I’m tagging in everyone whom I know for certain helps or at the very least tries to help others.
My intention here is to send Epic a clear message:
Either the abusive and censorship prone behavior from moderators and staff STOPS, or we will stop answering your client’s questions.
Enough is enough.
Since you probably got notified by being linked above, Please chime in with any thoughts you may have as to how profoundly UNPRODUCTIVE the current censorship rule of
“I don’t like it, people throw insults, I delete the whole topic”
Approach to moderation this forum has taken is.
I mean…I get where you are coming from but as someone not so well versed in the community side of things (outside of the discord) this post and a lot of your comments come across as extremely hostile and inflammatory. It’s certainly worth discussing moderation and rule enforcement but I can’t imagine if I was a mod wanting to do that when you swing like this.
There’s really nothing for the mods to discuss.
Censorship is Wrong. Period.
It’s an indefensible position in general,
One which I seriously doubt any moderator would even bother arguing for.
They are “doing what they are told”.
What “They are told” is wrong.
IT needs to change…
Censorship for the sake of censorship is wrong but there are cases where it can be seen as acceptable or even necessary. Let’s take an extreme example a nazi goes into a holocaust museum and goes around laughing and pointing at the deaths depicted. I think most if not everyone would agree he should be kicked out ya? but that’s censorship, or a more tame example not letting kids look at rate nc-17 material its censorship by not allowing it to just be seen by who ever but it’s important censorship that can provide a service to the public as a whole.
Yes we shouldn’t just close every post we dislike but
that is an assumption you’ve made about the mods opinion on a topic
a private establishment having certain restrictions on commentary is considered allowed censorship in the same way walking into a bar and yelling slurs at the bartender can get you kicked out, it’s only censorship in that your voice is censured in the place but not everywhere you can still go home and complain about the bar without fear of arrest.
TLDR: Censorship is an important part of keeping communities from devolving into chaos where the line is drawn can be up for debate but we can agree there is a line or are you arguing that absolutely anything should be allowed on here even illegal things?
Not really. This isn’t the first topic I see this happen to - This is repeated abusive behavior driven by a systematic rule that needs changing.
We can agree on that with a proviso.
All censorship is bad, but if censorship aids more than it damages it can be “right”.
In the case of this community - the current behavior is Damaging to the community.
I have first hand seen First Time Posters having their topic / or their questions In a topic be deleted.
This obviously results in the opposite effect of what is intended
To re-quote the policy:
“BUT, if you happen to comment and ask questions in a topic where people bicker, we just delete the whole topic. Including your questions, who gives a toss.”
That’s really NOT how moderation is supposed to go…
AND, if you folks want I can try and search my emails for other topics that were closed by various trolls trolling or insulting in the same way - by different mods.
Again, This is a Forum Wide policy - not a single occurrence.
TBH that post had devolved into a flame war, and was very off-topic.
Censorship is a laughable concern on a private forum. They’re tidying up as they see fit, and no one has any particular rights for their posts or comments to remain up, or be seen by any one else. If this is censorship, then every single place on the internet is heavily censored.
Consider this, on most product subreddits if you shat on the product like 50% of the time, you would be banned quite quickly. Hasn’t happened yet here.
Not me, but dunno about Epic! They don’t really allocate much in terms of resources to the unwashed masses (IE us), which has been changing somewhat, recently.
The impression I get from the forum is there’s a bit of a skeleton crew that manages it, and they are quite lax in terms of bans or mutes, opting to just lock topics instead. Whether either option is better than the other, I couldn’t say.
The topic itself was, honestly, resolved. We have no information about an impending release, and the original plan was to release a preview or two, which you can download at any time. All you can do, aside from source builds, is twiddle your thumbs waiting for UE5 to see a proper release. There is only so many posts and comments that are needed to convey that simple bit of information.
It is simple. Epic has their own rules in their own forum, like you can also decide who may be present in your appartement/house or not.
If their decision is to clean up in this way, they are allowed to.
You can scream “this is censorship” but they always say “it is our platform and our rules”. That is it.
