Please give us community moderation back

[Ray Benchmark]

Hey,

I'd like to see community moderator again. Not only was it a very good interface between user and moderation/valve, but they also knew the active forum user and took care of things in a responsible way.

Since we only have paid moderation there is no way of having a public discussion with them. And since the community moderation is gone we also have an increased amount of forum breaker in the forum.

At the same time many regular forum user get banned/a warning falsely - and the support often doesn't remove it. Two examples (not my case):
- Someone needed help with his PC, he got help by someone who works in IT for multiple decades, a third person claimed his points were wrong and don't help and the IT guy got banned/a warning for saying that he works for that long in that profession for beeing argumentative. That ban/warning was removed by the support, but that the warning even happend shouldn't be a thing.
- Second one was a warning given for posting a statistics site used for a game. This site is officially partnered with valve, hosts the biggest official tournaments etc. and gets posted daily by thousands of user. Everyone knows the site and nobody ever got a ban/warning for posting it. Now a warning was giving for posting it. In the support ticket the first response was "thank you for your feedback" and the warning wasn't removed. The second response was "we can't help you in your language but don't worry, it wasn't a ban, just a warning (so the support moderator didn't understand that they were talking about a warning and also doesn't know that they use a stacked system, starting with a warning and then handing out bans which gets longer and longer). Also he wrote that the ban was applied correctly. Which, needless to say, is a showcase of how less the moderation cares about the tickets/reports, doesn't pay attention to it and doesn't know the forum rules themselves nor the community and what they post daily. When this is adverting, then each and every single link ever posted in this forum is advertising. Even links towards this homepage. And based on that standard, 100% of all user would be banned at this point.

At the same time, the same forum trolls post hundreds of posts talking bad about everything, lying on purpose etc. Those got bans back when we had community mods. And some of these user even have multiple community banned accs and aren't allowed to post in the forum anymore at all, but since the community mods are gone, they live rent free in the forum.

I talk a lot with many people about their bans, see the messages etc. and interestingly enough, nearly all bans are given falsely. Even towards people I personally don't like much, so there is no decision bias for me. And the real persons who break the rules can do whatever they want and if they get banned, their ban gets removed within a day and they keep posting their toxic nonsens.

We had a long discussion with 3 former community mods in this discussion forum some time ago and they were even more critical about the change. They realized after teaching the paid mods how to handle tickets that they learn really slowly and there was barely an improvement.

I used to write in this forum a lot for years daily, but since the community moderation is gone, I barely touch the forum. Not even because of the community or whatever but only because of the new moderation. And in my nearly 25 years of beeing active in forums, I never made that experience. I love valve/steam, play valve games since before 2000 and have really good experience in every single other case. No matter if we talk about the page or the help I get via support tickets whenever I have a problem. So it's really just the paid moderation and the decision making in the support tickets when it comes to forum moderated things, which is painfully bad. We're not even talking about 50/50 decisions, we talk about 100% easily not wrongly things.

Just two more examples:
- Someone linked my steam profile in the forum and said I'm cheating. I didn't even see the post but someone linked it to me. That person was clearly naming and shaming but got no ban.
- I got a ban for naming and shaming, because I shared a scoreboard screenshot. In that scoreboard screenshot all player names were blacked out including the profile pics. So the paid mod had no clue about the game, didn't even pay attention to the screenshot and just threw out a ban (similar to the case with the link used as an example above). Luckily in that case the support ticket moderator removed the ban. The thing is, the support tickets are always a 50/50 chance to be solved with a removal of a ban or not. It only and only depends on the mood of the mod in that case. I saw people getting their heavily deserved bans removed and we even laughted in TS3 about it and in group chats and we saw things like the case above not removed, despite the fact it clearly isn't breaking the rule of advertising.

Sadly there is no way to give feedback or talk about it beside this subforum and sadly I bet the moderation will remove the thread, not because it doesn't break a rule but because it's honest critique and they take it personally. This is also the issue because it never improved over the 3 years the community moderation teached the new moderation, because when they do mistakes they "deny it instead of using it as a way to learn", this is actually a quote of community mods... That is why I hope that we get the community moderation back. Better quality, better decision making, a interface between user and valve.

