Breakfast Topic: How to fix the official forums
by David Nelson 
Dec 27th 2006 at 8:31AM
The WoW.com forums occasionally provide some insight or humor, but for the most part are a cesspool of stupid comments, flaming and ridiculous antics. This is really unfortunate, as while there are a ton of good World of Warcraft community sites out on the net, the WoW.com forums are the most visible and almost certainly the most visited. The forums could really be a place for good discussion...if only they weren't nearly useless in their current form.My question for you folks is this: Is there any way possible to make the WoW.com forums a useful community building tool? Or is it simply a lost cause? There are some other gaming sites that manage to keep some semblance of order and usefulness...Cheap Ass Gamer and NeoGAF come to mind (albeit on a smaller scale), so it can be done. But how can Blizzard to do it on the scale of the WoW.com forums? Is it an impossible task? Or something that simply requires more community policing and stricter moderation? Any examples of well run WoW forums out there?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Features
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
oomu Dec 27th 2006 8:37AM
of course there is a way : TO USE IT !
to post, to answer and to NOT CARE if there are morons.
tss.. you are writing for others, not yourself, so why it would be important if there are flams, stupids comments or whatever.
good posts are useful for readers. even if they don't answer.
Doodzin Dec 27th 2006 8:49AM
The anonymous nature of forum posting somehow brings out the inner ass-hat in some people.
One way to fix this is to allow only level 60+ posters, meaning no more low-level forum troll posts. Your main would have to own every comment you make. That would hurt the very casual posters or altaholics. But hey, how much do you really know about WoW if you haven't hit 60?
If Blizzard had unlimited human resources, they could edit all posts on the front end, meaning they give it a quick thumbs up or down before the post goes up. With the sheer volume of posts out there it might be hard. But then all of us wouldn't have to skip through all the "l2play noob" posts because they wouldn't be there in the first place. Some editing does go on post-posting, with deleted/locked threads, but not enough in my opinion.
Perhaps code could be written to check for use of leetspeak, but hey, some people might like reading posts in leetspeak, I for one, do not.
In the end any kind of censorship would reduce the current egalitarianism of the system as it exists now.
If people want to be total jerks on the forums, there is not much you can do to get around it.
Brinstar Dec 27th 2006 8:58AM
Authoritarian levels of control? Stamping out stupidity wherever it rears its ugly head?
The problems with the forums is that anyone is allowed to say whatever the hell they want, no matter how stupid it is. To weed out all of that nonsense, moderators can more controlling over what gets posted and quickly lock down threads that start to regress into stupidity. This will never happen because there would be an uproar and lots of qq-ing about how it's "not fair," and how they are taking away "free speech" and stuff.
The other way to get rid of all that shit is if the other people posting and reading on the forum would exercise social control over the trolls, the flamers, and morons by not tolerating that sort of behaviour.
Being shutdown by your peers has a way of teaching you not to continue to engage in behaviours that others find unacceptable in society (e.g. the microcosm of the WOW.com forums). It's a bit slower than the iron fist of being moderated, but it's probably more effective.
If the vast majority of forum readers/posters didn't tolerate stupidity, then there would be a lot less of it going around. I blame the entire forum community for the stupidity, whether they are actually being stupid or not, because tolerating stupidity just allows it to happen.
Urmacht Dec 28th 2006 3:10AM
http://forums.worldofwar.net/index.php
I like this one, it's pretty civil, without much flaming or trolling; and it gets past websense at work too^^
Rosemary Dec 27th 2006 9:26AM
The problem is at this point, the culture at the wow.com forums is pretty nasty. It will take a while to turn around no matter what. Though some forums are better than others: you don't often see flame wars in the professions area, for example.
Social control would be great, but how could it be used in the wow.com forums? Sure, any poster can call any other poster a troll/idiot/whatever, but more often than not that just leads to the same accusations being bounced back. There may be more social pressure in the realm forums, but even so, the anonymity of the internet won't stop most from their freedom to be a jackass. In addition, without a pm system in place in the forums, organizing people across realms to shun certain users would be very difficult.
