To the Almighty ones at Blizz. I just wanted to speak with you regarding this thing you call Trust Level 3. Never have I seen a forum permissions system feel so bad as the one as you have currently implemented. So I would let to go over this with you, and hope (but sort of don’t expect) you can give us your thoughts about how this is implemented, and if you currently have any changes to modify it.
As it stands, the purpose "feels" like you want to allow good posters the ability to post images and links without you worrying that people are going to post "bad things" intentionally. The requirements to get and maintain this though, feel out of line with this purpose.
You have to maintain a read count of 20k posts on a rolling 100 day basis. Don’t read this much? You lose it. But seriously why? Just because they haven’t read 20k posts over the course of a month or so doesn’t inherently make a person less trustworthy than before. The number is just so high, you have people literally farming megathreads by scrolling without reading them. To reach this naturally, you would need somebody on the forums hours and hours and hours a day only reading new threads, never reviewing old threads. Is this really the intended behavior you wish to re-enforce?
Trolling. OK, I get it, sometimes discussions get heated. We are a group of people that are passionate about your games! If people where not passionate about your games, then you wouldn’t have the large playerbase that you do have. But you know what? Just because somebody doesn’t agree with somebody else and gets mad about it, doesn’t mean that they are trolling. There have been a LOT of people that have been hit with trolling violations that are simply pretty ridiculous. The problem with that is that means a permanent loss of your TL3 privileges over a disagreement or a simple joke, and you know what? That stinks, and it stinks bad. The nature of jokes sometimes means a person will be upset, it’s part of what comedy and jokes ARE. Do you really want to foster an environment that people are afraid of discussions and joking around because it might upset a few people even when the aim was never to troll?
And even with the above, there are more frustrations, such as it’s rumored that even if a moderator agrees you aren’t trolling and unflags your post, to many false flags could prevent you from getting TL3. Is that true or not? Regardless of if it is or isn’t, this doesn’t feel transparent at all. We can’t look at our profile to gauge our progress to attaining TL3 in any real capacity, nor can we see if there is some mark that will prevent us from attaining it in the future.
At the end of the day, I’ve seen a lot of people, including myself lose their TL3 when the position wasn’t abused and even your MVP’s have posted things more questionable in the past that today we get wacked for. There were several people that had TL3, but as it is, it feels like less and less people have it, like the amount of people that can retain it for whatever reason are falling in number to the point that it just becomes to feel like an unattainable thing. It is really starting to make people bitter Blizz, and I feel like it needs to be addressed.
That’s just my 2 copper pieces.
Edit: Some grammar things, but no I ain’t aiming for perfection neither.
Double Edit: Please don’t discuss specifics of why a moderator gave you a forum ban. It’s against the rules and likely will result in further action against you.
