5608 réponses à ce sujet

[Killdren88]

I was so hoping to convince you to play MP one day.

 

Ride to Hell retribution is more appealing.

[o Ventus]

But moderation of official forums are stymied by their status as "official"; once a community turns toxic, attempts to moderate with any force can be spun as a nasty ol' company trying to silence free speech.

 

This has nothing to do with "official", people don't like being silenced. Personally, unless someone is blatantly and overtly derailing the topic or going out of their way to be a d**k to others in the thread, then I say let the discussion run its course. People are allowed to go on tangents so long as it stays civil and only people who actually break rules are reprimanded for it. The others taking part in the discussion will determine its value and merit better than any mod team can, which is something that Bioware's mods somehow repeatedly miss.

 

Using "force" in your moderation isn't the answer.

[Gannayev of Dreams]

Be honest BioWare, this is revenge for the reaction to the ME3 ending... isn't it?

[Reznore57]

I liked this post. 

 

other than that, I don't understand why the forum has to shut down. can't members within the community run the forum after the devs leave?

 

The forum belongs to Bioware.So no, they're not going to give it to fans.

Anyway they want to nuke the forum from orbit at this point , there's not much we can do.

[Heimdall]

Well, I think I'm going off for the night. I feel gutted...

[CHRrOME]

Moderating forums is challenging,t here is no doubt of that. It can also be stressful, and dealing with trolls painful. These forums used to be moderated by volunteer fans, and something like that could happen too.

I wish bioware had asked us for help rather than decided to close this

 

That's because this is obviously not the problem. They're closing this forums for a reason (a reason that is not the one described on the thread, that's for sure) that no one here really knows. We can only speculate.

[Sylvius the Mad]

There's a variety of angles that it can come from.

Post release, as someone that works in QA, seeing the issues that I cannot help resolve weighs on me because part of me feels I've let people down. (not the fan's fault, but is something that weighs on the mind for sure).

As someone that tried to be active in community building, it also meant not ignoring obvious transgressions. I remember when the Cullen thread received dozens of pages of porn image links spammed into it, and I felt I couldn't ignore it and went through cleaning up the thread and banning those responsible and investigating alt accounts and the like. I could have ignored it, but that probably would have been more mentally worse for me. I think I went to bed around 4 AM that day. I could have just closed/deleted the thread, but that was what the trolls wanted so I didn't want to just take the easy road out.

And maybe I need tougher skin? I'm probably not the best judge of that. I don't think I had soft skin, just more that my armor wasn't impregnable and for better or worse me posting somewhere was a lightning rod for people to derail threads to get my attention and vent their frustrations at me. So in that sense given enough time it just became, if not "stressful" then certainly much less fun.

I was always impressed with your stamina when you were here. I know I couldn't have handled the social pressure of doing what you were doing in a public venue.

[Killdren88]

That's because this is obviously not the problem. They're closing this forums for a reason (a reason that is not the one described on the thread, that's for sure) that no one here really knows. We can only speculate.

 

They don't want to spend the money to keep the lights on here.

[Cheviot]

This has nothing to do with "official", people don't like being silenced. Personally, unless someone is blatantly and overtly derailing the topic or going out of their way to be a d**k to others in the thread, then I say let the discussion run its course. People are allowed to go on tangents so long as it stays civil and only people who actually break rules are reprimanded for it. The others taking part in the discussion will determine its value and merit better than any mod team can, which is something that Bioware's devs somehow repeatedly miss.

Well luckily you won't have to worry about that.  You're entering a brave new world where Bioware won't have a say in what discussions you have with others.

[Darth Krytie]

While I'm not quite sure how BioWare will function without new, fresh, tasty, hot takes over why their next game is make or break or how they'll get along without 204 posts detailing lessons they need to learn, I'm sure they'll cope with it somehow, someway.

 

I've admittedly had a love-hate relationship with the forums. Not entirely surprised or disappointed with the decision. There are some aspects of the forum that I appreciated, and there's not really a good alternative to them in the existing, most used social media places. But, I'm sure something will come up.

 

In any case, I'm grateful for all the friends I've met here. As for the rest of the members, it was great debating with some of you.

[Sylvius the Mad]

The forum belongs to Bioware.So no, they're not going to give it to fans.
Anyway they want to nuke the forum from orbit at this point , there's not much we can do.

We can copy the data.

[PCThug]

Be honest BioWare, this is revenge for the reaction to the ME3 ending... isn't it?

