but moderators don’t always remove posts immediately and if there is an inappropriate gif that remains up until the mods can take care of it, then that would be harmful to the community.
freedom of expression and speech don’t apply to private companies like blizzard.
many private companies do and should limit people’s ability to post and/or say whatever they want
As I just said:
Hypotheticals are fun and all but they are just hypotheticals.
Doob’s latest account could get to TL3 and posts gifs too if they didn’t keep spinning up new posting characters and accounts and getting smacks on the wrist for spam and unproductive discussion.
it isn’t hypothetical that freedom of speech does not apply to private companies, though; that is a fact.
Didn’t say it was. I said that the system currently exists as is and that your hypothetical doesn’t. A gif that rubs you the wrong way isn’t an “inappropriate” gif. There are standards by which that decision is made.
there have been inappropriate gifs posted on the forums before, yes. that is not a hypothetical.
and i believe that the potential harm of inappropriate gifs far outweighs any possible benefit provided by them and the forums would be better without the gifs.
Show me some!
Oh, wait. They were taken down, the action of a single forum user totally unrelated to me, and have nothing to do with my posting privileges.
well i can show you this quote from Vrakthis that states unproductive gifs are removed from topics.
Continuing the discussion from For Vrakthris:
Yeah that’s a wide range of things from emojis, to blatant troll comments, to gifs. That’s very unspecific.
it is an example that provides support to my assertion
well i’ve said everything i need to on the topic and shared a quote from a blue post to support my assertions, so with that, have a lovely day everyone
i would like to personally thank Ard for creating this topic and giving me the opportunity to share these assertions.
i hope your thread results in much more productive conversation 
They should account ban those people from the forum. If you report something that isn’t against TOS but just something you don’t agree with BOOM there goes your forum privileges for 6 months. That would fix that in a hurry.
It’s hypothetical that I’ll comment or not comment!
Hypothetically I could have gotten a drop from the lfr run I just did.
Except that some of the reporting options are pretty open to interpretation. One person could legitimately believe they’re reporting a post for trolling or spam that a mod disagrees on, but it’s not an intentional misflag.
we need account wide ignore…
And too I could bring up an LGBTQIA+ topic and someone flag it cause… well whatever and it just makes it hard.
I do like updoots and downdoots though.
They’re not going to ban people for being wrong about the rules, and lacking psychic powers or an extremely clear pattern there’s no way to tell if it’s a “false” flag or just someone not realizing what the mods would consider a removeable post to be.
There has been extensive Blue insight into this over time. They don’t want to discourage people from reporting posts that they think are disruptive to the forum so that they can be looked at, if nothing is wrong with it the mods will restore it. They may also yoink posts with no associated penalty just because they’re unproductive in ways that they don’t want to encourage but don’t break any rules.
With the way that we post now, where every character is an island, I imagine that it makes it hard to identify patterns unless something really egregious is going on. Like with a lot of things, Btag posting would make persistent harassment through reports more obvious. People being able to curate their forum experience to not see posts from people they’ll never agree with again regardless of their posting character is another good way to give people more control over their time on the forum.
To help dispel the rumors floating around the forums about coordinated flagging.
Continuing the discussion from Are coordinated reports harassment on the forum?:
Continuing the discussion from Are coordinated reports harassment on the forum?:
First, I appreciate the kind words from some of ya. It warms my heart.
And, yes, though I can’t speak for anyone else, I post the GIFs I make myself and then a few others that I haven’t made myself, to provide a form of communication to convey how we feel about a subject. I don’t plan on going into it in depth—anyone who wants can find the posts about this in my profile (search for aphasia or for dysnomia])—but I have some serious issues with verbal and written communication. Sure, I do post text content on here too, but the GIFs or other images can allow me to communicate in ways I may not be able to put into words.
Beyond that, I’ve made the vast, vast majority of the 519 WoW forum GIFs I’ve made simply to brighten other forum members days. Maybe it’s just because I’m driven by my emotions and am highly-sensitive to others’ pain and tribulations, but I’ve always been fairly good at noticing when someone else is sad, or at least off from their norm. It’s a lot easier in person; however, sometimes I can guess fairly well when someone’s not doing so well here on the forums, especially those whose posting idiosyncrasies I have noticed. So, if I am able to do so—if I have the skill and patience as well as have the mental and emotional bandwidth and the time—I will try to make a GIF for which ever poster not themselves, who is dour, who seems depressed, who is sick, who is having a birthday but is alone in celebrating…whoever seems to need it. Sometimes that GIF is also pertinent to the conversion, and sometimes it has nothing to do with it but the person needed something positive in their lives right then. Or maybe they didn’t really, and I was mistaken; however, maybe it still brightened theirs or someone else day just a little.
Are some of the GIF responses people make, myself included, just for a bit of fun or even on the side of being facetious? Sure. That’s true also. Here’s the thing, IMO: up there under the categories, General Discussion and Oceanic Discussion is under the Community banner. Well, that seems to suggest to me that our forum community health is important. And, we have fights and poisonous vitriol that spit on each other in the very-heated arguments in certain discussion topics. That’s something pulls this community down and apart. So, if we are going to have that kind of hatred or spite between each other, we need to have something positive to boost others up and pull and hold us together. That’s what I try to do with GIFs, and there are others I’ve seen on here over the years that also use their TL3 status to post pictures and GIFs to spread some positivity around here.
If there’s no joy or no fun at all to be had and this is to be just a sterile, rigid discussion about “X” World of Warcraft game topic with absolutely zero deviation, then that’s not much of a community. Some of us care more about the other people playing the game than we ever did about the game itself. That’s the kind of thing that happens when a game has been played actively for nearly 2 decades. Are even meta threads like this, which is about the forums themselves rather than the game, supposed to not deviate at all from discussing just “forum-wipe” or “no-forum-wipe”? Yes, I know Vrak would prefer we stay on topic, but with this, as well as other topics, they affect the users of this forum in ways that may reach beyond the (web) page.
Some of the people in these types of threads may be hurt by other posts, whatever those posts may be and whatever side of a topic they may be on, and maybe they need a little pick-me-up. It can be a lot easier for some of just to post something like
than it is to verbalize our concern for others with a more personal and directed series of words.
I don’t know how to express myself in how I care about the people posting here, even those who may not be the nicest to others or who I may not agree with on things. So, show kindness through the GIFs. No one really wants to hear (or see) that Phara has been crying and doesn’t know how to verbalize the pain I feel because someone else seems to be hurting on the forums or because I’m hurting myself from something here (and, if you don’t think I really do cry over this, then you can just ask Fuzz). That’s just awkward to talk about as is saying I love everyone (yes, even you who may be reading this) in this brotherly/sisterly/neighborly Pharazon way…it’s awkward for me; it’s awkward for everyone. Nah…that GIF above is a better way for me to convey that. I mean…I continue to come here and continue to sometimes login to the game not because of the game, but because of the people here and outside of the forums I’ve met while posting or playing (mostly posting). According to my own guess using search, at least 1,300 of my 2,900 posts contain a GIF, btw.
In general can people spread positive energy around here effectively through words alone? Yes. Can Pharazon? No…
…But, all of that said, if Blizzard needed to remove the ability to post GIFs from everyone to fix the trolling etc problems around here, then I am okay with that. I would prefer that if something like this would happen (shoot, even if it didn’t) that Blizz provides us with a curated set of GIFs or images that we can post. Even if it’s just a few that are like the custom dracthyr emojis: something that can let us express caring, kindness, dislike, etc but that’s bigger and more impactful than the little emojis themselves. But, I’d still be okay if GIFs were completely taken away if it did make the forums a better place.