314 replies to this topic

[Bishop Steiner]

Good.

Now time will tell if it is cosmetic or not. BTW, nice sarcasm in the OP. It may be "bad" from the traditional "customer service" standpoint (aka, no matter what, one is not supposed to stoop to the customer's level), but I do prefer to see some backbone. Instead of anonymous lockings and boots. Maybe non-forum letter posts by certain parties would have obviated the need for many of the locked posts in the first place?

Believe it or not (as one of the more vociferous negative posters in the last few days), open communication, and non-kneejerk boots to Jettisoned Comm would have minimized the volume of the negative feedback, Niko.

Anyhow, thank you for listening to the feedback, positive or negative. I still feel that the traffic volume is diluted but that was probably partly the intent for the simple fact that hopefully some sections that were previously graveyards show signs of life.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 27 April 2013 - 04:07 AM.

[sokitumi]

Classic.
Maybe 8 of 10 posts in the last 28 pager said too many subforums.

Bill Gates said:

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Ludwig Van Beethoven said:

Nothing is more intolerable than to have admit to yourself your own errors.

Kurt Vonnegut said:

And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.

Thomas Carlyle said:

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Salvador Dali said:

Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

Rita Mae Brown said:

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

[Texas Merc]

A poll ? sweet! Here is mine; Canadian Forum Moderators: Lazy or Crazy?

[Bishop Steiner]

Texas Merc, on 27 April 2013 - 04:44 AM, said:

A poll ? sweet! Here is mine; Canadian Forum Moderators: Lazy or Crazy?

my vote is on crazy. I think there might be something in the maple syrup.......

[ijon]

greetings.

my first impression was: hiding complaints is one way to deal with it.
why you have such agressive customers at times, pgi? check your sales policy and what you deliver in return.

on 2nd thought this new forum structure is still not appealing. i like a certain flow of rabble.

[Krell Darkmoon]

Roadbeer, on 26 April 2013 - 02:54 PM, said:

Keep smacking a dog and sooner or later it's going to bite you.

If MWO was my dog, he'd be 6 feet under by now.

[OpCentar]

Still too many subforums, why is it so hard to have a general, General discussion forum from which the mods sort the posts?

If you are short staffed - hire more community mods. If it's too hard to moderate - hire better community mods.


As for the increase in unique visitors - it's due to the rage you induced in your community. News spread fast, bad news even faster so your new and unique visitors will not stick for long.

You also registered an increase in visitors to specific subforums?, well the fact that you opened a bunch of new subforums might have something to do with it!


Bottom line - we, the users, should not be forced to spend more time using the various subforums just because you don't like to have a single melting pot. That's why you have a moderating team, their job is to enforce the rules and sort the junk from the useful stuff.

[Jacob Dieffenbach]

My feedback:

General Discussion forum.

Since the only subforum I have ever visited, or ever intend to visit, is the "Suggestions" one, I want a General Discussion forum for the rest of my time.

And you know what? I only ever visit the suggestion forum after I've polished the idea through discussion in GD.

Stop with the crazy "Maybe we should have a subforum for that?" attitude. It's a little O.C.D. at this point. Just take everything that's not necessary to have as a subforum--the "pilot war stories" subforums, the "map discussion", the "metagame".... what's all this crazy ****? Just delete it. And put it all in the GD forum.

Subforums are a precision tool that you only implement when absolutely necessary. Tech support forum with workarounds subforum. General Discussion forum with suggestions subforum. Player Help forum with Guides by weight class subforum. Clans forum with individual clan Subforums.

See where I'm going? See how I didn't list "Tech support forum with problems related to error 1932 subforum, problems related to error 2000 subforum, problems related to computers build between March 12 2009 and July 28th 2012" like a crazy person who needs to have a subforum dedicated to each forum thread would do?

Just... relax it. Relax it all. Mix things into a single General Discussion area, with subforums if (AND ONLY IF) it's necessary to splinter it off into a subforum. Suggestions are fine as a subforum. Not polls. News is fine as a subforum.

By the way, if you want to clean up General Discussion? How about all MechWarrior Online news actually gets posted to the MechWarrior Online site? That's one huge chunk of the GD forum, is people retweeting important tweets to the forums, people reposting pictures found elsewhere to the forums, people reposting interviews found on YouTube to the forums... if you want that place cleaned up, how about you just be more responsible about info coming through the website?

You don't have to get rid of 'exclusive tips' or anything to gamer news sites, or stop tweeting. No. Just make sure that afterward, after you've had your fun posting to other sites, you actually post it HERE so we don't have to do the work for you.

