Hello everyone!

There has been some occasional discussion on these boards as well as the facebook group about the moderation of these forums. We, as your admin mods, would like to hear your feedback on our moderation practices in an effort to make our forums a place where the game community can come to talk about Lusternia!

I would love to hear what you think we are doing right as well as things you would like to see changed. I know there have been complaints of over-moderation, so I would like to hear how you think this could be better addressed.

As a baseline: The basic forum rules (which are linked at the top of every page) won't be changing and we are not bringing back Idiots! or Lack of Rants. I can't guarantee that we are going to follow every suggestion we get, but we are listening.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Personally I think it ain't broke and firmly believe in the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I have seen very few cases of what I would consider "Over-moderating" and I've been a member of forums with some fairly strict moderation rules in my time.

I've had no reason to complain in the time I've been here personally and think that the mods/gods are doing a good job on an otherwise thankless task - purely my personal opinion though.

These forums even -need- moderating these days? Seems to me that they are barely used, heh.

Regardless, whilst I cannot say with any certainty whether it's down to either very good moderation or simply a lack of trolls, I think we're in a good place right now. I have not seen or read anything that would fall into the bracket of: Remove post/ban user.

I had a post removed just a few days ago that was not in any way a personal attack; it was just a copy / paste of Iasmos' actions in-game (as far as I am aware, it did not even come with a warning- I don't even know why it was removed).

There is a problem with saying "I haven't seen or read anything that would fall into the category of 'remove post'", however; if it's removed, of course you won't see it!

Over-moderation stifles discussion and activity. These forums are nothing at all like what they used to be (in some ways that's not a bad thing, but in terms of overall activity it is rather disheartening). It's easier / better just to talk about it on Facebook at this point, so the conversations tend to just drift there.

The thing went something like this:
I tweeted about Iasmos' newly-developed penchant for killing the waystation quest NPCs (after both Xiel and I had already finished the waystation quest curios, at that).

By itself, that tweet would have survived; Xiel's much-more-pointed comment did: http://forums.luster...ndpost&p=871906

I apparently made the mistake of following it up with a direct copy/paste of what happened a few minutes after that tweet. I along with a few others had been hunting Icewynd, and we had just finished (which means we had been there for over an hour, not bothering anybody else). I was stepping out of the Plains with them, and was suddenly treated to a deluge of STRATAGEM REPEAT scrying. Adding that log on to the tweet somehow got both posts nuked.

The Facebook discussion on it, though, went on just fine for some time.

The one with Iasmos spam-scrying you? I hadn't even noticed it was gone... Yeah, that's a bit of an overmoderation, I have to agree. Naming-and-shaming does not equal personal attack in my eyes, even if the person on the receiving end doesn't like it!

Ssaliss:

The one with Iasmos spam-scrying you? I hadn't even noticed it was gone... Yeah, that's a bit of an overmoderation, I have to agree. Naming-and-shaming does not equal personal attack in my eyes, even if the person on the receiving end doesn't like it!

That's more or less my opinion, as well. I'm not sure who resolved that particular complaint, but when I saw the report come in I essentially said the same - if you really don't like being named-and-shamed, you should reconsider engaging in activities like that. If by simply stating what you did and showing logs of it you're upset and view it as a personal attack, then you probably shouldn't engage in those activities.

To me, there's a difference between "Ugh, I'm so sick of Iasmos spam-scrying and repeatedly killing Waystation mobs just to stop me and Viynain from doing the quest" and "Xenthos is a pox-riddled, pustule monkey, god I hope he chokes on a pretzel and suffers a brain anyeurism the piece of " And so on and so forth.

Oh, and one thing: At least let us know what happened to our posts if you do something with them. I know I've had a few posts moved to the more limited sections of the forums (envoys etc), and the only reason I know they were moved was because an envoy told me after I ranted about the post apparently being deleted. I'm not so much complaining about the posts being moved (posts written in the heat of the moment can come across as overly harsh at times, after all), but... yeah. Feedback!

Ssaliss:

Oh, and one thing: At least let us know what happened to our posts if you do something with them. I know I've had a few posts moved to the more limited sections of the forums (envoys etc), and the only reason I know they were moved was because an envoy told me after I ranted about the post apparently being deleted. I'm not so much complaining about the posts being moved (posts written in the heat of the moment can come across as overly harsh at times, after all), but... yeah. Feedback!

There's nothing in the Envoys section of the forums.

Oh, this wasn't recent in any sense of the word; the closest I can figure is a couple of RL years ago. I can't even remember what the post was about; all I can remember is being extremely annoyed at something, making a topic about it here, and getting even more annoyed when it was (as far as I could tell at the time) removed without any comment about why.

A few things:

I know what skin Zvoltz uses ^_^ it looks like only the blue one has the rules link.

Second, I think it's sixteen of the thirty-four threads that are showing up when I hit "View New Content" are... channels, I suppose. The "Simple Ideas", "Quotes", "Player Pics 1", "Lack of Raves" threads where we are encouraged into communicating specific things are what I mean by this. This is normal and has been for a while but I suppose there is a need to consider what was there that is not any more and what purpose these forums actually serve.

