1433 réponses à ce sujet

[Angrywolves]

Me desire to criticise Bioware ?
Say it ain't so.
I criticise bad moderation on the forums and mistakes made in game development .
Fair topics to criticise .
I've actually praised Ninja Stan as being fair, so I am not blind.
But Stan obviously has this man crush on Bioware where they can do no wrong.
Rather sad, but his choice .
shrugs.

[Ninja Stan]

Ohnenick wrote...

This is an excellent point and exactly the reason I want a reliable appeal system. If I get banned, because someone misunderstood a post or didn´t get the whole context, I want a chance to clear it up. Firstly because prior bans might give a mod judging my later posts the wrong idea about me. And secondly because receiving an injustice makes me steam. Getting the chance to address that injustice relieves pressure. Being totally ignored about it increases steam to rage. Rage makes a poor advisor for future posting in the forum or respecting the people moderating it.

Please understand that I write this as someone who yet has not personally experienced the above thing. I´ve only ever been banned once and I totally deserved that. But I see others fuming about stuff and I can understand where they are coming from.

I also understand where they are coming from. Though we are looking at it from two different angles, I'm not completely clueless or being deliberately obtuse when I offer suggestions or alternatives.

In your posts in this thread, your prevailing advice to all is "Do not break the rules". This would be sound advice, the problem is however, that we often have no idea anymore, where the rules draw the line. I do get the general gist of "read the guidelines", but that is not what I mean.

Constructive posters that have no history of getting previously banned and are generally helpfull members of the community have actually (in private discussions) stated to the fact that they almost don´t dare post on the main forums anymore, as they have no idea anymore what could bring down the banhammer and what would be save to post.

There was a reasonably clear line before the age of the Bot-Mods. But now - speaking figuratively again - , we retreated 10 clicks behind the line, only to see the same line jumping back and forth all around us. As others have allready said, the Bot-Mods act so... randomly... for want of a better word, that we have no clear line anymore.

So following your advice at the moment would mean not posting anything even remotely entertaining and stick to the purely technical stuff of game-mechanics and the occasional "what would we like for further games" stuff. This seems to be the only completely safe option.

But is a technical plattform for game mechanics only really the thing Bioware aims for with it's "Social" network? And would people really stay onboard for only that?

I do not try to paint the mods as the bad guys here, but I think the "whoever gets slapped deserved it and should deal with it" appraoch is - for all it's appealing simplicity - equally flawed.

But I have seen, that you in your above posts showed at least some understanding as to what bothers folks and that makes me more optimistic for now. I really think that implementing a working process for addressing questionable mod decisions would alleviate much of the current pains.

Thank you again for your time and input.

At the moment, absent any official word or reliable two-way discussion with the leadership of the BioWareMods, I think my suggestions are pretty fair and arguably effective. I'm not a huge fan of the one-liner, ICQ type conversations I often see in the ME3 MP forum, so my suggestions are mainly to cut down on the one-liner, meme, and image responses. Offering a counterpoint, advancing the discussion, or even presenting your dissent in a constructive way looks way better than responding to a post with "+1," "cool story, bro," "Sten: no," "Steak," "dat [anything]," or "I'm a Korean model." (And when typing those out, that's six responses that can fit onto a single line of this text window.)

Without official ofrum admin intervention, we're kind of at an impasse. I, for one, would like forumites to take more responsibility for their behaviour, and the only way we can emphasize that is (for some) through bans. Y'all would like the BioWareMods (and moderation in general) to be less strict, more consistent, more transparent and more communicative, and the only way you can emphasize that desire is (for some) by acting out. 

Who knows? Maybe the new Mod group was given a mandate to strictly enforce the rules, and all they need to tone it down is to get new marching orders. Keep in mind that, from my point of view, all those extra sets of eyes have made my job as Moderator much less stressful, which allows me more time to participate in interesting discussions like this one. Doesn't mean they're doing a perfect job, but they are having at least one of the desired effects (ie. freeing up named Moderator time).

I appreciate the reasoned, well thought out posts here, everyone. Let's keep it up and encourage others to do the same in other threads. 

[Catastrophy]

The off- topic forum - a long way to scroll there.

This discussion has taken its turn to some gripes with the current moderation. I guess enforcing rules is not a trivial task, but I 'll just tell you what makes me come visit this place:

(To clear up - I'm speaking about the MP part and the MP forum)

1)
Looking about info on one of my favourite games.
Since I've played it very long, I've begun wandering to other games and this isn't as important anymore.

Mass Effect MP can be played without having a deep insight into game mechanics but knowing some off the stuff definitely makes it easier on the higher difficulties. And that's where people want to go to get better rewards.
I'd strongly suggest to preserve informative threads for the playerbase. Unlike me not everyone likes to check out all the option of building a character by himself or figure out a kit and the different playstyles.
This place has been outstanding in providing such info - it's an asset, because it facilitates things for people who really want to dive into the game. And you can't get the info out of the game itself in a reasonable time span.

2)
Entertainment
When the game still had support one of the major sources of entertainment was Eric coming to the board and posting the balance changes. (I still wonder: Did he love it? Or hate it?). We had lots of disussions and lots of drama. This place was livid and there was always a comment to laugh about or just plainly facepalm over.
And I guess it has been a great source of tears for the writer pit's coffee machine.

