Moderation rules

[vazco]

Dear @admin, today I've learned that discussion about reasons for moderation of particular posts is forbidden, as stated by mod at the bottom of this thread:

 

I hope discussion about this rule is not forbidden as well, as in my opinion the rule of uncommented moderation may be responsible for a few significant PR issues of Naval Action, and in result generate substantial alternative costs for GameLabs. Changing this rule may in my opinion improve financial situation of GameLabs, which is also the goal of the community. The more time devs can spend on their game, the better for people who love it and try to support it.

PR of GameLabs improved greatly in time, but it's still imperfect. I know a bit about crisis management and I would suggest to adapt forum policy to rules of PR crisis management, for better efficiency. Some basic rules can be found eg below:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/06/20/13-golden-rules-of-pr-crisis-management/#c3c1ca21bcf3

 

The most relevant harming scenario in my opinion is for a discussion on an uneasy topic being muted on forum. Usually a result of such approach is that negative comments or negatively attituded people don't disappear, but rather move to a forum which can't be controlled by a company - here GameLabs, where GameLabs can't get in front of the facts. Examples of such forums are Steam comments, Twitch streams, reviews and others. A much more effective approach involves using PR crisis management to quash the crisis before it spreads and change people opinion before they move to other channels.

I believe that with different approach - which would require changing rules of moderation, Naval Action would sell much more copies already, and can sell much more copies in the future.

That's my three cents.

Edited November 9, 2018 by vazco

[Christendom]

this won't go over well...

[Vernon Merrill]

Man, the attention-whore crowd is out in full force today....   it’s pretty simple.  

Dint be a bitch and you won’t get banned.  

Hopefully the ban-hammer stays out, if you ask me....  

Theres providing feedback.  And there’s trolling.  

Dont troll admin and you won’t get banned.  

[vazco]

4 hours ago, Vernon Merrill said:

Hopefully the ban-hammer stays out, if you ask me

I don't care really if I get banned or not, it's just a forum of a game  I give advice, it doesn't need to be followed. I don't care if people decide that my advice, or advice from Forbes, is wrong. 

5 hours ago, Vernon Merrill said:

Man, the attention-whore crowd is out in full force today.

This kind of attitude is an issue from point 12.

[jodgi]

😔

We're given a bit a leeway, especially in news section, but rules are tighter in other sections and especially in patch feedback.

It's super easy to avoid being silenced or banned; Just make sure you attack the idea, you can even put color to your strong feelings. Don't direct your words towards any person; That is a surefire way of avoiding unwanted attention (accidental irony).

I know it's hip to purposefully misunderstand og misrepresent.

Read my lips: Noone has even banned for criticism of features, ideas, suggestions or what have you.

Now, look at the emotions being expressed in certain topics right now. People react. Mods and devs are people too. It would be quite easy to go full-on professional around here. To me that would be a terrible loss and a questionable gain, it would make me sad.

forumites, pls...

[admin]

9 hours ago, vazco said:

Dear @admin, today I've learned that discussion about reasons for moderation of particular posts is forbidden, as stated by mod at the bottom of this thread:

Majority of game forums do not allow discussions of moderation (you can check rules on eve forum for example), but such discussions could be allowed when community asks for a clarification of a particular action.

There are not many game companies where you can interact with key developers on a daily basis (but there are of course games like that); and this comes at a cost. People react and overreact, and it works both ways. There are many venues players can interact with each other avoiding such reactions (steam forums or reddit).

This is a development forum our common goal is to make the game better. Thus we take every response seriously and it actually take time to respond (english is not our native language). If we take time and respond to a veteran tester that there are other opinions on the subject and get a - "talk to a wall" "game has no future" response - there is no further value in the discussion with him or her. Keeping such member makes other member experience worse - because - we take EVERY response seriously and try read everything address to us. Reading such "talk to a wall" posts in the future steals takes our time from addressing your real feedback. Its better to remove them.

Some members of the community think some actions here could unjustified. Sometimes they are not and are revoked, some come out of misunderstanding and once understanding is found they are revoked too. But many times they are fine and make the forum better. 

[Hethwill]

All feedback is personal. There's no such thing as "we". That being said, it is an opinion but given the forum is a open public place owned and rules by GameLabs there are certain duties that come hand in hand with liberties.

Respecting the game designers has nothing to do with not agreeing with their design.

Thought provoking posts is one thing; I do it, others do it as well, and admin certainly does it. Why ?

