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Did Forum Mods Kill Forums?

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Wilf
Jul Member 2019

Wilf

Posts: 17,032 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Users have been actively seeking alternatives for a long time.

Off Topic Community was a free forum started by regular users of the Off Topic section in if memory serves 2006/2007

Why did they set it up? Because of the rules and the mods vigorously enforcing them.

It's a joke that some of them say stuff like they were bad back then, yet they happily took action. They were not being paid to do it so why do it if you think the rules were bad?

Jump some more years and then you have users setting up Real Rants, General Lounge and Off Topic Lounge for the same reasons.

These forums had former and at the time current fmods (also possibly current) as members , obviously they never commented on how these forums were moderated or the mods themselves...

26-Jul-2022 19:02:01

Jack Flac
Feb Member 2022

Jack Flac

Posts: 6,207 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
FMods aside, a lot of my personal engagements with Jmods left more than a little bad taste in my mouth. Meadows, Kalaya, both were just horrid. Sorry for those of you who held Meadows on a high pedestal. He was disgusting in the way he manipulated the players into treating me. He chose his job over his pride. That says something about him. Unless of course he held those views himself as well, in which case, he was even more disgusting than I already think.

From my experience, Jmods did a lot to chase away players, from both the forums, and the game as a whole.

And if this gets me banned, so be it. After 5 years of not saying anything, I'm more than fed up with things. Leader of The Enemy ||
The opposite of Justice is simply another Justice. What is Evil is subjective to each person.
YOU
are their evil

26-Jul-2022 22:00:17 - Last edited on 26-Jul-2022 22:00:58 by Jack Flac

Jack Flac
Feb Member 2022

Jack Flac

Posts: 6,207 Rune Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Jagex doesn't give one Rats ass about it's players. It just views them as walking wallets. Nothing more. And figures if it burns a few here and there, it doesn't mater, it can always get more. Disgusting piece of shit if you ask me. Leader of The Enemy ||
The opposite of Justice is simply another Justice. What is Evil is subjective to each person.
YOU
are their evil

26-Jul-2022 23:44:17

2_Tron

2_Tron

Posts: 22,959 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Rooh said :
Did Forum Mods kill the forums?

No, social media killed / is killing the forums.

Before Twitter, Reddit et al came along, the forums flourished... and back then there were many, many more FMods, so we're not the problem.


In fact, FMods do the opposite - we do our best to keep the forums afloat, we constantly push Jagex to improve the forums, we take part in discussions, many of us start our own threads, etc.


There will always be criticism from those who don't like rules but as Arch pointed out, we just follow guidelines set by Jagex.

Believe it or not we were as upset as anyone about the removal of a place where our decisions could be questioned, we used to hassle JMods every week to post on the thread in question (FMR)
That's a lot of '
sugarcoating
' you did there.
You are talking about yours far away forums regular players do not have access to. Thus we do not know anything about what you say and how much our points of view are turned inside out or twisted.
Where it comes to our threads in public forums you guys & girls seem to have a habit to grind them in dust quickly and getting away with it as we have no tools to shield them from yours contribution.
I do not believe that you were as upset as we are, constantly, but you have enough ways to put up a lot of drama so Jagex/JMods gives you the benefit of the doubt or at least it will cater the majority in The Office so nothing will be done about.

'
There's no balance ... in The Office
'

27-Jul-2022 09:08:18 - Last edited on 27-Jul-2022 09:10:46 by 2_Tron

Rooh
Jan
fmod Member
2006

Rooh

Forum Moderator Posts: 40,589 Sapphire Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
2_Tron said :


That's a lot of '
sugarcoating
' you did there.
You are talking about yours far away forums regular players do not have access to.
No, I'm not. Look around the forums, there's plenty of FMods taking part in threads/discussions.
2_Tron said :

Where it comes to our threads in public forums you guys & girls seem to have a habit to grind them in dust quickly and getting away with it as we have no tools to shield them from yours contribution.
Nonsense. Why would we do that? What possible reason would we have to "grind a thread to dust"?
2_Tron said :

I do not believe that you were as upset as we are
Believe what you like, I'm speaking from experience of conversations I've had with other FMods and we were sorry to see FMR neglected then eventually scrapped. We pestered Jagex weekly to address FMR.
Who's the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about?

27-Jul-2022 11:36:24

Tranq
Nov Member 2007

Tranq

Posts: 61,815 Emerald Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Rooh said :
2_Tron said :

I do not believe that you were as upset as we are
Believe what you like, I'm speaking from experience of conversations I've had with other FMods and we were sorry to see FMR neglected then eventually scrapped. We pestered Jagex weekly to address FMR.

Speaking from experience, I no longer have a pony in this race. However Rooh's is exaggerating when he says weekly. It was to the point where it was daily begging for something to be done. Even if it was nothing more than I know I've been busy and haven't had the resources to devote to handling all of your queries at the moment. If the reports weren't handled daily at a weekly interval depending on the week. We were told it took up to 8 hours + of investigative work to handle FMR.

Truth be told the whole reason the initiative failed in my mind is our CM's never got their promised Gold accounts, as to read FMR you needed full J-mod access. Can't really do your responsibilities when you can't read what was written.

Y'all wanted a place to request answers where the fmods couldn't read from fear of reprisal. You had it. The problem being is that the CM's added to the forums at a later date didn't have the ability to do their roles to the full extent because of it.

All neglecting FMR did was create what appeared to be a lack of oversight coupled with lack of J-mod physical presence meaning actually posting on the forums. Created a vacuum. Those that loved the forums still use them.

