Wednesday, January 02, 2008

I Was a GameFAQs Moderator for 5 yrs.

It was an interesting experience that I have wanted to share from time to time but GameFAQs has changed so much that I almost feel a little worried that anything I write here will cause secret CNet/GameFAQs agents to kidnap my wife and kill my cat because some people over there get a little crazy when people tell their "secrets". Not that I plan to post screenshots of the inner workings of the place but I might say something that would freak one of them out and all hell will break loose somewhere in the world over something pretty stupid.

Let me makes some quick comments in case someone actually does read this and wants to start some sort of e-fight. GameFAQs is a great place for what it is intended to be. That is a place that people can go to to get info and help in a almost any video game created on a ton of different systems. The message boards are secondary to that. There are some great boards on GameFAQs and sometimes you may get some help on a game board but don't get your hopes up. As the days, weeks, months, and years go by, the level of help you receive has diminished. Some people will disagree but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it.

I would also like to state that some of the things I will write could easily be hypocritical. I can admit that, unlike most other people. Some of the things that have lessened the greatness that GameFAQs once was were things that I myself used to do. It wasn't until last year that I realized it and did my part not to be that person.

GameFAQs for me was a place to waste time. When I had nothing to do or when I was playing poker online it was a nice place to mess about. When I first started going there back in 2000 it was quite small compared to today. I spent most of my time on the Final Fantasy 9 board getting help and helping others. Shortly there after I decided to take a shot at FAQ writing for the site and started to spend time on the FAQ Contributors board. That was the place to be. All the prolific writers and the moderators would hang there. Everyone was very nice and helpful and through that I made some cool e-friends. I started getting interested in the inner workings of the site and the rules. I was not a big internet person at the time and GameFAQs was the first message board I had ever participated in. I found it all quite fascinating.

Things were much simpler then. You had levels based on your time there and when you got modded you either got a deletion or you were suspended and then banned. No karma, no varying degrees of punishment, no purgatory, no contesting your deletions, etc. Delete or good bye. Maybe you would get warned. I can't remember but I bet you could, either way, it was much simpler. I started hanging out at Questions and Suggestions. That was the early Message Board Help (MBH). We had fun there, a small group of us. Things were not as volatile as they have been the last few years. Very little complaining and a lot of general questions.

As time went on I became quite knowledgeable of the Terms of Service and decided to apply to be a moderator. I got selected on the first attempt I took and that is where the fun began. It was a small group back then. Not many people knew the inner workings since there weren't all the leaks and screenshots and mod hackings there have been since. It was a pretty stressful job at first. At GameFAQs, if you are not aware, the sites users mark messages that they feel violate the ToS/ToU and that sends them into this queue. As a mod you have access to this queue and you go in there and can look at the marked posts and decide the punishment. I remember when I first started it took me forever to moderate. I would read the post, read the topic it was from, read the mod guidelines to get an idea on the rule it was marked for, check the users moderations history, read the post again, read the guidelines, etc because I didn't want to unfairly mod someone. It got easier. I would skip ones I wasn't sure of and then quickly mod through easy ones. Basically modding loses it's luster rather quickly and it just becomes a duty in which you want to clear the queue so you don't have to bother with the banner on the top of your page telling you there are posts to moderate. Some will disagree but none of them can honestly say they take the time to mod a post they way they did their first month. If they did they wouldn't mod as much as they do these days.

Early on the group was small and tight. We all got along and we all worked for the good of the site. Very little cliques going on and very little jockeying for positions. We were all moderators of this great site and we enjoyed it. It wasn't till I believe the next batch where things started to turn. A couple mods from the next batch were not the best choices. One being CronoGamer and the other being crimsonassasin. Crono was okay but after awhile he got sick of it I guess and decided to use his powers and go out with a bang and mod the living day lights out of a not so popular user on the boards. Did it really hurt anyone? No. Was it stupid? Maybe, but really, it is just an internet message board. If he did something like that in real life and at his real job he would have to suffer some consequences, but on the internet you just log off and be done with it.

Crimson was a different story. I didn't quite understand his game and what he was trying to accomplish but he was the first mod to attack other mods through moderation or just by posting violations on the mod boards at other mods. I won't go into great detail as this seems to be one of the "secrets" that could result in loss of life in my family, but CA was known to flame, troll, use SPI's against mods and even admins. For a long time he was left alone for some reason. One reason would be that mods had an unwritten rule back then that you could not mod a mod on the mod boards because then people using metamod would see it and OMG all hell would break loose. So CA's SPI towards me on Mod Social got to stay and truth be known, Ceej wasn't very active on the mod boards as many people might have expected so nothing much was done about it. I think the straw that finally broke the camel's back was when he posted some troll/flame towards a Gamespot Admin on the GS Mod/GF Mod board. After he got booted he knew the mods were not allowed to talk about the actions that got him booted so that gave him free reign to troll and cause problems on the board. Another by product of GameFAQs staff wanting to remain so mysterious.

Around that time is when things seemed to start changing for the worse in my opinion. By then the site had really grown to the point of Jeff selling the site to CNet, the need for more mods meant a larger group and the lack of any admin support resulted in chaos on the mod side of things. The level of consistency was ridiculous. I remember making topics on the mod boards that some of us worked on to try and get an idea on where people's heads were and it was amazing to see the complete mess it was. Some people would NKL one thing while some would warn for the same thing, a couple would suspend, and a couple would notify, and then about 50 mods would never even bother to read or participate on the mod boards. It was a mess. And I have no doubt that it still is but not as bad as I suspect that SBAllen contributes a lot more support than Ceej did.

