Ignore the forum trolls. They are acting that way so that they can force themselves to feel significant. Sad thing is, most of these trolls will crap their pants when you confront them in real life and start a fight. I'd like to call these trolls keyboard warriors. Because they suck at real life, they come to this cyber space and troll.
A subject that has constantly been, and will continue to be, echoed by many a concerned forum-goer. Personally, if I ran the forums (or had some authority over the forums) I would be a harsh muther. I know the concerns of the moderators are to 'keep it clean' and 'keep the peace'. But the concerns of the people demand a higher level of service. One which the current scope of the team cannot handle.
As volunteers, the moderation team starts off with an impractical base. This already severely undermines their performance capabilities. Secondly, the sheer number (sheer would imply a great majority, but in this case I mean great minority...) of moderators means each personal individual is overwhelmed with tasks to deal with. Finally, the team structure means no one-moderator has a specific task, the task overlap means most members will focus on what is considered "priority" to the individual, which is usually a near unanimous "fighting fire and spam" viewpoint. Meaning minority tasks such as quality control goes unattended. Leaving it on show for the public.
To summarise it in an analogous manner; the police have the authority to deal with public disorder and assault - similarly, they can issue fines for littering. If we increased the pressure (number of cases) on the higher-level assault/public disorder offences to a point that pushed the police taskforce to it's limit. Minor offences such as littering would be ignored. Resulting in a build up of litter. (Obviously this analogy falls to the wayside when you include janitorial staff that clean up litter etc).
Finally to make my point, if the moderation staff was organised in a way that separated duties not just by board, but by job, and increased the number of low-level moderation staff (or as I like to call them community officers), the boards could be both heavily moderated for spam and flaming but also cleaned up by the community officers who could hide post deemed poor-quality.
However, I will be the first to admit the impracticality of the entire scheme. The management of the board is also voluntary and run by the moderation team itself, meaning the management infrastructure to support large-scale teams of moderators and community officers would be absurd. Infact, you would probably have to introduce a special group of directors to manage it, and even then it would be a struggle.
Then there is the issue of rogue community officers, hiding posts from members they have disagreements with. How do you judge the assured quality of quality assurance? This means a back-end infrastructure that makes the damage community officers can do to a minimal. Perhaps just "hiding posts" such as the YouTube "this post has been marked as spam [show]" and a moderator can undo the effect if a CO abused their power, or made misjudgement. Some of you may have the idea that the QA should be put into the hands of the community, but if we're arguing the immaturity of the community as a whole is the issue in the first place. Then this is self-defeatist, and opens up a system of abuse where people "flag as spam" all posts. Which would put even greater stress on the moderation team to QA the QA of the community, which is a larger audience than COs.
Huge wall of text is huge. Anyone with the patience to read it, I applaud and thank you. Please do dicuss - perhaps we can make a different topic directly on this subject matter.
tl;dr: This post contains lots of points for intelligent debate, if you can't be bothered reading it - then you probably aren't dedicated enough to be considered as a part of the solution to the problem anyway.
PS. This belongs in forum discussion, but whatever.
PPS, and edit: Sorry for poor grammar/spelling. I've just arrived home from an epic party and I've had like 2 hours sleep (and that was at least 14h ago).
@OP Basically it's like this; You are not required to participate in the forums. Don't like them? Don't read/post!
Quote from Blitzgrutel »
The people that are doing this seems loving to do this.
Exactly! These forums are awesome trolling grounds!
I pray you never make it to a place of power, though I'm safe in the knowledge you probably never will due to your poor attitude to fixing a problem - almost to the point of doing the complete opposite and approving of the problem!
Being a defeatist who just says "I don't like it, I'll bury my head in the sand!" never achieves anything. The problem remains, and you've done nothing to help or hinder progress. You're essentially a non-entity in the world. Your post demonstrates an attitude that nobody should follow.
I'm 31 and it doesn't bother me at all. It's the Internet, this is how it is here. If you don't like this forum, find another one. There are plenty of places with Minecraft forums.
