Feedback on Moderation Policies and Actions

Feedback and Suggestions
1

EHG_Kain indicated that feedback on moderation policies is acceptable within the locked “cautionary tale” thread:

Hopefully that’s true. I have 3 main concerns I wish to raise regarding the moderation policies and actions pertaining to that thread.

  1. Lack of clarity in the TOS and Posting Guidelines regarding “inappropriate content”
    The FAQ for the forums is found here: FAQ - Last Epoch Forums
    While the TOS is found here: https://lastepoch.com/legal
    EHG_Kain indicated Real world politics, religion, and ideology are against the rules. That’s entirely fair, the logic that the forums and game should serve as an escape from such things is certainly valid. Except, the rules mention nothing of the sort. The closest they come is to say that ‘inappropriate subject matter’ is not permitted. If you want people to avoid discussion on a topic, you should define those topics. No one inherently has a way to know ahead of time that it’s not permitted, after all, one of the tenants in the FAQ is “Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be”, and a place where philosophy and ideology can’t be discussed is by default a less interesting place to be.

So I’m not saying discussion of those topics should be permitted. But those restrictions on subject matter should be defined and listed in the FAQ and / or posting policy, so that those who read the rules and endeavor to follow them can avoid them in the first place.

  1. Lack of enforcement of listed policies.
    Following the closure of that topic, there was an individual who had specifically posted right before it was closed in a fashion which was rife with personal insults, and which was directly defamatory. This is a violation of the explicit terms, as well as the general FAQ guidance of ‘keep it civil’ and ‘criticize ideas, not people’. The posts in question have subsequently been removed, but the individual in question hasn’t missed a day of posting since, so I know that at no point were their posting privileges suspended. This means not only engaging with the topic matter in question (which they did) but also flagrantly violating the expressly defined TOS and posting guidelines was not enough to warrant such a suspension.

  2. Enforcement of ideological agreement via moderation actions
    I, on the other hand, was temporarily suspended. And while there was not any notifications via email or otherwise expressing Why, based on timing I must infer it was for my participation in that thread. Unlike the aforementioned individual, at no point was I anything other than civil. Nothing I posted contained personal abuse, foul language, and in no way was it harassing, threatening, hateful, discriminatory, or defamatory. Given that, and the lack of enforcement actions against someone else participating in the same ‘inappropriate subject matter’, the only conclusion which can be drawn is that someone used their sole human discretion after finding my post offensive or obscene. As they simply contained my opinions, that means they find someone having opinions or beliefs which differ from their own to be offensive or obscene, which is the very definition of bigotry. This is, to say the least, not ideal.

None of the above is a violation of any of your policies or terms of course. It’s your game, your site, your forum. You can have vague and unhelpful TOS and posting guidelines and retroactively deem subject matter inappropriate without explicitly defining it beforehand. You can ignore blatant violations of your terms and fail to take moderation actions against those who are wildly uncivil. And you can have bigoted moderators who punish those who differ from themselves in belief or opinion with moderation actions. That’s entirely your prerogative.

But I wanted to give the feedback that not only do I find all of those to be issues personally, it flies in the face of the stated goal of not making people feel less welcome in the community. After all, when there’s no clarity on what discussion is and is not permitted, and when it doesn’t matter whether or not you are civil or follow the listed rules or not, when the only thing that actually matters is whether or not your beliefs and opinions match those of the moderators, that to me is certainly a far less welcoming place to be. And far less interesting.

2

Clear rules would be helpful in theory. The problem is no rule can be clear enough, and players will find ways to avoid them. My problem with the TOS is not the lack of clarity. It is the fact it is done by bots using a flag system. As you correctly asked, who flagged it? Could I or someone else in hypothetical case go make 20 alt accounts and just go flag anyone I don’t like and have them banned?

This is same reason I don’t like democracy and why I support EHG making all decisions. EHG Kain should just flat out say that. As I posted in the other thread, the fact is they do silence criticism. That is perfectly fine. What is not ok is pretending that is not the case.

If I had my own forum, that would be how I would write a/ the tos. I got final word and everyone had to respect that. That’s good and all

3

This is linked to you by the system every time a comment you make is removed or moderated: FAQ - Last Epoch Forums

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.

You posted a bunch of blatantly bigoted comments and got a crackdown for it. There’s no mystery here and there is no lack of clarity. Just like the OP of the Cautionary Tale thread, if you got a suspension it was absolutely not just for saying innocuous words about politics. Many comments were removed, but so far the only people who got actually suspended from that thread were - shockingly - also the only ones making bigoted comments.