Back in the forums glory days, the fastest moving sections of course were the trading forums. If you wanted to buy in bulk the forums were the way to go. Now the GE serves that purpose has for the past 15 years. That was the beginning of the forums deterioration....
When the day becomes the night and the sky becomes the sea, when the clock strikes heavy and there’s no time for tea; and in our darkest hour, before my final rhyme, she will come back home to Wonderland and turn back the hands of time.

27-Jul-2022 11:58:16

Tranq
Nov Member 2007

Tranq

Posts: 61,815 Emerald Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Then social media and the fact that J-mods couldn't post on their staff accounts from outside the Jagex offices but could post on staff social media from anywhere at anytime they wished. Meant there was a newfound freedom for staff. So they could interact with the masses in real time instead of hanging around after work just to post on the forums for free.

So the proprietary draconian measures Jagex put in place to ensure staff accounts weren't misused meant that staff rarely if ever post on the forums, but you can easily tag them on social media and typically get answers back in no time.

Points at the community helpers that are almost in constant contact with J-mods yet you rarely see those same J-mods posting here. Maybe if Jagex invested in the forums or paid for a decent foruming software rather than waiting an eternity for coders to write a new one. We might actually get some nice things.
When the day becomes the night and the sky becomes the sea, when the clock strikes heavy and there’s no time for tea; and in our darkest hour, before my final rhyme, she will come back home to Wonderland and turn back the hands of time.

27-Jul-2022 11:58:28 - Last edited on 27-Jul-2022 12:03:00 by Tranq

Pis2ols
Dec Member 2023

Pis2ols

Posts: 1,648 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Tranq said :

So the proprietary draconian measures Jagex put in place to ensure staff accounts weren't misused meant that staff rarely if ever post on the forums, but you can easily tag them on social media and typically get answers back in no time.

The majority of players didn't use forums to interact with JMods. This was a place where players could chat with other players without having to log in RuneScape.

Unfortunately, Forum Mods over-moderated everything to the point where nobody was willing to post new threads or post new comments. This wasn't because they're simply enforcing the rules, they were making new rules to remove players that disagreed with them or removed things they didn't like.

As a specific example from before, a forum moderator targeted me by creating the most absurd rules, and ended up screwing over all other threads and friend chat communities in the process.

The only thing stopping forums from becoming popular again is the forum moderation team. I loved using forums in the past but it's sad to see moderators kill off traffic over the past few years.
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27-Jul-2022 21:42:29 - Last edited on 27-Jul-2022 21:49:40 by Pis2ols

Spearmint30
Apr Member 2012

Spearmint30

Posts: 23,350 Opal Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Pis2ols said :
The idea that "forum mods simply enforce the rules" is simply not true. Pis2ols said :
This wasn't because they're simply enforcing the rules, they were making new rules to remove players that disagreed with them or removed things they didn't like. These are some pretty big assertions, really. To buy-in, I'd almost need to see a copy of the (confidential) guidelines Jagex set for the FMods to even begin to try to make connections and claims to show deliberate deviation from policy against those guidelines in an effort to willfully drive the RSOF into decline.

Lacking all that, I can't, don't, and won't buy into pinning the state of the RSOF on the FMods. There's really nobody to "pin" it on. Jagex chose to venture out into other platforms to capture new customers (one of I'm sure several/many). The community chose to venture out into other platforms for a multitude of reasons, some of which may indeed include frustration or dissatisfaction with RSOF moderation - I won't deny that, and I'm not even considering whether I felt their opinion was right, wrong, or indifferent. Everyone's got an opinion and is entitled to it, I suppose.

I'm well aware that over the years, moderation decisions have been made that were unpopular and I'm sure a fair number of people will claim that to be the reason. This thread seems to assume a lot of FMod autonomy in policy making, though. I've also seen a fair number of people claim the reason they've left is because of certain users of the community who are still around here today, and a fair number more claim ease of use/features/etc as their reasons for moving to other platforms.

I'm happy for you to believe FMods are a reason for the state of the RSOF and I'm not here to change your mind. Just say we all have our own perspectives and I'm sorry your experience with the moderation staff of the forum over the years has led you to form this conclusion.
•
Spearmint30
•

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28-Jul-2022 06:18:13

Pis2ols
Dec Member 2023

Pis2ols

Posts: 1,648 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Spearmint30 said :
These are some pretty big assertions, really


I've created an item discussion community 100x more popular than forums already. It's proof that under a different moderation team, item discussion could thrive. They're not really big assertions, everyone active in ID remembers the moment a specific forum mod created a policy to ban FC mentions in posts, rather than signatures.

Some other contributions to the death of forums

#1 Death of Item Discussion
_
After a forum mod started deleting every "discussion" post, discussion died! (I name changed by accident back then). Threads became solely price check threads and there was no discussion anymore.



Mod Lee defended the FMod that deleted every single post and it became a policy thereafter that threads were strictly price check only. This wasn't the case earlier as it was called "Item Discussion". This policy was driven by the same forum mod that people known and love!

My item discussion friends chat grew to 100/100 because people couldn't chat on forums anymore.

_

#2 Death of thread posting

Another example, is when a specific forum mod goes around locking threads. Sadly I can't show the FMod in question since it would be a targeted attack!

After my threads get locked, I get a Mod Poerkie to approve it.



The same forum mod protests to the next JMod and subsequently removes my thread.

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28-Jul-2022 11:13:17 - Last edited on 28-Jul-2022 11:14:31 by Pis2ols

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