Games & Profiles - Moderation Features, Privacy Improvements & More
2 years ago
Portugal

As a game moderator I have 0 interest in anything to do with comments. I would like the ability to turn them off entirely for every game I moderate. I have yet to see a single person in the biggest community I frequent who wants this feature enabled in the leaderboards, especially game moderators.

YUMmy_Bacon5, Bro3256 and 13 others like this

So, one issue that came up was that apparently even Elo staff didn't have the ability to bulk-delete spam comments from a single commenter, which is why they didn't take down the thousands of comments from a particular bot. Has this been fixed?

Because the obvious innovation from the bots will be to spam links across thousands of games on the site, rather than bulk-spamming individual runs, so the moderators from individual games won't be able to nuke them all.

Also, what's the preferred method for dealing with spam/malicious comments: Report & delete, or report & leave up for Elo staff to see?

Edited by the author 2 years ago
YUMmy_Bacon5, madsen and 9 others like this

Firstly comments should have been at least temporarly removed, until you got all settings and things working. I dont mind comments, as long as i can get notifications on all of them from the leaderboard and the option to disable them and if it is just to turn it on for a week to block trolls. Also restrikting comments to actual runners (people with one verified run) would be great. I wont moderate comments at all until i have those tools. Also Comments should be wiped once all tools are finished.

Followed game statistic should be opt in. no debate! Game moderated statistics shouldnt be shown exept like before a list of moderated games. Maybe replace "run games" with featured games where people can pick up to 5 games to list. Its a way more demanded feature anyways which allows to show what you are actually proud of.

YUMmy_Bacon5, madsen and 8 others like this
Belgium

The Switch Pokémon speedrunning community has also decided to join other communities in the blackout. We will not verify a single run and any site moderation until the core of the issue gets addressed. This update does not change the main concern: leaderboard moderators do not want to moderate comments! Especially not if they have no way to see runs that have comments.

Therefore, once again, Elo: allow leaderboards to disable this feature entirely at the very least.

And while you're at it, our moderators also dislike your privacy invading "feature" that shows how actively they moderate and what games they follow. This needs to go!

This is the official announcement made to our community: "As a result of the recent direction of speedrun.com and in solidarity with the other communities impacted by the site's recent changes, the Switch Pokémon Speedrunning moderation team is suspending verification of leaderboard submissions.

The speedrun.com page will remain dormant and we will not verify runs until speedrun.com allows disabling of comments and gives regular moderators the ability to delete comments.

We apologize for any runs waiting in the queue to be verified."

jackzfiml, YUMmy_Bacon5 and 18 others like this
Hampshire, England

SHAR Community Blackout Update

We would like to update everyone on the blackout.

Whilst we appreciate the update from speedrun.com, going a long way to fix the issues we have been experiencing, the SHAR community will be continuing the blackout.

Our main issue now is that inactive users have their comments turned on by default, and thus are open to abuse.

We would like to see this change reflected on the website, from an opt out system to an opt in system.

We would like to apologise again for the delay in verifying runs.

  • SHAR modteam
jackzfiml, YUMmy_Bacon5 and 12 others like this
Netherlands

Although this update addresses a few things, it kinda feels like damage mitigation and doesn't even mention some of the obvious but just really important requests, like.. what about disabling comments for leaderboards entirely? No way to track comments in the audit log?

@Camcorder I do wonder what kind of information are you being fed? How is it not obvious from dozens of comments on previous threads and also this thread that this should have been a thing already? Its really silly that Elo doesn't understand that you can't just have runners mod their own comments. Ultimately someone's run on the site is part of a bigger whole, a leaderboard.

Here are just a "few" examples of things Elo clearly missed. Read the rest of this thread properly after these as well:

  • From Wartab: "This update does not change the main concern: leaderboard moderators do not want to moderate comments!"
  • From Powdinet: "As a game moderator I have 0 interest in anything to do with comments. I would like the ability to turn them off entirely for every game I moderate."
  • From Punchy: "Users being able to opt-out is nice but yeah, moderators should also be able to opt-out the boards they moderate."
  • From Liv: "If a user hasn't used the site in a while, then they aren't going to be able to turn comments off... and trolls are obviously going to take advantage of this."
  • From survivalMichi: "Also Comments should be wiped once all tools are finished."

Honestly, it's getting quite annoying. I don't want to moderate a comment section. It's getting to the point where I just can't even give credits to this new update since people are giving so much feedback but Elo just chooses to ignore the most obvious and important requests and decides to push their own silly propaganda instead time and time again, and doing so with lacking communication and transparency. Reminds me of the CEO posting on Twitter in Oktober 2020: "Any change on such an established community site is scary and we have to earn your trust." And a year later, here we are. Getting big features thrown in our laps with 0 communication beforehand. Yeah, great job on the promised trust earning.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
YUMmy_Bacon5, madsen and 18 others like this
New South Wales, Australia

The bear fucking minimum. First all comments need to be wiped and started afresh cause no one wants to moderate every bloddy run on the site. Second comments need to be turned off by default and a feature that is Opt-In not Opt-Out Third comments need to be disabled on obsolete runs Fourth since comments are unfortunately here to stay there has to be a notification system so we know when someone comments. cause as it is no one is notified when a comment is posted making it hard to moderate More moderation tools are also required.