They moderated on just about everybody. It just so happens that blatant, unabashed bigotry is kind of a bigger deal than just being rude to bigots. Use as much of that tired Motte and Bailey/dogwhistle playbook as you want - You do not have a “difference of opinion”, you are not the victim of ideological persecution or bigotry or bias, you have a hateful intolerance that should not be welcome anywhere. What you are doing has an established name, it’s DARVO, and it’s what abusers and bigots do to avoid responsibility for the reprehensible opinions they have and awful ways they treat others.

Meanwhile, this thread isn’t feedback. You’re just doing the same thing that my 6 year old does when she gets sent to her room. You got in trouble, you don’t like it, and you’re looking for anything you can come up with to justify feeling indignant - including and especially complete dishonesty about your behavior - instead of learning your lesson and being a better person.

The only thing wrong that happened here was your suspension being temporary instead of permanent.

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4

Those rules act as a general guideline, the issue arises when companies act against their guidelines and actively censor things.
Which is why I always find it very off-putting if a company removes comments towards them for ‘negativity’. They’re actively ruining their best source of feedback this way, disgruntled people often have an argument to make… just not the words for it after all.

As for the issue with why different people are treated different? Well, that’s definitely circumstances, they’re included.
Person ‘A’ making a offensive comment which generalizes a whole group together in a overall bad light or makes clearly inflammatory or outright defamatory comments towards someone will get ‘their ass kicked’ so to speak.
In comparison person ‘B’ which points out the things which person ‘A’ does wrong while also stating that a change in behavior is expected to lead back to the discussion at hand will not be punished even when using some… ‘more direct wordings’ at times.

Why? Because ‘A’ does escalate a situation and reaches out of the general social norms on how proper communication is handled and ‘B’ provides the verbal ‘slap on the back of someone’s head’ in comparison, which is socially generally accepted to a degree.

Clear guidelines with distinct examples open loopholes, this is not a democracy and should never be. EHG are the leaders of their product and provide it to us ‘as is’. We can comment on it, complain, make suggestions, talk about it. If it endangers the status of the communication overall to become ‘toxic’ (there’s a myriad of stuff in there and many misconceptions for individuals, nonetheless I’ll use that term for simplicity) then obviously EHG will give the respective people who incite this a slap on the back of their writs or worst-case point them right towards the entrance. This is normal and fully understandable.

5

This is false. If you actually believe it to be true, please report the specific instances of it directly. Any critical statement that was deleted was done so because it was in a manner which broke the rules in other ways. We are extremely strict about not removing criticism [of LE or EHG] because it is critical or what it is critical about. Additionally, we wouldn’t let positive comments sit if they were equally bad in those other ways.

I will also remind you that misrepresenting moderation status is also against the forum rules. It puts us in a very difficult situation of having to call out people directly and it just gets so messy.

For the main topic here, I’m sorry, I wasn’t involved with what you’re referring to GiantOctopodes so I don’t really have anything to add to that but I expect that we will take a closer look at it on Monday.

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Feel free to look through the thread. As i said above, your perfectly fine with silencing criticism. That is not the issue. The issue is the lying about it.

Now if you want to ban me go ahead. But keep in mind I ain’t criticizing you all, I am supporting your decision. I merely pointing out the fact bellow that what you saying is untrue. Have a fun read and have a good day.

Case 1: inappropriate

I dont think the devs would consider this change even if i wrote it in a more articulated way, these are the people who could not get servers working with the funding of tencent who has 100K people and somehow are incompetent enough to ask players on feedback instead of just fixing things as would be common sense.

I dont expect the devs anything outside of messing stuff up harder. i use emotions for the masses and leave facts for the few is a well known expression that explains well. Since facts do not sway them, maybe emotion will

nothing wrong with saying this. Tencent has 100K people working for them. You are all funded by them, where exactly is this innapropriate? I expect better from professional developers in a large company

Case 2: Innapropriate

I agree. My voidknight is bricked his potential cause some clown amongst the devs thought it was a good idea to not add mana pots to LE.

Point of ARPGs is to make crazy build, sticking a rod in wheels of mana regen is such a borked decision the person who made it should be fired and never work on another design idea again. Why this game should been fully offline like all proper arpgs

**there is nothing inappropriate about calling bad game devs to be fired. Irl incompetent people are laid off. Simple fact of life. **

Case 3: Innapropriate

You have articulated very well, and i would say better then the vast majority of people probably could. I think we all appreciate feedback from a developer especially since the feedback we provided has been similar.

