Official Discussion about the new Forum Rules
- Thread starter Kuliani
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To be perfectly honest, that's much better.Milky_Fresh said:
Well, eh, not "much", but "fairly".
I'm a bit confused. Are we no longer allowed to say we don't like a particular show for X and Y reasons? Now, I don't mean berating the show, or insulting the creators or anything like that. For example, saying the plot of a show could use some tweaking in certain scenes, that the dialog could have been written in a way that flows better, that certain characters should have been left out because they didn't provide anything to the overall story, and so on and so forth.
Are we allowed to say anything along those lines? Or do we only have the choices of either saying we like a show, or not saying anything at all? I know that sentence doesn't make a whole lot of sense(it doesn't make much sense to me, but you'll have to bear with me). I just don't know how to phrase it.
Other than that, I hope these new rules make the site a better place for everyone who is willing to abide by them.
Are we allowed to say anything along those lines? Or do we only have the choices of either saying we like a show, or not saying anything at all? I know that sentence doesn't make a whole lot of sense(it doesn't make much sense to me, but you'll have to bear with me). I just don't know how to phrase it.
Other than that, I hope these new rules make the site a better place for everyone who is willing to abide by them.
That is exactly the kind of post that you are allowed to make. Encouraged to, even. Constructive and well thought-out commentary is always welcome. It's only when posts cross the line of being purely negative that they aren't allowed.superbatranger said:
You couldn't possibly be more wrong. That's because you're operating from the perspective of a viewer, and not the point of a content producer. We have a vast amount of information available on how content is doing, and we already know exactly how much that doesn't match up with what the comment threads look like. Here's some of the things we know about a video that you don't, for example:Zeeky_Santos said:
How many views it gets.
How many unique users view it.
How much it costs to produce.
How much it costs to serve, in bandwidth.
How difficult the creator is to work with.
How much work our editors have to do per video.
What advertisers are interested in it.
What "industry" people think of it
How much traffic it gets outside our site (embedding, etc).
How well the ad units in the video perform.
How well the back catalog performs.
How much the staff like it.
Those statistics are far, far more important in determining the success of a show than forum comments. For example, a show that gets moderate traffic numbers but doesn't cost much, gets shared and embedded, pulls in new users, has above-average ad performance stats, and gets industry contacts fired up to work with us is one we'd consider to be doing well for us, and would be worth keeping around, even if the forums complain about it. I'll let you guess what show that was.
We see time and time again that some shows do well and get terrible comments, while other shows do poorly and get great ones. Why is that? Two reasons:
Once a forum thread turns negative, it stays negative, and the people who would say good things stay away to avoid being attacked.
People that complain about serial content frequently come back to do it again for each episode, repeating the cycle.
The people who comment on our forums represent .3% of the people that look at our content. That's not a typo, it's less than half of one percent.
What it comes down to is that the reason we don't need to see negative comments is because we can already see how well things perform based on hard numbers from our whole audience. The only thing the negative comments do is prevent a community of people that enjoy that content from building up around it. Because of that, we don't want them around here.
Like I said in my previous post on the topic: "If someone doesn't like a particular piece of content, they don't have to watch/read it." If you don't like something, accept the fact that maybe, just maybe, it's not for you, and let the other people who do enjoy it do so. If you do enjoy it but think some things could improve, then post away.
Sassafrass said:
The most that a group could do would be to push a post to the top of the Mod Queue, which would cause a moderator to look at it sooner. If a post doesn't deserve moderation, nothing will happen regardless of how many people report it. Also, we can look and see who reported what if necessary, so if we see a group of users abusing the report system - for example, by systematically reporting every post by a specific user to try to get them banned - they'll be on the receiving end of some mod wrath.Nerf Ninja said:
So are you actually going to answer my question regarding Escapist content? Becuase it looks like you're just moving around it. I was told to ask questions and give feedback, but it feels like you're answering questions selectively.Virgil said:
I'm pretty sure I addressed it well enough in my response [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.249417.9222422] to John. The rules for content publishers are not the same as for forum posters, and the forum rules do not apply to their content. Yes, we have a double-standard here, and it's totally not fair. It also doesn't change anything.Internet Kraken said:
As for the rest, I think I've covered fairly well why we've determined that there's nothing of value for us or the site in allowing that sort of negativity in the forums. Unless there's a new or particularly interesting argument otherwise, I don't think I have anything else to contribute on the subject.
