Concern about the 200m in all skills thread

[Gemeos2]

Mod Edit: If you have concerns for moderation on the 200m in all skills thread, post them here. This is technically where suggestions or concerns should be shared when it doesn't relate to an individual moderator.

 

You mods are doing an amazing progress on killing this thread.

 

You can (and most likely will) delete this post but this is the general concern, at this moment.

[Kimberly]

I split this off into its own thread so it can be given the attention it deserves, though the irony of the situation doesn't escape me. But as moderators work to protect the interests of the community, it seems fitting that the community take the opportunity to state if those interests have changed or if they're not being met.

 

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I will be honest and post my opinion as an individual - not a member of the moderation staff.

 

The topic was set for death the moment Suomi reached 200m all and nothing short of a new skill release could revive it. Only because there are some great and passionate people in the efficiency community is the thread still tracking the progress of the top 20. The topic's scope never really was anything more than tracking those top players. Efficiency and metagaming play an important part of that tracking, which gives the thread considerable life that almost no other discussion has on the boards. What's mostly moderated seems to be the bickering back and forth that usually gets regulars to go, "can we please stop rehashing x again for the umpteenth time?" Hardly seems right to calculate that into how well a thread is doing if they just argue the same thing over and over. At least by splitting it off into another topic, they can do that elsewhere. And if the drama is really missed, well, it's not really gone -- you just have to go to another thread for it.

 

That's my two cents on the matter. Again, just my individual opinion as a member of the community, not as a moderator or a representative of the staff.

[Low C]

Just let the people discuss shit and if they start flaming each other then intervene. No need for such strict moderating when the gen disc board has very little discussion as it is.

[Bxpprod]

A thread split from the thread. Cool.

[Kimberly]

No need for such strict moderating when the gen disc board has very little discussion as it is.

 

I would say - this time speaking as a mod - that the 200m is being moderated to the same level the rest of General Discussion is with the way it is now. The only reason why you see more mod actions there as opposed to any other thread in GD is because it's so massive.

 

If there's an argument for less enforcement, I would think it'd have to be an argument that made sense applying to the entire board as a whole. On that front suggestions are always welcome.

 

A thread split from the thread. Cool.

 

I figured this would be a better alternative than just hiding the post and completely ignoring user concern, no? If just left in the 200m thread, we would drive it off topic again discussing moderation policy and block out anyone who wanted to legitimately discuss the top 20, seasonal high scores, any NIS setups that might be relevant to training, etc. That sort of thing has happened before (with a different subject of course) on the 200m thread and I would hope to avoid it if we could, especially since discussions like these are supposed to take place on the Forum Updates & Suggestions board.

[Low C]

I would enjoy more lax moderating in the general discussion board because i used to enjoy reading it. Most of the old users have migrated to XPW, Reddit, other fansites because of general hatred towards the moderators. However, Kimberly has always been somewhat of a reasonable moderator and i feel like you could breath life back into the place if you all discuss a more lax environment considering the forum base is a lot more mature these days.

[Fallstar]

There is severe over moderation of the 200M all skills thread. One interesting thing about that thread is it has always attracted top players to come and post - unlike every other thread on these boards, but when you delete people's posts you simply piss them off and make them disinclined to post again - which is a shame as they are some of the few individuals who've actually put the thousands of hours in and can tell you whether, for example, certain training methods are viable all the way to 200M or if they are mostly theoretical.

 

There is also a complete lack of consistency in moderation of that thread - my friend had his posts deleted for discussing a topic, then someone else brought the topic up and they had their posts left alone, and when he called the moderator out on it they simply deleted his posts again and issued him with a warning.

 

There is plenty left to discuss in the scope of that thread, if you'd just let us...

[Viv]

Yea the thread "ended" when suomi got 200m all but its still the only thread that I've been reading on tip.it for the past like year or 2 besides some update threads...

 

I think the moderation should be lax cause who's to decide whats offtopic and what's not? It mainly survived so much because of the discussions had on it and the tracking and stalking of top players.

