In my experience the rise of censorship in forums rears it's ugly head when there is something to hide, the company wants to save face, or the game itself is failing. This is a serious red flag to me and a sad day in CoE. Until now we have had the near full ability to express ourselves in any manner we wanted (minus the obvious racism, etc).

I really hope this gets addressed immediately.

Changing whole pages, deleting stings of thoughts across posts to change narritives, or putting words in people mouths is a dangerous prescient.

Posted By Serpentius at 1:01 PM - Tue Dec 03 2019

Let me see if I can help shed some light on this subject:

Mod Edits

If a moderator edits a post, it is discussed among the mod team. I have said this before but will restate for posterity - mods don't act alone.

If a mod edits something after discussing it with the team and it is deemed inappropriate or against our policies, we will remove the offending content by deleting the post.

If a post has relevant content in it and only one part is against our policy, we may at our discretion edit that part out. If the part breaks our rules, we aren't going to include why it was deleted to anyone other than the person who posted it, as it may not be relevant to all.

Lastly, the reason we use "mod edit" is to avoid harassment and targeting of mods who players disagree with. This has happened before, became an issue more than once, and this is a way we can avoid that.

If a post is edited by a mod, it will say "mod edit".

Admin edits

If a post is edited by a Soulbound Studios employee who has the ability to edit posts, it will say "Admin edit". Only a few members of the SBS team have admin abilities for many reasons, so you shouldn't expect that to occur unless it is Caspian or myself most of the time.

Every once in a while, someone may post a reply that isn't constructive or helpful in any way, and simply is an attempt to bash or put down the studio. In these rare cases, we will communicate with the individual directly, but we aren't going to advertise our administrative actions as that isn't the public's business, it is related specifically to the individual who was moderated, and we don't need to give fuel to trolls.

It isn't a debate we are going to have with the community, it is a policy we have adopted utilizing best practices to try and keep the conversation and community a safe and welcoming place for all.

You may not agree with how we moderate or even when we moderate, and that is completely understandable.

But it isn't realistic to expect us to put up for community scrutiny every decision to moderate we follow through on.

In conclusion

I would also like to note that every action a moderator takes, whether it is removing or editing out content from a forum post, removing a signature or avatar, warning a player via PM, it is all logged and recorded so any instance of something being moderated can easily be explained to the person who was moderated if they simply reach out and ask.

Emailing us at [email protected] will get you an explanation of what you did wrong. It may not make you feel better, help to appeal your moderation, or be something you can change, but we are more than willing to be transparent and provide the reasons that led to the moderation.

@Avastar, if you have a question about our policy, such as not discussing moderation, feel free to reach out to me directly or email support and I am happy to explain why.

I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

Thanks for listening.

If this is indeed the case Serpentius can you please explain why a comment like this would be made via a Moderator Edit? It doesnt look to be addressing any form of broken rules or any form of harassment what so ever. Actually it looks like a direct abuse of power, and an attempt to inject the individuals opinion into the post of someone else while remaining anonymous. Further after this incident and the response to it from the originator the post itself was deleted with no explanation.

This is what I received:

Your post was removed from the forum thread "NPC sexual orientation question" as it provided information against Code of Conduct, and Terms of Service. You asserted information in your post that has not been confirmed by the devs, and implies LGBTQ players or roleplayers are in moral violation.

From that explicit statement provided by a supermod, we all can understand that asserting unconfirmed information, or if mods merely infer something to be against CoC and ToS (where is the ToS?), then mods are allowed to delete posts.

The infer portion is most concerning. It opens the door to punishment without actual understanding of the situation; subjective vs objective; multiple mods' don't like it, so it gets twisted into being against CoC and ToS, then deleted.

Hi Adam, long time no hear from.

In this particular case, it should have said admin edit and not mod edit.

The admin edit was done in order to remove misinformation and clarify how we view the longest night calendars. I am not looking to argue with you about whether it is a loot box or not, only respond to your concern about censorship.

If you don't like something we do, feel free to provide us with your critical yet constructive criticism, we can take it and have stated before that we want it in order to try and do better.

But don't forget that he community is for all players, not just those who have been here a while.

When a new player joins and reads a news post from us, and some community members decide to reply with negative destructive swipes at the studio just because they can, we reserve the right to moderate as needed. It is stated in our Terms of Use, and it is what we feel is in the best interest of the community as a whole.

You may not agree with it, but it is not what I classify as censorship. This isn't a public website where freedom of speech reigns supreme. We have guidelines to ensure constructive discussion and we will continue to do our best to enforce them as needed while trying our best to not overstep.

I appreciate your reply.

Posted By Serpentius at 1:29 PM - Tue Dec 03 2019

Hi Adam, long time no hear from.

In this particular case, it should have said admin edit and not mod edit.

The admin edit was done in order to remove misinformation and clarify how we view the longest night calendars. I am not looking to argue with you about whether it is a loot box or not, only respond to your concern about censorship.

If you don't like something we do, feel free to provide us with your critical yet constructive criticism, we can take it and have stated before that we want it in order to try and do better.

But don't forget that he community is for all players, not just those who have been here a while.

When a new player joins and reads a news post from us, and some community members decide to reply with negative destructive swipes at the studio just because they can, we reserve the right to moderate as needed. It is stated in our Terms of Use, and it is what we feel is in the best interest of the community as a whole.

You may not agree with it, but it is not what I classify as censorship. This isn't a public website where freedom of speech reigns supreme. We have guidelines to ensure constructive discussion and we will continue to do our best to enforce them as needed while trying our best to not overstep.

I appreciate your reply.

