So, having the Forums Admin have her profile locked is very welcoming to new players, yes? You have to put yourself in a players perspective. You join this community with potential questions, yet can't even comment on profiles?? Very welcoming indeed. - The rules and rate abuse is so contradictory, that even those who run the Forums needs to lock their profiles to escape from the burden.
When I first joined the only thing I knew how to do was post on someone's profile. It took me a month to find out what a "PM" was. I didn't know anyone here, and I didn't know how to post a thread also. I understand you guys have a right to have privacy, but you signed up to help people, and sometimes new people don't know how to start a convo or post a thread.
You can't even publicly help players with the constant fear of 'rate abuse.' That's the job of a staff member..
Maybe if players like you didn't make alternate accounts to rate abuse us, this wouldn't be an issue. (No, I'm not blaming you in general, those players know who they are)
Most of the time people rate abuse for a certain reason, so maybe if you guys weren't bias all the time rate abuse wouldn't be an issue :')
You have the power to stop such things, do you not? This is what I mean. Your rule and paranoia on "rate abuse" truly creates nothing but issues. Could you agree to that statement? Because so far, I have seen nothing but contradiction.
Honestly the staff's main concern should be helping the community and not protecting themselves from something as silly as rate abuse.
It's not that. I've seen countless people try and help their friends gain trophies over it. For example: Madi has spammed Carolyn before trying to get her a trophy point, all they did was get her in trouble. Example two: People are making alternate accounts to rate abuse those that have high amounts of positives, only so they can become higher than them. Pop's was rate abused, making him lose tons of his status'
This is not an issue on any other forums, Nana. The staff should be able to publicly address the community with being constantly afraid someone like Thorraks will rate abuse you with 50 alts.
So most of the staff team? That's why they all locked their profiles before, lol. Because of the rate abuse issue.
I am 75% support. I respect that mod's can control if they want to shair their profile and stuff. But... at the same time... If new players were to show up and they needed to contact them, they couldn't, and they prob wouldn't even know the mod's username/IGN. Not only that, if the player needs help contacting someone easily. It's just annoying to have to figure out another mod's IGN, or ask somebody, or something.
Is there a way to implement the ability for mods to just remove ratings? Then not only will rate abuse decrease, but moderators can have their profiles open. I understand you mods have a right to privacy also, it wouldn't be right for someone to say, "you can't lock your profile". Although it's more convenient for you have your profiles open, maybe more focus needs to be put towards ways to stop rate abuse.
I'll be keeping my profile open. However, there may be times where I will have to lock it for a bit but a majority of the time I keep mine open for anyone who has any questions they'd like to ask.