I agree with the first poster. Blizzard should moderate more strictly. They often seem more interested in being everyone's friend. Or (just as likely), they don't want to allocate the resources to moderating their forums.
Deam Dec 27th 2006 9:59AM
1 new thread every 3-4 days, that way it is more inclined to be well thought out, And the well thought out threads aren't 2nd paged in 20 seconds. Replies can stay the same because alot of my posts are meant to draw replies and opinions.
Arras Dec 27th 2006 10:21AM
i see two problems with the WoW forums
1) The CMs - they do good work and generally keep things clean...when they're around, which isn't a whole lot and they really just focus on a few forums. Granted, keeping each board fully staffed would be a tremendous undertaking and Blizzard's money could be spent better elsewhere...perhaps give some of the MVPs the power to lock a thread?
2)The other problem is the people. There is a lot of good information and lots of insightful people post there and ask good questions and give good feedback. And then there are the trolls...effing Trolls. They've really taken over some boards and probably prevent a lot of people from asking questions or providing feedback because they don't want to get bogged down in an immature flame war - that's at least why I don't post there very frequently.
So, yeah. Blizzard, fix those two little problems and we'll be good to go :D
Tekkub Dec 27th 2006 4:25PM
There are a few basic changes that would help a bunch, IMO...
1) User can only "choose" their highest level player to post as. If they have multiple 60's then they can choose from those.
2) In realm forums, limit the poster to chars from that server, unless they don't have one. Just like (1) this will help reduce flame posts posted on L1 alts.
-- If (1) and (2) aren't implemented, at least let users see the L1 alt's other toons. The anonymity must be removed, period.
3) Implement a simple rating system for posts, like what slashdot or thott use. Every user can rate a post up or down once. Bad posts will quickly fall below the threshold.
4) Implement some very simple filters. For example, any short post beginning with the word "first".
5) Server-side blocking of posts that break rules like "NEVER POST WITH A TITLE IN ALL CAPS"
(1), (2), and (3) are the main ones, these would reduce flames and let "the community" get rid of stupid posts easily.
Jack Dec 27th 2006 10:49AM
Well, for one, any post with "Blue Please Read" in the title should be deleted, as well as any thread with the word "signed" in it, as these threads are stupid and get nothing done. Instead, there needs to be a player to dev discussion forum that devs will actually hang out in and answer intelligent questions/delete the stupid people who just QQ all day.
Also, perhaps a private messaging/ranking system could be installed similar to other forums on the net. The account names would be listed with each character, and each account would have its own private message/rankings pool so that if someone posts something stupid on their alt, they will get PMs and other players could give them negative ranks, and because their alts and main share the same ratings pool they will have to own up to it. People could have a limited amount of +/- ranks they could give each person per post (say, 1 per person per post similar to the comment rating system on digg) to limit rankings spamming either in the up or down direction.
This system would work well because if someone is a troll that just flames the forums all the live long day, their low ranking will show up on their alts as well as their main, all but destroying their credibility in any conversation and perhaps even on their home server.
Dahlaine Dec 27th 2006 10:54AM
If blizzard took the time to read and respond to a greater number of forums with a greater frequency, there would be a good chance that the forums in general would improve. The problem as I see it now, is that just about 99% of feedback comes in the General forums which have no direction and are very prone to trolling. If, for instance, there were daily responses in the Professions, Raids and Dungeons, Suggestions and even the Class forums, it would likely defuse much of the trolling and allow for far more thoughtful posts to carry through. The only flaw to this plan is the fact that Blizzard is not likely to spend the kind of money to expand their CM staff to the size that would be required to undertake such a task. As it is now, it is very easy to simply troll the General and one or two class forums and ruin good discussions.