Third, a small reminder that it's not just actual moderation that can stifle discussion on a forum it can also be the interaction between players and admin. Part of coming to these forums is that ability to interact with the admin and try to discuss things out of game, when you need admin input and they're silent it can be discouraging, if input is given and it even just feels negative this is also discouraging. I suppose the end result here is active and positive communication(the original post is a really great example) seems likely to help resuscitate the forums. This one may not be fair, but I just had to spend a year having to do this irl face to face for a club and it's a customer service thing.

Fourth, there is always the ultimate issue... Facebook is easier. I'm notified about things faster, I can use it on my phone easily, and if I only have one window open then it's probably facebook. The forums are separate from everything, I generally need a reason to come here.

Fifth, the games seem to have stopped. I remember times where I was only really coming to play mafia but then saw a topic of interest and read through it.


I suppose it's all... the forums died because of over-moderation (I remember when tangents resulting in threads being closed) and the rise of the facebook group. If there is a desire to bring people back, then the question of why they should come here needs a look.

Thank you for the feedback so far, everyone.

Saran:

If there is a desire to bring people back, then the question of why they should come here needs a look.

I'm not sure that the goal of this thread was to bring people back, so much as make sure we aren't driving people away. If the facebook group is a more convenient method or you just prefer that format to the forums then there is certainly nothing wrong with that. What I don't want is for people to feel like they have to use the facebook group to discuss something about the game or that they can't use the forums because of moderation.

Saran:

Part of coming to these forums is that ability to interact with the admin and try to discuss things out of game, when you need admin input and they're silent it can be discouraging, if input is given and it even just feels negative this is also discouraging. I suppose the end result here is active and positive communication(the original post is a really great example) seems likely to help resuscitate the forums.

Most of the admin frequent the forums, even if you usually only see some of us posting. So even if we aren't getting involved in the discussion, please keep in mind that we are reading your posts (for more than just moderation purposes) and are likely discussing them at an admin level. The discussion about playerbase dilution being the most recent example of this.

I would like it if subforum #26 were deleted.

Subforum #26?

I think something that would be great is an appeals process if you were warned or banned, or opened a topic which seemed inflamatory to the admin and was locked, even though people wanted to comment and talk about the post/problem.



I also think people who get banned for a year should be able to be unbanned after that year when they contact the administration repeatedly about being unbanned, or at least have the administration contact them and tell them "no dice". Especially when the banning was because of complaints about in-game actions and how some players treated other players.

We do have an appeals process available. Here's the line from the forum rules:

12. Moderators. Even beyond these rules, moderators reserve the right to restrict forum topics in their sole and absolute discretion. If you feel a monitor is being unfair, you can contact Lusternia Support.

That only works if you are informed that you received a warning (which does not always happen).

Further, Celina has tried to get unbanned many times through that route and is told "we are not considering that right now".

Speaking of, could the rules be stickied somewhere? I can't view them on this skin and don't know if they're anywhere else but through that link.

Xenthos:

Further, Celina has tried to get unbanned many times through that route and is told "we are not considering that right now".

A different appeals process wouldn't really help that - the same person(s) would be handling it.

When we switch forum formats, everyone will get a clean slate, warnings and ban wise.

I imagine the lack of forum activity has to do with the overzealous moderation of anything even remotely resembling a negative thought and the fact that given the nature of the game, a lot of conversation lies in discussing all sorts of conflict.

When you talk about conflict, people on either side of the spectrum tend to be very passionate about their opinion, and words get heated. Case in point: RL rants being active even now. Back when it was allowed to vent ingame frustrations, you saw a lot more people posting. While quite a few posts did nothing but antagonize, it also showed that people cared.

Maybe it's just another thing that has changed, but I felt a lot more community in the forums back when everyone posted not just the ups of Lusternian life, but also the downs. I just feel that it's very fake to turn a blind eye to the bad and only acknowledge the good. While personal attacks are bad, the fact that the moderation team has been inconsistent with rules gives the overall impression that posts made will just end up being removed if it posted anything that wasn't a rave (slight exaggeration). If people feel that way, then they won't post, which means that everyone just suffers because there will a lack of both feedback and discussion on just about anything else.

Personally, I'd rather see people caring about the game to the point that they get too passionate vs. an artificial happiness perpetuated by the environment. And frankly, people are gonna complain. If you're not gonna allow them on the forums, they're gonna end up in another place anyway, far from where the admin can address potentially valid concerns.

With that said, given the moderation and the no-conflict-allowed nature of the forums, it has been reduced to this:
1. A request board for Iosai
2. A few pages of discussion about the latest promotion/announce
3. The occasional rave / Hallifax RP log / random request for script/customization/credit trade

It's not necessarily bad, but I sure feel that it's a lot emptier than it used to be and doesn't quite portray the true depth of the game.