If you don’t like it and keep on bashing on their really good product (my opinion not yours) than they are allowed to delete your posts and to kick you out of their house.
Instead of bashing around, you could be productive and helpfull by reporting bugs or at least make a list of problems in the forum.
Instead you bash high level features which are explicitely marked as alpha features and hate around.
To bad that this seems to be the standard behavior of the large majority of internet users currently.
Except this is our community, so I for one think we have a direct say in them not being allowed to use the Nuclear Option instead of properly moderating.
Or else, you’ll see that the majority of us - I for certain - will stop doing their work for them by answering their client’s questions for free.
It is quite literally as simple as this.
Actually, they announced that they added paid moderators and people to help properly run the forum - in an effort to “foster” the community.
This of-course (like almost all of their other postings and announcements), has so far in fact revealed to be yet another lie.
And, yes, they definitely dont give bans when they should, or some of the people on that topic wouldn’t have been able to freely insult each other during regular business hours like twelve year olds…
Particularly since i know that at least two of them have had at least 2 counts of being muted for weeks after issuing gratuitous insults about.
Again, there’s no excuse for POOR moderation.
You either do it correctly, or you don’t moderate. Pass it off for someone else to sort out.
On the theory side of things, i agree, moderation is not simply closing a thread, that has gone offroad. There are rules, that have to be uphold and enforeced, and depending on how much room the mods have for interpreting and enforcing, they can cleanse more or less.
However, on the reality side of things, that would require an actually operational mod crew, that has enough manpower to do the job. And since a long time, i have the feeling, that the mods here are way more rare than a legendary pokemon.
If they simply don´t have enough people, then at least for me, it´s understandable, that they rather close a thread, that became a flamewar, than trying to clean that mess. Desireable? Nope. Understandable? Unfortunately yes.
I agree to most of what MostHost_LA has said regarding cencorship and moderators outright removing entire threads.
While I don’t know the extent to which this is happening, I believe even in an inflamatory topic developers can find clues to solve their problems.
While Epic has all the right to ban or unban as they so choose on their platforms, but given the fact that it is the community here that helps others 99% of the time and not Epic staff, I say the weight of removing entire posts (instead of maybe just inflamatory remarks, which I think personally should also still be kept for context purporses, Maybe a flag by the community where we can turn them on and off can be helpful?).
There should be a balance in all this. From my experience I have yet to see a remark in these forums that constitues outreight banning or insults. ( there are and were spammers though but thats another matter).
You want to see inflamtory remarks go browse your average everyday social media (twitter, reddit etc…) Epic forums are like your every day mom and pop shops compared to those places.
These are the types of people who helped me lose interest in Game Development.
Censorship and community guidelines people. I lived with an alcoholic and I’m not going back to that unpredictable hurricane of ever changing guidelines.
Gamers. Even if you gave them ten million dollars, they would still pester you with complaints.
Programmers/engineers. Their arrogance for accepted practice runs on an infinite loop.
Artistic people. I did music for 25 years and swore to never work in that kindergarten even again, that artists are.
People who are against business and profits. Most of the industry.
Sensitive and entitled victim mentality people.
Internet ranting and venting people.
I honestly have no idea why I even have an EPIC account, because I haven’t felt any passion for Unreal or this industry for many many months because of the people involved.
I mostly tend to disagree with you about things you write on this forum. Especially being overly negative about pretty much all the aspects of the engine.
You tagged lots of us in your original post, and then under it you write “Either the abusive and censorship prone behavior from moderators and staff STOPS, or we will stop answering your client’s questions.”
Don’t do that. Speak just for yourself, not for the rest of us. (I believe) most of us answer the questions on this forum just out of the passion for the engine and the community. I don’t consider it being some altruistic way of helping Epic with the client support, especially since vast majority of the forum frequenters are using the engine for free. Most of those, who have reached that crazy high $1M revenue cap, and therefore became actual Epic’s clients, probably have access to UDN with much higher quality of client support.