Go make your own game, you would likely do it better then these clowns. Cant even get servers working after 5 years in early access.

**Advising someone to make their own game is not inappropriate. **

Case 4: Innapropriate

From development stand point why would they? 95% of players are casuals so will never use cycles or any of the end game stuff- I suspect the devs are intentionally not fixing anything as they want to force most people offline to save costs.

I think they are just “saying” they are working, but not actually doing anything, because no way 90+ devs can not figure this out. Only reason its not fixed, is they are not fixing it.

Once people quit or beat campaign it will go down, and will be playable. Just is what it is

there is nothing Innapropriate about whaf i said here.

These are the main examples. However you also removed the posts where i showed that grinding in LE is largly a waste of time.

Case 1

Have fun yall. After watching, did you come down to the same conclussion as me?

providing functional content is not spam

tldr

Posts have been censored. That is fine, jts ok to censor posts. Just do not pretend or lie that is not the case. Toxic positivity is not something to strive for. You all should know that i think

7

That is something I’ve never ever seen from EHG and I know what I’m talking about because I call out shit when I see it and they always took it like champs and answered on it as well.
They only moderated content when a line was crossed or if the community flagged something a lot like some old threads were one very… special person though it would be a good thing to insult everyone ^^.

They even left some more heated posts open when they don’t get totaly out of hand.

So far I think EHG and their moderation in the forums is one of the most open I wittnessed in let’s say 2 decades.

I think people should point out examples and mention them to EHG and have a quick talk with them because it’s only human to overlook things and feedback is never bad.

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In all those examples, it’s more likely that the community flagged them because you’re either insulting (calling the devs clowns, repeatedly) or slandering (saying they’re intentionally not fixing things), just because you’re salty, sometimes even insulting just because of game design decisions.

And with enough reports, the mods simply deleted it. Not the devs. This is an important distinction.

I’ve also had posts deleted because they were flagged by the community. For example, one where I just complained that people should search for open threads, or one where I just said “Bingo”, because they were not helpful to the discussion and were sort of disruptive.
And I just saw that and moved on.

There is no conspiracy from the devs against you, as much as you like those theories. There is just the community flagging stuff and the mods acting on that. And this works for both “sides” of the fence.

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The even funnier part is… if I compare it to other forums then:

A: I won’t even be able to write a messed up fucked up post that is ass because the automation in the backround of the forum fobids it.
B: Even if i was able to I would be silenced by mods 24/7 because they would find my use of language inapropiate.
C: Go and try to give other devs a friction of the shit EHG had to stand at their release and see what happens.

I don’t understand why people don’t praise EHG for their effort to not police speech like other companies do. I love but I’m kind of a vile and bad mouthed human beeing so I’m maybe biased :smiley: .

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Your spelling leaves something to be desired as well & that’s a far greater sin in my book…

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Am I the only one who has a visual giant gap between my las post and LLama8’s?

If it’s a sin in your book I’m fine with it anyway :smiley: . Then again I’m looking for some cheap english classes right now because I’m unhappy with the state of my english writing skills that have suffered big time :frowning: .

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English is my second language as well, even though I’d like to think I read/write it pretty well. And that’s because I’ve been reading books in english for well over 20 years.

Your ability to read/write a language is very much linked to your visual memory. If you read a lot, you’ll see the words written a lot and you’ll know the proper spelling because you’ve seen it written multiple times, including in the context of many specific phrases.

So my advice to you is: you already write decent english. You can get your point across. You make spelling errors and you may lack some vocabulary. Reading in english will fix that. And

I mean actual writers, not posts on the internet, since those achieve the opposite goal, given that many people don’t really know how to write properly either or know the difference between they’re/their/there.

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A lot of allegedly native English speakers don’t know that difference. Or your/you’re. It’s depressing.

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Yeah, I know. My brother in law is a kiwi and I see in his posts that he keeps getting those wrong.

To be fair, I do believe it’s because most people don’t read books and their visual source of spelling is the internet. So it’s a snowball thing. You see it being used wrong but think it’s right, so you do the same thing and other people see that and keep replicating it.
Also, some people don’t really care.

Also, to be fair, sometimes that is how languages evolve. That’s why color/colour is a thing in “american english”/“uk english”. And many other spelling variations.

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I read watch and speak english stuff without any issues. I have problems writing my native language as well so I’m okay with it. Then again I remember my school and working days that used more english then my native language and everything was a non issue. I just had no practice for a lot of time and writing isn’t my strong suite anyway ^^.

