External communities & Graalonline

[unixmad]

I have heard about some rumours that graalonline administration was against external forums, this is completely false and we are writing this message to clarify our position on it:

We are very happy when graal players are organizing themselves to create communities. Most of the actual communities are connected to playerworld or development communities. These communities are really helping us by providing feedback, ideas and are organizing content or gameplay. We will continue helping all this communities with software, hardware, time but also links from the graalonline main client.

Recently some of you have been unhappy about the official graalonline forum moderation and forum rules, I can understand your point, it's always hard to follow rules and we all like to be able to write what we want when we want but you need also to understand our point of view:

• We are the official forum and we can not allow slang langage, personal attacks, too much spam and anti social activities.
• We are a registered company and we need to control the content available on our computer. That's the law and we need to respect it.
• The official forums are focused on Graalonline, our goal is not to provide a general forum to discuss about television or cinema but Graal. Even if it's not our goal to provide such discussion, we have allowed a non graal related forum and a private forum with relaxed rules.

Some of you don’t like to respect these rules and want to discuss more general topics. Creating such forum not connected to the graal administration is a good idea if the goal is really fair.

This is becoming a problem when such an external forum is managed by a group of people that want revenge against the Graalonline administration team because they have been banned from GraalOnline for not respecting the rules. A few of these forums have been created these last years and have been all focusing on attacking the game management and the game itself by spreading false rumours on the Internet about Graal or the Graal management or by organizing illegal activities like copying our software, logos, forums or stealing graal account passwords.

At the end it makes a small group of people annoying the big majority of players by making the graalonline small administration team spend time on fighting false rumours and illegal activities made by a group of anonymous people.

Now ask yourselves:
• If you can be part of such community and also part of the graalonline community
• If the graalonline team can respect your suggestion when in the same time you are threading the graalonline administration.

If you are member of such forums focusing on making graal change by fighting the graal administration and/or want accounts unbanned by forcing us to lose our time and our energy fighting your activities, then don’t expect anything else from us than being ignored. Don’t expect to be or stay staff or an active member of the official graal community if you play an active role on such community, we will make sure to protect the majority of the players by asking these players to go find another place.

If some players want to create an external forum to make a forum for the graal community to discuss all topics with less moderation, we will be more than willing to participate by replying to your questions or having nice discussions about graal or anything else. We will not ask anything else than respecting basic rules that make everyone talk together, the respect!

If such community is active and friendly, we could even organize or participate to some nice meeting like we have done in Germany with the Atlantis community.

This thread is open for discussion but it will be strictly moderated. It is not the goal of this thread to advertise any forum or put spam. Try to make a message to give your opinion or idea not only to say you are against someone else opinion or idea.

Thanks.

Unixmad, Stefan and the GraalOnline administration team..

[Crono]

Recently some of you have been unhappy about the official graalonline forum moderation and forum rules, I can understand your point, it's always hard to follow rules and we all like to be able to write what we want when we want but you need also to understand our point of view:

I respect that it's your job to make sure we don't write things that are illegal and out of control, but you must also realize that deleting posts because they are "negative" bothers people. For example if someone makes a thread giving specific reasons why a global is bad or why a server is bad, I believe the thread should not be deleted. As long as there's proof and valid points to the person's post, I find it ok but moderators including yourself do not seem to agree on this. Why?

anti social activities

Don't you think that heavy moderation = increasing anti social activities? If people can't voice their opinions (if extremely negative, backed with valid points and proof) is this not actually bad?

I'm glad you left the topic open for discussion rather than quickly lock it, shows improvement on your part.

[unixmad]

The problem is we can't allow personal attack against anyone, staff or not if we want a friendly community. Lot of other communities have made the same choise including wikipedia, slashdot ...

If you have bad opinion about a staff or the administration, then open a support ticket and give proof of what you say and you can be sure we will take care of your opinion.

The moderation is not made to make everyone happy but to make a friendly community. Rules are made for the majority of player and are not always fitting for some minorities I can understand it makes some of you unhappy if they are member of such minorities.

Originally Posted by Gerami

I respect that it's your job to make sure we don't write things that are illegal and out of control, but you must also realize that deleting posts because they are "negative" bothers people. For example if someone makes a thread giving specific reasons why a global is bad or why a server is bad, I believe the thread should not be deleted. As long as there's proof and valid points to the person's post, I find it ok but moderators including yourself do not seem to agree on this. Why?



Don't you think that heavy moderation = increasing anti social activities? If people can't voice their opinions (if extremely negative, backed with valid points and proof) is this not actually bad?

I'm glad you left the topic open for discussion rather than quickly lock it, shows improvement on your part.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by unixmad

The problem is we can't allow personal attack against anyone, staff or not if we want a friendly community. Lot of other communities have made the same choise including wikipedia, slashdot ...

Well, I don't mean -personal- attacks, but rather commenting on the actual work a global or player may be doing. Not "LOL HES STUPID!11" but rather "What he's doing is wrong. Here is proof."

If you have bad opinion about a staff or the administration, then open a support ticket and give proof of what you say and you can be sure we will take care of your opinion.

But do you believe anything will be done? The purpose of a forum is for open discussion, so I think it should be more open rather than only a support ticket. It's good to discuss such things because it educates the whole community and at the same time makes use of the point of having a forum.

The moderation is not made to make everyone happy but to make a friendly community. Rules are made for the majority of player and are not always fitting for some minorities I can understand it makes some of you unhappy if they are member of such minorities.

Well, the forum rules says:

Originally Posted by Rules

d) The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for all users. Do not make threads/posts complaining about, or discussing these rules. If you have a question, or a complaint about the forum rules, use a forum PM.

It says "The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for all users. Im my opinion this should be changed to "The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for the majority of the users."

It would be more true and make the statement valid

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Gerami

...
It says "The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for all users. Im my opinion this should be changed to "The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for the majority of the users."

It would be more true and make the statement valid

Or we change it in: The rules are made up to make these forums to a friendly, not swearing community to exchange information in a proper manner! And with respect to each other.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Sam

Or we change it in: The rules are made up to make these forums to a friendly, not swearing community to exchange information in a proper manner! And with respect to each other.

Well, anything other than the "The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for all users" becaue that is not true, sadly.

Apart from that I can't really comment on unixmad's other points as they seem valid.

Also...

Originally Posted by unixmad

Some of you don’t like to respect these rules and want to discuss more general topics. Creating such forum not connected to the graal administration is a good idea if the goal is really fair.

So it's ok to create a forum with the sole purpose of discussing more topics not allowed on the OGCC? Because that's the picture I got from the above post, and if this is the case then good.

[Darlene159]

Originally Posted by Gerami

So it's ok to create a forum with the sole purpose of discussing more topics not allowed on the OGCC? Because that's the picture I got from the above post, and if this is the case then good.

None of us were ever against that. It just cannot be linked to this forum if it has content which breaks these rules, that's all.
Graal is made up of mostly teenagers. We know that, especially teenagers, like the freedom to say what they want. You just cannot do it here for the reasons Unixmad explained in his thread.
What we get upset about, are the forums/websites that are made out of anger to Graalonline, and have nothing but bashing of the administration, and/or discussion/planning of illegal activities against Graal, which has been done probably more than we even see.

Originally Posted by Gerami

Well, I don't mean -personal- attacks, but rather commenting on the actual work a global or player may be doing. Not "LOL HES STUPID!11" but rather "What he's doing is wrong. Here is proof."

Allowing people to start accusing others of wrong doing, with or without proof would be a bad idea in the public forum.
Proof can be faked far too easily, and needs to be verified (if it even can be). If someone does fake these things, it gives the person being accused a bad name for no reason, excpet that someone is mad at him/her.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by Gerami

So it's ok to create a forum with the sole purpose of discussing more topics not allowed on the OGCC? Because that's the picture I got from the above post, and if this is the case then good.

Both forums claim to have the intentions of being a nice place to talk about Graal, but by focusing on each other they're beyond that.

I don't seem to enjoy coming to either forums these days, and if I do I don't stay on for very long. Both forums seem to be very.. angsty?

The "other forum" states that is has a slacker moderation, but as I seen yesterday this is not the case. Graal forums are moderating out topics against them and so are the other forum, neither are places for free discussion; just one allows swearing.

[Sam]

Originally Posted by Gerami

Well, anything other than the "The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for all users" becaue that is not true, sadly.

Apart from that I can't really comment on unixmad's other points as they seem valid.

Also...

So it's ok to create a forum with the sole purpose of discussing more topics not allowed on the OGCC? Because that's the picture I got from the above post, and if this is the case then good.

Well, I never visited Sweden (sadly), but I visited France, the USA, Singapore and also the Netherlands (and many other countries).
A small example:
If you walk thru Amsterdam (Netherlands) you will be able to see porn magazines, videos and so on in the windows of the stores. You are able to buy marihuana and its allowed to consume it.
If you go to New York City, you do not see any porn in a stores window, maybe you'll see some naked breast. But if you smoke marihuana you will get in jail.
And Singapore? You will NEVER see a paper with some naked persons and if you import it from outside you go in jail, and for consuming drugs you get executed.
So what I wanna say is, here is the forum of Graalonline. Unixmad make the rules and we have to accept it.
If some other forums have other rules, it's okay, but if Graalonline don't want to show these content or hints to such content here, we have to accept it.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Darlene159

None of us were ever against that. It just cannot be linked to this forum if it has content which breaks these rules, that's all.

Oh. Thats good to hear...

What we get upset about, are the forums/websites that are made out of anger to Graalonline, and have nothing but bashing of the administration, and/or discussion/planning of illegal activities against Graal, which has been done probably more than we even see.

Nothing wrong with bashing the administration, as long as it's with valid points/proof. Though illegal activities I agree, I don't support that ****.

Allowing people to start accusing others of wrong doing, with or without proof would be a bad idea in the public forum.

Yeah.

Proof can be faked far too easily, and needs to be verified (if it even can be). If someone does fake these things, it gives the person being accused a bad name for no reason, excpet that someone is mad at him/her.

But what if its real proof? :o

So what I wanna say is, here is the forum of Graalonline. Unixmad make the rules and we have to accept it.
If some other forums have other rules, it's okay, but if Graalonline don't want to show these content or hints to such content here we have to accept it.

Yeah I agree but I'm just asking for that line to be changed because it's wrong. Not wrong as in morally wrong, it's just wrong.

[Darlene159]

Originally Posted by Gerami

Yeah I agree but I'm just asking for that line to be changed because it's wrong. Not wrong as in morally wrong, it's just wrong.

What line?

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Darlene159

What line?

The one I pmed you personally and the one I quoted here.

Originally Posted by Rules

The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for all users.

That line should be simply changed to...

Originally Posted by leet version

The rules were made up to make these forums comfortable for the majority of the users.

That way it's actually correct. =]

[Darlene159]

Originally Posted by Gerami

The one I pmed you personally and the one I quoted here.




That line should be simply changed to...



That way it's actually correct. =]

Easy fix, and you are correct, as it is impossible to please everyone

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Darlene159

Easy fix, and you are correct, as it is impossible to please everyone

I agree and I think I'm done here. Thank you guys for your time/giving us a chance to express our opinions.

[unixmad]

Valid proof or not, public bashing is not good. When something is said in public, valid or not, it stays something in the head of everyone and it's easy to use such tactic to make false rumours about someone.

Originally Posted by Gerami

Oh. Thats good to hear...



Nothing wrong with bashing the administration, as long as it's with valid points/proof. Though illegal activities I agree, I don't support that ****.



Yeah.



But what if its real proof? :o



Yeah I agree but I'm just asking for that line to be changed because it's wrong. Not wrong as in morally wrong, it's just wrong.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by unixmad

Valid proof or not, public bashing is not good. When something is said in public, valid or not, it stays something in the head of everyone and it's easy to use such tactic to make false rumours about someone.

