Post reporting

This is the most useful thing on this site. Thanks for creating this!

 

This entire forum is what's wrong with this community. Apply chemo on the cancer that's on here, and this place will become better.

 

As I've said before,
there have and will always be idiots in a community, whether that's as small as the BeamNG forums or as big as the CS:GO community. There will be trolls, and the only thing we can do is report and move on. If everybody would do that (wishing for a perfect world), trolls would disappear, because there is no reaction, So stop feeding them.

 

Thanks for taking the time to create this new system!

I think a lot of the problem right now with the community is attitude. There seems to be a lack in respect in general towards other users, especially concerning new users. I believe that we, as a community, should be using positive reinforcement to correct mistakes new users make, instead of being hostile towards them. We will never grow as a community of new users are greeted with hostility minutes after their first post, only because they accidentally bumped a thread, or posted in the wrong place, or forgot to post a screenshot in community screenshots, etcetera.

For example, if a new user bumps a thread, write something like “Hey! Welcome to the community! For future reference, please refrain from posting on threads with a bump warning. If you would like to continue the thread, consider sending the original poster a PM, or creating a new, similar, thread. If you have any more questions, feel free to send me a PM and ask! I hope you enjoy your time here in the BeamNG community!”

Right now, I see a lot of “Omgggggg!!! Why would you post on this threaddddddd???? Stop being so stupidddddd!!!” and similar messages. This is neither productive, nor welcoming, and just generally degrades the quality of our community.

Unfortunately, many people in this community seem to have have that kind of attitude. You are not at war against everyone else in the community. We should be working together, not putting each other down.

Going back to what I said earlier, there’s a major lack of respect in the community, especially as of late, especially towards the staff members and moderators. The moderators are not your enemy, it’s quite the opposite actually. If they made a decision, then I guarantee there was a good reason. You may not agree, but please respect that they are just doing their job. Moderating a community as large as ours is not an easy task, and many difficult decisions have to be made. Please work to make the mod’s and dev’s jobs easier, not harder. I’ll put it this way, the devs will have a lot more time to work on the game and add new content if they can spend less time dealing with our antics on the forums.

I know many of you may not agree, but I believe each and every one of us can make a difference. I know many of you will read this with a negative attitude, and continue likewise. I know many of you don’t care about the friendliness of the community, and none of this will change that. I know many of you won’t even read this at all. But for you, you fellow users who want to make a difference and make these forums a better place, I’m here to tell you that you can accomplish your goal.

If you, alone, work to make everything you do a bit friendlier, our community will be a much nicer place. We’ve gotten so caught up in the negativity as of late, I think it’s time to take a step back and have a more positive attitude towards our fellow users.

Every small act of kindness makes the world a better place.

Thank you for spending your time to read this. I know I’m not a very good writer, but hopefully this got the right message across. Everyone makes a difference. Be sure you’re making the right one.

~~Rezia~~

 

Just to add onto Re:Z_IA's post: An introduction to how the forum works would be extremely helpful. I think that a lot of people who comment on old threads don't realize that commenting on it bumps it to the top of the forum. A lot of these people have likely never used a forum before, and they are probably unaware of how bumping works.

Similarly, it would be good to have an explanation on how old mods are less likely to work due to game updates breaking them. There's always some cool-looking old mods that seem to get bumped because of that, having a warning come up when downloading files from before recent or big updates would probably help reduce the amount of bumps from new users asking why the mod isn't working.

 

Is it a possibility to implement a system where you have to have a certain amount of time with a mod installed (or something similar) before making a review?

 

^^ this
Also, maybe have a checkbox on the review saying "I'm having trouble with this mod" to alert a staff member and/or mod author that they have a problem, and when the problem is fixed the author/staff member can submit a review deletion or change.

 

That would be bad. If I want to rate an absolutely trashy mod as it deserves, why should I be forced to download it? If this becomes true, I'll never rate or review anything again. If so, it's better to ditch the rating system altogether.

 

I suppose that that is true. Other issues would likely be those of us who still install everything manually instead of downloading through the game, and people who don't have their game connected to BeamNG's servers.

