Forum Moderation PSA

freespirit

I'll have been here 11yrs beginning of January, I have never received even a warning!

I have argued with people and occasionally been sarcastic HOWEVER I have seen many people who seem to be just after an argument!!

The other thing that does appear, to me at least, to happen a fair amount, is things get lost in translation.

I think everyone mods included, should always consider whether a poster may not be a native English user and if maybe the offending post just didn't translate that well.

SteveCampsOut

Desiato wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Has anyone ever successfully had moderation overturned after appealing and explaining?

Without getting into the details, I appealed a moderation, asked what I should do different in the future if met with a similar situation again, and the customer service's solution was to do the very exact thing that I had been moderated for! And they did not remove the warning.

I think if someone did, they wouldn't want to say so here because such a response could warrant mod attention. DM me if you want a better answer.

I appealed one of mine. Their response was the same as the warning. Go read the TOS. They couldn't or wouldn't tell me how my message could be considered baiting. It left me not feeling safe here when an appeal had that result.

spartaxoxo

SilverBride wrote: »

Has anyone ever successfully had moderation overturned after appealing and explaining?

Edited to fix quote

Yes. There have been times when bans were successfully appealed. I cannot go into detail here for obvious reasons. I'm just stating that there exists bans that have been successfully appealed by unnamed people at unnamed points in time for unnamed reasons. This is a thing that customer service has done at some point in time.

Valion

Tandor wrote: »

They never attracted warnings or penalties because I kept them constructive and polite. That's the principal key to avoiding moderation.

I am sorry, but I disagree. I believe you that this is in fact your experience, but I have witnessed different.
As others have, too.
There is in fact a certain degree of unfortunate decisions, and maybe if that even reflects the typical 6% "human error factor", it needs to be adressed.
Mind you, a more communicative moderation system could not just prevent unease, but also consolidate our identification with - well - the forums. And in such, the game.

Desiato

ESO is different things to different people. To some, it's just a light pastime full of lols that they don't think too hard about.

Others might be gaming enthusiasts who are as passionate about their hobby as someone else might be about any hobby.

You might think I'm talking about hardcore trial or pvp players, but I'm not. For every major activity in ESO, there is a passionate community that cares deeply about it.

On top of that, ESO is a social outlet for countless people in an increasingly isolating world.

So this necessarily means that issues that relate to ESO affect us disproportionately. When ESO is offline, that's no problem for some. Most players probably don't even notice. For others, ESO is where they hang out with their friends, so it's extremely stressful.

This applies to all aspects of the game. When ESO still had a large PVP community, they were generally surly and didn't have a great relationship with ZOS because of all the major issues affecting PVP. Of course this makes it more likely for one to get frustrated and lose their composure. They were right to be upset because ZOS failed to deliver on their promises. Mods, that's not bashing. That is my honest view about what happened.

On top of that, language is fluid. These forums are not representative of the larger ESO community as I know it. To truly experience it, one must read trade guild chats, discussion in Discord communities, and watch twitch. Many gamers today speak a different language than that what we use to discuss topics here. They use terms that could be easily misunderstood by someone not familiar with them. I would argue it is a legitimate dialect and linguists would probably agree because how people use words dictates the rules, not the other way around.

My point is, we need leeway to have frank, passionate discussions about the game. If things get heated, I expect mods to intervene, but in most cases this shouldn't result in a permanent mark against the player.

We also need to be more flexible about the terms that are used. Why? Because it's possible for policies designed for inclusion to result in greater exclusion. The ESO community should be broadly reflected in the forums.

I would say as much of half of the ESO community is excluded from the forums because of how they casually communicate -- which has become normal in most of society.

AtriaKhorist

SilverBride wrote: »

Has anyone ever successfully had moderation overturned after appealing and explaining?

Without getting into the details, I appealed a moderation, asked what I should do different in the future if met with a similar situation again, and the customer service's solution was to do the very exact thing that I had been moderated for! And they did not remove the warning.

All such conversations, tickets or requests I have been privy to, from several friends, either saw no response at all or standardized responses that were at best unhelpful.

No overturning. Zero. Not even a proper explanation.

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

After removing a few off topic posts, we would like to ask everyone to keep posts on the subject at hand, as well as keeping things civil and constructive.

Thank you for your understanding.

LadyGP

AtriaKhorist wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Has anyone ever successfully had moderation overturned after appealing and explaining?

Without getting into the details, I appealed a moderation, asked what I should do different in the future if met with a similar situation again, and the customer service's solution was to do the very exact thing that I had been moderated for! And they did not remove the warning.

All such conversations, tickets or requests I have been privy to, from several friends, either saw no response at all or standardized responses that were at best unhelpful.

No overturning. Zero. Not even a proper explanation.

My partner got their account banned after being on here since 2013 sometime. They only have a few strikes on the account and over a.. 10+ year period of being active on the forums.. it's super easy to get some strikes when you're giving feedback and constructive criticism over the 10 years (especially given the current state).

Now, one of them was 100% warranted for being a bit too blunt in my opinion (not disrespectful but rode the line if that makes sense).

The warning that got them perma banned was for the usual baiting claim, which was them simply responding to someone who actively trolls/baits them in game and on the forums (responded to them explaining why something happens and was sarcastic about it). Request to review put in and was denied. Second request a few months later were put in with context of what was going on and also denied.

SilverBride

LadyGP wrote: »

My partner got their account banned after being on here since 2013 sometime. They only have a few strikes on the account and over a.. 10+ year period of being active on the forums.

That is a perfect example of how extreme and heavy handed the moderation is. A poster can have 15000 posts over the 10 year life of these forums that fall completely within the posting guidelines. But one handful of posts where the poster either slipped up (we are all human so it's going to happen) or were completely misinterpreted can earn them a permanent ban. And these few infractions follow us forever.

