Feedback About Feedback On A Closed Thread


Customer Service


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This thread had some outright racist posts.

In the future, it would be helpful if CS continued to state that actual racism is not allowed on these boards when they close a thread.

"just isn't appropriate for our forums" doesn't really get that point across. One of the things I really like about Paizo community management is that they clearly identify what harm people have felt when reading 'inappropriate' posts. I feel seen when someone says 'that's not appropriate because (explicit reason)".

Calling all offenses "inappropriate", sets a very different tone and doesn't really educate people who didn't see anything wrong with the posts. Saying out loud "This is what transphobia looks like" and "this is what racism looks like" is very helpful in opening people's minds to the subtle and insidious nature of these harms.


Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Of course, even these explanations may not work too well for anyone reading a thread after the offensive posts have been removed.

And leaving the offensive posts up with clear pointers from the Paizo folks as to why they are objectionable could lead to other problems....


CrystalSeas wrote:

This thread had some outright racist posts.

In the future, it would be helpful if CS continued to state that actual racism is not allowed on these boards when they close a thread.

"just isn't appropriate for our forums" doesn't really get that point across. One of the things I really like about Paizo community management is that they clearly identify what harm people have felt when reading 'inappropriate' posts. I feel seen when someone says 'that's not appropriate because (explicit reason)".

Calling all offenses "inappropriate", sets a very different tone and doesn't really educate people who didn't see anything wrong with the posts. Saying out loud "This is what transphobia looks like" and "this is what racism looks like" is very helpful in opening people's minds to the subtle and insidious nature of these harms.

I agree. “Heres what you did and this is why it’s wrong” is useful, I feel.

It also sometimes acts as education - it’s relaxed a little now, but there used to be a policy of extreme anti-piracy discussion including deleting any post that mentioned piracy, even if it was condemning it. That understandably led to some ill feeling, but because it was explicit, those of us who spend a lot of time here were are able to articulate the policy.

(I’ve also flagged this as wrong forum. Not sure of the current preference but meta-discussion about moderation used to go in website feedback..).


Yes, but the boards are almost entirely moderated by customer service.

So it should be directed towards their area of expertise so they're aware.

For the record, I agree completely with Crystalseas.

Paizo Employee Customer Service Representative

As I'm sure a few of you are aware, we've had quite a bit of CS turnover in the last year and our main focus has been on our email backlog. Now that that's mostly resolved, we're making a concerted effort to be more prompt and involved in forum moderation.

That said, forum moderation is completely new to a few of us, and customer service as a whole is still working out how best to represent Paizo and ourselves in moderating the forums.

So, the feedback is appreciated! I'll be linking everyone else to this thread so we can discuss best/better approaches with forum moderation.

I'm not sure what the future of this particular forum is since we want to move back to email being the primary way of contacting us with problems in regards to orders/subscriptions/etc., but I'm okay leaving this here for now.

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