Discuss: ScoreHero Moderation

**nextlevel88** · Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Posts: 573

I have to agree with the over-moderation. I appreciate what the mods here do, and I know that one of the reasons this is such a huge fansite with developer input is because it's so well maintained. But a lot of potentially good discussion gets cut off far too quickly while intellectually engaging comments like these get to stay:

**Fedora** · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 2286 Location: Des Moines, IA

rockband.scorehero.com is dead.

Long live rockband.scorehero.com
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The original Rock Band career bassist.
Former DJ Hero player for vVv.

**Fedora** · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 2286 Location: Des Moines, IA

I mean

we're out of new items discovered and found
we've ground every potential topic into the ground
there isn't a discussion at this point original
so at some point we despair and send out the signal

that every new post must be made to conform
to the few superthreads that have become the norm
and I ask several times what has happened to thee
and the once-prolific rockband forum creativity

But at this point we've exhausted the details
by documenting the result of every plunk, thunk, and wail
so we sit here and argue about topics abstract
and a dozen sticky threads won't bring originality back.

So we sit and we wait and we oft contemplate
That the glory forum days will not return to sedate
our growing distaste for repeated topics at hand
and watch as the forum stays lifeless and bland.
_________________

The original Rock Band career bassist.
Former DJ Hero player for vVv.

**HylianHero** · Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 4673 Location: Santa Cruz, CA

I'm going to add my personal opinion here. This in no way reflects any other opinions on the staff and is solely mine. Rewind a couple months to a time when, admittedly, moderation was very slow. Topics started getting out of hand and people started complaining that a bunch of crap was getting through. There were a small group of users that enjoyed this freedom, and absolutely hated when we cracked down and did our jobs at keeping these forums looking somewhat clean and orderly. Now, those same people that were complaining are coming back now, saying we are effectively being too harsh in our methods.

Do I really want to point each and every single post in a different direction or cut it off? No. But at the same time, I don't want to have to look through seven different threads going off about different DLC rumors where conversation is eventually bound to cross over and the idea of having different threads set in the first place is completely pointless. I don't want to have to moderate a wishlist thread for each and every member of this forum. I don't want to have to look through each of these threads and make sure that nobody's going off on each other about musical tastes. The reason I prefer to pinpoint shit down to a different area is quite simple; it keeps conversations thread hijacked free and on the track where they're supposed to go. Take this very thread for example. There's been...what, 4 or 5 actual posts relating to the OP of this thread? And the rest of you guys are complaining about how the moderation is too strict and needs to loosen up and let these conversations happen? How much sense does that honestly make?

Not only am I being told by a group of the community that I'm not doing my job right, but I'm also just expected to leave this conversation here and let it go on. We have well over 400,000 members on this site. Even if you want to estimate that half of them joined and haven't done anything, that's still looking at 200,000 people that need to be kept an eye on...by roughly the 25 moderators that we actually have. If you count in the moderators that actually are even around and active still, that number shrinks to about...oh...6 or 7. For convenience's sake, though, let's round that up to ten. 10:200,000. For every one active moderator we have, we have 20,000 users to keep an eye on. Obviously, not all 20k people are going to be acting up, but in the event that one does, we need to be over that right away or you guys attack us for not doing our jobs right. This includes moderating leaderboards, every forum (and pretty much every thread of every forum), custom songs queue, technical difficulties, IRC, etc. I'm sorry if pointing people in the right direction for where we have conversation set up specifically for that is deemed an abuse of power or whatever, but I'm going to take a break when I can get one. We have that official topic set up for a reason. Is it the most orderly thing in the world? No. When the eventual SH rewrite gets its motors going again, it should fix it. Until then, these are the tools I'm given, so I'm using them to keep the forums more clean.

...Now. If you'd like to take this up with me personally, PM me and I'll be happy to oblige. If you really feel this needs its own topic, go make one in Website Discussion. For now, can you please go somewhat back on track and talk about FotC in RB, even though this really SHOULD be going into the DLC rumors thread?
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-- My Kaizo Mario (savestate/rewind-less!) LP - through Level 3!

**woozerkristen** · Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 10:54 pm Post subject:

I second what Hylian is saying here.

I'm new to moderating here, and I honestly had no idea how constant attention has to be paid to this site. Perhaps I'm biased, because when I was just a regular site user, I was one of the ones who appreciated the site being moderated as well as it is, but now that I'm on the other side, I have a lot more respect for the work that goes into keeping it that way. Maybe you don't like the fact that there are few active threads at a time, but from our standpoint, that greatly cuts down on how much we have to keep up with. Want there to be some more threads? Think of something new and interesting to discuss.

Beyond that, I think Hylian has said it all.
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**Carungi** · Joined: 12 Dec 2007 Posts: 2216 Location: Phoenix, AZ

**killzonedout** · Joined: 12 Jul 2008 Posts: 3061

**elmarko** · Joined: 27 Jul 2007 Posts: 419

**espher** · Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 12:21 pm Post subject:

**mct** · Joined: 27 May 2007 Posts: 1018 Location: Illinois

**IWillKickU** · Joined: 06 Dec 2007 Posts: 2830 Location: In the Undertow

**HylianHero** · Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 4673 Location: Santa Cruz, CA

**JCirri** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 4576

I have no clue how this turned into a debate on moderation tactics..

