Personally I think the notion that ISDs are biased and too aggressive is overstated. A lot of threads are started that raise good points, but the opening thread is written in such a way that either it in itself goes out of bounds or it leads the subsequent conversation itself to go haywire, ultimately leading the thread to be closed.
Let’s take two examples from yesterday:
- One guy wrote a thread about concerns on suicide ganking. Second sentence in and he compares it to gang rape, school shootings, and terrorism. At that points I personally was not going to give him any credence or any consideration. I did not bother reading anything else he had to say; I just lit up the Bat Signal and waited for Batman (aka ISD Dorrim Barstorlode) to come around and save Gotham, which he did as he usually does as ISD MVP. A buddy of mine tracking the same thread said “you know, he actually raised some good points” and I told him that even if the points themselves were worth considering and responding to, I wasn’t going to bother reading them or engaging in a conversation in a thread what was going to be locked down. Your points could have 100% merit, but if you include stupid ■■■■ like that, it’s going to get locked down - don’t accuse ISD for being biased or aggressive.
- The post about ageism and racism and telecommuting being an option for CSM - the problem with that post wasn’t so much the points being raised, it was HOW they were being raised. It should come as no surprise to anyone that it was hard to take OP seriously and that the thread spun out of control based on HOW he presented and supported his arguments. Personally I thought OP was a troll and called him out on it. It wasn’t until he posted a second time that I realized he was serious and was shocked at the absurdity at his delivery mechanism and some of his reasoning (while omitting several good reasons altogether). If you open your thread to be a piñata with plenty of sticks for everyone, don’t be surprised if it gets smacked around and ISD shuts it down regardless of points of merit raised in your opening post.
It’s also worth pointing out that customer support related issues that by their nature cannot be resolved with the support of other players (“Help! I can’t find my assets!”) don’t belong on the forums as a full-fledged discussion. Once they are bumped to customer support, of course the thread should be locked down. Take @Mu_ad_Diib’s example regarding the “bad names” post: there was no need to create a supportive post because the solution was simple: contact customer support. There was no need nor benefit to establish a dialogue with the community on the topic any further. Closing threads such as that, or even permanently removing them from the forums, are not matters of censorship or bias, they are matters of keeping things clean and orderly.
I don’t know why forum users huff and puff when they are told to file support tickets or email communityteam@ccpgames.com for issues that by their nature are sensitive and/or can only be addressed by CCP. Granted, they don’t always addressed your problems in a timely matter or even at all, but what makes you think the forums would be any better?
But going back to the matter of “censorship”: if you don’t want your thread to get shut down, then write it, very, very carefully: don’t go out of bounds, and don’t write it in such a way that the thread is very obviously going to go out of control.
@Mu_ad_Diib opened this thread in such a way that the subsequent discussion has been productive. His opening post was not perceived as a whine or “get over it” thread whereas it very easily could have been and shut down accordingly. Because it was opened well and has proceeded well, MVP ISD Dorrim Barstorlode is permitting it to go on because he acknowledges its constructiveness even if technically some of the conversations itself might be breaking some rules - but acceptably so because the resulting conversation is constructive and harms no one. Similarly, when I posted the ISD Appreciation thread that was linked earlier in this thread, I did so knowing I was breaking some rules, but I also knew the ensuring conversation would be constructive and as such an exception would be made for what was ultimately an exceptional circumstance. I would like to think that both the conversation arising from that thread in conjunction with the incident that “inspired” it are why ISD now have new powers. It goes to show that ISDs are willing to bend the rules if the result is constructive and harms no one.
As for ISD and defamatory users: ISD very, very recently got new temporary ban powers. We hopefully should see the most extreme offenders get bans whose duration increases with each additional offense. Each temporary ban by ISD gets reviewed by CCP. Yes, some of us call each other ■■■■■■■ idiots and imbeciles and whatever every now and then - as long as that doesn’t go out of control in terms of frequency and intensity and hogging up threads, it is what it is. I do agree ISD should, with their newfound powers, be relatively aggressive with certain defamatory language such as racial slurs such as the “N-word” (particularly if it’s not in an EVE RP context given that EVE lore is full of racism) and the word “retard”, etc. Insults as these lies in a spectrum of severity where ISDs should respond accordingly with warnings and when they intervene based on severity and frequency.