The Joys of Overzealous Moderators

[parone]

remmember, shrapnel doesn't really know or care what goes on here. they don't know the members. don't know who contributes what, who's a decent lass or lad, or who is a total d-bag.

they have what? 20 forums? while we all like dominions and have friends within the community(like callahan), they just throw it on a server and classify it "game support". so it isn't that surprising they might get it wrong now and then.

[Executor]

Originally Posted by parone

remmember, shrapnel doesn't really know or care what goes on here. they don't know the members. don't know who contributes what, who's a decent lass or lad, or who is a total d-bag.

And this is the heart of the problem. Shrapnel doesn't seem to realize this affects them, and not in a small way either. And this is also a problem which could have been easily solved with little to no effort from their part.
How they run their forums directly impacts their sales. If they run it badly (which I think they do), don't care about their members, threat them with disrespect, generally don't bother at all with anything and even manage to split the forum in half like is the case with Dominions, than those members will be less inclined to purchase more Shrapnel games and recommend Shrapnel games to others. Further more, the more livelier the forum is the longer said game will last, meaning, more people will eventually buy the game, more people will get involved in projects, be interested in a sequels perhaps, which that same company might publish, etc. Shrapnel doesn't really care about any of that so it's their own problem they are losing business.

A simple solution to this would have been to appoint several very active and appreciated members to supervise the forum they are active in, and leave those mods to handle internal matters regarding those forums. Help new members, organize new projects, intervene in situations like this where two members were pointlessly banned, etc. I'm sure many member would have been glad to help (people like Soy, WL, Frozen, Maer...) and those people would actually be able to promote harmony on the forums and help the company as well.
Is that really that hard to do? And yet imagine how much better this forum would be, how much more people would be here, how many more people would actively contribute and participate on the forums, and how many more people would actually buy this game?

So I can't really accept anything in defense of Shrapnel since it's their own incompetence that's the cause of all these problems.

[jimbojones1971]

Originally Posted by parone

remmember, shrapnel doesn't really know or care what goes on here. they don't know the members. don't know who contributes what, who's a decent lass or lad, or who is a total d-bag.

they have what? 20 forums? while we all like dominions and have friends within the community(like callahan), they just throw it on a server and classify it "game support". so it isn't that surprising they might get it wrong now and then.

I might be wrong, but it seems to me that almost all of the other forums are effectively museum pieces - not much if any posting ever. In fact, at a guess I'd say at least 80% of the forum posts happen in the Dom3 subforum.

Its going out on a limb, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that most of the income also comes from Dom3 now.