Forums not what they used to be

[Radiant]

I think this is a good example of too harsh moderation:

I concur.

I saw something similar yesternight in the Beginner Tech forum. Somebody asked a noobish question, somebody else answered it, and then a mod locked the topic stating that question was not allowed to be asked, and kindly RTFM. It seems unnecessary to do that if the question was already answered.

[Nacho]

Why not posting it in another subforum, in a first way? I don' t concur; "Moderatorism" was ok here, IMO. I didn' t find it funny, either... I am curious about Grundislav' s opinion, though...

[voh]

Just locking a topic, in my opinion, is generally a bad idea. Move it to a subforum where it'd fit, as it's obviously not meant in a harmful way (to the community/forum).

I felt the same way when I saw it was locked with just a "never do this again" message.

Maybe not harsh, but unnecessarily "BOOM! HEADSHOT!" afai'm concerned.

[Ashen]

Somebody asked a noobish question, somebody else answered it, and then a mod locked the topic stating that question was not allowed to be asked, and kindly RTFM.

Since I was that moderator, I feel I should address this. The rules in BTQ are pretty clear on RTM-type questions:

A lot of beginners' questions on this forums have to do with very simple things, and most often it can be found in the main manual itself. So don't get upset with us if we simply tell you to read the manual and lock your thread.

...

From now on, if any of us are reading a thread that has an obvious answer and if we can tell that you haven't read any of the rules or the resources below, we will simply lock it. We shouldn't have to clean up after you guys if you very well know where your topic should go and what it should (and shouldn't) contain.

If a threadstarter doesn't seem to have read the manual/BFAQ/forums, the thread will be locked. This isn't descriminating against newcomers, it'd be the same for anyone. It just happens that newcomers are more likely to ask those kinds of questions.
IIRR, the rules used to say 'we will delete without warning' - that was harsh, and encouraged further needless posts (re-asking the question, and asking where the original thread went). With a lock, the poster gets their answer, it's more likely someone searching in the future will find their answer, and useless threads can't be revived and drop off the first page. What's unfair about that? Without a 'don't do this again' post the poster mightn't realise WHY they've been locked, which would seem more like arbitary and unfair overmoderation, IMO.

If another forum seems more approriate, of course it'll be moved there, but some excessively n00bish questions (n00b to differentiate from newb, which we all were once) just don't belong anywhere, as far as I'm concerned.

[Nacho]

My avatar is cooler than yours, Ashen.

[Ashen]

But I was using it first, so I win. (Anyway, mine's more mysterious looking, and therefore cooler. Double win )

[Nacho]

 :'(

[Ashen]

Wait, does making the other person cry mean "mega win for me", or have I lost now?
These rules are too confusing. Let's just agree that Dexter kicks ass and share the avatar, shall we?

(I like the alternating Dexters down the sides the last few posts. Awesome, and kind of creepy.)

[Pumaman]

I think this is a good example of too harsh moderation:

I'd agree as well. I'm going to have a chat to the moderators about our current moderation policy.

With a lock, the poster gets their answer, it's more likely someone searching in the future will find their answer, and useless threads can't be revived and drop off the first page.

But why lock the thread? All it means is that they can't ask any follow-up questions in the same thread and end up having to start another thread to do so.

The other thing is the psychological effect of opening a forum and seeing half the threads on the first page being locked. This is quite offputting and perhaps gives out the wrong signal about the type of forum that we are.

All I'm saying is that in my opinion we should only lock a thread if it's getting out of control, and not just because the original question has been answered.

[LUniqueDan]

Just for the Tech Forum : is it possible to have a 'Solved' 'Thumb up-shapped' lock? It will have  a way less repulsive effect, and keep the forum clean.

Nacho / Ashen : both of your last spring avatar matched you better.

[lemmy101]

I would say 90% of what keeps me active in a forum community is the ability to have a joke around and feel I can say or do anything that I could around any of my real-life friends, within acceptable reason. I have to admit that over-moderation is the single biggest reason I tend to avoid AGS forums for anything other than update posts or technical questions.

[LimpingFish]

Disclaimer: I am not pointing the finger. Repeat. Not.

Taking the GiP thread as an example: Most of the threads I can see are locked by Darth Mandarb.

Yet, the board seems to have three moderators. So I have the following questions...

1. Is Darth Mandarb just a locking machine?
2. Are the other mods MIA? Or too nice to hand out locks?
3. Do so many threads need to be locked?

In my opinion:

1. 99% of the time Darth's locks seem fair. Some of them can be a bit terse, but lets be honest...How many times can one person reiterate the board policies without cracking?

2. I have no answer to this. I just rarely, if ever, see any name other than Darth Mandarb's at the ass-end of a GiP lock.

3. This is a matter of opinion. Though, various reasons why aside, I would say yes.


Both AR and CL survive with a single moderator. I'll admit these are less problematic boards, and more or less only need one mod. But still...

