The topic of users vs. mods is a very old one. In fact, it’s probably been discussed since before a lot of you were born. But it seems with every new platform/server or every new generation of users, everyone kinda forgets how things work and it turns into the wild west again like in the early 90s.

Given, this post was made by gAmErS for a gamedev forum, but I think the topic still holds if you switch out some of the words. People on the internet love to play “the forum game” even for topics totally unrelated to gaming. And I would bet that the 90-9-1 percent rule holds even for Lemmy.

The most valuable role a forum can serve is to let players get advice amongst themselves. It’s best to try to foster this sort of interaction. There’s a very strong temptation to use forums to gather information about your game, but you have to remember that forums are dramatically non-representative. Certainly you can spot trends in posts that can help you improve the game: forums are a great way to bring problems to light. But they are not a good way to tell how big a problem is. Even the most vitriolic topic may really only be affecting 10% of your player base, with the rest blissfully unaware of that issue. Reading too much into forums is dangerous.

A very skilled moderator can dramatically improve the value of a forum by plugging the spigots of vitriol, collecting the new ideas and complaints, and encouraging players to be helpful amongst themselves, rather than making every post an “I want this feature changed!” post. However, an unskilled or burned out moderator will make things worse, so be very vigilant about that.

Forums are dangerous because a tiny percentage of the player population uses them, and many of them use posts as a way to change the game in their favor or to get other people to react to them. It is easy to understand this on a conceptual level, but it’s much harder to keep this in mind when somebody says the new quest you made ruined the game and you ought to be drawn and quartered.

Treat forums with a healthy respect, like you would a tiger.

My personal suggestion to users who think they can do better than the GZD mods? Read the instructions on how to start your own Lemmy server.