Simple - write EXACTLY what you mean. Explain in detail, as it is hard to survey thoughts through the internet.

Honesty in feedback is essential. Example:

A) this patch sucks because now I cannot build ships. devs don't know how to code, etc

B.) this patch makes it very difficult to continuously gather resources and permits to build ships of the line. I understand that frigates became more easy but I'm not looking to play anything else than ships of the line.

...

B is way more clear and honest than A, which is totally unacceptable and meaningless and just a spoiled brat rant. ( i gave the example of crafting but could be any aspect that gets changed and we hate that our toys got moved aka. "who the f.... moved my cheese !?" syndrome )

Best advice is to read what you wrote a couple times before clicking Submit Reply. This is the Internet and if we do not make an effort to communicate in a clear and honest way the message will be lost, misinterpreted and give way to misunderstandings.

 

 

[Stars and Stripes]

This is simple.

Players NEVER get banned for criticism of a game mechanic or question how or why a game mechanic is employed or voicing an opinion about a game mechanic in a constructive way.

People DO get banned for insults, trolling and negative personal attacks and voicing fact less, dishonest generalized negative opinions on game. 

 

I think that many veteran testers start to believe that their opinion is worth more than others and that the Developers need to be TOLD how to develop their game.

I think that the longer you are a tester the more jaded and biased your views become. Your opinions become more intense and focused on what YOU like and thus 

you become a bit salty.

Its maybe time for some veteran testers to step back and let some fresh blood to look upon the game, with fresh eyes.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Stars and Stripes

[SnovaZdorowa]

28 minutes ago, Stars and Stripes said:

This is simple.

Players NEVER get banned for criticism of a game mechanic or question how or why a game mechanic is employed or voicing an opinion about a game mechanic in a constructive way.

People DO get banned for insults, trolling and negative personal attacks and voicing fact less, dishonest generalized negative opinions on game. 

it's lie not a full true, sorry my bad english. and it's my 3rd account. and all my previous posts here (don't deleted) on the forum, because they are don't violate rules

insults, trolling and negative personal attacks - it's too amorphous terms.
there no transparent moderation system with warnings, temporary r/o status etc. somethimes you get banned, forever,  in silence, without explanation 

p.s. don't ban me again please

[qw569😳]

23 minutes ago, SnovaZdorowa said:

it's lie not a full true, sorry my bad english. and it's my 3rd account. and all my previous posts here (don't deleted) on the forum, because they are don't violate rules

insults, trolling and negative personal attacks - it's too amorphous terms.
there no transparent moderation system with warnings, temporary r/o status etc. somethimes you get banned, forever,  in silence, without explanation 

p.s. don't ban me again please

Your second account was BanMeAgain.

I do not see anything surprising if he was banned

[SnovaZdorowa]

1 minute ago, qw569 said:

Your second account was BanMeAgain.

I do not see anything surprising if he was banned

нет. ты не знаешь всей правды

[Stars and Stripes]

7 minutes ago, SnovaZdorowa said:

нет. ты не знаешь всей правды

Да, я думаю, что да.

[Cecil Selous]

"feeling like talking to a wall" is not a really heavy insult in my opinion.

It is a fairly common phrase used in german or english to express a slight frustration if you might feel that your counterpart in a discussion doesn't really listen to you and don't understand you or sometimes doesn't want to understand you. Heck, I use it often when I discuss or argue with friends. It is in no way a hostile insult or of a magnitude that justifies a permanent ban.

@admin I think you overreacted a bit here.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Cecil Selous

[Old Crusty]

After Patch 27, and a statement from ADMIN about the direction they are taking the game I created a poll to see if the players on the Forums agreed with the patch and ADMINS statement. 

   In my comments I I explained that I disagree with the direction the game was going. At the end of my statement I said that I do not believe that players want this game to become a World of Tanks sailing ship style.

ADMIN quoted that statement, said it had no basis in reality and locked the poll. 

Tell me why they do not want to know if players agree or disagree with the direction they are taking the game and why they would lock the thread in the Forums.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Old Crusty

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

Let's get back on topic please.  I'm watching.

[vazco]

13 hours ago, admin said:

Majority of game forums do not allow discussions of moderation (you can check rules on eve forum for example), but such discussions could be allowed when community asks for a clarification of a particular action.