Oh, and the OP should learn how to spell 'flaming'.
And Faceless, that was an extremely wanky post. You're basically saying the post turnover here is too high for effective moderation of all immature and inappropriate posts. You could have said that is a tenth of the text space.
I disapprove of your adjective to describe my post - it actually doesn't have any definition (except your self-approved definition, which I am unable to apply). Yes, I could have said "NEED MOAR MODERATORS" it would have implied the same thing, however the qualitative information gain would have suffered considerably.
My post was not simply asking for more moderation, or criticising the lack of effective moderation, though I do both of those, I also suggested a complete overhaul of the back-end infrastructure and the organisation of staff. The alternative post would have just suggested a very sloppy "throw more soliders at it!" approach. Which we all know, is a bad idea, tactical and strategic planning prove more effective and produce a better result.
So yes, it could have been condense - nodoubt, I do tend to repeat myself a lot. However the summary you provided misses out a huge caches of information.
I pray you never make it to a place of power, though I'm safe in the knowledge you probably never will due to your poor attitude to fixing a problem - almost to the point of doing the complete opposite and approving of the problem!
This reply tells me that you are not old enough to know that this attitude is prime manager material. :wink.gif:
Quote from Faceless »
Being a defeatist who just says "I don't like it, I'll bury my head in the sand!" never achieves anything.
It's not being a defeatist, it's being a realist. The OP has some naive notion on how the Internet should work. He's 33 years old and still hasn't figured the way of the world out.
Quote from Faceless »
Your post demonstrates an attitude that nobody should follow.
How does it make you feel that reality disagrees with you?
I pray you never make it to a place of power, though I'm safe in the knowledge you probably never will due to your poor attitude to fixing a problem - almost to the point of doing the complete opposite and approving of the problem!
This reply tells me that you are not old enough to know that this attitude is prime manager material. :wink.gif:
Quote from Faceless »
Being a defeatist who just says "I don't like it, I'll bury my head in the sand!" never achieves anything.
It's not being a defeatist, it's being a realist. The OP has some naive notion on how the Internet should work. He's 33 years old and still hasn't figured the way of the world out.
Quote from Faceless »
Your post demonstrates an attitude that nobody should follow.
How does it make you feel that reality disagrees with you?
If people committed murder and we said "oh well, we'll never stop them all. Lets do nothing" we'd all be dead - or leaving in a primitive state. The definition of progress is overcoming a problem. Overcoming this problem, is progress.
Reality doesn't disagree with me, it in fact, supports my theory. Science, a practice of overcoming problems resulting in progress is a huge part of the human race. If not the essence of our being; to make sense of the chaos.
To see a problem and fall BEFORE the first hurdle, that is defeatist. If we try, and we fail, you may gloat your "told you I was being realistic" shite, but don't try to rub it in my face without first putting some effort into solving the problem.
If you want a realist's point of view. The internet is riddled with trolls and immature persons, we will never stop them. Ever. But, there is a chance, with the right plan of action. We can minimize their impact on the experience of all well-mannered and moderately-intelligent+ members of forum.
That is realism. Seeing a problem, providing a potential solution and admitting the limitations, but providing a good cause for action.
I pray you never make it to a place of power, though I'm safe in the knowledge you probably never will due to your poor attitude to fixing a problem - almost to the point of doing the complete opposite and approving of the problem!
This reply tells me that you are not old enough to know that this attitude is prime manager material. :wink.gif:
Quote from Faceless »
Being a defeatist who just says "I don't like it, I'll bury my head in the sand!" never achieves anything.
It's not being a defeatist, it's being a realist. The OP has some naive notion on how the Internet should work. He's 33 years old and still hasn't figured the way of the world out.
Quote from Faceless »
Your post demonstrates an attitude that nobody should follow.
How does it make you feel that reality disagrees with you?
