We need more mods, paid or not doesn't matter

[Hamsterpeek]

I'm in the steam discussion for many years, having many thousands of comments, helping thousands of people, doing positive work for the community. I love it helping people, do it whenever I've a bit of time.

But in all these yeras and all the experience I gained in that years I noticed one thing:
This forum isn't moderated enough.

We've just very few moderator and they get spammed with profile comments because many people behave wrong. In some subforums are tons of people who bait, troll and provocate on daily basis and some of them even try to bait negative comments from helpful people out and report them. I saw many very new behaving people banned in the past months. People who always are nice, are always helpful and spend so much time with exactly that.

On the other side I see many people who copy paste the same baiting and provocating comment over and over. They get banned less and when they get banned they simply log on another account and do it further.

What I really miss here are two things:
- The correct decision making from mods: The current mods are not deep enough in the community to know what's going on. Especially in bigger communityhubs like csgo it's necessary to have active community member as mods because the community hub is so big and it's a big family. A family with many white sheeps and also many black sheeps. So we figured out that mods only ban depending on one comment they read, they never read the post history, never read the context. That's a huge problem and disrespectful to all nice community member. Most of the time those bans get lifted after making a support ticket because then mods really start to read through the thread and notice "oh he's right".
- The amount of mods in general. As you noticed I focus on the csgo forum. In that forum we've many people who are able and willing to be a community mod and they would most likely do it even for free.

So the question is how is it possible that valve completely ignore the community, the issues in the community and find no ways to fix it? The baiter and trolls are a huge problem, but many other things too. For example how many people ignore the sticky threads? How many people beg? How many people try to scam people? With simple algorythms it would be possible to stop all that. Just add a forum filter: Whenver someone is for example writing this in a new thread:
"I got ban for nothing"
or
"can you give me skins"
the forum automatically pop ups a notification that threads aren't allowed for that topic including links to faqs, rules and guidelines.

I really like the forum, I like to spend my time here, meet nice people and stuff. Really. But the negative points are really bad and it even gets worse because they're easy to fix. Just give more people community mod rights and improve the forum algorythms.

Sorry for the long text but that was something I wanted to write down for quite some time. I scratch my head so often whenever really bad people get reported but don't get banned even after days and then I read from other very helpful persons that they got banned for such tiny things while they behave so great all the time.

In fact the forum gets overrunned by trolls and baiter and the nice behaving people either get banned or leave the forum. For some people it's too hard to just be nice to other people and that's sad for all other persons. :(

Have a great weekend whoever spend his time reading through the whole thread and maybe valve can improve some things so the forum gets friendlier again!

[Funz]

引用自 Gus the Crocodile：

引用自 Funz：

I never implied it was different.

Well then what's so troublesome that it qualifies as the biggest mistake ever? The world is full of paid bakers, receptionists, sysadmins, nurses, game developers etc. Managing employees is not some kind of weird unsolved problem.

the problem is that these paid moderators just blindly work a quota so they can cash their paycheck.
bakers and what not did not replace voulunteer bakers to begin with.

[Gus the Crocodile]

引用自 Funz：

the problem is that these paid moderators just blindly work a quota so they can cash their paycheck.

Not sure what "blindly work a quota" actually means or why it's a bad thing to, you know, do the amount of work you're paid for, but regardless, can I ask what information you're basing this on?

I mean, you said before that Valve would need to have the ability to check on their employees to see if their work was satisfactory - in other words, they need management/supervision, like in every industry.

So on one hand, if they have such an ability (which of course they do), then Valve can already see how their employees are doing, and if they're not making changes then they're clearly content with that work. On the other hand, if for argument's sake there is no way to check on how Valve's workers are doing, then surely you can't have a useful assessment of them either.

引用自 Funz：

bakers and what not did not replace voulunteer bakers to begin with.

Of course they did. We've had fire longer than we've had money.

