It seems users can delete their own posts now. I have an issue with this.
Right, I’m a roleplayer as much as a predominantly nullsec PVPer, so for me forums are often a lifeblood of inter-factional roleplay since my character rarely meets his foes face to face (unless it involves shooting the crap out of each other in space.) The ability for characters to delete their posts is concerning, given that often one wants or needs to cross reference something said, or a key opinion expressed that ties into whatever RP is going on.
Individuals being able to just go in, delete it and cry out “it never happened” thanks to the loss of the primary post will lead to arguments, drama and a loss of accountability we took a bit for granted in the old forums. People make mistakes, sure, and those can be edited out. But allowing people carte blanch to go around removing their tracks makes responding to them, or demonstrating counter points/debates extremely difficult. Now apply that to CSM posts, to well known players giving an opinion or saying some stuff they maybe shouldn’t have, and then just covering all that up like it never happened!
Yes, you could just edit a post to remove all the words, but it’s harder to deny you ever posted at all when a post becomes ‘snip’, and we can track the edit history now for that supposed ‘accountability’. I also understand you could still track back via the quotes, replies and all the rest, but these potentially will be sketchy at best, and deniable at worse with the cry of “you put that quote in and just attached my name on it!”.
So CCP, is this ability to delete going to remain and become a fact of life we all gotta deal with or can this be changed?
The ability to have the forum AI automatically hide someone’s post by mass popular reporting, before a moderator ever sees or takes any action on any reports, is not great either. It makes it very easy to cheese the system and force hide whatever post you want, even if that post hasn’t actually broken the rules.
Agree with all of the above, but have to say at the same time you’re not going to get CCPlz to remove any tool that lets them avoid actually dealing with forum moderation. I’d like to be wrong, but I suspect I’m not.
With these new boards also removing old bans, we’ve literally buried the barrier for entry and I think that’s how CCP prefers it, on the IC boards as well as the OOC ones.
Deleting messages for the sake of just deleting them is irritating, especially in the IGS portion. If you’ve made a mistake, sure, delete it, but don’t delete it because you feel it might be trivial.
The ability to delete posts is bad. Worse than the ability to edit them.
Without editting and deletion, people would have to act responsible and thoughtful and can’t just hide, run away and pretend things were never said or meant. Which, I guess, explains why these “features” are implemented. vOv
@Steve_Ronuken, the person you responded to here deleted their post, once again. I guess it’s nice to have a direct example in this thread itself of why it’s a bad idea to let people do that.
A lot of forums employ an automatic timer on posts, so that after a certain time period the post cannot be edited or deleted.
Generally, I think that, if someone’s reputation is on the line and they say something in the heat of an argument that they might thoroughly regret later in life when applying for a serious job, in that case deletion should be an option, either by contacting the forum mods or by the ability to delete. It wasn’t a forum post but a in this hockey league I used to play in, they listed the suspensions to each player. A guy applied for a job about 3 years after having been suspended from the league for fighting and verbal abuse of official. The potential employer did an internet search and… well he didn’t get the job.
I think though that in a game such as this where your character name is not tied to you personally (as far as I know anyways…), posts should generally stand. I think that a 10 minute delete timer (or NO delete option at all) and 30-60 minute edit timer should be utilised. I die a little bit inside when I know something was said on the forums that answered my question and I go back later because I can’t remember the specifics, only to find that it is gone.
Edit: on a side note, when I came back to this game after a long absence, I decided not that I dislike my current name but that I found a different name I liked better (which was my alt’s name). I contacted CCP to see if a name swap was possible. Their explanation as to why I could not change my name was that reputation in this game is earned and plays a large role in player interactions. Since our forum posts are tied to our characters in-game, shouldn’t reputation also play a role in deciding what you choose to post on the forums? If not, my request to change my name stands.
There does need to be some limitation on the deletion of old posts, or as has been said, forums lose much of their usefulness. This is a game that inspires griefing behavior, but if that griefing is allowed to go too far, the game becomes unplayable. The forums become unusable if ‘post griefing’ is allowed to go too far.
On the other hand, NO ability to edit or delete posts makes said forums also problematic, as human beings do make mistakes.