It's also easy to use such "tactic[s]" to expose how people really are.

Not saying this is the case in this little episode, but you've got to account for both sides of the argument for it to be fair.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by unixmad

Valid proof or not, public bashing is not good. When something is said in public, valid or not, it stays something in the head of everyone and it's easy to use such tactic to make false rumours about someone.

Well...if the points are made each with proof then you wouldn't have false rumours. Also, although I agree bashing someone out loud is wrong, I still think that criticizing their actions is fair and legal.

[Rufus]

Originally Posted by Gerami

Well...if the points are made each with proof then you wouldn't have false rumours. Also, although I agree bashing someone out loud is wrong, I still think that criticizing their actions is fair and legal.

If there are proven points then it is easy to work that reputation to create rumors.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by Rufus

If there are proven points then it is easy to work that reputation to create rumors.

I said "if the points are made each with proof". Meaning you don't make rumours, points, and such without valid proof.

[HoudiniMan]

Originally Posted by unixmad

...

Oh, this is the thread you meant?

Well, I just found it.

I suppose that answers your earlier question.

[Malinko]

Originally Posted by HoudiniMan

Oh, this is the thread you meant?

Well, I just found it.

I suppose that answers your earlier question.

Perhaps someone should be a bit more active.

Oh, and that was not a bash, because it's advice, or rather a suggestion that a lot of people want to state sometimes.

[HoudiniMan]

Originally Posted by Malinko

Perhaps someone should be a bit more active.

Oh, and that was not a bash, because it's advice, or rather a suggestion that a lot of people want to state sometimes.

I tend not to register the stickied threads, just like everybody else when there's a few up there.

As for your advice, I've been a PWA more than 16 times as long as the 73 day stint leading up to your getting fired. Keep it.

[Mykel]

Originally Posted by HoudiniMan

I tend not to register the stickied threads, just like everybody else when there's a few up there.

As for your advice, I've been a PWA more than 16 times as long as the 73 day stint leading up to your getting fired. Keep it.

Someone uses the calculator.

[excaliber7388]

So are globals allowed to participate in non official graal communities yet?

[HoudiniMan]

Originally Posted by Mykel

Someone uses the calculator.

Inspired by the recent addition of a day counter to my sig

[konidias]

Originally Posted by Gerami

I said "if the points are made each with proof". Meaning you don't make rumours, points, and such without valid proof.

It's incredibly hard to prove anything over the internet. Saying "it's true because it really happened I swear!" isn't proof. Screenshots aren't solid proof. Logs are not solid proof. There is nothing you can do to prove anything that happened over the internet, via the internet.

Then what happens if someone falsifies evidence to make it look like proof, and then everyone believes that person? Then someone innocent will take hell for it.

[Crono]

Originally Posted by konidias

It's incredibly hard to prove anything over the internet. Saying "it's true because it really happened I swear!" isn't proof. Screenshots aren't solid proof. Logs are not solid proof. There is nothing you can do to prove anything that happened over the internet, via the internet.

You're right, so why ban people? Hell why even make rules if nothing can be proved, right?

[jake13jake]

Haha, want to see some of my notes from trying to agree with Classic guild leaders on a territorial base CTF system??

Stubborn Tangential Arguments:
Won't work
Nations vs. Guilds
Not a priority of development

[TonyRivers2]

My take on all this is if you have any viable proof of wrong doing by a staff member there should be a meadeation between you, the staff person, and someone who can do something about it. This party should be non-objective and hear both sides of the arguement then have the ability to deal with it. From the player prospective a support ticket is bias to the accused as they (staff) can speak to the higher up directly and can easily convince him/her it is an issue of a player that happens to merely dislike them. Conflict cannot be resolved without the involvement of both parties. You have to include the player directly when you look into these sort of things.

Of course this will never work because you are dealing with a majority of teens and preteens that will never understand this is only a game, (despite the fact that you paid for it or how much time you spend everyday playing it) none of it is real.