Atomic Systems

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Why are some topics locked? Is this censorship?

Is was thinking of this particular thread "First commercial Rail Sim addons abandoned"

rogertra wrote:Moderators

Why are some topics locked? Is this censorship?

Is was thinking of this particular thread "First commercial Rail Sim addons abandoned"

Easilyconfused wrote:OK. We have the initial report and we have posts from Adam and Derek with further information and a response to some points.

Further speculation / conjecture / chest-beating / conspiracy theories / comparison of simulators is not going to change anything regarding Blue Sky so let's all take a deep cleansing breath and move on.

Any complaints use the button or PM another moderator.

It's not censorship, it's using our experience and judgement as to which topics are likely to deteriorate into slanging matches.
In this case John has locked the topic to prevent this happening!
We don't censor anything, apart from anything that infringes our guidelines.
As John posted..

Any complaints use the button or PM another moderator.

By posting your question, you have infringed section 7 of the guidelines...

7) Restarting a discussion on the topic of a locked thread or deleted thread by starting a new thread on the same topic, or by starting a thread along the lines of Why was thread X locked?/ deleted? or Please unlock / undelete thread X should not be done. If you wish to put a case for unlocking / undeleting a thread, then use a PM to a Moderator to put your case.

I'm not complaining, just asking and I rec'd a satisfactory answer.

Thanks

In order to avoid breaching the forum guideline about questioning decisions of individual moderators I will ask the question in general terms. Is there now a policy to lock threads in a pre-emptive "strike", rather than because they have actually gone downhill? It is inevitable this could be seen as stifling free discussion and attempting to appease the RS reps.

So are we allowed to discuss the topic of BSI add-ons for RS or not?

Whatever, let's hope the guys didn't pay their 2 x £1000 (two routes) up front!

Just about any thread is in danger of degenerating into a slanging match on here!
So how come they aren't all locked ?

A Read Only forum anyone ?

By posting your question, you have infringed section 7 of the guidelines...
7) Restarting a discussion on the topic of a locked thread or deleted thread by starting a new thread on the same topic, or by starting a thread along the lines of Why was thread X locked?/ deleted? or Please unlock / undelete thread X should not be done. If you wish to put a case for unlocking / undeleting a thread, then use a PM to a Moderator to put your case.

This has been done by others. I refer to the topic 'Not so fast'. That went on for another 3 pages. Granted that was because some issues hadn't been discussed, but this shows that sometimes topics can be locked a bit too soon.

John

dorlan wrote:It's not censorship, it's using our experience and judgement as to which topics are likely to deteriorate into slanging matches.
In this case John has locked the topic to prevent this happening!

Destroying a conversation before it can be destroyed results in the same outcome.

bigvern wrote:In order to avoid breaching the forum guideline about questioning decisions of individual moderators I will ask the question in general terms. Is there now a policy to lock threads in a pre-emptive "strike", rather than because they have actually gone downhill? It is inevitable this could be seen as stifling free discussion and attempting to appease the RS reps.

No
Where does it say that you cannot question decisions of individual moderators ?

As for the rest of the questions, As far as I am concerned the whole railsim threads on here are a mess, we have tried very hard not to stifle anything, letting quite a few threads carry on, where they should have been locked before.

When we do lock a few, we get accused of censorship
Just goes to prove, you just cannot win whatever you try and do.

Any volunteers to become mods to see how hard it is ?

Okay, it doesn't in so many words, but given the OP was jumped on from great height with Clause 7 for deigning to ask the question, I decided to play safe.

Been there, done that with my own forum a few years ago and I know it is a thankless task. My own personal view on the thread in question (without breaching Clause 7) is that it was leading into a reasonable discussion of what future there is for RS payware when one of their courted developers announces to the effect at present the game is not fit for purpose so far as their aspirations are concerned. Surely we have every right to explore that in a reasonable manner?

Otherwise unfortunately it does come across as rather unreasonable attempts to shield Kuju/RSDL from the pragmatic reality of things.

There are some things which need to be said very clearly and which require decisive and speedy reaction by RS otherwise the Sim will die very speedily. For example, I've been working on an activity for the S&D. When testing it I realised that the signalling was far worse than I ever envisaged, even in view of the widespread adverse comment it has received. On the single line section out of Bath I encountered a head on collision with an approaching AI train. There is no excuse for this on a released product and, while the dreaded stand off in MSTS was hard to alleviate, yet even cure, I shudder to think how RS and its present signalling is going to cope with single lines.

