Censorship.

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Hello.
I’d like to discuss the issue of (sort of) censorship in these forums. Ideally I’d like to also get an answer for:
What is a mod allowed to do?
I’m afraid I’m on a good way to get banned, since I understand forum rules a bit differently than the mods. I’d love to get some clarification.

I want to talk about few different accidents:

  1. A while ago cupcakes got removed and we had quite vivid discussion about that issue. I felt that queuing cupcakes, waiting for them to shield and attacking, thus generating points when the target is losing none, was abusing game mechanics and I referred to it as “cheating”.

My posts got removed by mods and I was informed, that devs don’t view cupcakes as cheating.

Nevertheless, instead of just pm’ing me, I was simply censored.

  1. Recent removal of “lol” and “off-topic” markings, as well as not including “dislike” option for posts. Appearently those two new buttons were removed, because people used them for “griefing” other players.
    Nevermind, that I find that description riddiculous, but I’m simply wondering why is the like button present (and we had it for a while) but a simple dislike is treated like taboo?
    How is disliking a post griefing?

Can it introduce some negativity? Of course, but it’s just the part of discussion. Because these forums are a place where we’re supposed to discuss things, share opinions? Right?
Or are we only allowed to share certain opinions?

  1. Point 6 of forum rules:
    No vulgarity or profanity.

Now here I’m seriously confused, because I thought that rule was simple: don’t use offensive words.

I wasn’t aware that it’s completely open for interpretation.

At first I was shocked that I got a warning for (terribly sorry for using it [I guess?]) writing a letter F followed by three hashtags.
A sort of self-introduced profanity filter. Someone old enough will know what I meant, but I didn’t curse.

Wrong.

Then a fellow user advised me to just use the tinykitty word instead. I made a post asking, whether it would be fine. Got few responses from users, no clear answers from mods, untill today.
Well, technically it was an answer, but in reality another warning.

So now I’m even more confused. One of the main forum rules states:

2. The user must be over the age of 13.

So there are no children here. I can understand the need to keep forums clear, no offensive words etc. I can not understand why the forum rules aren’t clear enough about those issues. It seems like these are open for interpretation. I can not promise that one of my posts won’t hurt someone’s feeling, more important - I definitely can not promise that one of the mods might feel that my post is hurting somone’s feelings.

Could we have more precise rules about these issues?
I don’t want to rely on somebody’s opinion that my post is fine or risk getting another warning and possibly a ban.

*Removed quoted text as it breaks rule 7. - Ducky

2

I also don’t like when posts get moved to different forum sections. In some cases, it makes sense. I wrote a post that was questioning the direction of the game and expressing my dislike for the recent changes.

the response? Not only was the title of the post changed by a mod (It used to be “Is it time to say what the fudge?”, to the newer “Unhappy with recent changes”), which was a very weird thing to see, but it also got moved to the “Suggestions and Feedback” section of the forum. That is where they send posts to die.

Sometimes I truly believe some censorship can help keep the forumites on track, and sometimes it can be very necessary. Other times, it just seems like the moderators feel the need to protect the developers’ feelings. I consider this a microcosm of the “participation trophy world” we are living in, where someone’s feelings, subjective as they may be, matter more than common sense. Anytime you say negative things about the game or the people in charge of the game, you are flirting with disaster (according to Molley Hatchet).

3

They have to suck up to the bigwigs, otherwise they’ll lose their position. Also, power corrupts, and all that…

4

It’ becoming clear that these forums are no longer a place for meaningful discussion. There are no stupid people here, there are no stupid ideas. There is no discourse.

5

I want to fight against this notion that “treat others with respect” should automatically equate to “Let’s not hurt anyone’s precious fee fees”

Can we all just stop pretending a forum saying “Can you not be a horrible person, please?” means they’re treading on your human rights or something?

For point 1, I can imagine it came across like you were accusing people of cheating…when it’s not that at all. It’s kinda like slander, in a way. I’d assume the mod wanted to just squash the post before it could gain traction. Best not even start a debate on whether cupcaking is, or is not, cheating.

Point 2 The idea of a like button but no dislike is to encourage promotion of good posts and not demean those who make unpopular opinions or just attract the ire of other board members. Downvoting got pretty toxic in some places when we had it. So for those who care, getting likes feels good but making a post and getting no likes at all feels a bit better than getting a bunch of dislikes. It’s not about “Safe spaces” or “looking after the snowflakes” or whatever other silly phrase the kids are using these days. It’s about promoting possitivity.

Point 3 is…pretty standard practise in most message boards I’ve used. If there’s a rule against profanity and there’s a profanity filter in place to remove words deemed inappropriate, trying to circumvent that filter is very much frowned upon.