I don't post much anymore on GameFAQs. I still visit every now and then and it is either to get help on a game I am playing, check reviews of a game I might want to get, or check out my private board, KGB. I no longer bother with the side of GameFAQs that I used to. The moderation/MBH side. Having gone on to other forums I can honestly say I have never ran into the oddness that is GameFAQs and it's users preoccupation of mods, moderations, and the rules. I have also not run into a site that allows it's users to contest deleted posts even once whereas you can contest a deleted post 3 times at GameFAQs. It amazes me how much hand holding goes on at that site. I was a cranky person when I was a mod. Not because I am cranky by nature, but because of all the ridiculous crap I had to endure. Moderate this, answer this stupid question, get flamed, get nasty emails, go into the contest queue and read how this one guy thinks that saying he wants to rape his cat and then cut it's head off should not have been deleted because this is America and the Constitution gives him the right too post that without penalty. Deal with that everyday and you can get an idea of why most mods who post a lot are complete fucking assholes. I was. But then I grew up a bit and realized how utterly lame and foolish I looked. Some people need to step back and look through their posting history to see they too might need to do the same thing.

Being a GameFAQs mod was fun at times, boring and annoying the rest of the time. The first 2 years were great. We were doing something, but after that it became this odd little society where people were backstabbing each other and trying to gain more power and control.

The rules are just odd as well. Some make perfect sense and back in the day they seemed to fit but as the world and internet changes I think some of the rules make GameFAQs...bad? How many sites out there use the ignore function? Many do, all of the sites I go to have it. Well GameFAQs got it not too long ago and since the site likes to try and control so may aspects of a users posts, you can get modded for telling someone you are going to ignore them. That is the perfect example of how uttely ridiculous that site's rules are. Fine, nude pics, swearing, graphic sex discussions, and hardcore insults are deleted, but modding people because they want to tell a troll they are ignoring him because that will annoy the user and he may respond in a flame? Give me a break, it is like elementary school, not a video game site on the internet. Does this mean the mods are at fault? Not all of them. Talking to some I know they disagree with that rule and many others, but they are instructed to moderate these posts so they are just doing what they should do.

The site does not allow you to post a hyperlink. Why? Because someone might post porn. ????

The site does not have a Private Message system. Why? Because the mods would have a hard time monitoring what is being sent through the PM system. ???

The site does not allow people to edit their posts? Why? Because people will post a flame, or a link to ROMs/Porn, etc and then quickly edit it to not get in trouble. ???

So the basic theme is that they think all their users are a bunch of retarded monkey children who will do anything they can to break a rule so may as well live in the old ages of internet forums. I understand no avatars and pics for speed and simplicity but the examples I posted show what the staff is all about.

Quotas were a sore subject on the mod boards. Basically Jeff always said that he would not set a quota since it was a volunteer position. That makes perfect sense. There were weeks were I would touch 200 marked posts/contests, and then there were weeks where I would mod thousands of posts and handle many contests. Whatever I had time for. Some mods would do thousands in a day. Those mods begged for quotas because some felt that it was not fair they would do so much and others would do so little. People wanted Ceej to set up a quota and boot anyone who didn't meet it or had not done anything at all in years, which sadly there were many people with mod titles that did nothing at all. They posted everyday but had not handles even 50 marked posts in over 2 years. Is it a big deal. I didn't think so for the reasons many said. I think you boot them because why not, they don't do anything. The reasons other people wanted them booted was because they might be leaking the big ol' secrets. The moderations staff love their secrets. Oooh, let's not let them know MMA still exists. Let's not let them know that there is another queue full of marks that during my time were left untouched for weeks and months until someone group decided to tackle them. If anyone is reading this, there was a day a couple years ago where MBH and the site when crazy when people started getting modded like crazy for old stuff. That was the time some mods decided to spend a weekend going through the queue filled with marks that had low MMA and the mods just let the ranting and raving go one without just simply telling people the truth. For some reason telling people that marks from low MMA users go into a different queue because 80% of them are bad marks and take time away from handling the marks where 80% of them are good marks is going to do something bad. As a smart person it makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the fact that we had to hide it. Stuff like that just made me start to think how utterly ridiculous things have gotten. OMG, don't tell the peeon users that we get stars based on how many messages we handle a day. That might cause some sort of rift in the time space continuum. The reason people get mad and frustrated is that keeping such ridiculous secrets does make it look as if the mods are vastly superior to the regs. Like the regs are too stupid to handle it. Excuse me while I take this time to make some phone calls to make sure my wife and family are still safe.

When I left the mod staff last year things were ugly. Quotas were imposed somewhat, some people thought it was wrong to set them on volunteers, others could care less, and others thought that the quotas were too lenient. Mods were urged to spend free time in the queues and not posting socially. Fights ensued and me being a blunt person never hid behind my feelings of what was going on. I rubbed a certain group the wrong way during the quota discussions and some consistency type topics but big deal. I still have emails from mods thanking me for saying what some were not in a position to say. Most mods just hide in the corner and just do a good job and doing their best to get rid of the crap that actually does get posted on that site, while others act as if it was their actual career. One mod told me that we owed it to CJayC to be on the site every time we had nothing to do and dig through the queue. I disagree. Help out when you can and when you want too. If you want to go hang out on Current Events and shoot the shit about some new movie or what someone did over the weekend, go ahead.

