Yes, respect, an odd word for you all to hear from me. There are people here that have earned my respect; not at all an easy task. Mostly because far too many have lost what I afford to everyone.
With respect to the forum moderator/s; if there is still one around, I would deeply appreciate setting the flag system back to 3. At one it is too easy to abuse; as has been proven of late.
Now I am not sure if it was set to one, but I have every reason to believe what I have been told. I trust the source.
I’m sorry but there are too few of us left for one person to be power trippen playen forum god.
I know no one will take responsibility, but I want to thank them for pushing me off the game.
I’ve deleted all my characters, losing all that progress, and uninstalled the game.
UNLESS
we see a literal game changer update, I’m off searching for a new game to play for years.
As you can see in my reply to you in another thread, even if just one person is all that is needed to trigger moderation it still REQUIRES a moderator to view the post and make a determination as to whether or not to hide said post or not.
As you can see above, the post I was replying to you in that thread has been “marked for moderation”, aka someone “flagged your post”, and yet it was not instantly hidden. It still requires a moderator to view it and then DECIDE to hide it or not.
So, while I agree that one flag is too few, the real question becomes one of this. Is there A). an actual person moderating these flagged posts and if so do they really have a solid grasp of what they are doing or B). are they using some “algorithm” or “AI” garbage to do their moderating? In either scenario, it is not good to lash out at one another over the marked rash of hidden post as it is on Funcom’s end that so many of these flagged post are being deemed worthy of being hidden regardless of how many flags are being submitted on them.
Ok, so…
My windmill gif meant “Your attempt is futile. Just like Don Quichote, fighting windmills”. And to give you the possibility to confirm your claim.
Seems my posting was 50% successful. I hope it stays that way, and they do something about the onetime flag…
Most likely it was flagged by someone who doesn’t have the necessary trust level, as defined by the Discourse software.
Yes. That’s how Discourse works. It’s not something Funcom made in-house. In fact, it’s open source, so if anyone wants to spend time on that – I don’t – they can go check the source code.
I would wager that most people don’t. The vast majority of the forum users here don’t even know how flagging is supposed to work normally. To be aware of what’s currently going on, you have to know how flagging works and you also have to know that it’s configurable. In short, you either have to have heard of Discourse or you have to be very inquisitive.
I figured it out by accident, because I realized that a post would get hidden very shortly, as I thought at the moment, after I’ve flagged it. When it started looking like too much of a coincidence, I made it into an actual experiment: the next time I felt that a post deserved a flag, I flagged it and immediately reloaded the topic, and it showed up as hidden.
While it’s entirely possible to extend Discourse with plugins, I seriously doubt that Funcom did that. They have shown complete and utter disregard for these forums, so why would they spend time and money looking for a plugin, installing it, and configuring it?
First, let’s address the “regardless of how many flags” part: it’s definitely one, beyond the shadow of doubt, provided you have sufficient trust level. I don’t know if that trust level is “member” or “regular”, because I can’t check the settings, but I have literally proven that one flag is enough.
Since that can only happen because of (mis)configuration, that’s squarely on Funcom’s shoulders.
Now, about lashing at one another and taking responsibility for driving people away and all that jazz, people have been treating this like some kind of conspiracy, and I’ll be blunt: it’s ridiculous.
First of all, when you can hide a post with just one flag, it’s a free-for-all situation. It’s not “one person on a power trip”, it’s that literally anyone who has been on these forums long enough knows about flagging and will potentially be able to hide any post.
“Potentially”, because there’s still a matter of trust levels. I know that even when I provide a link to the freaking docs, no one is likely to go read them, so let me break it down in more blunt terms: if you haven’t been a constant nuisance on the forums, you’re likely to have a trust level that will allow you to do this. People who are constantly toxic are less likely to have that trust level, just by virtue of being too entitled and dense to change their behavior.
Even before this misconfiguration happened, we’ve already seen a bunch of people who keep posting stuff that got them flagged by multiple people who are tired of their crap and they never seem to get the message. No need to name any names, because most reasonable people here could rattle them off without breaking a sweat.
That’s why community moderation (e.g. flags) is never enough on its own, and you need dedicated moderators to deal with people like that. Since that’s unlikely to happen, it’s basically the Wild West here.
For those who enjoy ridiculous conspiracy theories, here’s one you’ll love: Funcom did this on purpose to get rid of the forums
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. In both cases, people will claim that it’s not only on purpose, but that the motivation is to “get rid” of the servers or the forum or whatever it is that Funcom is neglecting. As if they can’t just pull the plug and get rid of it.
I would wager that as well, and personally if I am not sure if something should be flagged then quite simply I do not flag it. Even if I know that something is, for example, off topic (which is one of the flaggable categories), as long as the post is not offensive IE filled with racism and personal attacks I don’t even consider the possibility of flagging it because no thread ever stays “on topic” for very long.
But I DO expect better from the people who are flagged post are being sent to for moderation, hence my comment, and I do not see that as being the case at all.
Point taken.
That wasn’t my point though. My point was that, regardless of whether it takes one flag or three flags, it still has to go to moderation review. And it is at that point where the true failure is taking place. I am not arguing the number of flags that it takes (depending on “trust level”, which is pretty damned sketchy itself), I was only stating that it should not matter how many flags it takes because the failure is happening at a level beyond the user end.
