test content
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc

New Community Moderation Program

12467

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    I am glad you are thinking about the kids, and also I would never wish to be moderator here LOL. I already have my own kids to moderate ROFL :D You should at least offer these volunteers some benefits as far as mental health for helping out :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    StormShade wrote:
    If you don't like the idea we're going with right now, I can understand that. However, this issue has been decided. I've done the best I can to come up with a fair, and non-biased selection process, and level of power for the community moderators. It's been vetted by multiple people here, and gone through several revisions. It honestly isn't going to get any better than this, and the process is being implemented.

    I don't care for the idea, but I certainly see the utility of it and the need for it. And both of those items are things I can respect, despite my personal discomfort.

    I've seen community moderation done extremely poorly (elsewhere) in the past; I've seen user-moderators blatantly violate community standards and repeatedly commit bannable offenses, only to be given absolution and to have their offending posts POOFed out of existence by the involved community's Powers That Be.

    That being said, I sincerely hope that the Cryptic team rises ABOVE that standard and that this new program is successful. Fingers crossed, knocking on wood, biting my tongue. :p:)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    That's fine. You don't have to accept anything. However, these rules, and this program, ARE going into place. This is not changing. So, in short, if you don't ever break any of the forum rules, you should never, ever, hear from one of these Community Moderators in a way which makes you unhappy. If you do break the rules, well, no one forced you to do that, and the people which we choose to moderate our forum will be allowed to, by us, to moderate your posts.

    while I have no intention of breaking forum rules, lets be very clear on what you're saying here stormshade. other companies have tried this, other companies have gotten in very serious legal trouble for doing so. in short, only a paid official member of a companies customer service team may be in any way involved with moderation, discipline and such toward a customer. according to state law any action taken by admins based on any input, recommendations, etc... from a 'volunteer' staff member of any kind are grounds to take action against a company. its a very clear conflict of interest.

    don't blame me and say nobody warned you in advance when one of these volunteers ends up suing or getting you sued by a customer over something that never should have been allowed to happen in the first place

    stormshade, this program is a disaster waiting to happen. I will remind you that these volunteers are not even qualified to be customer service members, administrators, moderators or anything else. putting them in such a position over customers will come back on you sooner or later, as it does with every company that has attempted it.

    and on a related sidenote, I don't believe that part about 'if you never break a rule you won't ever hear from them' because more than once I have had incidents with such people. in fact the last time it was an email from a moderator on another site sending me threatening messages for simply agreeing that a statement made by a user seemed a little odd and that he may not be who he claims to be. you wouldn't believe the message I got the next day from an admin because of that. the point is people can abuse it whether you have broken a rule or not.
    If a Community Moderator is found to not be moderating the forums fairly, and impartially, we will remove them from their position. Simple.

    this sounds good, in theory. i've found the reality of situations like this to have been different.
    Except for the fact that we, as the forum administrators, are giving people the right to moderate the forums, who do not work for us.

    which is at best questionable from a legal standpoint. it also creates a fair bit of liability on cryptics part for actions taken by those people
    In the end however, the decision is entirely that of the Community Manager's, and the Moderators recommendation is only meant to bring a person to the Community Manager's attention

    i'm not disputing that, however the point i'm getting at there is more to how much of the final decision was simply the actual admins decision and how much was influenced by the volunteer.
    According to Stormshade, they explicitly do. From the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies:

    according to state employment law they don't
    What exactly does 'not accepting' a ban mean? If you're banned, you can't just say "I refuse to accept this" and log in anyway.

    it means that depending on the circumstances of the situation, I have every right to and would challenge any moderation action taken against me or any banning of my account. consumer protection laws are pretty clear about that. in simple terms: any such decision that had any input from someone who was not an employee of a company is not difficult to invalidate because the person who had that input was not in a legal position to be allowed to do so. this is what has gotten companies in trouble in the past with these kinds of things. you could take it up with the state attorney generals office and whoever else handles consumer rights complaints. its been done
    This doesn't sound like that bad an idea actually, it all depends on who they select to do it though.