Overall it was a great experience and I had fun for the most part. When it stopped being fun and became more serious than the job I do for money is when I realized how it wasn't for me. If some want to sit there and moderate 2000+ posts a day then more power to them, it was no longer for me. I am sure this post will ruffle some feathers and create some controversy if it ever gets to GameFAQs but I don't care. My blog, my experience, my right to post about it. I never signed anything that said I could not talk about it. But maybe they make them do that now. It would not surprise me. At least I left out a lot of juicy secrets that should remain secrets. Or maybe that is just me creating more conspiracy theories for the pure hilarity of it.

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

Almost makes me want to ask what you think of all the MMA Whores on MBH that obsess about becoming moderators. :P (this is ViperInfidel)

Anonymous said...

Someone just linked to your blog on GameFAQs

Anonymous said...

Thank you.

Anonymous said...

If only more people did realize it was just an internet message board... Ah well. If you don't like it, go somewhere else, eh?

Anonymous said...

Right on, dude! As a current poster of 7 years, I agree with everything you posted.

Shame you had to go out like that. But shit happens.

Keep up the good work!

avideogameplayer

Anonymous said...

DRAGON ANGEL X2 FOR MODERATOR!

Anonymous said...

Ha. Love it. Even if one disagrees with your view of the events, none could say that what you have put down here isn't acurate.

Anonymous said...

Interesting read, thanks for showing some balls and being one of the first mods to express an opinion on this.

Anonymous said...

GameFAQs was once a great messageboard system, but the moderators who "work" there now have turned it into a toilet. As far as I'm concerned, every last one of them can go fuck themselves. There is something fundamentally wrong with you as a person if you will spend hours a day voluntarily meting out punishments on a message board and treating the board's populace like, as you yourself said, retarded monkey children. The board's populace is what it is. If you treat a group of people like criminals for normal human behaviour, then they will become criminals.

One of the most salient things you pointed out Many of the rules are designed solely to generate violations, and serve no other purpose, like telling another user that you've marked them, or telling them you're using the ignore function. And the biggest bunch of lifeless assholes on GFAQs are the snivelling sycophants who hang out on Message Board Help giving snotfuck responses when the questions aren't entertaining enough, and licking the Mod staff's collective asshole at every turn. It's a case of shit worshipping retardation, pure and simple.

I spent several years posting on GFAQs during idle hours at work and home, and after nearly half a decade, I was so overwhelmed with disgust at myself, the board, it's moderators and admins that I voluntarily suicided all of my accounts. I urge any sane person who uses the boards to do the same. I promise you that your life will improve. And this is not to say that I don't use message boards anymore-- I did before GameFAQs, and still do afterwards. But the entire setup and experience of GameFAQs is fucking rotten. And the people to blame are it's moderators and admin staff.

If you are a GameFAQs moderator and you're reading this, I have a simple message for you: you are fucking wasting your life being a tinshit pretend cop on a worthless message board. Fucking quit, asshole. All of you should quit. And those of you mods reading this thinking "Oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's not talking about ME," well, YOU'RE THE BIGGEST PART OF THE PROBLEM, DOUCHEBAG.

Anyway, thanks for the article, Steve. Good on you for moving on. Wise decision.

Sincerely,
SlamShut
Former GameFAQs victim

Steve B said...

I just want to point out a few things.

There are many good people on the mod staff. Way more good than bad. I was one of those asshole mods, no question, but I did do it because I thought I was helping out the site and making it a better place. I have talked "behind closed doors" with countless mods and I am sure some know exactly what I am talking about and some of them I believe do try and keep the bad at a minimum but keep in mind, for years there was absolutely no support for the mods. We were for years left to fend for ourselves. I think that is where most of the problems stemmed from. Then the staff got larger, much larger differences in personalities and reasons for being there and that creates the mess we see these days.

I don't post much except for KGB and CoD4. But I read. I see now that the sig divider issue is now --- or you get the wipe. Fine, whatever, but again, the way the site seems to decide these things is so screwed up. I think the largest complaint was, why not inform us of the change, and the common response was that it's always been a rule but most of us decided until now to ignore it. Come on, how ridiculous does that sound? I have always believed that if it's a rule then it should be a rule. Not a rule for some and a rule for others and hitting people who were told countless times on MBH and the like that as long as it is 3 characters we won't touch it is another reason that there is no real thought process going on somewhere in the higher ranks. I am not talking about whether the rule should or should not be a rule, but simply the way rules get put into place and then enforced is far from standard.

Anyway, my main point was not to get people to jump all over the mods. Many as I have said are good people doing the best they can, it's the others that are more noticeable.

Anonymous said...

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Hey anonymous with the long post:

The mods weren't the problem. It was the system that made it easy for the mods to take advantage of. Because you never saw anyone with a "moderator" label and never know who modded you.

phpBB's code may have been broken and full of exploits, but it always had the superior moderation system. Nobody marks or flags messages. The mods have to come out into the open to pick the rogues from the good guys. They start with posting a warning in the topic.

The warning worked so much better because it cools the flames and reduces the amount of potential offenses to look over. Any problems that continue to linger would be solved one-on-one by private messaging.

Bam. Easy system and less cynicism for authority. People actually KNEW the mods because they participate a lot, and well.

Anonymous said...

You should post some secrets. Expose the truth we all have a right to know. Also if you would be so kind to answer this next question...Do certain boards (Next_gen Gaming) have assigned mods or do mods just like to hang around an mod stuff?

Anonymous said...

Steve,

Thanks for the response. You mentioned something that stands out: "keep in mind, for years there was absolutely no support for the mods."

See, that's the thing right there.

Why the fuck didn't you just quit, then? You weren't getting paid.