That being said:
This is one of the rare occasions where I have to agree with you. As soon as corporate phrases like “We want to create an inclusive and open space…” start to get thrown around, things tend to go to $#!t really quickly
EDIT:
Still, you are about 90% responsible for closure of that thread. Right before you joined that thread, it was just about positive excited speculations regarding what final UE5 could bring, but then you started to repeatedly derail it with your usual inflammatory negativity. If you never contributed to that thread, it would have never been closed.
Only the remaining 10% of the fault falls at PresumptivePanda for crossing the line between a mere explanation and corporate virtue signalling in the message they sent you. But compared to what you did, that’s negligible.
Not sure why I was tagged in here.
I do not like to discuss politics nor social rules…
I just want to improve knowledge about unreal engine, learn from other developers and share what I’ve learned.
I do not use Discord neither Twitter specifically ro avoid political discussions, I hope the forums don’t go in that direction.
I agree tho programmers, we are arrogant, this is why I always try to explain coworkers that I will “try” something or I don’t have all the answers, I try to make it clear there’s a ton of things that I don’t know and try to improve my communication with the non programmers.
i be moderate wit no reson and i stop use this service… now I do not uae a forum i avoid it…
i see a mail from epik forum with this topic on and i come cmplay to but to fight against the fascism of the stitem Forum in general it’s a lost cause guys you just got ban for spoke out you stress yourself and all for nothing 2 clicks you are no longer there and nothing you said
You are correct in that I definitely do not speak for all of you - However the intention was to invite all of you to consider your continued participation to this… LEMONshow^.^ if the rule isn’t changed.
Thing is, most of the people I have tagged initially have actually stopped responding to people’s post since before the new year started.
NOT that this specifically is the reason why, but I’m 100% sure it factors in overall. Particularly for at least 2 people in that list.
Well, that’s your opinion.
Nothing I said was actually untrue, And @HAF-Blade didn’t have any need to go SJW on the epic defensive by arguing non-engine related things.
Even then, the discussion was Amicable / And ended there.
IF you are suggesting that the discussion should be closed because Epic’s sorry excuses were being criticized, well then, that’s a different form of censorship. Perhaps an even more dangerous one than preventing little kids from throwing dung at each other by closing a post…
The only way we have to get Epic to improve the engine - Since, quite honestly they don’t give a toss about Bug Reports OR even engine contributions - is to criticize the ever-living-LEMON out of the engine until SOMETHING gets done about the (never-ending list of) short-comings.
But since you are discussing, consider this:
Your knowledge - or People’s knowledge?
The point here is that the current censorship will factually PREVENT people from gaining knowledge in the long run.
I know you to be one of the most knowledgeable ones around here, who apparently does care about helping others and the community (which is why you were tagged really).
Obviously there’s no reason for conflict in really any forum thread/post. I think anyone older than 12 would agree on this point
You aren’t particularly wrong on any of your points.
Passions come and go at times. Particularly when you have to deal with 90% of people being the way people are.
In an environment where you would assume having a modicum of brain matter between your ears is a requirement, it’s disheartening to find out just how brain dead some people are
Still, hopefully you overlook that and focus on your own stuff / re-ignite that passion by just completely ignoring most things. Best of luck on that
Well, the staff claims this isn’t the case.
So this thread here is basically us saying “prove it”…
Chances are, I’ll just stop using the forum. It’s really no skin off my back.
But there’s no point in me (or anyone?) trying to contribute to a community that cuts off it’s nose to spite it’s face – via censorship of all things. In 2022…
There would be nothing to clean up if there was no mess in the first place… So who’s really to blame: the person who made the mess, or the person who cleans it up?
More specifically, should we be putting blame on the moderators, or on the people who make moderators necessary?
@MostHost_LA so far can’t say I share the same experience, so I’ll limit my comment to that.
I respect you and your opinion. Just hope this doesn’t discourage you to stick around since I believe you are of the the most knowledgeable UE users willing to help.
Yes, and the worst of them all is myself. As you can see, even in a Utopia beyond perfection compared to life from start and until 50 years ago, I’m still not happy “because the others…”
