I always understood their reasonings for not having official forums with GW and just assumed it would remain that way. Interesting to see how this pans out, what effective measures can they take to ensure the community doesn't devolve in to what we've come to expect from official forums?
As a forum junkie I approve
It's simple don't be forum Nazis, WOW forums are run like a private server anything the Dev team ( Ghostcrawler) doesn't want to hear is tagged as spam and deleted. So no their forum is in the horrid state is is now, nothing but sunshine and rainbows, on the other hand people who want to have an actual discussion on the state of the game either go to sites like this or some other outside forum. TOR forums did the same model, ban all who say bad things so they just come here or post on youtube and whatnot, it creates a larger problem.
1. Forums moderators shouldn't be able to hand out bans at will.
2. Subscribing players or people who own the game should be able to police forum moderators.
3. There should not be that many forums moderators in the first place, or much or any moderation, because mods take sides if given that kind of power.
4. Have a FLAME thread and if anything is too aggressive just put it there topic and all and stop killing every conversation you personally dont like. No one plays games and gets on the forums to talk about issues so they can be privy to the whims of some 17 year old kid forum moderator who is also a rabid fanboi.
It's simple don't be forum Nazis, WOW forums are run like a private server anything the Dev team ( Ghostcrawler) doesn't want to hear is tagged as spam and deleted. So no their forum is in the horrid state is is now, nothing but sunshine and rainbows, on the other hand people who want to have an actual discussion on the state of the game either go to sites like this or some other outside forum.
interesting, my experience with the WoW forums is the exact polar opposite. Gripes are ignored or closed but not deleted.. oh but I agree its all about GC screwing Blizzard up! My main concern with Blizzard's forums which I think ANET might be able to fix and I hear Rift's forums have is the harassment of others. Just like in WoW on the official forums harassment is promoted by simply ignoring it exists. So basically by not doing anything to dissuade harassment they promote it. When there are no consequences for bad actions there is no reason to stop bad actions.
This was my fear regarding an official GW2 forums until I read the blog post further and I do think they will try to eliminate stuff like that.
Honestly mmo are all about this internet blabla stuff, so an offi forum is like a must to me. I wouldn't care much if they went without one, but ye it's logical for an mmo, for any kind of computer game it wouldn't be so obvious, but an mmo, you know they are all about that internet communication wave, so.
Anyway. I wanted to add something to the actual topic, something that I thought of...
How many of you are hoping that they have server forums? It's sounding like they have specific servers, now, and it's always nice to get to know the people on your server.
I like server forums because they're great fun to just faff around on, be silly, and just get to know people. All the debate about professions, lore, and gameplay will be happening elsewhere. A server forum is a great place to goof off, look for guilds, organise events, and just have fun.
So if they are having separate servers like that, I hope they'll have forums for them.
Anyway. I wanted to add something to the actual topic, something that I thought of...
How many of you are hoping that they have server forums? It's sounding like they have specific servers, now, and it's always nice to get to know the people on your server.
I like server forums because they're great fun to just faff around on, be silly, and just get to know people. All the debate about professions, lore, and gameplay will be happening elsewhere. A server forum is a great place to goof off, look for guilds, organise events, and just have fun.
So if they are having separate servers like that, I hope they'll have forums for them.
I would hope that they do. They mention the community and a server community is more important the the game community, reason being is that you spend more time in a game with the server you are on than with the game community as a whole. At the same time this is my biggest worry.. as I have stated before that my worry is harassment.. If a guild decides to gang up on another guild and troll them or some jerk decides to stalk someone are they going to deal with it? or are they going to ignore it as Blizzard does.
Anyway. I wanted to add something to the actual topic, something that I thought of...
How many of you are hoping that they have server forums? It's sounding like they have specific servers, now, and it's always nice to get to know the people on your server.
I like server forums because they're great fun to just faff around on, be silly, and just get to know people. All the debate about professions, lore, and gameplay will be happening elsewhere. A server forum is a great place to goof off, look for guilds, organise events, and just have fun.