Look, you seem like a cool guy, so I'm not going to mince words here. As a former user of GameFAQs who was moderated by some of your former comrades, and often given more bullshit and fuckass attitude from the mod than what I was being modded for, I have to say this: WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU QUIT? That would have been the sane, human, normal thing to do, if it had gotten so bad.

But you didn't, did you? You and a great number of the other mods took the downside of being a GameFAQs moderator and used that as a license to act like a colossal fucking asshole to the people you were dealing with. You know what? I don't want to hear about how fucking hard it was to be a mod. It's a fucking volunteer position. If you don't like it, STOP FUCKING VOLUNTEERING. But most mods don't actually want to stop, and they don't fucking want anything to improve, because then they lose the one good excuse they have for wielding their power like prison guards and getting their fucking jollies acting like the biggest fucking assholes on the board, with carte blanche to do or say whatever the fuck they want.

In all my years on GameFAQs, I never once was witness to any sort of code of honor or standard of conduct on the behalf of the moderation staff. The only discernible difference I noticed between the moderators and the regular trolls was that the mods were unpunishable, and beyond reproach. THAT'S IT. That's the only difference.

There's no training, no guidelines, and no fucking repercussions for mods. So what do they do in that sort of vacuum? They turn into the biggest fucking assholes on the board, often flaunting their ability to break the TOS without fear of reprisal in front of the same users they moderate for the same fucking actions. And then there's the whiiiiiining. Oh, it's so hard to be a GameFAQs moderator. Fuck you, man. It's not hard to be a GameFAQs moderator. It's fucking easy. You do what you want, when you want, and if you don't want to do it, you fucking quit.

But no, most don't. Because most people who get that moderation position have no fucking interest in "the greater good," or "keeping the boards clean." They want the pathetic fucking e-cred that comes with being a make-believe authority figure on that site. That's it.

And that's fucking pathetic.

But you realized this, Steve, or at least something close to it, according to your article. You saned up and quit. I saned up and quit the site, and gave myself no door back in. I don't want to say that I did that because of the mods-- really, it was the general stupidity of most people on the site, and the shoddy way the whole thing has been run the last few years that did it. But good moderation could have at least made a shitty situation better. And it did the opposite. The mods actually make that dirty toilet of a site even worse than it is.

Let me reiterate: if you're a GameFAQs mod, and you're reading this, YOU ARE A FUCKING LOSER. YOU SIT ON A SITE PLAYING INTERNET MALLCOP ALL FUCKING DAY FOR NOTHING MORE THAN THE FLEETING ADMIRATION OF PEOPLE MORE STUPID AND FUCKED-UP THAN YOU.

Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to air some of this shit out, Steve. Keep on keepin' on.

Sincerely,
SlamShut

Anonymous said...

Jeff AKA Snoopy says : I'll be a mod, but I won't change my posting habits or anything. If that means I can't be a mod, then I won't do it.

That being said, bitching and moaning about Gamefaqs on another website is just stupid. >_<

Steve B said...

I stayed for a number of reasons after it got...odd.

1. I have a boring job and regardless of the politics, jumping into the queue and wasting time was easy, there is no interaction with anyone or anything, just click buttons.

2. Fully expected things to go back to the way they were before. Obviously not a great idea, but it was a thought.

3. Little part of me enjoyed the drama. If I leave then I can't see what happens next. Just being honest.

4. There are mods that actively have and I assume still do attempt to make things right. I have or had faith in them and knew they were trying to do things to change it. There are many mods who strived for consistency, something completely lacking on gamefaqs (sig divider is a good example), and I wanted to help them. Hell the final days of my modship were sitting in topics on the mod board fighting about specific instances and how they should be handled. The disagreements got big and the same old fight started and that was it. I had faith that it would change.

You are right, it is not a HARD job. It is EASY once you get the hang of it. What is hard is the politics, the cliques, the bullshit. Sitting in the queue and just clicking buttons can be done by almost anyone, dealing with the extraneous factors is what is challenging. *shrugs*

In response to someone else, mods mod where ever they wish. Some have favorite boards, like I spent a lot of time monitoring MBH, but I essentially modded all over gamefaqs.

Anonymous said...

Honestly, it seems to me that this drama and cliquishness has creeped into the moderator selection system itself, now. People who buddy up with a given mod or mod clique clearly can get much more easily approved for moderator status that those who don't, regardless of their moderation history or MMA, presumably because whatever mod or mod clique that they've buddied up with believes that they will support that clique in the various arguments you describe. It's really a sick, twisted system at this point.

~StarcraftJunkie

Steve B said...

Knowing mods is a good way to get in. Not the only way though, but it helps. I posted on boards where a lot of mods posted and I have no doubt that knowing them and them knowing me had some sort of connection to be being a mod. But that happens everywhere for the most part.

Jakas,

This is my blog. Had if for a long time. I have every right to post whatever I feel like. I posted this in Jan. I actually wrote most of it back in October. I didn't spam it, I never directed anyone to it, just something I felt like writing. Can't help that someone found it and decided to post it on gamefaqs. Either way, you might need to figure out what a "blog" is if you think I created this place back in July of 05 to bitch about gamefaqs. :)

Anonymous said...

You have described everything that I think is wrong with GameFAQs. Yet I still post there because I like the way the boards themselves work and there are a lot of cool people who still post there that I like.

Anonymous said...

Shitty experience man. Thanks for sharing. I hope your enjoying your free time now.

7 year GameFAQs board user
-Rolo

Anonymous said...

I want to hear more. They can't and won't do anything to you. If they're so afraid of their shifty practices getting out to the general GF population, then they should stop enforcing shifty practices.

