[2018] PINNED: A message to the Stellaris Steam forum:

Hello everyone. Some of you may have seen me around. I handle the Steam forum reports as well as the User Generated Content (Workshop, Guides, etc.). I handle 99% of the reports around here.

I wanted to clear the air about a few things.

1. People who support the game/Paradox don't get banned/warned.

This is not true. I don't care if you've been supporting the game for 10 years or 10 days. If you break the rules, I will execute the appropriate punishment based on your past infractions/content.

So then why do people who disagree with popular opinions/Paradox get in trouble more than those who support Paradox?

I've thought about this and have come up with a simple explanation. Those who disagree can sometimes get very defensive and argumentative in their post. I’ve seen the term “fanboi” a lot lately, and that only baits the Paradox supporters to reply in a negative way and/or report the user.

So the problem isn’t that I’m on the Paradox fan’s side. It’s that they are being called names with negative connotations and report the person who is doing so. I come in and give that person a warning/ban. When you have a lot of fans on a forum (which naturally, you do), there is essentially more reports on one person if that person breaks the rules. If you have been banned for having a negative view, I promise you, it wasn’t your opinion. It was the way you delivered it. If you want to discuss any prior bans on this topic, reply saying “I’d like to discuss this with you” and I’ll send you a private message and we can go over any infractions you have.

2. Paradox employees don’t look at the Steam forums.

Devs rarely look at the Steam forums, that is true. They spend enough time as it is on the main forums. However, this is not to say that no one is looking at the Steam forums. I am in close contact with the devs and report to them if I see anything out of the usual on the steam forums. You have to understand that the Steam forum is only a small sample size of the whole player base. There is on average nearly 20,000 players playing the game. If some people complain about x, y, z on here, don’t think Paradox doesn’t hear you. We hear you. Just know that it would be best if you were to make a constructive post on the main forums so that devs could access it more easily. Chances are, there might be a whole thread already on the main forums about different things you might agree with.

3. Why did I get banned but not warned?

I handle reports from oldest to newest. If I see your name reported multiple times in my report queue, the ban will come from the sum of all those reports rather than just warning you a bunch of times and then banning you.

A few other notes:
Replying with +1 is considered spam. Quoting someone and just posting it without adding anything to the post is considered spam.
Bumping is not allowed, so don’t bump threads.
Swearing is not the worse thing in the world, but please refrain from doing so. Some posts seem okay except they have a lot of swear words and that doesn’t look nice. Keep in mind that Stellaris is rated PEGI 7.


So how do you ensure that you don’t get warned or banned? Well, I highly recommend you take a look at this guide: Rules & Tips for Steam Community: Contributing Positivity and Avoiding Bans

Remember, I’m here to help. I don’t like banning people because that means less users. Don’t be a jerk on the forums and you’ll be fine. And please use the report button!

If any of you have any questions about anything or want to make a comment/discuss any of these points, please feel free to do so in this thread. Let’s have a constructive, civil discussion about the forums. Any complaints you want to make, or maybe there are a few things you’d like me to relay to the devs or Susie (Stellaris Community Manager), then please do so here!

Paradox. My title is Community Ambassador.

Originally posted by CysteicAcid: Are you an employee of Valve or Paradox or neither?

EDIT:

This is true, but then I can say that I will enforce the rule of "Do not post any content containing the following: Abusive language, including swearing."

Originally posted by Desolator: Tiny little pedantic addition / correction to your post: PEGI doesn't rate online interaction specifically for the reason you mentioned. Expecting an online discussion to not involve swearing when most conversations online "auto include" them is a bit over the top. Other than that it's nice for the people who don't use the forums to get a reply here.

I see what you mean. I'll remember this next time. I usually give bans without warnings when a user is very toxic and was deserving of a ban, but what you said has a point. If there is no warning, then they can't change their behavior.

Originally posted by Jaded Wrath: Shouldn't ban people without a warning imo. Doesn't allow for them to reform.

Hello! Nice to meet you too.

Originally posted by Stormsong the Fallen: Hi Trance, nice to meet you!

EDIT:

Interesting question. No, I try my hardest to be impartial. If I see someone breaking the rules, even if they have a nice post, I'll usually send a "Custom Message" to them alongside a warning explaining what parts of the post were not okay. The only times where something similar was a problem was when someone was breaking a rule while I agreed with them. Just because I agree with the user, doesn't mean I shouldn't be fair and give them a warning/ban depending on what they posted.

Originally posted by CysteicAcid: Trance, have you ever encountered a person breaking the rules with such wits and taste, that you just had to let the person go free from a ban? If so, share the story please.

The only permabans I've ever given out, iirc, are things relating to piracy. Otherwise, I don't remember ever permabanning anyone on the forums. At most, I'll give them the longest ban duration. (I could be wrong since I have a bad memory, but the point is, it is extremely rare for me to permaban someone.

On that note, when I say ban, I mean temp ban as in a few days, week, or month ban. Yes, I agree that a 3 day ban can be a warning. To answer your question, I moderate the Steam hubs for Stellaris, HOI4, CK2, and EU4. With this new patch it's over 25+ reports a day (for Stellaris discussions), not counting replying to people who make a comment on their ban/warning. On top of this, the Stellaris workshop is constantly spammed, so I do mass banning over there for duplicate mods etc.

Originally posted by EleventhStar: This reads as if all bans are instant permabans, which i don't think is the case. If the offense is severe enough I think everybody understands if a short duration ban serves as the warning itself.

Out of curiosity, and i understand if you don't want to get into this topic, what is a normal amount of reports to get a day/week?

Still trying to find out if they'll fly me over to help out with it all.

Originally posted by Army Pea: Hi Trance.

I’ll buy a beer at the next PDX con
:)