Censorship in official MSFS forums

[F737MAX 5,738]

29 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

Now they started removing posts without leaving any trace.

I hope you are not surprised by this? The MSFS forums are just another marketing channel which MS has now decided to 'curate its content'.

For example:

Poll: Is MSFS?

• Excellent
• Just wonderful

Posts that suggest otherwise will be flagged by the community mods and will be temporarily permanently hidden. 🙂
 

Edited March 11 by F737MAX

[AnkH 2,282]

Those forums are a full joke the longer you think about it. No tools making the sim better like the AutoFPS tool are allowed being mentioned (not even in PM), in Bug threads moderators continue to teach contributors about that bug threads are not meant for discussion, if you have a thread with votes, you are not allowed to link to this thread from another one dealing about the same topic, and and and.

The main aim of those forums is to have a bunch of yaysayers praising the product. End of the story. And to calm down the naive ones with stupid stuff like "bug logged" or "feedback logged" tags pretending that devs are working on certain bugs. If they do, nice, but do not expect feedback and if you do, be prepared that the "community" flags your post. 

Ridiculous, just straight ridiculous. Only thing that drives me more nuts is the hard-coded smile in Jorgs face during Q&A sessions.

[hansb57 501]

I see the offical forum more like an info gathering tool for MS/Asobo. They want get a sense of what;s going on and are not interested in ongoing discussions.

They often reference the forums as a source of intel for them.

 

[Reader 2,034]

You are mistaking commercially owned forums for places where you can post whatever you want to.
If you cannot help yourself, there are plenty of other outlets for your erudite interpretations of the present.

[Vali 85]

I think not only the moderation, but the implementation itself is pretty bad, I find it most of the times useless for me. Therefore I appreciate Avsim even more 🙂

[AnkH 2,282]

25 minutes ago, hansb57 said:

I see the offical forum more like an info gathering tool for MS/Asobo. They want get a sense of what;s going on and are not interested in ongoing discussions.

The error many companies do, instead of getting true customer feedback, they have a forum full of white-washed yaysayer stuff. As soon as you criticise, your stuff gets removed, so if (!) Asobo Devs really rely on feedback from the forums, it would explain why some stuff never improves.

Sometimes truth needs to hurt and if you deliver rubbish, it is important that at least one persons is able to tell you so. Otherwise you will never improve. But I am aware that this is a mindset many people do not like nowadays, they rather prefer the "no-harm approach" instead of clear cut words. 

[eslader 1,814]

One thing a lot of forums are moving toward now is using AI to either supplement or replace the human moderators. This creates problems, because artificial intelligence is 50% a lie: It should really be called Parroted Stupidity based on how it actually works. It's bad enough when word filters are in place, because there's a tacit assumption when, for instance, you ban a word that refers to stupid people that it will always be used to call people names using that word, and then it gets deleted even when used in contexts that aren't calling other people that word.

AI is worse because at least with word filters they can be tweaked or removed when the humans in charge notice they're doing dumb things, but AI is often just set loose and then never looked at again with the result being that it goes on a deleting rampage without any apparent rhyme or reason. I noticed other comment sections doing that a lot lately. A lot of comments get removed as spam even though they very clearly are not spam, and it's because the AI doesn't understand what spam is.

 

[MarcG 3,031]

The censorship over there has got worse in recent months, I've seen perfectly well written posts detailing issues get removed because they dared stray into the negative. As previously mentioned the very fact they've locked a discussion thread (at least one) on an issue is simply appalling, it's like they're actively preventing people from discussing issues and yeah the flagging system is simply terrible.

As above they're making a rod for their own back, you need to listen too and digest all forms of feedback in order to help make your product better, something that isn't allowed on that forum unless it's kissing the bare behind of the developers and playing Happy Clappy with the mods.

[Reader 2,034]

Once again, the main point that is being ignored here is that their forum is sponsored.
It is not a free for all and however indignant you may be, it is entirely up to the owners
what is allowed to remain there and what is not.
While your complaints may be allowed to stay here and at social media platforms, there
is no reason at all why they cannot choose, using their own parameters, what is allowed
to stay and what is not.
It's just a fact of life. The option not to go there at all remains.
Mine is to scan and see if there is anything useful and move on.

Edited March 11 by Reader

[cavaricooper 2,615]

The fact remains- THANK GOD FOR TOM’S VISION. This is the only place I go daily for my FS news, and despite its shortcomings… it’s by far the best source for all things related to FS..

TA TOM- God Speed!

C

[F737MAX 5,738]

1 hour ago, Reader said:

it is entirely up to the owners
what is allowed to remain there and what is not.

Oh, absolutely. Like all fora, what you can say and do is limited by the site owners (Avsim is no different).

*However*, in the past few months there has been a change of tone / lowering of the moderation threshold that has seen far more posts 'flagged by the community and temporarily hidden' than was the case previously.

Useful posts on how to tinker with settings files are rapidly vanished and warnings issued, threads that relate to the same issue are not permitted to be linked (for fear of showing how commonplace the problem is?), and critical posts providing useful feedback are also disappeared.

The general direction that MSFS2020 and its official forums has taken since the end of last year has not been good—I'm visiting both a lot less than I used to.

Let's hope that MSFS2024 changes the fortunes of both the sim and the forums.