That’s fairly insulting to the LGBT+ community…
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Not as insulting as telling people to off themselves and being allowed to do so.
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Lol Sasarai, we all do weird, contrary things when we least expect it. Life is funny that way. 
We’ve all speculated about what’s going on with the moderation. Are the inconsistencies because different people get these alerts in their inbox and all just deal with them uniquely? Are there set standard mods for each forum? Are we misinterpretting cherry picking and attributing a mushy ill defined job responsibility in the company that gets sort of passed around as a temporary chore that gets swept under the rug? or instantly deleted or ban hammered because that’s the quickest solution?
There’s a lot of questions. And honestly, it’s probably okay if we don’t find all the answers. Clearly some of us would like more understanding of the methodology. But is knowing the methodology going to change people’s behaviors on the forums? Not likely.
Looking at even bigger public platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. People are gonna post what they’re gonna post, it’s a tool available to utilize. If the mods don’t enforce their rules here consistently, then by all means that’s the nature of the beast and we all have to choose if it’s the right platform for our time and thoughts to be put into pixels. Otherwise it’s time to find a different pixel farm to sink our time into.
Everyone who has responded has definitely done their best to give a clear summary of their experiences, which answered a lot of my questions. So thanks for being one of them to give voice to what I was observing!
Here you go.
I want it to be fair, honest and down the middle. Nothing I have seen tells me that’s the case. If you have the approved message you can get away with just about anything. Like with my uncles 60 day ban. I challenge anyone who is intellectually honest, to use the words he did in any order and warrant a 60 day ban.
In todays age if you’re not on social media, you frankly don’t exist
Blizzards management have their performance bonuses linked to measurable improvements in diversity and inclusion, it’s more of a PR thing than anything else. I’m in favour of more diversity and inclusion, but I think most people would like the millions of LGBT+ threads merged into one thread where possible.
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You know your tired when you read the post and think it says, “So, what exactly are the MEDS doing…?”
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This was exactly the info I was looking for, thank you. That thread is a great read. I dunno why I didn’t think to look in customer service forums.
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I’ve noticed the Mods only step in once enough people cry.
I got a vacation when I didn’t say nice things about a forum bully when karma finally caught up with him IRL and he got a boo-boo.
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I can see it. And it is not called an addon btw. I kept commenting on the vids about exactly how many dislikes they had. So my comments are now shadowbanned to where if I log out of my account I cannot see them and no one else can see them either. So YT really wants to keep the videos they are promoting up and popular.
There are several things going on here that intermix.
- The folks who people had discussions with were not moderators. They were Community Managers. They have the ability to perform Moderation, but that is not really their job. There job is, in part, to collect feedback across the various platforms for the Devs, then relay it to them. Along with a ton of writing, publishing, marketing, media/influencer outreach, promotion campaigns, etc.
- Somewhere along the line Blizzard changed the policy about CMs interacting in a chatty way with the forums. They don’t do it anymore for any Blizzard game. Rarely they will answer a question about a patch note or a severe bug, but that is it. They don’t chat any more.
- The lack of regular presence makes people act like a unicorn showed up if one posts something besides an article or announcement.
- The forum software changed in 2018 from Blizzard in-house software to a product called Discourse. That is set up differently and limits us to 5 report flags per day per account*.
- Accounts are tracked at the character level, not Battletag level on the WoW forums. So each posting char has fresh flags and trust levels. All the other Blizzard forums tie it to Battletag.
- Moderators are part of the CS/GM team. They do not actively hang out and read the forums. They take tickets for ALL the Blizzard forums across all games. They don’t work 24/7. They don’t see patterns in posting by different characters very well. It is mostly a yes/no as to if something broke the forum Code of Conduct. Not much more than that.
- There are not a lot of forum Mods.
Now, as to automation. There is one aspect that is automated. If a post gets flagged enough it gets automatically greyed out and you have to click it. That is automatic. A mod then comes along (maybe), and either removes the flag, deletes they post, and/or maybe applies a penalty. So the actual account actions are not automated.
One of the biggest issues on the WoW forums is the forum accounts seeing each char as separate. That is something Blizz did on purpose to give an RP feeling - but is re-thinking and may change. Posting by Battletag with the Char as the avatar would greatly reduce some of the trolling/sockpuppeting.
