Guild Wars 2

As the topic indicated, I think the moderation system on these forums is likely the single worst set of forums I have ever participated in. All I can assume is that an old ladies church group was funded to moderate the forums as they seem to have a large amount of idle time to spend nit-picking the forums to death.

This is a PvP based game. Discussions will get heated, that is what makes a community great and lively. I am not saying name calling and any form of racial/sexist/etc behaviour should be allowed, by all means clamp down on that stuff, but stop taking it to that next step which hinders communication and discussion.

Some general areas I think that could be improved:

1) Stop moving so many threads to different forums. While I appreciate the need for things being orderly, a lot of threads could happily reside in several different forums and when you have a three page discussion going and then it randomly gets moved based on the whim of a moderator, it kills the discussion.

Change requested: Only move threads that are very obviously in the wrong forum.

2) Define what ‘contribution’ means in regards to moderation of posts that are not providing ‘meaningful contribution’, particularly in comparison to the original post it responds to. If someone posts a inaccurate, troll post why do those responding need to write a book in response for it to be considered a ‘meaningful’ contribution? I would argue the entire thread wasn’t a meaningful contribution, let people post as they like.

Change requested: Either you come up with some kind of reasonable approach to ensure this is applied by some form of standard for both OP and responses, or just stop doing it all together. Who cares if there is a short response really, makes it faster to read.

3) PvP/WvW forums by their nature are going to be competitive and aggressive. It is in game, so why would it not be on the forums? Currently the moderating of these forums is over zealous and hindering an already struggling sense of community in the wake of free transfers. By all means clamp down on anything that gets super personal or nasty, but a lot more leeway should be allowed on these forums then others.

Change requested: Please ease off a bit, maybe a lot. In some cases I will see threads get locked after the heated part is over and folks have moved on with other parts of the discussion, in comes a mod late to the party and locks the thread.

In summary I think everyone wants the same thing, I vibrant gaming community. While the current moderation polices may make the forums ‘more orderly’ for moderators they are not doing so to the benefit of the community in general, in my opinion. I have been online gaming longer then most, and in that time my average moderation rate for the entire time spent in a game might be 1 post, often never. In this game I have already been moderated 19 times, not a single one for language, behavior, or anything I would consider meaningful, just a lot of nit-picky stuff.

Regards.

On the off chance this thread doesn’t get deleted:

I agree with 2) there needs to be some serious changes on that subject.

3) There’s nothing wrong with a bit of bark, it’s when the bark turns to bite that things need to change. A good example is a old roommate of mine and I would play Black Ops, we’d talk smack back and forth but it was all in good fun and games, we never crossed the line and if someone did we let the other know and we stopped talking smack for a little bit.

I actually like the stricter oversight in these forums. Most game forums become so filled with qq and veiled attempts at pushing personal agendas that they lose any value to the community.

Yes, some criticism is good, and I have made a few critical posts/replies myself (and not once been infracted or moderated) – but the same people posting the same thing in 20 different threads adds nothing to the discussion and should be culled back by moderators when possible.

If everyone made their point once and only responded when there is something new to add – rather than feeling the need to react to every other poster, I guarantee the moderation would be less severe.