I 100% support and approve of this message @souppression.
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oh dont worry, forum moderation is VERY strict… if you ever tell your opinion on roblox updates under their posts.
other than that yeah i’ve seen this happen quite often, especially recently and it’s just made me use the devforum less and less
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Oh my god YES. ABSOLUTELY THIS. I’m so happy to see that so many people feel the same way.
Don’t even get me started about all the rule breaking posts getting outright approved (as in “You can’t flag this post, it’s already been reviewed and deemed ok”) and requiring the “something else” flags just to try and get rid of it (which still isn’t 100% reliable)
My tinfoil hat theory on this for some easy laughs
My crazy conspiracy theory is: The rules aren’t being enforced to try and turn the wider (or at least more mature) userbase off using the devforum to curb the active users down to a smaller and easier to manage amount before bringing post approval/regular applications back.
Most of the complaints about devforum moderation I’ve had all started roughly around the time PA/regular was removed, and those things were removed simply because the devforum was getting very popular/very busy, so it’s an interesting coincidence.
With that out of the way, the one point I agree with most out of them is by far updating the forum rules. It’s clear that the way they’re currently worded isn’t being enforced, they’ll either need re-wording to accurately reflect what is being enforced, or the mods should actually start enforcing the already existing rules (which to be fair ends up falling under “properly enforce the rules”)
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I’ve observed that DET tends to listen to you more if you the “Something Else” since you’re giving a reason behind it. So these days I only use the “Something Else” reason since it has a 90% of success each time.
Anyway, I’m glad that more and more people are coming to agreements on this.
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+1, I was in a topic where someone did this
I am in full support of this. Forum moderation needs to be ramped up.
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People who do that are impatient and don’t give time to understand a person that is not good in English.
It does not matter if the person is bad at English. You can still understand what he wants, and even solve his problems.
A good example is this:
This person is not fluent in English, but with patience, I managed to solve his problem.
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yeah i’m no english but me know how to talk.
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Totally agree with these points. We should all realize that everyone started out as a learner and everyone starts somewhere, and there’s a large range of maturity between 13 and 25 (core audience of this forum).
It’s not okay to bully / ridicule / put other users down for poor language proficiency or poor development skills. We were all that user at some point some years ago – put yourself in the shoes of that person before engaging, whether that’s on the forum or on social media otherwise.
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I agree with some of your points like:
But I think they should change moderation actions in a different way. Before I start this I am TL3 on a different forum and they skip right to mod (No TL4) and me and the other TL3s deal with a lot more moderation and stuff like that.
When a topic is all good except the category just recategorize it and give the user feedback. And at the worst unlist and lock a topic and set a topic timers to relist and unlock the topic after x amount of time to ensure the user sees the feedback and doesn’t just ignore it.
DET should decide on each flag based on the post on NOT moderation history. But the punishment for that flag should be based on the flag AND moderation history. And change the moderation system to a different way than strikes. Mabey do a point system where each rule is worth a different number of points. And x, y, z, g and i number of points you receive a different punishment. Possibly (x the lowest and i being the largest number of points) x would be 1-day suspension y would be 2-day suspension, z would be 4-day suspension gwould be 7 day suspension and i would be a perm suspension.
Edit: Possible instead of suspending users for some number of points you would be silenced instead. Learn the difference here The Difficult User -> Silence the user/Suspend the user.
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To be clear I’m not suggesting we kick non-native English speakers off the platform. That whole block of text in the OP is just listing everything I’ve seen (and flagged) from a known problem user before suspension (albeit for only 1 day) to demonstrate the issue.
I agree - this is what I was trying to say but perhaps I worded it poorly.
I don’t think the problem needs to be addressed with complex point systems - it’s ultimately DevRel’s decision on the best way to respond; my proposed solutions are only there as a guide of the sort of changes which might help. I don’t see any issues with the current strike system other than the fact that the correct punishments aren’t being enforced on repeat offenders.
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I think we should use a point system because do you think advertising via DMs is just as bad as references to illicit content. I think the latter is worse but they are both 1 strike.
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I’ve never encountered anyone advertising in my DMs, so I don’t think DM advertising is that much of an issue in the DevForum right now.
My DMs are always open to everyone by the way
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I’m not saying its a problem but I’m comparing 2 rules that have the same punishment when one is worse than the other
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Ohhhh. I see. Never mind.
On my post that Original Posters linked in OP, I put a screenshot of a modified version of the Broken Rule Index.
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Regardless of which rules we all subjectively think are more important than others, the problem is the defined punishments are not being enforced in the first place.
