I'm sorry, but I do believe sir nikolai should have been handled by mods quite a while back. Maybe not to the point of banning immediately because that never solves anything. However I've been a starcraft community volunteer mod for 4 years now. Frankly when it comes to situations like his that are "unique" as that one. We take a group decision that if enough rules have been overly abused more than once and been given multiple warnings then something needs to be done. I'm sorry if it seems as though I'm over stepping a line with this comment. However from experience from a very toxic player base on the starcraft forums I just feel something should change in policy if you want to keep others from going off on others from 1 person yelling ANARCHY!
I'm not directly blaming mods so please no one take it that way plesae. It's just there needs to be a better due process on these types of situations. I know I haven't been very active here and mobafire and maybe I'm out of line for commenting this.
Shaddofokkusu wrote:
I'm sorry, but I do believe sir nikolai should have been handled by mods quite a while back. Maybe not to the point of banning immediately because that never solves anything. However I've been a starcraft community volunteer mod for 4 years now. Frankly when it comes to situations like his that are "unique" as that one. We take a group decision that if enough rules have been overly abused more than once and been given multiple warnings then something needs to be done. I'm sorry if it seems as though I'm over stepping a line with this comment. However from experience from a very toxic player base on the starcraft forums I just feel something should change in policy if you want to keep others from going off on others from 1 person yelling ANARCHY!
You're not stepping over any lines with this comment. I agree. And I'd like to say this to the mods right now; don't be so lenient to these types of people, including myself.
This has happened countless times before with the likes of Mybloodisblack, mrcuddowls and I'm pretty sure a few others before my time here.
Same thing happens every time. Person posts dumb ****. Other people comment on how dumb the **** is. I catch wind of it and start calling person out for their dumb **** everywhere they go. And I've been warned by Psiguard for being overly mean before, and likely will again. But how much can I actually get away with unless I start taking things to a racist/sexist/homophobic/whathaveyou place? My point here is... if someones causing **** in your forums, reprimand that *****. Even if it's me. Or anyone else. No one should get a free pass from breaking the rules because you guys wanna give them the benifit of the doubt.
Vynertje wrote:
although I personally wish the mods/admins would take a more prominent stance against those people who live on the edge between trolling and stupidity.
I hear you, but I also hope you understand that someone being completely oblivious to what might seem obvious to others does not mean that person is doing anything against the rules. It becomes problematic on the forums once someone like this starts acting superior to those who are clearly more knowledgeable than him/her about a certain subject, but there are always two parties involved in cases like this.
The first, obviously, is that specific user. In many cases, it's not exactly easy to determine whether this person is simply ignorant or trolling everyone, and even if it's clear that it's the latter that doesn't automatically mean we can just get rid of him/her - if trolling wasn't allowed at all, Toshabi would also have to find a new home, after all :^)
The second party involved is the rest of the community, and in many cases it's actually one member of this group who steps out of line first (i.e. gets baited). We as moderators/admins have to be unbiased towards these type of situations (as OTG rightly points out), and I feel it'd be too easy to simply point fingers at the individual and blame him/her for everything.
It's definitely not easy though, and feedback on how we're handling individual cases is always appreciated. Just keep in mind that we can't act solely based on finding someone annoying to deal with.
@Shaddofokkusu
As OTG pointed out, you're not stepping over any lines with that comment at all. Thanks for the feedback. I do want to point out we have taken action against SirNikolai before (this includes several warnings and a temporary ban), even though that might not be as obvious to the community as it is to us (it doesn't mean nothing's being done).
@OTG
If I remember correctly, you were warned for this behaviour quite recently. I can guarantee you I will never give you (or anyone else) a free pass because of your rank or reputation - the only thing it could influence is how often you're warned before we turn to heavier measures (removal of rank, temporary ban, etc.).
Again, any feedback is welcome.
I'm glad to hear Wayne that actions were taken against him as we all know of the apparent ban against him. I will say this though it seemed that the warnings went unpressed if you will. Now I know from experience as a mod on another forum that these actions are done privately between the user and moderator, but it seemed that he still continued on with his actions without reprehension. That's not to say it's any mods fault that this continued as to be noted it's the conjecturing persons fault for not taking cite to their actions and changing, but the volume in which his actions carried throughout seemed to impact quite a few to almost a dangerous level of intolerance on both parties.
Wayne3100 wrote:
I hear you, but I also hope you understand that someone being completely oblivious to what might seem obvious to others does not mean that person is doing anything against the rules. It becomes problematic on the forums once someone like this starts acting superior to those who are clearly more knowledgeable than him/her about a certain subject, but there are always two parties involved in cases like this.
The first, obviously, is that specific user. In many cases, it's not exactly easy to determine whether this person is simply ignorant or trolling everyone, and even if it's clear that it's the latter that doesn't automatically mean we can just get rid of him/her - if trolling wasn't allowed at all, Toshabi would also have to find a new home, after all :^)
The second party involved is the rest of the community, and in many cases it's actually one member of this group who steps out of line first (i.e. gets baited). We as moderators/admins have to be unbiased towards these type of situations (as OTG rightly points out), and I feel it'd be too easy to simply point fingers at the individual and blame him/her for everything.
