Thanks for your feedback on this thread, it's something we are happy to have a fair discussion on. There's a few things for us to say:
- One of the reasons we have a forum is to get feedback. We really do listen - If we didn’t want this, we wouldn’t have a community at all - The vast majority of threads don't need moderation by us and that's great - When we do have to moderate or block people we don't do it with pleasure - We do this because we want it to be a nice, friendly and helpful place - A healthy debate is often a good thing (often these are the best threads!) - That said, we don't want them to overspill and get too heated or personal
We wrote the community guidelines with all this in mind and hope they are clear and fair (as with other things they are also up for debate and can be tweaked)
Blocking people from the community is not as common as you might think and we often go a long while without having do take any action at all. When we do block people, we do it for the right reasons, with good intentions and for the improvement of the community overall.
Unfortunately, it's not possible to discuss individual cases but there are times when people sadly do things which deserve a response. Many times it's other community members who help buy reporting it to us. Other times you might not see the cause of it at all. We're repeating ourselves but above all we really want the Sky Poker community to be a place where people enjoy coming, feel comfortable in and want to come back to.
Community members and moderators really help with this and we sincerely thank you for that - it's genuinely amazing to see when a new customer comes on the community to introduce themselves or to ask for help. You all make them feel really welcome and help them out (everyone is new at some point!).
It's also great to see that people make forum friends on here and really want to support and learn from each other about the game we all love, poker.
Thanks again and we hope you have a really good weekend!
I thing Matt's idea merits serious consideration. For the Forum to retain it's popular reputation. Rather than knee jerk forum bans, could we not have a sin bin? Many of us make passionate comments on the forum without considering possible implications, Many a time, innocent, naiave words can be mis-interpreted and taken totally out of context. Having a sin bin with contentious threads reviewed by sensible, respected forum members. would give misunderstood posters an opportunity to explain themselves before they are exiled forever. I miss Spornybol and Evil Pingu's threads and believe had they been given a chance to explain, and time to cool down, they would still be valuable forum contributors. Who did more good than bad for the community.
I thing Matt's idea merits serious consideration. For the Forum to retain it's popular reputation. Rather than knee jerk forum bans could we not have a sin bin? Many of us make passionate comments on the forum without considering possible implications, Many a time, innocent, naiave words can be mis-interpreted and taken totally out of context. Having a sin bin with contentious threads reviewed by sensible, respected forum members. would give misunderstood posters an opportunity to explain themselves before they are exiled forever. I miss Spornybol and Evil Pingu's threads and believe had they been given a chance to explain and time to cool down they would still be valuable forum contributors. Who did more good than bad for the community Posted by cleansweep
Fair comment, thank you cleensweep.
Again it's difficult to discuss individual cases but we do often allow people to come back and it's not normal that a 'first offence' results in a permanent ban. It depends what it is.
To be fair, many people do immediately admit it and apologise (not that we ask them to). Others do not.
But either way we do try to be fair and do things for the right reason.
Excellent posting. The trouble with any growing site is if we look back a few years ago how many people would dare to be that abusive or as out of order at the tables as they have become so never easy for Sky.
However I would hope that Sky can see from these responses that people now are not coming to the forum and being as honest as the forum bans are hanging over people in the respect it doesent matter how many or few have been baned it has made the comunity feel over policed.
In the same way look how people react in a country without free speach I say no more.
The ideas of sin bins and a group of players having some sort of contact with Sky is something I have mentioned in posts before and would very strongly press Sky to take Matts idea or some version of it on board as I am sure this will re-address the way the forum culture is going which Sky you keep telling us you do not want, so if you do want the forum to get back to being totaly honest (of course personal abuse never excaptable racism etc) then I think that will totaly do the trick if players felt they did have a way of bring up issues.
