Guild Wars Wiki talk:Direct feedback provision quality standards

I don't think that we really need any formal policy to say "use commonsense, be polite, don't insult ArenaNet employees or criticise their work without due merit". -Chieftain Alex 20:31, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. The "restriction of personal attacks" is already covered by the NPA policy that is linked to. Regarding "Moreover, any personal affairs arising between two disputant users should be handled within their private talk space", the NPA policy states "If you feel that a response is necessary and desirable, you should leave a polite message on the other user's talk page. Do not respond on a talk page of an article; this tends to escalate matters." --Silver Edge 22:54, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

The goal of "creating a certain maturity, as well as quality level of the feedback submitted to ArenaNet" is a valiant one, but one that will fall short of expectations.

Quite a few of the immature posts are, not coincidentally, written by children. These are people who do not have the skill or knowledge of how to form clear, well-reasoned and respectful arguments; children tend to spew out the first thoughts that come to their head, with little or no reflection. This inability to form a proper argument does not negate the fact that they have something to say.

When we, as "older and more mature" editors (add sarcasm), see such posts, it's only natural to feel offended by their tone, word choice, lack of grammar and clarity. We could most definitely remove such posts, and there are times to do so, but the gains and losses of doing so need to be assessed. We gain a cleaner and more respectful appearance on the Feedback pages, but we lose the input from the community and we lose our ability to say that we're respectful of others.

If a member of our community sees something wrong, wants to change it, and posts their concern, this is a step in the right direction for them. They didn't do so in an appropriate manner, but we can at least help them improve our game. Note that when I first saw this post, and its subsequent removal, I partially supported it going away because the post was offensive to read. Only after a fairly lengthy amount of time, and a prod from another contributor did I force myself to look at the original feedback and hunt for the intentions behind the original post.

Asking for feedback is a difficult thing, as it isn't always useful, accurate, or on point. But I would rather keep the 90% that's garbage than risk the loss of the 10% that's quality. Mr. Kimmes does a great job in responding when he can. It does fall on us to help respond to the other posts, even if we don't like wading through what we see as drivel. G R E E N E R 02:28, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

"I would rather keep the 90% that's garbage than risk the loss of the 10% that's quality" Excellently put. It's pretty much the job of any community-interacting personnel to be able to sift through mountains of suggestions, thousands of pages of ranty forum threads, and angry letters to find the diamonds in the rough. And a lot of times those are only created by a discussion among the community, where several ideas are merged and compiled and refined to make a serviceable suggestion. Stifling all inter-user conversation in addition to pointless censorship would do nothing but drive away any potential diamonds in the rough - leaving only a massive pile of shit for devs to sort through. -Auron 10:42, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Preface; this comes after a rather minor scuffle between only a couple of players on a single dev's talk page - over a nonissue. In 2015. In short; get a grip. In long:

• 1) Pointless and counter to the purpose of a wiki. Discussion pages are meant for discussion. If someone says something retarded and it gets called out as being retarded, maybe that person will say something less retarded the next time. Communities do a fantastic job of policing themselves. As stated before, if you want a private channel to whine to a dev and not have your ideas shredded, email them. If you post your ideas to a wiki, prepare to have them shredded - unless they're good, obviously. And even then, expect at least a small amount of fine-tuning.
• 2) Dangerous, single-minded censorship. Any policy that singles out dissidents as unwelcome is unwelcome to this wiki. If you truly value criticism, you understand that a blanket ban on negative comments will stifle valuable criticism to meaningless levels. Worse still; this is literally not an issue. Users who are unnecessarily argumentative, incessantly aggressive, and just general pain in the dicks have historically been banned for disruption (sysop discretion). Before that became a thing, one user even went through the ArbComm process and was disallowed from posting on dev pages without their express permission. A blanket ban on negative comments will solve nothing and only cause problems - namely, making the section useless as an actual tool for gathering feedback.
• 3) Nanny filter/anti-swearing policy attempts have been nearly unanimously shot down every time they were brought up. The main points of previous, hundred-page-long discussions: arbitrarily banning words is illogical and solves nothing, the intent behind a comment matters far more than individual words within it, and it's fucking degrading to pretend a conversation cannot be held between adults (or teens, even) unless it contains absolutely zero swearing. "No profanity" policy suggestions are incredibly simpleminded in the assumption that changing a word or letters to asterisks or what have you actually alters the content of the message. As in my previous example to the policy author, the User In Question's post was offensive because he pretended like he wasn't worthy of a ban after all the shit he's pulled. Changing a word to another word does literally nothing to make the post less offensive. Pointless, harmful censorship.

ArenaNet aren't children. They're professional devs with hundreds of employees. The basics of internet PR are not lost on them - they've been doing it for years now, just like us sysops. Nothing in this suggested policy will make their jobs any easier - in fact, it would easily serve to make it pointless, as it neuters community-driven discussion and the majority of vocal negative feedback (which is, of course, infinitely more useful than an echo chamber circle-jerk of positive reinforcement). And let me restate this very important point; it's 2015. GW1 is a dead fuckin' game. If ArenaNet pretended to read feedback pages in 2009 and didn't, some hilariously censor-happy discussion-killing policy isn't going to do the section any favors. Might be a good nail in the coffin, though, if that's what you're trying for. -Auron 10:37, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Allright, guys, I'll explain of why it's got put up the way it was, the reason is that I wanted the suggested form of conduct to be all-inclusive, meaning that following this while participating in communication at the staff feedback pages would naturally include the abidance of other generally-accepted interplay policies such as GWW:NPA & GWW:AGF, unifying it as the whole with a newly-introduced 3rd clause, the latter being applicable exclusively to a certain (the direct feedback) type of pages.

