Guild Wars 2

To Moderator: Before you close or delete mod, please know that I’m not appealing an infraction. I have a question/bug to report concerning them. The infraction I did receive will go away with time (I think) so it doesn’t bother me as I try not to do things that cause it on a regular basis!

Okay on to my point.

Yesterday there were 2 threads that were on similar topics. They were done by 2 separate people, who both wanted input. I did post in response to both, the answers were similar but not the same. Sometime last night these threads were merged. After the merge, I now had what could be seen as a repeat post in this single thread. (similar but not the same post) Because one of these had to be deleted to keep the thread clean, I was given an infraction.

Now, I have to ask. Are infractions automatic when post is deleted? If that is the case, it doesn’t really make sense to me, seeing as sometimes posts would be deleted for innocuous reasons.

Also, If infractions are not automatic with post deletion, why would you infract someone for something that would not have been infractible so to speak until after the thread was merged, when both posts were made before?

Now like I said, I don’t really care that I was infracted. My main concern is that there are people out there, who probably use forums just as much as I do, and post in several different threads, some of them to the same type of topic. Isn’t it like infracting someone for being an active forum user? People don’t use search and multiple threads do pop up. Sometimes people will respond to answer many different people who have the same question… wouldn’t some of these people be infracted multiple times, just for answering the same question in different threads?

I would figure that the topic starter, should be the one receiving the infractions since they didn’t use the search option…

I think with the amount of traffic on the forums, special situations like yours could get overlooked, especially if someone in the community was helping out and flagged it. I would definitely drop an email to ANet and let them know. If another mistake is made, you wouldn’t want to have to sort it out while on a posting suspension.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I think with the amount of traffic on the forums, special situations like yours could get overlooked, especially if someone in the community was helping out and flagged it. I would definitely drop an email to ANet and let them know. If another mistake is made, you wouldn’t want to have to sort it out while on a posting suspension.

Don’t bother using this email address though: forums@arena.net.

I’ve sent 4 or 5 emails so far and all have had absolutely zero response.

nd given that it’s impossible to PM the “Forum Moderator” account I fail to see who else we can contact.

I’m guessing that you’ve never been in a situation where hundreds of folks email you every day, sometimes multiple times.

Just because you don’t get a personal response doesn’t mean that nothing was done. If nothing else, at least there is documentation that there was an error if another infraction gets put on your account.

I prefer to think that a well run forum doesn’t have its members complaining so much that they are unable to reply.

;)

There have been more than 2 million sales of GW2, and that email address is one of the few publicized ones. Based on my experience, they’re getting everything from technical support requests to dissertations on how they should have designed the game cross-mailed to every available address. I even had to handle folks trying to get support from us for completely unrelated products. Just because you don’t abuse support email addresses, don’t assume no-one else does.

If you’ve never had an experience where someone who had no idea what you do had unrealistic expectations that they thought were perfectly reasonable, I envy you.

I got infracted but had no clue that you couldn’t talk about other games on this forum.
It was part of why I had opinions on the topic and when I responded, it came in as an infraction then said it was because I talked about other games then said the post I responded to was deleted.

I don’t think all the mods follow the same rules. I even reread the Code of Conduct to see if I just missed it but there was nothing that said don’t talk about other games.

Like you I suppose it will just go away in time but I’m not sure if I got caught up because I responded to the other person or if they really meant to target what I typed about.

Oh no, I just got another infraction for saying thanks to someone, guess you can’t admit you are bumping a thread that had lots of research but no responses. That one at least is in the rules. This is going to be hard to keep up with. If I end up banned can I still play the game lol I am not good at these forums so far.

psirca.9452:

I don’t think all the mods follow the same rules. I even reread the Code of Conduct to see if I just missed it but there was nothing that said don’t talk about other games.

It’s become pretty clear that following the code of conduct alone isn’t enough to be sure a post won’t receive an infraction or a thread get closed or whatever. The mod staff has some kind of collection of rules that seem to be enforced based on whomever is driving the moderator account at the time.

ANet,

Please, please, please, when you suspend someone don’t just provide a generic “check your PMs for details” message – especially when you don’t even send a PM!

When someone is suspended they need to know why and for how long.

At the very least send them a PM stating how long the suspension will last, they shouldn’t be expected to guess what they are being punished for and how long the punishment will last for.

Jestunhi.7429:

ANet,

Please, please, please, when you suspend someone don’t just provide a generic “check your PMs for details” message – especially when you don’t even send a PM!

When someone is suspended they need to know why and for how long.

At the very least send them a PM stating how long the suspension will last, they shouldn’t be expected to guess what they are being punished for and how long the punishment will last for.