For instance, typical griefers frequently break Global Rule 1 (Trolling, flaming, personal attacks), Global Rule 4 (Insulting or derogatory posts) and Global Rule 18 (Disrespectful/impolite arguments) - all three of which, in most cases, should immediately warrant a strike, but this isn’t being done. Personal opinions about which one of these rules is more important are irrelevant when punishments are rarely followed up on to begin with.
(cc @ValiantWind)
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yes, especially in development discussion. They hardly take down any bad posts
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I’m guessing s = suspension, or strike
I’m half in support of this.
Normally, trolls get suspended rather quick.
The issue is, I get flagged pretty often for no reason at all, which means, I could get suspended, while I have done nothing wrong, but people legit breaking the rules could be fine.
Trolls are funny most of the time.
But, when they create help posts and waste people’s time, then it’s a huge issue.
I fell for that recently, and tried helping somebody, and 20 posts later I ofund out that it was a pretty unfunny joke.
And also, the rules are often overlooked by staff, or just plain dumb.
I think that hardly anybody actually follows that rule, and nobody enforces it thank goodness.
The longest I have seen a troll post survive is 30 minutes
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That rule only applies to #bulletin-board, please don’t just read the ‘short-hand’ of the rules as they are quite inaccurate.
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Confused as to what’s so inaccurate about it. BB1 indicates that is rule 1 for Bulletin Board, 0 indicates you many strikes you would generally get for it, and “Feedback” indicates what punishment is generally given out.
And I am genuinely interested in learning why they are inaccurate.
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I agree with everything you’re saying. Often in development discussion, there is a plethora of low-quality topics and posts, I honestly find myself using the forum less and less these days because of the seeming overwhelming number of low-effort posts. I still lurk from time to time and contribute my thoughts and questions sometimes but I have not much interest in doing so anymore.
There are also a handful of individuals and scenarios of people who constantly personally attack others, post non-contributive replies, get into hostile arguments and more in the development discussion category, I’ve also seen a large number of moderation questions that do not belong there.
I will admit, I’ve posted my share of unintentionally rule-breaking content (eg. off-topic or non contributive posts), however the main distinction between well-intended and ill-intended individuals is that those who are ill-intended do not take feedback when moderators send them a DM in response to the moderation actions.
Something that I’d like to point out from the rules:
Please also note that receiving an unreasonable amount of feedback messages in a short period of time, especially for the same rule violation, puts you at risk of receiving a strike. This includes rapidly making low-effort posts.
That statement should be clarified, an unreasonable number of posts in a short period needs to be defined, and possibly made less lenient. In my opinion, I believe that feedback is specific enough to change your actions because you know what you did wrong. This is especially relevant because these repeat-offenders that constantly do the same thing when it comes to creating problematic posts and overall being a negative influence for the community have no place on the forum. It is often clear when these people are here only to create an issue when they constantly do the same rule-violating action over and over.
There are specific patterns in activity when it comes to the moderation team that are problematic as well. There is essentially no moderation in the evenings, overnight and early morning for the US, therefore there are no moderators online. This, in my opinion, is not the issue. The issue is that when the next day comes, there is zero action taken against the problematic individuals from that previous night, and that reason I believe is a significant reason the moderation aspect of the forum has not improved. That also brings me back to my previous post (paragraph 2); since no moderation actions are taken, no feedback for the rule-violating post is given, therefore those who are well-intended are indiscernible from those who are intentionally being problematic.
Another thing I would like to point out is that when flagging a post, often you will get a response from the moderation team stating they agree that the post/DM is in violation of the rules and/or quality threshold but there is still no action taken against it, and therefore it remains forever on the forum. Furthermore, sometimes, even when the post blatantly violates some rule, it is marked as reviewed and the content is restored, and it cannot be flagged again.
In addition, rules surrounding the content of posts need to be implemented as well. Many times I see duplicate topics, website inquiries, moderation inquiries, questions surrounding the community from the perspective of a player, posts asking for legal advice, posts asking for development support, low-quality posts that do not provoke any thoughts or discussion whatsoever, among many, many others. Likewise, in #help-and-feedback (specifically development help categories, especially scripting support), there are many posts that are extremely low-effort, like posting a block of code with the title “why won’t my script work”, failure to post any errors, etc… In my opinion, these are fundamental in asking for support and should be put into the post template. However, the part that is relevant to this topic, these posts also violate the category guidelines post, each post must follow the posting guidelines, else they aren’t meant for that category. Even if you aren’t posting your script/creation, asking for a guide on where to begin is okay, as long as they answer those questions.
I guess I’m just complaining at this point so I’ll end my post here, I believe I’ve mentioned everything I wanted to.
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