Not sure if this is a “misconfiguration” more than a change made on purpose after the forum was being flooded by scam call center bots, to make it easier for us to flag those posts , while @AndyB also hardened the rules to newcomers So how about that spam eh?
Absolutely correct. I’ve said more than once that flags were never meant to be the be-all and end-all of moderation. Community moderation exists to both take the pressure of dedicated moderators and close the feedback loop, but it cannot work properly on its own, without active moderation.
And when it comes to Discourse, there are many tools in a moderator’s toolbox. It’s not just about de-listing and deleting posts, or silencing or banning users. Discourse Moderators can split topics to keep them on track, merge duplicate topics, provide adjustments to the title and category of a topic, add a staff notice to a post, make a whole staff post, put the topic on a time-out when things get too heated, set the slow mode for a topic where people are engaged in rapid-fire bickering, and more.
Even the way flags are handled once they are put into the moderators’ review queue is not just a simple “hide” or “restore” choice.
But for all of that to work, you need moderators. These forums used to have those. Apart from the community managers who worked for Funcom, there were also volunteer moderators. The end result might not have been perfect, but it was so much better than the cesspool we find ourselves in.
Personally, I wouldn’t. People used to just click on “show ignored content” and continue derailing the topic. Sure, they can continue derailing even without that, but it was worse when you could actually quote the crap you didn’t get to see.
But yeah, it can be annoying to get replies you can’t see.
If that was the reason for the change, then whoever did it is downright incompetent, because it doesn’t take more than a cursory read of the Discourse documentation to figure out that it won’t help whatso-freaking-ever.
You see, the way things were set up before, you could already flag those posts and hide them with just one flag. A new account has the lowest trust level, so flagging their posts for spam would automatically hide them even back then. I know, because I was one of the people who tried to help by flagging those posts.
The problem wasn’t just the spam, it was the volume. The spam campaign was so massive, it couldn’t be solved by outsourcing the anti-spam measures to the community. Even if we wanted to spend more than half of our time on these forums flagging spam – and I’m fairly sure no one does – we would quickly run out of flags, since each user has a limited number of flags they can use each day.
On desktop, too. I’m guessing they upgraded the forums to a newer version, because there’s now a “rich text editor” for posts.
Not sure why they would bother with an upgrade for a communication channel that they don’t bother with otherwise, but I’ve long since stopped trying to understand Funcent logic.
These two words do not belong in the same sentence, let alone side by side.
I completely agree with you.
And yes, I’ve seen plenty of times were posts were merged (though that often became a confusing jumbled mess), moved a thread from one category to another and other such things. Then again they used to also make announcements on the forums as well. When was the last time you have seen that done for anything important?
Though I do think that being able to see hidden posts really wouldn’t do much damage because most of the derailing occurs before the post gets hidden anyway. I see tons of responses to posts that are hidden away. Without having any idea what they are responding to it really makes it difficult to know what the context is behind their response. Also, at the very least, if someone responds to you personally, THOSE should be able to viewed even if others cannot.
I saw your reply last night just before I went to bed and decided to put off my reply until morning. I’m not sure why it was flagged. I have my suspicions, but that’s not enough.
I’m going to reply anyway, because I think it might be worth doing so.
For anyone who didn’t manage to see @darkpower’s post before it was flagged, it was something along the lines of “Why don’t you create a new forum with better moderation… and leave this one behind?”
It might sound like a facetious jab, but it also could be a genuine question, so I’ll explain my reasons.
The main reason is that this are the official forums for Conan Exiles. This is the place where there is a reasonable expectation that Funcom will engage with the players. If I created an unofficial forum, the best scenario in terms of its success would be to attract one or more Funcom employees occasionally posting incognito. If you just want to chat unofficially about Conan Exiles, there’s already the unofficial Discord, but if you want an official communication channel, I can’t make one.
Of course, there are no unofficial forums, so I could theoretically provide that, which leads me to my next reason: such an undertaking has significant costs. I’m not just talking about money here. I’m talking about time and effort. You have to take care of the setup, then you have to visit it every day and help moderate it, not to mention maintenance and administration. That last one often gets overlooked. Remember the spam campaign? Someone had to deal with that.
I guess my final reason can be derived from my second reason, but let me state it explicitly: I don’t care that much. I have a demanding job and I have a family to spend time with. My free time for other pursuits is limited and I would much rather spend it reading books, playing games, working on my own side projects, cooking, or taking walks, than babysitting forums for a niche game that I used to like playing and would like to play again if it ever returned to a decent state.
So those are my reasons why I don’t make new forums and leave these, @darkpower. Since you seem to think it might be a viable solution, can you tell me what your reasons are for not doing that?
It was a genuine question and your answer is stellar. I’d be willing to provide the hosting if anyone were to take on the task and is serious. I have no reasons against making a new forum. I would do the entire thing and pay a few people to moderate, admin, etc. If I knew there were enough people to make it viable, I would do this because I have the resources for it. I don’t have a demanding job, but I own a company, I don’t have children, and that allows me to manage my time how I see fit. My wife and I are avid players of the game and fans of Robert E. Howard’s stories. I have 7,200+ hours in the game since 2023 and we have 2 private servers that we have had since 2023. I like this game and we all know the value of a good forum. What’s happening on this forum is beyond “fixing”. There are clearly incompetent people managing it and I don’t think the moderators, admins, or community managers actually play the game enough to be considered players that know enough about the game. They seem to be extremely apathetic people that have no concern for the forum or the major issues with the game.
or what?
.
.