More like the tepid response to their EA Play presentation.

[Dr. Rush]

The more I think about it, the more I think they are trying to rebuild the community. The BSN was a big project, shifting the community from the old legacy forums to the BSN. It feels like the new Bioware community managers are very deliberately trying to undo the community that was built by Chris Priestly in the years past. I don't know if Priestly was the guy who made the decisions for the BSN, but that era of this community is very much being razed to the ground.

 

I can only think they must have some long-term plan to re-introduce a new forum community when ME:A launches in 2017. They probably want a fresh start with a totally clean slate, rather than trying to redeem this community that they inherited. 

[Reznore57]

We can copy the data.

 

Don't these belong to Bioware?

I imagine it's possible to archive the forum somehow but to keep on using it?I doubt that.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I was so hoping to convince you to play MP one day.

I did get convinced to play ME3 at all. After ME2, that was quite an achievement.

[o Ventus]

The more I think about it, the more I think they are trying to rebuild the community. The BSN was a big project, shifting the community from the old legacy forums to the BSN. It feels like the new Bioware community managers are very deliberately trying to undo the community that was built by Chris Priestly in the years past. I don't know if Priestly was the guy who made the decisions for the BSN, but that era of this community is very much being razed to the ground.

 

I can only think they must have some long-term plan to re-introduce a new forum community when ME:A launches in 2017. They probably want a fresh start with a totally clean slate, rather than trying to redeem this community that they inherited. 

 

Let's not pretend that Priestly had a hand in building the community here, he was one of the more banhappy mods back in the day and shut down entire sub-forums because he didn't like what was being said in just a few threads.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Don't these belong to Bioware?
I imagine it's possible to archive the forum somehow but to keep on using it?I doubt that.

There would be a break between the new posts and old, but a site-rip as an archive should be possible.

I wish we'd done that to the old BioBoards before they took them down.

[nightscrawl]

The more I think about it, the more I think they are trying to rebuild the community. The BSN was a big project, shifting the community from the old legacy forums to the BSN. It feels like the new Bioware community managers are very deliberately trying to undo the community that was built by Chris Priestly in the years past. I don't know if Priestly was the guy who made the decisions for the BSN, but that era of this community is very much being razed to the ground.

 

I can only think they must have some long-term plan to re-introduce a new forum community when ME:A launches in 2017. They probably want a fresh start with a totally clean slate, rather than trying to redeem this community that they inherited. 

 

So they're hoping, what, that certain toxic people won't hear about the new forums opening up and come back to continue their trolling?

[SKAR]

No more forums = they don't give a damn about their fans. If they did they wouldn't take away the forums. The official story is bull$#!t. But like Joker said in the beginning of Mass Effect only an Idiot believes the official story.

[Reever]

I really don't understand why the heck you'd take such a decision. It's like shooting yourself in the foot and alienating your core fandom. Very dumb move.

 

I haven't been active in the last few years anyway, but the forums were still a source of info and some good discussions about ME. And I would have loved to continue observing/taking part in these in the future.

 

But alas, I guess it won't be on these forums anymore.

[ObserverStatus]

If BioWare doesn't want to continue investing time and money into this little corner of the greater fandom, I guess that's their business. I truly did love the BioWare Social Network, but this place always did seem like a pretty sorry substitute, and I lost my remaining interest after BioWare closed Off-Topic. Oh well, the experiment is over, breakups happen. Good luck with whatever you decide to do next, BioWare. Live long, and make good games. Maybe some day I'll drop by on one of those newfangled social media platforms and say "hi."

[Allan Schumacher]

I don't think even they believe that but they had to give a reason and that's the one they ran with.

It happens a lot more as we get closer to release (and especially right after release) but even then it wasn't uncommon for long time forum regulars to get upset at, for example, why Hrungr even needed to have a Twitter thread when devs could be posting those comments and messages here on the forum.

 

I suspect the forum is a bit quieter at the moment so it might not be as obvious right now.

 

I was a mod at a very famous anime board run by the translator. I know exactly what you went through especially with porn spam and breaking the news to fans about things they did not want to hear regarding fav pairings, etc... and I quit and had a breakdown.

My brief stint as Community Manager was very eye opening. It's very challenging to try to keep ahead of the curve for that sort of stuff.  I try to be more diligent when I see very bad stuff on other forums I go onto now just to help out as much as I can.

 

Seems like in instances of actual moderation needing to be done, it should be with those generic "BioMod01" type accounts. That way people can't get mad at an actual name.

