Guild Wars 2

Why not make a sticky for all discussion about botters/gold farmers/spammers ?

When you lock threads arbitrarily it makes you look like your attempting to hide something from the gamers.

Thats how i perceive it and how many others do also. Sure i understand you do not want a million posts about this subject, so give us one thread where we can all go to and discuss it, it would also make the moderators job easier, and not make ANet look like they are over controlling the forums.

Sure lock this thread also, but just give the idea of a sticky for discussion on the subject.

Since that is a popular topic, and locking them doesn’t seem to stop people from talking about it, maybe make a sticky post at the top of the section and then simply move the various threads into that one. It would serve to help keep the discussion area free of clutter and also make an area for everyone to talk about the gold seller problem.

Thanks in advance for considering doing that before you lock this one. =)

Thanks for the quick update on this and i am glad that great minds think alike

While i do not personally think you are attempting to hide things, i do know that this perception of ANet will persist if that’s all that happens.

Thanks again.

I’m against the arbitrary locking of threads ‘because the op’s question was answered’. There’s no need to lock them types of thread (Looking at you CC Eva!), yes the op may have gotten his/her answer but that is not an indication that the thread has no more useful life left in it.

Many times in various BB’s have I seen a thread started by one person with a question move on to actually become something massive (eg discovery of a massive exploit or indication of a problem somewhere), that until that thread was allowed to grow went unnoticed. Killing threads that are not full of flame bait or hate is IMO a waste of resources.

At worst if a thread is not relevant it will usually die a natural death anyway.

Agreed. The massive amounts of thread locking stifles conversation and the formation of community. Thread locks are a very heavy-handed moderation tool and should only be used to shutdown threads which have absolutely no value. Just because a person’s question has been answered doesn’t mean that the discussion is over.

A thread lock is the moderator saying to ArenaNet’s customers, “Shut up.” That’s bad business. It makes people not want to come back to the forums. It means that people will find better information elsewhere where they are allowed to freely discuss their ideas.

I disagree. Threads that go on too long degenerate quickly, and I’ve never seen a thread locked where the conversation was actually interesting to folks other than the two or three that were arguing with each other.

You can always start another topic if the answer to a question took a tangent that you want to explore.

Pandemoniac of the thread locks lately by CC Eva (sorry Eva Its not personal) how many had degenerated into arguments?

I do agree that you could start another topic if it’s relevant, however does that not go against what Eva states she is locking threads for (to keep the forums neat and tidy?). Does it not also run the risk of getting locked once you have an answer? Therefore once again stifling the flow of information?

Which threads do you feel were locked too soon? I’m not trying to be contrary, I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from.

I’ve understood the reason behind every thread that I’ve seen locked (including those I was in the middle of composing a reply to). I took a quick look through the forum for locked threads to see if there was something I was missing, and I couldn’t find any that I felt would have been more valuable if they had been allowed to continue.

Very few people will read every post in a really long thread. That thread died out on it’s own and the discussion was picked up a several other threads because folks didn’t want to go through the older threads.

If you want to stimulate discussion, it’s much better to start fresh threads. Summarize the discussion so far for the folks that didn’t catch the first 50 post thread and keep the discussion going if it’s something you feel is important.

I don’t think your being contrary at all Pandemoniac but to answer your question…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gold-Selling-SPAM
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/John-Smith-and-the-State-of-the-Economy
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gold-Spammers-and-Private-Mail
Those three alone could have been merged or better yet merged into an Official Anet post dedicated to discussing gold sellers and RMT which is also stickied. That would have had the added advantage of not having any further threads locked and kept in the thread lists. Duplicate topic threads could be moved thus removing clutter from the boards as each subsequent thread could have been moved into the Master Gold Selling thread.

Your points are valid, I guess in essence it all boils down to how we use forums as individuals. Personally unless a thread degrades into flame’s and trolling or hate speech I’m personally of the opinion that it can carry on.

Your also right that few people would read a really long thread but two pages? I’d consider a really long thread to be 20-30 pages long and a theradnaught to be in the 100’s.

But as I already said I think our differing opinions boil down to the different ways we individually use forums. I personally just would rather the CC team ease off the trigger fingers and let irrelevant threads die out naturally and devote there attention to threads where they are needed to moderate and action posts.

Taiance.6213:

But as I already said I think our differing opinions boil down to the different ways we individually use forums. I personally just would rather the CC team ease off the trigger fingers and let irrelevant threads die out naturally and devote there attention to threads where they are needed to moderate and action posts.

I do think that a very obvious sticky with Arena Net’s response to the gold selling spam is merited. They have made repeated, very clear statements that they view it as a serious problem, but it seems like a lot of folks aren’t seeing that message.

I don’t think the threads you linked would have contributed all that much to the discussion had they been allowed to continue. Everyone agrees gold spammers stink, it’s bad for the game, and it’s really annoying. The ANet folks are very much aware of the issue and take it seriously. There really isn’t much we can do to help solve the problem, other than continuing to report the spammers and not buy their services.

Based on my past experience as a developer who also moderated a small company’s forums, threads about sore spots like these can spiral. Folks get fixated on something negative that can’t be fixed right away and the feel of the forums gets really negative and unpleasant. It demoralizes the developers that read the forums and drives away new folks. It’s much better to lock the threads before they get rolling. If you wait too long, then the act of locking the thread makes the situation worse. Take a spin by the Diablo 3 forums if you want an example of what can happen.

As far as long threads go… well you’ve got more patience and focus than I if you can read through 20 pages of posts with most of them repeating what has already been said I think shorter threads are better for discussion, and longer threads for the poll type threads. Even if a discussion doesn’t degenerate into an argument it usually ends up as a conversation among two or three people with an occasional drive by by someone who hasn’t read everything that’s gone before.

I think the best part about starting up a new thread is being able to make the title of the thread match the tangent the discussion has taken. A thread that starts out complaining about the gold spammers and turns into an interesting discussion really needs a new thread because I don’t read threads with those types of titles anymore and I’m probably not the only one.

Yeah, this topic took up lots of pages, having a thread for just that would be so much better.