Constantinolia
TNPer
Before I get to my primary analysis, I think it’s necessary to give a timeline of the events which led to my interaction with the mods. I should also say that while I’ve been on NS off and on for over fourteen years, I had never posted on the NS forums, or even visited the forums, until a few days ago. I won’t be naming the mods by name. After my experience, and even though this forum exists outside of NS, it wouldn’t surprise me if naming them here is part of some obscure rule that I’m unaware of.
Timeline:
Two days ago: I sent a private telegram to a few of the admins/mods about issues with the nation name release policy. At the time I didn’t realize that telegramming the admins/mods individually about NS policy was frowned upon. The reuse policy is important to me and I didn’t want my objections/solutions to be lost, buried, or accidentally overlooked on the forum. The telegram that I sent, which I can share here if anyone cares to see it, was not in anyway rude, inflammatory, abusive, etc. In fact, I made it a point to be polite and respectful.
Five hours later: I received a reply from one of them telling me, rather curtly, that a private telegram is not the appropriate venue for technical suggestions and that I need to post it in the Technical forum. When I tried to reply in order to apologize for bothering them, I realized that this particular mod (I’m not sure if the others I messaged did the same) blocked me from contacting them again.
Minutes later: At this point I’m already irritated that I was blocked from contacting at least one mod after sending a single telegram that was perfectly friendly in tone, so I took their suggestion and posted it as a new topic in the Technical forum. Within minutes the topic disappeared and I mistakenly assumed it was deleted, which irritated me further. So, I re-posted the topic, went to the mega thread, and accused them of deleting it. After I posted the accusatory comment, I saw my original post in the mega thread and mistakenly assumed that I must have accidentally posted it in the mega thread to begin with instead of as a new topic. So, I deleted it, thinking that the mega thread wasn’t the proper place to post such a long piece. When I went to delete the comment accusing them of deleting the topic, another mod had beaten me to it. The mod then brusquely told me that he had merged the topic into the mega thread, something I was hitherto unaware was standard practice on the NS forums. He went on to accuse me of doing it on purpose and issued me with a Warning for Spamming. When I tried to explain my ignorance, he doubled down on the accusation and even went so far as to allude to my other “antics elsewhere.” At the time I was taken aback by the accusation of antics elsewhere since I’ve never really interacted with anyone on NS outside of the RMB. I asked him what he meant by that and received no response. Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I’ve come to the conclusion that he probably just said that as a way to make me look bad.
The next day: I appealed the warning. While I was waiting for a response to the appeal, I perused the Moderation forum for other appeals in order to gauge my chances of having the appeal approved. I got over twenty pages and didn’t find a single appeal reversal, not a good sign. Unsurprisingly, my appeal was denied. To be fair to the mod who denied my appeal, however, he was at least polite about it.
I’ve since had time to reflect and look at things with a clear head. Let me first say that I am fully aware that mistakes were made on my part. Some I made through no fault of my own, while others could have been avoided. Let me also say, however, that many of the mistakes I did make would never have been made in the first place if the mods had handled the situation differently from the outset. This brings me to what, I think, are some fundamental problems with the NS admins/mods:
I’m not posting this in angriness or bitterness. If I currently feel anything, it’s defeat. Many of the mods (Three in particular from my experience/research.) are rude, malicious, nitpicky, purposefully obtuse petty tyrants, and the admins enable them. So unless hundreds, or even thousands, of players do something about it as one (Not exactly the likeliest of scenarios.), what’s the point? Any complaints or suggestions are either buried under a mountain of bureaucracy or outright ignored.
Am I wrong, crazy, too sensitive, etc.? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Timeline:
Two days ago: I sent a private telegram to a few of the admins/mods about issues with the nation name release policy. At the time I didn’t realize that telegramming the admins/mods individually about NS policy was frowned upon. The reuse policy is important to me and I didn’t want my objections/solutions to be lost, buried, or accidentally overlooked on the forum. The telegram that I sent, which I can share here if anyone cares to see it, was not in anyway rude, inflammatory, abusive, etc. In fact, I made it a point to be polite and respectful.
Five hours later: I received a reply from one of them telling me, rather curtly, that a private telegram is not the appropriate venue for technical suggestions and that I need to post it in the Technical forum. When I tried to reply in order to apologize for bothering them, I realized that this particular mod (I’m not sure if the others I messaged did the same) blocked me from contacting them again.
Minutes later: At this point I’m already irritated that I was blocked from contacting at least one mod after sending a single telegram that was perfectly friendly in tone, so I took their suggestion and posted it as a new topic in the Technical forum. Within minutes the topic disappeared and I mistakenly assumed it was deleted, which irritated me further. So, I re-posted the topic, went to the mega thread, and accused them of deleting it. After I posted the accusatory comment, I saw my original post in the mega thread and mistakenly assumed that I must have accidentally posted it in the mega thread to begin with instead of as a new topic. So, I deleted it, thinking that the mega thread wasn’t the proper place to post such a long piece. When I went to delete the comment accusing them of deleting the topic, another mod had beaten me to it. The mod then brusquely told me that he had merged the topic into the mega thread, something I was hitherto unaware was standard practice on the NS forums. He went on to accuse me of doing it on purpose and issued me with a Warning for Spamming. When I tried to explain my ignorance, he doubled down on the accusation and even went so far as to allude to my other “antics elsewhere.” At the time I was taken aback by the accusation of antics elsewhere since I’ve never really interacted with anyone on NS outside of the RMB. I asked him what he meant by that and received no response. Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I’ve come to the conclusion that he probably just said that as a way to make me look bad.