So if Sky does want a free forum to get true feelings off players then please run with these ideas raised, but of course if this is not the case Sky are free to keep the forum as it is and maybe get a very toned or no true feelings of its players there is nothing wrong with that as long as it not trying to sell a forum that is free speach and genuinely looking for feedback just dont say you are as it adds fuel to the flames.
ps I know my spelling bad but I havent even learnt to read or write yet so dont correct it as I wont be able to read the corrections lol
Many moons ago, when I first ventured onto the forum, there was a very very nice man called Sky Rich. He was sort of a community officer of the forums and would try to help all out, whether they were new or regular players. He was probably overworked and underpaid though and left for pastures new.
There was also a more fun factor within the forum with some good forum comps (posters freeroll for example).
If someone got out of line, a friendly warning was normally given and players/posters respected that, and in the main, the situation defused.
Nowadays, there seems to be more and more bans and IMHO, less help when asked for. The community suggestion thread may aswell not exist and the technical help thread was renamed and therefore has become almost extinct.
I hope going forward, some of the old feel good factor can return to the forums and maybe a designated forum overseer can be appointed with maybe some assistance from selected Sky players (Tommy D springs to mind).
Surely this works both ways! The biggest complaint that I hear from previously banned members is the lack of communication regarding the reason for the ban. No need to mention names, but some of the people banned deserved an explanation also.
Hi everyone Thanks for your feedback on this thread, it's something we are happy to have a fair discussion on. There's a few things for us to say: - One of the reasons we have a forum is to get feedback. We really do listen - If we didn’t want this, we wouldn’t have a community at all - The vast majority of threads don't need moderation by us and that's great - When we do have to moderate or block people we don't do it with pleasure - We do this because we want it to be a nice, friendly and helpful place - A healthy debate is often a good thing (often these are the best threads!) - That said, we don't want them to overspill and get too heated or personal We wrote the community guidelines with all this in mind and hope they are clear and fair (as with other things they are also up for debate and can be tweaked) Blocking people from the community is not as common as you might think and we often go a long while without having do take any action at all. When we do block people, we do it for the right reasons, with good intentions and for the improvement of the community overall. Unfortunately, it's not possible to discuss individual cases but there are times when people sadly do things which deserve a response. Many times it's other community members who help buy reporting it to us. Other times you might not see the cause of it at all. We're repeating ourselves but above all we really want the Sky Poker community to be a place where people enjoy coming, feel comfortable in and want to come back to. Community members and moderators really help with this and we sincerely thank you for that - it's genuinely amazing to see when a new customer comes on the community to introduce themselves or to ask for help. You all make them feel really welcome and help them out (everyone is new at some point!). It's also great to see that people make forum friends on here and really want to support and learn from each other about the game we all love, poker. Thanks again and we hope you have a really good weekend! Sky Poker Team Posted by Sky_Poker
I know other sites have a warning system next to players lames. Would go from 25%/50%/75% Then 100% was a Ban, Mayb some thing like this. OR is that too many chances to give a member?
In view of the honesty of the posts on this thread and the genuine aim to enhance the forum/community. Would Sky consider as a gestur of faith an amnesty to members currrently forum banned? Obviously with the understanding that should their posts cross well defined boundaries there would be no further chances!
i think there has to be a greater level of shared responsibility for the forums in general between sky and the players. i'm not a massive forum poster and have to admit i dont know anything about forum bans etc so this is mostly the perspective of someone who isn't directly involved in anyway.
i'll use another thread from general poker chat right now as an example. it is titled 'how do you get a player ID with 13 characters?' i haven't opened it, i haven't read it and i probably never will.