Thank you.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von wrace:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tito Shivan:

But the rules have not changed in the almost two decades Steam has existed. You keep grounding your ideas on wrong premises.

Nope. Paid moderators use all holes they like. You used the holes you like. I am not sure whether you used the reason "creating of unconstructive posts" to close threads / provide pemanent bans. Did you do this?

If you keep breaking rules, you will get a ban. It doesn't matter how 'small' the rule is. Repeated offenses get bans.

[Psymon²]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Thermal Lance:

Let's not forget the golden rule to avoid trouble. Report And Move On. Good grief, if people did AT LEAST only that, the community would improve 10x instantly.

Good idea, you should tell people more often to ignore a thread instead of reply in a hostile manner that baits others into retaliation.
whodvethunk!!?!

[kitt]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mad Scientist:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

I don't know, maybe stuff like fostering a group of users that gets away with everything?

Trying to throw around unhelpful conspiracy theories is not recommended, especially when some users will blindly believe it, start fights, and get into trouble for the same conspiracies which caused them to constantly get hit for repeatedly going after select users they do not like, because of their own unacceptable behavior.

Those users do not "get away with everything", they simply know how to follow the rules.

.

https://ibb.co/N94LTFn (oh he could activate groups that acutally break the rules... would never happen with forum topics/posts, right? or that he (they) would protect certain users.. )

https://ibb.co/JHmFxG3 (oh look, users that get away with basically everything.. some already left as I will mentioned below)



Some users left the group (I'm certain, little chance of remembering it wrong) after someone defended the volunteer mods like crazy and I pointed out how they are in a group of fanboying a volunteer mod.

But hey, is a conspiracy.


And I didn't even bother with the rest (or it since got deleted). I mean leaving evidence out there would be pretty pathetic, right?



So now you are the one creating conspiracy theories by claiming none of that ever happend. Is like Twitter claiming shadowbanning and doing other stuff never happend..

[Psymon²]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

I don't know, maybe stuff like fostering a group of users that gets away with everything?

Trying to throw around unhelpful conspiracy theories is not recommended, especially when some users will blindly believe it, start fights, and get into trouble for the same conspiracies which caused them to constantly get hit for repeatedly going after select users they do not like, because of their own unacceptable behavior.

Those users do not "get away with everything", they simply know how to follow the rules.

.

https://ibb.co/N94LTFn (oh he could activate groups that acutally break the rules... would never happen with forum topics/posts, right? )

https://ibb.co/JHmFxG3 (oh look, users that get away with basically everything.. some already left as I will mentioned below)



Some users left the group after someone defended the volunteer mods like crazy and I pointed out how they are in a group of fanboying a volunteer mod.

But hey, is a conspiracy.


And I didn't even bother with the rest (or it since got deleted). I mean leaving evidence out there would be pretty pathetic, right?



So now you are the one creating conspiracy theories by claiming none of that ever happend. Is like Twitter claiming shadowbanning and doing other stuff never happend..

woo!!
call out that gas lighting more!
moderators don't seem capable of recognising it eh?

[Mad Scientist]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Psymon²:

of course, my mistake for encouraging you to be helpful instead of vague, pardon me.
lol this place, utter farce.

Hotsauce literally gave the user a helpful answer.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

https://ibb.co/N94LTFn (oh he could activate groups that acutally break the rules... would never happen with forum topics/posts, right? )

https://ibb.co/JHmFxG3 (oh look, users that get away with basically everything.. some already left as I will mentioned below)

Is that supposed to be some sort of "gotcha" moment? Just seems like you have a particular bias against a mod.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

Some users left the group after someone defended the volunteer mods like crazy and I pointed out how they are in a group of fanboying a volunteer mod.

So users left because of other users opinions. That's a nothingburger. Fan groups and having a mod in there is also a whole lot of nothing, I've seen a mod on the friends list of a problem individual and it was entirely unimportant because they had made no biased movements against that individuals opponents, or other unjustified or overly incorrect actions that would question if they can do their job without the bias of the other influencing them. Had I brought that up, it would also be a big pile of nothing.

Mods can be places and friends with people without it affecting their decisions, not exactly a big surprise. Some mods had their profiles open where people linked to stuff that needed to be looked at for moderation, no big deal either.

