EVE General Discussion

Dearest forum posters,

Since I joined the Community Team, I have become increasingly vested in the state of these forums of ours. For a desirable environment to exist here there needs to be a place to discuss our rules and the actions we take when those rules are broken.

There is a difference between discussing moderation in a general sense and discussing specific instances of moderation. The latter type should always be petitioned to us in the Community Team by selecting the Other Issues – Community category. This will allow CCP staff to review what has occurred and hopefully answer any questions that might have been raised by moderation actions. The URL to file petitions is the following:

https://support.eveonline.com/Pages/Petitions/MyPetitions.aspx

The former type needs to have a special place where it can be discussed by us all. While it is true that we ‘own’ these forums, in the sense that we make the rules and ultimately control what content is on them, we still need to maintain some level of transparency so that we promote a positive environment to discuss things. You, the posters, then make these forums what they are. We don’t want to drive this place into the ground with explosive moderation that leaves no one alive.

In short, a place to discuss the broad strokes and general outlines of our moderation methods is required. That place shall be this thread. We will be keeping an eye on it and we would appreciate if all matters regarding the broad strokes of our moderation actions be contained to this thread.

This will be addressed, but as we we do not discuss warnings and specific moderation actions on our forum, we cannot comment further on this.

Other off topic posts were removed. Please stay on topic and constructive, thank you.

Well, to start with it would help if a thread about forum moderation (in general) actually listed the complete set of rules and guidelines supposedly used by the CCP and ISD moderators. For example, at the moment, based on personal observation of actual moderator actions, apparently it is ok to lock threads as duplicate without including a reference to the duplicated thread, or to provide a reference to the duplicated thread which is itself locked. :facepalm:

Cites to the above behaviors:
Locked as duplicate without reference to appropriate thread:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2040255#post2040255
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2039860#post2039860

Locked as duplicate, directing user to another locked thread:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2039308#post2039308

(N.B. I already reported these posts a few days ago hoping they would be fixed.)

MDD

So why was my post removed? Because I gave the opinion that people who just post saying "First" and don't add anything to a discussion (in this case, what we should and should not moderate in general on the forum)?

It wasn't meant to be targeted at that individual poster, rather the idea that surely posts with "First" aren't helpful or needed. Warnings or deleting posts (or both) would be appropriate for first time offenders.

Of course if THIS is also discussing a specific moderation issue in your eyes I can always file a petition to get the answer, but I'd rather not as everyone has quoted my post anyway so I'm not too bothered about my point not being made.

The system locks any thread that hasn’t had any replies in the last 90 days, but I see some posts being locked as necro.

At what point is it considered a necro post?

Your point was very valid but Phantom simply wanted to have the discussion and conclusion covered in one post.



Saying 'Bump' in a thread that has been inactive for 89 days does not contribute anything to the discussion. That is necroing and we don't like that. However, if someone wants to add something to a discussion that was going on 89 days ago it should not be locked. If that happens, it is a mistake and simply needs to be petitioned. We are only human and sometimes we make mistakes.

Oy. Put your armor down; I'm not out for blood. I'm not so daft to think that extracting a promise of "never again" is likely or even worthwhile. I fully realize that moderation errors will continue to happen. I'm genuinely trying to have a conversation about what mechanics might help prevent a repeat of that sequence (because, as you acknowledge, a locked thread directing posters to another locked thread is undesirable). Perhaps I can ease your mind by throwing out the first obvious idea: before locking a thread, have the system report any other locked threads which refer (by URL) to the current thread. Obviously, this is predicated on the system having the ability to tell the moderator about those references. Obstacles: This ability probably doesn't currently exist, and it may not have enough importance behind it to get the manpower allocated to implement the ability. The automatic detection may not be foolproof. The moderators may fail to use such a report.


I will try to suppress my incredulity here; you're asking us to have a discussion of moderation in general without providing the current guidelines to discuss? Eshtir, I realize you are but a humble volunteer and this is not your decision to make. Please direct someone at CCP corporate (Gargant?) to look at this and re-evaluate whether keeping the current moderation guidelines under NDA is in the best interest.

MDD

No worries there. Im here for a very long time now and have been through much darker conversations.

Your idea sounds good, but if we lock a thread for being a duplicate one, we already know there is an existing one.

Regarding the policy document, the Community Team has it and it has their approval is all i can say for now. But you have my promise i will talk to CCP Gargant and the Volunteer Manager about this.

Hi,

Where we're aware of this, we do take the appropriate action.

If you see one we've missed, please use the report button and we'll take care of it as soon as possible.

Thanks.

You can't post in CAOD if you're in an NPC corp, the forums won't let you. Either the posters were in a player corp at the time of posting and dropped since or the thread was moved from GD (something that is pretty annoying - NPC alt threads being moved to CAOD defeat the purpose of that rule)



Also, this. There is a huge difference between a post like "look, here are killboard links of titans blapping frigates, please keep saying that titans can't track frigates" in a thread about titan tracking and "Ahaha look at your horribly fit Hurricane lossmail here, look how terrible you are" in a thread where such a remark is totally unprompted. The first example can't possibly be trolling because it's on-topic, it isn't particularly meant to berate anybody, it adds to the discussion at hand and it's not like the dudes who lost the ships in those killmails are going to feel ~offended~ because somebody linked their lossmail.

To say that this has been an existing policy based on the "no trolling" rule is simply insulting our intelligence - up until recently, this rule was never enforced outside of IGS and C&P, and how can killboard links, in and of themselves, possibly constitute trolling?