Semi-OT: Admin activity. (was forum=21)Follow

First off, this is going to be a lengthy post, mostly directed at the admins here, but feel free to read and give some comments if you agree or disagree. These words are my thoughts on the subject.

Lately I've noticed a drop in admin activity on this board. I'm not talking about admins posting less often, because after all, we've now got Tyrandor, Azuarc and even Allakhazam who visit us, as well as Darqflame when I send her enough virtual love (Nizdaar as well, though he requires a lot more love than Darq).

But lately it seems like admins need a wake-up call from a poster before they check to see if there is anything wrong here. Once in a while someone appears to balance things out by going bamhappy on everything that smells of troll, but it would be better for everyone if those bamhappy admins were here all the time or at least more than they are now.

This thread, for instance, is not only against the Terms of Service and End User License Agreement you sign and agree to follow upon installing and updating World of Warcraft, it is also considered bamworthy by most posters here. The poster is obviously only posting to advertise his illegal trade of an account. He doesn't care about the service Allakhazam.com and the community offers other than advertising space.

Bam him!

Then there's this guy. Either a troll or idiot, or perhaps both, or perhaps just a confused player and poster. I wouldn't call him bamworthy because he might be innocent, but would it hurt if an admin sent him a Private Message telling him to stop making so many threads* about questions he should be able to answer himself after a few minutes of playtime? I know that people told him to stop spamming threads, but people tend to listen to admins and such, without making a drama session over it.

*One, two, three...

Also, a large number of class specific threads have been taking up space lately. I know it's the Main WoW Forum and people are of course allowed to ask questions related to classes here as well, but questions so obviously class specific as "Warrior question: How do you" and "DD warrior?" belong on the class boards, in my honest opinion. Not because I'm annoyed by them, not at all, but because the poster would almost certainly receive better guidance if he or she posted the question in a forum dedicated to the class. Some class forum posters don't visit this forum and would miss out on such a thread.

A lot of posters here prefer to post questions to the Main WoW Forum crowd and there has to be room for that as well, but 1-posters (read: posters with a postcount of 1) with class/profession specific questions would probably be better off in the class forums. I also believe that a lot of threads could be moved to the faction forums, though they tend to be filled with so much crap it would be a shame to send anything valuable there.

Why do I care? Because I want to help people and I believe that a lot of people leave this board thinking "Gee, what a bunch of selfish jerks" because we ignored or flamed their perfectly innocent question about some talents or whatever. I don't want people to think ill of us, nor the site, and thus I post this, hoping it will make things better for all of us.

I'm not sure how often an admin checks this board. Every hour? Every twenty minutes? I'm not sure, but sometimes it seems like nobody's watching at all. A lot of the game specific admins are busy programming and whatnot, but could you assign an admin to forum watch or something? It takes a whole five minutes to scan the various World of Warcraft forums and I'm sure even the busy Allakhazam admins can set aside five minutes.

A lot of people help out by posting links to the various forums in the thread, but again, people tend to listen to authorities. Like admins. Not to mention admins have the ability to move threads as well as nuke, ban or lock, am I right?

Now you've probably read the whole thread wondering one thing: Why didn't he post this on the Forum Feedback forum instead, seeing as he's so upset about putting threads the wrong places?

I'd like to explain that. First of all, I only think threads should be moved if it benefits the original poster, or if the post is annoying the community. For instance, making an offensive thread about nothing related to World of Warcraft should result in the thread being moved to the Out of Topic forum or The Asylum. Or nuked for that matter. But people who post off-topic threads about their newborn children is okay, because that's what makes it a community and not just a database of facts. I also posted this here because I wanted to give the other posters a chance to agree or disagree with me. After all, I don't want to speak on behalf of others and least of all against their will and without their knowledge.

I think that just about covers it. I'm looking forward to hearing from your admins.

Ps. Sorry about grammar and typos. I'm a tad tired and English isn't my first language. Also, if I offended someone with my post I apologize and ask you to point it out so that I may explain and/or edit the offensive part out.

Edited, Nov 1st 2006 at 3:41pm PST by Mazra

How often have we had administrators scan the boards?

No, really. The vast majority of forum policing has ALWAYS been accomplished through the Karma system. This isn't a new trend here... and there's a reason that the title is "Administrator" and not "Moderator".

And the karma system is working as intended, right?

We're talking about five minutes.

Do I have to help my customers carry their groceries to their car so they don't drop them halway there? No, I don't. They can go and move the car, then carry out the groceries themselves. Nonetheless, I help my customers carry their groceries. It takes so little and the reward is bigger than you could ever imagine. The customer leaves the store feeling special and all because I took an extra five minutes to do something I didn't have to do.

Edit: Added quotation.

Edited, Nov 1st 2006 at 4:01pm PST by Mazra

I'm pretty satisfied with how our Admins are taking care of things.

Just my

Having Tyr as a new admin was just praised a couple of days ago and we all are aware that Rale, Azuarac and Zam are trying to make the old O-Gaming equipment work. I'm figuring integrating from Morse Code into modern has Rale baying at the moon and the scribed initials of Nicola Tesla on the hardware probably has them up-dating their tetanus shots after every scratch.

