When we ask you to stop it is not because discussion is closed, but because most of the time it is carried over into a private discussion about what to do. But, I will commit to trying to add this to my directions because it is something we can do to ease tensions.
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I’d imagine it takes roughly the same amount of time to do that as it does to check the forum rules and make sure your conduct is in line with them.
The mods are people, meaning they’re not perfect. But there’s a lot more of us (regular forum users) than there are mods, so I think it’s fairly understandable for them to expect people to have a grasp on the rules of the community that are already laid out.
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I want to address something specifically (This is to the entire community):
As per the FAQ:
This is not something I will debate.
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@Eiwynn If someone requests to no longer be part of a conversation, you’re not supposed to tag them. Per the FAQ.
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Alright, I’m going to close this thread for an hour or two.
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The address was to the community A quote is not a tag…
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I’ve updated the FAQ to make it clearer how to contact the moderators and CoG staff with issues. Now it says:
The Choice of Games LLC staff can all be found here. If you need to reach the staff about something critical, it is best to contact us via email at support@choiceofgames.com.
There are also a number of forum moderators. You can type “@moderators” to ask for attention from the moderators. You can also send private messages to the moderators using the link above. The moderators are not employees of Choice of Games LLC or Hosted Games LLC. They are volunteers, contributors, and community members. Their statements should not be taken as coming from the companies. We are not looking to add additional moderators at this time.
If you feel that the moderators have made an incorrect decision, you can email CoG staff at support@choiceofgames.com. Note that when we suspend users, we typically discuss it in a private discussion with the other moderators and CoG staff. (We generally don’t do “short” suspensions of less than one month; a year suspension is more typical.)
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Year-long bans do not come out of nowhere, unless the infraction was so counter to the rules and norms of the forum that the only other option was a permanent ban.
As for “steps before year-long bans,” there are both unofficial warnings (like when a mod says on a thread that it’s time to “stay on subject” or “to cool down”) and Discourse’s “Official Warnings” which are handed out when appropriate. And that’s all separate from when a mod does the heroic work of having an actual PM conversation with someone.
So, I get that it may seem like long suspensions come out of nowhere, but they don’t.
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Don’t know what I said in my last post that was offensive, but okay. I think this might be the issue we were attenpting to discuss.
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I feel like copying and pasting the forum rules here.
If You See a Problem, Don’t Reply, Just Flag It
Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.
When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by drawing attention to it, and consumes energy that could instead have been spent making the community a better, more enjoyable place for everyone. Just flag it . If enough flags accrue, action will be taken automatically to hide the post, until a moderator can review it.
If a thread turns to discussing someone’s bad behavior on the forum, that’s not as serious as bad behavior, but flag that, too. If you wish to discuss a flag or removed content on the forums, contact the moderators. Don’t defend yourself, don’t defend others, and don’t pile on to someone who made a mistake.
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…
Was this thread not made as an open line of discussion, by the moderators, discussing the community? Why offer open communication, and then immediately close it off?
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I just want to weigh in as a non-mod in support of the mods. I know first-hand how it can be an unsympathetic, difficult, and time-consuming unpaid labor. Maybe CoG forums isn’t a place where you can say anything you want about anything you want. However, having any place at all to discuss something so niche with like-minded people is really special. Banning can seem really harsh IF you don’t consider what’s at stake. Things can very quickly take a downhill direction, in any number of ways, if you don’t nip them in the bud. TL;DR: the true irony is that mods get unconstructively criticized on a platform they enable to exist. I’m super grateful for the work they do.
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Edit: I misread the post; sorry for the confusion.
Closing it off after 24 hours…
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If nothing else, I think it’s good there was finally some discussion, on the forum, that didn’t result in deleted replies and bans. That’s a lot of progress, really. And the amount of people voicing their opinions on this who say how afraid they’ve been to talk points to this being something that needed to be had.
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It was closed for an hour, not permanently – did you have a specific thing you were unable to say during this hour that you could not say later?
I’ve put this thread into “slow mode.” Users can post once every 4 hours. This is intended to allow tempers to simmer a bit, without “closing the thread.”
To be clear, we have deleted some posts in this thread that violated forum rules.
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I agree, and I appreciate people who want to make suggestions for improvement coming forward and offering feedback without fear. I hope and believe that people who are posting in good faith are being listened to; certainly no post made to further the discussion (as opposed to posts made to provoke) was deleted.
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I do want to stress that everything that was said I have read and will work on including from this point out. I understand the feelings of many who feel that we don’t do enough in certain categories and then seem to crack down hard on silly things.
What I just want to stress is that you can always contact one of us to raise your concerns and we do talk about it if you guys go that extra step. We can’t see everything and we can’t read minds- if you have a problem please, please, just reach out and talk to us.
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