An Open Letter to the Moderation Team: Preserve Neutrality

RPG Maker Chat
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Hello, I want to address some major pitfalls that may ruin this forum just like rpgmakerweb was ruined for many of us, which is biased moderating.

First, please strictly vet everyone who applies for a moderation position. Many individuals with commercial interests or personal agendas may try to become moderators. Once in power, they will protect their own interests, run smear campaigns against competitors, and ban anyone who asks difficult questions or offers criticism. The moderation team must remain completely neutral.

Second, please avoid automated systems like downvotes or community flags that let users hide or delete posts. Allowing strength in numbers to dictate content moderation is a massive mistake. Organized groups will weaponize these features to coordinate attacks against valid criticisms. These groups in the rpgmakerweb forums used to deliberately start flamewars just to give a biased moderator an excuse to lock the thread and stop any discussion that did not benefit the commercial interests of certain groups. It was a common used strategy to control the narrative in English official community channels.

While crowd-sourced flagging might work in Japan, Western online communities are highly polarized. Users will mass-report opposing views regardless of the facts, turning the forum into an echo chamber.

If someone posts a critique or a controversial opinion, the response should be open communication backed by facts, not hiding the post or using community notes to smear the author. Please keep this platform unbiased and open to discussion so we don’t repeat the “fit in or get out” attitude that drove people away from the older official RPGMaker community forum and Discord server.

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Visustella and Plugins
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I saw the same thing on the old forums and I agree with you, this advice is sound. I hope they end up staying totally neutral and fact-based. It’s ok for people to disagree too.

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I leave posts up unless they’re NSFW, in which case they’re gone. I’ll lock a thread if needed though. Some posts teeter the line on our Prohibited Conduct rule (Section 5(i) in English, 4(i) in the Japanese text).

https://guild.rpgmakerofficial.com/t/terms-of-service/8

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I don’t have much to add other than the fact that I agree with this completely. I have nothing against VisuStella (I used to, but I buried that hatchet long ago) but I really do think the special darling treatment they got over at RMW needs to be over with.

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Thank you, so far it feels more neutral/fair, thanks for being a good mod!

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I’m hoping flags and reports will slow down some here soon. RPG Maker has very passionate people apparently. :sweat_smile:

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They are very passionate for sure!

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Thank you for listening. I did not mention any specific names because my post was directed at a broader, general issue. My goal is to prevent problems in the future, regardless of which group is involved. Since I could not find a contact button, I opened this discussion, and I hope the entire moderator team can discuss this potential issue. No matter what anyone’s stance on the matter is, neutrality should be aimed for. I hope this post will not dwell on past grievances, but instead remain a general conversation to raise awareness so we can avoid repeating mistakes as described. I only used past experiences, which people can agree or disagree with, to illustrate my point.

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As long as people don’t mistake neutrality as “giving equal balance to truth and falsehoods”, I can get behind this.

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One cannot uncover truth if they bury it with pretense community reports just because they do not want to hear it.

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I do not believe in neutrality. It’s just bias that is kept hidden.

The forum should have a specific expressed goal, which it should remain biased towards. And when people come in, acting in opposition to that goal, they should be dealt with.

Running a small RPG Maker community (via discord) of my own (by myself as the sole admin/moderator). My goal has been to finish quality games using RPG Maker, and encourage others to do the same.

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And so
 when someone comes in, and starts provoking members and distracts everyone from working on their game. I pull them to the side, block their access from the rest of the community, and ask them, “What are you working on? Where is your project?”, And almost always, they don’t have one. Or have been neglecting it.

Meaning: They aren’t here for (or can’t invest in) the goal of what the community is for. Hence they are just here to mess around, be a nuisance, cause distraction for others, unnecessarily argue & make mountain out of a mole hill. (An idle mind is the devil’s workshop, after all.)