It's silly when some guy who hasn't got his hands on the reigns of his own life takes a step onto the internet, behind a "mod" badge, and uses it to facilitate his superego, artificially giving him some belief he's actually in control of his surroundings.

Powerhungry works the same way on and off the internet. It's shameful people like this get the privilege of responsibility and overextend their authority by making terrible judgment calls under the guise of a sense of duty.

Kudos to you for stepping away and taking inventory of what truly matters.

Bob Smith said...

Great points you made there. I can see why you left the GameFAQs moderator service, and I really don't blame you. On a site I go on, I am a mod, and there are certainly comparisons that could be made between my own little site and GameFAQs. The politics, cliques and factions in the moderator army of GameFAQs seems to much to comprehend, and to think of such little things like saying you are going to ignore something or a custom sig-separator.

Being a mod/admin/platypus brings a whole new meaning to internet=serious business. Personally, I think that the internet is something for free time, and for someone who has lived as long as I (26 long years), for fun. Being a mod/admin can change that perspective of the internet for you. Lets use GameFAQs as an example: Factions, cliques, groups, all vying for power. It all seems like one MASSIVE power struggle if you ask me.

There is a true theory about why mods do NOT want to quit their "job". I have felt this feeling when I first became a mod, but now I believe I was foolish, selfish, and just a plain asshole to think such things. Mods do not want to lose the power they gained. That power separates them from the average poster, which, in most cases, provokes the mod to think that he is better than the average poster. It is wrong to think such things. Are we no better than the next man?

Maybe why the site I mod for hasn't dug itself into the shithole is because we don't have a large enough community for such violence. But even within our tight moderation group, there are factions, friends-in-high-places, and whatnot, causing some form of power struggle, which I cringe whenever I see. I never want the site I mod for to turn out that way, like GameFAQs did.

Wishing you best in your future endeavors,

Jake (BobSmith937)

Anonymous said...

If I may be so bold as to ask, why are you commenting now? Just reminiscence, or someone was talking about Gamefaqs or something like that?

Either way, I'm gonna end up on Gamefaqs til the day I die, or it dies. =P

Steve B said...

JAKAS,

That question to me? If so I don't get what you mean? I am commenting because people are posting on my blog and it is a courteous thing to do. I still log into GameFAQs everyday to hang out on KGB and I spend time right now reading the CoD4, Oblivion, and Rock Band boards because those are the 3 games I am currently playing. I spend most of my internet time though playing poker and being a regular member of a large poker site where I can say shit and not get in trouble. ;P

Anonymous said...

There are a number of things within the mod ranks that need to change. You know it and I know it, Steve. You know how it's so fucking frustrating to try and come up with a viable solution to "inconsistencies" or stupid rules, when the administration won't get involved in discussions of any kind with moderators directly, and other moderators only post to disagree and bitch and moan about why they shouldn't have to go along with the proposed changes. This isn't new.

Personally I do not believe in a number of the rules on GameFAQs, even though I am a moderator. I think that just came with growing more mature and realizing that it's a bit limiting to have to watch what I say to people I can't normally talk to on a messenger service but want to discuss things with. The only reason I can come up with as to why we have such rules is because there are still kids (yes, kids, younger children) who read the site and of course the administration has to appease the sponsors.

I am a moderator on GameFAQs, but I feel more and more detached from the site as a result of such bickering. A lot of things need to change drastically over there. I'm not sure exactly what it would take to rectify the major issues, but something has got to give.

Anonymous said...

I never really thought of you as an asshole. I always got along with you on MBH when I went there.

But I agree with virtually everything you said, especially the fluidity of the rules. Especially considering how much things don't get announced. You don't find out that, say, LUEshi is a ban until someone finally gets the axe. You don't find out that altering sig dividers gets a wipe until it happens.

There's an MBA board, but it's used sparingly. They have sticky functions now, but used sparingly. Important information about what you can and cannot do is expected to disseminate through a telephone-game type system. And that's how "User A got a 3kl for a racial slur" becomes "User A got banned for saying cotton candy".

If Ceej and SB want to run the site, I think they should do that. I think they should then appoint someone who is completely in charge of the boards, the moderation staff. Someone not of the mods. Someone who is not of the clique. Someone's who's job it is to wrangle in the mods, decide the rules, and communicate with SB.

I think information about how the system works needs to be public. I think all mods ought to be responsible for their actions - no more of this anonymous moderation crap. Beware the JBD, a good friend of mine, felt stalked by Raptor for awhile. Raptor being a douchebag, I don't doubt it.

It's too bad you had to go out like that, because I thought you were one of the good ones. I'm still kicking it here at CMU, although I'm nearing completion. Come up to Soaring Eagle sometime and I'll see if I can't take your money.

-ArmedWithAWiffleBat

Adam McDaniel said...

The fact is that moderators are human and many of them are on power trips. When a use can respond to a contest legitimatly and get a response of "Don't ever act like you're in control again, because you aren't." then there's something wrong. When topics poking fun at the mods disappear, there's something wrong. When someone makes an unfavorable comment and gets modded, theres something wrong.

Anonymous said...

I gotta say everything you said is true. Granted I've never been am od on the gamefaqs board and know little about it, but what I did understand completely was true.

As you said, There are several rules with no purpose, they are nothing more then additional ways to get modded.

The site really has gone to hell recently. Not very long ago at all things weren't so bad, but it seems one day some kind of mistake was made and dozens of idiotic immature bastards were given the ability to mod. I have been getting modded over such pointless things it amazes me. A couple weeks ago I was modded on a social board for saying "I believe most of the things said in the bible are untrue." Because apparently it was offensive, but before that I had said much worse things about the bible and nobody cared.