Yes I intentionally removed all blame from Edison but he’s a fellow Ohioan so I was forced to. We may not have State Police but I’m not taking any chances with the Buckeye Bear and with Canadian choppers all over the place I’m worried about the UN coming after me.

Well, George Weasley, the least you could do is show us a new magic gizmo or prank!

*cracks the whip* Get to it! The Maz commands it!

Tbh who gives a f uck?

As I said before, send a PM. There are more ways around bad karma than not saying anything and letting it simmer then getting everyone in an uproar.

List of Forums that's a hellalot of skimming, which still means not quite as fruitful as if someone just links up a crappy post.

There are several posts on the front page of the forums that don't belong here IMO, butleaving them because when they get moved, they are less likely to be continued and may have information that this community wants, and will probably result in karma bombing.

You know I am here for you guys, and this post will eventually end up in the Feedback Forum. So without further ado, I will make a tad clean up just for you Maz, now you get no oils....

I won't kill you, just know I have been having excessive migraines, surgery the week of Turkey Day to deal with them.

Mob and item pix will be coming up soon, Tyrandor is almost trained enough to leave him to himself. Azuarc has been hard at work getting class pages, maps and stuff updated. Yes, he's making some awesome maps. And you know I could never leave the wow site completely, it's my favorite game!

Oh btw level 23 TFS woot!

Interesting debate. I like the responses so far- most have been rather good points of view (apart from Inuyasha, who I am noticing recently likes to give pointless one-liners with poorly-broken curse words). I've been pondering this since reading, and am ready to give my perspective.

I don't think that the admins are doing too little. As has been said, this is a self-moderated site for the most part, and while I sympathise with Mazra's point of view, I don't think it's up to the admins to determine what should and shouldn't be removed from the forums, with same exceptions.

What if Azuarc decided that everyone who posted a repetitious topic would have said topic deleted- even if said topic hadn't been discussed in several days and was no longer on the first page? The people who have been here longest would be aware of the number of similar posts, but a new poster might be disturbed to see his "new revelation" removed summarily. For example, we get a dozen or more "How do I make money?" posts every week. I reply by pointing uot the guide in my sig. Sometimes I get ignored, and the last time I did so, I was rated down. Did I care? No. I played my role- to educate the person asking the question. It was up to them to actually peruse my sig or ignore my advice. I don't ask for karma bumps every time I point to it. I also don't tell the person they should be able to find out because I've written "check my sig" a hundred times already. I just point to my sig- because, for them, it's a new issue. The only exception to this is when you have half a dozen of the exact same topic on the first page, in the sticky or FAQ. Then you know the person is just too lazy to even skim the first page.

Another hypothetical- Darq decides to summarily nuke any post with the word "suck" in it, because she decides that people who say "X class sucks" or "X race sucks" or "Horde Suck" don't deserve to be entertained. Now I write an article, and mention how competing in Felwood for herbs against people that try and farm the ones I'm picking is starting to suck my faith in my fellow players, it gets nuked- because of one word. Not that I think DF would do that- I just wanted DF and 'suck' in the same paragraph.

My point in both of these scenarios is that we have a small number of administrators, who may have their own notions about what is and is not acceptable behaviour. Given the amount of people that visit Alla's forums every day, I think we should be able to moderate ourselves better, and leave the admins to administer the servers, data, etc. We can either PM or post in the Feedback forum when we see a glaringly offensive post or thread, and we're pretty damned good with immediate action against goldsellers, PLers and account traders, IMO.

There have been, and will always be, asshats and f*ckmonkeys who abuse the karma system and rate according to some random, usually emo personal reason. However, the admins cannot be held liable for one or two people. They can, and do, warn people when they're abusing the karma system- although I'd like to see a slightly more proactive approach there, granted (1000 ratedowns by 2 people in 1 month, and they weren't norated?). The admins aren't supposed to check every post to make sure it's "Alla-apprved". We're here for that. I would like to see the spam ads and retards gone faster, but I think that's because they often don't go reported by the first few people that see them. I tend to find that the same people do the reporting. That's not the fault of the admins. That's the fault of the community.

A bit extreme examples there, Wondrous, but I get your point nonetheless.

As with every business you can't run alone, a lot of the responsibility will have to be on the next-in-command, the admins if you want. There is a reason why we aren't all admins even if this is a user moderated forum. I do believe (or hope, for my own sake) that Allakhazam trusts his minions employees.

If, for instance, Darqflame decided to nuke all the posts containing the word "suck", I'm fairly sure some of her co-workers would disagree with it and perhaps raise an eyebrow.

At the moment, the only thing we decide is whether or not people should speak. Kinda like giving everyone in IRC the ability to mute others. It's bound to end in a mess.

I know- I felt it good to give an alternate PoV, and yes- I did the extreme examples for a reason. I felt if I did more subtle scenarios, I might not get my point across as clearly. And thanks for a good rebuttal.


I'm not sure, and honestly, I'm not too worried about it. I figure I shat in somebody's sandbox with one of my statements and they think that they're punishing me. They're not. As long as I have opinions, I'll keep voicing them, and as long as I'm not sub-default, people may keep reading them. I suspect I bore most people with my ramblings, anyway.

Edited, Nov 2nd 2006 at 10:20am PST by Wondroustremor