Now we haven't got the new and fresh infusions of the 'old days' anymore, but I like to see that people I recognize are still around and see some inside jokes.
Sure, some things may have become old or 'memeish' but that only proves that the game has made a rock solid impact.

Now - I have two places to go for entertainment: The fan fiction forum and the MP forum. I like the stuff from the fan fiction but the MP forum is my favourite place to hang out and I'd like this place to have some humour, too. I wouldn't visit it if it was just Question-Answer-Thankyousir.
It's got a community with weird, annoying, strange people, yes - that's where you mods come in. Just find a balance - this place needs humour.

And unnamed mods? "Bot mods"? I think they're creepy. No fun at all. Why are they there? Did things get too personal with some of the mods? Now it looks like "Your papers, citizen! Go ahead! Do not linger around! No laughing!" (I'm exaggerating - but they DO look creepy.)

3)
Looking for info for future content.
I know there's a lot of excitement about the new DAI - I might even try it out when it's out. But from my heart I'm all for Sci-Fi.
But that's not the point. I expect to have some news about things I crave for from the forum. What's better to herd some people together in a place and know they'll be there when things are gonna be disclosed? That's better than advertising - and way cheaper. And we might tell our friends, too. And the family. And the doggy.


tl;dr: Typed together stuff you already probably figured out by yourself. Just try to keep a balance. You might want to keep as many users visiting as possible. We need the carrots - and keep the sticks, too.

[Ziegrif]

If I could change something I'd put a ''my favorite boards'' block in my profile section of the site so I wouldn't need to click my latest post to get to that board but just get there faster from a ''favorites'' section on my profile.

I hope I managed to explain it sufficiently. >.<

[DragonRacer]

Ziegrif wrote...

If I could change something I'd put a ''my favorite boards'' block in my profile section of the site so I wouldn't need to click my latest post to get to that board but just get there faster from a ''favorites'' section on my profile.

I hope I managed to explain it sufficiently. >.<

Oooh, that does make sense! Give us a way to tag favorite subforums so we can get there more easily than scrolling through the current 8 billion subforums that exist on BSN.

[Ziegrif]

DragonRacer wrote...

Ziegrif wrote...

If I could change something I'd put a ''my favorite boards'' block in my profile section of the site so I wouldn't need to click my latest post to get to that board but just get there faster from a ''favorites'' section on my profile.

I hope I managed to explain it sufficiently. >.<

Oooh, that does make sense! Give us a way to tag favorite subforums so we can get there more easily than scrolling through the current 8 billion subforums that exist on BSN.

Exactly!
I'm kinda tired of ctrl + f searching Off topic because I didn't make a post in that sub forum in a long while.

[2Pac]

I think we should have background photos on our profile. Like Theme's but themes we can upload.

[Ohei]

Let me post in the sections of games that I own yet for some odd reason can't seem to be able to link for the life of me and thus I get locked out. Even contacting Origin about it did nothing; this whole, ''you gotta own it to talk about it.'' is completely ridiculous, in my opinion.

[Fast Jimmy]

I'd like to be able to Ignore posters. Not just IM's or updates, but entire forum posts.

Some people do nothing but distract from the conversation or post incredibly stupid things that do nothing but infuriate me. If we could just say "I don't want to see anything from this person, ever" it would be a big boon.

[J-Pony]

Being able to upload custom avi's through the site naturally like any other site.

You know in case the DA:O creator refuses to upload everything even the normal non custom avi's for you like it did me.

[fchopin]

I would like a different forum created for books and other subjects so the forums do not get infested with spoilers from books.

I like the gamer forums to be only for games.

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

I've been informed that using one smiley per line of text is "spam." 

My post was deleted as a consequence of this ruling. 

I have been using a smiley per line of text for quite some time. 

It has never been deemed "spam" before. 

For obvious reasons, I would like to suggest that including smileys in the Forum interface implies that it is acceptable to use them. 

And, I would like to respectfully request that they be considered a ligitimite form of Forum communication, since I believe they enrich the experience, and reduce the likelihood of people's tone being misunderstood. 

[Arcadian Legend]

How about that for any threads you've subscribed to, you get alerts on the What's New page the same way you do for Group Subscriptions anytime something gets posted in one of them.

[Angrywolves]

Was that our Jessica on that Heroes of Cosplay show ?
If so, congrats.
Now we know what you do in your spare time.
smiles.

[Blood-Lord Thanatos]

I ask only that the avatars of Moderatus the righteous be merciful to those deserving of mercy

[shepskisaac]

I would like an ability to view all recent developer posts, like SWTOR forums have. Not talking about clicking on blue Bioware icon in each thread, a separate function that lists only dev posts in descending order.

[Nerdage]

I still think spoiler tags are a good idea, not to talk about spoilers in the non-spoiler sub-forums but just to talk about other games; you don't go into spoiler sub-forums here expecting spoilers for other games after all, but sometimes you want to draw a comparison to another game and it can't really be helped.

[Fiddles dee dee]

i would really like the pm system back. two friends who are not friends with each other having an issue which neither can explain to the other in a thread without derailment could easily be fixed through pm.

[The Don's Hound]

PMs to people who aren't friends.

I want a mobile app also.

[Obadiah]

Fix the "Updated" date on the Projects.