I mean it seems most of the mods now literally just want to mod people out of spite. I was modded for spoiling guitar hero 3.....that's like being modded for spoiling Pong it just doesn't make sense.

I once contested a moderation and it was upheld the mod's response was essentially "It was modded because I felt like it" It is all so infuriating.

And then there are the mods who will say some of the most arrogant asinine things when you contest. I mean I've spoken with police officers who were more humble then the mods of gamefaqs, I normally refrain from childish threats of violence on the internet but it just makes me want to grab them by the throat and beat them over the head until they realize they are nothing but gamefaqs moderators and being gamefaqs moderators does not make them heroes and it gives them no real authority, certainly not enough to talk to us like we are troublesome 13 year olds throwing things at cars.

Anonymous said...

Good post. I'm a 5-6 year board vet, and I'll be honest. If you want to write more about GameFAQs, I might be interested in that. I probably won't be reading anything about poker. It's your blog, so you can write what you want to, but I think more modding anecdotes (or even GameFAQs anecdotes that aren't mod related) would be a good read. Peace.

Unknown said...

It was a very good read. I frequent the Message Boards there a lot more than I used to. My relationship with gamefaqs started as simply a FAQ and Cheat reader. Then I there was one FAQ that didn't exist yet, that I wanted... so I wrote it.

This blog oddly reminded me of my next FAQ that I would like to write. It's easy to forget what GameFAQs is really about sometimes.

Unknown said...

Another thing that really bugs me about the Mods are the fact they are never wrong. NEVER. They always back each other up even when it's clear the post in question isn't against the ToU or w/e its called now.

They also need to stop modding joke posts and focus on the actual flaming. When someone says "I'm 12.99999" I really don't see the point in modding that. When someone says "I hate black people" in all seriousness then that deserves a punishment. A whole reevaluation of what deserves a mod is what they need.

gamerunknown said...

ah, just enabled NoScript for this site and a long message was erased...

Well anyway, basically, we all get bored of stuff. Things lose their appeal over time. Honeymoons are more exciting than separating squabbling children, I'm sure. So, we try and justify why we stay at a site. It usually ends up being "When I joined, things were much better". Chances are, when you joined, you just ignored all the threads from the vets saying the exact same thing. It's just the strange humour that GameFAQs entertains with is usually pleasantly shocking on your first day, but after a year, you're on your own. It's your turn to produce it for the "noobs". Despite the fact that you probably have already developed an elitist attitude.

Then, if you decide to quit, it's painful. You have to constantly justify it and correct yourself when wondering about someone who you may never see again, while you find yourself... Browsing similar boards aimlessly. So you develop a loathing of the thing that you need to stay away from. You have to concentrate on the tribalistic "us vs. them". Sorry, but the entire state of things is depressing. I remember wanting to see moot as a human being, to know that he wasn't a mystical character. But when I got that information, I totally forgot why I even wanted it. Of course he was just another guy... so?

I still feel that it's important to have information spread equally between all people willing to discover it, so I'm a little depressed that the 'staff' there still extend their power over to you, even if you mostly meant that in jest. I hope they don't come after you or something.

Gamerunknown (PotD), 7th February.

gamerunknown said...

No ****ing way. First post: Deleted due to not enabling NoScript the first time around. Second post: Deleted due to signing in after typing the whole thing out.

Anyway...

People grow bored of things. Honeymoons are probably more exciting than pulling apart squabbling children. It's easy to give early days posting a mystical status, but chances are that people were complaining about how it was better before your batch joined even then. Probably because the first time you stumble across a social board is just comedy gold, but after a year of posting it falls on you to produce the content there.

Those who quit probably shed an overly negative light on their experiences. You have to justify your action against your nostalgia and check yourself when you wonder about the latest drama unfolding with the new girl on your board. So, you demonise the previous posters and yourself in order to keep yourself from being too conflicted. I have to say, reading your posts have made me quite depressed. We set different hierarchies, it's human nature, yet we always want to see the figurehead at the top coming down, or exposed.

I remember wanting to see an image of moot from 4chan, to confirm to myself that he was a normal person. When I did get pictures, I just felt empty. I totally forgot my reasons for wanting to see him, to show my dominance... However, I still feel a lust for knowledge in the face of withheld information. It's occurring at GameFAQs right now and I applaud what you've done. I wont pressure you into revealing more though, since the 'staff' are omnipresent. Good luck with protecting your cat and whatnot.

7th February, Gamerunknown.

Anonymous said...

The silly modding business aside, one thing I noted from this blog was that with the steady influx of new users, the quality of posting was going down. I can't even begin to count how many times I've entered topics with users asking innocent questions about a game, only to be horribly mocked or responded to by joke posts. Granted, there are times when you simply must remind the user that there's little point in posting a question that is 100% already answered in a FAQ, and there have been more and more "joke topics"/troll topics that do nothing but post something pointless and stupid in order to get a few laughs/flames, but there are plenty of posts that ask legitimate questions and are often ignored.

The site itself is a great site, and a service to many gamers out there that would otherwise flounder about on their RPG worldmap or waste away at the hands of a difficult boss, but the messageboards have lost a good amount of their helpful spirit, and instead thrive and feast on trolling, flaming, complaining, and mocking.

Anonymous said...

Heh. Not suprising. Tiger, I think that the people who leak mod info are great. Why? Because it's funny to watch the reactions the mod staff primed the users for.

I am Crazyman93...

Anonymous said...

Well written.

I lol'd at the cat rape and decapitation example.

Anonymous said...

It's me, ViperInfidel again.