So if they are having separate servers like that, I hope they'll have forums for them.
Well, we can but hope, I suppose. It's just a wait and see thing. However, what I think is that if you have a guild that seems to constantly be harassing someone, people won't see that guild as an attractive prospect to join.
It's simple don't be forum Nazis, WOW forums are run like a private server anything the Dev team ( Ghostcrawler) doesn't want to hear is tagged as spam and deleted. So no their forum is in the horrid state is is now, nothing but sunshine and rainbows, on the other hand people who want to have an actual discussion on the state of the game either go to sites like this or some other outside forum.
interesting, my experience with the WoW forums is the exact polar opposite. Gripes are ignored or closed but not deleted.. oh but I agree its all about GC screwing Blizzard up! My main concern with Blizzard's forums which I think ANET might be able to fix and I hear Rift's forums have is the harassment of others. Just like in WoW on the official forums harassment is promoted by simply ignoring it exists. So basically by not doing anything to dissuade harassment they promote it. When there are no consequences for bad actions there is no reason to stop bad actions.
This was my fear regarding an official GW2 forums until I read the blog post further and I do think they will try to eliminate stuff like that.
I don't want them to eleminate much at all, I would rather a forum work like an open democracy with a Flames board rather than people backstabbing each other doing constant reports. Its actually fairly bad on this site to, you can't say you don't like anything about TOR without being reported by someone for sometihng. But on WOW magnify that times a lot more. Which raises another problem, They really need to do something about forum moderators controlling arguments in way that they like. I think one of the forum mods for WOW was like 11 when she started, I just don't need that in my life.
It's simple don't be forum Nazis, WOW forums are run like a private server anything the Dev team ( Ghostcrawler) doesn't want to hear is tagged as spam and deleted. So no their forum is in the horrid state is is now, nothing but sunshine and rainbows, on the other hand people who want to have an actual discussion on the state of the game either go to sites like this or some other outside forum.
interesting, my experience with the WoW forums is the exact polar opposite. Gripes are ignored or closed but not deleted.. oh but I agree its all about GC screwing Blizzard up! My main concern with Blizzard's forums which I think ANET might be able to fix and I hear Rift's forums have is the harassment of others. Just like in WoW on the official forums harassment is promoted by simply ignoring it exists. So basically by not doing anything to dissuade harassment they promote it. When there are no consequences for bad actions there is no reason to stop bad actions.
This was my fear regarding an official GW2 forums until I read the blog post further and I do think they will try to eliminate stuff like that.
I don't want them to eleminate much at all, I would rather a forum work like an open democracy with a Flames board rather than people backstabbing each other doing constant reports. Its actually fairly bad on this site to, you can't say you don't like anything about TOR without being reported by someone for sometihng. But on WOW magnify that times a lot more. Which raises another problem, They really need to do something about forum moderators controlling arguments in way that they like. I think one of the forum mods for WOW was like 11 when she started, I just don't need that in my life.
WoW mods are employees as in she couldnt be 11, you might be thinking of a VIP, the green posters. There is just no reason or use for nasty posts.. I am not talking about debates that get heated.. I am talking about flat out harassment. I will give you a personal example. Guild A hits a rough spot, joins up with guild B, 2 months before cata the people from guild A tell the GM of guild B that they would be leaving before Cata when it became impossible to raid(you know how things die off at the end of an expansion). Guild B goes absolutely apeshit when the time comes for guild A to actually leave and starts trash talking and making up stories about the leaders of guild A. This is the REALLY toned down version btw. Guild B is allowed to lie, harass, ect of the WOW forums and in game.. no matter how far fetched and personal the lies are. Cata comes out, guild A is the first horde side lvl 25 guild on the server... guild B's people(now scattered because the guild fell apart) go crazy again.. spread mass lies ect.. again on the forums and in game. This was so bad that they were posting pictures and more of us. WoW did nothing.. I went round and round with Blizzard, spoke to two supervisors.. nothing. THIS is what shouldn't be allowed... EVER. No one deserves to be treated like this.