Seems you're trying to make something out of nothing.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

But hey, is a conspiracy.

Few select people adopting ones conspiracy of "users who cant be banned" and getting other users into trouble for it by causing it to spread, adopting it, and using it against their opposition for them not getting into trouble is entirely on them for trying to make arguments with others based upon something entirely fabricated.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

And I didn't even bother with the rest (or it since got deleted). I mean leaving evidence out there would be pretty pathetic, right?

Stuff against the rules getting deleted is of no surprise.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

So now you are the one creating conspiracy theories by claiming none of that ever happend. Is like Twitter claiming shadowbanning and doing other stuff never happend..

By saying what never happened?
False equivalence.

It's just a few people trying to derail this thread in regard to their strong dislike of moderation & rules. Happens often when a thread about mods/rules is made. Please discuss the subject instead of trying to spread conspiracies.

[KillahInstinct]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ray Benchmark:

Hey,

I'd like to see community moderator again. Not only was it a very good interface between user and moderation/valve, but they also knew the active forum user and took care of things in a responsible way.

Judging by the amount of posts that want old moderation back, you're not alone. But I'm fairly sure there is more to it than just a community outcry.

Good moderation takes time and money, and that's not something that easily makes money - not core business for a gaming platform.

[KillahInstinct]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mad Scientist:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

https://ibb.co/N94LTFn (oh he could activate groups that acutally break the rules... would never happen with forum topics/posts, right? )

https://ibb.co/JHmFxG3 (oh look, users that get away with basically everything.. some already left as I will mentioned below)

Is that supposed to be some sort of "gotcha" moment? Just seems like you have a particular bias against a mod.
out mods/rules is made. Please discuss the subject instead of trying to spread conspiracies.

When people have a bias they literally put on blinders. That's why I never befriended anyone (ok, except one person) online, I didn't want it to get in terms of moderation. People always look for conspiracies when they don't want to accept the rules, and are slowly coming to terms with the fact that.. the rules are still being applied. Just less frequent and more random.

[Bee🐝]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von KillahInstinct:

Good moderation takes time and money, and that's not something that easily makes money - not core business for a gaming platform.

This is an incredibly important point. Human moderation, on larger platforms, is incredibly expensive because it's so labour-intensive, which is why a lot of companies wash their hands of it and use bots for anything that's not account and billing-related.

The volunteer moderation policy definitely felt like it was a holdover from when the forums, and Valve, were a lot smaller. I preferred it because the housekeeping got done, but obviously, Gabe and friends decided it had to go.

[Reported.]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von KillahInstinct:

Good moderation takes time and money, and that's not something that easily makes money - not core business for a gaming platform.

Valve are exceptionally efficient at being a *business*.

Content moderation simply is not in their business model, nor is other things they actively avoid doing in the sake of gamer comfort that other companies do. They will do whatever it takes to get the maximum return for almost nil investment. If it doesn't make money in any meaningful form, its removed or not even considered.

[Zefar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von mudlord:

Valve are exceptionally efficient at being a *business*.

Content moderation simply is not in their business model, nor is other things they actively avoid doing in the sake of gamer comfort that other companies do. They will do whatever it takes to get the maximum return for almost nil investment. If it doesn't make money in any meaningful form, its removed or not even considered.

That is wrong.

Valve threw millions on VR knowing it most likely wouldn't generate it back to them.

Valve would much rather lose all of the money they made from cheaters rebuying their games if it meant that the game was cheat free. Imagine how much money they made cheaters in CSGO.

Valve have stated that they have more money than they know what to do with.

People at Valve can work on projects that they like. There is barely any deadline for projects and this is the cause of "Valve Time" meme. So they are not in a hurry to make money.


Still this doesn't mean they will throw millions at forum Moderation.


If you want a company that only cares about money and business you can just look at Activision.

[Zefar]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von wrace:

Agree. One more simple example - Steam Input and Steam Overlay which do not provide the direct profit for the Valve. Another example - guides. One more example - awards.

