I never even got on the list. :(

I'm on the list lol

Yes it is, I made the list, I wear it as a a badge of honor and anyone else on there should too. The irony of course being he calls others trolls and douchebags and then proceeds to spam the same trollish comment over and over again in various articles.

GreenGangsta was not Rookie-Monster, I have no idea why some of you keep spreading that false rumor. For all we know it could have been Errorist or Kraenk, two others that were mysteriously banned from this site.

Angry joe is more of an industry professional than most of the crap that gets posted on N4G. While I know you used him as an example, I find something like that severely limiting to those in "the industry" who actually perform better jobs than the thousands of bloggers who get credit because they happen to have a domain.

Youtube is just a service to provide content. It is not different than a place like blogspot or wewritethings. Just because someone like Angry Joe uses it to distribute his content, it shouldn't be a reason to keep relatively respectable industry pros from being seen around here. N4G is an aggregate site, and they shouldn't have to jump through hoops because the mods decided to change some rules.

N4G was once a user driven site, and while I don't like the direction it's gone in recent years in terms of user content, it seems you are more and more removing the community driven nature away from the posting guidelines. Where is the whole user driven community discussion on this before the rules were made up?

I understand the reasoning behind what you're doing, but maybe institute a way to have "approved" YT channels. While that brings it's own problems because who gets to decide what's approved, but I think it's better than just treating YT content makers as a lower class of industry pro....or not a pro at all.

I have to disagree as how you are categorising industry professional.

Regardless if someone likes or dislikes content YouTubers create, some are industry professionals like Angryjoe, Jim Sterling, Totalbiscuit, etc, they are industry professionals because of their wide reach and influence. It think it's pretty naive to not consider industry professionals. There seems to be more honest commentary and content from wide reaching gaming channels than major gaming outlets. Maybe smaller channels or individuals in the gaming industry don't think or didn't intend to become professionals, but because of the content they produce they became successful at what they do.

When those who produce can content for millions to watch, get press invites, go to press gaming events and even paid sponsor deals then that makes them industry professionals.

@RocketPanda

This is a conversation I had with the Admin on Twitter just a couple days ago. He doesn't believe that anyone outside of game development or publishers is an industry professional, which I adamantly disagree with. How is an interview with Greg Miller not relevant to N4G? How is an interview with the most notorious leaker in the games industry, Shinobi602, not relevant to N4G?

Both of these interviews were approved by the community, which means they were interested in the content enough to approve, so what's the point of a moderator or admin failing it? That takes away the role from the community in deciding what content is relevant...

@hockeyfan

I'm going to seem hypocritical here on some of my other posts in the forums, but the requirements for getting things approves is actually rather low on this site. For many things it's as little as 3 people, for others, 10....but some users have more weight in their votes. I think I get 2-3 points for approval, so an opinion article can be approved with just 3-4 people. That skews the nature of the content to those who have more weight in the voting process, while anyone who hasn't posted a story at all has no real say in the content except I believe to report an article.

I wont even get into the sites which use employees, or approval circles of a few users to get things through....sometimes from user accounts from a single site, or from multiple sites colluding to approve each others articles....something which would be good to address by the mods as it actually skews the appearance of what the community wants.

I like gangsta's suggestion to allow YouTube reviews, because a review doesn't have to be from an industry pro, and more often than not, aren't. Nowadays, from what I've seen, many in the community actually believe the best reviewers exist outside the mainstream sites, and almost all agree that the random blog poster reviews are usually worthless....although this tends to be dependant on if that review lines up with one's own console preference for exclusives, while people don't care for multi-plat games.

But, with the example of Angry Joe, he also does do actual interviews and reporting. He was one of the few media types who really laid into MS at the start of this gen and went beyond just showing some distaste for the idea. He's one of the few who doesn't hold back. Same with Jim Sterling. Love them or hate them, they do something right....which is behave like journalists(most of the time anyways).

The rule itself is kind of hypocritical IMO.

Take forbes for example. A lot of the stuff that gets posted from that site is just stuff that users post. Contributors they call them. They are no different than people like Angry Joe. They don't get paid by forbes directly to post. Yet based on the criteria of these rules, they are now professional sources? It is a double standard. There are other blog sites which are similar....some of which allow people to have their own domain.
It's being used to weed out the random crap from YT obviously, but it actually causes more harm to disseminating good stuff to the community. How often do the crap TY videos get posted, while the more prolific YT posters actually get a lot of attention? Seems the community has it under control on this aspect, so I'm curious why the mods felt it necessary to single out YT. Maybe something I'm not seeing in the back ground?