Again.. debate and friendly banter is one thing... harassment is a totally different animal. Oh also.. on your reporting issue I agree.. one of the forms of harassment they used was spam reporting any post any of us made. So mods that didnt read the post warned us or even banned some of us. So I see your worry but I would rather it be a banfest than an unsafe or unfriendly place to be. I seriously doubt that ANET will be either extreme.. not after reading that blog post. I just hope they can live up to their promises
Well...if there wasn't reason enough to wonder why guru needs to go this thread sure proved it.
Kind of sweet that a very mod from the site would show why that place is absolute garbage community wise. All on her own too.
No big wonder Anet wants to start distancing itself from those schmucks.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I am glad GW2 will have their own forums, I think it will be best for the owners and players of the game.
I base this on seeing past fan sites and how they quickly degrade with quality as they increase in popularity. Now I am not speaking towards how communities in general seem to get mucked down by higher population and the masses. Instead I see how ego's inflate and/or the site also goes to profit the individuals running it.
So often I have seen these sites be sold or become overloaded with ads. This is all fine, as people are free to do as the desire.
However as an owner of a product, I would prefer to go directly to the source where the focus is nothing but the company and their game. This way actions are based and a direct relection of the product and not some third party and it's own agenda.
As you said, ArenaNet have made their choice, and ultimately it's going to be for the best.
Still, best not to start the whole furore over again... eh?
So, is anyone else curious about the Facebook mentionings? I'm wondering if they're going to do something like Champions Online. See, CO had this really nifty thing, you could Twitter from in game to an account especially for your superhero, this would appear on the site, and it could be tied into an actual twitter account.
(I'm surprised that I never saw anyone tweet "I SAVED THE DAY!" or "I'M BATMAN!" though.)
But what do you guys think? It'd be pretty fun to do patrol reports, or to keep a journal, just building your character as you go along.
Unfortunately, with gw2g the mods there are always more likely to try and cover up or augment threads if they made a huge mistake, instead of just openly admitting they made a mistake.
Ha, I didn't know guru mods were such douchebags. But he does have a point. When you've ran a community of people for a few years like I have, you'll notice that 80% of everyone is ungodly stupid. I mean seriously just...stupid. Complete morons. I guess just realizing all this just makes you a douchebag because I'm agreeing with those douches. Dammit
Eh, it's not hard to be a bad mod. Some people are just too misanthropic for the job. Like I said prior, the magic element to moderation is that people just want to be treated with dignity and respect, if you take no sides and handle things carefully, then you're never the bad guy.
It takes patience, it takes someone who can wait and look at something objectively, and it also takes a person who's compassionate and optimistic. It takes someone who can step in and say something for the benefit of people, rather than the beneift of the forum. And that's what makes a good moderator. If most of your moderation is misanthropic, then it's time to flush the staff and start anew.
If you just jump on people without bothering to actually keep that in mind, then you're going to be a bad moderator.
90% of the people on your forum are stupid? You're misanthropic. I'm sorry, but you are, you clearly have a hatred for people. That makes you a bad moderator. Another example of bad moderation is to, for example, lock threads purely because you think that they're asinine dribble and that they lower the thread quality of the forum. It might have been something important to the person, the thread might have been completely civil, but because the thread isn't to your interests, it gets locked.
No, it is possible to be a good moderator. Just treat people with dignity and respect and don't be a misanthrope.
What you'll find if you're a good moderator is that the vast majority of the community supports you. That's what I've found in my time moderating. If you show that you're one of the good guys, then people will get behind you, and the community will actually start to police itself.
Bad moderation: This is bad for the forum, anything more like this and you're all banned. This is being locked.
