Community Relations Archive

Recently, Tiggs posted a "Thank You" message (http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=customerservice&message.id=8025) to the CSRs for their "hard work" during the difficulties caused by the sloppy implementation of the current Combat Revamp.

Leaving aside definitions of "hard work" many people, myself included, disputed that the CSRs should be congratulated on their work - the first 2 pages, pre-purge, were 95% full of people explaining that they had never once had a positive experience with a CSR and in fact, the CSRs involved would often give completely irrelevant answers to simple queries.
Whilst it is not our place to decide whether they are working hard (not something anyone disputed), we are fully entitled to point out that the "hard" work they are doing is substandard in most cases. Not everyone has only had bad CSR experiences, but many would be hard pressed to recall more than one or two instances of an adequate answer to a situation.

Expressing our personal viewpoints, in a thread that was entirely open to such discussion, cannot be called "trolling", as my ban message, and presumably others, stated.
It is wrong to do so and insulting to boot.
Most (but to be fair, not all) posts were polite, though extremely critical of the decision to post such a public congratulations in an "external" forum open to the community most adversely affected by the poor work that is being lauded.

There is absolutely nothing in the rules, anywhere, that says we may not criticise a post. Nothing.

Even if we are to accept that what we did or said was "wrong" and worthy of being banned - dozens of other people have since posted very similar things in the exact same thread, yet their posts remain intact and they can, seemingly, continue to post with impunity.

This is patently unfair and is not a situation I will stand for.

Therefore, I request a formal, public, apology from any and all moderators involved in the deletion and banning of those of us who posted messages that were not "flames/trolls".
Deleting/censoring our posts is one thing - banning us for daring to be critical, then letting others get away with the exact same things, or worse, is not right.

(This is a repost since the original has disappeared.)

Message Edited by Ackehece on 05-16-200511:58 PM

Message Edited by Ackehece on 05-16-2005 11:58 PM

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Treena_Daal wrote:

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Mythor wrote:
(This is a repost since the original has disappeared.)

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That should have been a hint. Don't hold your breath.

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I'm certainly not holding my breath. But I also won't let it drop without an admission they were wrong.

I wasn't told that my message contravened the rules (since it doesn't), so I generously gave them the benefit of the doubt and assumed it simply went 'missing'.

They take all posts off that are critical. It is interesting that the positive p osts are most likely plants by SWG to talk up a now inferior product.

As I noted in my original post - they haven't removed other posts that occurred after the initial purge. Including ones that are much more clearly flames/trolls. And they've not banned those people, either.
Deleting and banning people for making well founded criticisms whilst doing nothing about those causing the real problems is atrocious.

The fact is they have removed people. Your debate is intelligent and well founded but they have removed many people.

Only shortly after the thread was initially posted. Everyone since then has been given a free rein over that thread, while those of us who spoke up first had to sit through a totally absurd ban period.

I was really surprised that Tiggs had even started that thread. The second I read the thread title I knew it would attract every troll in the galaxy. The fact of the matter is, any time a dev starts any thread it becomes a troll magnet and people will try to think of something negative to post, no matter how mundane the thread subject actually is. Here a few (slightly fictional) examples:

Dev: The fanfest will be held in California.
Troll: I can't believe it, California? Why is it never held next to my home in Bluebill, Nebraska?

Dev: Servers will be coming down for maintenance at 12:00 P.M. PST.
Troll: Oh great, thanks for doing it on the one day I get off from work. Maybe I'll go try WoW, I hear their servers are up constantly.

Dev: Here's a tuesday tip--you can send a tell to several people simultaneously by separating the names with a comma.
Troll: Wow, every person who has been playing for more than 1 day knows that tip. I'm paying $120 a month (8 accounts) for these tips, I might as well cancel them.

And so forth (the real trolls are a little more creative than I am ). For what it's worth, I can honestly say I have never had a bad experience with a CSR. Each of the three times I have needed their assistance, they have performed their job in atimely fashion and without any "canned" responses.

Can you say, "I am a CSR plant."

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Liguori wrote:
Can you say, "I am a CSR plant."

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Is that your answer for everyone who isn't upset about the changes?

As I said, I'm sure some folk do have positive experiences with the CSRs, but the vast majority have mostly negative experiences when contacting them for in-game help.

I'm certainly not defending people who do "troll", and wouldn't attempt to defend my own post if I knew it was troll-ish... But criticising such a post is not "trolling". I wasn't doing it to "get a rise" out of Tiggs, I posted to express my disbelief that the thread was even created in the first place, since it's something that should have been internal, not broadcast to the players.

Public praise does wonders for employee morale.

If they spent as much time helping customers instead of stroking the egos of the customer service people, things might get done.