Well i’m always going to be for taking it on a case by case basis and trying to find context.
I’ve seen too many forums go too far with cracking down and becoming a sycophantic hugbox which is just as useless as getting to the heart of a matter as the opposite end (a flaming warzone) Just my opinion.
In saying that, even I would have hit a couple people with a temp ban at the least…
Is there any consequence to abusing the flagging option? No way i’m the only one who has noticed there seem to be some personal vendettas obviously being carried out…can’t really be more specific without naming.
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I have only partially read through this topic so don’t shoot me if I seem a bit of topic but although I am not in the habit of voicing my opinions a lot I do want to say something about boundless forum behaviour. I’m not a rookie when it comes to forums/chatrooms/ingame communication feeds and always there are frictions. It is in our nature to establish ourselves and try and make the world shaped in our own view. That said: there are two things when it comes to the boundless forum imho
- the forum acts as a toold for the devs to test the waters and shape the game
- the forum acts as a community tool to communicate/show/aid what happens ingame
All too often those two things get mixed up by players who are that passionate about shaping the game, they take every opportunity to push it.
Players like me who are more interested about seeing other players work or getting guidelines to what todo and what not are often offset by these endless discussions. On the other hand I do believe it is for the benefit of the game that these discussions continue and that these who are very passionate about boundless need this format to express themselves.
I would like to suggest that this is taking in account when moderating is done. Keep those two forum uses separated.
- Boundless as developing game/suggestions/etc: freedom of speech as long as it it is respectful and not a format for personal attacks for of any kind
- Boundless as community gets together. Screenshot treads/seller-buyers/guilds, etc. When get intruded by developing discussions they are blocked immediately from these treads.
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Be respectful, stupid! Lol
Even if you point out the hypocrisy you cant indulge in it. 
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I think you should police your forum as you see fit and some stricter moderation for a while would be welcomed here.
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Regarding the OP, if a thread gets locked just make a new one. I think often threads blow up because some people just can’t let it go if someone says something they disagree with. When two or more of these people get locked in an argument it becomes an endless cycle. Eventually tempers rise and nasty things get said. Sometimes a reset on the conversation is all that’s needed.
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Personally I’d like to see the option to delete one’s own post (or edit it to oblivion) be removed. It’s very frustrating trying to understand the context of any discussion when somebody burns back through a post and just deletes everything like some kind of forum scorched earth…!
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Yes, you need to clamp down.
I made moderation software (it looked like cack though for a music community of 80k. One person could bump a person out with a single click, analyse conversation happening in realtime, and flag potential problem people… moving them seamlessly into a nulled instance of what they thought was the same place… to rage on their own.
What the community did, was applaud the peace that returned… the sense of justice that the owners were keeping the place safe for the honest/civil members.
Give the mods the tools they need, and give them power to appoint sub-mods to help report and catch the various posts that lose the plot. Then they get to play the game occasionally, rather than checking every post.
Give the community the justice it deserves! 
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Shadow banning is disgusting. Either ban a person or don’t.
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@Salvatory, that sounds like a horrible and abusive idea. I might post a lot of things people don’t like to hear, (Very apparent from all the hidden messages to silence some of my posts, even the ones not breaking any rules in my eyes.), But I still have my own ideals, values, and discussion to try and help the game grow.
Just because you, or a Dev, or another player disliked what I had to say, just because I didn’t proof read it, cleaned it up, and let a robot dictate it, and instead let my anger and passion write it for me, my posts should all be ‘hidden’ away from the eyes of everyone else, just because they want the Forums to look nice?
Worse yet, from the sounds of it, it sounds like the system Youtube has, where the original post owner wouldn’t even notice or see that it happened, not knowing that no one can see their posts. That just makes it worse when they bring up multiple ideas, and no one responds to it.
With that kinda censoring, and it wouldn’t be hard to make a second account to check, they can easily break that info up to other people and get the game and devs seen in a very very bad light. Censoring is almost never a good thing, even if the post is rage and **** <— Star filled mess. Especially for a small game like this, cause that can very quickly get a lot of… Don’t know what to call SidAlpha and Jiminqusision. Gaming Youtube News Funnies? Either way, it can get the channels like them to tell their community not to support this game because the Devs are Censoring paying customer’s ideas, critiques, and suggestions. Even if those Censored at what some of the more… Stuck up people, find offensive.
^ That might work in a Music Community, and most others really, but not a Video Game community, where the people are meant to interact with Devs and Others of the community to help support the game.
Just because you don’t like someone, or like their posts, doesn’t invalidate the points they bring up.
I think it’s a bad idea, because no two opinions are alike. What you, the Devs, could see as derailing or off topic, others might not see that way.
If the title of a Topic, for example this one, is ‘Forum and Punishment’, Then lets take a post from this one… Hmm… These two posts.
and
Oh, and this one too:
All of these posts, one after the other, has nothing to do with main topic. Should they get deleted and removed? One of them was even by @Havok40k who is a Mod himself, so would the other two get deleted/removed/censored and his still be allowed to stay?
Because while Derailing a Thread, I can understand why people don’t like that, people CAN put it back on track. People CAN just scroll down and NOT read about the arguements people have. There is no magic force making you read about two people arguing over ideas and suggestions in a thread about a different topic.
At worse, I would say not ‘Delete’ or ‘Remove’ them, but force them into a different Topic at most, about what they are arguing about. THAT should be the ‘Worse’ that happens for Derailing a Thread. Because sometimes the posts derailing a thread, and those that get into arguments, DO bring up good points, suggestions, and ideas.
