Greetings all,
In October, we had some discussions and updates regarding our Moderation & Moderation Enforcement policies. We had a good discussion on this thread and Martin gave an update on how we decided to process attacks on our staff. At the time, there were a few different threads asking questions about the Community Forums and Moderation. We promised to pull together your feedback and get back to the community with an update. With this in mind, we’d like to share the following updates and offer up some better guidelines and expectations.
Forum Structure Changes
We will be making updated forum structure changes. We’ll be opening a new Profession Balance sub-forum, but merging/archiving some of the less used sub-forums. We will be completely removing the WvW Match Up sub-forum. You can read more details about this change here, Upcoming Forum Changes to WvW Match-ups Sub-Forum. We believe that by streamlining the forums, it will make it easier for you to leave feedback and our Development Team to find said feedback. We will also be updating each sub-forum’s stickied threads, which should help players find help much easier.
Regarding Moderation
Many passionate players gave their feedback in the various posts; many more offered up their opinions via our forums@arena.net account. There are many players who lurk on the forums, or feel that the forums have become more toxic over time. We always strive for inclusive and welcoming spaces for our community. Many players wished to know more about how moderation works and better descriptions for when the Moderation Team is handling posts and threads.
We’ve been working together to update the messaging and change some of the processes. We started closing some threads when we’ve heavily moderated them, but left the good parts intact, instead of removing the whole thread. Of course, we still remove many which are full of violations regarding accusations of hacking, exploiting, griefing, and the like. These threads never go well, so we remove them entirely. Sometimes we make simple edits to posts. These happen when someone makes a good post, but maybe takes a pot shot at another player or a developer. We’re continuing to refine and rework our processes and responses, so we appreciate your patience while we implement the new changes.
Regarding infractions & punishments, please review the stickied post, “A Message About the Infraction System”. This is a good overview of how the Infraction System works. The Community Team has updated some features on the Guild Wars 2 Forums which give us a tiered system of forum privileges & access based on number of infraction points. We decided to offer this tiered approach so players lose various privileges versus receiving harsher suspensions and permanent bans.
The tiered approach covers implementing flood control (how often you can create threads/reply to posts), and disabling attachments, signatures, private messages. In some cases, we disable your ability to create threads entirely, but only allow you to reply at a very slow rate. As one stacks up infraction points, the tiered approach to forum privileges kicks in.
In the past, we haven’t always handed out infraction points, hoping that many players would change their posting habits. With the aforementioned issues with toxicity, we have started implementing points in the system, which will now lead up to permanent forum bans after the tiered system kicks in. We’ve also started doing monthly account reviews, for those of you with an excessive amount of infractions, regardless of your points. We have been notifying those folks to let them know their account is in danger, to give them an opportunity to review our Code of Conduct and get back on track.
We would like our players to consider their posting habits and encourage following the Code of Conduct. We are confident that this approach is more conducive to guiding a more positive experience for our community. With a more positive approach, we’re also going to be pushing out a new Community Team driven initiative. Yes, a wee tease to let you know we’re working on some upcoming changes to the forums and a new way for you to all have a chance to get your many questions answered. For now, you can review our new guide, How to Give Good Feedback