Sky - sky needs to make accessing information far easier. this new player should never have to write on the forum to find this information. it was mentioned earlier in this thread that there should be an FAQ section to deal with small issues like this. also, they shouldnt need to clutter up the forums with such a pointless (imo) thread which will no doubt annoy other users who see really important threads being pushed off the first page. an improvement to the organisation of the forum would also help solve this.
also, if there are issues about chat bans then maybe introducing a 'you will be banned for...' list or some more professional equivalent would be beneficial so that you have something to refer back to if players complain about a chat ban etc. its also pretty clear from this thread that there are issues about the fairness of punishments...as part of your custormer service you should strive to improve the way you deal with this issue
Players - as tempting as it is sky players need to avoid making negative contributions to that sort of thread. there is no doubt hundreds of funny comments you could make but for the forum to work it is probably best if people just skip by without commenting. a great example of this was when idonkcallu started posting....the amount of criticism he got was appalling and it took a lot of work by him to win the regular posters over. many players would have given up.
some players also need to think about what they post on the forums and what threads they choose to start...how many more threads do we need about chat abuse at the tables? how many questions about why high stakes heads up players dont play heads up against each other? how many complaints about live streaming?
maybe a guideline for new players or some equivalent?
Sky can quite easily improve their forums and accessibility of information. but it will be interesting to see if the sky players are able to reign in the negative comments which seem to be spoiling the forums in general. i don't claim to be any sort of angel on this matter and am sure at some points i have said things i shouldnt have said but it is clearly becoming one of the main issues with the forums and essentially this is just my 2 cents and i have tried to put it as best i can.
flame away....(ps you know there are issues on the forums when many posts feel they need to end this way because of the inevitable criticism they will receive)
i think there has to be a greater level of shared responsibility for the forums in general between sky and the players. i'm not a massive forum poster and have to admit i dont know anything about forum bans etc so this is mostly the perspective of someone who isn't directly involved in anyway. i'll use another thread from general poker chat right now as an example. it is titled 'how do you get a player ID with 13 characters?' i haven't opened it, i haven't read it and i probably never will. Sky - sky needs to make accessing information far easier. this new player should never have to write on the forum to find this information. it was mentioned earlier in this thread that there should be an FAQ section to deal with small issues like this. also, they shouldnt need to clutter up the forums with such a pointless (imo) thread which will no doubt annoy other users who see really important threads being pushed off the first page. an improvement to the organisation of the forum would also help solve this. also, if there are issues about chat bans then maybe introducing a 'you will be banned for...' list or some more professional equivalent would be beneficial so that you have something to refer back to if players complain about a chat ban etc. its also pretty clear from this thread that there are issues about the fairness of punishments...as part of your custormer service you should strive to improve the way you deal with this issue Players - as tempting as it is sky players need to avoid making negative contributions to that sort of thread. there is no doubt hundreds of funny comments you could make but for the forum to work it is probably best if people just skip by without commenting. a great example of this was when idonkcallu started posting....the amount of criticism he got was appalling and it took a lot of work by him to win the regular posters over. many players would have given up. some players also need to think about what they post on the forums and what threads they choose to start...how many more threads do we need about chat abuse at the tables? how many questions about why high stakes heads up players dont play heads up against each other? how many complaints about live streaming? maybe a guideline for new players or some equivalent? Sky can quite easily improve their forums and accessibility of information. but it will be interesting to see if the sky players are able to reign in the negative comments which seem to be spoiling the forums in general. i don't claim to be any sort of angel on this matter and am sure at some points i have said things i shouldnt have said but it is clearly becoming one of the main issues with the forums and essentially this is just my 2 cents and i have tried to put it as best i can. flame away....(ps you know there are issues on the forums when many posts feel they need to end this way because of the inevitable criticism they will receive) Posted by huuuuume
Excellent post Drumahai, and again an excellent post by Huuuuume.Huuuume has said many of the things I was going to say but in a much better fashion so I’ll just echo what he has said as well as adding the following.
The general tone and friendly atmosphere of the forum has been plummeting for some time now.IMO a major factor of this are some good and great posters are not posting anymore for a variety of reasons.Many were great at starting threads, a skill in itself and vital for a forum to survive.That just doesn't happen enough with the quality and quantity as it used to.Some very good posters are still posting today but at a fraction of the rate they used to.Apathy and a general malaise has spread across nearly everyone when it comes to the forum.
