Dear Gametap Staff:

As you are quite busy with implementing great ideas, management of the forums has fallen to the side. Prompt and personal communication with customers is vital to the success of any company, and because of this, I offer this suggestion:

Gametap previously had community moderators who worked in tandem with staff and usually kept a good eye on the spam, inflammatory posts, and keeping the trolls in line. As far as I know, these volunteer moderators simply don't exist anymore, or have resigned their posts. If they do exist, the amount of unanswered and unmoderated posts suggests that more moderators need to be added.

Volunteer moderators, if they're trained well, often act more professionally and with more tact than others posting to the thread may. They can also act as a mouthpiece for the community, like an ombudsman, defusing volatile situations while remaining independent from the company. The moderator can recognize what issues he or she can assist the customer/subscriber with by him or herself, while pushing those issues which require staff attention to the appropriate departments or staff members. This has the advantages of expediting support issues that are not submitted using a support ticket onto their proper paths as well as giving subscribers/customers with issues or suggestions acknowledgment that their voices are heard. If subscribers or customers feel they are not being acknowledged, they will stop offering suggestions, become irate, cancel the service (and not recommend it to their friends), or even dispute charges with their credit card companies or banks.

To illustrate the need for additional moderators, here are only a few examples of threads that need a moderator's attention, either to delete obvious spam, intentionally duplicate threads/posts, or to assist extremely frustrated subscribers/customers who use hate speech to get their point across. While freedom of speech is a good thing, there is an very real need for rules to be enforced. Some users are deliberately spreading inflammatory remarks in a stated attempt to offend other customers/subscribers (and their children) in an effort to cause them, and other potential subscribers or customers, to avoid the service.

Please see the following links:
"Don't spend money with this company! they suck!"
Obvious spam: "tft lcd monitor you keep track of sins"
Flaming/hate speech"how do i talk to someone from gametap????"

Additionally, the report button, used to flag spam or other posts that are not allowed on the forums so they can be dealt with by moderators, appears to be broken using Firefox 3.6.15.

Thanks for your consideration, Gametap Staff.

Additionally, the report button, used to flag spam or other posts that are not allowed on the forums so they can be dealt with by moderators, appears to be broken using Firefox 3.6.15.

Thanks for your consideration, Gametap Staff.[/quote]

As much as I feel my "feedback" to such threads is justified, I can read back through it well enough to know that I am a hypocrite. While the general message of each of my "feedback" I feel is dead on, I too curse and make offensive remarks that if were made by any other user, I would complain about them and present "feedback" on.

That said, I have to agree with Classical on the need for some form of moderation of posts. Even if you don't frankly care about the language used in the forums, there are plenty of examples of duplicate posts, posting in the wrong forums and unanswered questions or problems that more moderation would solve. One guy asks about the ability for the game to run in General, another in Help and another in Games. Three posts of the same problem but only the one in Help gets answered. With so are many people looking for a quick fix to their question, they don't even notice the Help forums. With, as far as I know, every admin being in a different time zone than the American subscribers, a LOT of frustration waiting on even a single reply causes many of the outbursts that appear. Local moderators that can at least mention how they will forwards things to admins can cool many a head.

You look into Help and there are multiple threads on the same issues, that if it wasn't clogged with posts that don't belong in Help and Support, people might be able to look at previous posts to find the answer to their problems.

Frankly, while the service itself has improved from the previous year, the forums have degenerated into a useless place to rage at everyone else, blame admins that have nothing to do with the technical sides of things and spam spam spam like it was a Monty Python production.

I'm sure all of you are busy with other things, maybe you should also be thinking of the little things that will help keep this service something...well half way decent


One tiny little thing, keeping posts from 2007, particularly about games that you know longer have and will never encounter the same issue with (You'd have to recode the games to this Plugin, right?) is a waste of space and adds useless search results. I think the Help and Support section is the most important section and keeping that streamlined is the bestest thing ever!

Beyond that, I'm gonna PM Metaluke, LittlestCthulhu, MetaRaka, prinC3c, and metaviio with a link to this topic. Please consider doing so yourself in the hopes they consider it.

Moderators for the forums and more staff in general. Not to mention working phone lines and other agents. It shouldn't take a customer placing 4 calls and leaving voicemails (none returned), submitting a ticket and never having that agent respond again to try and get some assistance.

Lastly honor your own words and realize having customers is needed for a business to thrive. Bad word of mouth to friends and online is never good for a business, nor are reports to the BBB or FTC. Best of luck, GameTap. Oh, and I will still accept my refund now (even though I requested it in that 2 day period to no avail).

I would hereby like to nominate both Kirosha and classical2 for the post of Forum Moderator.

It's quite obvious from their extremely well writen posts that they not only understand the problem but, would be quite good in the role.

So, how about it guys: either one of ya want a job (voluntarily, of course)?

classical2 wrote: the report button, used to flag spam or other posts that are not allowed on the forums so they can be dealt with by moderators, appears to be broken using Firefox 3.6.15.

I can't use the "Report this Post" form in either Firefox 9.0.1 or IE 9.0.8112.16421 on Windows 7. Specifically, clicking the "Report" button on a forum post does take me to a form for reporting the post. However, the list next to "Reason" is empty, and it doesn't accept the form when I click "Submit".

Rayven998 wrote: I would hereby like to nominate both Kirosha and classical2 for the post of Forum Moderator. It's quite obvious from their extremely well written posts that they not only understand the problem but, would be quite good in the role. So, how about it guys: either one of ya want a job (voluntarily, of course)?

To answer your long-standing question, Rayven998, yes, I'd be interested, should the Gametap staff feel a need to contact me regarding it.

Thanks for the update, quirkster. I see the same symptoms running Firefox 12.0 and Opera Win 7 64-bit. Inspecting the source, it appears there are no reasons defined, so this issue is browser and operating system independent.