    did you read the part about selecting people via a poll? yeah theres a real smart way of selecting administrators

    i'll reiterate once again: companies have had considerable problems over these types of programs. they are lawsuits waiting to happen. they are a very very bad idea for everyone involved. if you want more administrative staff to handle the boards fine, hire more qualified staff
    That's why Cryptic is going to be screening them and why there will only be two. They have to have a history of following the rules and avoiding flame wars. This isn't going to be a case of them bringing on some newb or repeat offender. Odds are in order to be considered, you have to have a minimum number of posts with few infractions. Only the long term and fair posters would be able to even apply.

    sounds like 'yes men' to me. and I doubt they will be screening anybody very effectively. not that screening works anyway. I could tell you some horror stories about dealing with mods in other companies that would make you cringe.

    not to mention considering a large part of the choosing of these mods involves a poll I question any screening process from the get go
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Hiring (if in name only) players to be moderators does not seem like the best idea to me as how does one seperate their fandom from reality to be objective in moderation?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Rhodes85 wrote: »
    it means that depending on the circumstances of the situation, I have every right to and would challenge any moderation action taken against me or any banning of my account. consumer protection laws are pretty clear about that. in simple terms: any such decision that had any input from someone who was not an employee of a company is not difficult to invalidate because the person who had that input was not in a legal position to be allowed to do so. this is what has gotten companies in trouble in the past with these kinds of things. you could take it up with the state attorney generals office and whoever else handles consumer rights complaints. its been done

    The only thing I can suggest to this, is that you pay for access to the game. However acces to the fourms is a privilage, not a right, and only a Cryptic employee will restrict that privilage at the end of the day. But it falls into the cat of "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason." Because of that statement cyrptic can restrict access to their systems. They do not have to allow you to post. You pay to play a game, not to talk on a fourm.

    Not saying your right or wrong, just trying to provide an unbiased look at the overall picture.,
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Well from a positive perspective, there are plenty of great community run sites that are doing just fine without paid moderators, like STOWiki and Starbase UGC. Star trek fans are often very good people.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    StormShade wrote:
    Hey gang!
    ...
    Right now, we’re looking for 3 moderators for Star Trek Online, and 2 moderators for Champions Online....

    Thanks,

    Stormshade
    Having had some experience moderating a popular online forum, my biggest concern, (and considering the amount of vitriole exhibited on these forums...) that 3 moderators is simply too small a number for Forum Rules enforcement...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Rhodes85 wrote: »

    according to state employment law they don't

    Ths does not sound correct at all to me.
    Such a law would forbid an unpaid intern to a Senator from providing them information that may/may not affect their descisions.
    Or unpaid Voluteer Police Officers from reporting to their paid Supervisor why they had detained an individual.
    How would the "volunteer" moderator bring legal actions when anyone can report innapropriate actions by another, with the Report Icon?
    Can you provide a link to the PC that says this?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Stormshade... I know I fall on the rather-slightly-more-critical-than-average side of things, but I'm going to make a very very strong suggestion: Do not rely on volunteer moderators. Therein lies madness. You will save yourselves HUGE headaches by giving some poor, otherwise unemployed lads or lasses a part-time minimal-wage no-benefits work-from-home paycheck.

    Allow me to explain: When you give someone a paycheck, there is an explicit, legally binding arrangement. You can simply enforce certain behaviors from your moderators better than you can if they are all volunteers. Put simply, when you give someone a paycheck, you can demand and require a certain level of professionalism. You can demand and require a certain amount of time from them. You can demand and require a certain accountability. You can demand and require a certain lack of bias. And you can demand and require certain qualifications that would otherwise be difficult to require in a volunteer. (In cons, when looking for gofers, you tend to have to make do with what you can get.) When you ask a volunteer to do it, you get none of these. You may think you can, but a volunteer is just that: A volunteer. They are not required to do anything, and they are not held up to certain standards. And you cannot hold a paycheck over them. All you are holding over them is the removal of being a moderator, and chances are the damage will have already been done and at that point they will not care that you are removing their moderator status.

    I would also point out that you are only adding another level to the moderation process. It may look like it will be a timesaver for you and BranFlakes, but you will still have to review all the actions undertaken by your volly monitors. This is the problem of moderators: Either you give them enough teeth to do the job for you, or you may as well not have a moderator at all. And if you give them enough teeth, you must hold them accountable. A paycheck is the surest way I know of to hold someone accountable.

    Volunteers are great and needed in a lot of roles. We need them and rely on them at conventions a lot. But you do not want them doing your face work. You do not want potentially paying customers to run into a moderator who may have had a bad day. And in a community as... energetic as this, you want moderators who will be held up to standards, and who have the teeth to nip problem threads in the bud.

    Yes, it means shelling out money. That's going to be the case. That's unavoidable. You will get a much more reliable moderation team if you pay them rather than asking for volunteers.

    This isn't even talking about the belief that anyone from this community, no matter what they may say, will be going into this with biases and axes to grind and phasers set to 'Make posting life miserable.' :o


    ETA: I would also add, that a Poll is *absolutely* the worst way to go about this! The moderators should be anonymous. We should not know them at all except by their mod names. There are a large number of posters here who have 'reputations,' all across the continuum of posters, and that WILL be evidence of demonstrable bias in ANY case where someone disagrees with their moderation. As long as the mods are uniquely identifiable, and known to Cryptic, they do not have to be known to us by their typical standard forum names. Therein lies not only madness but incendiariness the likes of which the Devil can only dream about.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Moderators report to and are a part of Marketing (MarCom). They are responsible for PR as well as rule enforcement and they use moderation to accomplish goals in both areas.

    We've seen moderation used for PR motives here before. "Crackdown Style" moderation ended up being a detriment to the community and the overly strict moderator ended up relieved of their job. With "more boots on the ground" Marketing could attempt this again, except this time it won't be blatantly apparent on the Dev Tracker.

    If Cryptic ends up using Player Moderators to white wash general negativity and hand out warnings en masse in attempts to control their image on the forums then this will backfire. We'll just have to see if this ends up being "Moderation to Protect Kids" or "PR Censorship & Image Control."
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    a poll? really so its all down to a vote for me contest, yeah, this is gonna go over well. This is getting worse by the day, Scrap this idea before you get yourself in a jam.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Kyuui wrote: »
    a poll? really so its all down to a vote for me contest, yeah, this is gonna go over well. This is getting worse by the day, Scrap this idea before you get yourself in a jam.

    this, a popularity contest is something we don't need. Stormy, yes I'm back :p. its time for old man Butters to go on one of his walks down memory lane.

    back in, I want to say mid 2009 there was a IRC channel that had gained a wide spread fallowing. nearly all the active members in the community, it was rather small and close knit at the time. ended up there; so much so that it kind of became the defacto link between Cryptic devs, Mostly Gozer, Awein ( the them Community Rep) and a few others.

    now keep in mind that STO was still in its F&F stage, CB did not start for at least 6 months if not longer, its a little fuzzy as to the time line but that is not the point i am trying to make. now as the game and its community grew this channel became more and more popular. so much so that cryptic clamed it as "The Offical Star Trek Online IRC Channel" now before that the channel had been created and ran by one of the early fleets called All Out Assult. and as they had been running the channel so long cryptic just left them in charge.

    the problems started soon after. as new people came along and clashed with the "old timers" arguments happen (:eek: arguments! on the interwebs no way) and the mods, being the old timers were kicking the upstarts.

    now this being the Official channel cryptic had to step in and moderate it themselves. a added responsibly to go restart negotiations with CBS, but that is a story for another time.

    TLDR this is not the first time Cryptic has tried this

    Moving forward.

    in this the one thing cryptic should avoid is hiring well known 'personality's'

    now i know that cryptic has hired form the community recently before, looking at you 'Tron' but let be say this there is a lot of differences in pay-grade. im not saying that a volunteer is less compentant or passionate than someone who is payed for there work but im talking about that fact that you need completely unbiased people working for you.

    not to say that this is bad, no, ill timed, should have started a month ago. but i have seem to have go on and rambled.

    TLDR, be wareiry of hiring forum 'personality's'

    ps no I would not touch this job wiht a 39 1/2 poll :p
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Althought moderating each other somes good on paper, I'm not sure it would work in real life.... Add that these are unpaid positions just makes me think of the old saying "you get what you pay for", if you pay nothing you'll get nothing .....