It seems General Discussion is randomly modded by whoever happens to be in the vicinity at the time, since it's designated mod hasn't been around since 2005.

I think we need a clarification of who is responsible for what. Locked topics should at least contain a post from the moderator who locked it; if not stating why they locked it, then at least putting a face to the lock.

I'm grateful for the time mods put into the forums, though, as it's never an easy job.

[ManicMatt]

Yeah Darth should have moved the spoof game thread to somewhere else really...

I can see that if I'd got my game on the Gip first page and some joke pushes it off the page and takes some attention away I might be a tad miffed. Sorry Voss! (I don't have the keys to type his proper name in here..)

[Darth Mandarb]

1. Is Darth Mandarb just a locking machine?
2. Are the other mods MIA? Or too nice to hand out locks?
3. Do so many threads need to be locked?

In my opinion:

1. 99% of the time Darth's locks seem fair. Some of them can be a bit terse, but lets be honest...How many times can one person reiterate the board policies without cracking?

2. I have no answer to this. I just rarely, if ever, see any name other than Darth Mandarb's at the ass-end of a GiP lock.

3. This is a matter of opinion. Though, various reasons why aside, I would say yes.

Hehe!  I'd have locked this thread LONG ago!!  Kidding

I tend to be the only one that moderates that board. Snake shows up from time to time though he's far more lenient than I am.  I don't even know who Nellie is.

I'm a pretty cut'n'dry kind of moderator really.  There are rules, if they are broken I lock.  If they are "grey" areas (like the second screenie is a menu or something) I will post a warning to read the rules and update, if they don't comply, lock goes the weasel.

Sure, I can be a bit terse from time to time but (as LimpingFish commented on) considering the number of idiots people that just can't seem to read the very simple rules before posting it's amazing I keep my cool at all sometimes!  All-in-all (personally) I think I do a pretty damn good job at it.

The alternative is a bunch of "I'm makeing a game!  It's gonna be teh awesomes!!1!!" threads with no information, no screenshots, nothing.  Speaking for myself personally, I wouldn't want to post a thread in there with my actual "in production" game if it were like that 'cause it'd be lost in the muck (as it was like before I started my domination term as moderator).  The board would quickly deteriorate into uselessness (in my opinion).

But hey ... this is just my opinion.  I'm not trying to be a hard-ass or to piss people off.  I'll even resign as a moderator if that's what people want.  My intent isn't to offend, just to keep it clean and usable in there.  Which I feel is being accomplished.

[ManicMatt]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

You get back in that Moderator's chair right this instance!

(Besides, I enjoy reading your comments when you lock hehehe  )

[Snake]

In Darth's defence, he does a good goddamn job. He's right there when a thread shouldn't be posted (like the one exampled) and when he feels the topic is leaning too far away from the games promotion and the discussion turns into an absolute different subject, yes, there needs to be some sort of action.
Like he's stated already, I'm rarely moderating that forum - for two reasons:
1. I'm rarely here anymore (although my AGS interest and AGS game programming has not ceased). When I am I see what's in production and that's it. There's a lot of good shit being produced.
2. He's already beaten me to it - which only shows that he's right on top of his task. He's one of the moderators for that forum - plain and simple. He knows what he's doing and gets it done.
In the thread-makers defence (the one exampled), yeah, I certainly agree that the thread should have been moved to a different forum and not locked, since it was indeed funny and in good fun, not intended to be malicious to the forum rules.


Reverting back to an early comment by Rick:

Over Moderation: A new member asked something to the effect "I am excited about AGS but don't even know where to start, it's kind of overwhelming.  Would someone be willing to hold my hand a bit to help me get started?"  The response was basically "Read the manual and be more specific." and the thread was locked. 

You know, I've been a member of this community for years. I haven't released a game yet, eventhough I've been working on quite a few over those years, but I always post in the beginners tech forum because of this. I posted there recently about blocking commands and if there was an "in between" so to speak. Someone asked me if I used Repeatedly_Execute_Always(), and I replied, "I don't want to sound stupid, trust me because I feel stupid, but what is that? I've always used repeatedly execute. That's all I thought there was " and I got the same responce right away, "Try reading the manual."
Jesus Christ that pissed me off - no, I haven't sat down and read the whole fucking manual yet, sorry, just a question. It would have been different if it was said in a joking manner, since he did, indeed, continue trying to help me with my problem - and I absolutely respect him for that. But the whole, "Try reading the manual" comment irked the shit out of me.

There are other things I'll comment on when I have more time,

Great thread, by the way, SSH I guess you got a portion of what you were missing


--Snake

PS
To ScummVM forum members,
AGS FOREVER!!1

[bicilotti]

I'm going to have a chat to the moderators about our current moderation policy.

[...]

But why lock the thread? All it means is that they can't ask any follow-up questions in the same thread and end up having to start another thread to do so.

The other thing is the psychological effect of opening a forum and seeing half the threads on the first page being locked. This is quite offputting and perhaps gives out the wrong signal about the type of forum that we are.

