Critism: My opinion on Rule 21 & current Forums status.

[Mroz4k]

As some may know, and some may not, the Rule 21 was recently edited, and now it basically says the people cannot post comments on the Player Reports, unless they are the OP, or stand a withness to the report.

I consider this a bit unfair towards that part of community who takes great pride in providing support and opinions on Player Reports.
Not only this in my opinion limits the freedom of posting for regular users, it also takes away one of the oppurtunities for regular users to be useful. And, lets be honest, who else then people with wide experience with handling support on Reports are better idea for candidates for Gmods or Trial judges? So, in the longrun, this only hurts the Staff, as the Staff has limited their own ability to constructively "test" potentional future Staff candidates.
Experience and general presentment should always be the number one priority on the candidate´s resume (at least as far as Trial Judges go).
Obviously, GMod candidates would need a lot wider set of attributes, as their work involves a lot more then handling the Reports.

I am very well aware of why this rule was updated recently. It was due to a huge number of shitposting and general off-topic bull going on the Forums.
However, solving this by taking the Community´s right to post on Reports is the laziest option possible - in my opinion, instead of taking it away, the Mods should start putting down a lot heavier punishments on these kind of posting, and not only on Reports, but on all the Forums alltogether.

Certain users recently moved from 200 posts to over 1600, because their posts majorly consist of low-quality, often even unrelated posts.
Locking out the Reports will only stop this behaviour on the Reports - but this is not solely Reports problem.

So, I see two solutions out of this problem:

A) the rule is kept as it is. But, in this opinion, I expect to see the Moderators to put emphasis on the Reports, to post on them regularly, explaining how things are. On top of it, this ought to be done frequently - to make sure all the people reporting obtain the same level of support they would get from the regular users.

Now, lets be realists, Mods wouldnt be able to keep this up for long, there is too much of Reports every day to not take up significant amount of time daily.
Hence, the community used to handle this.
And finally, this option doesnt allow Users to develop their skills with reports, therefore less potential Mod or Trial Judge material.

B) The rule is returned, but the Mods take extra hard steps towards shitposters, and low quality posters. This is how it should be, in my sole opinion - the Mods should be handling the Forums with a bit more iron hand then they currently do.
This would not only fix the solution with Reports, but with Forums in general.

Certain Users (wont name who) were capable of reaching from 200 to 1700 posts in the matter of few weeks - due to them commenting with comments of rather low quality, often even off-topic. Such behaviour should be rooted out as well.

I am suggesting the Mods activity to increase as far as warnings go, because I have a bad feeling the Mods are not taken very seriously in this matter.
Quality of the Forums as far as posts go has decreased dramatically over the past three months.


These are my opinions, take them or leave them, and if you feel differently, go ahead and comment your own opinion.

Adding a poll to take up public opinion on the new Rule 21.

Now I dont want to sound all entirely negative towards Mods - they do the best they can in their spare time, that is respectable. But, they shouldnt take away what community can handle if it means they will not be able to bring it in the same amount.
And, they should in my opinion start handling certains Forum matters a bit harder.

[CarmenK74]

Should be exclusive to trusted users, IMO.

[Deleter]

The rule was originally created because this would happen.

Jack: BOB IS A HACKER HE SKYPE CHEATED
Bob: NO I DIDNT
Jill : lelelelel jack is salty cos got dunked
John: so jill are you bob's friend defending him???
Marvin: let's start a debate about whether scumreading is hacking
Gregory: all scumreaders are fucking idiots
Bob: NO YOU
Gregory: NO YOU
Francis: anyway Jack should have reported Jim as well, in screenshot 3 you can see that he random shot as vig which is gamethrowing
Gregory: francis ur wrong and dumb
Francis: WAAAAAAH GREGORY IS A **********
Marvin: I'm out of here, you're all idiots.

To prevent this from happening the mods should just allow Trusted Users to post on Report Players but change the rule thus:

All posts in Report threads MUST be relevant to the report at hand.