Good moderation: Guys, you're likely going to regret this in the morning. Everyone else has left this thread, and all the rage is a bit alienating. I'm going to let this run its course, but I'm going to move the argument to a new topic. That way, you can continue to debate, but it allows the original thread to continue. It's up to you whether you step off or not, I won't tell you to. But you may feel kinda bad about this in the morning.
That's how you do it. It's not hard. It's just treating people like human beings, and not like 90% of your forum is comprised of retards.
What I will say is that what Guru did to me was horrible. I won't go over it again, but it left scars. And that everyone was too afraid to speak up for me because of the tyrannical rule they had over that place embittered me to the GW2 community for a long time.
So when I first came here I was tremendously bitter, I didn't have a particularly high view of the GW2 community, but stuff has been happening that's been improving my opinion and healing old wounds. I feel better now. I couldn't have blamed the moderators for just getting rid of me permanently back then. But like I said, I had a whole lot of negative baggage regarding the GW2 community at that point.
But here we are. The truth about GW2G came out and I feel vindicated. I frankly feel better about the GW2 community than I have in a long, long time. And as such I'm making more of a vested effort to leave my GW2G baggage behind me than ever. This place isn't GW2G. The MMORPG.com mods aren't GW2G mods. Honestly? They're good guys. They really are.
They take a hands-off approach. They treat people like people - not like cattle, not like retards, but like people. Sure, things can get a bit heated around here, but it's a million times better than the alternative (Guru).
And like I said, after seeing how incredibly shitty the GW2G guys were to Martin...
Well, I just feel better. Everyone knows they're bad mods, now. Possibly the worst. And terribly misanthropic. As I said above, it's not hard to be a bad mod, but it's not impossible to be a good mod. And half of that is in how you treat people. If you're really misanthropic and you're constantly treating people like retards, cattle, and/or monsters, then that's going to really fuck up your community. And when you go as far as publically humiliating people and not giving them a chance to redeem themselves...
I saw GW2G go off the deep end a long time ago. Now everyone sees it.
But this is better for all of us. Now everyone knows.
And now there's an official forum.
So there's no real need to dwell on this any more.
That's why I've been trying to direct this topic away from Guru.
Ha, I didn't know guru mods were such douchebags. But he does have a point. When you've ran a community of people for a few years like I have, you'll notice that 80% of everyone is ungodly stupid. I mean seriously just...stupid. Complete morons. I guess just realizing all this just makes you a douchebag because I'm agreeing with those douches. Dammit
Hah......awesome.
Hey at least you see it for what it is. That is always a bonus.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Ha, I didn't know guru mods were such douchebags. But he does have a point. When you've ran a community of people for a few years like I have, you'll notice that 80% of everyone is ungodly stupid. I mean seriously just...stupid. Complete morons. I guess just realizing all this just makes you a douchebag because I'm agreeing with those douches. Dammit
Unless you have 130+ in IQ, I don't see how you can justifiably make a such claim. Even then, it wouldn't be strictly related to forums, but to all people that you meet in your life seeing as most people have "average" IQ.
Thanks for that, InFaVilla. I completely agree, really. It's just misanthropy, really. He's no smarter than you, or I, or anyone else here. He just thinks he is because due to misanthropic leanings, he believes that there's a subset of lesser beings (lesser than his human standard) that he has to 'put up with.'
That's misanthropy. Bad moderation is rife with it. And no, misanthropy is never a 'bonus'...
See, this is why I was so bitter towards the GW2 community for a while. That other place genuinely made me believe that misanthropy was rife amongst GW2 fans. Doesn't seem to be the case any more, it's just there in particular.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that being a misanthrope does not make for good moderation. For obvious reasons.
(And really, there's absolutely no way you can claim that 90% of people are stupid and not be a misanthrope.)
Yeah to Official Forums!! I like to speak directly to ANET and those who represent them. Thank you for the Guru insight. I had no idea. MMORPG has been my primary source of info. Now I know.
Guild Wars made pretty good without official forum, but it does not mean that there decision to have official forum for GW2 is going to be a bad one. Well, will have to wait and see.