I actually did start to do that, although to limited effect as I didn't change how I wrote any moderator comments

 

That said though it's still me seeing stuff and taking care of it.  I actually found explicit retaliation when I moderated with this account limited (and rare enough that it was more humorous than aggravating).

 

From the mods own keyboard.

 

 

For context, if someone comes up to me on twitter and says that I should be aborted as a fetus so that competent QA would have been available to work on the game, I consider that unproductive and I am not interested in facilitating a discussion with that person.  On a place like twitter, I can happily block and move on.  On the forum, however, blocking people that were rude wasn't a thing.  I could (and would) moderate them, but unless it was a permanent ban they'd eventually return. If I had them muted/blocked then I'd be unable to see if they were being bad on the forum.

 

Twitter is certainly not ideal for lengthy feedback unless you are able to send direct messages, but people do still report issues they have with games as well as general critiques.  I can still facilitate discussion with those people.

 

As for the "random interjection" I'm referring to, when on the forum, I'm helping people who have specifically problem X.  Sometimes see that I'm actively helping those fans with their problem and get annoyed that they are getting all the attention, so they then come into a thread about Problem X to discuss problem Y, and sometimes even state that they will not leave because obviously Problem X thread is where devs are hanging out and it's the only way to bring attention to problem Y.  Unfortunately this usually ends up breaking out into a fight between fans as they get upset over thread derailment etc.  It also creates work for me (and the moderator team) if we decide to clean things up.

 

 

I don't know if you know me, but I've always had the utmost respect for you and the effort you put in for us here. I'm glad you're with us for the end

 

I do remember you and thank you for the kind words.

 

I think what you need is someone who does that job for you on a forum.

 

We had moderators, but honestly I asked for moderator powers from Chris back in the day because having it sit there and wait for moderators to see the report was often too long for my liking.

 

For a bit it was actually my job to help coordinate this as I was a temp Community Manager between DAI shipping and me joining MEA.  I was surprised how different my interactions felt simply by having it be my job.  I definitely prefer interacting with fans as a "volunteer gig" on my own time (such as right now).

[duckley]

There's a variety of angles that it can come from.

 

Post release, as someone that works in QA, seeing the issues that I cannot help resolve weighs on me because part of me feels I've let people down.  (not the fan's fault, but is something that weighs on the mind for sure).

 

As someone that tried to be active in community building, it also meant not ignoring obvious transgressions.  I remember when the Cullen thread received dozens of pages of porn image links spammed into it, and I felt I couldn't ignore it and went through cleaning up the thread and banning those responsible and investigating alt accounts and the like.  I could have ignored it, but that probably would have been more mentally worse for me.  I think I went to bed around 4 AM that day.  I could have just closed/deleted the thread, but that was what the trolls wanted so I didn't want to just take the easy road out.

And maybe I need tougher skin?  I'm probably not the best judge of that.  I don't think I had soft skin, just more that my armor wasn't impregnable and for better or worse me posting somewhere was a lightning rod for people to derail threads to get my attention and vent their frustrations at me.  So in that sense given enough time it just became, if not "stressful" then certainly much less fun.

Well I am certainly sorry if being connected to this board has caused you or anyone else significant stress. There are certainly some nasty people out there, who thrive on the anonymity of the internet. Unfortunately you sill find this sort of bullying, toxic behaviour on facebook, twitter etc - but likely it won't be yours to deal with - I get it.

 

A couple of thoughts already shared merit repeating IMO.

 

1) the rationale provided initially did not ring true and for me it made a lousy decision even more hurtful and disrespectful.

2) If the real reason for terminating the site is because of toxic participants - it is too bad that the exception creates the rule... I hate it when the sins of some punishes all.

3) If the real reason for terminating the site is because of toxic participants, as was suggested, it would have been great had Bioware reached out for help to clean up the posts and ban the offenders.

[AlanC9]

There would be a break between the new posts and old, but a site-rip as an archive should be possible.
I wish we'd done that to the old BioBoards before they took them down.

Have you tried the Internet Archive? The Wayback Machine works on this board, but I'm not sure about the old ones.

[vertigomez]

Allan, I understand where you're coming from when it comes to how fans interact with you and the other devs. I think Twitter and other outlets are probably better for that, and I don't blame any dev for not sticking around when the BSN gets hateful.

But where, oh where, are we supposed to talk to each other? To other fans? There's no place like this forum.

I hope someone can archive the place before it gets destroyed.