Re: Friday Facts #266 Censorship/Moderation Behaviour

[featherwinglove]

As requested by Klonan to move the discussion of Wube's strange moderating behaviour and the associated responses to the modding community's reaction to the FFF#266 issues, I am still awaiting a proper response to the issues raised.

The removal of the axe is nothing compared to this disgusting and insulting censorious behaviour.

Closing topics when they become off-topic is not the same as censorship.

In the case under discussion, the discussion of modding of axes and mining hardness was shut down. That goes well beyond mere moderation. Also, it doesn't matter what you think, if you can't offer any suitable justification for this deplorable behaviour, cannot see it as destructive to your ends and the relationship with the community, and have no desire to apologize for it, I can't feel in the slightest bit comfortable with Wube Software, especially the way I've seen you toot your ethical horn in the more distant past, and also very recently in private messages sent to me.

So I don't think its productive to close all the discussion, akin to saying: "We are right you are wrong now shut up",

But that is exactly what you have done in the modding thread I linked above. viewtopic.php?f=33&t=64142 for your convenience. Also, you need to realize that it doesn't need to be productive in a technical sense to be productive in a community sense; or at the very least realize how destructive it is to shut down the speech of your community members, please.

You have also done exactly this with a new user's concerns regarding the automatic crash reporting and you shut him down. Not once, but twice. Before I found out about this, I was quite satisfied with automatic crash reporting privacy and security. However, words mean less than action and your behaviour has raised my doubts to the point where I have turned off crash reporting.

I know I've gone off topic here, but frankly these are topics you are not allowing people to discuss anywhere else. Are you sure this is moderation? Or is it really as it looks from my perspective: Has Wube Software has lost its mojo?

The user referred to who has been censored on the topic of automatic crash reporting opened a thread in this forum section viewtopic.php?f=55&t=63823#p389064

The topic has been locked for no reason, so I restart it here.

I do not consider this behaviour to be defensible, and am currently warning my friends of it. It has the very real potential of destroying the reputation of Wube and Factorio, causing this once find developer to join the trash heap of the current gaming industry, something I don't want to see.

[JCav]

Eh, get over yourself.

[Serenity]

You consistently derail threads. And especially that one. People want to read other stuff than just your rantings

[Engimage]

Mods on this forum have steel nerves. And you managed to escalate it up to Wube guys themselves.
I would say - calm down and stop this. Your ideas or your personal opinion is not the pinnacle of human thinking so just get on with it. People get your point from one post and if they do not accept it there is no point in arguing to death. This is really annoying and infantile.
You derailed so many threads during last couple of months that if I were a mod I would personally permaban you.
So just calm down here.

[Gebus]

Mods on this forum have steel nerves. And you managed to escalate it up to Wube guys themselves.
I would say - calm down and stop this. Your ideas or your personal opinion is not the pinnacle of human thinking so just get on with it. People get your point from one post and if they do not accept it there is no point in arguing to death. This is really annoying and infantile.
You derailed so many threads during last couple of months that if I were a mod I would personally permaban you.
So just calm down here.

+1

Intelligence and maturity don't always go hand in hand it seems. I hope the devs aren't too distracted by the rants of a couple of individuals.

[xfir01]

Mods on this forum have steel nerves. And you managed to escalate it up to Wube guys themselves.
I would say - calm down and stop this. Your ideas or your personal opinion is not the pinnacle of human thinking so just get on with it. People get your point from one post and if they do not accept it there is no point in arguing to death. This is really annoying and infantile.
You derailed so many threads during last couple of months that if I were a mod I would personally permaban you.
So just calm down here.

+1

Intelligence and maturity don't always go hand in hand it seems. I hope the devs aren't too distracted by the rants of a couple of individuals.

Indeed.

[morsk]

This "controversy" only exists because of forum limitations: the inability to disagree quietly. On reddit, I can downvote without replying. I can reply without quoting. And when I reply, it doesn't make a copy of the post I'm disagreeing with, sending it back into the thread again for everyone to see. It follows underneath it in a tree structure.

Here, I'm forced to amplify a post in order to disagree with it, making disagreement impractical. I was unable to disagree with the pickaxe spam in FFF 275, because it was off-topic, and I would be making it worse by replying. I was unable to disagree with the "censorship" spam in FFF 266 for the same reason. Anyone can go on an off-topic rant at any time, and no one can disagree. There's the real censorship.