A major factor to the forum's decline is blatant hate campaigns on other social media.I really think some members think they can say anything cruel and hurtful they like elsewhere and this won't have any ramifications on their reputation or how people respond to them here.Over the last year I have seen the most hideous hypocrisy, abuse and bullying from some members on other forms of social media, yet when people respond to them negatively here they feel hard done by.I also feel that some users are doing their level best to destroy as much morale and good feeling here as possible to further their little agenda and petty amusement.
With these factors no wonder regular posters are leaving/not posting as much.And no wonder we don’t get many new posters through the doors.Do I agree with every decision SkyPoker has made in the forum?No, not at all.I don’t agree with every banning TBH.If it was up to me I would have let a couple of the recent bannings stay.I do however understand why they were banned and in no way are any of them completely innocent of blame. I wouldn't be a Mod on a forum where I thought people were being banned for no reason. But I've just seen a regular poster I respect in the OP say how they now feel worried when they post. That makes me very sad, it's not meant not to be like this at all.
The userbase must accept their fair share of the blame for how turgid and negative this place has become.Only we, not the Admin or SkyPoker, but us the community members can force the change in attitudes to make it better.Stop posting negative comments for your own amusement.Stop trying to flamebait to illicit some sort of reaction.Stop trying to get other people into a confrontation so you can sit back and enjoy the fireworks.If a new member comes in then encourage them.
In short, play nice and remember why this forum was created.At this point I’m getting close to believing there is no practical purpose for it and maybe it should be shut down for good.Then again then the trolls would win.To make sure this doesn’t happen, both SkyPoker and the Userbase have to work together to turn this place into what it used to be, a fun hang out for likeminded people.
I'm trying to decide weather there is any point in staying as a reg on the forum. why because it seems you now need a prove reader before posting anything. I defend the right for sky to protect their business and their clients from abuse from trolls and the like. but I'm afraid it seems to me its going way beyond that. we are seeing forum regs receiving bans for things that I just cant understand. I always believed the forum was a place were you could let off steam when on tilt as long as you didn't become abusive to others or sky. over the last couple of years I've had posts criticizing me and praising me without the poster having to think weather they could be banned or not. I have questioned online poker at times without fear. something I would not do now for fear of a ban. I fear I my be seen to have stepped over the line with this post, if I have how sad that in this day and age on a modern game site that we have come to love and enjoy we can no longer speak our minds with respect to others. sorry to have rambled on but it would be nice to hear your views is it just me or is the forum not what it used to be?? Posted by drumahai05
This is why I dont post much anymore......................
Boom, Tommy strikes again. Great post Tommy and Huuuuume. EDIT: In the process of posting a thread that should hopefully try to spread a bit more friendliness and serve as a 'get to know you' for all. Posted by Lambert180
Excellent post Drumahai, and again an excellent post by Huuuuume. Huuuume has said many of the things I was going to say but in a much better fashion so I’ll just echo what he has said as well as adding the following. The general tone and friendly atmosphere of the forum has been plummeting for some time now. IMO a major factor of this are some good and great posters are not posting anymore for a variety of reasons. Many were great at starting threads, a skill in itself and vital for a forum to survive. That just doesn't happen enough with the quality and quantity as it used to. Some very good posters are still posting today but at a fraction of the rate they used to. Apathy and a general malaise has spread across nearly everyone when it comes to the forum. A major factor to the forum's decline is blatant hate campaigns on other social media. I really think some members think they can say anything cruel and hurtful they like elsewhere and this won't have any ramifications on their reputation or how people respond to them here. Over the last year I have seen the most hideous hypocrisy, abuse and bullying from some members on other forms of social media, yet when people respond to them negatively here they feel hard done by. I also feel that some users are doing their level best to destroy as much morale and good feeling here as possible to further their little agenda and petty amusement. With these factors no wonder regular posters are leaving/not