Re: Important moderation message, please read
Hi all,
I have a bit of a unique perspective on this matter as I am both a game developer and have been a moderator of various lists throughout my years as an internet user. However, the fact of the matter is as has been stated there is no satisfactory solution for this problem, because if someone can use it they will abuse it. That just is one of those unfortunate facts of life we all have to live with.
That said, first of all we have to begin with stating the rules and letting people know that the rules applies to private messages as well as to public posts. While I know Dark has his doubts about the community policing itself I am one of those who thinks the majority of the members of this forum are generally honest and would turn in someone who is abusing the system if they were directed to do so in the rules and told when, where, and how to report abuses. That may seem like turning a blind eye to the problem but we have to be realistic here.
For one thing the private message system was never designed to prevent people from exchanging cracks, pirating games, and therefore short of moderating each and every message there isn't a realistic way to catch people at abusing the system. The next best thing in that case is to strongly discourage people from doing it, state clearly in the rules that it is not to be done, and rely on the forum's more honest members to enforce the rules in cases where a moderator can't do the job alone.
As a developer myself I really dislike piracy. It upsets me to see people passing around cracks for games weather it is my game or not, but over the years I have come to see piracy as a realistic but unfortunate hazard of writing software. People have all kinds of personal motivations for pirating software, and some of them are even justifiable in certain cases. Regardless of what justification or motivation is behind a person's actions we as moderators and developers can't possibly st op piracy ourselves. Sooner or later we have to trust the community in helping us fight piracy by reporting offenders, by letting us know when a service is being abused, and mainly being our eyes and ears when we can't be there ourselves.
In short I think the best thing to do here is allow people to use the private message system because it is and has been a very useful contribution to this forum. I understand that piracy is and will always be a risk, but so is Skype, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and pretty much any other social media. Any system that allows two or more people to communicate via the internet can be abused so private messages is no more and no less a threat to developers than any other means of communication. While I commend Dark's desire to try to make private messaging more secure it does seem a little heavy handed to me, and unfair to punish both the innocent along with the guilty forum members by disabling the service completely. It seems more fair to me to allow the forum members to use it, but make it clear that it is not to be used for piracy and that anyone can report abuses of the system to the moderators. That should be hopefully a satisfactory solution to the issue under the current circumstances. I look forward to any thoughts, suggestions, or comments about this possible solution to the situation.
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