Meaning you only post if:

- You were the reported player
- You are a witness
- You have additional evidence to add on("Shitlord wasn't Skyping, I was the invest that game and I whispered him that John was GF/Mayor, that's how he knew")
- You are here to point out something relevant to the case("actually, the admins ruled that you aren't allowed to spam even if you're a jester")
- You are here to provide additional non-evidential information about the case("This was not a one-off incident. Gucci has been spamming games for quite a while now, so we should suspend him to teach him a lesson")
- You are here to report the same player in a second game to avoid cluttering up the forums with 5 clones of "report X".
- You have an inquiry pertinent to the case in question("Do you have a screenshot of the end game lobby?" "Maybe the mafia knew Bob was jailor immediately because they had a consig, was there one?")

[agigabyte]

I was going to make a long post tomorrow but Deleter did it for me.

[Jfire]

Trusted only, when you think about it it's only trusteds that are able to use the trial system, so this is the same thing, make it trusted only.

[Ansem555]

I'm in the camp of allowing only Trusted Users to post there, however I also want a joined vote of "put emphasis on rooting out shitposting." Even if someone's a Trusted User they may still shitpost as one so I wanted to vote for both (in a way, I don't think everyone should be allowed to post in Report Players) to promote relevant discussion.

[Mroz4k]

I'm in the camp of allowing only Trusted Users to post there, however I also want a joined vote of "put emphasis on rooting out shitposting." Even if someone's a Trusted User they may still shitpost as one so I wanted to vote for both (in a way, I don't think everyone should be allowed to post in Report Players) to promote relevant discussion.

I am right there with you.

I actually wanted to add that as an option, but forgot and then I lost the internet.

Yea, I see a lot of "Trusted Users" shitposting all around forums. The thing is, ever since that one time when Moderators went in hard on pushing down the community in posting, and the following riot that ended in some Moderators punished, it seems that the Mods kind of gave up on correcting these, as I have a feeling most of the Staff are nowadays a bit concerned that if they push down the "Low quality posts" and "off-topic posts" for a certain user, that the people will rise up and just get them into trouble again.

Again, I kind of understand that, but at the same time, I dissaprove - the Mods ought to start putting more effort in rooting out these low-quality posts.

We can also see that Ansem555 is a Forum OG - even though his post was very short, he contained in his opinion, and explained his point elegantly, hence its a good post.

Spoiler: The rule was originally created because this would happen.

Jack: BOB IS A HACKER HE SKYPE CHEATED
Bob: NO I DIDNT
Jill : lelelelel jack is salty cos got dunked
John: so jill are you bob's friend defending him???
Marvin: let's start a debate about whether scumreading is hacking
Gregory: all scumreaders are fucking idiots
Bob: NO YOU
Gregory: NO YOU
Francis: anyway Jack should have reported Jim as well, in screenshot 3 you can see that he random shot as vig which is gamethrowing
Gregory: francis ur wrong and dumb
Francis: WAAAAAAH GREGORY IS A **********
Marvin: I'm out of here, you're all idiots.

To prevent this from happening the mods should just allow Trusted Users to post on Report Players but change the rule thus:

All posts in Report threads MUST be relevant to the report at hand.

Meaning you only post if:

- You were the reported player
- You are a witness
- You have additional evidence to add on("Shitlord wasn't Skyping, I was the invest that game and I whispered him that John was GF/Mayor, that's how he knew")
- You are here to point out something relevant to the case("actually, the admins ruled that you aren't allowed to spam even if you're a jester")
- You are here to provide additional non-evidential information about the case("This was not a one-off incident. Gucci has been spamming games for quite a while now, so we should suspend him to teach him a lesson")
- You are here to report the same player in a second game to avoid cluttering up the forums with 5 clones of "report X".
- You have an inquiry pertinent to the case in question("Do you have a screenshot of the end game lobby?" "Maybe the mafia knew Bob was jailor immediately because they had a consig, was there one?")

