I don't know if it's reasonable to expect us to just watch 90% of the more active posters in this thread get banned and pretend as if nothing happened. The PC community here on Era has been methodically and systematically dismantled. Shouldn't we, as a community, have an official answer as to why this happened? What went wrong and the community that has consistently maintained an extremely high level of civility and discourse in every single PC-focused thread ended up with so many people banned and its main thread in disarray? Many of us are here since the beginning of the site and we have offered a lot to this community. I feel like we deserve something more than "move along, nothing to see here".
I've been a member of Era since the site was created and the only warning I've ever received was for not reading the OP in a forum theme changelog thread. I think I've proven over time that I can contribute to the discussions happening here while respecting the rules of the community, but it is important that I speak up now because I believe you still might not be sure as to what exactly happened. I accept whatever action you feel is appropriate if you think that my post is out of line.
The current situation is a result of two things. The administration's mistake in not properly defining the PC platform and the moderation's significantly late response in addressing the situation in Epic Game Store threads.
Back when Era was still newly formed, the administration made the call to define the PC platform based on hardware, essentially using a console-like approach. The decision back then was that the moderation's protection of the platform from platform wars would only cover the hardware part and not Steam. That decision failed to recognize that Steam is an integral part of the PC platform. That decision, based on a console-based understanding of what a platform is, was catastrophic because it gave trolls free reign to disrupt, derail and shut down Steam-related threads with no fear of disciplinary action, since the moderators were instructed to treat Steam and Valve as a neutral third party instead of the de facto "face" of PC gaming.
This initial decision directly led to the clusterfuck that were the Epic Game Store threads. For a very long time, for several months in fact, platform warriors and trolls wreaked havoc in those threads with zero action from the moderation team. I said it back then and I'm saying I again now, it's not the moderation team's fault. They operated based on the policy set by the administration and their hands were pretty much tied. Eventually the moderators took action and the situation improved drastically but the damage was already done.
It was that initial mistake and months of continued inaction by the moderation that led many people of this community to their breaking point. We've been under constant pressure for many months and the administration and moderation failed to act in time. These are the results.
My recommendation as a part of this community is to find some more moderators that closely follow PC gaming so that they can get ahead of situations such as this and extend the platform protection to Steam until such a time that another service takes its place. The entirety of the PC community in Ear did not turn into assholes overnight. You're doing something wrong.
Well said.