posting as much. And no wonder we don’t get many new posters through the doors. Do I agree with every decision SkyPoker has made in the forum? No, not at all. I don’t agree with every banning TBH. If it was up to me I would have let a couple of the recent bannings stay. I do however understand why they were banned and in no way are any of them completely innocent of blame. I wouldn't be a Mod on a forum where I thought people were being banned for no reason. But I've just seen a regular poster I respect in the OP say how they now feel worried when they post. That makes me very sad, it's not meant not to be like this at all. The userbase must accept their fair share of the blame for how turgid and negative this place has become. Only we, not the Admin or SkyPoker, but us the community members can force the change in attitudes to make it better. Stop posting negative comments for your own amusement. Stop trying to flamebait to illicit some sort of reaction. Stop trying to get other people into a confrontation so you can sit back and enjoy the fireworks. If a new member comes in then encourage them. In short, play nice and remember why this forum was created. At this point I’m getting close to believing there is no practical purpose for it and maybe it should be shut down for good. Then again then the trolls would win. To make sure this doesn’t happen, both SkyPoker and the Userbase have to work together to turn this place into what it used to be, a fun hang out for likeminded people. Posted by TommyD
Comments
Thanks for your feedback on this thread, it's something we are happy to have a fair discussion on. There's a few things for us to say:
- One of the reasons we have a forum is to get feedback. We really do listen
- If we didn’t want this, we wouldn’t have a community at all
- The vast majority of threads don't need moderation by us and that's great
- When we do have to moderate or block people we don't do it with pleasure
- We do this because we want it to be a nice, friendly and helpful place
- A healthy debate is often a good thing (often these are the best threads!)
- That said, we don't want them to overspill and get too heated or personal
We wrote the community guidelines with all this in mind and hope they are clear and fair (as with other things they are also up for debate and can be tweaked)
Blocking people from the community is not as common as you might think and we often go a long while without having do take any action at all. When we do block people, we do it for the right reasons, with good intentions and for the improvement of the community overall.
Unfortunately, it's not possible to discuss individual cases but there are times when people sadly do things which deserve a response. Many times it's other community members who help buy reporting it to us. Other times you might not see the cause of it at all.
We're repeating ourselves but above all we really want the Sky Poker community to be a place where people enjoy coming, feel comfortable in and want to come back to.
Community members and moderators really help with this and we sincerely thank you for that - it's genuinely amazing to see when a new customer comes on the community to introduce themselves or to ask for help. You all make them feel really welcome and help them out (everyone is new at some point!).
It's also great to see that people make forum friends on here and really want to support and learn from each other about the game we all love, poker.
Thanks again and we hope you have a really good weekend!
Sky Poker Team
I thing Matt's idea merits serious consideration.
For the Forum to retain it's popular reputation.
Rather than knee jerk forum bans, could we not have a sin bin?
Many of us make passionate comments on the forum without considering possible implications,
Many a time, innocent, naiave words can be mis-interpreted and taken totally out of context.
Having a sin bin with contentious threads reviewed by sensible, respected forum members.
would give misunderstood posters an opportunity to explain themselves before they are exiled forever.
I miss Spornybol and Evil Pingu's threads and believe had they been given a chance to explain, and time to cool down, they would still be valuable forum contributors. Who did more good than bad for the community.
Again it's difficult to discuss individual cases but we do often allow people to come back and it's not normal that a 'first offence' results in a permanent ban. It depends what it is.
To be fair, many people do immediately admit it and apologise (not that we ask them to). Others do not.
But either way we do try to be fair and do things for the right reason.
Thanks
Sky Poker
Would Sky consider as a gestur of faith an amnesty to members currrently forum banned?
Obviously with the understanding that should their posts cross well defined boundaries there would be no further chances!
i'll use another thread from general poker chat right now as an example. it is titled 'how do you get a player ID with 13 characters?' i haven't opened it, i haven't read it and i probably never will.