Generally speaking the rule here is “Just be nice, alright?”
If you have to stop and think “Is this post kinda mean?” it probably is. There’s no need to be aggressive here, and especially no need to direct your frustrations at a singular person or persons. We’ve all made that “Rawr, the AI just got the most RIDICULOUS cascade, this game’s broken!!” style rant topic, but that’s a whole different ball game from directing hate at the developers specifically.

Again, I’m not going to side with people who want to be butts and not get called out on it.

6

I’ve been on a bunch of different forums and they all have people who end up riding on the edge of what’s allowed. It doesn’t really matter how clear they make the rules, someone’s going to have trouble following them.

I don’t necessarily agree with the way this forum is moderated, but adapting to it is the same as it is on every other forum. Get warned, then avoid doing the stuff you got warmed for. No big deal.

7

Right, because a “hey, please don’t do this, honor system! (thumbs up)” button is ironclad security.

Anyway, I agree that moderation here is sometimes overzealous in its efforts to keep everything “civil,” but personally I’m more irritated by the fact that even the most innocuous words get caught by the profanity filter. I’m fairly certain nobody has been offended by a word that starts with C and ends with a 3-letter genre of music since 1885.

8

Is there an “I’m a big boy” box I can check that will allow people to NOT be civil toward me? I say A LOT of stupid “tinykitty” and I would much prefer that others tell me when I say something stupid so that I don’t repeat it rather than have everyone fake nice so that I can continue thinking my stupid ideas are great and end up repeating them to people I actually care about.

9

Feigned ignorance.

10

Well I got a post removed without any sort of notification when I said I suspected the “fix” for no green checks was that we’ll soon have the opportunity to buy em for 25HP each, plus expect a new store to offer an entire events worth of green checks for 500HP…

with the note:
*assumed fix based on recent “fixes” of other wholly self created issues

So add lack of sense of humor to the reasons posts get shipped into a black hole with no notice (though I didn’t even get a warning, probably because it would be too embarrassing to even try to justify, who knows)

11

What’s especially funny is that they removed the foes feature that did the most in helping people ignore posters that might incite them.

Sue me, I’m human and am more likely to post a response to someone that I disagree with than waste time creating an echo chamber of false harmony.

12

Yes, false harmony is definitely what these forums are known for.

13

Back when the Thumbs Down aka Dislike button was creating a problem, it was between a handful of players that are no longer on the forums. The dislike button can be negative but not always on a bad way.

For instance, I wrote a post about about how I thought you could pull more gold depending on where you physically are because on my drive home from work, a particular road always seemed to yielded me more gold than if I opened tokens at home. I got blasted with down votes telling me not to play MPQ while driving. I argued back with some players but then I realized everyone was right and I was stupid. As a result, I edited my original post and apologized to everyone.

Down votes can be used for good. Regardless if the developers feel they should still be removed, there’s still no reason why we cannot have the “LOL” option instead of this current Like and Insightful aka “Great”

14

Sorry if this sounds armchair psychiatrist here but…do you not think you might have an issue if your brain/mouth barrier is so weak?
You must surely have developed some kind of self censorship by now. A set of walls in your mind that prevent you saying dumb stuff because that little voice in your head says “Yeah, better not.”

Part of growing up is learning social cues and how to conduct one’s self in social situations. If you’re unable to understand which things you say are acceptable and which aren’t by this point without someone outright telling you not to say those things…you have a lot of maturing left to do.

And I’m not being disingenuous here, I say this as someone who also suffered the same issued in my teens due to a general lack of social interaction. It’s something you need to work on if you have trouble with it. The main advice I was given, especially with written text, is to try to read it as if you weren’t the one who typed it. Try to imagine how it could come across. If you think your tone might sound off, better to re-type it or just take a deep breath, delete the post and move on. Generally speaking, an online forum is not worth getting yourself worked up over.

15

I remember that post

Also, wasn’t one of the problems with the old down vote system that if a post got enough thumbs down then it was blocked from the thread, or something like that? So battling forumites would constantly down vote each other’s posts just so they couldn’t be read by anyone. It was very childish by a few. However, I never really minded the thumbs down. I do wish they would bring back the LOL and off topic to this forum (at least the LOL for sure).

16

when I see a topic that is Closed theres a 50/50 chance in my opinion that it will be unnecessary when I check the ruling (Hence why I was using the off topic button). This conversation happens every few months then a response of “we talked about it internally…” no really change. I do think the forums need a “off topic” section to let us just talk about what ever. Not everything needs to get sorted into dead sections (where topics go to die). It honestly kills the desire to contribute to the conversation.

17

https://forums.505go.com/categories/off-topic

18

Titles serve a purpose. Using a garbage clickbait title that does nothing to describe what the thread is unnecessary. I flag them whenever I see them because they’re disrespectful to everyone else.

-Removed insult - Ducky

19

I dont see what @Nightglider1 is trying to say here

20

You suggested an “off-topic” forum. I provided a link to the off-topic forum. :slight_smile: