21 hours ago, bailout said:

I wish there was more 'censorship' on the official forums. The General forum there has just been the same people moaning on the same threads that have been going for months. 

The official forum staff are obviously chasing engagement traffic at this point, crazy how all the extremely toxic " Dear Diary" general vent about nothing threads, some 100 page old as dinosaur fossils remain open. 

Meanwhile useful threads about ACTUAL SIMMING AND USING THE SOFTWARE are shut down and quickly dismissed the minute there's a tiny disagreement between users.

These are the largest oldest open threads in the general forum go in and scroll through and it looks like a complete warzone happened in there with all the deleted and flagged post.🤣

Yet the staff decide to keep them open and going to the point the users are flagged so much they don't even bother engaging anymore.

The forum staff don't mind pointless toxic general drama as long as it drives forum engagement and user traffic.

All the great community members and helpful knowledgeable simmers were ran away from there long ago.

The most poorly managed and crappiest moderated place I've ever witnessed in flight simming. 

Mission accomplished!🏆🤣

 

7 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

Right, but they base their decisions around information that is possibly flawed and AI has no way of determining whether or not it is. It presents misinformation as fact which is no better than having a handful of random users who think reinstalling Windows will stop their bedroom light from flickering.

And it is easy to see when an AI response goes wrong, and to see when it is being extremely helpful. ChatGPT improved my VR performance. It had been at about 32 fps for 4 months. In a few minutes of time on ChatGPT it went up to 45+ and has stayed there ever since, on every flight. 

AI is a tool that can be misused. But at every step you can complain back at their answer, giving your exact reasons to it, and it will give you an improved answer. It is a wonderful tool that some will not take advantage of.

Based on the criteria that I asked of it, it composed an UserCfg.Opt file for me and invited me to download and try it out. That file is what instantly improved MSFS for me. More than if I had went and bought a high price new computer. It was fast and it was free. 

I did not figure out what I should ask ChatGPT. What I should ask was presented in here in another Avsim thread by someone else, Benjamin H. I did follow that. And in a few minutes MSFS improved a ton! That was two months ago on August 1. And the fps gains and more stable VR has remained ever since. 

 

18 hours ago, JonathanC said:

It does not matter if it IS censorship or not.. that is entirely irrelevant. It is a private company with a private forum. They have the right to decide what they will allow or not. There is no inherent right to "free speech" on a private forum. 

Yes, they censored your speech. No, that's not wrong or evil or incorrect or unfair or whatever. Yup, they don't want you criticizing them on their own forum and kicked you out.

You are free to complain elsewhere, as you are doing now, and MS cannot and will not censor your speech here. Many people here will agree with your technical point about triple monitors (I agree myself).. but you being removed for their forums has nothing to do with your technical point. 

 

@JonathanC Let me explain again, as my messages and the reason why i shared those screenshots are either being misunderstood or going in wrong direction. 

By the way, I did not get banned or kicked out.  as @SeedyL mentioned my account is still in good standing and i can still contribute. 

 

• My first screenshot: My message removed by moderator. Reason Code of Conduct. Totally normal, no problems. (To be more clear: I am not blaming the moderator here.)
• Seconds screenshot: Freedom of opinion (not freedom of speech). Moderator clearly informed me there is no freedom of opinion in those forums. Understood, again no problems. This shows i misunderstood the FORUM concept (in MSFS forums case) which i used to experience more than 25 years. Also I agree they can do whatever they want since it is their forum. In this case Example > AVSIM = Yes to Freedom of Opinion. They let me write my opinion here about my MSFS forum post that got censored. 
• The last screenshot i sent: Based on what happened, It supposed to be hidden due to code of conduct last year and exactly as i was saying, after posting the screenshot on here it was reported and hidden. I can criticize inconsistency here. If you apply a rule to user X, it must be applied everyone.  Again this is not moderator problem because they are volunteered. This is something that needs to be resolved by higher level. Huge change in forum environment negatively since August 2020 which is understandable due to popularity.

Now here comes the censorship part:

I wrote: "Since my previous comment got censored. i am re-writing without the criticism part. I dont understand why they do not mention or say anything about it. Why MSFS2024 or 2020 as a flight simulator does not have advanced fov and triple settings? (Still in 2025). They did not even say “it is not our priority to develop more triple setup options etc, may be in the future” or “we know there are some niche with triple setups, we will look in the future etc” which is surprising."

This was removed and this is what i called "despotism" and "censorship" from my point of view. Because the message i received from the moderator is kind of sound like i am protesting the moderators, which i wasn't.  I have been warned before by other moderators and immediately fixed what was wrong and moved on. 

This case is different.  I do not see anything wrong in my message (2nd one). May be apart from the word censored (what should i use instead flagged? Deleted? Removed? or against code of conduct? )?   Now i need to go and explain to the moderator that i do not have grudge/hate against him/her.

 Edit: Communicated with the moderator and editing to be fair. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 24, 2025Oct 24 by AOZ67

I’m kinda lost as to the point of this now and am stepping away from this thread. It doesn’t make sense to me. Hope you find whatever resolution you’re seeking 

It's just flogging a dead horse, it really is.  Sometimes you just have to move on and stop wasting your own time.

