When all is lost...

When all is lost...the mysterious and elusive Andrew Gower, the lord from up high, visits the mortal realm to assuage our fears and hear our pleas...

193-194-474-60855666

Andrew Gower

Hi,
I thought I'd just post to explain some of the thinking about the forum communities, and also to tell you about some tweaks we have made in response to your feedback.

The original goal of this project was to answer a request we have frequently been receiving from the players. When we started allowing free players to post on our forums there was actually quite a lot of ranting that this was a bad thing, and a lot of members asked us "Please can we have our own members-only forums, like we have our own members only game worlds". Similarly we frequently received requests from high-level players that they would like their own private 'high-levels only' space to be able to chat on the forums.

These all seemed like good ideas so in response to your suggestions we started working on those features.

The forum communities we launched added exactly that, separate members-only forums, and also high-level only forums.

The aim was NOT to fragment the community or dictate where you can and can't post, it was to add an additional feature, which you optionally use, that was frequently requested by the players!

Unfortunately the names of the forum communities weren't very well selected, and the 'everyone can post' forum, could be misunderstood to be ONLY for free players. Obviously that wasn't the intention, as evidenced by the fact that EVERYONE can post on it.

Lots of people have been saying things like "lets rebel and all just post on the free 1000+ forum" which goes to show how much confusion this simple mis-labeling caused! Clearly getting the labels wrong was a very bad mistake! We expected and WANTED people to do that! That was the intended way the forums would work. The new communities should be seen as optional extras, which you can choose to use if you want, and not taking something away.

So we've now fixed the labeling so hopefully things are a lot clearer now.

You are very welcome to just use the 'everyone' forum and pretend the forums update never happened. Or conversely if you want your own private members-only space to post you can use that, it is up to you. Not trying to dictate!

There's been a few other reoccuring complaints which I shall address now also:

1) The removal of the 'game feedback' and 'future updates' forums. Ok we got rid of these because they didn't seem very useful, also when the decision was actually made about a year ago future-update was mostly just suggestions, and game feedback was mostly just rants, so they seemed like duplicates. Things improved over the last year but the decision wasn't re-reviewed. We'll be looking to bring these back (including the posts that were in them). Although 'game feedback' will probably be renamed to 'constructive criticism' as that is mostly what it contained. Someone is working on restoring these now, but it will take a few days at least as copying all the posts in is non-trivial.

2) The 'you have to wait 6 hours' to post in more than one community rule. This was introduced because we were worried about people just cross posting their threads in every single community and really spamming things up, which we are very keen to avoid. This is likely to remain, but we are now thinking of ways to relax it whilst still achieving the original aim. The main idea I have at the moment is making it so if you post in say 'members only->general' it only restricts you from posting in 'general' on other communities, but you could say still immediately post in 'everybody->teamwork', this way if there are some sub forums you want to use the members-only version on, and other you prefer to share with everyone, the 6 hour rule won't hit you. But we still avoid the cross posting problem. Not sure how technically difficult this is to implement though, web systems are looking at it now.

I was hoping that they would say something like this...haha, they fixed the segregation, but I'm still miffed over the conjoining of the suggestions groups.

I noticed it too, it has gotten better, but it's still not good.

I think part of the problem is I can't just shut my eyes and imagine that there's nothing different if we just use the Everyone forum. A lot of the FORUM communities have still been destroyed.

This is perfect evidence of bad feedback at work. People never praise you on a good idea, they only complain about the bad ones. So these few people who wanted this are being herald as a large number of the community simply because no-one was posting saying we love the current aspect.

Ah well... at least they realize the problem and are trying to fix some of it.

...

No.

3mptylord wrote:I think part of the problem is I can't just shut my eyes and imagine that there's nothing different if we just use the Everyone forum. A lot of the FORUM communities have still been destroyed.

This is perfect evidence of bad feedback at work. People never praise you on a good idea, they only complain about the bad ones. So these few people who wanted this are being herald as a large number of the community simply because no-one was posting saying we love the current aspect.

I agree to an extent, but there is one thing that you aren't recognizing. This ISN'T what was suggested!

We wanted new, additional forums exclusive to different communities that couldn't be spammed up by other groups. We wanted HTML and BB codes, a laxing of the rules, custom avatars... features that virtually all other forums have. Instead we get this update that's been a year in the works for what? Innovation? When you are seriously behind in technology, you have to catch up before you can mess around with things. There was so much potential in a good, solid forum update and they lost all respect that I had for them as a company.

Why doesn't Jagex just hire a serious forum-making firm, or at least an adviser to help keep them from screwing everything up? We didn't want four different forums, we wanted one modern one! It's not that we didn't tell them we liked the forums, because the things they "fixed" weren't the things that we complained about...

But that would have made too much sense.

I think it was Mod Mark H that answered a question about when we get STANDARD forum features, with something along the lines of this: We don't have anything planned right now, but we have some really cool ideas.

And I was just like "NO COOL IDEAS! PLEASE! Just Basic stuff will do"

*sigh*

Okay, I can see [quote] [i] [b] [u] [hide] [spoiler] and color tags being put in, but we'll never get images or custom avatars, I'm sorry, no...too many people would just put a piece of porn on the rants forum

Nah, I don't think custom avatars will either. But I can see a gallery working. Simply have pending, and moderators can approve/disapprove... and then attach some sort of QFC to each image, rather than using URL tags.

Lol...so...jagex hires a mod to look at flickering images and click accept, or...they force volunteers to look at them...why does that seem unlikely to me?

Because it makes too much sense. Besides Jagex should have done what Dark Avorian stated they might do in the last post on page 1 instead of this "update".

So many people would fill the rants with porn? Kay. So many people would simply get banned.

Jagex's forum is designed for an elementary school student (which would have been appropriate two years ago but is hardly the case now) and as such, is extremely lacking. We don't have STANDARD features, like coding and options to control your own assets like your threads and profile. We have groups now... I guess... but for a years worth of work and planning they were done extremely half-assed.

The age required to join myspace is what, five now? =/. Well honestly I'm not sure but I've had mine since I was twelve so it can't be a very high number. Myspace doesn't require any form of parental consent but does -advise- that a parent see what's going on. Runescape states that according to their rules and agreements a parent MUST be there during the creation of an account under thirteen, and that they can cancel the membership of anyone under eighteen who does not have parental consent. The conditions also say that a player under 13 can't give personal information.

My point is, if myspace can let kids run rampant in a virus infested predator's paradise, why can't Jagex let us post links to websites and maybe pictures, and limit conventional forum use to users over 13. Are they that conservative that they can't let us have that?

I mean there are two arguments that I can think of here. 1 is that kids know that when they join myspace, they are getting into a social zone, whereas when they join runescape their identity remains secret. However to combat this, all you have to do is slap a warning on the forum log-in. Kids will know what they are getting into. They may see inappropriate images, which will be dealt with promptly by mods.

2 is that the mods wouldn't be able to handle it. Well I have a one response, what are mods really for? In the runescape forums they stop spam, and do general forum maintenance. Give us some more mods, give us rights and ban anyone who doesn't want to follow the rules. Sure it'd be hell for a few days or weeks, think about when "ass" got removed from the censor. But after that, it will be a rewarding and constructive place that doesn't feel like a swimming pool without any water. (because children could drown.)