Wotc Community Survey

[avin]

Did you guys have taken it?

I answered that I don't feel comfortable in Wotc boards, that they should get rid of community volunteers (never works on business boards), try to learn something with Blizzard's Wow Blues (that guys know how to handle the hot).

I pointed out that guys like Peter Lee and Scott Rouse posting on boards such Enworld and DDMspoilers is something very nice.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4dnd/survey

 

[Shemeska]

The actual WizO's (renamed ORCs) do a decent to good job on forum moderation with regards to CoC violations. It's not as good as it was before a lot of them left / were fired when G0 was there, but at times it feels like they're fighting the tide, without the resources to really do the same moderating jobs they used to do.

The VCL program needs to be shut down. It was a very poor idea when it started, people still are confused about the difference between VCLs, Forum Leaders, Scribes, WizO's, etc, and some of them simply don't have the objectivity that a trained, paid moderator does. Giving fanboys power on fan forums is a very poor idea, and when the program started, a lot of people felt that the deck was getting stacked with people receptive to the then-current folks in charge of the program rather than much else.

Some of the forum merges and moves should be revisted to see if they can improve posting and traffic levels to a level of where they used to be.

 

[Paradox]

As the VCL for the D&D area, I'm always open to suggestions/ideas.

Since I've also been with the site for 12 years, I do feel I've got the training/objectivity of a paid moderator. (Which I'm also. )

It's been slow going, but we've been moving threads from the other worlds board to the individual forums.

I'm going to poke the higher ups again about moving the D&D general board.

Traffic has always fluctuated. Always.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Took it - easy to fill out because there is lot of negative stuff to be said about the boards. Prime examples are
a) super-fans taking whole subboards "hostage", attacking any differing opinion (FR, looking at you).
b) moderation =/= faceless "maybe we removed something from a thread similar like this, but we wouldn´t tell you what, why and how".

The Wotc forums will stay a "visit once in a while to watch flamewars" board for me until they get a soul.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

One suggestion I made was to perhaps have heavier moderation for threads listed as [4e+/-], [3.5+/-], etc. sort of like what they did on RPG.net. Since many good threads have been drowned by edition wars so if the OP of a thread wants to make sure to keep edition conflict/debate out and such then using such signs be good (only work though with thorough moderation to go along with).

 

[fissionessence]

One thing I forgot to include in my general comments at the end was a clarification on how I don't think Wizards communicates well. I don't want them to take that as a negative thing toward their people who post frequently and give as many updates as they can (I've specifically noticed this from Scott Rouse, though I don't pay attention all the time, so I'm sure I've missed folks).

Anyway, my issue is that a lot of the times people from Wizards who do post either don't have the information or can't state the information that the community wants. That's where the issue with communication comes in: when Wizards can't/won't answer to problems. The problem is not with the Wizards employees who actually take time to share as much as they can.

~

 

[Henrix]

I don't visit often, there's too much noise, and not much signal, but it always strikes me as a rather unfriendly place. I don't feel at all comfortable there.

(And then again, Wizards have garbled my account (or, well, in WotCspeak, persona) so that I cannot use my old name. (Yes, I have been in contact with them, repeatedly, and they say they cannot do anything.))

 

[avin]

The same feeling I have. Henrix, I'm not comfortable there.

I should feel ok there. I'm a DDI subscriber, I'm a 4E DM and player, but dishearts me to see some 4E militia obliterating any criticism about fourth edition.

Community volunteers do not work. When I go to World of Warcraft forums I want to see a Blue answering questions, not Greens (wow's volunteers).

Forum itself needs a revamp, introducing some new features to look more attractive.

Developers should post more and they should use a different color, like Wow forums.

 

[Derulbaskul]

I suggested that they pattern the way they run their boards on this site. This site works well. The troublemakers and threadcrappers get slapped down fairly quickly so there is a good signal-to-noise ratio here.

 

[Kzach]

I answered that I don't feel comfortable in Wotc boards, that they should get rid of community volunteers (never works on business boards), try to learn something with Blizzard's Wow Blues (that guys know how to handle the hot).

You can't seriously be using the WoW forums as an example of good moderation, 'cause that alone destroys your argument wholesale and why would you want to do that in the very first post?