[Survey] Player Moderation, yay or nay? @Community

Yes, it even exists for Wrenchmen, but only in Help&Support forums with some very limited powers. I don't understand why doesn't Riot want Player Moderation in other sub-forums tho.

However, all volunteers are rooting to have the same powers once we are completely switched to new Boards, since we don't have any powers here at the moment.

Honestly - we should try not to make it matter to you guys. You should hold us accountable for successful and effective moderation and it shouldn't matter if it's a fully internal team or we use outside folks to get it done.

IMO we just have to solve the problem. In this context we tend to not make the distinction either. Whether it's a third party contractor or fully internal is just a legal relationship that wouldn't dictate our standard.

What we're talking about is full time paid professionals vs part time unpaid volunteers.

So I post two options, one of them I said that I like and the other one I said I don't like, but you think we're probably going to do the reverse? O_o

I suppose that's possible

I feel like part of my point came across in a way I didn't mean it.

I don't mean to say that Player Moderators are worth any less than Rioter-payed moderations. What I'm saying is that they still are external to Riot Games, and thus aren't really "Speaking the voice of Riot". Sure, they would get the same training as contracted moderators and such, but since they'Re player moderators it doesn't give the same message in the end. "A player censored part of my post" and "A guy employed by Riot deleted my post"; the second one is much harsher, but it still feels more justified/warranted.

Similarly, I never said that Player Moderators would abuse their powers in any form or ways, but as long as the moderator is a player, as opposed to being paid by Riot to do that job, the crime of abusing their power seems more plausible to the mass. Losing one's privilege and tarnishing your pseudonyme isn't as harsh as losing one's job and tarnishing your name.

For your last point, I'm unsure what you're getting at. Do you simply mean there should be a report function to facilitate contractors/employees' jobs? In that sense I would 100% agree personally.

Personally, I've never seen a case where I thought the forum mods were overly draconic, but I imagine the popular opinion that they are didn't entirely come from the forum-equivalent of people who ask Lyte for chat logs. Ideally though, I'd hope for a mirror of the in-game systems. We have a report button here in the Boards, and that's a start - but let's get some of that new tech Lyte is testing here too. Let's start adding game punishments to forum punishments (not on the exact same tier - except for really severe cases you'd probably get a forum permaban with an in-game suspension.) And let's apply those punishments to the main accounts, not the smurfs. Riot is already identifying smurfs.

To be honest I have a bit of a "cleanse it with fire" attitude toward GD that would make me a bad fit for any kind of player moderation, but at the same time I'm perplexed that a company that takes player behaviour so seriously seems practically apathetic about the behaviour on their forums.

It's interesting, I didn't actually think anyone would poke holes from the player moderator's side, but like I said I'm glad you did.

Depending on the mod, the debate, and how important things are, one will get involved.

Naturally that's dealing in ideals, but as far as the actual trend goes would you say that a player mod will always be judged too harshly by the very nature of being a player mod?

I'm of the mindset that the answer is yes. Being the law of the forums has its own rights and responsibilities, but it also ruffles a lot of feathers when you do your job. I mean take a look at the crap Lyte's been going through lately with all theses people asking for him to explain why they were banned. Simply because you have some forum powers, that means your involvement carries certain weights and even if you aren't abusing power, just because you have it can be an issue to some of the regular fans.

Then there's the legitimate polarizing disagreements that happen and when someone gets butthurt, it's possible that they'll complain just to spite your mod power. I'm entitled to my view, I demand you remove this mod. Let's put this in an LOL perspective: if a mod on this site said: you are stuck bronze because you suck as a player, stop blaming others, get over it and start owning your mistakes... well while some people might love what he's saying, others are going to get offended.

This is where support from the top comes in. Does the staff want fan mods to encourage and spark debate? Is the staff cool if a fan mod takes a side in an important issue that is dividing the fans? Do the higher ups not want fan mods to not bring up topics that make the company look bad?

Take Hashinshin. For whatever people say about him, he cares about the game. He also has no problem pointing out issues that he sees in the game or its design. Would the reds be particularly happy every time he points out that bruisers still aren't fixed in a way that pisses people off? What if for the sake of the argument he was a completely fair mod despite his posts? A whole lot of companies would look down on that sort of thing. In fact I used to work for a company who fired a manager because he felt they weren't treating people right and he felt like he had to make noise about it to fix things.

Now let's take things in a different direction. Let's say that mythical fan-mod Hashinshin posts a major thread that people love and points out a number of issues that were screwed up. Then morello has to respond to the thread because it was popular or a good point was made or whatever. But the issue isn't a very happy one for riot because it's been giving them grief in trying to correct and the last thing they need is more attention brought to it. He might not even be fully aware of the headaches whatever problem was giving them and now he's adding to it. Despite being a fair mod, despite bringing up good points that are either correct or worthy of one of the reds having to respond to, he's adding to the problems and grief. It'd be pretty easy to strip him of his mod powers as a recourse. A lot of companies would do that even if they couldn't ban someone for whatever.

Or take someone like Kaceytron. A lot of people hate her because boobs. I guess. I haven't seen her stream for more than a second or two and I can't give you a fair criticism of her good or bad. Anyways, lets say she was a fair fan-mod. A lot of people hate her, so much so in fact there have been petitions to ban her. So if a fan mod generates hate, because boobs, but for the argument is a good mod, what does riot do about that mod?

Or I could bring up Athene or someone else who gets a lot of hate, but you get the idea.

Moderation is sort of the ugly but necessary side of keeping things on the internet "nice" and I really think there can be high and sometimes unfair expectations from both above and below placed on them.