumped in with little preparation aside from a "Remain professional" that was shared with me in late 2009 in preparation for DAO's release. So yeah, I've definitely taken some things the wrong way when I probably shouldn't have. I've reconciled with some people that I initially snarked at (with varying degrees of longevity), and openly had some humble pie on various topics that were heated but ultimately I was still very new to trying to take part in because I was ignorant to a lot of perspectives.
100% of the time I spend on this forum is completely volunteer and completely of my own volition. And to read that anything that results in less effort is preferable is exactly the type of sword that pierces right through my heart. My brain isn't immune to latching onto things in the worst possible way, and it's really hard to not see something like that and think "I guess I did nothing but waste my time for the last 20 months."
But I guess I was trying to be more proactive in "policing the forums" (even after external moderating teams were brought in so that people like myself and Gaider and Jepler wouldn't need to act as mods.... mostly because I felt a dissonance to turn a blind eye to what I felt was obvious mean spirited posting) so I fit under that umbrella. Doubly conflicting, however, since others in this thread have stated that all would be well if only were were more active in our policing and hired more moderators.
I have more I'd like to say about the topic and discussion in general, though I'll defer somewhat to Jessica as I have no idea what her actual plans are for where she'd like the forums to move to, but at this point it's 3:30 in the morning and I should probably just go to bed. So good night.
Allan
Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 14 novembre 2013 - 10:37 .
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