A detailed attempt to explain why we need more moderators.

[DeMonkey]

I've been saying this for awhile now, but I feel I might as well attempt a thread explaining why a bit better.

I'm going to repeatedly refer to this thread regarding current moderators, and whilst things may have changed somewhat the information appears to be relatively up to date.

1) Insufficient number of moderators.

As per the thread we have 13 volunteer moderators for the global forums. This number is not enough for a forum that now has over 4 million registered users and has peaked at 70,000 online users, not to mention that Yaerion is no longer actually a moderator making the number 12.

In the thread it is stated that upon coming out of closed beta DE were swamped with forum reports and that's why they were bringing people in, this was back in 2013. The community has increased by a sizable amount over the course of the past 5 years and as such the number of reports is going to have increased by a comparable amount (it's logical to assume that if the community doubles in size, the amount of reports doubles in size).

It'd also be logical to assume that if the community has doubled, you need double the moderators. Pick a ratio, bring in more moderators to fit that ratio, stick to that ratio so that you're bringing in new people as the community continues to grow.

2) Inactivity.

Real life takes priority, no excuses need to be made for a moderator not being around to moderate. I've certainly taken my fair share of breaks from the forums due to real life issues.

But when you have moderators away, others need to be brought in. This doesn't need explaining.

Without naming names,

We have a moderator that's performed 4 acts of moderation since 2015, another that hasn't performed any since 2016.
We have a moderator that hasn't even logged in since last year.
We have several moderators who moderate one thread every week or two, others disappear for months on end.

The number of moderators I see regularly (you know who you are, I appreciate the hell out of you) I can count on one hand, frankly I could probably chop off a couple of my fingers on that hand and still have enough.

Leading back to what I said about ratios, based on what I'm seeing at the moment we have 1 regular moderator for every 1 ~ 1.3 million registered accounts.

That is not a good ratio.

3) Sub-par moderation with regards to closing messages.

This one is arguable, certainly, but still an issue. I'm directly referring to the issue raised by @--Q--Voltage here.

I'll simply repeat what I said in that thread, 

''I'm struggling to even understand why this started in the first place because it didn't used to happen, if it's a case of time restraints then in my opinion they shouldn't be moderating in the first place. Copy and pasting a response (which is all that's required for half these threads) shouldn't take up much time at all, and if that's still too much then yeah, shouldn't be moderating. If life is taking up that much time (which is entirely fair of course) then you should be bringing in people who can dedicate an appropriate amount of time to it.''

Closing thoughts.

Again, I fully understand not wanting to be on the forums, I am not shaming any moderators and I feel no ill will towards any of them for taking a break, for having a life.

The only thing that I am unhappy about is simply that more haven't been brought in. There are times when threads last for hours despite being lock worthy from the very first post, I recall a certain thread in Off Topic that was someone posting racist jokes. Lasted almost a day to my recollection despite almost immediate outcry.

I decided to not include staff members, because whilst you certainly moderate it's the same issue I presented above. Intermittent moderation. Again, completely fine, you have actual jobs to be attending to.

Apologies for the long post, really wanted to drive this home.

[GinKenshin]

Monkey for president! 

[(PSN)purpleskullgamin]

10 minutes ago, GinKenshin said:

Monkey for president! 

...

And I thought I should go to bed, but a monkey for president? Well that's just Bananas.

 

Edited July 17, 2018 by (PS4)purpleskullgamin

[Voltage]

I agree. More moderators in most regions would be a welcome change in my opinion.

Edited July 17, 2018 by --Q--Voltage

[DeMonkey]

25 minutes ago, GinKenshin said:

Monkey for president! 

Prime Minister*

Spoiler

 

18 minutes ago, (PS4)purpleskullgamin said:

And I thought I should go to bed

Bed? I thought you slept on hay! You lied to us!

4 minutes ago, --Q--Voltage said:

I agree. More moderators in the most regions would be a welcome change in my opinion.

Certainly, I didn't include other regions in my post given I simply don't know enough. I speak no other language beyond English.

If the same issues are prevalent there as well, then absolutely.

[Voltage]

6 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Certainly, I didn't include other regions in my post given I simply don't know enough. I speak no other language beyond English.

If the same issues are prevalent there as well, then absolutely.

I just mentioned it so that it includes more than the Americas and the associated time zones.

Edited July 17, 2018 by --Q--Voltage

[(PSN)purpleskullgamin]

29 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Bed? I thought you slept on hay! You lied to us!

Oh no no no I hit the hay, got to check it for any monkey's then I go sleep in the bed.