Ignacio Dec 27th 2006 11:14AM
Azgalor has their own forum run by players.
www.azgalor.org
i believe it was made since the actual realm forums were always down.
easyfix Dec 27th 2006 1:06PM
start slamming people with 1week suspensions.
Start enforcing and that will keep most in check.
The LACK of enforcement encourages stupidity to flourish.
Eclipsia Dec 27th 2006 10:03PM
-If they can the possibility to ignore someone in the forum, it would be nice.
-Rank this reply or post. Does it help? If not then give a low rank. Low rank could be erase.
-Is there a moderator? Please do your job Blizzard as a moderator. I do mine on our guild forum. If thing goes out of hand...erase the reply or the post.
Druid dude Dec 27th 2006 11:23AM
People have a sense of entitelment in the WoW forums, a belief in a right to post whatever they want. Many believe that not only *can* they be as rude of a jackass as they want to be, but that they have some sort of god-given right to.
I believe that paying our $15 a month gives us the right to play the video game, but not the right to any sort of forums. The WoW forums are a free bonus given to us by Blizzard. We are essentially guests in their house when we go to the forums. Instead of using the forums for constructive discussion and as a place to voice legitimate concerns, it seems like most people prefer to trash the house and piss all over the furniture.
Why this behavior is acceptable to Blizzard is beyond me. If someone comes to your house and insults the other people there, insults you and complains about how you haven't done a good enough job in providing them a free place to visit, what would you do? For me, I would toss them out on their ungrateful arse and never invite them back again, probably after beating them down like a redheaded step child!
It I worked at Blizzard, and was put in charge of cleaning up the forums, I would take drastic steps. People posting inflammatory crap would get a 30 day forum ban, no questions asked. Second time, 90 days. Third time, permaban. I would make it very clear to forum users that the forums are in fact a free service, given on a best effort basis. There are no gaurantees, and use of the forums is a privelage, not a right. People that lose sight of that fact will lose this privilage.
Yes, their would be an outcry and much whining by an extremely vocal minority. It would subside in a short time. I think many many more people would be very glad to see the WoW forums cleaned up, and that these people would outnumber the whiners by a massive ratio.
Anyway, thats my thought on the matter. Probably good thing I am not in charge of such things LOL!
Rayze Dec 27th 2006 11:21AM
Moderators...each forum should have at least 2 moderators. It's obvious that the little kids need chaperones so that's what it will take to keep everything in order. Obviously, Blizz doesn't consider it a high priority or this problem would've been rectified ages ago.
Chris Wood Dec 27th 2006 11:23AM
Simple answer, Blizzard should not be responding to general posts in an official capacity. So much of the problems with the official forums are "Blue said this, blue lied about this, blue why won't you answer my thread" the same problems existed with the EQ forums that I hated. Have a forum for official posts where the Blizz reps can post important notices or write general responses to questions and trends in the forum, but never post as blue in the general forums. If they feel the need to discuss and interact with the customer base, do it on charachter accounts that can be created randomly on a weekly basis so it appears to be more a level discussion among players instead of the demanding whine fest where any wrong word written in blue gets stored away and referenced for years.
Jack Dec 27th 2006 11:33AM
Well, I posted it on the WoW official forums, you guys can view it here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=59492695&postId=592574014&sid=1#2
Now lets see how long it takes to die.
Mike OHara Dec 27th 2006 11:33AM
One great example of a great player-run forum was the unofficial realm forums for Hellscream ... unfortunately the site's owner let the domain expire.
Rayze Dec 27th 2006 12:00PM
@#12: Are you kidding? Morons would just flame each other instead of flame the blue posts...ppl just want to flame and if there aren't any blues they'll easily pick on each other as they already do in great capacity.
Jack Dec 27th 2006 12:01PM
I made a thread about this in the general forums, if anyone is interested in posting there.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=82F113DC5591A5CF806B993BCCA76048?topicId=59492695&sid=1