Honestly, I think that you should keep moderator a volunteer job. If it's a paid job then there won't be the same love and genuine care for the game that a volunteer moderator would have, and if you spend all your ape moneys on moderators where will all the updates get their funding from? Ata staff members need money too! The old mods were volunteers and the new ones should be too.
Oh gosh, kaw_admin I know you guys mean well but why not say "adios" to the old greats and accept some new guys? Give KaW a whole new outlook. Also, I agree with whoever said that they choose the level of silencing. Mods should be able to decide if the offense was cruel enough to get silenced everywhere, or just needs to not be able to post on walls, WC, etc. One nmore
Agreed with word, to add to my comment. It's great to know the developers of this game care enough to clear stuff up and/or interact with the players. (Whatwith kaw_creative) [No Sarcasm at all]
Props to dev for giving us some feedback re: Mods and silencing changes. Some o the concerns addressed were actually valid in the side of the development team. However, IMHO the PM commo channel should be included in the silence but leave the players group chat open. If the concern is not knowing the ToU in their first silence offense then they can still ask questions within the chat group channel. I'm sure many within their clan have a rudimentary knowledge about the ToU and can explain it to them. Blocking the PM channel will address the community's concern about them people with inappropriate conduct.
First of all, thank you for opening this discussion to the KaWmmunity. I hope the thoughts and ideas we players share with you are not shared in vain. You know I applied as a moderator over a year ago. My reasons for applying are well-known to some of the veteran players here. However, my reason for applying evolved as time went on. I remember seeing one mod doing a disproportionate share of the workload here in forums. I feel like this place is the neglected step-child of KaW sometimes. Soon, my motive for applying became to help keep forums clear of spam and clean of bypasses. That's not to say that the other mods weren't helping - they most certainly were. What I'm saying is that there was more work to do than the mod team was able to carry. The result was threads that ran far too long without being policed and bypasses in forum posts that went unnoticed. For a community of thousands of members, I never understood why the moderator team was so small. I'm not even bringing this up out of my desire to moderate - there are simply too many people playing this game for such a small team of people to moderate. It certainly is not for lack of quality, either. Slayerbob, Señorita, Paraxiom (AKA Willy-The-Deuce), Drgnblade, Delphin, Toast, Sholron, and -Deadly- are all top-teir choices. What harm is there in promoting these high-quality members who have served your community for years? Eagle Now that you've come out and said it, I respect your decision in selecting Eagle. You have a time zone to cover, and I understand that. However, I recommend a training period be implemented prior to promoting new moderators. I have never had a job that did not have an initial training period prior to being out on your own. To me, what happened to Eagle is similar to a police station handing a gun and a badge to a citizen and putting them out on patrol in the streets without going through the police academy first. For that reason, I can't even blame him for what happened. He's just being himself. You must find a way to instill in all your future moderators the understanding that it is not OK to make up answers to questions to which they do not know the answer to. Eagle was asked a very basic game mechanics question: How much gold do you lose per steal? Instead of looking it up, asking a more knowledgeable player, or simply saying "I don't know," he chose to lie and say that the amount lost per steal is 10%. I can only imagine he did this hoping he would guess correctly in order to avoid "looking bad as a mod." I don't even care if Eagle doesn't know game mechanics well. If he is willing to admit when he doesn't know the answer to something, that would be perfectly acceptable to me. I'm sure it would be acceptable to the vast majority of those who opposed his modship as well. As a mod who is just there covering a particular time zone, all he needs to be doing is watching WC and responding to wall messages with complaints. I don't think he is ready to moderate forums nor answer game mechanics questions. Not that you've read this far, anyway, or would bother heeding the advice of a washed up KaW addict. :lol: Closing Thoughts I will say that I like the direction you've taken over the past year. You've kept an open ear to the community, and you have responded by giving us exactly what we want. For that, I commend you. I actually have no doubt that you'll continue to do that in this situation as well, but I am disappointed that something so drastic had to happen to get your ear back monitoring the heartbeat of this game. Your moderator team is your window into the KaWmmunity. Nobody knows us better than they do. I think you made a huge mistake ignoring their advice regarding Eagle's modship as well as not heeding their feedback regarding the silencing rule. All that being said, I think you deserve a second chance, since you have historically shown us that you always come through for us - even though it may not be fast enough for some. Respectfully, Cheese
I think the behavior of the mods recently is rather childish ( not speaking about all mods obviously) When you disagree with something you should not behave irrationally as the result of emotions you should behave as the result of rational thinking...especially when you lead a community if people Naturally we as players will be adversarial to mods and devs and naturally mods will be adversarial to devs....we as people just hate authority I think some mods felt as if this silence rule took away some of their power In my opinion do away with silencing all together it's silly...in wc just have it to where nobody can post more than a certain amount of characters in a limited time no matter what it says and that kills spam....if the rare event comes up where someone makes hundreds of accounts and won't stop posting just ban accounts one by one until its over...if you break TOS give one warning and then account is deleted no questions asked(of course their are exceptions) It is good to have new mods...lets be positive about a new age in Kaw....the estoc era...the eb era has died and with it comes new mods...so many people want to be mods it's good to bring some new ones in every so often
I, personally, can't wait to have Mods that are more interested in moderating the game and enforcing the ToU, than cultivating a teen fan-boy base. Here's hoping.
I do say to all new mods coming in: when it comes your time to step down and pass the torch to the future mods of Kaw try to have a little more class and show a little more respect to the community, to your fellow mods, and to the devs that gave you the opportunity to lead in the first place This controversy is not healthy for the community at all and it is this community that you pledged to lead mods...could have been handled with a little more class