"I can't even begin to count how many times I've entered topics with users asking innocent questions about a game, only to be horribly mocked or responded to by joke posts."

Ditto here. The last time I ever, ever asked for help on a game on GameFAQs was for Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. On SFA3, I couldn't find the "world tour" mode. Couldn't find anything in the FAQs either. So I asked.

What I got in response was a flood of profanity and anger.

"No, it's not in there, I'm sick of people asking that!"
"We're so ****ing sick of answering that!"
"Are you blind, stupid, or just a ****ing retard? If you don't see it, IT MUST NOT BE THERE. Quit wasting our time with pointless topics." (That one I marked, and surprise, surprise, it didn't get modded because the board is low-traffic.)

Seriously. WTF, I told myself. There are such things as "common questions" that get asked about games. If certain folks don't like it, guess what, don't go to the game board if you don't want to see questions get asked about games! That would seem to be (un)common sense.

Or the now in-vogue "read the fucking sticky you n00b dumbshit" type response. I'm so fucking tired of that one, guess what people, not everyone is a stupid lazy no-life that played through the game 50 billion times before you. Maybe they just rented or bought the game months after it came out, and don't know everything. Be prepared for that.

As for the moderation side, I do try to give the mods respect, really I do, because they really do deal with a lot of shit, but as a piece of constructive criticism, I do see plenty of inconsistency and problems. Like the fellow on Hellhole right now (07Feb08) who was suspended for making a "hey everyone, what's up?" topic on the Dragon Ball social board, got purged, and even a MOD came in only to say that he can't see why. That's bullshit, we can all agree, and has to go.

I also dislike all of the pieces of "mod wanna be" shit that hang out on MBH and, in increasing degrees, on Hellhole. Seriously, they need to go fuck themselves in the ass with a traffic cone. That's right, instead of waste server space hanging out on MBH, they should shove a great big traffic cone in their fat asses to pass the time. It's not like they ever have anything more important to do with their lives anyway. :P

People hate me on GameFAQs for some reason... but seriously, how much should I post or contribute when all I see when logging in is this crap? I hate parrots who flap their traps, and sadly, GameFAQs is full of that nowadays. "AWWWWWWWKKKK!!! AWWWWWWWKKKK!!! Go read the fucking sticky bitch!!! AWWWWWWWKKKK!!! AWWWWWWWKKKK!!! Why was I suspended? Just because I asked for pics of a naked 12 year old girl!!! AWWWWWWWKKKK!!! AWWWWWWWKKKK!!! Every moderation handed out is fair and everyone should be suspended!!! AWWWWWWWKKKK!!! AWWWWWWWKKKK!!!" Sound that out like a parrot, trust me, it sounds like GameFAQs alright.

There have been times I have honestly considered leaving just because of the stupid fucking bullshit, and nothing ever changes. Ever. Tomorrow I will log in and find the same trash on the boards I saw yesterday.

*sigh* Sad state of affairs it is.

Anonymous said...

A good read.

Why am I not surprised about the MMA and all that?

...And also, if you can answer this. Whenever a mod said "okay, I totally just cleared out the queue", and thus we were forced to assume a message someone wanted deleted was No Action'd, does that mean the other queue(s) were not necessarily cleared, and that the mod would generally only refer to the main queue?

Steve B said...

EO,

Things probably have changed but back in the olden days (hehe) it depended on what the dregs were like. If there was a mass effort to clean them out it was stay cleaned out for quite awhile, then we would get a bit lazy and let it build up and then a month or more later a group was needed to clean it out. Personally I would go into the queue and then set the sorter to take all the censor bypass marks for any MMA level and run through them. Then I would grab all the flames and then disruptives. So when I did it that way I was attacking the general queue and the dregs. I don't know how other people go through the queue so it would be a guess on my part. If there are new mods though, the dregs will be kept clean because they usually want to moderate marked posts and that is where the majority of them were. Again though, things easily could have changed since then.

Steve B said...

was=would

Anonymous said...

Fair enough.

...I'd kind of had a good guess, subconsciously, that a lot of this stuff was going on. At least, the attitude about keeping everything on the site a mystery, and of course my questioning the rules (not the ones that got me moderated, though, I know I broke those pretty hardcore >_>). But this post helped validate some of my inner... theories? about it.

Whatever. I've stopped bothering with posting on Hellhole (I read it occasionally, though, hence why I'm here). I avoid MBH like the plague. All I do now is run a board RPG for kicks on a dead board. It's all good fun. (Laugh if you like, but it's for the same reasons you hang around, so I hope you won't.)

I didn't know that you used to hang around on FF9, though. Maybe I'd heard about it. I picked up that game fairly recently. It's a great game. (And it probably has my favorite of Uematsu's soundtracks) I have to wonder why people pass over it in favor of FF7 or FFX... or even FF8, though I personally think that game rocked pretty solidly and earned its place. But that's because I'm a number junkie and Junctioning fed my lust for calculation... haha.

...But I digress. My bad.

Anonymous said...

*waves*

-CA

Anonymous said...

Hey tiger, this is an old friend of yours... or at least I still hope you still consider me a friend.. even though you booted me from KGB, one of the only boards I ever enjoyed going to the past 4 or5 years... yeah, its TRC... you summed up my feelings pretty good on the moderators work these days,, btw, if you ever read this I have a new account on GameFAQs now called "xXTRCXx" and I would love to be a part of KBG again, considering that I got booted for getting hacked ~_~ but anyways, its nice to at least see a topic/blog, even if its not from GameFAQs, you always kept it real, and you stuck do you guns, like me... I respect that, live long and prosper old friend...