You know, I believe that actually the same thing could be formulated even much easier than I did, being shortened to only 5 sentences such as "The provision of customer feedback at the talk pages of ArenaNet's staff members should be held retaining constructive environment and with the abidance of GWW:NPA & GWW:AGF. This encourages avoiding harsh statements and immature expressions such as meaningless oaths. Please note that the staff feedback pages of certain ArenaNet's team members are substantially dedicated to particular in-game aspects to which the person is directly responsible for and do not cover abstract disputes of something which lies beyond their domain. In case when such discussions will exceed the appropriateness of their placement at the staff member's main feedback page, they could be moved to the corresponding trash can supplied for such occasions within the same space's backyard, leaving respective redirect. Please post your feedback wisely so that it wouldn't create unnecessary distraction and allow everyone to stay focused on topic, letting the truly worthy suggestions to find their way into the game".

In regards to the assumption that ArenaNet is ought to browse through the 90% of nonsense which is dispatched to their community boards, all I will say is that - no, they're absolutely not obliged to pay any sort of recognition to that, except for simply running through it with their eyes. If they actually spent their time considering it all, the development process would simply halt. That's not how the actual polishing of the game proceeds, which could be done by no more than 1000 testers internally. For this, you don't need to browse through ridiculous things or invent any sort of PR countering them, they're simply disregarded and the show goes on, not falling any sort of expectations. =) And of course, as the contributors, we aren't disrespectful to childish-minded people, even to those who haven't abandoned these habits past their youth, on the contrary, sometimes their behavior demonstrates disregard towards us, the kin who actually feels & does things that aid the prospering of both wiki and the game.

Yeah, I'm sure that Mr. Kimmes have seen even worse people's attitudes in his life, though it's better to predict such things and be a step ahead rather than start struggling with them post-fact. Please understand me properly, guys, I'm not really interested in putting any sort of unjustified censoring on the wiki, nor did I try to forge up a policy which would affect all of its existing pages, this exact proposal in its amended state is directed towards establishing the most suitable working environment for the convenience of people still engaged in supplying us the updates of the game.

Also, you have chosen a very inappropriate term, Auron. If someone knows internal company e-mails, it is very unlikely that the following individual will "whine to the devs", as specified form of communication assumes a certain level of trust, and most-likely occurs between people who's got their watches ticking the similar way. And yes, I personally find this mean of communication being one of the most efficient, as stuff usually tends to get blurred out in lengthy forum conversations, partly due to distinct levels of appropriate understanding of how things function within the gaming industry.

You know, when it comes to a title which is more than 10 years old, it's mostly certain community members who are still driving the process of inspiring the Dev Team to still keep moving on upon a once-selected road, and being able to cause such influence means the person on his own must be very proficient in both principal game design and particularities of the project itself. Ultimately, it places a certain level of responsibility for the concerns exchanged with people who are directly responsible for implementing them, and it means that you have to be very flexible in your suggestions, adapting them "on the fly" to what the team can actually produce and what-not. So when it occasionally comes to altering and re-adapting my own feedback, I'm all thumbs-up for it, if that eventually will help the proposal to find its way into the game. This is what I truly consider my goal, all the time it comes to discussions surrounding the present in-game environment. Dmitri Fatkin (talk) 23:34, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

I'll clarify my 90-10 statement above with an analogy I'm familiar with, resumes. When a company posts a job, they are inviting people to apply, in the same manner that feedback pages ask for responses. Companies fully expect, and get, a ton of useless resumes which are glanced at and then recycled en masse. Some companies put strong restrictions on who may apply, much like how we could ask for people to "Please post your feedback wisely", but this ultimately hurts the company in the same way it hurts the feedback. I'll explain:

• When you put restrictions on resumes or feedback, it doesn't stop poor quality responses from appearing. It doesn't stop them at all. You get the same amount of garbage; that 90% still appears. Ask anyone that has worked in HR.
• When you put restrictions on resumes or feedback, it stops people who have a good idea from responding, as they second guess the quality of their valid response. I've missed a job that was designed for me because I didn't think I met the qualifications, and therefore didn't apply!

Restrictions on this sort of feedback gives you the same amount of shit, but less of the good. Additionally, some of that garbage can actually bring about good ideas, as they can start further/different discussions. This is why I said at the start of the my original post that your idea is valiant, but it will not garner you the quality that you're looking for. I wish the world worked the way you want it to, but in this case it just doesn't. G R E E N E R 01:39, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this is quite a comprehensible point, but the problem is that in our case, these "resumes" aren't recycled at all, they're simply left at Joe's table with a likelihood of creating the whole pile at it. I've already asked ArenaNet to voice their opinion on the matter, right when they'll be able to allocate the time, so let's see how they'd choose to complement to the discussion we're holding, which I'd be delighted to spot advancing further... Dmitri Fatkin (talk) 04:31, 11 February 2015 (UTC)