There are not many game companies where you can interact with key developers on a daily basis (but there are of course games like that); and this comes at a cost. People react and overreact, and it works both ways. There are many venues players can interact with each other avoiding such reactions (steam forums or reddit).

This is a development forum our common goal is to make the game better. Thus we take every response seriously and it actually take time to respond (english is not our native language). If we take time and respond to a veteran tester that there are other opinions on the subject and get a - "talk to a wall" "game has no future" response - there is no further value in the discussion with him or her. Keeping such member makes other member experience worse - because - we take EVERY response seriously and try read everything address to us. Reading such "talk to a wall" posts in the future steals takes our time from addressing your real feedback. Its better to remove them.

Some members of the community think some actions here could unjustified. Sometimes they are not and are revoked, some come out of misunderstanding and once understanding is found they are revoked too. But many times they are fine and make the forum better. 

Thank you for a reasonable reply. I think with Liquicity however something really minor was interpreted as something much bigger - I guess due to a difference in language interpretation. Liquicity is a guy who created best grade of content in this game in the past - in form of a tournament, or revival of Prussian nation. He's always helpful in the game and mostly promotes it. His feedback was included a few times as modification to the game. He's one of the least toxic players, definitely from those who are known in the community. Giving him a permament ban is too harsh in an opinion of many. In my opinion it's counterproductive. It would probably suffice to warn him, or ban him for a week or two. Judging from signals I get, lifting his permament ban would help promote better image of GameLabs in the community.

Now I'm done with my statement, thank you for allowing to express it.

 

8 hours ago, Vernon Merrill said:

Yeah.  Trolls hate it when they themselves get trolled. Right?

That's kind of a reaction I wouldn't myself approve of from a moderator. Moderator shouldn't troll, he should prevent trolling - especially in critical topics, such as this. Similar topics in the past created backlashes outside of the forum and directly influenced sales of Naval Action. It's wise to pour water on them, rather than a gasoline.

 

Deleting a thread is also simply not efficient in terms of PR. It's much better to give your statement, check reaction and close thread. It's even better approach to understand reasoning and if needed, eg propose a simple adaptation, check reaction and close thread.

Now I'm done advising/suggesting as well.

Edited November 9, 2018 by vazco

[Henry d'Esterre Darby]

Often the problem with locking a thread and leaving it up is that the content of that thread get spread all over the forums and require even more moderation.  The moderation staff are purely volunteers - we do this to help Admin so that he has more time to work on the game and spends less time trying to fight forum-fires.  Threads that are a pure violation of the rules will often get hidden instead of commented/locked - they usually serve as nothing more than a lodestone for bad feelings or discord to spread across multiple boards.

[vazco]

10 minutes ago, Henry d'Esterre Darby said:

they usually serve as nothing more than a lodestone for bad feelings or discord to spread across multiple boards

It's almost always still better to keep an original thread, rather than spreading this content over channels which GameLabs can't control - which happened each and every time, including recent events. Recently one person had some negative opinion about last patch and made a comment which was considered rude (as I understand). Banning this person made 5 people react. Closing a thread made 20 people react and made discussion reappear in a few places, which made most of the community hear about the issue. It doesn't matter so much that the content of an original thread is not there any more, the PR damage was already done.

 

Relatively not many new players read forum, compared to other sources. It's a fairly safe place for discussion. Spilling discussion over other sources though has more impact. It happens mostly through opinion of players, not through what's written here.

[Anolytic]

35 minutes ago, Henry d'Esterre Darby said:

Often the problem with locking a thread and leaving it up is that the content of that thread get spread all over the forums and require even more moderation.  The moderation staff are purely volunteers - we do this to help Admin so that he has more time to work on the game and spends less time trying to fight forum-fires.  Threads that are a pure violation of the rules will often get hidden instead of commented/locked - they usually serve as nothing more than a lodestone for bad feelings or discord to spread across multiple boards.

I'll leave my 2cents on this specifically. It's of course up to you and the devs how you want to run this forum, but I ran a gaming forum as community manager for a some years and I never observed what you are describing as a potential issue here. My target was maximum possible transparency on moderator decisions and we would almost never delete topics unless they were just duplicates or viagra spam and creating cluster and pushing legitimate topics down the list. We would close them and leave the explanation there with a specific rule citation. If they served no purpose as examples we could delete the topics completely after a week or so - again to avoid clustering up the forum.

I also very rarely deleted comments, unless there was a certain quantity of consecutive spam, but would rather delete the contents of the comment or edit out the specific offending part of it and add a note about why and what rule was broken. 

