This truth validates Salty’s stance even more though. We had some minor flare ups with boys yesterday but now you can find no record of it. In my opinion, the major issue recently was actually caused by a regular who abused what little power they had. The reluctancy to give power is a good thing. Even if the forums aren’t monitored 24/7. No one will ever truly know how much they are monitored though. As stated before… We were attacked by at least 2 bots yesterday. And outside of this post… You won’t be able to find any history of it on the forums now.
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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.
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Isn’t there a middle ground? Like you just hiding the post yourself instead of deleting it outright?
I believe your intent was for the other programmers to review a thread and see just the facts without any feedback. But if you hide a post then they will know to skip over that post. If they choose to click on it and review it then that’s on them.
I learned my lesson when I was first on discord and would just delete posts that I found inappropriate and didn’t bother to explain why. Since then I’ve lived by the rule of if I don’t have time to explain why I feel a post is inappropriate… Then I don’t have the time to delete it. But if I could just hide a post until I had the time to explain myself after deleting it. Then I definitely would choose that option.
Yesterday, I had some posts deleted. Because the whole thread was deleted. Therefore I already knew the why so no explanation was necessary. I think it’s just a matter of people don’t like taking minutes to write out something. Just to have someone take a few seconds to delete it and then don’t feel it necessary to take a minute to explain why.
That being said… If I could just enough power to delete or hide any comment about “the mods/devs deleting posts” (even if it’s a dev speaking on it) I’d be a happy camper.
A different dev that I’ll protect their identify by calling them Malty… Used to delete my posts all the time…a few times I talked shit about it… But I think only once I sent them a DM because 1/20 posts that were deleted I truly didn’t know why that one was deleted. My point is… Any Regular by now should know by now that if Kafka deletes your comment…or did delete it… On a bug report. Then she has/had every right to. Post your thoughts basically any where else on the forums and 99% of the time the devs won’t delete it unless it’s super offensive or illegal. But under the bug report thread…she gets to be judge, jury and deleter.
So everyone involved in Delete Gate 2020. Please move the Frank on from it already. 
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