Steve B said...

TRC,
I didn't boot you because I disliked you, I booted you because it wasn't you on that account anymore. When I can find my log in to the board admin I will get you back on or I will have nhat do it.

Anonymous said...

I can send you a link to the private board admin page as I assume that is what you need. It is the same for all of them except the board number.

-CA

Anonymous said...

I made a topic for you on hellhole gfaqs - jamesp

Anonymous said...

I got to agree with that the MOD situation is bad from the user's POV, but didn't know it was that bad from the MOD side as well.

I'm one of those users that will direct you to a link that gives you the information. The Sticky was created for a reason, so you did not have the BS of answering the same question over and over. Generally, I'm not rude to anyone I give the link to, unless they were acting like "That's not what I asked for you piece of ****! I have not time to read through that crap, I'm modding you, now!". Generally, I just mod them and notice they don't disappear.

Main problem I have now got with GFAQs is actually getting guides (other information) on to the site. Once any information is on the site, it gets protected. If that information is challenged with correct information (with shit loads of prove, including the information from the Official Website), nothing will be done! WTF is up with that? Better quality or requested guides are also blocked. Once they are rejected, SB will just reject them again, without any information why (even if you prove his comments to be contridictorary). None of this helps with Hellhole being used. You are told that Hellhole will read through your guide to see what they think, when they generally suck the Shit out of SB's Ass.

Kind of want to read these secrets that you don't seem to want to post.

Anonymous said...

Thanks tiger. Nice to see some of the theories on MMA being proven correct.

You always seemed like a good mod. Thanks for doing the job for so long.

Anonymous said...

This report lacks kimbo.

Anonymous said...

Wow, that explains a lot, actually. Take care, Tiger, you're still my favorite former mod.

~Arch Angel 13~

Anonymous said...

Things like the issue of "consistency" combined with the secrecy are what bugs the shit out of most users, especially the vets like me who are going on almost eight years of posting. A few years back there was a flareup on the main board I visit (WOT) about large copy-pasted posts of news articles being deleted as "illegal activities". Yet that was tolerated and indeed part of the normal function of the mostly politically-oriented board for years.

Fine, okay, suddenly we respect copyrights down to the letter, right? The problem is, there was no clear idea of what "fair use" length was being considered, whether you could fill one post, half a post, one eighth of the article, etc., etc. and any attempt to question the local mod staff only received bullshit responses about how they couldn't say things that would actually inform us as to how to NOT BREAK THE FUCKING RULES.

So what happened? When the controversy died down, so too did the moderations, and nowadays it is again normal for a full post of text from a linked article to be posted and not moderated. At the same time, post public domain text from something like Wikisource going across a few posts and you get told how it is "illegal". Yes, comrade, it has always been a violation, it is only now that mod consciousness has fully awakened to it.

The bitching probably gets annoying to mods that are helpful and decent people, but how many fit that description considering the bullshit that goes on? Really? When you get smarmy anonymous responses to legitimate contests or told three different stories about your post that go from complete horseshit conjecture to insinuations of racism on your part that bear no relation to reality, why the fuck would anyone respect anything that any mod anywhere has to say?

Everyone has their lame moderation stories. My favorite personal experience as of late was this; I quoted the following post:

However, I have done similar things for games such as GTA: Vice city, San adreas, and DEFCON. So I'm no better, actually.

To which I responded:

Actually you are much worse because those games are terrible.

On WOT, a non-gaming social board. I got a SEVEN DAY SUSPENSION.

Anonymous said...

If the place sucks so bad (and it does) then quit.
Don't post a brick of text explaining how crappy the place is in detail and then finish up with: "but I'm still going back" for any reason. Oh I still go there for *blank* Fuck that shit. You're still a member and as such support a broken system.

Anything of value you can find there conversation-wise you can get elsewhere, better. Have friends there? Get their info, create your own forum/chat room/conference program. You're leaving the website, not the planet.

Nothing is worse than someone who clearly has enough dignity to admit that the site sucks but, not enough to actually back those words with action.

GameFAQS: Come for the FAQS. Stay for nothing else.

Anonymous said...

Hi tiger,

I totally see where you're coming from when you mention checking on your wife and kids to make sure they're ok. I know it's tongue-in-cheek humor, but I don't doubt that the fear is there in the back of your mind. When it came to light that my annoying posts, about the site, its policies and the enforcement thereof, NOT anyone's personal lives, were enough to make some people angry enough to come after myself in a personal way, that frankly scared the shit out of me. I not only left GameFAQs, but left off of a board designed to talk about your local city and state where many posters liked me, because I was using this handle on it. Could the mods be bad? Some of them are deluded enough to make it a possibility in my mind, so I didn't take the chance. Some people think that I've disappeared from the internet altogether, but that's obviously not true. I'm still around, still using the same posting and messenger handles. Perhaps I will go back to that local board, but I'm not so sure that will ever be a safe thing to do again.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed something very strange the past month or two. People with Ancient or Legend status starting stupid topics that read like something posted by a 7 year old. I've seen too many of them for it to be an accident. The intent can only be to irritate or annoy other users, but these topics will never get modded, which makes me think that the topic starters are mods themselves. I suspect these people are planning this on some secret board.

Here's a perfect example:

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=197338&topic=43279104

I see that we are now not able to tell if a poster is a GameSpot account. I really dislike that change. Gamespotters who come to GameFAQs are almost always idiots, and I used to just put them on ignore.

Madfoot said...

I just found this linked in someone's sig on Gamefaqs, and it was a very good read, funny and informative. Thanks tiger ^_^