This system needs moderator intervention to work. On a different system, none of this would be happening in the first place. Behold! A reddit thread about pickaxes. It is a joke. This is lighthearted for almost everyone. There is one post that laments the loss of pickaxe, as it felt like the first real power-up. Another RIP for steelaxe runs. But no monomaniacal ranting about the End Times.

[featherwinglove]

This "controversy" only exists because of forum limitations: the inability to disagree quietly. On reddit, I can downvote without replying.

Finally an intelligent response. The structure of the forum does contribute to the problem, but this is not a good defense of the moderation behaviour in these instances; I wouldn't have a problem if it were. There are other options for moderation than the ones taken. While I don't see any easy way of making it branch, phpBB is open source and voting extension are available. As for Reddit, I used to spend more time there than here, but it has bigger unrelated problems, especially obstacles to finding older materials, e.g. the FFF#266 thread there. Anyway, that's getting off topic for this thread.

For the rest of you, I have a few reminders:

- I'm not the only one who has had a problem with the moderation on these forums, it's probably more than just me and vangruz because finding deleted posts is rather difficult.
- I'm not the first person to mention FFF#266 in the #275 thread, and the topic was not axes, but Wube's behaviour towards the community, and generally stayed in that territory.
- I'm not the only one who hates the way the axe was removed, actually not even close to being the first.

Finally, let me elaborate on why I'm waiting for Wube themselves to respond: No one else can defend the deplorable moderation behaviour on this forum. For those saying they would have deleted my account - go start your own game and your own forum, and act like that, and you'll soon figure out that a major reason for Wube's success was not acting like that!

Once again, I ask others not to reply until the Wube guys have something to say (morsk just explained why.) If you're really on their side on this issue, and they choose never to respond, this should be the last post on this thread, and it should slowly sink down the section listing into oblivion.

[Jap2.0]

This "controversy" only exists because of forum limitations: the inability to disagree quietly. On reddit, I can downvote without replying.

Finally an intelligent response. The structure of the forum does contribute to the problem...

viewtopic.php?f=55&t=61488

[featherwinglove]

Update: I had a post deleted from this location without any notification. That's the end of it. There is really no point in me ever logging into this forum again. It is a complete waste of my time with this happening.

[Cyonic]

Update: I had a post deleted from this location without any notification. That's the end of it. There is really no point in me ever logging into this forum again. It is a complete waste of my time with this happening.

I know what post you are referring to and I reported it as being needlessly inflammatory and completely off-topic.

[xfir01]

I know what post you are referring to and I reported it as being needlessly inflammatory and completely off-topic.

Hey now, don't bring facts and context in here. It messes with his persecution narrative.

[jodokus31]

I deleted my original post, because I realized, better late than never, that it was more a personal advice, which I should have PM'd.

[featherwinglove]

Wube Software, I'm still waiting for that official response. I know I live in a world where it is now far too much to ask people to follow their own rules and apply them consistently in their areas of authority, and to explain to those who want to keep you happy what exactly about their behaviour is making you unhappy so that maybe it can change and the relationship can be restored. I thought you were an exception, and I thought you wanted to be an exception.

You removed a post of mine, that contrary to the guy reporting it, was accurate, on-topic, and not inflammatory (I pointed out that Nubm1 provided an accurate description of the News section, especially as it was at the time.) A moderator acted upon the report of someone who, at the time, had been registered with these forums for less than a week and had only two posts to remove the post of one of your two-plus year veterans who wants you to succeed, who wants you to be the bastion of integrity in the gaming industry, and you did it in such a way as to destroy his faith in your rules, your developer, your company, and your game.

You might be thinking "This is just one guy," but I've seen several others go dark at about the same time. When encountering situations like this, most people simply leave without complaint (business courses tend to say between 95% and 99% of customers do this, even when it is very easy to leave feedback!) I've seen several others (at least five) go dark at about the same time I did, keeping an eye on the forums, but not leaving any posts. Now, I'm seeing signs that censorious behaviour in forum moderation may be affecting development in the latest FFF:

So posila went ahead and fixed that, and now, biters are still affected by belts, but it doesn't completely bug them anymore. How did we not notice it for like 2 years?

Is that the same posila who said this?

I am listening (actually I am spending on this much more time than I should), but all I hear are emotions and very little reason.

I believe this is the answer to your question. If this is how you're regarding the feedback coming to you in the forums from users which have been noticing this and exploiting it for over two years, it could answer this question very easily.