Yeah then I’m fubar ^^. Afantasia says no to visual memory and imagination ^^.

I don’t know if there is an english lecture about the seit/seid issue in the german language anywhere but this drives me nutz every time ^^.

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I also have Aphantasia (yes, that is the correct spelling :laughing:) but it doesn’t affect this. When you see a word written in a certain way enough times, it becomes a sort of “muscle memory”. Even if you can’t willingly picture it.
And this is also true for bad spellings. So being selective in what you read helps.

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Nah, I think that’s just because you’re German not because you have Aphantasia.

Practice & constructive feedback helps. My manager is Indian & generally his spoken & written English is excellent, but there are a few things that he’s likely translating literally into English rather than using the English equivalent, though for the life of me I can’t think of any at the moment.

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No you’re not.

What you’re strict about is removal of comments and locking threads that criticise LE, while ignoring everyone’s else blatant attack towards players that do criticize the game, and preventing them to share anything without being constantly attacked and harassed and told how wrong they are, meanwhile there are myriad of threads of people praising LE, and not 1 dissenting player has went there to tell them how wrong they are for thinking like that.

Exibit A: Where players are pointing out their opinions, and tons of others telling them how wrong they are for expressing their opinions.
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/its-your-own-fault-for-gamers-leaving-the-game/71151/171

Staff locked my account for a whole week for making 3 comments that had not 1 insulting remark towards anyone. The reason was of provocative content while defending my opinions. How does one post provocative content if they’re defend their opinions? Are provocative opinions illegal here? If any?

At most I made 1 comment where I implied a person made a dumb reply, and it was in regards to what they typed, I didn’t call them dumb. We’re all dumb about certain things in certain isolated moments. Nobody is perfect.

Exibit B: People praising what they like about LE, and not 1 comment telling them they’re wrong.

These examples are abundant on the forum. You allow players to gaslight others, but I guess it’s perfectly fine when they’re on the side of “the game is perfect”.
Every dissenting opinion is met with the same aggressive “no, you’re wrong” comments which get more and more provocative, and nobody is doing anything about it.
If you value criticism this wouldn’t be the case.

I emailed other EHG staff about my wrongful mute, with examples, and the reasons and every comment I made, and 1 full week later, nobody has yet to reply to it. I was singled out, branded as the aggressor for defending my opinion, meanwhile everyone else who were free to tell me how wrong I am and prevented me and everyone else in that thread express their opinions freely without being called out about how wrong they are as if everyone praising the game is an authority of what a good game is supposed to be.

There has not been a reply to my email and request for other staff other than the one who wrongfully muted me to review my case, and nobody replied because frankly, you don’t really care…

So I removed the game from my library. You wouldn’t even delete my forum account. I sent the request several times. And now, when I see blatant bs like this, I had to buy it again just to post here.

TLDR: You only care about moderating the criticisms, and nothing else while turning a blind eye to everyone that harasses the people that express them.
Time to refund. Bye~

Edit to clarify:
You have been silenced from the forum until June 1, 2024, 2:43am.

Reason - Too combative

Hello SpoonedKiwi,

Your forum account has been suspended until 05/31/2024 for instigating, player harassment, and trolling. Please read up on our code of conduct here: https://lastepoch.com/code-of-conduct#harassing-defamatory to prevent future infractions.

Regards,

EHG_Kain

Instigating, player harassment, and trolling. Okay sure.
I’d like to challenge anyone to point out where in the code of conduct is “too combative” a reason to mute someone, review the locked thread, and point out where I have broken the code of conduct.

It’s also interesting that it’s the same moderator in question.

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So I was bored and I read through the whole thread. While i get the point you made there. i understand everyone who read what you wrote in a manner where the code of conduct was violated.

Oh on top of that I had a lot of healthy discussions about droprates and whatnot with members of this coomunity. As well as I bluntly said that the game offers no meaningfull content and whatnot. Guess what i was never moderated for this. The only time i was moderated was my own fault because I missed an important part in the CoC ^^.

Well see you next time when you buy the game to write soething and then refunding it I guess.

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Go to specific instances and compare them to the CoC.

The instigators in that thread is everyone who is raising the frustration of the players who are posting their issues with the game by telling them how wrong they are for thinking that way. Nobody here is free to post their opinions without being in one way or another called on it for being wrong. When the opinion is completely subjective to that person.

Any comment about the email that I haven’t had a reply on for over a week? My request for someone else to review the case?