It's definitely not easy though, and feedback on how we're handling individual cases is always appreciated. Just keep in mind that we can't act solely based on finding someone annoying to deal with.
If you want me to take this to PM or Vet forums feel free to ask, but I'll just write down my thoughts on the subject here until further notice.
I completely understand what you're saying and it's what I've been saying for some time as well: it's incredibly hard to decipher whether someone is a troll trying to make the forum a worse place or just very bad at league&life. However, allow me to cite the Mobafire rules here:
Quoted:
We will carefully review each situation individually, but if we determine that the sum of your behavior is having a negative impact within the community, you may quickly find yourself on the outside of it, at MOBAFire's discretion.
Now the highlighted part is a bit vague, because what is exactly "having a negative impact within the community"? I would argue that it's hard to define that, but it's easy to come up with examples of users who haven't made any effort to avoid being of negative influence on the general atmosphere on the forums.
I'm talking about constantly fuelling a (serious) discussion with non-constructive comments, memes or constantly beating the figuratively dead horse. I'm talking about the PC thread, the EU/NA LCS discussion threads and so on. The thread ban you guys imposed on BBG was a great measure to stop this, and his behaviour did slightly improve in the weeks to come.
Now I think the exact interpretation of this specific rule can allow you to impose more of these kinds of thread bans or similar measures. If someone can't understand that his/her behaviour is having a negative impact on the general atmosphere, you warn him first and thoroughly explain why he is having that negative impact. If at that point he refuses to listen you can thread ban him from the specific part and only if the 'infection spreads' to other parts of the forum, you'll consider other bans. You probably did a lot of this work already, but I personally feel like it didn't have to come to this. I'm talking about the riot forums post one of the dudes made: "if you feel so bad about our community that you're going to make a forum post about it without any constructive criticism, we don't want you here either" would be my thoughts.
Now of course this all has some possible drawbacks, e.g. how it can be used to silence a minority or to shy away opposing points of views, but I regard you guys from the mod/admin team able to deal with that ;)
Also, I think it's easy to differentiate between the kind of trolling Toshabi is doing (as it's obviously with humorous intent) and trolling in a way to come across as a stupid person (as Sirnikolai is believed to be).
Anyway, these are just some random thoughts and there may be flaws in my logic or you may have dealt with this exact situation like this, but do let me know what you think of it.
Would suggest an icon on people with restrictions or bans (most forums use these). I mean, this shows the admins are doing stuff to this or that person and makes your work a bit more obvious while simultaneously showing people they can't just mess around without any consequence.
@ Vynertje
Working more with thread-specific bans is a good idea, though I'm not sure when that should've been applied in this case. The example you mention is clear-cut in the sense that BBG's posts were obviously non-constructive (detracting from the serious discussion going on), but - for example - he has also started discussions because of his mindset before in the QQ thread while posting exactly what the thread is made for, a QQ post. Obviously, that doesn't mean he is automatically innocent (especially if it's not the first time it happens), but it makes the situation more complicated than the example which you mention. Again, the question of who is at fault for the situation escalating plays a big part in determining the measures that need to be taken in those instances.
We haven't actually used this measure before or after the BBG case as far as I know (it just seemed to make sense), and I agree adding it as a possible measure we can take (after the first warning, and obviously before going over to temporary bans) is a good idea. Thanks for the feedback.
@ FalseoGod
Is the main purpose of this to show others that we take action, or is it also supposed to "motivate" (not sure whether this is the right word to use here) the user to clean up their act? I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced it does the latter well, but it's an interesting suggestion. I'll discuss it with PsiGuard and Mowen to see what their stance on that idea is.
Working more with thread-specific bans is a good idea, though I'm not sure when that should've been applied in this case. The example you mention is clear-cut in the sense that BBG's posts were obviously non-constructive (detracting from the serious discussion going on), but - for example - he has also started discussions because of his mindset before in the QQ thread while posting exactly what the thread is made for, a QQ post. Obviously, that doesn't mean he is automatically innocent (especially if it's not the first time it happens), but it makes the situation more complicated than the example which you mention. Again, the question of who is at fault for the situation escalating plays a big part in determining the measures that need to be taken in those instances.
We haven't actually used this measure before or after the BBG case as far as I know (it just seemed to make sense), and I agree adding it as a possible measure we can take (after the first warning, and obviously before going over to temporary bans) is a good idea. Thanks for the feedback.
@ FalseoGod
Is the main purpose of this to show others that we take action, or is it also supposed to "motivate" (not sure whether this is the right word to use here) the user to clean up their act? I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced it does the latter well, but it's an interesting suggestion. I'll discuss it with PsiGuard and Mowen to see what their stance on that idea is.
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And it's happened to you before already, just not nearly to this caliber, when you were banned from all computer threads. :p
Edit: And I may be "mean" to you as well, BBG, but I honestly don't mind you as much. I genuinely do try to give you advice sometimes and feel bad for you when I see the **** people in your ranked games. The fact that you haven't written a comment to Nikolai's level of bigotry towards me, or anyone else on the site for "being mean to you" shows a much higher level of maturity than him. So good on you for that.