You guys have a tremendous opportunity in front of you: Blizzard and Bethesda are leaving their audiences behind, and now Bioware has Anthem turning into a catastrophe, and this is all happening because studios and publishers are paying more attention to social justice rhetoric and shareholder greed than they are to their paying customers. If you start treating us, your existing customers, in a markedly different way then they've been treated recently, you can reboot the 1990s' golden age of video games, and they could be soon be your customers.

Factorio might not be the game for everyone, but the Wube ethical model that I once found here is. You need to get it back. And you also need to listen to your modders: The genre of game most affected by these issues are the "looter shooters", top view RPG, third camera RPG, and first person loot/RPG and base building games (with the exceptions of Fortnight and Apex.) The franchises most affected are Fallout, Destiny, Anthem, and, most importantly to Wube, Diablo. Factorio could be modded to provide gameplay experiences very similar to the 1990s classic RTS and RPG games like Diablo I and II, Warcraft I-III, Command & Conquer, and the concept-identical Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. There is a big market for that kind of gameplay, and more importantly, there is an even bigger market for the creative and ethical background these games were made in.

But if you decide to continue on the path I see you following, I might shed one, or maybe two more tears.

If you don't want to respond to this issue, I'd like you to lock this thread, and I will be satisfied with that as an official response, and thank you for it.

[Jap2.0]

Now, I'm seeing signs that censorious behaviour in forum moderation may be affecting development in the latest FFF:

So posila went ahead and fixed that, and now, biters are still affected by belts, but it doesn't completely bug them anymore. How did we not notice it for like 2 years?

Is that the same posila who said this?

I am listening (actually I am spending on this much more time than I should), but all I hear are emotions and very little reason.

I believe this is the answer to your question. If this is how you're regarding the feedback coming to you in the forums from users which have been noticing this and exploiting it for over two years, it could answer this question very easily.

Is this the same featherwinglove who wrote this?

That's the end of it. There is really no point in me ever logging into this forum again. It is a complete waste of my time with this happening.

First: I believe that was written by Kovarex.
Second: You're bringing up completely unrelated things and spurious correlations. I checked and biters on belts was never brought up as a bug or a balancing issue.
Third: Posila was a bit busy writing an entire graphics engine. You were busy complaining on a forum and receiving responses while aforementioned graphics engine was being written.

I'm going to do my best from refraining from this discussion more (for everyone's benefit), but I would also like to mention that the mods are not devs, that discussing the game is quite a different topic from discussing the news section, and that I do believe the mods have the best interests of this forum in mind.

[BlueTemplar]

This "controversy" only exists because of forum limitations: the inability to disagree quietly. On reddit, I can downvote without replying. I can reply without quoting. And when I reply, it doesn't make a copy of the post I'm disagreeing with, sending it back into the thread again for everyone to see. It follows underneath it in a tree structure.

Here, I'm forced to amplify a post in order to disagree with it, making disagreement impractical. I was unable to disagree with the pickaxe spam in FFF 275, because it was off-topic, and I would be making it worse by replying. I was unable to disagree with the "censorship" spam in FFF 266 for the same reason. Anyone can go on an off-topic rant at any time, and no one can disagree. There's the real censorship.

This system needs moderator intervention to work. On a different system, none of this would be happening in the first place. Behold! A reddit thread about pickaxes. It is a joke. This is lighthearted for almost everyone. There is one post that laments the loss of pickaxe, as it felt like the first real power-up. Another RIP for steelaxe runs. But no monomaniacal ranting about the End Times.

IMHO the biggest issue is that while Wube is among the best at using forum software, here they are doing it wrong :
Each FFF having only a single forum thread, even though they are almost always multi-topic, not only makes it harder to discuss these topics, but also invites unrelated spam* (see above).
(This is much less of an issue on Reddit, by the way posts get "auto-split" into discussion trees.)

Spam

*On the subject of that spam, lest anyone might take it that I completely oppose those positions :
I too have an axe to grind against the removal of pickaxes (doubling as a melee weapon) and mining hardness from modded games, especially considering the potential that they had for more survival-style Factorio mods and total conversions (CounterStrike, Turret Defense, DOTA...)
Also I sympathise with privacy issues (but taken too literally, the GDPR is completely unworkable, so...)

P.S.: Congratulations on your 2M copies, and happy new year !