EVE Information Portal

As i see it, we the players now have a new opportunity to help support a game we love. We should be excited for this chance.

As for the people that lost their jobs, I feel for them, getting fired sucks. But it is not uncommon in this economy. 3 years ago when I worked at Wally World there was almost always at least 5 or 6 employees in the electronics department. These days your lucky if you can find one.

I have a feeling CCP is doing what they can to survive. But look at it this way, at least they are doing what they can to maintain the level of service that we expect. It may not be the way we want them to do it, the Devs lost to the unfortunate state of the economy will be missed, but it may be the only way.

Hmmm, I have mixed feelings about this.

First of all, as a consumer and paying customer, I feel this is just plain wrong. The moderation and Public Relations of these Forums should be and need to be done by CCP sanctioned employees.

There is just too much chance for the general decisions, viewpoints and judgement calls of the 'Volunteer' Forum Moderators to become biased. Especially if most of the applicants belong to a specific group. Also these 'Volunteers' getting a new ISD character basically gives them anonymity and power that can be used to sway community opinion.

Second, why wasn't this posted in all Sub Forum sections? That alone in fact reduces the amount of potential qualified applicants and makes this 'Volunteer' option unbalanced. I spend a lot of time in the Forums and I'm just now seeing this thread.

If you really wanted this to be done on a 'Volunteer' type option, I think each channel in each Sub Forum should have a type of 'Vote' done to decide on a few active members in each specific channel. Those active members are well known in those specific channels and would be better at representing the needs and concerns of the community active in that specific channel.

Anyway, I've contributed a lot of time posting mainly in 'Missions and Complexes' since that pertains to familiar game play. I wouldn't feel right moderating unfamiliar channels such as 'Warfare and Tactics' or 'Corporation, Alliance & Organization Discussions', etc.

If I became a Volunteer Forum Moderator, I'd probably end up deleting or locking half of the threads in 'General Discussion' due to it being 'Troll Heaven'. Just saying, it wouldn't stop there either. Any off topic reply posted to a thread would be deleted. Not to mention all Troll, Sarcastic, Demeaning, Disrespectful, Discriminatory, Racial or otherwise Inappropriate replies directed towards other players attempting to draw tears or start a forum flame war.

Problem with this is that my estimation or view of a posted reply will differ from another person. Having Volunteers moderate the forums would create problems and maybe even place more work load on CCP employees.

I've often thought about joining ISD due to creating and adding info to Evelopedia pages but about this 'Volunteer' Forum Moderation, I really believe that should be done by sanctioned CCP employees..

Hi DeMichael Crimson,

Let me say, i understand and respect your point of view. Im here to give you an indepth answer to your concerns.

• Moderation by sanctioned CCP employees only.
Volunteer forum moderators have been used in the game industry for some time now. I used to be one here for EVE Online way back. With an indepth training provided, volunteer moderators are just as good as paid moderators and they can engage the community around the clock, gathering feedback and trends for CCP.


• Bias and the uber secret volunteer identity.
I can tell you, that i have zero tolerance towards bias. If i spot a member of the CCL abuses his moderator abilities, i will be the first one to remove him as moderator and file a petition against him. But as you can see in the Dev Blog, our edits are monitored by the Community Team and can be reversed if needed. There is also IA watching over us.
Our volunteer identity is here to allow us to play and enjoy EVE as you do.


• Recruitment and voting people in.
ISD recruitment is a rather time consuming process. But it allows us to see if your the right person for the job.
See it this way, do you want volunteers who have been screened by experienced volunteer moderators or do you want someone monitoring the forums that does not know how to walk the fine line of moderation and maybe is not so fluent in (insert language here). As this is what happens if you just vote on people, there is no screening process behind it.

I have the pleasure of being in charge of the volunteer moderators. I will make sure rules are followed and that there is no bias in moderation. I hope this makes you feel more comfortable towards the volunteer moderators and should more questions arise i will be here to answer them.

o/

G'day all. This is my first ever post. I've been lurking for a long time (years, actually), as one does before diving in...

There are a couple of questions that I'd like answered if possible, and please bear with me if they're stupid .

1) Has there been any update on the process of accepting volunteers? I see many comments about how many apps were received, but de nada about how many were accepted, when they'll come online, who they might be, and so on. An update would be great. As always, if this is answered in bleeding obviousness elsewhere, please help by directing me to it...

2) As a new player, the changeover from the old forums (which are locked and readonly) to the new forums/wiki (much of which is locked due to no traffic or "other reasons") hasn't gone well. At all. Even the wiki appears to have been frozen two (or more) releases ago. So not only is the information outdated, some of the entries are locked - so even someone who wanted to update them or pose questions or requests, can't. This is frustrating for a rookie, as most links in the new forums just plunge users back in the frozen old forums with no option to update or ask anything. Dev blogs are just amazing (no, really) but there are how many of them? And many of those appear frozen at this time (mid-December 2011). It may just be me, of course.

I'm asking these from the perspective of a communication specialist who's new to the Eve environment, and looking for easy answers to simple questions about game mechanics, strategies, ship details, weapon details, market procedure, and so on. If I can't find much that's helpful, imagine the 150 or so reading-impaired newbs who join each day. The rookie chat channel is just fantastic with excellent support from vets, but more than 9 out of 10 questions should have been answered in the resource guides and howtos.

The problem is, the resource guides and howtos are written very much from the familiar player perspective, and that's a real pity. Tanking, ganking, deadspace, 0.0, CONCORD are all wonderful technobabble to a wordlover like me, but to someone who can barely read (or who's first language isn't English), some (most) of the resource guides are just so much HTML with the wrong terms linked! That really, really needs to be fixed, just as much as monitoring the forums that are still live. My hope would be, that if the howtos and readmes and resource guides were updated and cross-linked correctly, at least some of the new traffic might disappear and make everyone else's life a little less messy. Does that make sense?

I would love to be able to access some of those pages and update them, even with the little I know - just mentioning new ships and resources would be a help, not to mention cross-indexing terms for new users and so on (Readme 101?)! And as a speed-reading grammer nazi with a severe passion for Eve and information retrieval, I'm in a perfect position to update the older, hard-to-understand explanations, and if I don't know myself, I'm not scared to ask players or god-like creatures such as your good selves.

But... I feel that a) there's a huge gap in knowledge that I need to bridge asap, b) mods are working under a cloud of suspicion from both ends of the spectrum anyway (sadly, the reason for new usernames?), and c) how the heck can I apply as a tech writer/fixer-upper when I have so little technical knowledge, but so much to offer in terms of cleanup/rewrites/layout/imaging/etc?

I guess this isn't the most appropriate forum (pun intended) for this kind of "shotgun" questionnaire, but I'd appreciate any and all comments, suggestions, pointers, flames, personal invective, or just plain howdys.

Eve and the tremendously varied community has far too much to offer to have so much old baggage left behind to moulder and confuse the initiates. And a good start needs a good continuation. I'd like to be part of it, as much as playing the game.

Thanks for reading this verbiage. I hope some of it makes sense. Please don't kill me. :)