suggestion to Forum Moderation

[Sapphirethunder]

For forum moderators:

If you lock a topic, please, PLEASE write a reply there with the reason WHY you locked it. Along with something like "-Locked-".

That is a proper etiquette of moderating.

It's hard to tell from some topics why they got locked while some are self explanatory (spam, repeated topic etc.)
So take a small portion of your time to write a brief explanation. This will make foruming much more enjoyable for people.

Cincerely,


SapphireThunder

[Cutiebone]

I remember they used to do that, but stopped for some reason... Maybe they thought it wasn't necessary? Anyway, I think they should start doing it again! Sometimes it can be confusing to not know why!...

[McSleuthburger]

Usually that happens, but with all the traffic from the stress test it was hard to post anything/do anything on the forums
every other time you clicked something you got the 508 error, so we only locked topics that were answered or that were repeated dozens of times before
it was just hectic for us to log on, post a reason, lock it, and move it to the right place because instead of taking a few clicks it took dozens just to do one thing

also if you are unsure or wondering why a topic was locked please feel free to contact a mod to get a reason as to why said topic was locked in the first place

[Sapphirethunder]

During the stresstest's problems I can understand but even then it was fairly easy to navigate and use the forums unless you happen to have lower grade connection.

For such reasons, you might want to consider to get few more moderators since this is growing community. It will become easier to moderate with more people.

You have currently almost 31'000 members registered and growing. And only probably 5 people actually moderating the forums. (from what I have seen from this few past days)

You might want to have 3-5 people more.

[McSleuthburger]

dont worry the farther we good into game development the more mods we will most likely need and get
I mean for the stress test we were stretched out because of the sheer load but for right now we only have to watch the forums usually, which isint too difficult with the number of mods we have

[Sapphirethunder]

Indeed, for now it might get a bit less busy but still, by my own experience, you should get at least 2-3 more people. If possible, from other time zones.

As the development goes further, you can get more one by one.

Even if moderating isn't "difficult" currently, few more moderators, especially from other time zones, will keep the spam lower and give you more efficient moderating.


Moderating doesn't have to be difficult for there to be reason for more moderation but for also making forum work more efficient. 

it's kind of like: 1 moderator for each 1000- 2000 members. To make forum nice, clean and easy to navigate for everyone.

Of course, it's team's choice at the end but you should really give it a thought currently.

[Salnalus]

I'll give a 2-sided reply here.

On the Stress Test side, it's understandable because of the problems and bugs and stuff people were having with the game, and the fact it was being asked mostly everywhere more than once. It was basically common knowledge why such threads were locked without the posting of a reason from the Moderator whom locked it.

On the Board side, it wouldn't exactly be a problem with  having a few more Moderators. A forum I Moderate now has 9 Moderators, yet it's a fairly small forum compared to this one. However, it's amount of people looking after the forum makes things easier to deal with around the board. However, with the Stress Test over, it shouldn't be a problem handling the board now. Take this from someone who's been moderating for some time now, and has handled quite a lot of problems in the past because of little things.

You don't have to take my words at face value, though. Just saying what I've been through.

Either way, this is just my view on it.

[Somebeing]

Just pointing this out.

We do have 31,000 signed members.

We have around 20-50 people active at a time per day. Rarely, any topics aren't locked too often without the owner saying why, or with an obvious explanation why inside the topic.

Just saying. Though I agree that the mods need to be spread out a bit more.

But idc, I think it's fine as it is.

[McSleuthburger]

again, if you have questions just pm a mod and we will answer your questions

[Teal Turken]

I know most of you are new so you wouldn't know like I do but no where NEAR that 31k members even come back after the stress test.
We do fairly well with the moderators we have for the forum. We have an average 40 users on now. Before the last test we had about 25 on average.