Removing a faction's control over their own feedback thread.

[sindroms]

Okay, you probably see this sort of topic pop up at least once or twice a year, especially after some sort of larger drama moment between a faction and another faction or a faction versus indie, it does not matter.

What does, however, that I warn you up front that my take on this and the way I describe the situation comes from me as someone who has both been on the giving and receiving side of the argument shown.

The topic title pretty much sums up the idea of this thread, but I still suggest you at least skim through this post to get the arguments as to why this is needed.

With that in mind, let's begin.





The inherit problem with a player faction by its nature is that it takes a considerable amount of effort for it to become official. Many of us are hardcore roleplayers, who would not even find it odd if someone asked them to write a few pages of back-lore on the spot, but it is good to remember that not all of us are and those who do not have this skill should not be exempt from being able to create and lead a faction.

Writing up a faction without the proper skill or experience in fleshing out an RP idea on paper is hard and it is frustrating, because no matter how long you spend writing up the description and motivations and diplomacy, the end product still never represents the one that you had in mind.

That being said, it is usually a relief for a new faction to be approved by the admin team and the community. It is that exact moment when you can stop focusing on all of the text-based bullocks on the forum and move on to actually showing the idea behind your faction ingame. You know, where it belongs?

The point of the last paragraphs is to remind people that people tend to remember what an annoyance it is to establish a faction and this is exactly why most faction creators are usually terribly overprotective of their group. They will protect it in any way possible up to the point that they are outright forced to change something and let me tell you, changing something you have established to be a fact is even harder than thinking it up and implementing it from scratch.

In other words, you will probably notice it is very hard to give any sort of criticism (Constructive or not) to most factions just because of the mental situation around their creation and management. Any point a person will give is usually met with the same arguments.

*First of all, there's ignorance. The faction outright shrugs off any feedback, claiming it is either too minor to look into or it is a one-time problem, usually dismissed by a ''we will sort this out'' post. It is the good old ''shait happens'' moment, which is simply ignored. It is no rocket science to presume that most groups tend to forget about it during a hour or so, if the feedback thread itself is lost in the spam.
*Secondly, there is denial. A faction refuses to accept accusations for the actions of their members by hiding behind posts such as ''you always say we do X but do you have ss of it being done?'' that one is very common and I tend to see that exact answer come up every now and then, just in different wording and in different levels of hostility.
*Thirdly, the faction owner might pull out the ''you are a X of a faction Y, who has never been in good relations with us'' moment and thus making the poster's concerns instantly seem as whining. Mind you, sometimes it is whining. Actually, most of all it is whining, but it is exactly this reply that usually is used to drown out any actual concerns the faction would rather not deal with.
*Last, but not least there is outright locking.
This is the last choice a faction owner or PR guy would use. If the feedback topic gets too hot, they simply lock it. Any sort of options, valid or not, are simply lost and due to the nature of the forum we use, the thread itself is simply forgotten.




I have seen this happen so many times. I am pretty sure most of you have. I remember doing the same with the LR- feedback threads every once and a while and I remember my own feedback being shrugged off. But seriously, this is a problem.

Is there any point of a feedback thread if it is controlled by the faction itself? It is like "Yeah, you can tell us how you think we are doing. But we remain in control regarding what we will allow you to tell us, so if if you have something to say we do not like, we do not want to hear it."

For this reason alone I would suggest we move the faction feedback topics to the Discovery Rules section and remove the ability to lock them on the request of the faction it belongs to. It is simply shrugging off any sort of responsibility of your ingame actions if you do this. If the feedback is bad, deal with it. The only reason why people right now tend to just tell the feedback giver to bugger off is that if they get angry and start become more vocal, the topic owners simply can ask a moderator to lock it because of ''flaming''.

Now obviously there will be flaming, but I think that if the factions will get rid of their cheap fallback card in the form of having a chance to ''stop'' their feedback threads, they will outright have to take it ''like a man'' and deal with the ingame problems they might or might not have caused.

Because currently, the Feedback threads are basically reserved for positive feedback, where everything else is quickly smacked down with a wet cloth, but do we really need a set of glorified ''Kudos'' threads for every faction and group? Or do we accept that most feedback by its nature is not going to be all flowers and that a faction should be held responsible of the actions of their members and be forced to listen and deal with this feedback rather than locking the thread every chance they get?

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