[Coolant]

Roadbeer, on 26 April 2013 - 02:54 PM, said:

The way the community interacts with the employees is worse. Keep smacking a dog and sooner or later it's going to bite you.

interesting view seeing how we are the customers. Slapping around your customers doesn't make good business sense. Neither does eliminating a section of the forums that allows constructive criticism that can make your product better...

NRP, on 26 April 2013 - 03:25 PM, said:

I certainly hope these changes were made to quell the negativity. I for one would like to read some intelligent discussion once in a while. Unfortunately, that almost never happens around here.

The best discussions were in the General Discussions forum minus the insults. The most passion came out in heated threads and it is a big mistake to quell that passion...

[Coolant]

just checked...Hawken has a General Discussion forum...Armored Core has a General Discussion section...

Edited by Coolant, 27 April 2013 - 07:42 AM.

[Coolant]

CYBRN4CR, on 26 April 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

Moderators are human too you know.

You try to remain chipper and willing to do your job after seeing hundreds of threads of insults toward the company over the course of a month because people don't understand the concept of a beta being an incomplete product and think that they got swindled due to poor leadership and the inability to churn out bug fixes fast enough.

Or the fact that hundreds of duplicate threads kept on appearing because barely anyone used the search function because they think that their thread is somehow "different" when it's not. Why do you think people started breaking out the popcorn and said "oh look it's this thread again." It's not because the moderators were doing a bad job. It's because they were tired of moderating a system that was broken.

So you know what? Get a job in a call center sometime for any product. Then maybe you'll know how the moderators feel.

have zero sympathy for the moderators...i worked many years in customer service and you learn never to take things personally. They signed up for customer service and when customers aren't happy they are the front lines and should expect irate customers and deal with it. They should also do their jobs and delete or consolidate duplicate threads. Using that as an excuse to take away the General Discussion section is just that an excuse. And, yes, I firmly believe the reason GD is gone is that PGI's employees are exhausted over the negativity. So grow some thick skin, realize many of us have legitimate complaints about the game and don't shut us off because we have something negative to say because often we are the ones that point out what you may not be able to see.

[Roadbeer]

Coolant, on 27 April 2013 - 07:27 AM, said:

They should also do their jobs and delete or consolidate duplicate threads.

Yeah, because they never did that. And then there weren't 50 subsequent threads from the petulant child who just had their thread deleted crying about censorship, which would then, require MORE moderation.
Or when threads were consolidated the cries of censorship and the belief that 'volume' on a topic related to thread and not post count, so another 50 threads would be created in conjunction to the 'merged' thread, which would require MORE moderation.

[Jestun]

Roadbeer, on 27 April 2013 - 08:30 AM, said:

Yeah, because they never did that. And then there weren't 50 subsequent threads from the petulant child who just had their thread deleted crying about censorship, which would then, require MORE moderation.
Or when threads were consolidated the cries of censorship and the belief that 'volume' on a topic related to thread and not post count, so another 50 threads would be created in conjunction to the 'merged' thread, which would require MORE moderation.

Why are the mods letting 50 threads be created between the checks of the forum?

Do they only do 5 minutes work per day?

They simply need to merge the new threads as they come up. Obviously that won't necessesarily be immediately but if it takes them so long between checks that 50 new threads have been created then they need to consider 1. where the sticky is (e.g. hidden in a sub-forum where no one can see it?) and/or 2. hiring more moderators.

Edited by Jestun, 27 April 2013 - 11:27 AM.

[Roadbeer]

Jestun, on 27 April 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

2. hiring more moderators.

I would rather more programmers be hired, but if the forum is more important than the game, then I guess you have a point.

[Jestun]

Roadbeer, on 27 April 2013 - 11:28 AM, said:

I would rather more programmers be hired, but if the forum is more important than the game, then I guess you have a point.

I think it's unlikely they pay the same wage to everyone and are sitting there thinking "should we pay this money to a forum mod or a developer?".

Adding a moderator (which could even be a volunteer) would have very little impact on whether they could add another developer.

:edit:

As for is the interaction / presentation more important than the product... ask Apple. Nothing really innovative for a long time, and before that most of the stuff they did was combining other people's inventions. But they have a lot of sizzle to enhance their very mediocre steak and have a stupidly loyal fanbase.

Edited by Jestun, 27 April 2013 - 11:34 AM.

[Roadbeer]

Jestun, on 27 April 2013 - 11:31 AM, said:

I think it's unlikely they pay the same wage to everyone and are sitting there thinking "should we pay this money to a forum mod or a developer?".

Adding a moderator (which could even be a volunteer) would have very little impact on whether they could add another developer.