Having re-timed the AI to start ten minutes later I managed to get further up route, but received the news that two AI trains had collided though the coordinates were helpfully dipslayed. Again this was entirely due to signal deficiencies; both had begun their journeys a considerable time before. There was more retiming and I advanced a bit further, but this time a different AI train was in collision. Even now I'm barely half way from Bath to Templecombe. If I do arrive, there can be no guarantee that someone driving the route differently will ever arrive intact.

As for packing scenarios, and I've written about this elsewhere on these forums and on the RS forums, the Package Creator quite simply thows up an error. It will package the default scenarios; it may package some others, but so far none of mine. Additionally when the activity is well developed. I have one which creates a scenario.xml file of between 3,330 and 3,500 pages the save freezes, (it's done so about 30 times so far) so I've had to keep backups carefully otherwise all is lost.

If we hide such matters as these from RS, all will be lost for them. After all most of what I have written above is in attempt to get RS, operationally, up to the standard of MSTS. It will need an awful lot of work to take it beyond.

Mark

All I can suggest is more than three cheers to the people who try to sort this forum here out. There are people complaining about too much complaining, there are those complaining about not being allowed to complain more. There is no consensus on whether people should be segregated by their opinion or not. Constructive threads turn funny and funny threads turn constructive; and no one has a crystal ball.

At the same time, I understand that people are not yet done living out their emotions and going over their pain again. I feel it, too. Of course, it does not help objectively, I do not know. Whether it hurts RSDL or KRS, I do not know either. Several reviews in print media are out now which altogether to not touch the problems we see but instead make stupid comments about train enthusiasts in general. So we do not seem to hurt the reputation of KRS? But of course, reading all the complaints all over again does not make you happy either. Typing them, yes, reading them, no.

And no, I'm afraid, I do not expect new enlightenment from new discussions. But as I said, having them might be fun, but not for the moderators.

Clearly, reporting faults is a different cup of coffee. Bringing up new information and insight is very helpful, be it to support the development of a patch, be it to help others avoid known traps. But this discussion was about discussions, not about bringing up new bits of information.

A week or two ago, I was talking to a forum member (who shall remain unnamed, for obvious reasons) who said he was disgusted at myself and the other Moderators for allowing KRSL to be slated by some of the contributors on this forum. He stated that as soon as any poster turned on KRSL, Adam or Derek, the they should have been warned and their posts removed.

Obviously, I did not agree with him, and my arguement that we try where possible tol allow balanced discussions on matters relating to RS was not accepted....so we agreed to disagree on the matter.

Now we are being accused of censoring discussions about RS. Again, I disgree.....and I support the actions of my fellow moderators....for reasons that have already been stated.

So, "We're damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't"....

And what do we do? We continue to walk the tightrope and try to be fair to everyone. And I suppose we'll continue to be accused of being unfair fo some.

One thing we won't do is stop constructive feedback...we never have, and we never will.

"Accusation" is perhaps a strong word when the intention on my part was simply to clarify why a thread not heading into anarchy about a very relevant issue had been summarily locked.

I accept the Mods have a difficult job particularly where RS is concerned with strong feelings on both sides. I'm aware that my own views may have been expressed rather more strongly than normal on one or two occasions but that was largely borne out of frustration.

My own observations of the forums are that RS discussion has settled down in the last couple of weeks and is far more rational and reasonable than in the first couple of weeks. We are looking into the sim and seeing how to get it working and get round the problems (as far as possible). RSDL may be uncomfortable with discussions centred around their chosen developer pulling the plug but as I said above that has implications which can surely be permitted to be discussed in a reasonable manner?

I think this is a hard topic. As a Moderator elsewhere I know how hard it is to keep topics going and to bring yourself to delete one. I normally lock and edit rather than delete if there are multiple replies, this allows other Moderators to comment and for the topic to be almost made an example of.

One thing which I like though is a sort of Wikipedia like approach whereby members can in effect comment on threads at their own digression and Moderators only come into it when something of major incident happens.

I myself dislike the negative approach to RSDL and RS in general on these Forums but as said we must allow discussion.

We at RSDL encourage healthy discussion and always have.

regards
Derek