That makes alot more sense with your previous post. I am onboard now! Thank you very much for the clarification. :-)

Also ya I am around just lurking in a passive mode while I wait for something playable to come out and tell us if this project is actually going to make it or not. However I still have to pop in and provide what I can on behalf of my community when the need arises.

Thanks again Serp! Keep up the good fight!

Posted By Avastar at 12:22 PM - Tue Dec 03 2019

This is what I received:

Your post was removed from the forum thread "NPC sexual orientation question" as it provided information against Code of Conduct, and Terms of Service. You asserted information in your post that has not been confirmed by the devs, and implies LGBTQ players or roleplayers are in moral violation.

From that explicit statement provided by a supermod, we all can understand that asserting unconfirmed information, or if mods merely infer something to be against CoC and ToS (where is the ToS?), then mods are allowed to delete posts.

The infer portion is most concerning. It opens the door to punishment without actual understanding of the situation; subjective vs objective; multiple mods' don't like it, so it gets twisted into being against CoC and ToS, then deleted.

You are welcome to contact us directly about this and we'd be happy to explain to you our feelings on the subject.

We will not entertain this discussion here, thank you.

@Serp

Thanks for the response. As you said, I may not agree with it, but I appreciate your clarification.

@Marovec - thank you for bringing the concern up, I would rather address it to the best of my ability rather than there be some unknown ambiguity or speculation out there.

Happy Holidays.

Posted By Serpentius at 1:32 PM - Tue Dec 03 2019

thank you.

You're welcome.

I certainly won't discuss the underlying situation. I'm merely sharing two of the reasons (and relevent source) that posts can be deleted:

1. Mods inferring something and
2. users asserting something.

I've already contacted the supermod, i'm awaiting the supermod's reply.

Aaaand cut to serpentius .-.

I'd just like to throw in that Snipe used to work at Trion, and Trion was probably more hated than EA by people who play(ed) their games before going under. He criticized that company publicly in the past and almost certainly can recognize that it's wise to not make the same road of mistakes which gave that company its reputation.

While the site isn't bound by any sort of free speech rules, removing "disinformation" as you (Serp) put it has a massive Streisand effect in which instead of SbS's side of the story being put out, it almost exclusively is the message of the disgruntled players who disagree with these Surprise Mechanics.

Thus, instead of it being contained internally within the community and the fire being doused as best it can be when adding such things during a year in which they are so controversial, the overarching message spreads so that this gives many of the outside-community potential customers for SbS in the future exactly the message that SbS wanted to suppress. (With the added flare of censorship)

That's a terrible thing for marketing and I, as someone who cares about this game, sincerely hope that we never see something of the sort again: be that the Store Surprise Mechanics or the way in which the edited & deleted post was handled.

Posted By Serpentius at 3:29 PM - Tue Dec 03 2019

Hi Adam, long time no hear from.

In this particular case, it should have said admin edit and not mod edit.

The admin edit was done in order to remove misinformation and clarify how we view the longest night calendars. I am not looking to argue with you about whether it is a loot box or not, only respond to your concern about censorship.

If you don't like something we do, feel free to provide us with your critical yet constructive criticism, we can take it and have stated before that we want it in order to try and do better.

But don't forget that he community is for all players, not just those who have been here a while.

When a new player joins and reads a news post from us, and some community members decide to reply with negative destructive swipes at the studio just because they can, we reserve the right to moderate as needed. It is stated in our Terms of Use, and it is what we feel is in the best interest of the community as a whole.

You may not agree with it, but it is not what I classify as censorship. This isn't a public website where freedom of speech reigns supreme. We have guidelines to ensure constructive discussion and we will continue to do our best to enforce them as needed while trying our best to not overstep.

I appreciate your reply.

Calling a loot box a loot box is misinformation. This is a new low.

Posted By Avastar at 7:39 PM - Tue Dec 03 2019

are you referring to the irl science that was being discussed regarding population decline and how population decline harms society, thus provides reason to implement population procreation laws if the same thing does occur ingame? I was told that that discussion was blatant violation of CoC and ToS. I think it just hurt someone's feelings. Since, it was entirely grounded in science and was merely a postulation that discussed a what if ingame scenario

Not going to get into an argument with you, but the interpretation of how it was discussed can easily be seen as offensive. As you seem to be genuinely confused about this I feel its better if your stance is elaborated on respectfully.

First of all, your argument is based on selective socio-political science, derived from the fact that a society with a lot of elderly long-lived individuals will suffer economically. Of course, the easy solution is to keep breeding, but this is a bit like solving drug withdrawals by sticking to the drugs. It's also a bad solution considering the overall world is showing signs of unsustainable overpopulation. In addition, within the context of Elyria, its likely never going to be an issue as the population should be able to stay relatively productive throughout its entire life (games have to forgo realism where it isn't fun, and playing a character that is senile is probably not fun). Ergo, your argument has no solid foundation in either imperial evidence or Elyria, it's more political than scientific as the science only identifies the issue in this case. In other words, it was a subjective discussion.

Now the offensive part is that your argument for enforced procreation can be interpreted as the sexism that "imply" that "women are birth machines". And within the context of that thread it came off as a poorly camouflaged attempt at a homophobic jab as well. I hope you understand that these are all fine reasons to get hit by the CoC and ToS hammer. If this wasn't how you intended for it to be interpreted then I guess you should try to word it more eloquently next time.

Now I'm personally a strong willed woman that simply don't get faced by arguments like these, but that's not true for everyone, even without considering the hyper-sensitive kind that gets offended by everything it's still a conversation that is going to genuinely make some people feel unwelcome, and at that point it's not a good conversation to have on a forum like this.