The goal of the old English RPG Maker Web forum (and many of the communities they had their tentacles in) was to provide a welcoming place for RPG Maker users where they felt like they belonged (including themselves & their friend group). In consequence, people who disrupted that- no matter how contributing they were or how accomplished they were as a game-dev, they would be booted out. If enough members complained about a certain member or felt icky with them being in the community, and would threaten to leave the forum if that user wasn’t banned, then even if the member did not break any rules or receive a warning, they would get kicked & banned unfairly to appease the sentiments of many. (A reason why in my community. Anyone who requests someone be banned, gets banned/severely-punished instantly. As it’s a way for members to harass moderators & admins.)

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People don’t generally care for ‘truth’. They care for whatever serves their goals. And they will bend the truth or highlight only a part of it, to whatever serves their goal. Hence (ideally), decide on what that goal is, and announce it to the community.

With a shared goal, people can put their differences to the side (during moments of conflicts) and can remain focused, help each other, and achieve greatness.

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I always play pure neutral. I’m free to dictate my own rules! (without being chaotic).

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Another mod here, but not actively on RPG Maker-related moderation at this time.

I would like to clarify something: we will not tolerate personal attacks at all, for any reason.

If you attack someone, even in self defense, you will open yourself up to being moderated.

If someone posts questionable content, report it to the mods and we will deal with it. Do not engage, just escalate.

Being a Japanese company, GGG has clear rules on what kinds of language are allowable, and anything that can be labeled as slander or libel is completely unacceptable AT ALL TIMES. This is in accordance with Japanese law, which does not allow slander or libel even if there is truth in the reason for the comment.

Attacking someone’s way of life or personal beliefs or getting overly emotional at how a post you made was received are all grounds for potential moderation. Even attempting to create drama for the sake of drama is technically a violation of the Terms. OP is lucky that they did not mention any names when they created the post because that would have been considered an attack given the tone of the post.

We take section 5 of the terms very seriously as they are as much legal mandates on GGG to enforce as they are rules for the community to follow.

If anyone is unclear to the extent of the interpretation of section 5 of the Terms of Service, I will be happy to provide additional clarity.

To sum up, discussions need to be polite, respectful, and focused on creative & useful criticism. Anything else is open to interpretation and possible moderation.

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Support on what you just said <3

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Pls consider LGBT-pro posts be NSFW! We must protect our kids and hinder them from falling into the inhumane confusion pits!! Sorry, just had to say this. Bcause I have few Christian friends, who make good looking RPG Maker projects, just practically abandoned their games when they saw so many anti-lgbts posts discouraged and anything that is oopinated against it would cause post deletion, warning and even ban

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Normally I would delete this, but I am leaving your post up so I can make a very clear message.

Just a couple of posts above, I specifically said “Attacking someone’s way of life or personal beliefs or getting overly emotional at how a post you made was received are all grounds for potential moderation.”

By calling someone else’s belief “inhumane”, you literally just attacked someone else’s way of life and belief.

We are a neutral ground for all people to interact. If you cannot behave like a polite adult around people who have a different belief about certain behaviors, then this may not be the forum for you.

You’re free to believe what you want, but you need to be a polite and respectful person to be allowed to post on the GUILD.

This is your one and only warning.

And to anyone else on these forums, there will be no second chances going forward.

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If it needs to be spelled out, labelling people’s sexuality and gender expression as NSFW is anti-LGBT. Equality here means that whatever is your sexuality and gender expression, should be held equal to heterosexual and cisgender people. Labelling it as NSFW is discrimination.

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I think it would be fair to say that any sexualization, whether it is LGBT or hetero, should not be allowed.
Anything that is inappropriate in front of children should not be allowed here.

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Sexual content will of course need to be handled appropriately. I don’t know what the plan is there for the RPG Maker team, but the Action Game Maker side has a general rule of not allowing adult content on the forum. Whether this will change or not is not something I am privy to at this time.

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I imagine “adult content” means pronography. Most devs working with LGBT themes are not doing anything close to pornographic. Most openly LGBT devs I know are just creating weird and quirky characters for a broader message of being your true authentic, weird self. It wouldn’t be any more NSFW than Steven Universe which is literally a Saturday Morning cartoon

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