Just because some people don’t like anything that is dirty, doesn’t mean you should hide it all away just to make the Forums look nice, clean, and proper. After all, what would be the point of a Forums, if most of people there can’t even post without it getting deleted or removed? That people can’t give ideas or suggestions to a problem in a thread about the problem, and have it deleted and told to make their own thread and kicked out of the Discussions?
What if the Dev that posted about Forge Changes, just went through and deleted all the angry posts people had about that and pushed the feature through. To anyone that came in hours later, they wouldn’t see any hate, or debate, or anger over the feature at all, because they were silenced and removed. All in the name of keeping the Forums clean and peaceful. <— To me, that should NEVER happen, no matter how derailed or offencive a post is. Move it to a different thread so they can keep talking to each other if they have to, but don’t hide it in PMs where people can’t see it, nor remove/hide/delete it all together.
Edit:
PS. I wonder how long before this post gets flagged and hidden?
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I think some people do deserve temps bans or temp mutes. Don’t hand them out all willy nilly but a couple people up here are just staight disrespectful on a regular basis. Half the stuff they say wouldn’t fly in a face to face conversation but they think it’s ok to say it on the forum. Yea i get it, it’s the internet, but I read some of this stuff and just shake my head.
Arguing is ok, differing opinions is ok, but once you start to question another person’s intelligence just to belittle them they obviously need a break from posting anyway
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I’m not talking about opinions, I’m talking about breaches of the code of conduct - the removal of toxicity, mudslinging etc… If people are abusive, they need to removed from a community until they learn to behave!
Clamping down on trouble will foster a level of expected behavior, and shape the community in a healthy way. Opinions/hotheaded happen, but there needs to be a way to cut the rot out quickly.
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If you don’t shadow ban, they can use tools/alts to circumvent.
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What peers, a bunch of randoms who really have no idea who I am, or where I live?
@James it was only wrong, at the Discord vs Discourse on that I was mistaken, due to some false information provided. Everything else was accurate, including the TOS update.
I could argue, very clearly, that what I just quoted from you is a personal attack against me, those like me, and a form of Intimidation. Should I report you and have your post deleted and removed?
^ This is an example of what I meant about people having different opinions on if something is offensive or not. To me, personally, I don’t care about your post at all. Even if you started swearing at me and insulting me, I’d never report your post, nor want the Devs to delete or remove it. Sure, I’ll get mad over it, might post back my own toxic rage, but I’m not going to force you to remove your post or get banned/shadow banned for it.
You are correct, my post was off topic. @Psyborg’s was not though. He was responding to my saying how the stuff he posted is the stuff we have to look out for as a community.
If my post gets flagged and hidden, no big deal. It was off topic and didn’t add anything to the conversation. That wouldn’t be censoring, just getting rid of off topic junk.
I don’t think you will get flagged this time though Jiro. You did not personally attack anyone. You stayed on topic, and answered @james’s question.
In that forge thread, the discussion was good. there were a few of these:
“These dev’s just don’t know what they are doing.”
“You must not play the game, cause you don’t understand”
“What a joke”
“(Insert footfall comment)”
And they got hidden. I think your post literally said the devs wake up and think about how they can doo doo on players… That is the stuff that needs hidden to keep it civil.
I don’t know if banning should come into it. But when a post gets hidden, hopefully the reaction isn’t anger, it should be “Why did this get hidden, lets read it again. And how can I make sure my future posts don’t get hidden.”
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Beats chest making grunting sounds
No! I am right. And everything on the internet is focused only at me.
(Seems silly, right?)
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If you beat your chest, and make grunting sounds everything looks silly, try that during open heart surgery. Even then it will look silly.
But seriously, bait wasn’t for you.
As a mod, this sort of thing isn’t personal. Looking a the bigger picture. I don’t see your posts as a problem.
I’m thinking forward to 10k+ people being active, and the few that become really problematic - as in inhuman treatment… really toxic, personal, belittling, out of context/plain rude from nowhere.
There are some behaviors that need to be pushed out, or becomes a flame war so fast - or spam.
We had a guy post on peoples music, and all he said was ‘this is s**t’, and variations - they were removed by a mod. Another just had bad english skills and people complained - he wasn’t banned and the community was told to be more tolerant - The people doing the banning would know what’s abusive, and what isn’t. So they’d have their own code to adhere to, so they could be called out if they abuse it (like people you say are reporting your replies - if they are serial reporters and unjustly doing so, then those privileges should be removed from them for example).
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If people find out they’ve been secretly banned for however long it will enrage them a lot more. Maybe enough to go ham on the company that did it. You can’t even let them know what rule they broke.
Further, shadowbanning is highly abusable and manipulative.
Abusable because it’s used to silence opposing opinions, views, even entire ideologies.
Manipulative because you stop people being exposed to ideas except one the shadowbanners deem proper for the masses. You can tell i’m drawing from the obvious censoring by big tech here, but you can scale that down to apply to a forum.
There’s zero transparency so we are all to trust that the gods above us are following the rules and not censoring based on views, affiliation, personal vendettas etc, or trying to manipulate everyone into group think? I don’t know about anyone else but i’ve seen shadowbanning used for great ill despite the protestations of “We’re just protecting you little ignorant sheep, go back to sleep”
I
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I’d prefer a more firm approach as well. The constant rehashing and concern trolling from various players grind on me worse than mining itself. lol. It’s literally the same stuff being discussed every week and it gets tiresome. I know of a few players who have said they stay away from the forums because of the negativity nowadays. I come to discuss and have some friendly banter as I don’t belong to a guild where I can socialize with people on a consistent basis. But even I question my own sanity as to why bother nowadays.
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