Some time back, the Mod Squad decided to take a much more proactive stance with handing out forum bans.
Many popular posters - career trolls or players who post to speak their minds but aren't in the habit of making posts for the purpose of griefing - were banned. Many forum patrons now complain that the forums - and by extension the game itself - are "boring".
While this was intended to strengthen the community, or so it was claimed, it ultimately had the opposite effect.
First off, it had the effect of driving many players away from the game. Bans are permanent and the mods hand them out much more easily than actions against the gameside of the account; many players feel that unable to communicate with their realm communities through the realm forums, a central part of the game experience is denied them, and so they cancel account. This often causes a snowball effect as other players, who played for their company, or to be amused by their folly or rivalry, in turn also quit. Virtually every realm has seen this happen to at least some extent.
Second, it undermines the community itself. MMO players are typically ornery young males, and as it is a recreational and not professional activity, they typically are fairly uncouth and confrontational. While this may not be fundamentally desirable, this is the nature of the culture; while allowing the most negative aspects of gamer culture to define the community is a bad idea, it is equally unrealistic to impose a culture that isn't applicable - to legalistically regulate the forums as if it's the 9-5 corporate network.
Third, this confrontational and uncouth behavior is often central to conflict resolution. While drama threads may make non-gamers reel in disgust, the reality is, they serve their purpose. They allow for players to speak their minds and talk about past business; they are ultimately the final source of social accountability. While in the short run, nuking drama threads may seem to stabilize the community, in the longer run, this prevents realpolitik-driven churn. Recurring issues aren't resolved and bad arrangements sleepwalk along, whether it's the ninja VoA leader who finds new victims each week or the horrible guild that chain recruits across servers for years, rather than dying and letting a better guild form from its remains.
Fourth - and I think this is most crucial - the Mod Squad has failed at their purported goal, which was to reduce trolling. The forums are as much a cesspool of griefing, misinformation, and generally idiotic posts as ever. They choose to ban for small infractions such as posting on other accounts or use of profanity, but incredibly bureaucratic and small workarounds such as using non-alphabetical characters and spaces to disguise profanity or racial slurs or the like, or use of euphemism for sexual innuendo which doesn't change the basic content of the post, makes it acceptable to them. And so trolling continues.
Fifth, their misguided policies have in many ways increased trolling. By passing out bans in a very bureaucratic way, with no accountability or appeal, they have made the discourse much more disingenuous. Since overt trolling/insults/mention of past misdeeds is forbidden, instead posters often take a passive-aggressive or dishonest tack; often they make their point by way of allusion, which decreases the signal-to-noise ratio and ultimately rewards the fundamentally dishonest.
Sixth, the Mod Squad has chosen the very shortsighted and unwise approach of simply deleting threads and banning posters that are directly critical of Blizzard policy, most often when those posts are from "the loyal opposition" and intended to be constructive. This is bad for Blizzard, because it amounts to head-in-sand behavior and precludes input, and also because it undermines playerbase confidence in the company and encourages cynicism. There are abundant examples of where this has killed other MMOs - go look at the EvE management scandal, or the scandal in another MMO where threads about alleged billing fraud by the company were nuked. Whether the posters were right or wrong, over-aggressive moderation critically damaged good faith in the game itself as a going concern.
Seventh, they have likewise chosen to not action blatant trolls that plead in favor of Blizzard, either for the purpose of annoying/griefing (trolling) other posters, or for self-aggrandizement. The MVP program's failure - how posters like Palehoof and Snowfox aggravate and alienate more patrons than they appeal to - is testament to this. The fact that Blizzard's own MVP program has to a dramatic extent proven self-defeating is testament to the misguidedness of the Mod Squad's entire mindset.
The basic problem, as I see it, is that bans are permanent and actioned too easily. Entire threads are nuked rather than selectively purged, which has the effect of destroying the atmosphere of the game - the community of a server as defined by a shared history.
I would make a simple proposal:
A blanket amnesty and restoration of forum privileges to all accounts in good standing, and then proceeding on a going-forward basis, handing out future actions as necessary.
The Mod Squad should also seek insight and self-reflection as to the wisdom of their own culture and policies - is what they do really in Blizzard's best interest? Anyone's best interest?
For the record, this post is not motivated by any specific action to anyone I know. In fact insofar as this post had an inspiration, it was someone who I really didn't like who never ceased to give me a hard time on the forums and in-game, but whom I nonetheless knew to be a central figure in the community. Ultimately, his abusive posts enhanced my own credibility, because people saw them for the idiocy they were.
In closing, I would quote Nietzsche, "Love thy enemy".
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