I don't see how you can somehow not notice the obvious problem with such a massive double-standard; the community will emulate these people. It's only reasonable to assume that people who like a show will try to replicate what they like about it in their forum posts. You can see people doing that already. If you don't want overbearing negativity on this site, you can't publish shows that derive humor from it. Because people will want to copy that. Expecting people to follow these rules in light of this is absurd.Virgil said:
How about the fact these new draconian laws have made this site feel far more hostile to me than any amount of negativity in a community members post?
Judging from this, the ultimate objective of these rules was to make the Escapist a more pleasant and friendly place. I'm going to give you a benefit of the doubt and assume this truly is your primary objective.Kuliani said:
As someone who has used this site for over a year now, I have never felt more unwanted and unwelcome than I do now. The idea that merely expressing my honest opinion can earn me a ban just because it's negative is very uncomfortable. It makes me feel nervous about actually posting something, because it feels like a mod will be able to ban me because they don't like my opinion. You could say that's not what will happen, but this is the impression I have gotten. It hasn't done anything to make posting here more enjoyable.
I'm not opposed to punishing people when they are pointlessly cruel or rude, but the idea that just your opinion, no matter how it is expressed, can get you in trouble now is not what I would call "inviting". I've never felt that other members posting negative comments made me enjoy any of this sites comments any less. Just because they don't like something doesn't mean I still can't enjoy it. But the idea that mods will now be actively seeking to ban these people just for expressing their opinions is making me enjoy this site much less.
And this may just be my personal opinion, but if I was contributing content to this site I wouldn't like it if its success was judged solely by what advertisers think of it or how many views it gets. A million views sounds impressive, until you realize that those are just numbers. There's no opinion behind those numbers, other than that your content is worth viewing for some reason. But that reason could be anything. It could be because your content is legitimately good, or it could be because it's so laughably bad that people are viewing it just to mock it. I'd much rather judge the success of my content by the opinions of the community members. Hence why I wouldn't like it if mods ran around banning people for having negative opinions. Words mean a lot more to me than numbers.Virgil said:
These vague rules only work because this site has excellent moderation. If any of them were unprofessionals or just complete dicks, we'd all be in trouble.
If Moderators have always had that ability...why would we start now? If I wanted to I could delete every post you've made in this thread, and so could any other member of staff. But we haven't. I could say 'Don't be a Jerk' and ban you. But I don't.Internet Kraken said:
Now I'd like you to explain to me why I don't if I have this omnipotence. Go on using all you've said in this thread, all the fearmongering about the free reign I have to do whatever I want, explain to me why you're still here.
Because this thread was created for the purpose of giving feedback and listening to complaints? I don't see the point of your question. Of course you could ban anyone you wanted at any time, but people would point out how it was completley unjustified. Which is what banning me for complaining in a threat meant for complaints would be. However, you can now ban people just for being negative about escapist content and, under the new rules, it would be perfectly justified.Sevre90210 said:
I really don't get the point you're trying to make.
I'm saying I have the ability to ban you right now with no repercussions whatsoever, and I don't. If you think people are going to stand up for you...well you think very highly of people then.Internet Kraken said:
I've read through your posts in this thread and you seem to think the worst of us, that these rules are here to give us more power over what we do and who we do it to and we will use the full extent of our power at every occasion in an unjustifiable manner. Wrong.
This rule isn't saying "Yeah we're going to ban you for not liking something", you've misinterpreted this. This rule is the last resort, like the 'Rotten Apple' clause. It's predecessor was something which was barely ever used (I can only think of one example in the last 6 months). If we didn't use that clause extensively, why would we use this?
You're reading to much into these rules, they're not vague, they're simple. You're seeing them as broad generalizations when in reality, they're just simple rules which people abide by in real life and we expect them to do so here too.
The point is, you don't like the notion of the moderators having so much power over you, well in reality we've always had this much power over you. You're just seeing it with more clarity because we've simplified everything. We have no new tricks, no new tools, we've just updated somethings, removed some loopholes and made it a lot more precise.
Now if we didn't use our power to abuse you before, why would we do it now? No moderator sits down and sets out to ban people they don't like. We sit at a queue, watch the community report people they don't like and reports they don't approve of, then we follow the rules to pass judgement. And no not everything gets mod wrathed because not everything deserves mod wrath.
If you live in fear of us then that means we're doing our job right I suppose, but we're not going to censor your thoughts on our moderation, or ban you for thinking we're jerks.
You say that but this proves that the mods are, in some cases, still too zealous. I keep getting hints from them that I will be banned for 'low content posts', yet even though I don't see how most of them are low content, any I do make are 1 in every 900 quality posts. Yet they would ban me for a post which should have had more words or something? If anything we need to ease up a little bit.Armored Prayer said: