Quote:
Originally Posted by LoneAngelIbesu
I'm denying that moderation is not as big of a deal as you make it, and it's certainly not the largest reason, or even an incredibly outstanding reason as to why people don't use these forums.
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No interest in forums
If you don't enjoy posting or reading forums, then this place is obviously not for you. I can understand that some people just don't enjoy messing around on forums and I know it's not for everyone, fair enough. The responses totaled to 12 out of 121. With that in mind, one would assume that 109 of that 121 could be potential members of this community.
Technical Issues
The respondents of the sample had very similar technical issues. The majority of these issues were to do with their passwords being refused. The issue was generally surrounding the change in how passwords were set, with your password being the same for everything Graal related. This change was only announced on the forums, so if you were not an active member at the time of the change you wouldn't be aware of that, and obviously the people who had this problem were not. As
this thread is no longer stickied, it is up to the forum administrators to place this information in a place where people can access it easily. This is not the only technical issue that came up, and I helped as best as I could and have seen a couple of the players on the forums since I spoke to them. A little effort can go a long way, yet the FAQ hasn't been touched to deal with such issues.
Theme / Layout
It is not hard to notice that the forums do not reflect Graal very well. I'm currently using
Loriel's forum style so I didn't really know what the fuss was about as mine looks like it could represent a lot, but then I remembered how bad the actual style is. We need some new forum styles and that's pretty much a given but I wouldn't hold my breath for it. The aesthetics aren't the only thing that received complaints though. The forum layout itself is very cluttered and isn't very consistent. I
brought this up myself and although I did get a
response, months later, even after reminding him, nothing changed? Heh.. I see what you mean by positive approaches
!!
Moderation / Restrictions
Era is the only server out of the three that has a dedicated area on this forum, and with that came the highest rate of distaste for the moderation and restrictions placed on the forum. Go figure. Like I've said before, these forums are being ruined by over moderation of content that doesn't require it. Rules will always exist on this forum, and so they should. Rules are generally used as guidelines however, rather than heavily enforced instructions on how to post. The context in which the moderators of this forum take the rules is far too black and white and far too heavy; the rules themselves wouldn't be that big of a deal if they served as a guideline and a reference for when "bad" posts need to be removed, but that is not the case here.
Negative Community
This is an amusing one. The "negative" community included comments such as people with massive egos, people who try to act like smartasses, people who are immature, and people who just all round enjoy trolling everyone else. You're always going to have those kind of people, this is the internet and this is how the forums have been for a long time. It has got to the point now however, where it is hard to avoid the negativity. The forum isn't populated with just negative nerds though, it is just hugely influenced. Another part of the "negative" community would be those people who just post complaints about the moderators, or end up fighting in these "wars" with no resolve. The constant battle of "them and us" is boring, but no matter what approach you take with Moon Goddess or Sam nothing ever changes, so people vent. If change was promoted and positivity was reflected, would these threads stop? Probably. Are these threads going to continue so long as nothing changes? Definitely.
Uninteresting Content
The largest reoccurring problem throughout all of the servers; the lack of content that interests the player. I can understand where they're coming from too, I also often struggle to find a thread beyond the spam or horrible suggestions that interests me.
The current content being posted is due to the community, though not entirely. Removing post counts and allowing 'spam threads' in the NGRT served only to alienate the players who look for decent discussions. Lets face it, there isn't that much to talk about when it comes to Graal, and that is why we have the NGRT forum. There is so much you can talk about in a general discussion forum, yet it is littered with MySpace forum games. It is up to the moderation team to encourage decent discussions and you cannot do this through heavily enforced forum rules, nor allowing the problem to get worse by just allowing crappy things like forum games to be posted every other day. Removing the post count and removing the shield from obvious spam threads just ruined that forum.
In addition to the NGRT, the forums does not have specific areas for some of the most popular servers and because of this they end up having to make their own. I have ran two Zodiac forums now and both times they were pretty popular, the community was nice, and the threads were quality. Every time I left the forum it went to hell and I think Zodiac gets a new forum every other week. Unholy Nation has a forum and it has a lot of characters on it, but again they've had 3 within the past year. There is a demand for forums within these servers, but the official Graal forums don't have areas for them and their homegrown forums just end up falling apart. If the administrators played on Graal they would be well aware of these issues and would provide solutions for the players, but they don't.
"No Gold" / Unaware of Existence
I was really surprised when I received a lot of responses stating that the player had no Gold time on their accounts, so it's obvious that the word hasn't really been put out there. What surprised me even more was the relatively large amount of players that didn't know Graal even had an "official" forum. I've noticed that some players have been on since I informed them that it existed and is now free and that's good, but that tiny little message that was in the login news for a few days just wasn't good enough. The forums should be listed all over the place and the administrators should be proactive in trying to attract people to visit and contribute to them.
With all this in mind, how can you say that Unixmad, Stefan, Moon Goddess and Sam are not at fault in their complete disregard for how the playerbase feels about the forums? They haven't even asked as far as I know. All of these issues are linked together in the lack of effort that is put in by the people in charge. What you guys actually do is assume from the minority of the people that post here and instead of branching out, being proactive in solving the problems, you just continue as though this is as good as it gets. Since the forums became free there was an initial increase in players, yet it doesn't feel like it has changed at all. This is why people complain, and this is why people are unhappy about the forums. Acting like an elitist and telling these people to "take a different approach" is fruitless, because the majority of us have tried it all before. I just don't know if they care.
02-09-2009, 12:58 AM
I don't ever do anything to warrant any kind of worrying about who's a moderator and who is not.
Linear Mode