LOTS of games have official forums.... yet a lot of us kept checkin back HERE anyway b/c we can actually SAY what's on our MINDS. Just cuz we didn't spend every waking minute posting here, doesn't mean we abandoned it. This place will always be a second home for some of us b/c it's also a good place to spread the word (and the truth) to other players who might be interested in these games.
Actually on second thought... Maybe Guru WILL die now. Here's the sad facts...
...they can't handle "real competition". Tossed a lock on it all once it became apparent they didn't have enough fanboys to back up their incorrect previous assumptions. That's how they run things over there. Instead of getting rid of the "My opinion is always fucking right" crowd of Moderators and bringing more relaxed ones on board, they just kept promoting the WORST mods from the GW1 guru until the shit people was complaining about started happening every day. They got a little too comfortable with "authority" and forgot how it looked to all the rest of us. They can turn it around though. It's not too late. But if they don't unlearn some of them bad habits right quick, they very well might lose all the creative people who kept conversations fresh and intersting over there. And once they lose them, they lose all their real "Content".
EDIT: (b/c maybe GW2G is getting TOO much blame here)
The sad thing is... that's how most people in a team-lead position in GW1 in general usually ran things. Want to get through a really tough hard mode mission? ...pay a runner, or kòu tóu to the pug-leader with the star. Want to PvP anywhere but RA? ...sacrifice all your own ideas about doin a creative skill bar you're comfortable with, and run what they TELL YOU to run. Even the most liberal guilds that ran End-Game PVE content, still had these restrictions. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that that's how the GW1 community was used to things being run. ...as a 6-year vet, I'm MORE surprised by the reactions of everyone else here who found any of this "playing rough" stuff surprising. This was why Anet started this whole mmo-revolution thing. B/c the status quo was causing too much drama for them and the community.
Comments
It's simple don't be forum Nazis, WOW forums are run like a private server anything the Dev team ( Ghostcrawler) doesn't want to hear is tagged as spam and deleted. So no their forum is in the horrid state is is now, nothing but sunshine and rainbows, on the other hand people who want to have an actual discussion on the state of the game either go to sites like this or some other outside forum. TOR forums did the same model, ban all who say bad things so they just come here or post on youtube and whatnot, it creates a larger problem.
1. Forums moderators shouldn't be able to hand out bans at will.
2. Subscribing players or people who own the game should be able to police forum moderators.
3. There should not be that many forums moderators in the first place, or much or any moderation, because mods take sides if given that kind of power.
4. Have a FLAME thread and if anything is too aggressive just put it there topic and all and stop killing every conversation you personally dont like. No one plays games and gets on the forums to talk about issues so they can be privy to the whims of some 17 year old kid forum moderator who is also a rabid fanboi.
interesting, my experience with the WoW forums is the exact polar opposite. Gripes are ignored or closed but not deleted.. oh but I agree its all about GC screwing Blizzard up! My main concern with Blizzard's forums which I think ANET might be able to fix and I hear Rift's forums have is the harassment of others. Just like in WoW on the official forums harassment is promoted by simply ignoring it exists. So basically by not doing anything to dissuade harassment they promote it. When there are no consequences for bad actions there is no reason to stop bad actions.
This was my fear regarding an official GW2 forums until I read the blog post further and I do think they will try to eliminate stuff like that.
Honestly mmo are all about this internet blabla stuff, so an offi forum is like a must to me. I wouldn't care much if they went without one, but ye it's logical for an mmo, for any kind of computer game it wouldn't be so obvious, but an mmo, you know they are all about that internet communication wave, so.
My thanks to the mod.
Anyway. I wanted to add something to the actual topic, something that I thought of...
How many of you are hoping that they have server forums? It's sounding like they have specific servers, now, and it's always nice to get to know the people on your server.
I like server forums because they're great fun to just faff around on, be silly, and just get to know people. All the debate about professions, lore, and gameplay will be happening elsewhere. A server forum is a great place to goof off, look for guilds, organise events, and just have fun.
