EVE General Discussion

It has become apparent over the last 24 hours that players are upset at the perceived locking of legitimate discussion threads on the forums. The CCL have been set up to assist the Community team in talking to players, assisting them with queries and moderating the forums to ensure that EVE related discussions remain on-topic in a relatively calm environment.

So let me talk a bit about what is happening with this team historically, what is happening now and what we expect to happen in the future.

The Past – Formation of the team.

The concept for what the CCL team was outlined in a Dev Blog back in 2011. Our goals at that time were to establish the leadership of the volunteer program and let it grow to service the needs of the EVE forums. During its inception we had several volunteers join and subsequently leave for a variety of reasons, always their own choice. This meant that the program did not grow quite as we expected so we went back to the drawing board.

The Current – Growing pains

Our current Admiral, ISD Eshtir, has a long and established history with the volunteer program. Working with CCP Spitfire, he sent out a call for new volunteers which resulted in an influx of new and eager batch of recruits. Coming on to a large and vocal forum can be somewhat daunting and we expected that there would be growing pains. The volunteers we have are doing this because they have the best interests of EVE at heart. Will they make some mistakes? Sure, I still even do that despite being here almost six years. Should they expect threads calling for their disbandment and summary execution? No, they should not. The CCL is here for the long haul and the Community team will be aiding them to become better moderators and chill bros you want to hang with. We have a series of plans listed below to ensure that happens.

The Future – Posting Nirvana

Our aim is to provide a discussion platform that allows players, volunteers and developers to talk about EVE and how we can make it better, what you like and what you want to see more of in the future. I will be totally candid and tell you that this does not happen when any of these groups becomes abusive and vindictive. That type of discussion only ever results in one or more of those groups becoming more distant and non-communicative. That is not good for you, the players, and it is definitely not what our developers and volunteers want to see happening. So here is our plan for taking the EVE Community team and ISD forward:

• We have at least one vacant position on the Community team and hope to add more people in the short to medium term. If you are interested in applying, please see this link.
• The Community team will hold regular Skype voice chats with volunteers and address their concerns, assist them with any training they may require and help answer any of their queries
• We will aim to have an ISD Seminar for the CCL at the earliest opportunity. Hopefully this can be sometime in July but may run over into August due to vacations and Alliance Tournament.
• We will provide moderation log access to the Admirals and Captains so that they can fully see what the ISD team are editing/deleting. This access does not compromise any of your personal information or show any warning or ban history. It literally shows the content of deleted posts, edited/original content and who carried that out.
• Increase the volunteer team by a further six people over the coming weeks and provide a stable structure for an easier flow of communication between CCP and the volunteers so that they can get advice on moderation actions if they are required.

These are just some of the first steps we will take to improve the communication process to you. This is a two way street and you also need to be a part of for it to work. This means we will still deal with abusive posts decisively and firmly. If you wish to discuss a hot topic issue we will expect you to do so in a calm and reasonable manner. Duplicate threads will still get locked, threads in the wrong sections will still be moved etc. It is also worth noting that using EVE mail to contact ISD about moderation will result in nothing happening. The correct process is to submit a petition under ‘Forums’ and we will investigate for you.

Our goal at CCP is to provide you all with a fun and vibrant discussion area and we will not stop working to attain that. There will be growing pains and there will be times we drop the ball. This is not deliberate and when we do drop the ball we will aim to correct those mistakes.

Finally, the Community team will be locking the myriad of threads on criticizing ISD. You can direct all comments to this thread only as this is the only one we will be following and answering.

Thank you for your time.

The EVE Community and CCL teams

in before lock?

Thank you for placing this here.

Will update later with more opinion later.

Wow, that's nice to see, CCP Navigator.

Might I suggest a subforum for OOPE in which politics, religion, and all those other forbidden topics are no longer forbidden? This is a community, and sometimes such things are relevant to some members of the community. We'd probably be better off throwing such topics into their own forum than simply locking them and silencing the conversation.

It is heartfelt but your last line did make me chuckle. Thanks

Ok, here is what I will say about the use of 'Jewgold', Jewing' and other terms of that nature. They don't add anything of value to a discussion. The very terminology is offensive to many and completely unnecessary. There are many of our players who are Jewish and they should not be subjected to phrasing which makes them and others feel uncomfortable.

I appreciate the outline and the open communication.

I also recognize and accept the the ISD moderation is both for the improvement of the community and in any case, a fait acompli.

However, there were not "mistakes" made.

There were serious breaches of even the most basic and fundamental principles of customer services.

A particular ISD member I will not mention should NEVER be allowed to deal with the the public, unless deep training is done, and even then, the lack of common sense shown was not something that is usually easily fixed.

His or her behavior, at the very least, was petulant and condescending. At worse, it seemed he or she was engaged in a personal vendetta against a particular user, who then proceed to unsubscribed after various attempts to communicate his displeasure.

That is as far from good moderators and chill bros as you can get, and felt more like someone enjoying the power.

I guess my point is, this was not mistake, not a serious mistake, it was a game breaking bug in the system.

I do not understand why a hard introduce was needed. Even in real life, when new public area rules are introduced, the police are instructed to give warnings and educational summons before fines, for a period of months, to get people accustomed to the new rules.

I smoke, and live in a city that has banned smoking almost anywhere, and they took 6 months to introduce actual fines and interventions. In the meantime, the police told you to turn it off, and gave you a citation without a fine (to keep it on record in case you then got a fine later, it could be used to make the fine harsher).

So for example, instead of dumping new rules, and an obviously unprepared (And possibly unqualified) ISD team on us with full powers and full responsibility, a better way would have been to put the rules and have a period of education in which they wouldn't be enforced except in harsh/obvious cases (And of course, the old rules would be enforced normally), but instead they got a feel for the forums, the regulars, the trolls, the lines of demarcation, the coming and goings, you know, SITUATIONAL AWARNESS, and then after a few months, when the community already comfortable with the constant presence, then unleash the fury of the banhammer.

Of course, the cat is out of the bag, but there is a lesson here, which is that patience and understanding works both ways. And that just because one can do something, doesn't mean one should do it: that ethos is perfect for the game, not so perfect for customer service, which is what the ISD moderation is.

The only reason I do not volunteer is because I do not volunteer for for-profits. My accountant would kill me. But I know how CS works, and you did it wrong. And that is surprising, because CCP is consistently awesome in CS, even when failing at almost everything at some point or the other.

I will say I cautiously optimistic that is not the case.

Contrary to the the themeparks, EVE has always been way more open on its forums than other places, except for the annoying censoring filter, which I never got.

In fact, the threads here have been locked, not deleted, which they are in many other places.

And some of the stuff here, you couldn't get away with even in Something Awful.

So lets have a sense of proportion, and lets be patient.

That said, I do expect CCP to be more clear as to their intent, and this posting is a good step, but insufficient.

Yes, we are crybabies, and you cannot moderate that away. And we are crybabies that buy lots of etc, subs, and plexies with real money from CCP, so we are entitled crybabies. That will not change. Adapt or perish.

This game is mostly populated by middle age, educated males... yet your post makes it sound like it's populated by unruly, pre-pubescent tantrum throughing morons....

I'm sure there is a middle ground, where the obnoxious minority are limited in a reasonable manner.... CCP has a history of letting long, venomous threads vent player frustrations over their business decisions and game design choices. Why do you think this is going to end??? If anything, setting up a clear set of guidelines on how ISD is to handle player outcry is a good thing, so long as it's not a blatant censorship of disenfranchised sentiments.