Yes, this was kind of what I was thinking that would be a lot better solution then straight-up forbid posting on Reports.
Though, if any of the points you pointed out are met, I dont think the person contributing would have to neccesarily be a Trusted User. Sometimes, especially when it come to being a withness, it would most likely be complete newbies who would come by to share their side of story, as a withness to the reported occurence.

What I was moreless thinking would be that Trusted Users are be able to post their opinions on the report, but keeping it strictly, 90% report-wise.

There was a problem with Player Reports and people posting garbage posts on them before, which is why I originally created the Guide to Player Reports post (wanted to link it, but it was already removed, so I guess not), and after the Mods, me and some other serious Trusted Users, with our combined efforts we rooted out the shitposting on the Player Reports section. But, thats was temporary, and with the decline of fighting against shitposting, it spreaded to Player Reports once again (as well as the rest of the Forums).

-----------------
I also kind of find if funny that there are some low quality posts on this thread.
I am guessing I will link in the Sticky on this topic since some people probably dont even know they are posting a low-quality posts.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=13688

I ask that you start keeping posts quality here. Contribute to the discussion, or don't post at all. Simply saying that you (dis)agree adds nothing...why do you (dis)agree, or what are your thoughts ?

[Nellyfox]

Thanks for the opinions. I'm actually with Deleter on this one, and pretty much what he listed is what okay right now, except for the 5th and 7th. Minimodding still annoys me do when people make comments the staff specifically asks ... >.>

I am, however, a bit concerned over the fact you seem to be focusing on getting Trial Judges/GMod. I mean, you don't need specifically that board to show you'd be good for the position.

[Mroz4k]

Thanks for the opinions. I'm actually with Deleter on this one, and pretty much what he listed is what okay right now, except for the 5th and 7th. Minimodding still annoys me do when people make comments the staff specifically asks ... >.>

I am, however, a bit concerned over the fact you seem to be focusing on getting Trial Judges/GMod. I mean, you don't need specifically that board to show you'd be good for the position.

I think you have a point there - I should have specified that other qualities are also required for Moderators or Judges. However, having some degree of confidence when it comes to handling reports on Player Reports would be of great help to starting GMod. On the other hand, they also need to be calm, mature, proffesional, heartly and open-minded, but at the same time also strict and determined, depending on the situation.

Plus, in my opinion, GMod candidate should have a long history of helping around the Forums, by answering questions, helping out newbies, supporting GMods, enrooting into the community, having some degree of impact on changes for better, hosting and organizing community driven games or events, etc. - which is unlike most of the Trusted Users (Tbh I could think of maybe 3 who would fit there). So, having experience with handling Reports wouldn´t be all that important, since that only includes 5% of GMod tasks (from what I have observed.)

However, as far as Trial Judges go - these people are going to be solely focused on Reports, so I´d say it makes a lot more sense for Report-experienced Trusted User to become Trial Judge, as opposed to one who did barely anything else on Forums then hanged around Discussions.

Not all Trusted Users are by far considerable to Trial Judges - that wouldn´t boat well.

I´d say Trusted users who are mostly focused around Player Reports, Bug Reports and Ask Question (in that order of importance) should be the people on the top of the candidate´s list when it comes to recruitment. But thats just my opinion, on a simple logic of efficiency.

Also, I am kind of curious, Nelly - what would be your opinion on the drop in quality of comments around the Forums in general?

[Nellyfox]

I mean, I've already been around for picking mods so I know what qualities to look for or what is needed. What's important is trust and good standing, which reminds me I kind of want to discuss Trusted Users requirements with someone else but that's irrelevant.

The most important thing is that no rules are static and can change at any time, I have stated this several times before. It just got tiring handling and cleaning arguments almost every single day over almost nothing. If enough people want the change reverted, I'll bring it up.