To me, these non-industry pros fall into the category of things that are of interest to the gamer. Something the mods seem rather keen on removing from the community. They may not be industry pros, but a lot of times they are relevant to gamers themselves in some way, or provide information that we are interested in. Sometimes what and how they do so can be questions though, but the blanket use of "not allowed" is going too far I think. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, and the bad is what moderation is for. Mods seem to want to avoid the work with the blanket approach. True or not, I can't say, but that's how it comes off as.

So if someone chooses YouTube as their platform, they aren't considered an industry professional? I haven't posted any of my YouTube content on this site, but for example, I have an actual education and diploma in journalism.

You're basically saying that no matter how professional people like me get, we'll never be allowed on this site because we don't fit your narrow definition of an industry professional. And yet trash like Kotaku and Polygon are allowed, despite being some of the most biased and unprofessional journos around.

I'm sorry, but that's unacceptable. It makes no difference to me personally, because I don't post my content on this site. But for other professionals on YT, it's sad that they can't make use of a site like N4G.

so an armchair expert with heavily biased rant is allowed as long as he set up a simple website?

I'm not going to disagree that this definitely does affect "professional" people who do a good job of producing video content. That's just a fact.

The reasons for this are because N4G is not capable of moderating thousands of youtube streamers and the people who complain when we allow Angry Joe but we don't allow BigSchmuckDaddy. This is an N4G problem, not a content issue.

I want N4G to change to accept this content more easily overall and give you guys the ability to find it without it overtaking N4G's front page or causing tons of issues. I am suggesting things to try and fix this, but for now this is what we have, all of us.

Additionally, please note that many of the people mentioned have alternative sites that you can link their videos from. The goal of this is to stop YouTube spam, reduce moderation needs and time, and focus on a rule that applies equally to everyone. I know many of you disagree. If it becomes an issue, we'll edit that rule. But, for now, this is how it is. I'd rather approach HAVA with solutions to help everyone rather than let N4G turn into a source that can't be used for gaming news. We already have issues with opinion pieces taking over the site at times and I don't have the tools to handle that. But, I also can't ban all opinion pieces (personally, I would love to do that, but this isn't 'My' site).

Thank you all for voicing your opinions. We're not ignoring them, but there are definitely issues that exist that are not your fault but do affect you. If you see a video that is important to N4G, PM me directly and I'll try to find a way to get it on here without linking to YouTube. I'm already trying to figure out a way to keep a few of the mentioned here on N4G without breaking the rule and not opening the door to shenanigans.

If Angry Joe is not an industry professional, then I think no reviews should be posted.

So, how hard would it be just to have a new section about offbeat stuff that may not make it to the general page unless it gets above a certain temperature.

One of the rules of N4G that I've cited in the past on a past rules update, was that articles that are of interest to gamers get some leeway. It seems that the followup to stuff like that would also be interesting to some people, particularly those of us who go to conventions. Some of these cosplayers are celebrities in their own rights, and have more interest in them than any random small time indie dev who can get any kind of attention they want if they make the right kind of comment should that comment be able to be made into some clickbait.

I feel these kinds of articles don't really get enough heat, or enough going on in the comment section to really cause you guys any trouble, nor do they take up attention from the console war that seems to be more of a thing around here than things of general interest.

***So, how hard would it be just to have a new section about offbeat stuff that may not make it to the general page unless it gets above a certain temperature. ***

Only about as easy as giving users the ability to track sources, filter content, or ignore the comments of other users.

Read: seemingly impossible at this time much like many other features.

Short answer is no, there isn't. Everyone thinks there is some big behind the scenes stuff going on here, but it's really just a few mods, an admin and a couple devs that are rarely seen. Much smaller and simpler than most people imagine. It would be nice to have paid staff, but that's just not the way it is.

Oh I get it now. N4G is a non profit charitable organization. That clears it up lol. So ALL of those ads make just enough money to keep the ship afloat...got it.

@ gbsrnctaln

LOL. Buddy, you're free to believe whatever it is you want to believe. Everything that Emilio just posted is 100% true. Have a good one.