[DeMonkey]

So, last night there was a thread. It wasn't a very good thread, and the OP and I have discussed at length why it wasn't a good thread in PM's. Fair play to them and all that, they were able to admit their mistake.

The biggest mistake imo however, was that despite how many reports it would have accrued (it was at like, 4~5 pages last I checked, so certainly people had seen it and subsequently reported it) it was up for 6 hours before I went to bed.

Reason I can't check to see how long it was up in for in total is because it has been deleted, that should give some idea as to how bad the thread as a whole turned out to be, and yet it was up for at least a quarter of a day.

There's also a delightful Nezha thread in Off Topic that's been up for almost 2 hours as of this post.

I understand that right now with the lack of huge changes and such that the forums are a fair bit quieter than usual, and that you may think the moderators you have are adequate for the day to day stuff, but if threads can go 6 hours without a moderator noticing despite being reported... then we have a problem.

Edit: Aforementioned Nezha thread lasted over 9 hours. And here I thought the other threads 6 hours was bad.

Edited July 21, 2018 by DeMonkey
Redundancy

[Voltage]

Just adding here that on top of all these great points, new forum moderators could alleviate the stress of merging existing threads. I have seen atleast 10 new threads per day as I speak going up about login rewards that should be moved to the Dev Workshop post. I honestly feel a little bad how understaffed those people are. The player-base has grown so much, so why shouldn't the moderation team? Millions of players possibly visit the forums. There are almost 10,000,000 forum posts since the inception of the platform as per:

Recruiting moderators is no easy task. These players must be trusted community members, who are active, helpful, and willing to volunteer hours to this community, but there is a basic need in my opinion. This will make not only the forums a better place, but chat as well.

I do hope Digital Extremes looks into this.

[DeMonkey]

7 minutes ago, Voltage said:

I have seen atleast 10 new threads per day as I speak going up about login rewards that should be moved to the Dev Workshop post.

Don't forget the slew of Nyx and Vauban feedback threads that have completely taken over Warframe and Abilities feedback, why there isn't a megathread of it I don't know.

And by megathread, I don't mean ''dump everything into a single thread'', but one where the OP is then edited to reflect the points raised throughout the thread.

2 threads with the exact same name right next to each other, that should be a sign that perhaps things need grouping up.

[DeMonkey]

Yeah, I'm bumping this again as it still remains a problem. I am however actually bringing something to the table and didn't want to start a new topic when I already have this one.

The thing that troubles me right now is that I have brought up in several reports that there is an obvious alt account running around, and so far nothing appears to have been done.

To explain, I'll give some context to all this. The original account of this person spent several days making a nuisance of themselves. Dev-bashing, belittling, derailing, you name it. It's fair to assume that they accrued several warning points during this time, and managed to hit 3 in total as they went silent. The join date of the second account started exactly 3 days after the original account last had any activity. 3 days is the length of time of a suspension, so I assume that upon their suspension expiring they logged out and created a new account in order to avoid the moderation queue. This is obviously completely against the rules.

The evidence is clear, although I've since removed it from this post because I realise it would have caused problems, and yet despite raising it in reports several times they're allowed to continue posting. That's... not really effective moderation, as you might as well just chuck out the guidelines if people are allowed to just make a new account and avoid the penalties.

Getting back to the actual topic of the thread though.

I realise that this looks more like a complaint that I should be taking up with support, it's not, that would be rather drastic and I'd rather not take it that far. They'll be sorted out eventually I'm sure.

Instead what this is about is quite simple, there's every chance that this wouldn't have occurred in the first place had we enough moderators. Not having enough moderators creates a situation in which heated arguments arise and don't get noticed for hours, where one person says something stupid that sets off another person who then sets off the first person and without anyone around to officially say "chill out" things easily escalate out of control.

The more the players, the more the problems and thus the greater requirement for moderation.

And the more that this happens the less likely you are to find what would be considered "appropriate moderator material". 

Plus, the more moderators we have the greater care can be taken when moderating, we need not just lump 10 threads together and create an incredibly messy megathread, we could have some proper structuring. Greater attention can also be given to posts to reduce the chances of mistakes (we're all human), or missing someone who's obviously using an alt account.

I don't think we're at crisis levels at all, but the longer we go with limited moderators the faster it creeps up on us. I like these forums, I like this community, I want the best for us so that we can do our best for the game. We cannot do that with what we have.

Edited October 9, 2018 by DeMonkey
Removed screenshots, tweaked wording of thread, may tweak further.