    That is my nickles worth of free advice.....
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    i think this is a good idea as im an unemployed part time open univercity student studying for a physics degree (so i can make my own starship one day, maybe ill call her the phoenix or does that make me totally obsessed with all things star trek lol im geting distracted back to the point ) im allways looking to get a leg up in geting a fulltime job, as a volunteer the unemployed persion would have a refrance they could call upon when applying for a payed job in the real world and they would be able to put it on there cv.

    i would like to do it but it's probably to late now :(


    but on a good note we get new featured content soon after f2p lanch (not long now t-minus 3 days)

    and then who knows what, it is star trek . any thing is possible :)

    llap all faithful star trek fans
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Dont work for Cryptic for free. I made that mistake and just got screwed over.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Such a terrible idea; and since you are going through with this then there needs to be EXTREME penalties for favoritism and/or other less then honorable issues from community moderators. Extreme deterrence such as account deletion or loss of gameplay time will make sure only the worthwhile even apply for the position and make sure they stay in line.


    Idea is bad to begin with, and if these people are supposed to be 'the best of the community' then they need to be held to a much higher standard.

    ALSO LOL AT a poll to justify who will take a position. Absolutely worst idea ever, I'm sorry cryptic but popularity =/= good mod.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    This will not end well.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    There was a point system all this time!?

    Oh...now half of what I've seen since here 2009 is starting to make sense... =D

    On the plus side, at least I can say I ended well under par....!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    The new Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies are now in effect. Please make sure to read through them thoroughly, and that you understand and abide by them going forward.

    Cheers,

    Brandon =/\=
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    I'll just post my experience with this style of moderation: The Marvel Comics forums.

    It didn't work too well having specific members of the community given moderation powers. There was too much abuse, and way too much bias.

    For example you couldn't make a joke about The Avengers without one very diehard Avengers fan who was a moderator through their program taking it way out of context and then taking action against you.

    That was just one example. You mix in Sider-man fans, and various X-Men fans, and it was just an overall horrible forum experience due to the fans themselves, along with all of their biases, coming together and not even agreeing on any form of consistent moderation.

    The community/customers already have their own agenda and biases. So making them moderator is already doing it from a negative.

    But hey, whatever you all think will work. I've never seen that type of program work. Marvel just happens to be the most egregious example I've experienced.

    EDIT:
    If a Community Moderator is found to not be moderating the forums fairly, and impartially, we will remove them from their position. Simple.

    I wish it were that simple. But the problem is ... this type of abuse does happen in these programs. And the overall impact of such negative behavior is huge. Recovering from that kind of damage is never simple.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Based on the link BranFlakes just posted all the Mods can do is remove content they find troublesome via editing or closing threads. They cannot impose Infractions - though I assume they would direct Bran or Stormy to threads they felt deserved Infractions. That does not seem to be a big deal - and even with "professional" moderators personal bias will still come through.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    As I've asked before; Can we have more people monitoring ESD zone chat, please?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    The new Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies are now in effect. Please make sure to read through them thoroughly, and that you understand and abide by them going forward.

    Cheers,

    Brandon =/\=

    I take it we are no longer allowed to post in the forums. I will skip the formalities and go straight to my ban.

    Ok I was just kidding... Owww
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Zeuxidemus wrote:
    I take it we are no longer allowed to post in the forums. I will skip the formalities and go straight to my ban.

    Ok I was just kidding... Owww
    Those are almost identical to the forum rules which have been in place for that last 2 years so I'm not sure what you're finding so surprising. :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Cosmic_One wrote: »
    Those are almost identical to the forum rules which have been in place for that last 2 years so I'm not sure what you're finding so surprising. :)

    I was joking LOL
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    GameSpock wrote: »
    As I've asked before; Can we have more people monitoring ESD zone chat, please?

    Yeah I think it's funny that you have several different devs saying that they limit their interaction on the forums because it's so bad here. When ESD chat is like a million times worse LOL.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    Honestly in no disrespect but I won't be giving any more feedback until the moderators are Cryptic Employees or Perfect World Employees and not players with grudges against other players. It has already started but I do have a faith in both companies that they will see the error in this program and hire some quality employees like they have been. Pretty much though I am inclined not to read or post in forums anymore because of this.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2012
    3 month old forum tickets have vanished without a trace. WTG, Cryptic. Tell us to use a forum ticket system then never even read or reply to them. Talk about treating the customers bad.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    StormShade wrote:
    Hey gang!

