BuzzerBeater Forums

What to do?

More like: who to believe?

I think you'll need to remove me just to be safe, as long as we can operate with 9 GMs instead of 10.

Amazing, and here I thought pointless posts were supposed to be against the rules of conduct! I also thought GMs should indeed be leading by example and, if we agree with Perpete, we should trust you all to uphold the rules with integrity!

The specific subsection you're probably referring to is:
"- Useless or irritating posts. This includes single syllable answers, trolling(*) and spamming."

I think levity is not useless. You may disagree, perhaps. I'm not in favor of overmoderating, only partially because of the extra work it might create for me. People should be encouraged to enjoy the forums, not run every post through some content analysis algorithm to see if it contributes some meaningful purpose to the game.

I suppose we could also be harsher on "irritating" or "trolling" posts. But it's also a judgment call. In nearly every case, there is very wide latitude given. There are certain places where the latitude does not extend - the bugs forum, transfer ad threads, election speech threads, etc., where the rules are specifically narrower and explicitly pointed out as being so. Threads that are being derailed far from the original intent and devolve into back and forth arguments generally have some moderation applied to try to nudge things back to the topic (and often, with an invitation to take the other topic to a more appropriate thread).

Now that you've had your fun of pointing out 'oh, my goodness, GM-hrudey dared to make a joke!', consider for a moment if you truly would prefer a scenario where every single non-topical post was deleted, and whether that would be best moved out of a thread that is essentially a complaint about GM action in the first place.

The thing that bothers me ia that there are many who talk here like they knew how things work behind the scene, but that really have no clue.
It's easy to complain though when things seems to be in a certain way.

The thing that bothers me is I have no clue how things work behind the scenes. Or as I would prefer to put it, the opaque curtain behind which GMs secretly decide secret punishments.

I also have no idea what punishments are given, or indeed what misdemeanours I may commit, since its never clear what's a problem and what is not, because, and this is the important part, I have seen posts deleted where I have said nothing wrong, merely because someone misunderstood me, reported me to a GM, who again misunderstood me, and then my post was wrongly deleted. An appeal over something so small wasn't even worth the time it would have taken, but if the "punishment" was wrong in that case, it can be wrong in other cases and would seem to indicate to me that there are some GMs who clearly shouldn't be in that position.

In other cases I've seen posts of mine deleted which weren't even as bad as some GMs have posted.

I have said this earlier in this thread and it seems as it needs repeating. A GM with any personal involvement should not and will not in the big majority of cases handle that said case.

I don't believe you could possibly always know which GM might have personal involvement in a particular issue, but even as you admit by saying "the big majority of cases" you seem to be admitting it does and has happened. Certainly I believe that part.

As for your line about the same people will handle the appeal as the one that handled the case to start with shows just how little you know of how it works.

What I said was

We should be confident in an appeals process conducted by the same group whose decision we would be appealing.

Not the same person, the same GROUP. And I have seen nothing in this thread to suggest otherwise.

That said, I agree with what you said here:

I believe there is far too much negative words going towards GM's.

That is why the process needs changing. Both the process and on rare occasions the conduct of some individuals merit some of those negative words.

Edited to add that I have no particular problem with the job that you or Perpete are doing, although Perpete tends too much toward sarcasm. I actually think you both are doing a good job.

Last edited by Mike Franks at 3/8/2016 3:04:01 PM

Well I have found that as long as you follow the rules of the game and the forum you're in no way near any GM punishment.
If you start going off topic a lot or trolling or use foul language often you may end up under a GM's looking-glass.
Most users will never have this happen though.
And the "punishment" should be scaled on how far you have stepped over the line. So again most users won't ever see big "punishments".

I don't really agree, but I've tried to make my point so won't repeat it.

What many seem to forget is that far from everyone has English as their first language so that someone reads a post in another way then was intended may not be very strange.

Since you've replied to me I'll assume you mean me. I can't say any more than that it is not the case. I'm well aware that not everyone's first language is English, and have said so in posts before. In fact, I have relatives whose first language isn't English. I find it insulting if that is your assumption about me. If not, then I apologise for saying so.

Then a small question to the negative once. How do you think this game would look like if we didn't have users that invested their own free time into keeping this game as fair as possible?

I'm not going to answer that as I never asked for the removal of GMs so its a pointless question.

I believe there is far to much negative words going towards GM's.

Possibly true, but I believe everything I type. And I don't post thoughtlessly.

If they weren't here we would see a lot of unfair things happening.

Fair enough.

That is true, but a bit or sarcasm is needed to keep doing that job voluntarily. That is why sometimes I may go a bit too far, but I try not to and went to the extent of not posting what I wrote or deleting some of my own messages.

Same applies for me as a user, but unfortunately "you guys" (as I don't see who constantly deletes my posts) go as far as necessary. I even discussed that with Ryan who seems to be the most reasonable official I met in years and still not much has changed.

I'm not in favor of overmoderating, only partially because of the extra work it might create for me. People should be encouraged to enjoy the forums, not run every post through some content analysis algorithm to see if it contributes some meaningful purpose to the game.

I suppose we could also be harsher on "irritating" or "trolling" posts. But it's also a judgment call. In nearly every case, there is very wide latitude given.

That preaching water and drinking wine. As usual, double standards are applied whenever it suits you best. Like Lemonshine said, there were absolutely abysmal GMs, who were lauded as the cream of the crop of the BB-universe, just because. A bit more reflection on behalf of the staff would be welcome. But as soon as somebody switches the side every critizism is treatened like a personal attack. You need to detach from that.