Does the NI Forum Community Culture need a change?
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I am posting sincerely, sarcastically, as this is my last recourse before open anger. I have... a wealth of experience not only in this industry, but numerous related tech industries going back over 30 years. I am not commenting from a place of agreement with these sorts of brand management philosophies, and I have been a brand manager in my past professional life, among other things.
For reference, check out the Steinberg forums. After Yamaha bought them out years ago, things slowly transitioned on their forums, too. We went from having lots of normal threads and some angry threads, to 50/50 angry/not angry threads where Steinberg brand managers began categorizing angry customers as "not helpful", then censoring their comments. This philosophy alienated many of us, and ultimately gave rise to Bitwig and the CLAP protocol. Just saying.... lol.
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Thanks @wayfinder for the detailed feedback!
one report/flag button with a custom reason field should be enough.
We would actually need to keep the SPAM because it permits everyone to remove spam if a few people click it. We can't have mods around 24/7 and we do get spams randomly flooding the community (as you probably noticed in the past).
The report would work just as you described though, we would offer reason to choose from to make it fast but there is also a text field to just write a comment.
don't overthink it, imo. why "off topic" out of all the possible reactions? is it really that much of a problem?
You might be right. I see a lot of reports for off topic so I thought perhaps having a similar bury mechanism in the hands of users would be useful.
the cash/gear prizes for top contributors may well have incentivized people to powerpost
It's interesting because it seems like the way the point system work is either not optimized the way we thought it was or there is not enough communication about how it works. You can't get points by powerposting. The points are in the hands of the recipients and apply mostly when somebody else checks the "approved" answer. In any case, we're going to check data over the last few months to see the impact of that program.
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Our philosophy hasn't really changed though. Just like @D-One said, you can be as critical as you want as long as you are respectful and offer some level of constructive feedback. The moderation usually leans more against members being outright rude towards others or derailing threads with the same comments over and over. The community isn't a brand exercise otherwise we'll be doing a terrible job leaving the tough discussions and support issues in the open like that.
And for transparency, my biggest worry isn't having critical opinions on the community but having a space where the rest of the company doesn't feel comfortable engaging in (which was pretty much the vibe I was getting a few years ago).
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that's a fairly recent change though, right? just posting anything in a question thread would give points. there's also the phenomenon that I like to call Microsoft MVP Syndrome - people who don't really know a lot about specifics but keep a few more general problem-solving strategies on speed dial and post those in response to a broad range of problems without actually getting into the actual issue. it was described further up in the thread as "flatten everything and reinstall", and yes that might be a solution to a certain issue, so over time people just posting A LOT of these will accumulate points too
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To be clear and without saying names please, are you talking about a big problem that lots of people do or about one specific person who has been doing it a lot recently?
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The system was always design like that as far as I remember. There is only very few points being attributed by badges but for most part its when someone else confirms your answer or gives you an insightful reaction.
With that said if it was misunderstood, the outcome would be just like you described so we have to evaluate its purpose and effect.
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not a big problem, but also not just a single poster. it's something that i see from time to time.
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Whether or not your stated philosophy has changed, the climate here has certainly changed. It happened shortly after the forum reboot, and it is present today.
From my perspective as a customer, the main change has been in delay of support. On top of support delays, the subsequent variously angry posts from customers are now being discussed as mayyyyybe being something we can find a way to suppress, especially if it comes from a popular thread on the matter.
If you reduce all of this down to its simplest concepts, that is precisely what you are doing - opening the door for censorship of angry customers. If they become "unhelpful" in their anger, they are hidden. This is precisely what Steinberg did, and precisely what led me to find a new brand.
I think what this leads to is the idea that employees AND customers should have to put on the same professional facade in order to do business, and when customers break that decorum, they should be considered problematic just like staff who do the same. I wont be wearing your professional facade, that your staff must wear, no. You solicit my business, I do not solicit yours. This basic arrangement seems to be slipping...
For example, nobody has given me a suitable answer as to why your CDN is obviously throttling customers who need max bandwidth to avoid spending 24 hours downloading 1TB+ of library data. Instead, Ive been ignored once, and asked to "install a support tool" (and then ignored) another time, when many users are reporting the same thing. This makes me angry, and I will say so without inhibition. This is what leads to greater anger, and more angry posts.
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I'm confused, what support are you talking about? Offitial support tickets? Or support here in the forum?
