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Lord Barrius -> =ED= Forum Policy Changes (8/11/2011 14:09:20)
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Alright, by now you've noticed that I've taken over as head mod of this board. I wanted to take a moment to explain to you some of the changes we're making in this board, because I have a feeling that a lot of them have been oversold as something much larger than they are.
I want to start by explaining who I am, for the number of you who have never seen me before. I'm Lord Barrius, aka LB, aka Kitten. I first became an AK back in April of 2007, and was hired onto the AdventureQuest team in May as a member of the Knights of Order, AQ's balancers and primary development team. Later, in October, I was promoted from AK to moderator, and assumed head mod duties over Dragonfable Suggestions. I've also sort of slid into a writing position on the AQ team (for those of you who play AQ, I'm responsible for works like "The SeekRat Saga", Nemesis Set's new quest, and "Bun-Rangers", among others). With the recent closing of that board, I have been asked to take over as head moderator for this forum, EDGD.
My primary job as a game staff member has been to ensure that our players in AQ are always being listened to. I care deeply about their thoughts and opinions on various subjects, and it's because of this interaction that AQ remains successful to this day. My primary job as a forum staff member is to ensure that the forum community is open to all sorts of ideas and opinions and types of people, and that no one is being mistreated or discarded for having a different opinion from someone else. As a member of both of these staff groups, I have to constantly reconcile these factors together, and it has helped create my philosophy for how I do things.
Why tell you all this? I feel it's important for you to know where I stand for you to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing.
Let's start with the basics. When I took on this job, there were two key tasks that I knew I would need to perform. The first is to straighten up the forum community in such a way that everyone's opinions can be expressed without anyone being degraded for their point of view, and for everyone to be able to enjoy each other's company. To essentially turn this forum into a better, closer community. The second is to help guide all of the AKs from this community, teach them the ropes so to speak. They are new at this whole thing, just like you guys are. They don't deserve to be yelled at, or mistreated, they deserve respect for giving their very best to try to make this community run efficiently. They're not trying to be mean, they're trying to do their jobs and still fit in. That's not a bad thing, is it?
The second duty, I will be handling in-house. We're going to work to turn this AK team into one that can serve your needs better.
The first duty is a tough one, because it requires a bit of tough love. I've seen a lot of people wondering why we can't just loosen up, but that's just it: ever since the move, we've been gentler on you than on other forums. We've tried the loose leash, it does not work. Some people in here just don't intend to behave. They want to ruin the community for everyone else. So my goal is to make this forum work better and the community cleaner. That may mean that some people will be removed. I don't like to ban people, nor do I like to lock posts or delete them. Honestly, my preference is to sit back in a comfy chair and watch Fox primetime. Since we can't do that, here's how we're going to do things instead.
I have one big rule that transcends all the others: respect. I don't mind if people hate me or dislike me. You may have to take a number these days. But I do expect you to respect each other, and respect my team. If you can't do that, you won't be staying here. Full stop. I do not want this forum to continue to allow people to degrade, demean, and otherwise devalue each other. This is a community of people who all have one interest: you all love ED and you want to see it get better. So let's show that, rather than attacking each other or getting mad at AKs for doing their jobs, let's try to remember that we're all a community, a family of sorts, and let's try to make things work. Surely you don't hate members of your family, no matter how much they may get under your skin, right? :P
Onto the big part: changes.
One change I've implemented is to condense all balance discussions into one place. I did this for two reasons: One, to put it all in one place for the balance team to look at. Two, to make it easier for my team of AKs to take care of those who demean and degrade each other. This has met with a lot of criticisms. Being a balancer myself, I understand that many people are thinking "How can we hold discussions? There will be so many different ones in the same place!". You're welcome to use both PMs and the quote system to hold your discussions. It should help solve the confusion. At present, this policy is not intended to be permanent. It is a temporary measure that will be used for several months to help train our AKs to serve this community even better, and it will allow us time to pick out the good and bad posters. This makes it much easier for us to help clean things up and get the community back to being a community.
A second change I've made is to restrict "whining" threads. According to the rules:quote:
In addition to refraining from spam, please refrain from creating threads with the sole purpose of complaining about things in the game, such as lag. Well-reasoned discussions will be permitted, as always, but threads that exist purely to complain and whine will not be allowed, as these threads are prime targets for flaming and trolling. I should note that this does not read "you can never complain about anything". My wording is quite deliberate here. I want to encourage well-thought-out, positive discussions about the sorts of things you are interested in. I don't want to encourage threads full of "rawr I hate this game because they don't allow X!", because those topics lead to comments from two bad types of posters: those who agree and flame the staff for not changing it, and those who disagree and flame those who agree. Neither of those two types of posting are okay, and we want to get rid of that. You're still welcome to discuss a variety of topics, we just expect you to do it in such a way that no one is being insulted. We don't want forum or game staff insulted for their hard work, or players insulted simply for disagreeing with each other. That's not the sort of thing I want to encourage.
A third change I've made, perhaps the most criticized, is to restrict discussions of a "financial" nature. In other words, no Varium vs Non-Varium, Free vs Paying, Varium is too expensive, etc kinds of threads. Again, there are multiple reasons for this. The first is their tendency to dip into immature flaming, which as noted above, we don't want. AE respects all of its players and wishes none of them degraded because of their status. The second reason is because discussions about "how much is this" aren't things the forum staff have any say in. They're something only the devs can deal with, and AE typically does not wish for input in regards to how it prices things. That's not to say you're not allowed to have your say in this. Feel free to contact the ED devs when you feel that pricing is unfair. Cinderella will very likely be willing to hear you out. But coming to the forums to complain about it just leads to more of those in-house flame wars that we don't want, and forum staff really can't help you in this regard anyways.
A lot of you are telling me "LB, we're so angry because we're upset. We're not listened to.". As I've said, my job in AQ has basically been to make sure that my players NEVER say that to me, so you need to realize that I totally understand where you're coming from. With that said, there is a line that we must not cross. When a customer does not like their product, the respectful and adult thing to do is to pursue all possible methods of communicating that issue. The absolute worst thing you can do is start raging, insulting, and slandering. It makes the devs even less inclined to listen. After all, when you're on the job, don't you take constructive criticisms like "you could have done X differently, try this next time" better than when your boss yells at you in front of co-workers about your lousy performance?
The goal here is a better community, NOT a worse one. A community that can express opinions with freedom from persecution, NOT a community in which people stop treating each other with respect and dignity. I know that's not what you're seeing right now. Right now what you see is some strange guy plopped into your forums telling you what to do. But let's just relax a bit. Cool down. This is not the end of the world. It's not the end of the forum, either. It's the start of a new approach to things.
I created this thread not only to explain things to you, but to give you a chance to respond to me. I'm getting some flak for not responding to PMs, but that's mostly because my box is flooding over, not because I'm trying to be malicious. Let's keep this a respectful, responsible, adult discussion about the changes we're making here, so that everyone has a chance to provide their own opinions without anyone feeling wronged or insulted.
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