Forum Use Rules - Clarification please?

Community General Discussion
1

Hiya. We had a discussion a while back about forum posts here - well, more specifically, realm forums - and the problems faced by guild leaders wanting to advertise their guilds, but having problems due to the auto-lock feature that covers all forum posts after 30 days of no replies.

At that time we discussed alternative ways of trying to keep threads open - the main problem being that, if a guild leader wanted to keep their recruitment thread open, they had to have someone (other than themselves) reply first.

Some work-arounds were discussed … such as using a different character on the same account to update (not bump … but give additional updated information like progression changes, changes in the type of classes/roles needed, etc). At the time it was replied to by someone, who said they’d put it forward as a suggestion that perhaps certain forum sections could have longer time limits prior to being locked.

Obviously I expect nothing to happen immediately, or at all, and whilst discussing the problem with other guild leaders, one of them mentioned that he’d actually received a ban for posting on different characters on the same account, on the same thread, one after the other. Admittedly they were only a day apart … but I checked the thread he spoke about and, unless some posts have been removed, I couldn’t see anything major (other than the slight over-enthusiasm of making two posts only a day apart!) that could cause a ban.

Now obviously … I have no idea if there was something else going on, and I’m not claiming that whatever happened, he didn’t deserve it … the reason I mentioned it is because (a) something similar was suggested on that original forum post where I asked about advertising guilds and nothing was said by anyone at the time suggesting it was against any rules and (b) I want to know if it IS against any rules - obviously I don’t want to incur any bans so don’t want to do anything that could cause that … but if I don’t know what they are, and how they’re enforced, I can’t know if I’m unknowingly breaking them :open_mouth:

2

Sadly Customer Support won’t be able to answer this for you I am afraid as they only hold sway in the CS and Tech Support forums. The community team (in our case Aerythlea) are the ones that handle the settings and moderation for the realm forums, so this thread will likely be moved to General Discussion, don’t be offended, it’s just to make sure it is in the right place.

There were some updates to Discorse (the forum software) recently but I don’t know what those changes were. If I can find anything out though, I will let you know.

1 Like
3

Also, in the meantime, have your guild officers bump (post something relevant) it rather than doing in on your own accounts alts to avoid any penalties :slight_smile:

4

oh that’s okay … sometimes I just have no idea where I should post something … if they can shift it to a more appropriate place, that’s cool. To be honest, I’ve found the forum rules, and there’s several on there that I wouldn’t have even considered to be a problem … such as posting a link in one thread, to another. For example (just to totally land myself, and probably a whole load of other guild leaders in it) … sometimes when we see someone looking for a guild, we’ll write a bit of information about our guild, and then link our realm forum posts …

I’ve seen LOADS of these … and no action taken against them, so I’m assuming there’s either some lattitude given, or it’s only for specific things. I’m just confused :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT … hey that’s unfair … here’s me asking about people not being able to reply to their own posts … and you just did it :stuck_out_tongue:

5

I’m not aware of any such restriction. Whilst I do have rank 3 on the forums, I don’t believe replying to your own thread is restricted to anyone. If you have an example you can screenshot the error/message you get when you try it would be helpful.

6

oh my god … I’ve just broken it! lol … up until now, I couldn’t reply to my own guild recruitment thread - even if it was pretty close to the 30 days up … because it came up with an error message saying I had to wait for someone else to reply first. So … in order to get a screenshot of that … I went and did just that … with a “testing testing” type post … just to get the error message. And lo and behold … the flippin thing actually posted lol

Unfortunately … the delete post button doesn’t work … so now I’ve got a random testing testing post lol. I’ll amend it to something less weird if it won’t delete later :stuck_out_tongue:

Perhaps that’s what they changed …

… damn … sorry … wrong character … this is Poisonenvy. Also, just realised that the post I replied to was actually a hold-over from the old forums … so still had the old forums rules in place … I’ll go check the newer one … sorry

7

Are you using the SAME character that wrote the post to delete the post? You can’t delete a post from Character A whilst logged into Character B for example.

8

This is weird … it’s showing Poisonenvy at the top … but Rowtan when I start typing … let me fiddle a bit …

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Okay … I told it to switch characters at the top … from PE to PE … and I think this might have worked … it allowed me to start typing a reply to one of my own posts on my realm recruitment post … but when I tried to post it, it came up with the following pop-up:

“Please wait for other users to participate before replying”

*Edit … I then went and switched back to Rowtan to try and delete that post again … and it seems to have worked … kinda … just says it has been deleted and will be removed within 24 hours. I didn’t realise it wasnt an immediate thing.

10

Ah I see, so you just cannot be the first responsder (so to speak) to your own thread. Once someone else has posted a reply, then you have free reign to post as much as you like. I can only go again with my suggestion that you get an officer from your guild to reply to it for now and I will see what I can find out in the meantime, may take a while. :slight_smile:

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So do you think that, if I can get one of my officers (or someone else) to reply to my thread just once … then I can reply to it (and myself subsequently) as often as I want? (within limits … I mean, normally I tend to just reply if I think it’s close to getting locked … because I don’t want to have to start a new thread, and there’s the possibility someone may want to ask questions)

*Edit … no that’s not the case … I just tried to do a second reply to myself here … and got the same message.

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Link me the thread please, I will reply, then see if it unlocks for you.

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(you know this is against the forum rules, right? :stuck_out_tongue: https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/code-of-conduct/#cross-linking)

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Done, can you post in it now?

Make sure you use the Reply BUTTON at the bottom of the thread rather than the reply link in your last post. That could be the issue. Reply to the THREAD not to yourself.

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I love that guy :stuck_out_tongue: But no … that didn’t work. I could obviously reply once. But when I tried to reply again, no go. And then saw I might have used the wrong reply button … tried again … still didn’t work

16

Odd. I really don’t think it is anything to do with my rank level, but I will try and highlight this issue to the community team to see if it is known and/or intended.

17

Thanks, that would be great. It was kinda mentioned in a previous thread (that is now locked … I’m getting really concerned about the forum rules here … they’re REALLY strict! ) Forum Posts locked for inactivity .. how does it work?

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Well the only difference between you and I is that you are trust level 2 and I am trust level 3. It is possible that they remove reply restrictions once you reach level 3 I suppose. You are probably not far off level 3, I do see you around often :slight_smile:

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19

haha yeah … it’s that 20k posts that is causing me problems … think I’m only up to around 7k and it feels a bit dishonest (and very time consuming) to just scroll through a load of random threads without actually taking the time to read them :stuck_out_tongue:

*Edit … I am starting to collect cow gifs though :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
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Okay, I have a small update for you.

The restriction to replying to your own post is…
You can only reply yourself 3 times (account wide) before someone else must interact with the thread. Obviously I can’t see which are your characters in that thread, but if those replies are all your characters, it will prevent a 4th reply from you until someone else (in the test we did… me!) posts which resets your counter.

So really you do need perhaps a guild officer to do the first bump (legit post, not just “bump” obviously) and then you have 3 posts before you need an officer to post again etc.