Drathnoxis said:
I've been lurking these forums for quite some time now, and while I think it's generally a pretty cool place I can't help feel that the super strict moderation is a detriment to the site.
What moderation? I went from being a regular user to only coming on for a few series and maybe clicking on a few interesting looking news articles because of the lack of moderation. The moderation of this forum is of the worst moderation I've ever seen. You're allowed to insult groups of people all you want, just don't insult individuals or you get in trouble. Do you want to call all Americans stupid? Go right ahead, the mods are cool with that! Do you want to call all PC gamers pirates who don't deserve good games because they don't pay for them? That's fine too! Are you an intelligent American who buys all of their PC games who is now offended by the rampant insults being hurled your way? Well you'd better shut up and take it, and don't you dare get mad and call these people out on their bullshit because if you do, that's bad and the moderators will get you!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the moderations I have wracked up for becoming justifiably offended at those types of posts are unfair. They're fair, I lost my cool and insulted the guy back, that's a rule violation and I deserved to be moderated. What I am saying is that
the other person who started throwing insults first in each situation should have also been moderated. But they don't get moderated, they get away with it by insulting everybody instead of insulting an individual. I know this because on multiple occasions I have reported these posts and come back days, usually at least a week later (as I said, I only come around here for a few of the weekly shows now), and find that the post is still plainly visible for all to see, read, and be insulted by. This tells me that the moderators on this site are clearly okay with this kind of behavior. But why? On every single forum page, there's a link to the forum rules which contains this:
Don't Be a Jerk
This rule trumps any other. Any loophole you think you've found in any other rule is covered by this one. If you make our forums a less pleasant place to be, we don't want you here and we have no problem revoking your account. Here are a couple of the things you should stay away from:
Flaming
Calling people names (or groups who may visit The Escapist), this includes calling others a troll
This tells me that somebody higher up on this site who wrote the rules actually does not want it to be okay for members to insult entire groups of people, so why isn't this rule being enforced? Somebody higher up needs to sit all these moderators down and say "Listen guys, these are the rules we have laid out and you're not enforcing all of them. It's time to start doing a better job, and if you can't do that, we'll replace you with people who can." Because right now, people are making your forums a less pleasant place to be and absolutely nothing is being done about that.
That, and a while back there was a whole crapload of pony spamming going on. You couldn't go into a single thread without people derailing it to post pictures of ponies or talk about the show. And the mods did nothing about that either, which I found very strange because they moderate any post that's deemed to be "low content" because, according to the rules, "These forums are used for discussion and low content posts halt discussion." Yes, low content posts halt discussion, but derailing every thread possible to talk about ponies didn't halt discussion at all... Except for the part where, you know, it halted every discussion that wasn't about ponies.
My final issue is with the report button itself. I hate any report button that just pops up and says "Are you sure you want to report this? YES/NO" without any kind of input. It makes me feel like those in charge don't care why I feel the post is inappropriate. And how do you know what I'm reporting it for anyway if you don't ask? What if I'm reporting something because I feel it's a "Topicless Thread Creation", but the moderator who reviews it looks at it and says "I don't see any flaming or mention of that certain browser add-on that nobody had better ever dare mention" and thus doesn't do anything about it? What if it's like all those damn pony posts the forum used to be plagued with that I mentioned earlier and again, the mod doesn't consider that and just says "No insults, this post can stay"? At the very least, there should be a little window with a list of all the various rules and a radio button next to each one so we can pick what rule we think the post violates.
AnarchistFish said:
Yeah, I'll post what I said in another thread
I feel like most insults are less offensive (I'm not even sure how some of these are even found offensive or considered insults) than the passing aggressive remarks stringent rules like these encourage. People won't usually respond with those words unprovoked and they're not always unjustified.
Quoted for truth.
Dags90 said:
Hopefully no one on the entire internet finds this post offensive, or I'm in trouble.
Doesn't matter, they don't enforce that rule.
SanAndreasSmoke said:
Hell, I've seen other posters say the exact same thing without getting a warning, just in a more subtle, passive-aggressive manner. I actually find that to be worse because then you have condescension mixed in as well.
Once again, quoted for truth. I'm very glad I'm not the only one who's seen this going on.
Susan Arendt said:
Our rules are in place so that the community as a whole can enjoy themselves while they're here.
Now all you have to do is get some moderators in place that will actually enforce those rules and maybe people will be able to enjoy themselves while they're here. Until then, I won't be back until next Monday when there's a new Jimquisition to watch, because I'm sure not coming back tomorrow for the community that's allowed free reign to insult me for being American and playing PC games among other things.