[Funz]

引用自 Gus the Crocodile：

引用自 Funz：

the problem is that these paid moderators just blindly work a quota so they can cash their paycheck.

Not sure what "blindly work a quota" actually means or why it's a bad thing to, you know, do the amount of work you're paid for, but regardless, can I ask what information you're basing this on?

I mean, you said before that Valve would need to have the ability to check on their employees to see if their work was satisfactory - in other words, they need management/supervision, like in every industry.

So on one hand, if they have such an ability (which of course they do), then Valve can already see how their employees are doing, and if they're not making changes then they're clearly content with that work. On the other hand, if for argument's sake there is no way to check on how Valve's workers are doing, then surely you can't have a useful assessment of them either.

引用自 Funz：

bakers and what not did not replace voulunteer bakers to begin with.

Of course they did. We've had fire longer than we've had money.

I am basing my information on common sense.
do you think valve is paying employees without checking if they are doing the job?
all they need to do is to been seen doing the job it is beside the point is they do it properly.

if they were baking and not getting paid for it they were not bakers.

[Gus the Crocodile]

引用自 Funz：

I am basing my information on common sense.
do you think valve is paying employees without checking if they are doing the job?
all they need to do is to been seen doing the job it is beside the point is they do it properly.

Of course they're checking on their employees. Any company that doesn't want to just throw money into the void will have supervision of their workers. But you speak as if you have more information on Valve's employees than Valve do, which is pretty questionable, especially when the only source of info you're identifying is..."common sense".

引用自 Funz：

if they were baking and not getting paid for it they were not bakers.

Then the people not getting paid for moderating are presumably not moderators? I don't agree with that line of thinking, but hey, you're allowed to have your definitions.

[Funz]

引用自 Gus the Crocodile：

引用自 Funz：

I am basing my information on common sense.
do you think valve is paying employees without checking if they are doing the job?
all they need to do is to been seen doing the job it is beside the point is they do it properly.

Of course they're checking on their employees. Any company that doesn't want to just throw money into the void will have supervision of their workers. But you speak as if you have more information on Valve's employees than Valve do, which is pretty questionable, especially when the only source of info you're identifying is..."common sense".

引用自 Funz：

if they were baking and not getting paid for it they were not bakers.

Then the people not getting paid for moderating are presumably not moderators? I don't agree with that line of thinking, but hey, you're allowed to have your definitions.

I am not debating if they get checked or not but whatever.
the paid mods are warning and banning people for ridiculous reasons like linking a scam advisor link and call it advertising.
in duch we say "they are looking for nails in low water"( looking for lightning where there isn't any dash.)

because they do not get paid they are called voulunteer moderators I would feel silly to explain this concept to you some more so I hope you just get it.

[Froggy]

The way I see it is that the volunteer moderators usually had their "home" in one of the hubs, Killah in CSGO, Colt in the russian forums etc. They were in the community, part of the community. They got to know the users who frequented the forum often. They knew peoples history and worked with that.
They could also discern from a player posting about things they have absolutely no idea about as well as they could discern the people calling those people out.
These paid mods, from what I've seen atleast, have no idea about any of those things. As Funz said, they work off a quota and deal with reports as they come in. And by the looks of it, they don't pay much attention to the users actual posthistory or context what so ever. They see what they consider a problematic post, for example a link to scamadvisor to be advertising (when in reality it is helping the community and its members to stay safe from the many scamsites and other garbage). So in the end, helping the community ends you up with a ban, and the length of the ban is judged based on the amount of prior bans(who could potentially be as full of crap as the one in the example).

Another example is of UserA posting information as to how the OW system works for example. The problem is that that information is incorrect.
UserB then proceeds to call out UserA and ask for a source to back the bull UserA is posting, in which UserB starts crying about harassment and starts reportspamming.
Thus ending up with UserB potentially ending up in trouble for correcting the misinformation UserA was spreading in the first place just because the paid mods, just like UserA, have no idea how things work.