It would not reduce the number of duplicate threads and the need to combine them. That is a problem they don’t do a good job tackling.
Yes, the MVPs and Council folks talk about it quite often. Moderation is not up to snuff and is very inconsistent.
I honestly feel, that in addition to switching us Battletags (with char for avatar) so that we have one trust level/flags/likes, that the CMs need to be active on the forums. Blizzard’s policy of just letting the players talk does not result in constructive feedback most of the time.
Mods and Community Managers are two different things. You may be partially correct (I honestly don’t know) about why they don’t let the CMs interact as much, but don’t mix up the two. CMs are not here to moderate as a general rule.
Correct. Moderators have no say in the policies. A post either follows the Code of Conduct or it does not. They also have no say in when their shifts are are, how many people handle reports per shift, etc. They have no control over what players flag or not and can’t read every thread on every forum looking for rules being broken.
Be back. Storms coming and I need to tidy up outside before they hit.
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Blizzard- send in the water carriers to try and put out fire.
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MVPs (which I am and have been for 10 years) and Council folks don’t represent Blizzard.
Further, if you read what I said, and know anything about my posting history, you know I don’t agree with the inconsistent and nearly non existent moderation that goes on across Blizzard forums. You would also see that I don’t agree with the policy that prevents CMs from interacting on a broader basis with the forums.
Or did you just want to say something because “colors of text” without it being true?
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We all knew it was a PR stunt, from green to gold. Bla bla bla
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This is definitely a situation to explore. I don’t think posting Btags publicly is necessary, but somehow limiting users to one identifying avatar/character (maybe their oldest character on the account at least max level 30) is an option to consider. I regularly have to clean out my btag friends list and messages, because I’ll add people from Pugs and see if they gel with our mythics groups. If not they get a farewell and moved on to better things. I don’t mind posting under Btag, but I think if it’s not somehow gated, it’ll be a mess of weird boosting advertisements or whatever else others might use that info for once it’s let loose in the wild.
You mention that other forums do use Btag as identifiers though. So maybe that’s already been a problem that’s been worked out.
This made me laugh. It’s both funny and unfortunate. Players crave interaction with the game devs and moderators, but understandably not all interactions are created equally. There definitely has to be some parameters for constructive conversation rather than just a bazillion troll posts or emotionally reactive comments.
I imagine mods have a million tasks to execute, they cannot answer every single query sent across the platform. Moderating for all the games would drive me looney. I can barely comb through everything going on in this forum, let alone the thought of multiple forums for multiple games. Scary.
I’m not opposed to the players just allowed to talk, so long as it’s relevant to the game some way. It doesn’t even have to be constructive. The hamburger mount post, is silly, fun and just a way to kill time with some laughs. When you can’t access your computer and have to resort to possibly connecting with the community on the forums by smart phone, I get the allure of just dorking around. Technically the game and the forums are for entertainment - and as we sit here reading we are thus entertained.
All of this is really good information to have. There’s obviously concerns and complaints about the quality of the posts getting through the forums. Player confusion about what is and isn’t allowed when, by who, or conversely why they get banned. More moderator consistency would possibly build confidence.
But is forum community confidence going to affect sales and overall game experiences? That would actually be interesting to investigate, if engagement affects sales and loyalty. I bet there’s gotta be some data analysis out there on that. I forsee a Google search in my future.
Long story short, maybe this kind of information should be stickied somewhere, if the forum moderation topic seems to keep arising? I definitely think your post and the thread Arlenadja brought to the discussion were valuable to understand that players concerns have been heard, how actions are being taken and what improvements are being considered.
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Every other Blizzard forum uses our Battletag. Battletags are a user selected name that shares nothing about our real life. Further, they are far more secure than char-server. Char server lets anyone add you to their friends list in game without permission, send you messages in game without permission, send you mail in game without permission.
Battletag only lets people message or friend you with you directly approving the request. They can’t bother you in game, or anywhere, without your permission.