Those have never been about generating profit unless you're Youtube. So not sure why you bring them up. Also they are easy to store and it makes people stay on your platform.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von wrace:

Disagree. It seems that Valve in that case is the same as this one:

The thing is, I heard it directly from a Valve employee.

It's just a losing fight with cheaters.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von wrace:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

If you want a company that only cares about money and business you can just look at Activision.

Both can't solve effectively the problems with cheaters (or bots - in the case of Blizzard).

Cheating has nothing to do with that. Oh and bots in Wow still pay a subscription. If they care about money they wouldn't be banning them so quickly.

Activision once released the Guitar game Rockstar I believe or it had another name. The moment that game didn't went past a certain million mark, they shut down the studio to focus their manpower on something else.
If it's not making them a lot of money they do not care about it.
It's why they keep producing COD and other few titles.

[Reported.]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Zefar:

It's just a losing fight with cheaters.

OR....

Since its a losing fight, just not even *attempt* with further measures unlike other companies, and stop at the first point of failure. Let alone the fact EasyAnticheat/Byfron/BattlEye work on Proton. Activision and Epic had the chance to at least try. We all know ring3 is a fools errand and only stops casual copy/paste injectible code with people having the bare minimum of skill.

Its strange other developers actively *try* at least to have some fight. It seems Valve just doesn't want to fight at all and leave it to machine learning than trying to implement counter measures.

Also explains why some actual security bugs are left completely ignored by Valve in Source Engine games for several years.

It seems maybe they lack manpower in those game security sectors since yeah, any developer can work on *anything*, at any time. Or the devs thus are not motivated to work on such things due to lack of experience.

Valve have stated that they have more money than they know what to do with.

People at Valve can work on projects that they like. There is barely any deadline for projects and this is the cause of "Valve Time" meme. So they are not in a hurry to make money.

That well, explains a ton to me. Explains why absolutely *anything* Valve does is glacially slow since they are unable to have *any* sense of organization since thats inherant to the corporation's design. It explains why communication within the company to outsiders is so slow, why they are so slow to react to issues with Steam, why action done on some games' development is so glacially slow.

It describes why Valve is so glacial as a whole. Yet jumps at the chance at other things. It again ties to trying to put in as least effort into anything as possible, while still being wildly profitable.

Its sad since the things that they do have at the core, are very well made, like the gameplay of each of their titles. Its just every single thing outside of that completely sucks.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ray Benchmark:

Please give us community moderation back

Even if they ever go back to that model or a similar model, it's probably not going to be the same people that you knew from before.

Oh, some of them might return if Valve ever goes back to that model, but I doubt they'll reapproach all of the ex-volunteers and then of the ones that they actually do reach out to, there will probably be several that say no, or that they're no longer interested.

[Reported.]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ray Benchmark:

Please give us community moderation back

Even if they ever go back to that model or a similar model, it's probably not going to be the same people that you knew from before.

Oh, some of them might return if Valve ever goes back to that model, but I doubt they'll reapproach all of the ex-volunteers and then of the ones that they actually do reach out to, there will probably be several that say no, or that they're no longer interested. :seewhatyoudid:

Very good point :(

[Ray Benchmark]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Lilac McSanta Butt:

We really do need the volunteer mods back. The forums and community in general has been worse off without them. Now moderation is either too strict or completely non-existent, rarely a middle ground.

Were the volunteer mods perfect? Absolutely not. In fact I'd received a ban from one of them that I deserved but I felt the length was a bit much. But I accepted my ban and didn't throw a fit. But man they were better than what we got now.

I absolutely agree with that. And they didn't coat any money which of course if very beneficial for valve. In the forum are many who would je able to do the job and I'm sure at oeast some former community mods would come back.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Tito Shivan:

I'm actually quite fine living my retirement. :lunar2020ratinablanket:

I highly doubt Valve have any intention to fill again the profiles of Community mods for the Steam forums and will stick with the paid moderation team.

I'm afrqid you're right. At least some time ago I had hope that the new moderation will improve and we'll not miss the commjnity mods that much, but time showed us our hope was wrong.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Lilim:

Unfortunately, the paid moderators are not present in the forum. In my opinion, that is the biggest problem.

