Is it forum policy to crack down on non constructive comments like ‘This idea goes too far. Better let Asobo know I put my car in the garage yesterday’? I think it should. They add zero value to the discussion and have the potential to trigger an angry discussion.
The best forums I know have a strict ‘add something valuable to the discussion or get out’ policy and it makes the forums very livable.
The absolute best forum (only one case that I’m aware of) even gave people that responded to the post as if they are the moderator - instead of flagging it - a warning. Instead on this forum you get bad points if you flag a post and mods decide it’s not worth it.
edit for clarity: I’m mainly talking about the bug reporting and wishlist forum. Although the same could be applied to other topics.
There is a difference between ‘go buy a real plane’ and ‘I don’t like the idea because…’.
One of these will spark anger and cause the topic to go out of control. I don’t blame them to close non constructive negative reviews. Perhaps positive reviews also don’t add much to the discussion and having 1 topic for that is enough. Either way, I’m not talking about that as this discussion will likely also spiral out of control at some point and get this topic locked.
I’m specifically talking about non constructive comments in the bug reporting and wishlist forum.
I think the mods strike a good balance. There will always be people who are ■■■■■ spitters (Oz for people who throw their toys out of the pram, except the auto censor ironically blocked the benign Aussie word for a pacifier) but also you get people who are just frustrated and maybe don’t have enough knowledge yet to understand how to overcome what problems they are having. It’s a tough call and the mods here have my respect. Personally I find the threads that get my attention are genuine and the conversation is supportive and amicable.
It’s very difficult. I wrote a comment on there where I attempted to diagnose AP issues, but there are so many intermingling problems it’s almost guesswork. You can’t reliably go back and recreate something and figure out a proper bug report because it works erratically. Some people have no problems (which I suspect is because they just do GAVFR tbh).
There are ‘haters’ but there are also ‘shills’ just saying “how pretty it is”. We know that, and it is (mostly) gorgeous, no-one would deny that. But it has to be more than that.
The moderators here are all volunteers and part of the community tasked with upholding the Code of Conduct. There are not many of us spread across all time zones and there can be thousands of posts in a day. We rely to some extent on members of the community letting us know via flags or private messages to the moderator team to give us a heads up. Overall we try to be balanced and fair but in the end we will take action where the code is broken
I do not know if you (who reads this) have read/participated in the marathon thread about same subject. The thread is closed now because after ~300 comments it started to go in circles. That is normal for any subject that get so many comments. So the right thing was to close it.
I do not expect you to read the whole thread, but as a participant from the start of the thread and to the brutal end i learned a lot.
Despite that we need to remind each others and also discuss how we do in the forum on a regular basis.
I read that topic, and it was more directed at ‘stop the hate’ and ‘don’t angrily say the game crashes and is bad without saying why’. While I agree with these points, I can see why the topic spirals out of control.
I’m specifically talking about comments in a constructive topic that add exactly nothing to the subject.
Saying ‘go buy a real plane’ in a wishlist topic doesn’t add any value, and should not be there.
There is actually a good example in this thread:
TheLittlePilot1’s post is on topic, yet is flagged. (Although the friendlyness of the second part is questionable)
On the other hand Lochboisdale adds exactly nothing to this topic and should not be here.
WFM in this case Words Fail Me in that I am staggered that someone would actually do what they wrote. It required calling out specifically because it was engineered to increase negativity.
Apart from that I have no useful contribution to this thread as this thread has no practical value.
There is a Terms of Use and Code of Conduct. People gloss over such things in the same way that most people just hit “Continue” or “I Accept” on a multi-page EULA. Then they discover “Hey, that stuff actually matters.” For example, how many people actually know there is a Point System that determines penalties for muting and eventual banning? Or that there’s a badge for having read the Guidelines?
If you believe a situation does not violate either of those contracts, then flag it for consideration to the Moderators.
We certainly don’t need a new thread every time someone wakes up and decides they’re “done with this.” But apparently some simply can’t help spamming the forums with their personal rant.
I certainly hope to see the rule enforced with much more severity going forward, because all the unconstructive spam is suffocating the actually interesting discussions.
Actually, they do. That’s what the report button is for.