Chances are if you've ever posted a topic in the forum, asked a question or even just replied to a topic, you've met them. "The Trolls" - those intent upon making your job of getting a response much hard. Some people love them, some people hate them, some people even feed them but whatever your view point, has their job just got a lot harder? On Tuesday we all saw our Updates link glow yellow tempting us to see what new feature had arrived and this is what was there to greet us:
Creators of topics in the Classifieds and Game Forum can now kick users out, blocking them from posting
01:00 PM
Those who feel they have been kicked out unfairly can appeal against the kick directly from the forums.
Misuse of the feature will not be tolerated.
UpdatesPage said
For all those who had been terrorised by these troublesome trolls, your days just got a lot better. This new feature from Sky gives the player the power to get rid of those who are attempting to disrupt their topic. This feature did come with a warning though, "Misuse of the feature will not be tolerated", to stop those who wish to kick people out of their topic for no good reason. So has this changed the game already? We tracked down one of those yellow jacketed HDOs who deal with this frequently to see if it has indeed made a notable difference. We found YounV9 and asked him about his views on this update. "Nothing major changed for me personally. I do feel like it's a good new feature though." Youn told us. "The KO feature was here before but got removed due to abuse." We asked if he felt whether the abuse would be an issue this time. "I'm curious to see how it will turn out this time, so far it's looking good though. The staff will monitor abuse and if the same person does this in an excessive manor the feature can be taken away from this player. " We thanked Youn for his time and scurried off.
It would seem that most players don't have a problem with the trolls until they bring their japery into a serious topic attempting to hijack it, this being the reason they have got such a shadowy reputation. Another good part of this update is that it does not affect the off topic forum where players can discuss what they wish, within reason. This doesn't limit 'The Trolls' outlet for what they wish to say but just redirects it to a more appropriate venue.
We went looking for Sky and found him hard at work this week! After he granted us some of his time we asked him if he had noticed a change already in the way the update has affected the forum. "It's too soon to tell if this update has made a change, it's going to take a couple of weeks before we see some results, though we hope that the threat of being kicked out of every topic they go near will keep trolls out of the Game Forum altogether and in the Off Topic Forum, where they can (within reason) do what they want." Sky went onto say "The feature shouldn't be interpreted as us wanting to limit peoples freedom of speech. It's about right time, right place. The Game Forum and the Classifieds are about serious discussion of the Game, it's features, and the community. Everything else belongs in the Off Topic Forum, which we haven't forgotten about, but just allow more slack when it comes to rules." This is how the forums should run in many players eyes. One point that many have brought up is that new players are often discouraged from continuing by the hostile responses that they receive when they ask question in the forum. Whilst the FAQ is currently unavailable (to be reinstated soon) this is one of the outlets that these new players can go through. Being humiliated as they take their first steps will not help the new influx of players this game requires.
We asked Sky about what those who wished to abuse the system had to gain. "Compared to it's previous incarnation this system will really punish those who abuse it. We log every single kick, every single appeal, we can see who has the most appealed-against kicks and we will take action. If we feel you're abusing it, we'll revoke your privileges, taking it away from you entirely. If your abuse is egregious enough, we might even mute you." With this, we thanked Sky for his input.
This feature seems to be a big positive for not just the current players of the Bootleggers but also for those who will join the community in the future to form their own part of Bootleggers history. If we see the results that this update undoubtedly wishes to create, the decrease of so called 'trolling' in a forum where it is inappropriate, then this could be yet another step in the right direction for Bootleggers.