If people committed murder and we said "oh well, we'll never stop them all. Lets do nothing" we'd all be dead - or leaving in a primitive state. The definition of progress is overcoming a problem. Overcoming this problem, is progress.
Reality doesn't disagree with me, it in fact, supports my theory. Science, a practice of overcoming problems resulting in progress is a huge part of the human race. If not the essence of our being; to make sense of the chaos.
To see a problem and fall BEFORE the first hurdle, that is defeatist. If we try, and we fail, you may gloat your "told you I was being realistic" shite, but don't try to rub it in my face without first putting some effort into solving the problem.
If you want a realist's point of view. The internet is riddled with trolls and immature persons, we will never stop them. Ever. But, there is a chance, with the right plan of action. We can minimize their impact on the experience of all well-mannered and moderately-intelligent+ members of forum.
That is realism. Seeing a problem, providing a potential solution and admitting the limitations, but providing a good cause for action.
I see and do not understand your close-minded ignorance. So let go forth, in our quest of spellcheck!
If people committed murder and we said "oh well, we'll never stop them all. Lets do nothing" we'd all be dead - or leaving in a primitive state.
So now you are comparing an Internet forum about Minecraft to murder, I'll let you google for which logical fallacy you are committing. Next up: Invoking of Godwin's Law!
Quote from Faceless »
Reality doesn't disagree with me, it in fact, supports my theory. Science, a practice of overcoming problems resulting in progress is a huge part of the human race. If not the essence of our being; to make sense of the chaos.
You are confused as to the purpose of this forum. Reality does disagree with you and you may just be too blinded by idealism to see it.
The reality is that this forum is hugely popular as is, this means that the current participants don't have a problem with it or that the problem they have with it is smaller than the entertainment value they receive from this forum. Since the forum is full of trolls the only conclusion can be that the majority of the current participants doesn't mind them.
The reality is also that the primary purpose of this forum is to make money for those who benefit from the ad revenue. This may come as a shock to you, but it's not about Minecraft at all. Minecraft is just the conduit to profit.
More moderation = less popularity = less profit = bad. Simple really.
The "intellectuals" you may attract by having a more orderly forum are far less likely to click the ads.
Quote from Faceless »
If you want a realist's point of view. The internet is riddled with trolls and immature persons, we will never stop them. Ever. But, there is a chance, with the right plan of action. We can minimize their impact on the experience of all well-mannered and moderately-intelligent+ members of forum.
That may be your goal, and you may share it with a few folks, but the majority of users isn't with you on that one. Sorry.
Real life is serious business, Internet is for trolls.
Hehe lol I tought that this topic was dead lol. Finally, it turns out that I only wanted to hear some constructive opinions about the troll situation. And when I wrote this topic, the trolls where very active. Now I dont react to trolls or report them when their message is too violent or insulting.
Age has nothing to do with maturity. I can understand your frustration but it's pointless to start a thread about it. Be a bigger man and ignore the trolls. Give it time, they will leave.
I doubt the trolls will ever leave. Minecraft seems to be very popular with the 4chan community. The mods would have to go on an all out war banning every meme they saw to stop it. ( Including the ones in avatars and sigs)
You cannot say anything negative about the game or developers without a slew of white knights missing the point and derailing the thread in about 4 posts.
And to whoever says age has nothing to do with maturity: yes it does. Does it hold in 100% of cases? Of course not. But the vast majority of the time it plays a large role.
Age has nothing to do with maturity. I can understand your frustration but it's pointless to start a thread about it. Be a bigger man and ignore the trolls. Give it time, they will leave.
Im sorry, but I have to disagree with this statement completely. This forum has started the inevitable "spiral of evil" that eventually affects all large forums, especially gaming one.
Take for example, the SPORE forum. I used to be an incredibly active member there, amassed over three thousand posts, etc etc. The forum got big enough where it began to attract more trolls than the moderators could keep up with. The place soon degenerated into a complete nightmare. Eventually the moderators got fed up and left. essentially throwing the entire forum to the dogs.
trolls can be prevented only one of two ways Ive found
-keep the forum small enough so it avoids attracting attention (with one million+ sales, tough to do here)
or
-rule the forums with an iron fist. punish the slightest rule breaks with warnings, suspensions, or bans. ban repeat offenders quickly, one second chance is enough.
As volunteers, the moderation team starts off with an impractical base. This already severely undermines their performance capabilities. Secondly, the sheer number (sheer would imply a great majority, but in this case I mean great minority...) of moderators means each personal individual is overwhelmed with tasks to deal with. Finally, the team structure means no one-moderator has a specific task, the task overlap means most members will focus on what is considered "priority" to the individual, which is usually a near unanimous "fighting fire and spam" viewpoint. Meaning minority tasks such as quality control goes unattended. Leaving it on show for the public.
To summarise it in an analogous manner; the police have the authority to deal with public disorder and assault - similarly, they can issue fines for littering. If we increased the pressure (number of cases) on the higher-level assault/public disorder offences to a point that pushed the police taskforce to it's limit. Minor offences such as littering would be ignored. Resulting in a build up of litter. (Obviously this analogy falls to the wayside when you include janitorial staff that clean up litter etc).
Finally to make my point, if the moderation staff was organised in a way that separated duties not just by board, but by job, and increased the number of low-level moderation staff (or as I like to call them community officers), the boards could be both heavily moderated for spam and flaming but also cleaned up by the community officers who could hide post deemed poor-quality.
However, I will be the first to admit the impracticality of the entire scheme. The management of the board is also voluntary and run by the moderation team itself, meaning the management infrastructure to support large-scale teams of moderators and community officers would be absurd. Infact, you would probably have to introduce a special group of directors to manage it, and even then it would be a struggle.
Then there is the issue of rogue community officers, hiding posts from members they have disagreements with. How do you judge the assured quality of quality assurance? This means a back-end infrastructure that makes the damage community officers can do to a minimal. Perhaps just "hiding posts" such as the YouTube "this post has been marked as spam [show]" and a moderator can undo the effect if a CO abused their power, or made misjudgement. Some of you may have the idea that the QA should be put into the hands of the community, but if we're arguing the immaturity of the community as a whole is the issue in the first place. Then this is self-defeatist, and opens up a system of abuse where people "flag as spam" all posts. Which would put even greater stress on the moderation team to QA the QA of the community, which is a larger audience than COs.
Huge wall of text is huge. Anyone with the patience to read it, I applaud and thank you. Please do dicuss - perhaps we can make a different topic directly on this subject matter.
tl;dr: This post contains lots of points for intelligent debate, if you can't be bothered reading it - then you probably aren't dedicated enough to be considered as a part of the solution to the problem anyway.
PS. This belongs in forum discussion, but whatever.
PPS, and edit: Sorry for poor grammar/spelling. I've just arrived home from an epic party and I've had like 2 hours sleep (and that was at least 14h ago).
Exactly! These forums are awesome trolling grounds!
I pray you never make it to a place of power, though I'm safe in the knowledge you probably never will due to your poor attitude to fixing a problem - almost to the point of doing the complete opposite and approving of the problem!
Being a defeatist who just says "I don't like it, I'll bury my head in the sand!" never achieves anything. The problem remains, and you've done nothing to help or hinder progress. You're essentially a non-entity in the world. Your post demonstrates an attitude that nobody should follow.
I disapprove of your adjective to describe my post - it actually doesn't have any definition (except your self-approved definition, which I am unable to apply). Yes, I could have said "NEED MOAR MODERATORS" it would have implied the same thing, however the qualitative information gain would have suffered considerably.
My post was not simply asking for more moderation, or criticising the lack of effective moderation, though I do both of those, I also suggested a complete overhaul of the back-end infrastructure and the organisation of staff. The alternative post would have just suggested a very sloppy "throw more soliders at it!" approach. Which we all know, is a bad idea, tactical and strategic planning prove more effective and produce a better result.