But 2 Mods would probably equal a Devs salary, which was where it was going, because I didn't see a crop of names offered up as candidates for Vol Mods, and honestly, I wouldn't take the offer if it was given to me.

Those who have, I commend them, because I wouldn't want to spend my free time holding the hand of a bunch of petulant children.

[smokefield]

where in the hell you see payed mods on the forums ? most of them are volunteers and I am pretty sure we can find more than enough around here willing to help.

[TOGSolid]

Roadbeer, on 27 April 2013 - 11:38 AM, said:

But 2 Mods would probably equal a Devs salary, which was where it was going, because I didn't see a crop of names offered up as candidates for Vol Mods, and honestly, I wouldn't take the offer if it was given to me.

Those who have, I commend them, because I wouldn't want to spend my free time holding the hand of a bunch of petulant children.

Volunteer moderators can easily handle this position. Most forums tend to be staffed by volunteers and it works well. With one main staff moderator essentially functioning as the senior admin, they can easily delegate out sections of the forum to an army of mods. Depending on the potential for derp, each section would have a varying number of mods, ideally recruited out of the ranks of the people that post in those specific sections the most. For instance, the Community Hyperpulse section is really tame and one guy or two volunteers can easily keep an eye on that entire thing. A major forum like GD would basically see all the volunteer mods having control over it just to ensure the maximum amount of boots on the ground. This is mostly the same system as we have now, just with an apparent lack of moderators running around with enough power to keep things under control.

A visible warning system like Penny Arcade implements with their forums would help a lot with curbing the stupid ****. Infraction points build up and while you are infracted it causes a set of jail bars to appear over your avatar. You also lose certain forum rights like being able to link pictures/video and other minor things like that. If you build up too many infractions you get temporarily banned with, naturally, some things getting you automatically booted. While I don't know if our forum software supports that sort of thing, at least a warning icon appear on the person's posts somewhere when they've gotten a scolding/whupping would help remind people when they're ******* up.

Edited by TOGSolid, 27 April 2013 - 12:30 PM.

[jeffsw6]

Roadbeer, on 27 April 2013 - 08:30 AM, said:

Yeah, because they never did that. And then there weren't 50 subsequent threads from the petulant child who just had their thread deleted crying about censorship, which would then, require MORE moderation.
Or when threads were consolidated the cries of censorship and the belief that 'volume' on a topic related to thread and not post count, so another 50 threads would be created in conjunction to the 'merged' thread, which would require MORE moderation.

That's because they typically didn't merge & sticky, or merge & move, until some individual moderator is sick of some individual poster or subject. It wasn't routine for them to merge threads to tidy up General. What was routine is kicking critical threads off to unread sub-forums, locking threads so people just made more, etc.

Roadbeer, on 27 April 2013 - 11:28 AM, said:

I would rather more programmers be hired, but if the forum is more important than the game, then I guess you have a point.

If a paid staffer can't manage to corral a group of unpaid, volunteer moderators in the video game industry, where there are legions of tech-school students hoping for a future job, then that paid staffer is incapable of doing his job.

They would have to work real hard to find less professional moderators than some of the ones they have. Others are good, but are not instructed to do the right thing -- merge & sticky to tidy up.

This does not cost money, though. It just takes someone at the helm of the PGI community team who ... has a clue.

[Bishop Steiner]

smokefield, on 27 April 2013 - 12:24 PM, said:

where in the hell you see payed mods on the forums ? most of them are volunteers and I am pretty sure we can find more than enough around here willing to help.

Actually, they have both official IGP Mods who are staff, and work both MWO and Tactics forums (and probably SODA too), and Volunteer Mods, who have the hand "Volunteer Mod" tag on their badge. I will say the fact that IGP appears to have so few Mods covering so many Forums, I can understand where they might get a little snippy. It's never fun to be short handed, and have an employer on one side telling you everything is wonderful, do your job, and then the other side, a ton of customers telling you everything is horrible, do your job.

Do they sign up for it? Yes. Is it their Job? Yes. And in the end of the day, the first policy in Customer Service, is you are never supposed to stop to retaliation, or pettiness, but the reality is, sometimes they do. And in the modern Internet age, good customer service, be it on phone, by Forum and such, is sadly becoming rare. And many of the attacks made are not justified The Problem is, many ARE. The Mods, unfortunately HAVE to toe the Company line. Sadly, when the company has shown a propensity to have it's head planted in it's ****** canal, that leaves one in a rather unenviable position.

two sides to every coin. We, the population need to voice our objection maturely (not the forum rage nonsense, nor the "PGI ATE MY BABY" garbage certain self appointed community police are so fond of pandering), and IGP/PGI and their "minions" need to learn how to handle constructive criticism while they still HAVE a customer base.