    I’m really pleased to announce that we’ll be instituting a Community Moderation Program on the Champions Online, and Star Trek Online forums.

    Along with this, we’ll also be the first forums to implement the new PWE Community Rules and Policies.

    First, let’s talk about the new rules and policies:

    Essentially, these are the same rules and policies you’re already used to, with some minor changes to help take into account the differences between PWE and Cryptic games, and an introduction of the rules regarding community moderators. The rules themselves are not changing for Cryptic titles, but how we enforce them will be. I’ll have the new Rules and Policies Document up in the Announcements section shortly, so you can all see exactly what is changing.

    Since we don’t want your fellow players to have the ability to ban others from the forums, we’ll be reducing the point value of all infractions to zero. Our community staff will be kept aware of any issues with troublesome posters, and will still be able to issue forum suspensions or bans. We expect that community members will notice a sharp decrease in any suspensions or bans. Instead of having the VBulletin software issue suspensions and bans automatically based on the point values from infractions, we will be assigning them manually, at the Community Managers’ discretion, with the assistance of the community moderators.

    Due to this, the first time a Community Manager suspends you, you will receive a 3 day suspension, then a 1 week suspension, followed by a 2 week suspension, and should you garner our attention a 4th time, a permanent ban from the forums. This system will be using the current infraction point system.

    Now, let’s talk about the new Community Moderators:

    When a need for more moderators is identified by the Community Manager, they’ll post a thread, indicating the need, how many are needed, and the process for applying. For Champs, and STO, we’ll be asking people from the community who are interested to submit a community ticket from our support site, with the subject “Community Moderator Application”.

    Right now, we’re looking for 3 moderators for Star Trek Online, and 2 moderators for Champions Online.

    The ticket should include your time zone, any relevant experience you may have, and why you would like to join our team of community moderators.

    We’ll also include a day when we will stop accepting applications. Since this is our first time out, we’re going to accept applications received by January 13th, 2012. We’ll review the applications, and contact interested parties who we believe would best fit the role to perform a brief online interview.

    Using the interview, we will narrow the field further, and select our top candidates. If we have more acceptable candidates than we have positions, then we will be posting a poll, which will allow the community to have the final choice in the matter. The poll will last for one week, and close after that time. Winners of the poll will be contacted, and enter a 30-60 day probationary training period, where they will work with us to learn the ropes.

    As this is our first time out, we hope to have new community moderators on the forums by January 20th, 2012.

    It is important to understand that community moderators are completely unpaid. Community moderators are in no way required to work any specific hours, meet any quota, and may post as much or as little as they choose to. They are not paid in any way, shape, or form, and do not receive any compensation or perks for the time they choose to spend moderating the forums.

    Should you be selected to become a moderator by the community, you may choose to leave the position at any time you choose, and may be removed from the position by the PWE Community Team at any time if deemed necessary.

    If you have any questions about this new program (We’re sure you do!) you may ask by replying to this thread. If you have a question regarding the new Rules and Policies Document, please file a Community Ticket.

    Thanks,

    Stormshade


    bad idea... many have done this and each time shown it fails.
    of course I am assuming you would listen... but, go ahead learn yourselves.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited February 2012
    superchum wrote: »
    I'll just post my experience with this style of moderation: The Marvel Comics forums.

    It didn't work too well having specific members of the community given moderation powers. There was too much abuse, and way too much bias.

    For example you couldn't make a joke about The Avengers without one very diehard Avengers fan who was a moderator through their program taking it way out of context and then taking action against you.

    That was just one example. You mix in Sider-man fans, and various X-Men fans, and it was just an overall horrible forum experience due to the fans themselves, along with all of their biases, coming together and not even agreeing on any form of consistent moderation.

    The community/customers already have their own agenda and biases. So making them moderator is already doing it from a negative.

    But hey, whatever you all think will work. I've never seen that type of program work. Marvel just happens to be the most egregious example I've experienced.

    EDIT:


    I wish it were that simple. But the problem is ... this type of abuse does happen in these programs. And the overall impact of such negative behavior is huge. Recovering from that kind of damage is never simple.

    now that is Wisdom, trying to lead intelligence. Let us hope they do listen S
This discussion has been closed.