Hey Galway,

You and I fit the profile for the second cartoon lol. I printed that one out for my wife some time ago :).

Splitter

This forum needs a more present and more sever moderation. It's a pain for more than 80% of the users here -- and for Oleg and others from 1C -- to wade through childish flame wars in the update threads. This forum is not like any other on the internet -- it's a privileged meeting point with a developer. You could think of it as being invited into Oleg's office if you wish. If anything, this forum should be more severely moderated than others, and not the other way around.

That's actually very good advice. When people where debating systems modelling and clickable cockpits we took it up in a different thread. It ended up being more focused, it highlighted the real issue of why people wanted such features, plus if enough of them wanted it (via a poll).
In the end we got both of these features, systems modelling as a difficulty setting and clickable cockpits as an interface option, which means that everyone can choose what they want to use instead of forcing their preferences on one another. It was a very good outcome for everyone and showed what's the proper way to go about it.

As for moderation now, i agree that having 2-3 members of the 1c staff on the job would be good. Nearmiss is a volunteer and while he's doing a reasonable job (commendable even, concering the circumstances), he's one guy doing it out of his own free time and he can't be expected to be everywhere all the time.

Having a bit stricter moderation in the update threads by actual 1c employees would help things a bit.

Moderation is a big subject however, as it tends to be a double edged sword. On one hand, a company employee might be prone to silencing people who don't follow the "party line", on the other one a community member might be prone to silencing people who don't agree with his personal opinion. It's very difficult to find moderators that actually punish bad form and bad manners instead of difference of opinion.

That being said, i think that in the case of this company and with their proven track record of patience and community interaction, having moderators that are part of the company staff would not result in muffling out the voices of those who are critical of the games produced. After all, they do seem to value the input even if it's not all praises.

I would suggest something else:

Oleg can't and doesn't answer all the questions anyway. If you lock or extensively mod thread you lose the discussion, which not always, but sometimes goes a very interesting way.


But, what if there was a second (locked)thread where a mod or whoever just posts the Q&(answered-)A of the update.

Post1: Oleg's update
Post2: a selected question and Olegs answer to it.
P3=P2


In fact you could add each Friday update in this thread, what you get is a clean, full of info, focused thread.

I like the idea but I doubt the moderators have the time or the enthusiasm for that.

Yes sadly that's sometimes the case with me even in UK by the time I get to it.

"User moderation", "Open a new thread"... it just won't happen with some.

I'm coming to the conclusion we can't control this. I also think things will improve of we ignore the naff posts. If we can't get co-operation then as Spudkopf said we may just have to rely on the Oleg's Replies filter and remember the last one we read. It took me ages to go through the 20 pages, something like 300 posts :(

As to the original question, "What questions should we ask..." I think anything you like if it hasn't been asked before but keep in in the context of the Thread. "Update...." or "Oleg's Questions"