So yes, it could have been condense - nodoubt, I do tend to repeat myself a lot. However the summary you provided misses out a huge caches of information.
This reply tells me that you are not old enough to know that this attitude is prime manager material. :wink.gif:
It's not being a defeatist, it's being a realist. The OP has some naive notion on how the Internet should work. He's 33 years old and still hasn't figured the way of the world out.
How does it make you feel that reality disagrees with you?
If people committed murder and we said "oh well, we'll never stop them all. Lets do nothing" we'd all be dead - or leaving in a primitive state. The definition of progress is overcoming a problem. Overcoming this problem, is progress.
Reality doesn't disagree with me, it in fact, supports my theory. Science, a practice of overcoming problems resulting in progress is a huge part of the human race. If not the essence of our being; to make sense of the chaos.
To see a problem and fall BEFORE the first hurdle, that is defeatist. If we try, and we fail, you may gloat your "told you I was being realistic" shite, but don't try to rub it in my face without first putting some effort into solving the problem.
If you want a realist's point of view. The internet is riddled with trolls and immature persons, we will never stop them. Ever. But, there is a chance, with the right plan of action. We can minimize their impact on the experience of all well-mannered and moderately-intelligent+ members of forum.
That is realism. Seeing a problem, providing a potential solution and admitting the limitations, but providing a good cause for action.
I see and do not understand your close-minded ignorance. So let go forth, in our quest of spellcheck!
So now you are comparing an Internet forum about Minecraft to murder, I'll let you google for which logical fallacy you are committing. Next up: Invoking of Godwin's Law!
You are confused as to the purpose of this forum. Reality does disagree with you and you may just be too blinded by idealism to see it.
The reality is that this forum is hugely popular as is, this means that the current participants don't have a problem with it or that the problem they have with it is smaller than the entertainment value they receive from this forum. Since the forum is full of trolls the only conclusion can be that the majority of the current participants doesn't mind them.
The reality is also that the primary purpose of this forum is to make money for those who benefit from the ad revenue. This may come as a shock to you, but it's not about Minecraft at all. Minecraft is just the conduit to profit.
More moderation = less popularity = less profit = bad. Simple really.
The "intellectuals" you may attract by having a more orderly forum are far less likely to click the ads.
That may be your goal, and you may share it with a few folks, but the majority of users isn't with you on that one. Sorry.
Real life is serious business, Internet is for trolls.
Off topic much?
@Op:I understand your anger and completely agree.
The only thing I find painful is some people have been on the earth [insert your age] and still cannot read, at all.
Zing!
I love you, Minecraft Forums. You make me laugh.
I doubt the trolls will ever leave. Minecraft seems to be very popular with the 4chan community. The mods would have to go on an all out war banning every meme they saw to stop it. ( Including the ones in avatars and sigs)
:smile.gif:
You cannot say anything negative about the game or developers without a slew of white knights missing the point and derailing the thread in about 4 posts.
And to whoever says age has nothing to do with maturity: yes it does. Does it hold in 100% of cases? Of course not. But the vast majority of the time it plays a large role.
But yeah, I know what you mean. I'm 22 and seeing some of these threads makes me a little depressed.
Im sorry, but I have to disagree with this statement completely. This forum has started the inevitable "spiral of evil" that eventually affects all large forums, especially gaming one.
Take for example, the SPORE forum. I used to be an incredibly active member there, amassed over three thousand posts, etc etc. The forum got big enough where it began to attract more trolls than the moderators could keep up with. The place soon degenerated into a complete nightmare. Eventually the moderators got fed up and left. essentially throwing the entire forum to the dogs.
trolls can be prevented only one of two ways Ive found
-keep the forum small enough so it avoids attracting attention (with one million+ sales, tough to do here)
or
-rule the forums with an iron fist. punish the slightest rule breaks with warnings, suspensions, or bans. ban repeat offenders quickly, one second chance is enough.