I just thought I’d chime in on this one…
The easiest way to explain why this is more complicated and more work than it seems is just saying “Ultima Online” maybe not all of you are aware but there was a huge legal case with them and their volunteers which haunts game devs everywhere for all time.
I used to work with a large volunteer team on some games so I know it can be done, however, we also had an in house legal team one floor up and a few doors down. - We don’t have that at IP2 we are a very small team and an even smaller community/support team.
A HUGE chunk of time would spent recruiting, and training the right people, because becoming a mod doesn’t just mean you suddenly get powers and are let loose on the community. - time we can’t spend doing our actual jobs. It’s not short term pain for long term gain, it’s on going management and coaching time.
Those are just a couple of reasons this is a deep dive we’re not intending to take any time soon. I’m someone who really believes volunteer teams can work in games too - my career started out with me as a volunteer game mod, but this isn’t right for Gems of War right now. - You can debate it with me if you want but my opinion isn’t going to change today or tomorrow and I’m someone who is super passionate about getting the community involved in as much as possible.
So more importantly, what CAN we do that’s viable and a decent solution for most people involved?
What Salty is already doing, adjusting how the trust levels are balanced and who can or can’t hide other people’s posts so that the community can moderate itself with minimal mod oversight just to correct it when we do have a spike of unfair flags and hidden posts. It sucks when it’s abused for sure, but I think the trusted members of the community far outweigh the ones that might get mad one day and abuse it.
Good moderation in a forum utopia is hands off moderation. Mods not hiding or deleting posts (cue the Kafka witch hunters please to point out what a hypocrite I am), mods not getting involved at ALL except to facilitate a fun and constructive community. Facilitators, not police. The community can do this themselves without more moderators, most of our forum community are adults, I don’t want to believe you need to be baby sat, most users are fine.
No system is perfect, but I think this is the better option currently.
Just to address the handful of people who want my blood, I’ve done my best to be impartial, I’m human though, I make mistakes sometimes, some of the things you think were mistakes definitely weren’t, some were. I’m not going to be deleting posts in the bug report section any more because I’ve found the bug report section has become more constructive and I’ll put my money where my mouth is and let the community self moderate there.