The next day: I appealed the warning. While I was waiting for a response to the appeal, I perused the Moderation forum for other appeals in order to gauge my chances of having the appeal approved. I got over twenty pages and didn’t find a single appeal reversal, not a good sign. Unsurprisingly, my appeal was denied. To be fair to the mod who denied my appeal, however, he was at least polite about it.
I’ve since had time to reflect and look at things with a clear head. Let me first say that I am fully aware that mistakes were made on my part. Some I made through no fault of my own, while others could have been avoided. Let me also say, however, that many of the mistakes I did make would never have been made in the first place if the mods had handled the situation differently from the outset. This brings me to what, I think, are some fundamental problems with the NS admins/mods:
1. The generally adversarial, and heavy-handed, way in which they approach practically everyone, regardless of the context or situation. For example, if the mod who blocked me from sending him/her telegrams hadn’t blocked me after a single friendly telegram, I wouldn’t have gone to the forum with a negative disposition, which opened me up to making further mistakes based on emotion. If the mod who slapped me with the spam warning had taken the 30 seconds required to look at my forum profile, they would have seen that I was a new poster and was probably telling the truth. Etc. And it isn’t just me either. If you go to the Moderation forum, you can read page after page of issues and appeals that likely wouldn’t have been necessary if the moderator in question had approached the situation charitably rather than adversarially. On the one hand, I can appreciate the fact that they have to deal with a lot of riffraff on a daily basis, which is probably a source of a lot of their rudeness. On the other hand, it doesn’t excuse their behavior. To give a real-world example, I’m a supervisor at a retail store. In my line of work, not a day goes by that I don’t have to deal with some issue with a cashier. Time and time again I’ve seen other supervisors become so jaded that they begin to treat all cashiers like ne’er-do-wells in their first interaction with them. The cashier becomes angry and speaks out of turn, which leads to further infractions. As a former cashier myself, I try very hard to handle every issue individually without inserting any past experience bias. My point is that if someone can become so easily jaded, they probably shouldn’t be in a leadership position.
2. The appeals process, or at least the first level, is effectively worthless. At the time of this post I’m almost 40 pages into the moderation forum and, unless I’ve overlooked some, I’ve only seen two appeals approved. Now, from my research, there are three basic types of appeal. The first, which makes up the smallest number, are the appeals that don’t warrant being approved. The second are the appeals that, while not technically warranting approval, only exist because the moderator who issued the warning/ban was either overly adversarial or obtuse. The third, which makes up the largest number, are the appeals that should absolutely be approved because the ban/warning in question was obviously egregious, nitpicky, or just plain malicious. The issue, as I see it, is that mods are very reluctant to overrule fellow mods, at least in public (I have no idea what the appeal approval rate is for secondary appeals.). If this is the case, and I think it is, why even have the first level appeals process?
3. The admins. Where to even begin? From their strange ideological belief that people should be able to permanently reserve nation names after only logging in a few times well over a decade ago, which is causing stagnation, to their blatant disregard of mod abuses. The reuse policy isn’t within the purview of this post, so I’ll only address their enabling of the mods. While I’m aware that you can submit a GHR to the admins concerning moderation abuse, I’m not sure it would do much good. Put bluntly, many of the mods are petty tyrants which I’m sure the admins are well aware of. Maybe they just don’t care, or maybe they’re in favor of it because it keeps the riffraff in line. I don’t know, I’m not an admin. What I do know is that systemic problems with middle management are almost always the result of systemic issues at the top. Show me a retail store with a team of rotten assistant managers and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that it stems from the store leaders or store manager. It’s as consistent as gravity. I saw one appeal in the moderation forum where the player filing the appeal was so frustrated with the way the mod handled the situation that he wanted to go higher up. The mod told him that while he could report mod abuses to the admins via a GHR, the admins aren’t nearly as patient as they (the mods) are, so be warned. I’m paraphrasing, but that told me all I needed to know.
I’m not posting this in angriness or bitterness. If I currently feel anything, it’s defeat. Many of the mods (Three in particular from my experience/research.) are rude, malicious, nitpicky, purposefully obtuse petty tyrants, and the admins enable them. So unless hundreds, or even thousands, of players do something about it as one (Not exactly the likeliest of scenarios.), what’s the point? Any complaints or suggestions are either buried under a mountain of bureaucracy or outright ignored.
Am I wrong, crazy, too sensitive, etc.? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
