Decline in Quality of Guru Posts and Attitudes

Inde's post was pretty spot on, especially her response to Age's rather clueless remark.

It's human tendency to have opinions and to make favorites. Someone like Fenix (he and I don't always get along but he's an excellent example so I'll use him here) can be sarcastic, demeaning, and elitist. He'll also fairly frequently flame people.

The noteworthy part of it is, he's pretty much always right. Despite his occasional flaming, he's normally right both logically and factually, and doesn't make obnoxious posts that your eyes glaze over. So despite his flames, he's a pretty decent poster. Someone who makes posts that are quite wrong factually and logically are going to draw flames.

I'd prefer the mods to have opinions and favoritisms, mainly because the mods are going to favor those who post well and are going to have generally good opinions. The reasons most mods are mods is because they showed themselves to be qualified, knowledgeable, helpful, and experienced enough to moderate these forums.

If anything has gone down in terms of post quality, it's more and more posters asking more and more stupid questions and coming to even worse conclusions than before.

Regarding the slow decline in the quality of posts, I'll have to go against some opinions here and say that there has been a general decrease in what I'd qualify as quality. I'd attribute this to the fact that the game really isn't going anywhere, unless you consider periodic skill updates as progress. There is simply less new content for people to debate and I'd take a shot in the dark and say that the content that is changing is the type of content that brings out the worst in the complainers; as a result you are seeing the same as usual in that department but nothing else, so the cumulative effect is that general posting is worse.

Everyone has their own idea about how things should be done; we obviously can't accommodate all of you, so we don't try. We instead pick whichever way works best for our board and stick to it. Just because someone is a mod or admin doesn't make their opinion more correct than someone else's. God knows I've seen some terrible administrators, some that can't communicate, and some that don't care. Our moderators here are not perfect, and some are abrasive and can cross the line. They do get reprimanded, we don't let them free roam, but they don't lose their positions over infrequent transgressions.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but was this thread temporarily closed?

In any case, I think most of us agree that the current situation on Guru is not by any means the fault of our moderators/admins. Personally I feel all of you do an excellent job to manage such an enormous forum, although it would be nice if once in a while you took shifts so mere things like sleeping and eating didn't get in the way of your moderation.

Another thing I feel most of us agree upon is that the decay of good conversation is largely due to few new developments in the game in addition to the massive influx of "noobish" questions that have been answered over a hundred times before. Many new members do not use the search button or read the stickies before posting causing this problem.

It's a good sign that several moderators and administrators have taken an interest in this thread. I feel that with the information re-written in the previous paragraph can help to solve the problem if new changes are implemented. What about some sort of forum by forum validation system whose validation code is in a sticky? I've never administrated a vBulletin before so I don't know if this is possible, but disabling posting or thread starting in a forum until you enter a code seems plausible. Each forum has its own rules, by throwing in part of the code at the end of every section users would at least glance over the rules before posting. Providing a section with information about the stickies in that forum would probably stop a significant number of silly questions. Once the code is entered for a forum once, it would remain unlocked for that user.

Obviously unless extremely well implemented this idea would create chaos. New users would be clueless as to why they could only read threads even after registering, and the poor moderators and admins would potentially receive over 9000 stupid messages on a daily basis. My point with that suggestion is that with another step before posting users are forced to at least be exposed to the rules or sticky information before starting a thread.

Once again, thank you for taking an active interest in this thread.

If a validation code was required to post or start a thread every time, I'd find that annoying, to be honest. I'd rather have the freedom to post. I think going to a validation system would make it more work for legitimate users and have a tendency to push people away from the forum.

He meant only the first time they try to post in a forum, Jae, not every time.

This could be interesting, but I would not want to moderate it...

I will say that it seems to be largely to do with the length of time that posters have been playing the game actively. This is very noticeable when you move to another MMORPG which is quite old, yet still very active. I talk here, about WoW (I'm sure it's the same everywhere, but this is based on personal experience).

If you just want the summary, skip the follow 6 paragraphs

I made my first solo character, a Gnome Warlock. I levelled, and loved every minute of it. There were a few things I didn't like, but I got over them and continued. It was new, and it was exciting.

My friend also made a Gnome Warlock. We both wanted the same thing out of the game; some fun levelling, and then a chance for high-end raiding and good (clean) group fun. But here's what we did differently. She read alot of forums about Warlocks and the general game, and I just browsed the "need to knows" on wiki and some of the important Warlock threads (so I knew how to play my class).

Each time the game was updated, I'd be excited about changes when I read them. She would be complaining about things that had been nerfed, things at this point she had never used or experienced, and the regular complaints of the community. Bear in mind she started playing at the exact same time as me. Anyway we both pushed on.

We hit 70 within a couple of weeks of each other, and were both pondering how to gear up. She refused to enter instances without a full team of people she knew, and wanted to max her hit rating to 202 and spell damage to 850 before she started. She also wanted to read wiki about each and every instance before entering them so she knew what to expect. And she kept reading forums about warlocks (which did help me too, but also gave her this huge list of "things expected of pro players"), and about the game. She could always tell me about glitches people hated.

I was less bothered. I wanted to start raiding, and set out to find a guild to help me. I didn't worry about my stats or DPS. And in only a few weeks, I had seen more instance runs (all successful) and had more gear. My DPS was nearing the amount she wanted, and my hit was NEVER questioned. This wasn't just luck. I hit 4th in the DPS meter in my first Kara run (at this point, still lower than my ideal stats). To you, this may be meaningless babble. But suffice to say, it's like me joining an FoW or UW clear group (not quite DoA) with no idea what to do, and being able to complete a run in decent time just off the friendliness and helpfulness of those I was in the run with.

Meanwhile, her Warlock was gathering dust. She didn't want to do the instances because she felt she'd be accused of having sub-parr gear. She didn't want to join a guild in risk of them wanting her raiding full time, and she let the comments of those on the forums run her Warlock in game.

To sum it up here, 6 paragraphs later. She read the forums for WoW, and let the gripes of the community hit her own playstyle, whilst I just enjoyed the game. And I ended up better for it. The players who post on the official WoW forums are the same as those who post here; they have mostly complaints and bitterness for what they feel are stupid updates. And the players who avoid the forums are having a WHALE of a time in game. Loving every minute of the gaming experience for what it is; pure, unadulterated fun.

Large numbers of people loitering and complaining in one place will inevitably lead to exactly what guru has here: people who think they know it all posting insulting and un-useful posts for those who just want quick answers to certain issues. This is why I didn't read the WoW forums...because of my experiences with guru. And it payed off for me.

Anyway, just my slightly lengthy 2 cents.

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