Yesterday there were several threads that were obviously spam (2 threads titled "666" and several threads consisting only of the N-word). These threads were visible for hours, even though they were reported instantly (I reported both "666" threads when they were less than 5 minutes old, for example).

A moderator actually present on the forum could have deleted them immediately - no reports needed.

Jup it takes very long til those things are sorted away. If mods would be active user too these things would be gone within minutes. Now all we can dl it report and wait, sometimes for days. I got the information that a group which I reported one year ago glt removed just now few days ago. Community mods looked into that very fast.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Thermal Lance:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von wrace:

I am agree with the idea of returning of volunteer moderators instead of paid ones due to the simple rule "from of the two evils, choose the least" and due to their bonuses (they were visible, could provide info for Valve team, could create pinned threads with FAQs, could explain their reasoning and even comment actions of other moderators), but this action will not solve all mistakes of moderators while one will not provide the correct (ideal) version of the Steam rules and will not close all existing holes which can be used by unclever moderators.

Yeah and then the other half of the community will scream "corruption" toward the clouds.

Either way someone will complain.

You can appeal your ban if you feel it is wrong. The tools are there. Use them.

To be honest everyone I read writing this was a long time troll who were breaking the rules all the time. There were clearly no corruption and some people also got banned even when they were friends with mods. Mods were very objective in their decision making.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von wrace:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Thermal Lance:

You can appeal your ban if you feel it is wrong. The tools are there. Use them.

I prefer to close the hole at all instead of to use the tool to remove the consequences of the really unclever (stupid) action. Moreover, it takes time of support without really good reason for this. If you did not note, now support provide their answers with much bigger delay than early. Only one thing was happened - volunteer moderators gone.

The delay for support tickets is really huge. Sometimes I wait weeks, yes, weeks, for a response. And then most of the time it's a macro answer which doesn't even have a context to my ticket and only the second or third time the ticket gets answered properly. The issue mentioned that they have to solve x tickets per day is actually an issue because the quality goes down. If we had community mods we'd have more man power for the moderation in general, this woukd help towards response tiles and quality.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kitt:

was so good people made fanboy groups for the mods and mods joined them and then talked about how they can deal with stuff that break the rules..


yep, sounds like a good idea.. what could go wrong?


I don't know, maybe stuff like fostering a group of users that gets away with everything?

History has shown, that mods didn't "protect" people just because of subjectivity.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Thermal Lance:

Let's not forget the golden rule to avoid trouble. Report And Move On. Good grief, if people did AT LEAST only that, the community would improve 10x instantly.

True, I myself do that way more often today.

But you still get banned for helping another user by posting his stats and explaining him what he could improve on.

Or get banned for naming and shaming because someone makes a thread and asks why he faces a lot of cheater and you help him by saying that he played with cheater together multiple tiles and they got banned recently. When even the thread creator adds you as a friend to thank you because he noticed that you got banned for just telling him that you know aomeone is very wrong. Needless to say: That ban wasn't removed in a ticket. And I didn't use any names or links for that.

I have more than 1.000 of these stories from people.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von KillahInstinct:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Ray Benchmark:

Hey,

I'd like to see community moderator again. Not only was it a very good interface between user and moderation/valve, but they also knew the active forum user and took care of things in a responsible way.

Judging by the amount of posts that want old moderation back, you're not alone. But I'm fairly sure there is more to it than just a community outcry.

Good moderation takes time and money, and that's not something that easily makes money - not core business for a gaming platform.

True, moderation actually costs money instead of making money, so it's quite normal to go cheap on that way. But community mods weren't just cheap, they did it for free. Valve's only tasks were to look out who gets mod rights and stay in contact with them.

Also plenty of other forums use more automatic systems, like automatically locking threads when none posted there for x months. We see many necro'd threads daily, some are even 10 years old. If a topic is current again, it would be easy to just link the old thread and for example say "I've the same issue, just today" This also very rarely is the case. I'd guess that like 95 or more out of 100 threads necro'd isn't necrod for an actual reason, but locking them manually again takes time and a report.

Btw. thank you guys for all the feedback and doscussion here, especially because nobody is just argueing or so. I expected a way different feedback but it seems like a wide area of people is on the same page. And sorry for just answering now, I sadly didn't have much time the past days duo to work.