About forum moderation

Noob_Master69Noob_Master69 Member Posts: 689 ★★★★
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed less moderators being online on the forums lately. Whatever the cause of this may be is irrelevant to the points I want to make in this post and is not our business to discuss or speculate about.
What I do want to discuss is what can be done to make the forums a better place

It's no secret that there are a lot of forum users who are let's say passionate about the game and in return tend to not be the most positive towards Kabam, fellow summoners, and differing opinions. Every once in a while a post emerges that leads to very off-topic and not very classy discussions. During regular Kabam business hours this seems to be not a very big issue as Miike or Jax will usually be able to lock down or delete threads without too much delay and everyone can go on their merry way.

But outside of office hours, namely the weekends, some of these less classy discussions will emerge. This weekend a post got made talking about some racist statements another player made, what insued were (if I recall correctly) 5 pages of discussion about race, some things very mild, other things incredibly racist in my opinion. On monday this thread was rightfully shut down. I feel like these threads have been increasing in frequency, although I might be mistaken.

Another recent thread I remember is a player threatening physical violence, calling multiple people a variety of slurs, and posting their (alleged) own address in hopes to beat someone up. Again, once notified Kabam took this down, but the post had been up for quite a bit before they could do anything.
And there are more of these examples, from people posting links to mods, to pitty fights in the responses to a totally unrelated thread.

In the responses to the first thread I mentioned I saw a Forum Guardian(can't remember who) mention that they think they should have the power to lock a thread if multiple Guardians vote to do so. I'm sure this Guardian has shared that opinion with Kabam but reading that is kind of what sparked this post. With the game being global, lots of people playing on the weekends the forum will be used by atleast some people any time of the day, every day of the week. So why is there no moderation in place to reflect that?

I don't know if the Guardians voting on a post being taken down is the best solution, it can lead to all sorts of drama because someone may feel targeted and this can reflect badly on Kabam if handled poorly, but so do some of these threads I mentioned.

I think a form of volunteer moderation would not be bad. especially outside of business hours.

And btw, with this I have only focussed on the bad threads, having more (volunteer) moderation could also help with things like merging threads, so many times I'll find 5 posts underneath eachother mentionin the same exact problem that has a solution, cleaning this up could lead to less clutter and perceived spam

What do you guys think? I may have totally missed the mark here but would love an open discussion!

TL;DR: Forums are sometimes a nasty place outside of Kabam business hours, should Guardians or whoever have more control?

Comments

  • ahmynutsahmynuts Member Posts: 7,221 ★★★★★
    edited September 2023
    I actually read this entire thing. I think the voting idea could work, something definitely needs to be done especially on the weekends. Even if we don't want threads spiraling out of control they end up taking a nosedive anyway and keep on going. You didn't miss the mark at all. I hope Kabam takes something like this into consideration. I thought forum guardians should have had the power to shut things down from the get go, like when you're in a live stream and a moderator can time you out or ban you for saying certain things.

    Edit: Maybe then can have like levels of guardian? With only the top level having the ability to fully shut threads down?
  • TheromeTherome Member Posts: 44
    You're right. It would be good if there were new moderators. I was Moderator of the largest Spanish-speaking forum in the world. PortalXD, if I need help let me know.
  • laserjohn26laserjohn26 Member Posts: 1,531 ★★★★★

    It is a slippery slope. Personally, I dont want more power as a Guardian. One of the threads you mentioned, with it being very racist, problem was it had more eyes and comments before we could vote it down. Maybe some slight changes in the number of flagging required to remove a post can be changed, but in general, we have some good tools to keep these discussions in check.

    I do like this post though. Thanks for thinking about the mods as real people doing a job, and having a life on weekends. Jax and Miike do a great job over here.

    Clearly the only solution is that Jax and miike must monitor the forum 24/7/365. No days off.
  • Noob_Master69Noob_Master69 Member Posts: 689 ★★★★

    It is a slippery slope. Personally, I dont want more power as a Guardian. One of the threads you mentioned, with it being very racist, problem was it had more eyes and comments before we could vote it down. Maybe some slight changes in the number of flagging required to remove a post can be changed, but in general, we have some good tools to keep these discussions in check.

