The Official Cynthia leaving Relic thread

wait, I'm a bot?!

< has existential crisis >

Meh, computer made of meat, computer made of silicon, what's the difference?

(FWIW, I think you had a hard job and did it well. Good luck in the future.)

wait, I'm a bot?!

< has existential crisis >

pm sent

Thanks for everything Cynthia, I remember the times we chat about prizes and promo for Rewind, so thank you for your effort.

Best of luck in the future.

Dude. This isn't the entire reason as to why you were banned. We have a pretty lenient ban policy. People receive several temporary bans before being banned permanently, and it takes several infractions and warnings before someone is even temporarily suspended. We encourage constructive criticism, and there's a lot of it in our forums. Our volunteer moderators are even advised to edit problematic posts and delete the offending content only, yet leave the constructive bits of criticism up in order to allow the conversation to continue. We could straight up just delete comments that break our forum rules, but we try not to.

Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to point this out - I always did understand the system.

But face it, you had a broken community to deal with and the high-level approach corps take is to have a uniform approach that helps reduce stress on employees, increase productivity and also provide a positive demeanour to the world at large (marketing). This uniform approach has led to the implementation of mods and admins that censor people's posts.

My view is, that if I give a damn about something (e.g. a game) I will be honest about my perception of it. I' not in a business meeting so I feel entitled to use the odd swear word. How many other ways do I have to make it clear to Relic that I think some of their approaches, behaviours and methods stink? When mods start pruning posts such that my entire objection to Relic is gutted out, and call it 'moderation', Relic loses the opportunity to receive honest feedback and criticism.

Their entire approach to the community appears to be one of 'we won't tolerate critcism'. You say you welcome constructive feedback, but also admit to banning a guy for saying 'why can't we talk about the 6 mooth patch delay?' But how can Relic expect not to get any criticism? They take years to make changes that the community repeats at their screens ad nauseum, until they come to believe that Relic is badly out of touch with the fan base. They alienate the passionate fan that takes the time to repeat his suggestions to Relic, and end up censoring their posts when the person inevitably becomes frustrated - case in point? The thread about suggestions to change the vanilla factions - which soaked up suggestions for months and then shut down for like a year, and when the hint of a patch came to resolve the issues raised within, the actual meat of what the community DEMANDED got delayed for another 6 months AFTER people got a taste of it in Alpha. What a terrible mistake to make!

THAT is why the mods censor posts - not because they're trying to keep the peace, or promote good community, but because Relic and its employees (including, until recently, you) want to keep the public at arms length and roll out changes their way, in the way they think is best. I.e. they give no indication of how much they're measuring fan feedback into their plans AT ALL.

You seemed trapped in a role where you had to pass down bad news to us all the time, collect the same-ass data from us all the time and watch the devs continue to sit on it forever. Am I wrong?

To conclude this long post, I'm sure you're a good person etc etc. You have a nice personality on the forums. But I criticise how you subscribed to Relic's censorship policy. You may think it's an obvious thing for me to say, but this is how I see things. Fascism sucks. Best of luck in your next roles - I trust you will choose one that brings you peace.

Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to point this out - I always did understand the system.

But face it, you had a broken community to deal with and the high-level approach corps take is to have a uniform approach that helps reduce stress on employees, increase productivity and also provide a positive demeanour to the world at large (marketing). This uniform approach has led to the implementation of mods and admins that censor people's posts.

My view is, that if I give a damn about something (e.g. a game) I will be honest about my perception of it. I' not in a business meeting so I feel entitled to use the odd swear word. How many other ways do I have to make it clear to Relic that I think some of their approaches, behaviours and methods stink? When mods start pruning posts such that my entire objection to Relic is gutted out, and call it 'moderation', Relic loses the opportunity to receive honest feedback and criticism.

Their entire approach to the community appears to be one of 'we won't tolerate critcism'. You say you welcome constructive feedback, but also admit to banning a guy for saying 'why can't we talk about the 6 mooth patch delay?' But how can Relic expect not to get any criticism? They take years to make changes that the community repeats at their screens ad nauseum, until they come to believe that Relic is badly out of touch with the fan base. They alienate the passionate fan that takes the time to repeat his suggestions to Relic, and end up censoring their posts when the person inevitably becomes frustrated - case in point? The thread about suggestions to change the vanilla factions - which soaked up suggestions for months and then shut down for like a year, and when the hint of a patch came to resolve the issues raised within, the actual meat of what the community DEMANDED got delayed for another 6 months AFTER people got a taste of it in Alpha. What a terrible mistake to make!

THAT is why the mods censor posts - not because they're trying to keep the peace, or promote good community, but because Relic and its employees (including, until recently, you) want to keep the public at arms length and roll out changes their way, in the way they think is best. I.e. they give no indication of how much they're measuring fan feedback into their plans AT ALL.

You seemed trapped in a role where you had to pass down bad news to us all the time, collect the same-ass data from us all the time and watch the devs continue to sit on it forever. Am I wrong?

To conclude this long post, I'm sure you're a good person etc etc. You have a nice personality on the forums. But I criticise how you subscribed to Relic's censorship policy. You may think it's an obvious thing for me to say, but this is how I see things. Fascism sucks. Best of luck in your next roles - I trust you will choose one that brings you peace.

+1

Although I think that Cynthia is just caught by the NDA-Hammer which the higher management drops on her. Everything is NDA, NDA, NDA, so what can she tell us. She loses her job or something if she breaks it.

In my eyes it's because of that, that the fanbase is going to have someone. Unfortunatly the community manager has to take all the yummy brown pudding that the fanbase gives.

Perhaps the constructive criticism can be given with some less swearwords. When I write an official letter to a company I'm not using swearwords either. But hey that's my opinion.

Thanks for all your efforts Cynthia. Sorry to see you go. If we ever cross paths, the beer is on me.