So if they are having separate servers like that, I hope they'll have forums for them.
I would hope that they do. They mention the community and a server community is more important the the game community, reason being is that you spend more time in a game with the server you are on than with the game community as a whole. At the same time this is my biggest worry.. as I have stated before that my worry is harassment.. If a guild decides to gang up on another guild and troll them or some jerk decides to stalk someone are they going to deal with it? or are they going to ignore it as Blizzard does.
Server forums, yes, if done right
Not the abomination bioware calls server forums
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."
Those are good and valid concerns, really.
Well, we can but hope, I suppose. It's just a wait and see thing. However, what I think is that if you have a guild that seems to constantly be harassing someone, people won't see that guild as an attractive prospect to join.
I don't want them to eleminate much at all, I would rather a forum work like an open democracy with a Flames board rather than people backstabbing each other doing constant reports. Its actually fairly bad on this site to, you can't say you don't like anything about TOR without being reported by someone for sometihng. But on WOW magnify that times a lot more. Which raises another problem, They really need to do something about forum moderators controlling arguments in way that they like. I think one of the forum mods for WOW was like 11 when she started, I just don't need that in my life.
WoW mods are employees as in she couldnt be 11, you might be thinking of a VIP, the green posters. There is just no reason or use for nasty posts.. I am not talking about debates that get heated.. I am talking about flat out harassment. I will give you a personal example. Guild A hits a rough spot, joins up with guild B, 2 months before cata the people from guild A tell the GM of guild B that they would be leaving before Cata when it became impossible to raid(you know how things die off at the end of an expansion). Guild B goes absolutely apeshit when the time comes for guild A to actually leave and starts trash talking and making up stories about the leaders of guild A. This is the REALLY toned down version btw. Guild B is allowed to lie, harass, ect of the WOW forums and in game.. no matter how far fetched and personal the lies are. Cata comes out, guild A is the first horde side lvl 25 guild on the server... guild B's people(now scattered because the guild fell apart) go crazy again.. spread mass lies ect.. again on the forums and in game. This was so bad that they were posting pictures and more of us. WoW did nothing.. I went round and round with Blizzard, spoke to two supervisors.. nothing. THIS is what shouldn't be allowed... EVER. No one deserves to be treated like this.
Again.. debate and friendly banter is one thing... harassment is a totally different animal. Oh also.. on your reporting issue I agree.. one of the forms of harassment they used was spam reporting any post any of us made. So mods that didnt read the post warned us or even banned some of us. So I see your worry but I would rather it be a banfest than an unsafe or unfriendly place to be. I seriously doubt that ANET will be either extreme.. not after reading that blog post. I just hope they can live up to their promises
I like these guys more and more every day.
And I like how they left the fans out into the open.
Good move.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Lol
Well...if there wasn't reason enough to wonder why guru needs to go this thread sure proved it.
Kind of sweet that a very mod from the site would show why that place is absolute garbage community wise. All on her own too.
No big wonder Anet wants to start distancing itself from those schmucks.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I am glad GW2 will have their own forums, I think it will be best for the owners and players of the game.
I base this on seeing past fan sites and how they quickly degrade with quality as they increase in popularity. Now I am not speaking towards how communities in general seem to get mucked down by higher population and the masses. Instead I see how ego's inflate and/or the site also goes to profit the individuals running it.
So often I have seen these sites be sold or become overloaded with ads. This is all fine, as people are free to do as the desire.
However as an owner of a product, I would prefer to go directly to the source where the focus is nothing but the company and their game. This way actions are based and a direct relection of the product and not some third party and it's own agenda.
@Wickedjelly
I agree, but there's no need to worry.
As you said, ArenaNet have made their choice, and ultimately it's going to be for the best.
Still, best not to start the whole furore over again... eh?