All I'm saying is that in my opinion we should only lock a thread if it's getting out of control, and not just because the original question has been answered.

I must say I don't agree. I was (am?) a |\|003 and many times visit and post in the Beg.Tech.Quest.

The questions are many and even if you search carefully it is difficult to find what you need. It is better not "dilute" the key information and unfortunately the "lock thread" is the only way to obtain this result.

Moreover, I was addressed many time to read this or that part of the manual or to perform a refined forum search, but always in a tactful manner and most of the times (if not all) with some solid bit of code that helped me to find the right direction.

I'm not a long time forum poster, so I cannot judge wheter or how these boards have changed. I have nothing to complain about how the BTQ is run.

[Nacho]

Do you guys remember how GiP was before? Sometimes some things needs OVER______ (Moderatorism, in this case).

I preffer the situation nowadays. Maybe it' s time to say "ok, over moderatorism has archieved it' s goal, time to allow waters go back to it's original channel" but DM has done a supperb job figting chaos in GiP during this time.

[Andail]

If I recall correctly I was the one suggesting and endorsing that Darth should moderate the GiP board, and I can still back him up.
It isn't hard to read the rules before posting. If you can't be arsed to do so, you should expect being moderated. The rules apply to everyone, not only newcomers. I'd rather see a tidy, functional board than one where people are allowed to spam and clutter freely in their pursuit of - often undeserved - attention.

Sure, there seem to be a high amount of stickies, which could be reduced to help clarifying things...but too many stickies or too harsh moderation aren't the cause for the decline of this community, I frankly think it's silly to believe that.

I think it's a trend issue - a downward spiral tendency where older member leave the community to find more stimulating conversations elsewhere. This leaves the community with a higher percentage of young and not so eloquent or sophisticated members (no offense, but when you're 13 you're not as interesting to listen to, sad but true) which in turn fails to attract new members.

The forum would benefit from having more seasoned game makers participating in the everyday conversations. We need more professional input in the critics lounge and more experienced designing feedback in the GTD threads. And the "crazy" threads in gen-gen need to be funnier.
My 2 cents.

[RickJ]

Well the Tech Faq, GiP, and Completed Game forums have very specific purposes and it is important that things posted there be well organized and in consistent formats so that people can find what they are looking for.   People don't go there to socialize or to ask advice,  so it's appropriate that these forums be more strictly moderated than say GenGen, Beginners Tech, and Adventure Chat  forums. 

Darth is dong a bang up job but in the specific case cited let me ask this:  What would have been wrong with sending the author a PM thanking him for trying to liven up the forum and that you would let it run for a few days before moving it,  maybe even encourage  him to edit out the explanation so that people would fall for it?

IMHO, this is an illustration of what I mean when I wonder if the forums are over moderated.  In this case it's not that the moderator shouldn't have taken action, the question is rather what action would have been the most beneficial to the forum and it's members.  In this case someone was inspired to share a funny thought with the other members. Funny or not, he put in a fair bit of effort only to be instantly shot down.   Why not give the guy a heads up, let the joke run for a while, and then move it to a more appropriate venue or  whatever...

When I was a member of Toastmasters we learned how to critique one another's speeches in a way that would help the speaker to improve.   The most common method consists of the following three steps:

1.  Point out the positives, everything the speaker did right
2.  Point out the negatives, about 3 or 4 things the speaker did wrong
4. Point out how to improve, 3 or 4 things the speaker could do to improve next time.

Perhaps we could adapt something like this for our moderation policy, especially for newer members, you know the ones whose number of posts show up under their avatar. maybe it would go something like this.

1.  Say something positive - acknowledge their enthusiasm, their effort in making the post, etc, etc
2.  Explain the rules, what action is being taken, and why
3.  Tell them how they can improve the quality of their posts and encourage them to continue contributing to the forum

And perhaps there should be some informal guidelines as to what actions are appropriate in what circumstances.  As CJ has said earlier locking a thread is sometimes counter productive.  Perhaps it could be something simple like this:

1.  Is any action really needed at this time?  Is the offending thread likely to die a natural death?
2.  If action is needed, what action will achieve the purpose and least discourage future contributions by this and other members?
3.  What can I do to mitigate the negative consequences of taking action?

I'll finish by relating some of my experiences playing Rugby.  For those who are not familiar with the sport, Rugby is supposed to be played in a continuous manner.   I once had a hard time explaining the concept to some guy in a pub once, so out of frustration I said "Well, it's kind of like tackle bacsketball."  which, for reasons beyond me, seemed to clarify the concept for him.   

Well it's not that easy to keep the play continuous because there so many ways things can get screwed up.   To keep everything moving the referee is supposed to ignore minor infractions and allow play to continue provided that the team committing the infraction does not gain an unfair advantage.    It's such a joy to play in a match officiated by such a referee.   There is nothing more miserable to be playing in a match where the referee enforces every little infraction, everytime it occurs, with the maximum allowed penalty; it's just pure hell.