For the Discourse software the default is to use the single identifier, in this case Btag. Blizzard made a special request for changes to allow the character posting we have now which does not work well with the Discourse trust permissions/flags/likes. It means one Battlenet account which can have 8 WoW licenses has up to 50 chars per account so up to 400 per Bnet account to post with. Not counting all the Classic chars per Bnet.
Not likely. Forums are one of the least used forms of “social media” for game companies. Twitter, reddit, Discord and even Facebook have more users.
It comes up from time to time on the CS forums. So I know they are at least aware of the issues with char posting vs Battletag posting and are thinking of doing something? I have no idea what or when though.
The lack of moderation staff wise, is in part because they are the CS/GM team who have a huge backlog of tickets. I don’t know how they staff and prioritize, but the forums don’t seem to be the priority.
Community Managers (who are not moderators) not being able to freely chat here is a policy that is also something long term that MVPs and others have complained about. Blizzard’s lack of communication is well known. I don’t know that they will change it… BUT they have been putting out a weekly or biweekly news update. The Council experiment is also a way to have Devs weigh in on some topics where people can read. Mixed results/opinions on that so far.
Well that’s something!
That’s interesting. You’ve mentioned in a couple posts these Community Managers.
What exactly is their role, do you know? If they’re not here to moderate and not here to chat/explain things to players, and not really merging threads or doing typical forum housekeeping, what’s their purpose? Seems like they’re a bit lost in ambiguity.
Yes, I do have a pretty good idea what their role is. I posted about it on the Council forums along with a recent Job Posting for an Associate Community Manager (the junior role)
This is from that post and the post link with more info is at the bottom.
Community Managers (CMs) don’t take tickets. They have a very different role at Blizzard. Their job is to take feedback across forums, reddit, streams, third party websites, etc. To write and publish patch notes, news posts, forum notices, game changes. They also do engagement campaigns, promotions, and outreach. They engage and work with the media, streamer community, focus groups for raid testing and all the coordination that goes with that.
While CMs have the ability to moderate forums, that is not something they usually do. That is handled by the Forum Moderators who review forum reports that we flag. Those same Forum Mods are like the GMs who handle reports from the game.
Here is a recent Associate Community Manager role job posting.
Blizzard Entertainment games don’t just begin with game ideas or end once those games are released. A lot more goes into the creation of a Blizzard product than the work of developers—and we support our games for years after they’re in the hands of gamers worldwide. Operations teams support, evangelize, and improve our games. The Global World of Warcraft Publishing team is seeking a community professional who is passionate about player communities, brand communications, marketing, and customer support. They would join our community development team, who is dedicated to creating and maintaining relationships with our community of players.
The ideal candidate is driven, creative, and is a self-starter who possesses strong task management skills with a proven track record of successful community management and development experience in the entertainment industry. They are a tireless advocate for the voice of the player, constantly seeking to build bridges, trust, and foster constructive dialogue.
Responsibilities:
- Act as public-facing representative of Blizzard and communicate on behalf of the brand across multiple channels and at events
- Contribute to the design and execution of community development programs for World of Warcraft
- Support communication plans and channel management
- Create and maintain relationships with community partners including fansites, content creators, and volunteers
- Engage with players at in-person and online events Work closely with the various teams developing and supporting World of Warcraft
- Compile and relay meaningful feedback on the sentiment, suggestions, and concerns of the community
- Support the live operations of World of Warcraft with public-facing messaging tailored to our audience Develop official communications for upcoming game changes and content
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in communications, marketing, or related field or equivalent work experience
- Minimum four years’ experience with brand communications, forums, and social media
- Experience with channel management, publishing calendars, reporting & analytics
- Familiarity with project management and process improvement
- Ability to meet deliverables amid a fast-paced, high volume environment
- Able to travel, including international travel, and work long hours including weekends as needed
Pluses
- Advanced degrees in communication, marketing, or related field
- Third party relationship management experience
- Project management training and experience
- A passionate gamer possessing ample experience with World of Warcraft and/or World of Warcraft Classic
- Experience with content management systems, html, or other publishing platforms
- Existing strong personal network within Blizzard’s communities Fansite, creator, and/or streaming experience within the WoW community
- Video production and/or graphic arts experience
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Everything has been like that since the pandemic
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