Most sites of this nature are moderated by volunteers. Even the big forums have volunteers. Occasionally, some site like IGN or Kotaku have the staff do moderation also, but they still have what I'll label as "forum mods" to oversee the general running of the site.

I knew long ago, I think right around the time Cat left, and I believe some other mods had decided to step down or just disappeared around the same time, that the moderation on this site was going to become overwhelming. Things had been building in the console wars for a while, and the media in general was starting to move more towards commentary and editorial than it was about tracking down facts and doing journalistic work. On top of that, there was never a huge influx of constant news in gaming, and it was mostly at the whim of the publishers and console makers. That never changed.

I never really faulted the mods for the "lack of moderation", I just always wished there was more moderation, and it was more consistent. At the same time, I always felt there were some people who were left to their own devices to inflame others in the comments sections for way too long. Unfortunately, I also know judging that can be difficult at times, because there is a fine line between overzealous bias and trolling.

I know I tend to be critical about the lack of consistent and frequent moderation on this site, and often say how good moderation goes a long way and that sites shouldn't be afraid to have firm, yet fair moderation, but I do know that there just aren't enough mods here to actually handle the amount of content and users this site has. I ran 3 BBS forums back in the day, and moderated a couple newsgroups. Had a group of 4 moderators that I worked with between them all(we got the BBS mod "jobs" because of my forums), and we had maybe 2000 posts a week on the newsgroups, and probably 5000 users between all the forums, and it was overwhelming at times. This site easily gets about a thousand stories submitted a week....which have more rules attached than the newsgroups did, and I'd imagine upwards of 10-20 thousand comments a week. And there are only 6 mods.

It's not a simple thing to promote people to mods. Those that get the invite tend to have a long history of doing things right, and not being overly confrontational with other users. Christopher and coolbeans are two that were promoted that I conversed with frequently, and I always thought coolbeans was one of the better users on this site. Nowadays, I'd have a hard time picking someone appropriate if it was up to me. I know I certainly would decline an offer though, because I don't want the aggravation, and if I get in the wrong mood, I tend to be pretty harsh. Not a good trait in a mod.:)

No easy answers, but knowing that on the rare occassion I get restricted, I can make a fuss to one of the mods, usually cl or nineballs, I know that others are not as reasonable as I am. I do appreciate that when I do ask about such things the mods have always been respectful towards me about it....although I think they should rule in my favor more often .:-P

I nominate Septic to be a new mod, he's impartial and fair and is loved and known by all here on N4G.

gangsta_red3d ago

I nominate Septic to be a new mod, he's impartial and fair and is loved and known by all here on N4G.

You forgot the /S

The problems with moderation are many. Some are unavoidable, others are not.

That moderators are human is both a blessing, and a curse because of subjectivity. I mean you just have to look at trolling. There are doubtless many instances in which one mod considered something to be trolling that others did not and therein lies a potential for problems.

The site lacks structured moderation, and numbers. You have every mod dealing with every problem when they have the time to deal with it. This is why it ends up seeming to be haphazard. Instead there should be specific mods that deal only with tickets, mods that deal only with submissions, mods that deal only with comments, etc... Focused, structured moderation would go a long way.

Opinion should also be used as sparingly as possible in moderation. I say this because there have been people who have been banned for alleged "repeated" trolling when they weren't actually trolling, their past behaviour just created a reputation for them that they couldn't overcome. This is the result of "it's my opinion that this person is trolling and continues to troll so we have to punish them with a final consequence."

August 17th will mark my 10th year on this site. In all that time I've been on every end of the moderation issue. I've had some epic arguments with some mods (sup Nineball, lol), one mod still has me blocked, I was told that one mod will actively avoid dealing with me (though that might have changed by now), I've launched formal complaints against mods and Admins, and I've also defended mods and Admins.

I can say, with some experience, that this site is not as bad as some people want everyone to believe it is. Bias taints their opinion. But I can also say that there is obviously some work that needs to be done, and the bulk of it really is just a logistical numbers and structuring issue.

But at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. Mods can't be blamed for putting paying jobs and actual family life ahead of a volunteer position where the only time people care that you're around is when they have something to b**** about and give you grief over all day.

I see people say they see stuff like that all time, but I certainly don't. If people are dropping varying 'F' bombs then please bring it to our attention so it can be taken care of. Vote/report/open a ticket if you do please.

Just because something doesn't get marked doesn't mean we allowed it to happen, we can't take care of something we never see. This is where we need your guys' help.