So, is anyone else curious about the Facebook mentionings? I'm wondering if they're going to do something like Champions Online. See, CO had this really nifty thing, you could Twitter from in game to an account especially for your superhero, this would appear on the site, and it could be tied into an actual twitter account.
(I'm surprised that I never saw anyone tweet "I SAVED THE DAY!" or "I'M BATMAN!" though.)
But what do you guys think? It'd be pretty fun to do patrol reports, or to keep a journal, just building your character as you go along.
Hope arena net does it right, I don't go to guru because of the 10 or so posts I have there half were deleted for reasons I can't even imagine
"I am not a robot. I am a unicorn."
Unfortunately, with gw2g the mods there are always more likely to try and cover up or augment threads if they made a huge mistake, instead of just openly admitting they made a mistake.
Ha, I didn't know guru mods were such douchebags. But he does have a point. When you've ran a community of people for a few years like I have, you'll notice that 80% of everyone is ungodly stupid. I mean seriously just...stupid. Complete morons. I guess just realizing all this just makes you a douchebag because I'm agreeing with those douches. Dammit
Eh, it's not hard to be a bad mod. Some people are just too misanthropic for the job. Like I said prior, the magic element to moderation is that people just want to be treated with dignity and respect, if you take no sides and handle things carefully, then you're never the bad guy.
It takes patience, it takes someone who can wait and look at something objectively, and it also takes a person who's compassionate and optimistic. It takes someone who can step in and say something for the benefit of people, rather than the beneift of the forum. And that's what makes a good moderator. If most of your moderation is misanthropic, then it's time to flush the staff and start anew.
If you just jump on people without bothering to actually keep that in mind, then you're going to be a bad moderator.
90% of the people on your forum are stupid? You're misanthropic. I'm sorry, but you are, you clearly have a hatred for people. That makes you a bad moderator. Another example of bad moderation is to, for example, lock threads purely because you think that they're asinine dribble and that they lower the thread quality of the forum. It might have been something important to the person, the thread might have been completely civil, but because the thread isn't to your interests, it gets locked.
No, it is possible to be a good moderator. Just treat people with dignity and respect and don't be a misanthrope.
What you'll find if you're a good moderator is that the vast majority of the community supports you. That's what I've found in my time moderating. If you show that you're one of the good guys, then people will get behind you, and the community will actually start to police itself.
Bad moderation: This is bad for the forum, anything more like this and you're all banned. This is being locked.
Good moderation: Guys, you're likely going to regret this in the morning. Everyone else has left this thread, and all the rage is a bit alienating. I'm going to let this run its course, but I'm going to move the argument to a new topic. That way, you can continue to debate, but it allows the original thread to continue. It's up to you whether you step off or not, I won't tell you to. But you may feel kinda bad about this in the morning.
That's how you do it. It's not hard. It's just treating people like human beings, and not like 90% of your forum is comprised of retards.
Okay, new post for this.
What I will say is that what Guru did to me was horrible. I won't go over it again, but it left scars. And that everyone was too afraid to speak up for me because of the tyrannical rule they had over that place embittered me to the GW2 community for a long time.
So when I first came here I was tremendously bitter, I didn't have a particularly high view of the GW2 community, but stuff has been happening that's been improving my opinion and healing old wounds. I feel better now. I couldn't have blamed the moderators for just getting rid of me permanently back then. But like I said, I had a whole lot of negative baggage regarding the GW2 community at that point.
But here we are. The truth about GW2G came out and I feel vindicated. I frankly feel better about the GW2 community than I have in a long, long time. And as such I'm making more of a vested effort to leave my GW2G baggage behind me than ever. This place isn't GW2G. The MMORPG.com mods aren't GW2G mods. Honestly? They're good guys. They really are.
They take a hands-off approach. They treat people like people - not like cattle, not like retards, but like people. Sure, things can get a bit heated around here, but it's a million times better than the alternative (Guru).
And like I said, after seeing how incredibly shitty the GW2G guys were to Martin...