Funny thing is, it could be for anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if this post I am writing right now will get me banned. This the the most censored forum I’ve posted on in my 15 years of gaming. If you don’t post something about how great the game is or how great anet is, expect to get an infraction. I can supply my own infracted posts as proof of this censorship. I hope anet gets control of their mods soon.

P.S. I understand removing posts that attack other players/anet team, posts containing profanity (even though there is a profanity filter), or spam, but these mods will remove posts that they simply disagree with. Isn’t the point of a forum to express your opinion about the game, which includes both positive and negative feedback?

What would be nice is if the moderators moderated according to the forum’s code of conduct: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/rules

:edit:

But lets steer away from discussing actual moderation, as that will get the thread locked.

Pandemoniac.4739:

There have been more than 2 million sales of GW2, and that email address is one of the few publicized ones. Based on my experience, they’re getting everything from technical support requests to dissertations …

All of this is not relevant, if you give people an email-address then you are expected to reply to any decently worded, relevant mail they send you. Period.

While two million copies sold implies they might get a lot of mail, it also implies they had a lot of money flowing in with which they can pay people to read, sort and reply to these emails.

And if the volume is consistently high, you hire more people.

That’s how customer support works, if you don’t support the customer then you clearly aren’t doing customer support right.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I think with the amount of traffic on the forums, special situations like yours could get overlooked, especially if someone in the community was helping out and flagged it. I would definitely drop an email to ANet and let them know. If another mistake is made, you wouldn’t want to have to sort it out while on a posting suspension.

I disagree, I just came off a 7 day ban from the forums for no reason what so ever.

I think that the forum mods here need a lesson in reading comprehension and learning what truely deserves an infraction and what deserves a warning for an infraction.

At the current moment, everything is getting hit with direct infractions.

To the OP, no infractions do not seem to go away. I went for 13 days with no infractions, only to like I said, get hit with a ban for 7 days, no reason, no email and no PM sent in regards to what post it was about.

My question is, under what pretense are people “reporting” posts with legitimate issues only for those people raising the issues to be smashed with a infractions/bans.

Secondly, just look around the forums, I can see several threads that should of been shut down weeks ago, but are still flaming away.

Gilosean.3805:

Or low-paid people in Third World countries who don’t really know English and aren’t paid enough to care.

^ This, unfortunately it is true.

Whats worse is, if you even remotely try and dispute an infraction, you don’t even get a reply.

They simply don’t care.

I received 2 infractions over 8 days ago and felt both were completely unjustified. I sent emails about each to forums@arena.net but have yet to receive a response. How can I find out if these infractions have been removed? Also, is there a place we can actually look at on our accounts and see how many infractions we have at any given time? Thanks!

Yea, I fully agree the infractions on this forum are absolutely ridiculous.

I have only received infractions for two reasons: my tone, and posts not contributing.

There was only one post that received an infraction for “my tone”. And I agree with that one, no problems there.

Now, the whole “posts not contributing” is complete bull. One post was the meaning of contributing. The OP was asking why he got charged twice when he clicked the same button twice in the TP. I told him why and explained how a game server worked. Legitimate post, but was infracted for “not contributing”. Sent an email to have that infraction lifted but no response, SURPRISE!

Second time was recently when all I posted was +1 <insert user name here>. I can see why they would think that doesn’t contribute, but here is my justification. If someone clearly stated the problem PERFECTLY than why should I have to reiterate what that person just said and run the risk of stating it wrong. So you just don’t post saying that you agree with that guy? Ok. How does that look then? Others who don’t agree with the post (or even developers if it’s a game issue) will see ONLY ONE post regarding that issue. What would any person think then? It’s a one off issue, or it’s not really a big issue since nobody else agrees with that poster. Sorry but +1 a poster contributes to the thread. It’s a visual acknowledgment that says, “hey, I completely agree with everything you just stated and I want others to see that too”.

I seriously get the feeling that if a moderator doesn’t like your post or disagrees with you, he will begin searching through his arbitrary list of rules that exists but players can’t see them or know about them, and picks one. Hmmmmmmm, does that post qualify as “verbal abuse”, maybe “harrassment”, nah I will go with the generic “post doesn’t contribute” since that takes a judgement call (guess who makes that judgement call).

The best thing you can do to help ensure you don’t receive an infraction is by putting the following words in every post:

“I love moderators, they are always right and never wrong. Anet is the best.”

That should pretty much make the post safe.

I just recieved an infraction for posting a thread about not recieving email replies from forums@arena.net, no PM’s and no reasoning behind being banned on the forums……..

Complete and utter joke.

They want feed back about the game, but ban/infraction those they do not like the tone off.

Anet needs to get on top of this. Sack the company currently doing it and employ people who understand english.

DivineBeing.2086:

Yea, I fully agree the infractions on this forum are absolutely ridiculous.

I have only received infractions for two reasons: my tone, and posts not contributing.