I'm pretty picky about quality if you want to know my opinion. Small rant in the spoiler -

Spoiler: If you're not going to say anything new...these posts I just want to delete. I'm pretty sure i've even stated that I would delete posts like that but, meh. The people who just even agree with and restate the same thing just said annoys me the most, like its obvious you're just trying to increase your post count. Just stop. >.>

I wish people would just put thought into posts. Quality over quantity, and don't get me started on people who quote one post and just excessively post to reply if we're talking about spam. It's not hard to multi-quote. ;_;

[agigabyte]

I was agreeing with him when there wasn't a vote option for that. I wanted to show that Deleter wasn't the only one who thought that.

[Mroz4k]

I support Rule 21 mainly because letting people post will only start needless arguments. Every other forum I joined had the reporting section invisible to normal users, and it never affected the reporting system. so I don't see the need to make the users able to post.

I joined the Forums over a year ago, and this is the second time there was an actual problem with this, on Reports. First time, all it took was to setup the Guide to the Reports section, set down some boundries and make sure that people followed them by pointing a gun at them (figuratively).Not following them essentially meant going against the flow, against the OG posters or even the Staff - needless to say, very few resisted, and those got squashed in the end.

Right now, this whole phenomenon is coming back because the Staff were taking it a bit easy with the forum reports (not meaning this as a bad thing, they have every right to act the way they want to), and many newer users became confident that they can do as they want without getting more then a potentional warning or two. Basically, Staff (and the older Trusted Users) lack the kind of respect from the newer players, and thats in my opinion the whole cause of this. Lack of respect.

Its better to give people access to post on Reports, this way people have bigger freedom, can actually point out something really helpful that could have slipped for Staff, and in general they can help correct the reporter if they did something wrong.

From my experience, posting on Player Reports can be really helpful as if the Staff knows that this particular person knows what they are doing, sometimes it can be enough to read their shortened version with the observations, instead of fishing around in what the OP posted, which may be very chaotic.

Arguments happen all around forums, not just Player Reports. But, on Player Reports especially should be punished harshly.

This is not about affecting the reporting system in a bad way - obviously, it would work the way it is right now, but at the same time having intelligent people comment on them can help ease up the problem drastically.

@Nelly

I fully agree with you on your opinion, people take absolutedly no time to comment with something meaningful, and I have noticed more and more pointless comments of the type "first" that are unrelated to the topic at all.

Nothing against saying "first", if the comment continues and actually brings something new to the topic - but that is rarely the case these days.

With that said - I know we are allowed to report these low quality posts, but I´d like to ask - should I start doing that? I have a feeling it will be a sea of Post reports for you guys, which could end up being a detriment to you, as you would have harder time to distinguish low quality posts from different, perhaps more urgent reports.

I´d like to help out clean the Forums up, make sure the quality goes up again.

[PikaFox]

Eh, votted for the wrong one. Oh well.

Allow anyone to post on them. If the issue is people are being dicks on the forums, then thats already against the rules. Youre making it harder to moderate by stating no one can post than it is to allow anyone to post and just bring the hammer down when someone is being a dick. If someone has something to say, let them say it. Thats why the forums exist in the first place.

[Gobln]

shitposting is not a big deal, this is overdone crying.

If we're going to have people post in reports everyone should be allowed to post in reports.

[Nellyfox]

I mean, yeah. If you only allow Trusted Users to post on Reports then technically members new to the forums would be breaking the rules by making a topic there and replying to it if someone asked a question or anything of the sort.

Again, this isn't a static rule. Although, once the Trial System comes out, I don't see the report players board sticking around much longer because there would no longer be a need for it. According to TurdPile, Trial System is coming in a few weeks I think.

[PikaFox]

Eh, votted for the wrong one. Oh well.

Allow anyone to post on them. If the issue is people are being dicks on the forums, then thats already against the rules. Youre making it harder to moderate by stating no one can post than it is to allow anyone to post and just bring the hammer down when someone is being a dick. If someone has something to say, let them say it. Thats why the forums exist in the first place.

People don't usually get banned for being rude (I disagree with that personally) and mini modding is another issue. There Is next to no merits for letting people who got nothing to do with the report post.

People like to give their opinions. Let them speak.

And being a dick and in game cheating afaik are the two biggest ways to get banned that i have seen.