Fundamental Differences in Understanding GD Culture, the Mega Post (cross post from GD)
So, I gave myself some time to think, and to learn from a few experiences over the past week or so, all involving the changes that will be coming to the boards soon. Whether or not these changes will occur as Riot has laid them out so far is yet to be seen, but for better or worse, we know that change is once again on the horizon. If we want to have an impact on these changes for the better, we need to figure out the right way of going about these things.
Considering Riot's track record of GD changes in the past, I was of course very wary about what to expect in the future. To be honest I still am, and I don't like a number of the changes they have planned for GD/ All Chat, and I've voiced my opinions to an extent in some of the threads that have popped up. In my opinion, meshing GD in with other lesser used boards will likely drown out that other content, making it less likely to be seen. Upvote based sorting as the default will likely create a stagnant board which will deter new users from sticking around. The name is something we fought for as an identity, and something I believe needs to be kept. And lastly, moderation is a whole topic on it's own.
Obviously I'm of the opinion that going through with these changes would be a mistake, and detriment to the community as a whole, but are we as GD'ers really giving Riot a good reason to hear us out? Sure, they say they will listen, and see what changes we can come up with instead, but the conversation going on in these thread has really irked me. There seems to be a "for the greater good" mentality, which for me means a number of things.
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First, that Riot believes that the changes that GD has suggested will not benefit their boards in the long run, at the very least from the Rioters perspective. I'm not too convinced they are taking the players perspective into account. This leads me to think they believe the average GD'er has the inability to think for themselves, or at least, not on their level.
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Second, that this drives home the point that they wish current GD culture to die, believing that the majority of the posters here are toxic to their community.
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And last, that these changes are already largely built, and regardless of feedback, the time and money spent already making the new features is not something they wish to waste. This is similar to the last change, when we swapped to boards. Over a year was spent creating and refining these boards before the forced move of GD last October, and they still were not refined to the point that they were really usable. Quoting was a mess on release, as was moderation and the tools available for the mods. However, pulling the plug on the project seemed like less of a risk than the backlash from the players.
Which brings me back to my question above, have we really given Riot a good reason to hear us out on why these changes are bad for us, and what we can do better? The answer to this is a bit of yes, and a bit of no. A fair few players have spoken up constructively, and discussed with Rioters in threads their opinions as to why the changes are for the worse, and provided alternatives in these cases. We have had some level of communication with Riot Zwill especially, and he hopefully took our concerns to his meeting yesterday for examination by his peers. But this is only a start.
On the flip side, I'd like to look at this comment in another thread currently on GD:
> {quoted} >
> the toxic minority isn't the only problem. it's also the people who circlejerk the toxic minority when they pick every non-productive way to speak out against riot's actions. (i'm not saying you're the one doing this. i know you're not and i actually like the majority of your posts) > > if we want people like Wookiee to believe that we actually don't approve of the unacceptable behavior that we claim to want removed from our identity, we need to take a definitive stance. instead, a post throwing every insult and expletive known to man at riot in a feedback thread gets upvoted by 13 people even though the person posting it has been perma'd on several different accounts. (yes this actually happened)
Enosense is entirely right.
You see, we have always had this problem on GD of the vocal minority going out of their way to ruin the experience for the rest of us. These people come from a variety of backgrounds, and have a variety of posting styles. Some of them only do the mundane task of spamming the same threads over and over, whether it be "Nerf Nasus" or obscene pornography that is inevitably removed. Others only purpose in their presence seems to be to insult others, and act as edgy as they can. These types of people we view nearly as universally bad for our community, to be weeded out (eventually) by the moderation. But there is another for of behavior deteriorating GD that we haven't really looked at much yet.
There are players that have the same ideals as the majority of us, that choose to post them in a negative manner, and we upvote them. We upvote them based upon the ideal they hold, or because we have gotten to know them, and we ignore the context of the actual post. As an example, even I have been guilty of upvoting "Fire Wookieecookie" posts in the past. Do I actually want him fired? No I don not; I think the guy has generally some good points about what he wants for GD, though I disagree with a lot of the changes he proposed, especially to how he views moderation. I have a bone to pick with him involving the unprofessional comments he made involving certain other players I view to be my friends, but I understand a part of that is personal. Regardless, no one views themselves as the bad guy, and I know his heart is in the right place. He wants to change this place for the better, even if he is unsure how. What makes it tough is his lack of taking constructive criticism seriously, and a lot of this is because we upvote the deconstructive criticism just as much.
What we need to do here, is when we make our voices heard, aim to make your points as constructive as possible if you actually want to make changes for the better. We have the right to be angry when no one seems to listen, but this does not mean we should devolve to the point where we post blind rage, and support each other for doing so. Continuing to do this will only lead to Riot distrusting GD culture further.
All of this became more apparent to me after the FEK staff, myself included, broke off to form (yet another) side GD, to see if we could handle moderation ourselves, and if we can do it better. We do have plans for the future of this project, hoping to bring the scope beyond league of legends, and introducing it as a gaming site as a whole in the future, but I digress. For the moment, we wanted to experiment with a few things, the first of which being rules of moderation. What happens to the GD community, including those who had been perma-banned here in the past, when you introduce them to a forum with three rules?
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- No spamming
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- No 18+ Content
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- NSFW content not covered by the "no 18+" rule must be placed in spoiler tags
A bit after the induction, Frosthaven posted a thread titled "Offend Me", just to far exactly how far this community would go with the boundaries nearly removed. The results were as expected, many tended to post soft 'insults' as a joke, but just as many tended to be quite vulgar. Is this what we want our community to be known for?
http://puu.sh/iBqPH.png http://puu.sh/iBqUg.png http://puu.sh/iBqXs.png (not bothering to include the entirety of that last one, you get the idea)
These are not the type of people we need in our community, yet when some of them get banned, we still seem to run to their defense out of a sense to protect our freedoms, and avoiding censorship. When the moderators on these boards do go over the line, and it happens from time to time, these mistakes have been corrected a majority of the time. A false positive is never good, but it's not an excuse for us to be devoid of rules, or to demonize the moderators for responding with punishment. We need to educate our selves on the situation before raising our pitchforks, and if a mistake was truly made, offer constructive but firm criticism on how things should be done in the future. We shouldn't continue to fan the flames, as that proves to only make the situation worse in the long run.
We need to have clear, concise rules that the moderators can act upon. We need for them to be able to post their reasoning for why action was taken BEFORE the mob raises their pitchforks. We need clear and transparent moderation for these forums. In return, the community needs to show that we can mature, and for those who aren't willing to do so, weed them out of our boards. A lot of these problems could have been avoided if we just chose not to feed the trolls.
I'd like to continue this discussion more, but I want to see what the community thinks of this first.
-SilentNightSona/ BetterBanSona
EDIT: Spelling mistakes in my title, ugh...