We developed a very good understanding with the community, and there was no ambiguities about the rules.

That's all I have to say here, other than I hope Liquicity will be pardoned eventually.

Edited November 10, 2018 by Anolytic

[Jean Ribault]

I will not make a post here to argue the moderation or admin decision.  But I feel responsible as part of this community to make a statement on Liq's behalf, regarding something he said.

I read that post about talking to a wall, right after he posted it.  If you speak and read English as a native language, then know (without quibbling about it) that "talking to a wall" is an extremely common and acceptable phrase (clause, actually).  I probably hear it at least once a week if not more.  If you have children under 8 yrs old, you talk to a wall nearly all the time.  The phrase is used freely, frequently, and without demeaning.

The real meaning of the phrase is simply meant to express frustration at not being able to get your point across, feeling misunderstood.  It is not derogatory (usually, and as I see it in this case particularly not derogatory), demeaning, or condescending.  And not offensive.

If the admin thought that statement was worthy of a permanent ban, then I need to restate the request that Game Labs hire someone who understands the English language natively and use them for communication on this forum, as there was no crime committed by that forum statement.

[Silfarion]

As admin and the moderating staff have said on multiple occasions, they are human and make mistakes. The regular members of this forum are also human and also make mistakes. However, when the regular members make repeated mistakes they naturally face some kind of punishment or consequence as per the game rules. In other words, there is accountability for regular members which is well and good.

Yet, when admin or the moderating staff (who are the ones who hold the players accountable) repeatedly make a mistake or overreact--as many people think they recently have done--there are very few ways for us to discuss it. To vazco's point, it is very bad from a PR point of view, but even worse from a community point of view. No one would be bothering to write in these forums if we didn't care about the game--and let's be real, even the people who troll and cry and moan, want the game to succeed, even if they have a less mature way of showing it. 

I do know admin has said, and I paraphrase, that kind words in PM will do the job well enough. But the problem is that it isn't enough. Look at it this way, would you conduct the Tribunals through PMs? No, of course not. You have someone make a post with a claim and evidence, and the staff moderates that topic to make sure it stays on course. Then, admin makes a decision if he wants to, and a post is made to indicate the decision where further discussion is closed. In other words; transparency.  Would it really be the end of these forums if such a thread--or something like it--existed for appeals to moderating decisions? Wouldn't it be more convenient to have a localized thread for these kinds of decisions, instead of having several threads where everyone gets frustrated and nothing gets done?  

I'm gonna stress again, that both admin and the moderating staff have themselves said that they make mistakes like any normal person would. All I'm saying is that they be held to the same standard they hold the players to, by having some transparent accountability when they make mistakes. I honestly don't think this is a huge thing to ask.  

[p i t]

my girlfriend told me 'its like talking to a wall' all the time.... not sure what the big deal is about such a harmless statement.

 

she's now in a hole and rubs lotion on the skin, everything works out.

[Stars and Stripes]

17 hours ago, Old Crusty said:

Since you are a cheerleader for Admin and Game-Labs you will probably be rewarded.

So because someone has a different point of view to you then they are a cheer leader of admin??

Looking at your posts, you seem to want to be in the naughty boys club....

Your straw polls in a limited forum of extreme views, mean nothing other than allow people to have their pitch fork moment.

Constructive criticism is the way to go.

 

[Powderhorn]

13 hours ago, Silfarion said:

I'm gonna stress again, that both admin and the moderating staff have themselves said that they make mistakes like any normal person would. All I'm saying is that they be held to the same standard they hold the players to, by having some transparent accountability when they make mistakes. I honestly don't think this is a huge thing to ask.  

The accountability is generally to each other.  We communicate in private a lot to determine how to handle things, and we do ask each other for thoughts as to how to best handle something.  If we think something is not handled well, we discuss that too. 

So, how do you effect change in how things are done?  Essentially, you volunteer.  If you have a reputation for a level head and not being a troll, and you don't freely associate with trolls, you might be someone worth considering adding to the moderation team.

[Hethwill]

Moderation actions are not transparent but all abide by the rules established by GameLabs.

There's no neon signs saying this or that individual got warned.

Accept that it works.

Remember, majority of NA players are playing the game, testing, adapting to the project evolutiona and not the least interested in colluding with forum drama. This is a fact. A undeniable fact.

Honest, clear and purposeful posts never ever had any counter measures.