Sky - sky needs to make accessing information far easier. this new player should never have to write on the forum to find this information. it was mentioned earlier in this thread that there should be an FAQ section to deal with small issues like this. also, they shouldnt need to clutter up the forums with such a pointless (imo) thread which will no doubt annoy other users who see really important threads being pushed off the first page. an improvement to the organisation of the forum would also help solve this.
also, if there are issues about chat bans then maybe introducing a 'you will be banned for...' list or some more professional equivalent would be beneficial so that you have something to refer back to if players complain about a chat ban etc. its also pretty clear from this thread that there are issues about the fairness of punishments...as part of your custormer service you should strive to improve the way you deal with this issue
Players - as tempting as it is sky players need to avoid making negative contributions to that sort of thread. there is no doubt hundreds of funny comments you could make but for the forum to work it is probably best if people just skip by without commenting. a great example of this was when idonkcallu started posting....the amount of criticism he got was appalling and it took a lot of work by him to win the regular posters over. many players would have given up.
some players also need to think about what they post on the forums and what threads they choose to start...how many more threads do we need about chat abuse at the tables? how many questions about why high stakes heads up players dont play heads up against each other? how many complaints about live streaming?
maybe a guideline for new players or some equivalent?
Sky can quite easily improve their forums and accessibility of information. but it will be interesting to see if the sky players are able to reign in the negative comments which seem to be spoiling the forums in general. i don't claim to be any sort of angel on this matter and am sure at some points i have said things i shouldnt have said but it is clearly becoming one of the main issues with the forums and essentially this is just my 2 cents and i have tried to put it as best i can.
flame away....(ps you know there are issues on the forums when many posts feel they need to end this way because of the inevitable criticism they will receive)
Matt
Great Post H!!!
The general tone and friendly atmosphere of the forum has been plummeting for some time now. IMO a major factor of this are some good and great posters are not posting anymore for a variety of reasons. Many were great at starting threads, a skill in itself and vital for a forum to survive. That just doesn't happen enough with the quality and quantity as it used to. Some very good posters are still posting today but at a fraction of the rate they used to. Apathy and a general malaise has spread across nearly everyone when it comes to the forum.
A major factor to the forum's decline is blatant hate campaigns on other social media. I really think some members think they can say anything cruel and hurtful they like elsewhere and this won't have any ramifications on their reputation or how people respond to them here. Over the last year I have seen the most hideous hypocrisy, abuse and bullying from some members on other forms of social media, yet when people respond to them negatively here they feel hard done by. I also feel that some users are doing their level best to destroy as much morale and good feeling here as possible to further their little agenda and petty amusement.
With these factors no wonder regular posters are leaving/not posting as much. And no wonder we don’t get many new posters through the doors. Do I agree with every decision SkyPoker has made in the forum? No, not at all. I don’t agree with every banning TBH. If it was up to me I would have let a couple of the recent bannings stay. I do however understand why they were banned and in no way are any of them completely innocent of blame. I wouldn't be a Mod on a forum where I thought people were being banned for no reason. But I've just seen a regular poster I respect in the OP say how they now feel worried when they post. That makes me very sad, it's not meant not to be like this at all.
The userbase must accept their fair share of the blame for how turgid and negative this place has become. Only we, not the Admin or SkyPoker, but us the community members can force the change in attitudes to make it better. Stop posting negative comments for your own amusement. Stop trying to flamebait to illicit some sort of reaction. Stop trying to get other people into a confrontation so you can sit back and enjoy the fireworks. If a new member comes in then encourage them.
In short, play nice and remember why this forum was created. At this point I’m getting close to believing there is no practical purpose for it and maybe it should be shut down for good. Then again then the trolls would win. To make sure this doesn’t happen, both SkyPoker and the Userbase have to work together to turn this place into what it used to be, a fun hang out for likeminded people.
EDIT: In the process of posting a thread that should hopefully try to spread a bit more friendliness and serve as a 'get to know you' for all.
Done!