Ugh...  my condolences to that person. That shit is not right. 

Hmm, very fair points, particularly about the lack of anonymity and the fact that you have limited options in placating pissed off people since you're not in control (or even in full confidence of) the thing they're pissed about.

It's not an easy thing to solve. But I would say you still need to start somewhere. Get some community people in the forums as points of contact (they can use aliases to prevent personal reprisals). For any given issue have a carefully crafted statement they can toe the line with that's absolute gospel for the company's position on the matter but, and this is the key part, still have them interact with users in a more personable way, attempting to mitigate any negative impact and offer encouragement, or simply being an ear to listen. Have it be made very clear that while discussion may vary and be ambiguous in terms of interpretation, as all regular conversation is, the line is the line. And finally have the mods prepared with flamethrowers to clear the rabble that does take things too far. I think temp bans are your best friend in these cases. If someone's just plain hating and just acting out in the heat of the moment, shut them down for however long it takes for the heat to die down. Because as the great Sir Patrick Stewart once said in a Seth MacFarlane movie "eventually no one gives a shit". People may get really riled about a particular issue but chances are some aren't really that bad, usually. Using temp-bans as a "timeout" gets them out of your hair while the issue's hot and gives them time to cool, without necessarily losing them forever. Extreme cases of persistent over-negativity would obviously be a judgment call.

I can get being hesitant to post. In all honesty if I were a BioWare employee, I probably would be too as much as I'd love to interact with the community.

I mean, even for me I'm amazed at how far some of my Mass Effect 3 MP information has spread and seeing it show up on other forums and blogs around the net. If I recall right, my leaking of the Retaliation files went decently big as well. I can only imagine what happens when you actually have the BioWare tag below your name. Everything you say basically gets treated as an official seal of approval, and gets picked apart in every way imaginable(and a few you probably didn't imagine).

As for the harassment, people can say it's part of the job but to my knowledge Brojo posting on the BSN was never actually a requirement of his job. It's more something that was optional and he did because I would imagine he liked talking with the fans. He was always awesome on the ME3 MP boards, and I would like to think we weren't a bad bunch of insane asylum inmates =P

You can hire actual community managers to do this sort of thing, but then people complain that they're not talking to the actual developers and artists behind the games. Having better overall moderation does of course help tone down the level of harassment that BioWare posters get, and I think that having more of them around would essentially spread it out. As it stands right now, it's so rare to see one that you basically just get jumped the moment you post something.

If you do have all that negativity it's draining on you. I've watched a CM have a meltdown on the World of Warcraft forums because of that.

That all said, I think if one were to want to improve things on the BSN itself then you would need to send a few people into the trenches with some moderator support. If BioWare truly thinks that place is too toxic, it's not going to get cleaned up by ignoring it and shutting down boards. To Brojo's credit he has made some posts in the Andromeda forums, mostly the toggle thread making some clarifications about just how much work is actually involved in such a feature.

Unfortunately, that also means somebody is going to have to withstand some of that toxicity for a time. It's not just going to go away naturally, especially not on the internet.

Hello! I wanted to welcome and thank you for coming here. You are most welcome to stay, but please be careful on what you post, if Bioware finds out you might lose your job and that's not something that I want. I'm upset with the company, not you as an individual. That said, we do not promote doxxing or attacking employees here (there has been a lot of venting and shit talk about certain employees, but that's a different matter).

I'd like to remind people to remain respectful to BroJo, any harassment or personal attacks will be dealt with moderation as per the rules "do not attack other members".

I feels it says a lot that we didn't even know someone was a community manager for a time. It just happened. It a similar issue with the Offtopic closing where it just got nuked one day with no warning. It's a real lack of transparency that's the problem.

Right, and all this time we've been careful not to call out Conal Pierse because he is just the messenger, all we can see from his account is that he is a "bioware employee." But in actuality he is the community manager and absolutely the person we should be directing our concerns toward. And the person who should be making some effort to respond to our concerns.

I hear Ostensible Bryan Johnson's point that Conal Pierse wasn't the only person making the decision, but it's his job to speak for those people, and to speak for us to those people.

Hello Bryan,

I hate clipping your posts, but just assume anything I'm not quoting is tacit agreement with the rest of what you said.



Did you hear that? That was my jaw dropping half a continent away.



I agree, you don't have much options.

You could say a combination of the "I have forwarded on this info" and "we are working on X, Y and Z," instead letting people know that you have forwarded on the feedback AND that it is resulting in discussion and actual work (instead of the perception that you just forward an email that disappears to a corporate abyss).

But the real thing that could be done? Saying it again. And again. And again. Not a copy pasta, mind you, but responding over and over again. Keeping a consistent message. Not saying it once as a decree from the mountain top, but a continual reassurance, an acknowledgement that "yes, I still see and hear you; and yes, we are still doing the work to help you." Otherwise, it becomes six months down the line and no one has the slightest CLUE that the boring platitudes uttered half a year ago matter at all.

Communication isn't about always saying something new. Communication is about saying something that makes people feel heard and understood.



And Conal can't do that with less than 250 posts as the Community Manager for the past 18+ months.

I am uncertain how long he has been in that role, but can state it is less than 18 months

I think we may be getting close to the "Nothing really matters" part at the end. Poor Prince.