It seems rather than take on all feedback onboard they pick and choose what they want to read and pass on to the developers and that right there is a good enough reason not to use the official forum, of all the many forums I've been a part of over the years the best ones are (and continue to be) where the developers actively engage with the community on the forum/discord and don't hide behind "community moderators". MSFS Official isn't on it's own, I've encountered many like it before and they've all been places to avoid posting.

18 hours ago, JonathanC said:

I think that makes it quite clear why the previous commentator's posts were removed

Reading them didn't give you a clue? The tone of @AOZ67 in his comment at the official forum was not constructive at all...

6 hours ago, Rimshot said:

Reading them didn't give you a clue? The tone of @AOZ67 in his comment at the official forum was not constructive at all...

That is correct and the first message was removed for this reason. My mistake was based my old message and some other user messages, i thought that may be tolerated and i was wrong.

The second one is there now after i discussed it with the moderator and nicely and briefly told what was wrong in it. (1st sentence was against code of conduct, which i disagree, but i fixed it.)

The reason why i posted on AVSIM is to see people's opinion and based on different comments i have read so far, it was a correct choice. 👍 

Edited October 25, 2025Oct 25 by AOZ67

On 10/23/2025 at 12:35 PM, JonathanC said:

I think the problem is not with the MSFS forums here.. 

Broken clock being right twice a day is a thing.

 

On 10/24/2025 at 12:03 PM, SeedyL said:

Hello @JonathanC,

As a general rule, we don't normally discuss actions taken by our volunteer community moderators publicly, but I do want to clarify a few points regarding your quoted text above:

• Everyone is welcome to post criticism about MSFS on the official forums. We never remove negative feedback posts solely because they're negative. Anyone who spends even five minutes browsing the official forums will find plenty of negative feedback there, all of which is allowed.
• In almost all cases whenever someone claims they were "censored" for posting negative feedback, it wasn't what they said but how they said it. When posting negative criticism (which, again, is both permitted and welcomed on the forums), we do have the very reasonable requirement that the criticism be both constructive in nature and expressed in a respectful manner.
• This particular individual was not "kicked out". They received a reminder about the Code of Conduct via a DM (not even an official warning) from one of our volunteer community moderators. Their account is still in good standing, and they may continue posting on the official forums normally.

Also, please remember that all private forums, including right here on AVSIM, have expected behaviors and norms to which posters are expected to adhere. For example, here is some text copy/pasted directly from AVSIM's Terms of Use, which is very similar to some aspects of the Code of Conduct on the official forums:

https://www.avsim.com/AVSIM Pages/terms_of_use.html/

 

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

I find it interesting that the MSFS community managers are now coming to third party forums to tell users they've banned for negative feedback that they don't remove negative feedback. That's fun to see.

As a retired 5 year moderator on the official MSFS Forums, I can see "most" points here. I was one of several moderators to try to get the Code of Conduct relaxed over the years. Moderators are end users of MSFS and will assist on escalating bugs in MSFS.

However, please keep in mind that all moderators have moderator guidelines issued by MS to uphold the Code of Conduct.

Bans/Silences are approved by MS and all CM's and some Asobo staff can view all messages and deleted posts by all users of the forum. Especially any messages sent by a moderator. 

Also, all your DM's on the forum can be read by MS/Asobo.

I see some posting on here where they were not banned. It's amazing how much is NOT said about why they were banned.

Myself and other moderators generally go over the warning limits of the Code of Conduct before escalating a ban on users.

If you have any questions, concerns, issues, contact the Microsoft Community Team here:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/welcome-to-the-public-forums/121637

To Note: One of the CM's has blocked DM's of which I disagree they block them. All CM's should be openly available to DM. That current CM is: Chewwy:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/u/chewwy94
 

Sincerely,
Hester40MT (retired from the MSFS Forums)

Edited January 24Jan 24 by Jancey27

Well, then you could at least finally confirm that this «post hidden by community flags» is nothing than a balant lie 🤣

23 hours ago, Jancey27 said:

That current CM is: Chewwy

No surprise there.  Attention-seeking, celebrity wannabe YouTube personas should never be chosen as moderators.   Too many agendas and too much self-interest (with a sprinkling of narcissism in this case).

Chewwy is not volunteer moderator. He was hired by MS. Although he does moderate on the forum, but don't confuse a "volunteer moderator" with a "CM". All "CM's" are employed and paid by MS. They set the "rules" for all volunteer moderators.

22 hours ago, AnkH said:

Well, then you could at least finally confirm that this «post hidden by community flags» is nothing than a balant lie 🤣

That is a standard response from the MSFS Forum software (Discourse). I have asked if this wording can be changed, but it cant. When an auto flag comes in on a post or if users on the forum flag a post, that flag is sent to moderators (any admins, CM's, volunteer moderators) to review. A moderator will then review or reject the flag. The word "community" means anyone using the forum (Admins, CM's, moderators or any user that is active on the forum). It's not a "lie".

See: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/flagging-a-post-how-and-when-to-flag/716904

Edited January 25Jan 25 by Jancey27