Looks as if you just flogged a lot of the moderation of run comments onto the runners. fun fact runners also don't have the time to moderate a broken comment system.

YUMmy_Bacon5, madsen and 8 others like this
French Southern Territories

Most people who submit speedruns to this site don't want to have to moderate their own comment section. That is not their job, and isn't what they signed up for. It should not be the runner's responsibility.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
YUMmy_Bacon5, Pear and 3 others like this
Canada

Comment system drives more "traffic and engagement " so they increase their ad revenue. Make no mistake comments and src turning into a social media site is coming whether you want it or not.

YUMmy_Bacon5 and Walgrey like this
Ero
He/Him, They/Them
2 years ago

Are there even rules in place anywhere on the site to which moderators can point for violations?

YUMmy_Bacon5 likes this
Israel

@Ero There are, but it's not trivial to find them: https://www.speedrun.com/knowledgebase/site-rules

Gaming_64, YUMmy_Bacon5 and 4 others like this

let's be honest

y'all should've remove or never add run comments altogether. this feature fucking sucks, pointless, problematic and is a waste of site space

YUMmy_Bacon5, Nightwish and 5 others like this
Denmark

Yeah, enabling comments for runs that were added before comments were enabled is just an incredibly bad idea. In my mind, this is what needs to be done before this is close to acceptable:

• Comments should be made opt-in everywhere, individually for users, and per game decided by the mods, with "disabled" always taking precedence—i.e. if a user has comments enabled but a game has them disabled, then "disabled" wins. • All comments up to this point needs to be wiped. A complete reset. It's ridiculous that runs posted 8 years ago suddenly have comments enabled and people can post all kinds of shit there. • Elo should be transparent about how they intend to moderate comments in terms of both guidelines and resources. It's fine to let the community moderate stuff themselves (if they want to), but when someone inevitably posts death threats, child porn, and other illegal stuff, there needs to be staff at Elo that can act swiftly in removing it and assist law enforcement if need be. • There needs to be (better) modding tools if you absolutely insist on keeping comments around. You can't expect people to moderate stuff themselves and give them nothing to do it with. Notifications for the right people is an absolute no-brainer, with bulk deletion and bans/mutes as close runner-ups.

I gotta say that I'm pretty surprised at how tone-deaf of a move this was. I don't expect things to change but I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

Edited by the author 2 years ago
YUMmy_Bacon5, Nightwish and 10 others like this
Nova Scotia, Canada
Sadly
He/Him, They/Them
2 years ago

Alright everyone whatever you do be sure to delete the evidence of the abuse if you moderate a board and surely don't let companies like Best Buy, Hotels.com, Squarespace, Omen as well as Google (since they provide the ads) of what's going on on the site, because then src might have to do something about this abuse.

YUMmy_Bacon5 and Nightwish like this
United States

Quite frankly ELO gave no notice, and has no policy that moderators are responsible for any comment content, so it is entirely on them if suddenly the content on the site gets them in trouble with advertisers.

Honestly we're all trying to moderate comments because it's the right thing to do, but maybe we treat this like the bots thread and point it out and let them handle entirely. They implemented this, they deal with any consequences.

YUMmy_Bacon5, Nordanix and 10 others like this
Jönköping, Sweden

Just to throw in my two cents here. I can accept the fact that Elo want to have comments on this site going. But that is a feature of their choosing, I as a moderator will not be taking any responsibility for that social media aspect of this leaderboard site.

I'm here to speedrun and moderate leaderboards, not to babysit what's essentially youtube comments 2.0.

If people suddenly asks me to do something about it, I'll gladly refer them to reaching out to Elo whom caused the problem to begin with. Take responsibility for the feature you introduce if its flawed, but don't expect me to do the dirty work for you.

Edit: Also I hear beta testers is a thing

Edited by the author 2 years ago
YUMmy_Bacon5, Helix and 7 others like this
Canada

Since you're adding all this extra responsibility to VOLUNTEER moderators so that you can make extra ad revenue maybe we should be talking about revenue sharing if anything.

YUMmy_Bacon5 likes this
United Kingdom

There are new comments settings for leaderboard moderators. They are:

  • Allow comments on runs
  • Allow comments from users with a verified run (in any game)
  • Allow comments from users with a verified run (in the game)
  • Disable comments on runs for this game Exactly what we've been asking for, thank you.
Edited by the author 2 years ago
YUMmy_Bacon5 and Pear like this
Belgium

And we STILL can't hide our moderator stats from our profiles...

YUMmy_Bacon5 and Helix like this