I guess a compromise could be to require a download and a short wait time (ex: 15-20 minutes) before a review can be made. Although I'm not sure that either of the proposed ideas would be able to fix the problem of the people who rate everything 5 stars.

 

Personally, I'd like to be able to review a mod without downloading it.

 

@tdev ,

I have the most radical concept that some might see as excessive, but let's see what you think.

BeamNG staff spend too much time and energy cleaning up stupid stuff on the forums. You, the CEO of the company, of all people, should not be focusing on idiots on the forums, but rather the game/company. The same applies to Nadeox as well. BeamNG staff should not be focused on running a game forum, but rather on the game itself. Running a forum directly on a company owned site is a bad move in my opinion, and no amount of moderation is effective in a world of VPN IP ban bypasses. Although having company hosted forums is useful to the company to interact with the community, staff members could use the other site without having to worry about cleaning up messes caused by immature members of the community. Although it might seem like this is extreme overkill to what seems like a minor problem, it might help in the long run when the community eventually bursts (as all game communities do), and the company would not have to bear any adverse effects.

I propose that the forums be moved off of BeamNG.com, and be community run on another domain. BeamNG GMBH does not need the liability of the forums, because actions on this site, which are hosted and run by the company.

In this case, we would have two theoretical sites, BeamNG.com and BeamNGforums.com,

BeamNG.com would be the company/game site, and host the mod repository, tech support, devblog, and wiki. The company would moderate this site as normal. The forums would not be on this site, and accounts would be used to upload mods, edit the wiki, and post support requests ONLY.

BeamNGForums.com would be a third party site that would host it's own forums. This site would not be tied to BeamNG GMBH in any way shape or form, and any actions would not affect the company in any way. BeamNG staff could create accounts on this site and provide support, but they would not need to moderate, as a community run team would do it instead.

Obviously this is a very basic description of what would be a complex task. I can provide further explanation as requested, as I am not that good at writing long explanations (blame ASD), so I assume you would have a number of questions, so if you need any explanation, don't hesitate to ask!

 

What needs to be done if Feras idea is done:
I would like to add 1 thing. I would like to have 1 login/account for the different sites. I dont want 2 different accounts.

About the forums:
The forums get rated by the top 50 posters/members. And if 15 and multiple random people are toxic the forum would get known for being toxic. I liked the forums more when i started because there was less annoying kids.....but kids that buy the game keep the game running. So we should let them know what they are doing wrong.

What i Suggest:
I suggest you have BeamNGBot send a private message to EVERY new account that is made with a paragraph with basic rules, basic trouble shooting, tips and maybe a newcomer forum.

 

Agreed on the 1 account for both sites, it would make it easier. Also, I sent Tdev a PM a little while ago about the BeamBot thing... Odd.
--- Post updated ---
I do not agree on the top 50 members rating though. It would create a rift in the community and do more damage than it would fix.

 

Big problem number one: The repository. A huge part of the reason why the forums are run by BeamNG are the mod repository and being able to have an official place to upload and discuss mods. Having those be separate would be a mess, and would also make it a pain to keep track of mods.

Big problem number two: Imagine this: Let's say we have a young kid named Timmy who's seen this cool car crashing game on Youtube. He begs his parents to get it and they look it up to see what it's about. What would look better? An official site for the game where the conversation is usually fairly mature, or a 3rd party site such as the subreddit or one of the various Discord servers where the community tends to get a little bit lewd and use strong language? Whether or not it's officially tied to the company it's still going to be connected by association, especially if the developers and staff members maintain a presence on the third party website.

 

I have two issues with the site still. when you read a post and someone updates it after you read it, you no longer get notified of future replies. and when you don't comment for a while on a watched thread, you stop getting notified of replies. two annoying issues for me.

but overall, this forum is my favorite out of all the ones i visited cause everything is SUPER simple to use.

 

I’d like to sort of disagree. Yes, I think that the devs should absolutely be able to focus on the game and not be forced to go around policing these forums for trolls and such, but I think there are situations where only staff members are able to solve an issue, or properly contribute to something. I think there’s definitely some things on these forums that could be done away with, such as the “ask a person of this region” type of threads and similar, but I think some things should probably stay on the official, full-fledged website. That’s my opinion.