CMs and Players -- The Rift

#1 - Feb. 10, 2011, 2:09 a.m.

I was reading over a thread and, among many other upset comments, I found this one. I'm not here to repost hateful or hurtful comments, or to call anyone out. I simply feel that this quote is a very good summation of our current situation with the blues.

"I wish I could freely speak my mind on this topic, but I don't want to be banned."

I feel that with every passing day, CMs have gotten more and more detached from the community. In part, I suppose, because of its ability to be rather caustic at times. Even still, blues have been talking about opening the channels of public discourse, and I feel that as long as players feel this way, those channels will remain closed.

I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed directly--not as a demand for answers, but for the blues to tell us openly and plainly where we stand in relation to each other so we can work on how to communicate better.

Bashiok

Community Manager

#30 - Feb. 10, 2011, 3:05 a.m.

No one is being suspended or banned for just speaking their mind as long as they're within the forum code of conduct. That can include reposting threads that have been deleted, though.

What might be happening fairly regularly is that threads are being deleted because they're on topics that exist in many other threads, and/or have been discussed a great deal.

We realize that many people want to have a thread that is their very own and provides their own voice to commentate on why they think something is a bad change, or what have you, but we do have to keep the other few hundred thousand people reading the forums in mind and keep topics to at least some standard of variety. You can generally see in these threads a great deal of hostility as most forum goers are just simply fed up seeing these topics over and over, and while those fed up individuals can themselves cross the line and earn a vacation from the forums, we have to attempt to understand the cause of their frustration, and I don't believe it's wrong to remove those repeat threads to create a less hostile environment. And in fact it's considered spam to not add to existing threads, and thus a violation of the forum code of conduct.

In any case, repeat topics is what I have found to be the reason for 90% of thread deletions that people perceive to be 'deleted for no reason'.

Neth made a pretty lengthy and good post on some basic information about how we expect these forums to work. I recommend giving it a read if you have not already:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2016792409#1