TEAM INTERVIEW - [R-DEV]Dunehunter
1 - Can you introduce yourself to our readers?
Hey everyone, in real life I am a 22 year old Belgian college student. Within the team, I serve as the Lead Moderator. This means that I don't do any actual development, but I support the rest of the team by supervising the forums and leading the moderators.
I've been playing online games since fairly early in high school, spending a lot of time on a Neverwinter Nights server. Some people I met there were also playing Project Reality at the time, and they introduced me to it. I still remember playing Zatar Wetlands with them back when I started out but that map was removed a couple of releases ago I think. Shout out to Darkpowder, he is one of the people who got me hooked, and he is still a member of the team. I joined the forums in December 2006, so that's probably when I started playing PR.
Zatar Wetlands
3 - When did you join the Project Reality team?I haven't been able to dig up the actual date when I joined the team, but I think it was in September 2007. There was a public recruitment drive for moderators, and for some reason I was picked. I became lead moderator in June 2009 when Masaq was promoted.
I also help out with other team stuff, like trailers. I make three appearances in this video, guess which roles I play. You can find the answers at the end of the interview.
5 - So you are the Lead moderator on the forums? this post must entail a lot of work? Tell us more about it.
First of all, I still work as a moderator. This means that along with the other moderators I will keep an eye on the forums and act when things threaten to get out of hand, or punish people when they misbehave. At the same time I lead a small group of people, which means that I am the final authority when there are disagreements or when we have to come up with new rules and regulations. I am also responsible for making sure that the moderator team as a whole functions correctly, which means that I add and remove people when needed.
My actions don't result in changes to the game itself, but I try to make sure that the forums are a place where people feel at home, and I think that this is important for the success of the mod as a whole.
6 - So there are things to delete and to move, some posts are aggressive or outright insulting, your role then is to watch over and control the flow of things? Is it easy?
There are a couple of different approaches to moderation within the team, and I generally fall on the relaxed, patient side. There are some things to which I will react very strongly, but in general I try to be patient with forum users, so I might give someone a warning instead of an infraction, or simply post a warning in the thread that people posting there should be careful. After a while you get used to the ways in which the regulars react to certain issues, so I know to keep a close eye on threads about Israel for example.
This is something I had some trouble with at first. As could be expected, there are strong disagreements between the different moderators about how certain things should be handled. Some are more lenient, while others are less willing to give people multiple chances and might give temporary or permanent bans sooner. I try to make sure that there is a certain amount of consistency within the team, while at the same time leaving room for individual identities. There is no point in forcing everyone to do things my way, because then I might as well use a bunch of clones.
8 - I guess you have a team of moderators how do you manage that? Do you have reunions and do you have regular updates? Do you discuss special cases, for example how do you manage a ban or a warning, and do you have free reign or do you have to refer to higher ups?
We have our own team forum, with a sub-forum for problem members. Within our general forum we will discuss moderating issues, how do we react when someone posts x? Within the problem member forum we focus on particular users who are particularly troublesome. In one extreme case there are almost 300 posts about one user, but in general people change their behaviour, leave voluntarily or receive a ban if they keep on causing trouble. Discussions within the team forums about users and issues are encouraged, so that we can learn from each other.
In general, moderators are fairly free to do as they please as long as they do not abuse their power. Unless other team members are involved we do not need permission from higher ups. When it comes to moderation I am second only to the Management team, so I do not have to request permission for things very often.
9 - If you weren't there, the forum would be a mess. What software aides do you use to be on alert when things go crazy?
I use several programs to keep in touch with my moderators (MSN, Xfire, Facebook chat, Teamspeak), but none for moderation itself. After a while you get used to quickly scanning dozens of posts and threads for signs of trouble, and you get better and better at reading the mood of the forum as a whole.
What I look at when I log on
I can access the forum using my mobile phone (HTC Desire), but it just isn't very convenient. Even with an app made to browse forums on a mobile phone I would still only check in on the moderator forum. I trust my moderators to be able to do their job when I am not around, but when I can't really be active I still like to follow developments there. There is just too much to follow for me to do it exclusively using a smartphone or a tablet.
11 - How many gamers are registered on the forums now? With PRarma2 do you think you'll have even more work?
I checked, and while I am writing this we have 53 453 registered users on the forum. This does include spambots, people who have been banned and people who are simply not active anymore, so the number of active users is a lot lower than that. I can access some statistics through the admin control panel, and user activity has remained fairly stable over the years. I do expect an influx in new members and increased activity once PR:ArmA2 is released, and we will probably add more moderators for that.
12 - You are sometimes seen as someone who decides, sometimes in a mean way, but today do you wish to explain your way of doing things to the users?
When I have to decide between allowing someone to remain on the forums or banning them, I look at their past and present behaviour to try and estimate how likely it is that they will continue to cause trouble. If I think that someone might be able to learn a lesson and become a productive member of the community I will try to give them another chance to change their ways. Sometimes we have heated discussions about this in our forums, where some of us want to ban someone and others want to wait. In general, we try to be as impartial and objective as possible. I know that it can be hard to judge this from the perspective of someone who isn?t part of the team, but we don?t take our ability to permanently ban someone lightly, and unless someone is an obvious troll there will be a clear path of infractions leading to temporary bans and then to a permanent ban.
Permanent Ban List
The upper half of one of the 29 pages of permanent bans.
13 - I would like to finish this interview by asking what you think about the team. Can you say to me something about it?
As is normal within a group of people, there are some disagreements, but I feel that as a team we do a good job, and that we work well together. That's all I can say about it really.
Trivia Answer: the Insurgent who gets shot in the face by the German soldiers, one of the British soldiers leaving the Chinook and the Insurgent sniper firing at the US troops in Kokan.
bad techno but keep up the good work, u slammed me with an infraction before i had a chance to edit my mistake u work fast
