i now but from commens from bioware developers it sems that it is esier on face and twiter and that they fells thet must be nice on ther own forums, and they havedto ask to get moderator power and folks are nicer on twiter and facebook
some quotes from Allan Schumacher
There's a variety of angles that it can come from.
Post release, as someone that works in QA, seeing the issues that I cannot help resolve weighs on me because part of me feels I've let people down. (not the fan's fault, but is something that weighs on the mind for sure).
As someone that tried to be active in community building, it also meant not ignoring obvious transgressions. I remember when the Cullen thread received dozens of pages of porn image links spammed into it, and I felt I couldn't ignore it and went through cleaning up the thread and banning those responsible and investigating alt accounts and the like. I could have ignored it, but that probably would have been more mentally worse for me. I think I went to bed around 4 AM that day. I could have just closed/deleted the thread, but that was what the trolls wanted so I didn't want to just take the easy road out.
And maybe I need tougher skin? I'm probably not the best judge of that. I don't think I had soft skin, just more that my armor wasn't impregnable and for better or worse me posting somewhere was a lightning rod for people to derail threads to get my attention and vent their frustrations at me. So in that sense given enough time it just became, if not "stressful" then certainly much less fun.
I actually still engage on places like Twitter. I actually find it easier to have conversations in some capacity due to Twitter's nature of not showing posts unless you follow the person and at least one of the people tagged in the message. So it's unlikely a random person will interject to derail something.
That said I also like Twitter because it's a bit easier to talk with people as friends rather than explicitly as dev-fan. Sometimes that latter relationship is fine and even desired, but sometimes I don't want to be talking with any sort of symbol of authority and whatnot.
I also felt it easier to mute/block because, as the forums are a BioWare thing, I felt a stronger degree of responsibility and that I shouldn't make anyone's posts invisible to me lest they be doing Terribad™ things on the forum.
To be clear I definitely do not consider myself a "victim."
One thing I always tried to be while on the forum was as honest as I could possibly be. In this case, I'm describing how over time I felt fatigue from remaining engaged with the forum and I needed to disengage for my own well being.
I can understand that you feel my disengaging with the community means I gave up on the fanbase but unfortunately it's not a perspective that I share. I'm sorry.
It happens a lot more as we get closer to release (and especially right after release) but even then it wasn't uncommon for long time forum regulars to get upset at, for example, why Hrungr even needed to have a Twitter thread when devs could be posting those comments and messages here on the forum.
I suspect the forum is a bit quieter at the moment so it might not be as obvious right now.
Mlady, on 30 Jul 2016 - 02:17 AM, said:
I was a mod at a very famous anime board run by the translator. I know exactly what you went through especially with porn spam and breaking the news to fans about things they did not want to hear regarding fav pairings, etc... and I quit and had a breakdown.
My brief stint as Community Manager was very eye opening. It's very challenging to try to keep ahead of the curve for that sort of stuff. I try to be more diligent when I see very bad stuff on other forums I go onto now just to help out as much as I can.
Gannayev of Dreams, on 30 Jul 2016 - 02:19 AM, said:
Seems like in instances of actual moderation needing to be done, it should be with those generic "BioMod01" type accounts. That way people can't get mad at an actual name.
I actually did start to do that, although to limited effect as I didn't change how I wrote any moderator comments
That said though it's still me seeing stuff and taking care of it. I actually found explicit retaliation when I moderated with this account limited (and rare enough that it was more humorous than aggravating).
Cainhurst Crow, on 30 Jul 2016 - 02:26 AM, said:
From the mods own keyboard.
For context, if someone comes up to me on twitter and says that I should be aborted as a fetus so that competent QA would have been available to work on the game, I consider that unproductive and I am not interested in facilitating a discussion with that person. On a place like twitter, I can happily block and move on. On the forum, however, blocking people that were rude wasn't a thing. I could (and would) moderate them, but unless it was a permanent ban they'd eventually return. If I had them muted/blocked then I'd be unable to see if they were being bad on the forum.
Twitter is certainly not ideal for lengthy feedback unless you are able to send direct messages, but people do still report issues they have with games as well as general critiques. I can still facilitate discussion with those people.
As for the "random interjection" I'm referring to, when on the forum, I'm helping people who have specifically problem X. Sometimes see that I'm actively helping those fans with their problem and get annoyed that they are getting all the attention, so they then come into a thread about Problem X to discuss problem Y, and sometimes even state that they will not leave because obviously Problem X thread is where devs are hanging out and it's the only way to bring attention to problem Y. Unfortunately this usually ends up breaking out into a fight between fans as they get upset over thread derailment etc. It also creates work for me (and the moderator team) if we decide to clean things up.
Nefla, on 30 Jul 2016 - 02:22 AM, said:
I don't know if you know me, but I've always had the utmost respect for you and the effort you put in for us here. I'm glad you're with us for the end
I do remember you and thank you for the kind words.
Catastrophy, on 30 Jul 2016 - 02:33 AM, said:
I think what you need is someone who does that job for you on a forum.
We had moderators, but honestly I asked for moderator powers from Chris back in the day because having it sit there and wait for moderators to see the report was often too long for my liking.
For a bit it was actually my job to help coordinate this as I was a temp Community Manager between DAI shipping and me joining MEA. I was surprised how different my interactions felt simply by having it be my job. I definitely prefer interacting with fans as a "volunteer gig" on my own time (such as right now).