The list could be made longer, but I believe the point is made.

In the end, more moderation is definitely needed to clean up the forum and all of the useless, pointless threads and the spam therein, to correct misinformation where it is posted and keeping things in order.
However, for that to become a reality, the mods actually have to have knowledge of the place they're taking care of. Which IMO, isn't the case.

[7zaman_ttv]

I can only agree.

[Satoru]

引用自 Funz：

the paid mods are warning and banning people for ridiculous reasons like linking a scam advisor link and call it advertising.

There is no such thing as a 'scam advisor link'

It sounds more like you're actively making things worse, then wondering why the mods arent patting you on the head and giving you a cookie

[Froggy]

引用自 Satoru：

引用自 Funz：

the paid mods are warning and banning people for ridiculous reasons like linking a scam advisor link and call it advertising.

There is no such thing as a 'scam advisor link'

It sounds more like you're actively making things worse, then wondering why the mods arent patting you on the head and giving you a cookie

https://www.scamadviser.com/

Then what is this?

[Funz]

引用自 Satoru：

引用自 Funz：

the paid mods are warning and banning people for ridiculous reasons like linking a scam advisor link and call it advertising.

There is no such thing as a 'scam advisor link'

It sounds more like you're actively making things worse, then wondering why the mods arent patting you on the head and giving you a cookie

it sounds like you think I got in trouble for that.
I would never use an example that is my own.

you can check an URL on scamadvisor and link it here.
hence the scamadvisor link :D

[TehSpoopyKitteh]

引用自 Satoru：

引用自 Funz：

the paid mods are warning and banning people for ridiculous reasons like linking a scam advisor link and call it advertising.

There is no such thing as a 'scam advisor link'

It sounds more like you're actively making things worse, then wondering why the mods arent patting you on the head and giving you a cookie

He has a habit of that.

The warning I got for it was during an argument I was having with Funz and Froggy. Poor lads probably think I’m triggered by that. Anyway, that paid mod no longer works for Valve and the account has since changed hands.

[Funz]

引用自 Teh Spoopy Kitteh：

引用自 Satoru：

There is no such thing as a 'scam advisor link'

It sounds more like you're actively making things worse, then wondering why the mods arent patting you on the head and giving you a cookie

He has a habit of that.

funny when it was your ban or warning and your link I was talking about.

edit:nice edit I don't see how I can be blamed for a moderators actions and I even reported that moderator for that crazy ban.

[jin]

引用自 Teh Spoopy Kitteh：

引用自 Satoru：

There is no such thing as a 'scam advisor link'

It sounds more like you're actively making things worse, then wondering why the mods arent patting you on the head and giving you a cookie

He has a habit of that.

The warning I got for it was during an argument I was having with Funz and Froggy. Poor lads probably think I’m triggered by that. Anyway, that paid mod no longer works for Valve and the account has since changed hands.

Not triggered while you are stalking us and trying to spread misinformation about certain users. Mmmm, yeah. Alright.

[Woody]

If reports worked well enough there wouldn't be a guy linking people to a cheat website still up, there wouldn't be people calling for the extermination of a people with a history of racist remarks still being allowed to post, there wouldn't be spam impersonators on the forum left to troll for far too long.

The system doesn't work well enough.

[TehSpoopyKitteh]

引用自 Woody：

If reports worked well enough there wouldn't be a guy linking people to a cheat website still up, there wouldn't be people calling for the extermination of a people with a history of racist remarks still being allowed to post, there wouldn't be spam impersonators on the forum left to troll for far too long.

The system doesn't work well enough.

I agree that there could be a fewe more improvements here and there TBH, it is just hard to find the right type of person through text-only responses. A lot of tech interviews in the US are done either in person or on Skype and I have a feeling that the paid mods have gone through that process of selection to gain the position that they have. I think that future volunteer moderators should go through the same process as a test of character.