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The Trans Rights are Human Rights thread (This one) has been an absolute show. It’s disgusting that you’ll allow bigots to have a voice on these forums by giving them little more than a slap on the wrist while people who are trying to tell others of the abuse they’ve recieved are placed in the same category as people who copy-paste from 4chan with their posts hidden as if they said something bad (they did not)
Do something about it.
I’d’ve made this post in that thread, but I don’t feel it’s worth risking a lock on that thread. Trans rights are a more important issue than the complacency of the forum mods.
I think the core of the issues lies in Blizzards Reporting system, it’s fundamentally open to abuse, and to be avoided.
But it’s extremely tangled up because of “Name and Shame” and an “Automated System” - by my experience, the Game Masters use this to place a cognitive bias of unwillingness as they stand by an algorithm instead.
For example, if you are inciting a mass report regardless of morale conscience - Blizzard will ban you for it, I recall two years back I was muted ingame for a couple of days by GM’s for inciting a report on a player who persistently harassed a guild member through whispers.
The idea that AD specifically is some social cesspit of depravity is false, I would definitely say that in terms of acceptance the AD community is very strong, from discords to groups to guilds. So personally, I think the narrative should be pointed towards how Blizzard deals with harassment and abuse.
The fault definitely lies with Blizzards moderation system, it’s functionally insensitive, it feels too computerised; when you speak to a GM, they’re bound by such a seemingly strict code that you might aswell be speaking to a computer. I think they need to be putting in reform when tickets are made, and should be acting more a case by case basis - with an easy function to get logs and evidence. At the end of the day, it can be anyone facing this sort of stuff.
The funny thing is, they do sometimes read the forums. Perhaps even this thread! I can predict some people going ‘umm, general/customer support is this way ’, but seeing as some threads do eventually get locked here and there, they do eventually read these threads.
Perhaps the title will make them skim over though, but their job is to read through all the threads, react to reports and act accordingly. I understand completely that right now is a very stressful time to be working at Blizzard, but seeing how both on General Discussion and here - the two most active places on the forums - have had some extremely vitriolic posts or even threads left open for WAY too long, I am starting to question the position of the CMs themselves.
After all, people call out bigots, often not even responding as harshly as the bigots themselves and end up getting banned for it. Bigoted posts are still up while uplifting posts get hidden. Saying this out loud risks a ban. It’s especially glaring on GD, where even some more notable forum posters are continuously active after saying some extremely weird takes or more generic bigoted statements. I guess it’s OK if it’s a friend to the CMs, right??
Racism, homophobia, misogyny, and transphobia are often allowed to linger on the forums for an extended period while anything combating it is mopped up much quicker, and it just confuses me - we all know the ToS, so the CMs should as well. But somehow, saying a minority should be extinct is less punishable than saying that statement is horrible and idiotic. Or even weirder, punishing a poster for saying CMs should do their jobs and not reporting a post (that likely got reported by others anyway, but fair enough and point taken, don’t punish me for over-reporting now - even if seemingly it has no effect).
It’s really jarring that, after nearly two years of these new forums, individuals are still able to mass-report posts by themselves. It causes the entire reporting system to be inherently flawed — because then it’s no longer “the community” hiding reported posts. It’s simply too easy to abuse, yet Blizzard doesn’t seem to care.
Sadly, that’s the motto with these forums; whenever there have been changes to its coding, they’ve often been minor fixes (e.g. private profiles no longer looping you) — but never a change to alt-upvoting and reporting, which sadly gives these troglodytes (see: a certain dwarf warrior) more power than they should ever have.
To rub salt into the wound, we also know Blizzard does read these forums given how they’ve stickied several helpful threads and even responded to some. They’re here, they’re watching — but when they are, do they care?
They want to clean up their game after the whole Afrasiabi (etc) affair, but they do not even start with the little things like proper moderation on the forums. This is a place where people, supposedly, interact directly with Blizzard, and this is the response we get.
In all honesty they haven’t really touched up on the forums since the big update a while back. Moderation, flagging system, the weird trust system are all terrible and outdated.
There’s some words to be said about effort + effect. I think they don’t care because so few players actually use the forums nowadays. I’m quite certain WoWhead has more daily visits & comments than the Blizzard forums.
It’s kind of sad that even my semi-trolling GD thread where I asked whether high elf customisation threads are reportable had its flag reverted fairly quickly (less than 24 hours) but the trans rights one and this have still kept theirs.
This is where you’re wrong. Blizz are upset they got caught, not that it happened. Anything and everything they’re doing right now is purely reactionary, designed simply to generate positive PR and foster goodwill with the community after it turned on them. Cleaning up the forums is nowhere near the top of their priorities and you shan’t see any meaningful changes for a long while… If at all.
show. It’s disgusting that you’ll allow bigots to have a voice on these forums by giving them little more than a slap on the wrist while people who are trying to tell others of the abuse they’ve recieved are placed in the same category as people who copy-paste from 4chan with their posts hidden as if they said something bad (they did not)
this way 
’, but seeing as some threads do eventually get locked here and there, they do eventually read these threads.