Forums

Displeasure

• Faterson 2,902 Posts

  Wed, Jan 6 2010 8:33 PM

  Hi,

  A belated Happy New Year to all the players.  

  As my personal look back at 2009, I published an article in my blog that explains why I am, by necessity, starting out in a new WGT year with a feeling of displeasure.

  However, let us hope all will turn for the better. I'd like to add to the blog entry that I received an email from WGTalex earlier today that made me suspend (for now, at least) the boycott announced in the blog. The email said that WGT.com plan to do the following in the foreseeable future:

  • fix the dysfunctional Report Abuse link in the forums
  • implement some flooding and posting controls [?]
  • hire forum moderators

  WGT have also today removed an objectionable entry from another player's blog, something I had requested back on 29th December. Better late than never.

  In my reply, I requested WGTalex to put back the Active Threads link to the forum. It's very difficult for the regular forum user, without the link, to follow the various conversations in these forums. On TWO, one of the things I praised WGT's forums for was the Active Threads link (something acutely missing at TWO), and here WGT now remove that link as well.    Removing that link will not prevent vindictive madmen from spamming away like crazy in the forums; removing that link primarily punishes the regular forum user. The uncomfortably familiar pattern is reaffirmed here (that of "punishing" the regular guy, here by taking a useful tool away from him/her).

  Again, Happy New Year to everyone, and merry Christmas to any Russian site users, where Christmas started yesterday.   

• YankeeJim 25,827 Posts

  Thu, Jan 7 2010 5:07 AM

  Bookmark this link.

  http://wgt.com/forums/topicsactive.aspx

• Faterson 2,902 Posts

  Thu, Jan 7 2010 6:07 AM

  Bookmark operational and used on a daily basis for months  , however it will only help forum "old-timers" or someone who accidentally reads a discussion related to this here in the forums. The vast majority of forum users will be left with the impression that there is no Active Links overview in WGT's forums, just as there is none in TWO's/EA's forums, and many will probably give up participating in the forums because of that. I practically don't participate in TWO forums, because there's no easy way to monitor the various discussions; they don't even offer the My Posts link so that you're unable to follow any feedback from developers to the bug reports you may submit! And email forum notifications don't work at all there. It's silly for EA to remove those links because they are standard features of the phpBB forum software package, and they do use a modification of that software package.

  Hiding this link is counter-productive and can only backfire for WGT in the long run. Hiding the link won't prevent massive spamming of the type that occurred in recent weeks. The way to tackle this is to address the root cause of the issue; not depriving forum users of standard functionality, but addressing the source of the problem. In an email mailing-list, preventing spamming of this type is very easy: you can set up your software so that any new user's contributions are, by default, moderated (a moderator must manually approve each post by a new user). This eliminates all spambots and spammers with 100% efficiency. If WGT's staff can introduce a similar functionality here in the forums (all forum posts by new forum users would by default be moderated, and wouldn't appear online until manually approved by a moderator), the spam issue will have been resolved once and for all. Well, "flooding/posting controls" are announced, so perhaps something like this ("moderated vs. unmoderated forum user" switch) is already in preparation.