This really needs to change.

Lags

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

Again.. and again.. and again..
This is NOT the safe space you are looking for! This is not a happy place with fluffy unicorns. This is a gaming forum, where people are discussing, reporting and expressing their views on the PRODUCT they bought with their earned money. Sometimes controversial and confrontational. Deal with it.

Going to clarify slightly here. This should be a safe space for people to discuss, report and express their views. Absolutely. And there will be times where that discussion can be controversial and disagreements can (and should) happen. Those disagreements can happen without name calling or trying to ridicule another poster. That also makes people unwelcome to have conversations here. Confrontational does not need to be part of that equation. Conformational implies hostility, and that is not appropriate most cases here.

Again, we are going to chat with some of you in a one on one capacity to get feedback on how we can get to a better middle ground here, and have conversations with our mod team. That way, more open and honest conversations can happen, but folks still feel like their voice can be heard without fear of someone getting hostile toward them.

Also wanted to note that we hear the feedback on having more clearly defined rules, so we will work on that as well.

id love to have a chat with you about the list of things ive been actioned for on the forums. Every single one was ridiculous and childish. Every single one was a rule open to interpretation that i would never imagined would be used against me. Many of the times it felt like it was to simply silence me for being critical of zenimax.

Even today my thread was removed. Thats another issue. I understand closing down discussions because of the same topics but just because the topic is similar does not mean its the same, especially when someone is asking questions directly to zenimax and the other discussion is just a list of previous threads from zos, with no other dialogue. I messaged the mod about it @ZOS_Icy but i haven't gotten a response. It was just today so ill give it time but i probably wont get one at all.

Regardless of that, it may be too little too late with a lot of people. And that may be a theme with zos. Its well known in this community that on the forums especially, but even in game, zenimax is verrrrry heavy handed when it comes to actioning peoples accounts for absolutely silly reasons. You guys should be able to do things on a case by case basis, and tell bad actors apart from players just making small mistakes. It really makes me wonder why zos is so quick to perma ban someone who has a silly character name, for example.

On one hand you have people typing slurs, name calling, threatening people, and acting like animals. No one wants that. But on the other hand you have what has been going on for years, the exact opposite. Where the most benign things will get you actioned. Really hope you guys are serious about looking into it.

One other thing is the appeal process. it feels like when you appeal something it doesnt matter. Who is it going to? Is it the same person who gave me the ban? They dont ask for anything, you just send your appeal and 99.99% of the time they say "we reviewed it and the decision is the same".

SilverBride

Lags wrote: »

One other thing is the appeal process. it feels like when you appeal something it doesnt matter. Who is it going to? Is it the same person who gave me the ban? They dont ask for anything, you just send your appeal and 99.99% of the time they say "we reviewed it and the decision is the same".

That is something I was wondering, too. Who is reading our appeals and making these decisions?

Lags

SilverBride wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

My partner got their account banned after being on here since 2013 sometime. They only have a few strikes on the account and over a.. 10+ year period of being active on the forums.

That is a perfect example of how extreme and heavy handed the moderation is. A poster can have 15000 posts over the 10 year life of these forums that fall completely within the posting guidelines. But one handful of posts where the poster either slipped up (we are all human so it's going to happen) or were completely misinterpreted can earn them a permanent ban. And these few infractions follow us forever.

This really needs to change.

their 3 strike rule is absolutely insane. Both in game and on the forums. Imagine in 2015 you got a chat ban for swearing. Then in 2018 you got a 3 day ban for tbagging someone. Then in 2021 you get a perma ban because your @ name is corona man. Or something stupid, maybe its named after an in game NPC (which is apparently against the rules, and yes they ban for it).

So you're telling me its fair to perma ban someone for strikes over the course of years? Like i said in my above post, they should be able to tell average players who make small mistakes apart from malicious bad actors who repeatedly break the same rules.

It honestly feels like zos enjoys banning people. It feels like they think they are purging their community. Im sure they would say no, but to many of us it feels that way. To ban people for tiny, benign, infractions, and to make it permanent after a couple times, is insane. We put thousands of hours into this game and the forums. it would be awful to lose it over something stupid.

And i used in game as an example but the same things happen on the forums, as you said, its just more often and for more silly things. Their 3 strike rule is just insane. This isnt baseball. And tbh, im pretty sure i know when they changed this too. It was back with the whole cheat engine scandal, when they banned people and then unbanned some on appeal and people were up in arms. So after that they got waaay more heavy handed with bans in game and on the forums.

Arunei

I've had a few warnings and one 72 hour forum ban in the years I've been posting. A few times I've had comments removed from a thread and been told.

A lot of other times I find comments gone entirely with absolutely NO indication of why. No messages telling me what I did wrong, no edits saying the post was removed for X or Y.

And that's one of the big issues with the moderation here. How are we supposed to know what we did wrong when we have posts just go missing with no feedback as to what caused it? How are we supposed to know what rules may have legitimately been broken when there's no communication? When posts just disappear for quite literally no reason, it fosters a sense of "what if I mess up again and don't know I did and that's my third strike".

And there's that too. That it feels like posts that vanish without any reason given as to why are removed for...well, no reason.

It makes perfect sense for people to be worried about posting and whether anything they DO post will land them in trouble or not, when we have posts go missing with absolutely no context as to why. We can't even contact the mod responsible if we aren't messaged about it to try and figure out what the problem was.

Sleepsin

I wonder which company has been hired for forum moderation. Which leads me to the next question, did that company outsource parts of forum moderation to a 3rd party contractor?

shadyjane62

I had a post removed and got a warning during the 24 hour outage. I felt it was unwarranted but I know better than to try and do anything about it.

It just reminded me never to to say anything about my true feelings.