Censorship in official MSFS forums

[tpete61 235]

4 hours ago, hansb57 said:

You're a guest at forums. As a guest you dont set the rules. It's as simple as that.

Because you are used to a certain degree of freedom on Avsim doenst mean other forums use the same standards.

This forum has it's issue's too so not much better here to be honest.

 

[Piotr007 170]

We need to vote for free speech and pass a reform. 

Censorship is so outdated. It even wasn't part of the Cursus Honorum🤣.

Jokes aside, msfs forums are far too sensitive on this matter. It should become more lenient.

[Bond 129]

Mods hide it but they don't have the guts to say, so they make up like it's the community doing it.....

Edited January 29 by Bond

[inker 12]

I agree with you. I too have had replies hidden that I just do not understand. And I've been locked for 7 days and had to pinky swear to adhere to the rules.

The last post that they didn't like, which caused me to abandon the forums over there and move here:

 

I’m generally very happy with my Alpha and Bravo, and was really considering the Charlies too, however decided to not want to wait any longer so bought something else.

I’m very conflicted about this. For us flight simmers it would be great if this company existed, and continued to push out products, in good quality at a reasonable price. But the guy seems in way over his head on the business side of things. So what if he finds a new partner, what serious partner would want to invest in this? Sounds like a ton of outstanding, unsolved issues and financial debt. Not to mention the publicity nightmare the brand has suffered.

I would be very cautions of buying something else from them in the medium term, even and perhaps especially if another email comes promising everything is solved, orders are open again. What is to say he’s not simply dumbing inventory as a last ditch, you’d once again be left with with no support.

I think the brand is dead…"

This was in the Honeycomb news thread.

"Your post was flagged as inappropriate: the community feels it is offensive, abusive, to be hateful conduct or a violation of our community guidelines."

Half the threads you open they find some rules about you can only post by using their template, the other half you can't discuss tools they don't like (like the atmospheric tool before the latest SU, or the dynamic LOD) and then they just lock threads. In the past you could see the post that got flagged, but they took that away about a year ago. Since then more and more stuff get's flagged and hidden.

Like someone said, their place, their rules, but it's becoming more and more useless to follow what is going on as you can only read what they approve of.

Edited January 29 by charliearon
Removed attempted swearing! Use the emojis!

[Bobsk8 12,855]

The moderators on that forum are way beyond brain dead.

[Keirtt 590]

I'd have to agree and echo what others are saying. I've had challenges on their forum as well. Had my posts hidden by a mod and when they followed up with me, I explained that I didn't like the idea of it saying the "community" when in reality it was the mod who was doing it. Stuff gets flagged way too frequently over there.

[hansb57 501]

I personaly dont care if they hide my posts. My voice is not so important that I feel everybody should read it.

As long as you dont care to much, why be bothered with it.

[arsenal82 120]

One of the worst forum ever created for FS; Ms would be better off shutting it down for good.

[St Mawgan 1,405]

I wouldn't go there to word not allowed and moan as I wouldn't expect posts to last but I actually prefer the structure there and find a couple of the forums useful. Only had one post hidden as far as I know but, I got over it. 

[Vitold69 47]

3 hours ago, JYW said:

Exactly as Dillon says, I suspect at the corporate or 'Jorg' level, they've no idea this is happening.

Could it be forum support mods are based in Russia? 💀

[aniiran 433]

Preach!  I got a post "flagged by the community" when I typed.  "Simply uninstalling 8 cities worth of photogrammetry isn't a fix for the blurry textures and bumps at DFW caused by the Arlington photogrammetry, can we please find an actual fix like just removing Arlington from the package or getting different Arlington photogrammetry, or actually finding the source of the conflict?"  I guess that was too derogatory to ask for a fix and offer suggestions.  It must have been my tone. It was too aggressive.

[Reader 2,034]

 

For the thin-skinned, internet forums and social media are not the most hospitable places to be.
At every such place can be found moderation that does not please everyone, moderation that
does not even conform to its own rules, users who cannot be pleased, users whose only purpose
in life is to take shots at everyone else, users who have undisclosed motives behind what they post
and so on.

Between all of those are the voices of reason, who try to contribute usefully, who do not need to do
anyone down and who apply the forum rules in an even-handed and sensible way.

Such is life and the option is always there not to visit, or visit and not contribute, or indeed to contribute
in a polite and pleasant manner.
In the case of the latter, the response will more often than not be equally polite and pleasant, hence 
the expression "reap what you sow".

The bottom line is indeed that you are a forum user and if you choose to post what you wish, you must
accept that the forum moderators can do also as they wish and that you might not like that, especially
if you cannot tell the difference between a polite statement or question and a sarcastic or just plain rude post.
 

 

[YVR_23 54]

Microsoft owns it so what do you expect?

[AnkH 2,282]

2 hours ago, Reader said:

The bottom line is indeed that you are a forum user and if you choose to post what you wish, you must
accept that the forum moderators can do also as they wish and that you might not like that, especially
if you cannot tell the difference between a polite statement or question and a sarcastic or just plain rude post.

While I totally agree if we talk about a forum like avsim forums, I do not entirely agree on product-related forums like the official msfs forum, where you are also asked as a customer for feedback on the product you did pay for for example. As such, it is kinda "necessary" to participate over there, it is also one of the sources for bug reports etc., official statements are published over the forums and and and. It is, at least to me, something completely different compared to an entirely "recreational" forum like avsim.

And as I wrote and others posted: many, many censored posts do not obviously violate the Code of Conduct, are far away from being "rude" or "sarcastic" and as I said, this "community flag" thing is a joke. So yes, in the end I must accept this, but I can still write my disagreements with the way they treat forum users over there, no?

[cj-ibbotson 81]

8 hours ago, AnkH said:

It was a reply to the comment of one of the mods in this thread here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/aerial-ground-tiles-changing-popping-in/547197/1028

Basically, I was just supporting an earlier post of stormraider1985 in the thread saying that although it has this "bug logged" tag and was part of an Q&A, nothing was done about the issue since then. Which is 100% true as the issue still exists as on the first day it was reported back in October 2022, it even got worse on some regions since then. So yes, I basically said that nothing was done since October 2022 and that the "bug logged" tag is useless piece of information as illustrated by other long-time bugs carrying this tag for months or even years. 

That's basically it. Only facts 😉 

I was following that thread for a long time and recommended to some that they should use the Map Enhancement Mod and use Google Maps imagery instead of Bing.  The problem stopped as soon as I used Google.  I got a private message from a moderator saying my comments had been hidden or deleted and from memory also warned that I would be banned if I continued to mention the mod.  They have claimed for a long time that it is "bug-logged" but there has been absolutely no comment from Asobo, the odd comment from moderators is not enough.

They also appear to be scared that members of the sim community appear to be able to fix issues they themselves fail to resolve.  I hear that any mention of the Frame Generation or Adaptive LOD mods also gets deleted.  I rarely visit those forums now.

Edited January 29 by cj-ibbotson