Where did anyone here say that we had a problem with this topic being created? Because I certainly don't, and I think everyone is blowing our stance on this way out of proportion.

The only truly "official" topics designed to collect information are those either stickied or created by a SH staff member - of which the "Rumors thread" is neither. We certainly don't want to see topics created claiming "so-and-so on gamefaqs posted that his brother's friend's father said __". But if there's an arguably reputable source of something GH/RB related that people want to discuss, by all means a new topic is perfectly fine and expected!

The existence of a congregate thread (unless "official" - i.e. stickied or created by a staff member), should never restrict any discussion topics from being created that are otherwise acceptable on the site. This means there can be both congregate threads (with OP updated by users) and specific-topic threads for major points inside with similar discussions taking place - and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact the topic creator could help to further organize things by providing links to other discussion threads in his OP; though the wiki is usually a better choice for such things.

The intention behind the actual "official" catch-all topics are to collect information that is interesting to read, but doesn't warrant discussion/replies to every post within the topic. For example, we want people to have a place to introduce themselves and see who's joining the community, but it's not necessary to have a dozen "Welcome" posts following each introduction. The occasional few are still fine.

All of our rules are designed with the intention of maintaining an above average signal-to-noise ratio while keeping the forums structure simple and easy to use. The alternatives are to go down the road of other large site communities and:

Create many forums unnecessarily segmenting overlapping ideas; or
Allow many topics to be created without much discussion taking place, and regardless of similarity with many other topics.

In response to #1, I feel that ScoreHero is unique in such a way that separates its forums into categories of thought rather than material things. That is, we don't automatically create separate forums for every GH and RB game title - instead we bring together the common types of thoughts (Technique, Software, Hardware, Misc, etc.) which are very often applicable across many games and have little overlap with one another. This makes it easy to follow what's going on across the entire series and provoke discussion from a larger audience without having to check many areas that would otherwise receive little attention. Of course there's the occasional instance where categories of thought do align with specific games (e.g. the RBU sub-forum was created in TSG because technique thoughts from the other areas do not apply; and there's "Other Music Games" as well).

To accomplish that idea-centric goal, it would be overwhelming to browse topics if we went the route of #2 with no effort to maintain organization within each of the few/simplistic forums. As a result, each forum generally ends up with its own set of guidelines and stickies designed to cut down the noise and promote the signal.

That's been the philosophy behind the ScoreHero forums structure from day one. If you disagree with its goal or the reasoning for the policies in place to maintain that goal, then let me know. Maybe you feel the line between signal and noise should be drawn elsewhere? Explain.

Ultimately we're here to provide you all with a fun and useful community site. We love these games as much as anyone and it's not in our interest to always be looking down and enforcing rules if the majority of the community no longer shares the same vision.

Because I am open to discussion on this, I've split most of the topic off to here where it belongs, and left the original topic where it belongs (which can now hopefully get back on track). I hope now that this has its own topic we can respect one another and offer on-topic feedback without the sarcastic remarks.
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**sukergod** · Posted: Thu Oct 01, 2009 1:22 pm Post subject:

**nextlevel88** · Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Posts: 573

Like I said in my previous post here, what the moderators do is important. I've been a member here for a long time (Joined: 11 Apr 2006), and only for the forums, I never bothered with the score tracking.

So, why do I bother coming here if I don't use the score tracking? Surely I can find all the info that I get from these forums on the official Rock Band forums, right? Probably, but everything is just easier to read here. Things are just run better here. Part of that is because the community is smaller, but most of it is because of the moderation. We get direct input from the development staff from both games, and they get direct input from us, all without having to step foot on the official forums. That alone speaks volumes to me about how well the website is run.

That being said, sometimes I think threads are locked too quickly, even if they have nothing to do with the congregate threads. Most notably to me are the 'question-answer-lock' threads. I know we want the main page kept clean, but often times people are scolded for not making use of the search feature. I've tried to use the search feature to get my questions answered. If you don't use the exact same vocabulary as the Original Poster of the question, forget it; you're not finding that thread. If the question gets answered a few times in that thread using more varied terminology with each answer, the odds of that topic not coming up again are much better, thanks to more successful searches. And honestly, how long would last on the front page? A week, maybe two?

This post is getting too long so I'll stop here, but before I do, I just want to say that a lot of the reason the moderation has to be so tough is because of the community itself. As I said in my previous post, I was disappointed that the 'GH5 features in RB3' discussion was cut off in the 'No Parts' post. It was actually a decent discussion and I enjoyed getting the many different opinions on the subjects being discussed. I completely understand why that had to happen; the discussion had nothing to do with the topic anymore. But it certainly couldn't have been a topic on its own. If the moderators had let it go (which I doubt they would have had the topic read "GH5 and RB3"), it would've undoubtedly spiraled into fanboy drivel. That's not the mod's fault, that's the community's.

To close this off:
1. Mods, keep up the good work, but
2. Don't be afraid to let us go off and BS once in a while. Good things may come of it. Maybe. Well, probably not, but it might surprise you...