 

Also Splitting the thread into different threads just makes those threads die tbh and is completely annoying to see on the forms "200m in all skills" "blahblahblah split from 200m all skills". Player motivation is definitely on topic as that's like the main obstacle. Generally when a "minitopic" on the thread gets tireing than people will stop posting a couple days then the subject will change on its own.

 

Offtopic stuff already gets policed by the people on the thread just look at when someone ask a question completely irrelevant most people will tell them then say its irrelevant and won't talk about that topic again.

 

The 2 "repeat" topics that used to come up were donations and nolifing and sure they got annoying but they were still related but generally talking about them too much got moderated if thier was flaming going on or something but going offtopic for a page or so is basically the whole topic.

 

Otherwise what is that thread? Top 15 updates every 2 weeks or so, nothing else?

 

Yea I don't support the splitting threads.

[Gemeos2]

What even is freedom of speech....

 

Also, there's so many things that you consider offtopic (that really aren't imo) because your moderation is too restricted.

[Randox]

Some things to consider I suppose.

 

The thread is a sub community, one that is living with some of the lessons learned from the last sub community we had residing in a single thread. I'll have a look through more of the reports when I have a good time to get a better perspective on this myself, but the current stance is more rigid than perhaps is normal, which flows both from tangents turning into flame wars, and lessons learned.

 

I am not particularly inclined towards special cases that involve rule exemptions. In this case, threads having topics is a core mechanic of how forums function, but also because pulling back our moderation would invite more active self policing, which is an issue neither side needs (since it invariably ends with rules being broken and us taking action, raising tensions all around). Any discussion will have a natural evolution, a form of passive topic enforcement if you like, something that comes out of group interaction. We will take a look and see if we are allowing enough room for the thread to evolve or not, and how long we allow tangents to live before stepping in.

 

If people have specific examples, or rather, can point me to specific examples (ideally the author of the removed posts) and why think it should have been allowed, that would probably be the most helpful to us in getting a good perspective.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Randox
Shortened and clairifed

[Ellac]

The topic is about 200m in all skills primarily, but efficiency/metagame/top players still have a heavy hand in the discussions which happen in the thread. Due to the huge scope of topics which fit into the broad discussion of top players, metagame and efficiency, it is hard to have a thread which discusses things separate from the rest of the general discussion forum. Many of the posts about new updates have just as much relevancy in the discussion of top player's roads to 200m all skills as they do in the discussion of the general opinions of the entire player base. The problem stems from where to draw the line in how relevant new updates are in the discussion of 200m all skills compared to how relevant they are to the overall playerbase.

 

I would say that arguments/personal attacks, etc. should be removed as they always have been, but things such as new updates and how they affect the top players/efficiency should be left, even if there is another thread already discussing the topic. Similar to how the RS Screenshots thread works - screenshots are posted about new updates after they happen, even when there is a thread about them already. It is not necessarily off-topic to post a screenshot about a new update in the screenshot thread, since one is a specific topic (new update) and one is a broader topic (screenshots). Similarly, we have a broad topic (200M thread) and a more specific topic (new update).

 

Hopefully I was able to get my point across in an understandable way :)

[Aiel]

the three threads split from the 200mAS thread have like 100 posts between them, I think that in it's self should say that they didn't need to be split and that the discussion would have died down quickly. They weren't particularly offtopic (motivation/trimmed comp/paying money for YT shoutouts are all things related to maxed players) and likely would have died even faster if they hadn't been given the attention of having their own thread. Moderate flame wars if you want, but keep offtopic-but-metagame/efficient/maxed-related discussions in the 200mAS thread.

[Kimberly]

So it's been about a week and a half to two weeks. There has been an effort to leave more lax banter in General Discussion be similar to how Off Topic functions. (So no more splitting unless in extreme cases gone way off point and so on.) Do you guys think this helps at all, or is there still more you'd like to see done? If you can't give specifics, that's fine, I just might have to ask some questions to understand what you mean.