There was only one post that received an infraction for “my tone”. And I agree with that one, no problems there.

Now, the whole “posts not contributing” is complete bull. One post was the meaning of contributing. The OP was asking why he got charged twice when he clicked the same button twice in the TP. I told him why and explained how a game server worked. Legitimate post, but was infracted for “not contributing”. Sent an email to have that infraction lifted but no response, SURPRISE!

Second time was recently when all I posted was +1 <insert user name here>. I can see why they would think that doesn’t contribute, but here is my justification. If someone clearly stated the problem PERFECTLY than why should I have to reiterate what that person just said and run the risk of stating it wrong. So you just don’t post saying that you agree with that guy? Ok. How does that look then? Others who don’t agree with the post (or even developers if it’s a game issue) will see ONLY ONE post regarding that issue. What would any person think then? It’s a one off issue, or it’s not really a big issue since nobody else agrees with that poster. Sorry but +1 a poster contributes to the thread. It’s a visual acknowledgment that says, “hey, I completely agree with everything you just stated and I want others to see that too”.

I seriously get the feeling that if a moderator doesn’t like your post or disagrees with you, he will begin searching through his arbitrary list of rules that exists but players can’t see them or know about them, and picks one. Hmmmmmmm, does that post qualify as “verbal abuse”, maybe “harrassment”, nah I will go with the generic “post doesn’t contribute” since that takes a judgement call (guess who makes that judgement call).

The best thing you can do to help ensure you don’t receive an infraction is by putting the following words in every post:

“I love moderators, they are always right and never wrong. Anet is the best.”

That should pretty much make the post safe.

I have come to notice that, if people do not agree with your point of view, they report it for being off-topic then a Forum Moderator doesn’t even bother reading it, they just open-can-tip-out-response.

Thats about how easy it is to shut someone down you don’t agree with.

I’d just like to point out that deleting posts is a different matter, there’s no such thing as freedom of speech on a privately owned forum.

But infractions punish people, and as such they should be based on the forum rules. The forum rules are easily accessible on the right hand side of the forum homepage and have been linked in this thread – that’s what we agreed to and that’s what we should be judged against when it comes to infractions.

I’m still trying to find the section where I can actually see my infractions… So far I’ve had 2 infractions (for trivial issues), but you can’t review them anywhere. All you get is a PM and that’s it. Sending an email felt like a waste of time as they didn’t even bother to respond apparently.

That is why I sent a PM directly to ArenaNet Support and notify them of the way their moderators were currently (mal)functioning on these forums. Being a moderator myself for close to 10 years at Bethesda Softworks, I figured I’d let them know what their moderators were doing and the negative impact it could have on this community.

And so far that seemed to have paid off because the moderators in general seem to have backed down and no longer casually delete posts/threads or hand out infractions left and right without a good reason.

So to me these forums are starting to feel a lot better again… But I still can’t seem to find out where I can see my infractions.

Jestunhi.7429:

I’d just like to point out that deleting posts is a different matter, there’s no such thing as freedom of speech on a privately owned forum.

But infractions punish people, and as such they should be based on the forum rules. The forum rules are easily accessible on the right hand side of the forum homepage and have been linked in this thread – that’s what we agreed to and that’s what we should be judged against when it comes to infractions.

There is a differance between just and unjust infractions, unjust infractions is what we have problems with while many of the infracted post are within the forum rules.

LOL, what is with Forum Moderators giving people (including myself) infractions for agreeing with people??!?!?!?! I guess, in some country on some part of the planet, agreeing with someone is appartenly off topic and does not contribute to the topic at hand…….rofl.

Seriously…….this is getting too much. Might start taking a peak over the fence for the next title……

MasterYoda.8563:

There is a differance between just and unjust infractions, unjust infractions is what we have problems with while many of the infracted post are within the forum rules.

Yeah, that’s why I said we should be judged against those rules when infractions are considered.

Are we able to report moderators? I got an infraction today after a guy on WvW forums decides to accuse our server of cheating and conspiracy theories, he calls out the entire server simply because his is losing. My response is that he’s being ingorant and I get the infraction and his post is still there, what the hell is this garbage? So you’re allowed to post inflamatory remarks aimed at an entire server population, but not an individual? what a joke.

I reported a PM from a mod as “harassment” as I felt he was accusing me of infracting the rules when I didn’t (combined with no one answering the provided email and mods not being PMable as far as I could see – how else was I supposed to contact someone?!).

I got no response, but assume it didn’t help me in any way.

FYI an update on my emails to forums@arena.net:

Of my 5 emails between 8th & 21st of October I have finally got one reply.

Asking for my account name.

My response on 3rd Nov has, of course, not been replied to.

:edit:

And it was my latest email, on 21st Oct, which got the reply.

So either they work them in a random order, or the previous 4 were read and ignored.