    I do like this post though. Thanks for thinking about the mods as real people doing a job, and having a life on weekends. Jax and Miike do a great job over here.

    Oh so you guys already have the ability to remove a post with votes? I didn't know that/couldn't gather that from the comments I read. Yeah perhaps in that case some values could be tweaked or maybe more Guardians could be let on to help moderation!

  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Member Posts: 36,489 ★★★★★
    I think what you're asking for is more Moderators. Which I'm not opposed to, considering I was in all those Threads. I think it becomes problematic when you're talking about changing the roles of Guardians.
  • Sachhyam257Sachhyam257 Member Posts: 1,163 ★★★★

    I think what you're asking for is more Moderators. Which I'm not opposed to, considering I was in all those Threads. I think it becomes problematic when you're talking about changing the roles of Guardians.

    What is a role of a Guardian anyway?
  • spidyjedi84spidyjedi84 Member Posts: 353 ★★★
    More moderation is not a bad thing, especially on holidays and weekends, even if that is citizen moderators stepping in to make the job less chaotic for Jax, Miike and others on Monday mornings. Especially after that racism thread this weekend. That was a hot potato that should have been shut down fast.
  • Eb0ny-O-M4wEb0ny-O-M4w Member Posts: 13,933 ★★★★★
    Forum Guardians can delete a post if it got none of very few comments. Once it has a few of them, it can only be flagged. Although they were "promised" new tools and all, but nothing has changed ever since 2019 so ... there's that
  • MauledMauled Member, Guardian Posts: 3,957 Guardian
    We can’t directly take posts down at the moment, no matter how fresh they may be. As long as there’s not too many comments on them a few flags does seem to at least hide the topic but I don’t think there’s any real science to it. Well, obviously there must be as it’s a computer, but I don’t think it’s a conscious policy choice by Kabam as such.

    More power would be helpful to take down a post that is truly hideous, but its potentially a slippery slope and at the end of the day we’re here to be helpful, not to be employees. I’d like better tech in place to filter these kinds of things, some OCR tech to pick out those lovely colourful words in those line screenshots for example would certainly not be a bad thing as i assume it’s in place to prevent the posting of 18+ images.
  • OGAvengerOGAvenger Member Posts: 1,131 ★★★★★

    Forum Guardians can delete a post if it got none of very few comments. Once it has a few of them, it can only be flagged. Although they were "promised" new tools and all, but nothing has changed ever since 2019 so ... there's that

    Some new guardians might not hurt either…🫢
  • PikoluPikolu Member, Guardian Posts: 7,358 Guardian

    I think what you're asking for is more Moderators. Which I'm not opposed to, considering I was in all those Threads. I think it becomes problematic when you're talking about changing the roles of Guardians.

    What is a role of a Guardian anyway?
    Aid the moderation team by flagging posts, and try to be helpful to the community here. We have some other roles too like helping in the CCP, but those are the main ones I know off the top of my head.
  • ItsClobberinTimeItsClobberinTime Member Posts: 5,369 ★★★★★
    I told that person to just ignore the trolls in global cause that's how every gaming community is unfortunately, and they ended up accusing me of being a white supremacist basically lol what a deranged individual. I do think Guardians should be allowed to vote to get a thread closed, we don't need that type of toxicity here, this isn't Twitter or Tumblr.
  • ThecurlerThecurler Member Posts: 875 ★★★★
    I made a few posts in that weekend thread and was amazed it stayed up as long as it did.
    Still can’t decide if the op was trolling or not 🤷‍♂️
  • Noob_Master69Noob_Master69 Member Posts: 689 ★★★★
    Thecurler said:

    I made a few posts in that weekend thread and was amazed it stayed up as long as it did.
    Still can’t decide if the op was trolling or not 🤷‍♂️

    From the replies I saw of them I don't think they were, but either way a thread like that should be dealt with before it has the chance to spiral into what it did
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