EVE General Discussion

Just remember guys just like you banned those speaking out during the jita protests a few months ago you guys can silence any voices that don't agree with your profit model or way of creating the game. but in the end you don't silence the unrest and the player base that you know has been dwindling due to poor decisions over the past few expansions. I wonder if this comment will get moderated ? I wonder if I didn't agree with CCP enough ? or maybe their judgement is that I am off topic because they don't like what I am saying. Either way you can give us a history on your forum thugs/player base laison's all you want but as long as you keep locking topics people will know what is really going on.

It may have been over the top, but when you're annoyed at a company and their representative fumbles the ball trying to placate you (with, "doodz, you're being impatient, everything's fine"), there's a good chance that that's exactly what's going to happen.

When you have a powderkeg, you don't go sticking matches into it (even a small one like that thread).

It seems that instead of locking threads they've resorted to just butchering the contents of anything deemed "offensive" or "trolling". This has, in quite a few cases, lead to OPs that are partially or just entirely unreadable as stuff is just cut without replacing it. Furthermore often the OP is quoted quite a few times further down the thread and left unchanged there.

From such a few quoted OPs it seems that expressing a strong opinion is considered trolling by some moderators, this to me either rings as if said person had a stake in the discussion or is simply overzealous (I'm inclined to go with the latter). While it could be argued that an entire post is trolling or not cutting out parts isn't the solution, it can change the message the poster wanted to bring across and entirely derail the discussion due to extra misunderstandings created this way. Either lock it or leave it alone and if in doubt: leave it alone.

Selectively censoring parts of a post is NOT the way to go.

The thing I liked about these forums (and this game in general) as a relatively new player is how people could express the dumbest (and that is an opinion, of course, I'm sure the posters thought differently) opinions without being cracked down on by the censoring police that forum moderators on other games' boards tend to be. A serious breath of fresh air.

If you want to turn these forums into "fluffy ponies and rainbows"-land I'm afraid you're making the wrong game or creating a huge disconnect between the forums and the game.

Yours respectfully,

Al

I appreciate the update.
You have to understand that without confirmations like this we have no way of knowing if you (CCP) is listening. Id love to say we can all assume you take some interest in what the community is saying but your actions have proven over and over again that you would rather have a wall between yourselves and the community.

It would go along ways to have a random dev post anytime they checked a big issue thread. We need to rebuild our confidence, and we cant do that if you are constantly hiding behind devblog schedules. For what they are, they still feel very distant.

Having said that. Let me reiterate that I (and I hope alot more) appreciate this update.

I know you can't promise any dates, and I know the ISD can't either. That wasn't the problem in that thread. The problem is wading hip deep into annoyed people with an attempt to be funny about something they're ticked off about. While I understand the impulse to do exactly that, it's still a bad idea.

One of the first things I learned in the field was the simple truth that telling someone who's worked up to "Calm Down" never [Forum-Unfriendly Word] works. Even better, it almost always works the angry/crazy/drunk/whatever person up more. Better suggestions for this type of thread:
"I hear what you're saying, and I want to help; it's just going to take some time"
"I understand your concerns, and I've made sure the right people will see them"
"I appreciate that you're angry, so I'll try to get you a response soon"

I know that I didn't hit the tone (or really the whole thing, I'm not particularly pleased with it, tbh ) I wanted to hit with that post, and I'm sorry for that.

I really think that some communications lessons for the ISDs would go a LONG way. There are some great products that a lot of Emergency Services agencies use because the skills they teach work wonders when you're talking to angry people, and I would guess that they'd work pretty well for a lot of this kind of moderation (the talking kind, which I applaud the ISDs for using more of). Talking to people who are worked up is not like talking to normal people.

I want to apologize again for my post on the previous page, it was really cruddy of me.

I think that this thread could easily become a very good way for the ISD team to receive feedback (it'll mostly be negative, but that's a sad truth of customer service, it's ignored unless it's bad, or perceived as bad) when things go off the rails in threads destined to be locked, and I'm glad to see you're open to receiving it.

The problem, of course, if this thread evolves into that, is figuring out a way to cull rants and other nonconstructive feedback without leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Again, I'm glad you're actively learning from your missteps, and being open about doing so. I think that openness will go a long way to building the bridge you need to build with the rest of the community to be effective here.

For my part, I'll try to keep an eye out for ISD comments that I think are deserving of positive callouts as well. I know how taxing reading a constant stream of negative comments can be.

Maybe the message I was trying to bring accross wasn't clear (English is not exactly my first language). I'm not defending racist banter or other downright offensive language (though some people have just stupidly long toes when it comes to their country/race/religion, but that's neither here nor there). Although what is offensive tends to vary per person, some moderators seem to have a very low threshold.

What I am speaking out against is the censorship I've seen applied to various threads, by deleting (parts of) sentences and replacing them usually with "--snip--" (or something along those lines) seemingly without making much of an attempt at conserving the readability of the post. In quite a few cases this censorship was entirely unjustified (if I felt it was justified I wouldn't bother posting here, obviously) and downright obstructive to following the discussion.

As I said before: if in doubt about something leave it alone or before we know it "consolized" will be a censored word as it is on the Steam forums.

Like yourself?

We can definitely cross reference each others forum posting history with Eve Search if you wanna pursue this. In fact I think that's a good idea, especially since you seem determined to start something with me.


Got any proof to back up your allegations?
I've only seen a couple rare occurrences but you and others who keep saying there's a multitude of so called 'innocent' replies being unjustly moderated is simply an exaggeration.

Either host events that let us punish the ISDs in game via warfare for their heavy handed and poorly executed moderation, or just abandon the effort entirely.


I would not mind being edited and reading through all the lame "-- snip --" garbage so long as I could find the responsible people once in awhile and shoot missiles at them.


All's fair, right?