:edit2:

I’ve just worked out that my first email is still awaiting a reply THIRTY FIVE DAYS AFTER IT WAS SENT.

:edit3:

I was going to agree that it seems to have gotten better recently (the modding, not the email).

But then I got infracted for a “personal attack” for pointing out to someone who was complaining about people disagreeing with a specific dev decision that his post history shows that he does the exact same thing when the decision is one which he disagrees with.

So much for the improvement…

at·tack? ?[uh-tak]
verb (used with object)
1.
to set upon in a forceful, violent, hostile, or aggressive way, with or without a weapon; begin fighting with: He attacked him with his bare hands.
2.
to begin hostilities against; start an offensive against: to attack the enemy.
3.
to blame or abuse violently or bitterly.
4.
to direct unfavorable criticism against; criticize severely; argue with strongly: He attacked his opponent’s statement.
5.
to try to destroy, especially with verbal abuse: to attack the mayor’s reputation.

Nope, I don’t see it.

I’d send another email but… you know…

Why bother? If they haven’t dealt with any of my other emails, why would they deal with this one?

Static.9841:

Are we able to report moderators? I got an infraction today after a guy on WvW forums decides to accuse our server of cheating and conspiracy theories, he calls out the entire server simply because his is losing. My response is that he’s being ingorant and I get the infraction and his post is still there, what the hell is this garbage? So you’re allowed to post inflamatory remarks aimed at an entire server population, but not an individual? what a joke.

I know that posting a statistically accurate and only-derogatory-if-you-squint remark about a group got someone I know an infraction. Some kind of appeal or moderator-report functionality would be nice.

At this point, there’s no way to tell who will and won’t get an infraction because they aren’t enforcing the rules consistently. Or if they think they are, the difference between one post and another isn’t explained.

This forum needs better moderators. I remember getting an infraction, I appealed and got a reply a month later. If the infractions are done by a computer, it needs way more accuracy. Other than that, ANet needs to fire the moderators and hire new, moderators who understand the english language. This silliness is getting out of control. Hopefully this thread/post won’t get removed. These are the most regulated and hostile forum moderators I’ve ever met.

So many people are now being effected by this and no word of it being reconised.

I have sent email after email and no reply. I have reported Forum Moderators only for it to fall on deaf ears.

It is quite clear at this point that the current company moderating these forums don’t speak english as thier primary langauge, fully understand the context behind the english langauge and compounding this issue further, simply are showing a lack of care, professionlism and consistency in regards to follow the EULA for forum use.

If you don’t agree with someone on these forums, just report them, because they will get an infraction, it is that simple. Want to shut down a person who is proving you wrong? Report them, get them infracted. Want to keep your thread clean and tidy with no one else view or opinion in it other then those who share the same view and opinion as you? Report them.

So my account was again just suspended, AGAIN (this is my wifes account).

No PM, email, post it was in regards too. I know which post was removed and AGAIN, reading comprehension of these forum morderators is terrible if they can not understand what we are talking about.

If anyone can please help me out here, check my past post history and try and help me out to determine why I was banned please.

Taemek.1602 is the chat handle and apparently this is the thread is which I was banned from:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Don-t-implement-a-gear-treadmill

As you can see, even other posters are starting to reconize this abuse of moderation.

Taemek.1602:

I just recieved an infraction for posting a thread about not recieving email replies from forums@arena.net, no PM’s and no reasoning behind being banned on the forums……..

Complete and utter joke.

They want feed back about the game, but ban/infraction those they do not like the tone off.

Anet needs to get on top of this. Sack the company currently doing it and employ people who understand english.

Holy puppy! I saw this post 5 min after making a topic just like that one…glad I managed to delete it(phew, no infraction)

Since we are complaining and this has been driving me crazy… I tend to get infractions and forum bans often enough, comes with the personality. But when I get infraction for no reason at all… Actually this is the first time I got to look at the mod PM and wondered what the heaven?! And here goes. 3 days ago I made this post:

Or another solution would be to gasp start gathering. Why Vanilla beans are considered rare is beyond me(you can get ~60/hour easily and how many beans does one need a day?!). Chilli peppers can be found in charr low lvl maps(Plains, Diessa give a decent amount, Fields of Ruin are a bit poor but still ok if you are desperate). Also…gathering is fun <3

(Disclaimer: I’m not providing any information with that quote, false or not)

In a topic about Chilli Peppers and other low level ingredients. The reason for the infraction was false or misleading information. Now, I really really need to know what that false or misleading information might be. I sent a mail to ask about that, but no reply yet and I rly rly need to know. Sooo, any ideas…maybe? Pretty please?

Oh, and while I’m here…how do I see the state of my forum account? How many infractions, when they expire, how close I am to a band…that kind of stuff….