Hum.... I'm also confused about this 'suppressing anger' business, suppressing anger is understandable, but that's a long ways from suppressing criticism/censorship. As they say 'my freedom ends when the freedom of others begins', I can complain to the chef/waiter that my food is cold without having to spit in his face and make a scene in the restaurant causing a disturbance for everyone else. There are acceptable levels for everything...
Being angry over products/issues/support was never a reason that a thread was closed or someone got banned, it's always users VS users for the most part, so I'm quite confused about where this is coming from...
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Nobody is suggesting you should be wearing a professional facade. We're simply signaling that you can voice your critics respectfully. That goes true literally wherever you are engaging with others.
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I have been reading the threads taking place here, on the subject of moderation, what is "helpful" and what isnt, and again - if you reduce it down to its simplest form, this is opening the door for brand-centric people and/or mods to mark certain comments as unhelpful or even "spam" when in fact they are righteously angry.
To be a good customer service representative for your brand(this has been one of my duties for 30 years), you should accept, understand and redirect customer anger whenever possible, not attempt to reclassify and/or hide it. Meet angry, dissatisfied people head-on where they are, and any bad faith people will usually identify themselves within a few comments. Good faith customers, too, identify themselves..........
This is the brand and the brand's comms philosophy people looking a diverse customer base in the face - people from all walks of life, income, language, and culture - and attempting to flatten out the landscape. And again - there are other public, unaffiliated, censorship-free forums and social spaces online where these people fall back to. They make their threads and their comments there, where you cant decide to hide them. Guiding those people to a space where you can turn a loss into a win should be the choice in social media management philosophy, but is it?
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I have made numerous posts & tickets, yes, which have seen major delay and/or nonsensical responses. The anger that comes from that confuses you?
You commented to me.... in a thread about maschine routing, where I had specifically reached out to you 3x since having the issue. I specifically mentioned my original forum name to you(Jeremy), thinking you might not remember our earlier conversations, and even went to your posted YouTube channel to try to get your attention. I heard nothing. Then you commented to me 3 days ago "why just be frustrated? You can always come ask questions here", and that..... made by blood boil, lol. Not seeing someone's anger, then acting incredulous about it, is also frustrating.
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Some correct things have been said here. Not so sure what is being said correspond to what I see lately.
I’ll take myself as an example: I’ve spent a lot of time here helping other users. And also criticizing what I thought must be criticized. In a respectful way and offering some level of constructive feedback.
After seeing the constructive feedback being ignored and useless for so long, I started omitting this aspect. But keeping the respect.
What I see now is that my demotivation making me abandon the “helping other users” side left me only being the “criticizer”…but always maintaining the respect. I never name called anyone, never being not polite to anyone, never been disrespectful to anyone.
Nevertheless now my posts get canceled, I receive warnings and I’m being discredited in different ways in order to make what I write seem like a fool babbling. And this because for someone I criticize too much.
And still what is being discussed here is what users are doing wrong. There’s another face of the medal…and it’s WHY there are so much more unsatisfied users complaining about what is not working.
So please… if you really want to improve things, take in consideration both aspects: what users are doing wrong AND what NI could make to have less unsatisfied users.
Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear…
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The intent of our discussion here isn't to hide or suppress anything but to find the right set of tools to make sure bad behaviour isn't rewarded and understand what concerns some of the members.
We're not talking about folks that are waiting for their orders or a response from our team. We are engaging with as many people as we can on that front and are doing so literally every single day on here and beyond. Unless of course, whoever is reaching out is making comments about their experience in bad faith, are rude to our support staff or don't respond to what we send (which happens more often than not).
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At this point, Im just deciding if I want to continue to be part of this brand, going forward. I've resolved all my specific tech problems on my own, and the throttling thing only applies when I need to download stuff... so.
Im certainly not here to couch an angry debate about forum censorship, at any rate. If I decide to continue being a paying customer, Ill cross that bridge.
The NI development philosophy has begun to leave me behind, with things like the Absynth/Brian C decision, the scheduled obsolescence of hardware, talk of "AI" tech, the lack of instrument instruments and focus on prepackaged sampler content, and now ALSO potential forum censorship on top.
I usually spend $100s on NI products every year, every sale, but today I haven't bought anything in about 12 months and will hold off until this all settles down. The private equity thing is, of course, what I am watching closely. Please dont argue with me about this, as I know you cant be frank here. I am far too old to be confused about any of this.
If I have to come to these forums to make another support request, and that request is abandoned and then my resulting very normal anger is classified in a way that hides my comments or censors me in any way, that will make my decision for me. I couldnt be more strongly against censorship of that type if I tried.
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