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.

[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.

[HoudiniMan]

Originally Posted by Mykel

Someone uses the calculator.

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

[excaliber7388]

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

[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.