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Another Day, Another Complaint About Boards Moderation

Scary Door·3/11/2018, 6:07:56 AM·2 votes·1,811 views

The inconsistent, ill-defined and arbitrary Boards moderation crew strikes again.

I get it, I'm not allowed to express certain viewpoints or opinions on the Boards, particularly those that go against moderators or popular posters as I am learning from the deletion and punishment history that I have accrued, nevertheless in the interest of some degree of objectivity I figured someone should at least try to 'police the police' so to speak.

My latest Boards punishment came more than a week after I had posted the original "offending" remark.

Here's the context: There was a thread that someone wrote about their "idiot" friends that somehow tricked the poster into saying words that would get them punished by the instant feedback system. This entire post blamed his friends for his own actions, so---JOKINGLY---I wrote,

"Who is the real idiot in that scenario? The one that tells you to do something stupid, or the one that actually does it? Stumped as to the answer? I'll give you a hint: It's you."

If someone tells you to jump off a bridge, would you do it? You can't call others "idiots" when you performed the idiotic action in the first place.

Now, mods, let's understand something... I've been posting on the forums for 7 years and I have never seen such terrible moderation. I think the part that gets me most is how inconsistent it is though. There are several threads that exist on the Boards right now that should be removed based upon the seemingly arbitrary criteria the mods are using.

I understand that I have a target on me from one mod in particular, but if these guys are the ones that you're entrusting to moderate your forums, who polices them?

"But you can come talk to us on Discord"... Ahh yes, after a hard day's work there's nothing more satisfying than discussing moderation of a gaming forum with random strangers that are half my age and if I met in real life would be nothing but sweethearts to me---but since they have a keyboard and a bully pulpit behind them, they have the ultimate say.

5 Comments

ModThe Djinn3/12/2018, 4:41:43 AM4 votes

Ahh yes, after a hard day's work there's nothing more satisfying than discussing moderation of a gaming forum with random strangers that are half my age and if I met in real life would be nothing but sweethearts to me---but since they have a keyboard and a bully pulpit behind them, they have the ultimate say.

I'll be frank -- it's difficult to have a rational discussion when I immediately have the accusation of being a power-mad juvenile leveled against me.

Regardless, I'd like to clarify a few points, and then provide some insight into this particular removal.

Inconsistency This is a point where I believe we can improve, definitely. That said, given the size of the boards, we are somewhat reliant on having things reported before we can take action, and no one moderator can handle every report. As such some inconsistency will always exist. It's something I believe we're getting better at, but it is something that still needs work. We're in agreement there. If you see stuff up that you feel shouldn't be, please report it.

Mods Targeting You We don't target individuals, despite what some people think. Really, our ideal outcome in every situation is for someone to adjust their behavior and never pop up in the Report Queue again. We may remember names and know to take a deeper look at a player's punishment history, but we're not scouring the boards just waiting to pounce on someone.

Oversight We do have Rioter oversight, as well as the Herald team, who are always happy to pop in for a second look at a given action. What we do not have, however, is a team to assure that every player is satisfied with their punishment. While I'd love to say it's possible, ultimately not everyone will agree with the rules of the board, and thus some people will always feel like moderation is biased, targeting them, or simply awful. There are, however, several levels of internal policing going on, up to and including our Riot connections.

In this particular removal, it's not actually obvious that your comment was intended as a joke instead of an insult to the OP. Even if it was intended as a joke, however, it still boils down to you calling him/her an idiot, which is not really acceptable behavior. You further create the perception of the insult with the "I'll give you a hint: it's you" line, which makes the intent to call the OP an idiot abundantly clear.

It's a pretty clear-cut case of an insult, intentional or not, and your behavioral history resulted in this being a sightly stricter warning than it might otherwise be, as it is a minor violation at its core.

I acknowledge that you may not agree, and you may feel this is in some way a personal attack on you, and I'm sorry that I do not think I can assuage those feelings short of a reversal of the action, which I do not feel is appropriate in this instance.

If there's anything further I can help you with, please let me know.

oOBestEveNAOo3/13/2018, 8:34:37 AM2 votes

The real issue is that the inconsistency happened in the past and became a regularly tolerated thing when this type of behavior was never truly acceptable in the first place.

In what world is it respectful, polite, and appropriate to go around calling people idiots (even if said person is being less than optimally intelligent)?

The entire problem 8, 7, and 6 years ago was that this type of thing was NOT moderated well and THAT became the accepted status quo...

Honestly, it's nice to see that changing.

Infernape3/11/2018, 6:13:31 AM1 votes

inb4 removed and banned.