Well, I just feel better. Everyone knows they're bad mods, now. Possibly the worst. And terribly misanthropic. As I said above, it's not hard to be a bad mod, but it's not impossible to be a good mod. And half of that is in how you treat people. If you're really misanthropic and you're constantly treating people like retards, cattle, and/or monsters, then that's going to really fuck up your community. And when you go as far as publically humiliating people and not giving them a chance to redeem themselves...
I saw GW2G go off the deep end a long time ago. Now everyone sees it.
But this is better for all of us. Now everyone knows.
And now there's an official forum.
So there's no real need to dwell on this any more.
That's why I've been trying to direct this topic away from Guru.
Hah......awesome.
Hey at least you see it for what it is. That is always a bonus.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Unless you have 130+ in IQ, I don't see how you can justifiably make a such claim. Even then, it wouldn't be strictly related to forums, but to all people that you meet in your life seeing as most people have "average" IQ.
Thanks for that, InFaVilla. I completely agree, really. It's just misanthropy, really. He's no smarter than you, or I, or anyone else here. He just thinks he is because due to misanthropic leanings, he believes that there's a subset of lesser beings (lesser than his human standard) that he has to 'put up with.'
That's misanthropy. Bad moderation is rife with it. And no, misanthropy is never a 'bonus'...
See, this is why I was so bitter towards the GW2 community for a while. That other place genuinely made me believe that misanthropy was rife amongst GW2 fans. Doesn't seem to be the case any more, it's just there in particular.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that being a misanthrope does not make for good moderation. For obvious reasons.
(And really, there's absolutely no way you can claim that 90% of people are stupid and not be a misanthrope.)
Yeah to Official Forums!! I like to speak directly to ANET and those who represent them. Thank you for the Guru insight. I had no idea. MMORPG has been my primary source of info. Now I know.
Guild Wars made pretty good without official forum, but it does not mean that there decision to have official forum for GW2 is going to be a bad one. Well, will have to wait and see.
LOTS of games have official forums.... yet a lot of us kept checkin back HERE anyway b/c we can actually SAY what's on our MINDS. Just cuz we didn't spend every waking minute posting here, doesn't mean we abandoned it. This place will always be a second home for some of us b/c it's also a good place to spread the word (and the truth) to other players who might be interested in these games.
Actually on second thought... Maybe Guru WILL die now. Here's the sad facts...
...they can't handle "real competition". Tossed a lock on it all once it became apparent they didn't have enough fanboys to back up their incorrect previous assumptions. That's how they run things over there. Instead of getting rid of the "My opinion is always fucking right" crowd of Moderators and bringing more relaxed ones on board, they just kept promoting the WORST mods from the GW1 guru until the shit people was complaining about started happening every day. They got a little too comfortable with "authority" and forgot how it looked to all the rest of us. They can turn it around though. It's not too late. But if they don't unlearn some of them bad habits right quick, they very well might lose all the creative people who kept conversations fresh and intersting over there. And once they lose them, they lose all their real "Content".
EDIT: (b/c maybe GW2G is getting TOO much blame here)
The sad thing is... that's how most people in a team-lead position in GW1 in general usually ran things. Want to get through a really tough hard mode mission? ...pay a runner, or kòu tóu to the pug-leader with the star. Want to PvP anywhere but RA? ...sacrifice all your own ideas about doin a creative skill bar you're comfortable with, and run what they TELL YOU to run. Even the most liberal guilds that ran End-Game PVE content, still had these restrictions. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that that's how the GW1 community was used to things being run. ...as a 6-year vet, I'm MORE surprised by the reactions of everyone else here who found any of this "playing rough" stuff surprising. This was why Anet started this whole mmo-revolution thing. B/c the status quo was causing too much drama for them and the community.
Frankly is my biggest worry that EA or Activision buys out ANET from NC soft.
While it isn't likely similar stuff have actually happenedin the past. Either of them would do to ANET as EA did to Westwood.