Hi there,
Even a superficial look around will prove that there is plenty of criticism, constructive and not, leveled our way that is in no way censored or obstructed and always has been.
We moderate based on our forum guidelines, as one would and should expect.
Moderation occurs when forum rules are violated. If you have reason to believe that is not the case then please write a ticket to CS explaining the situation and they will have a look at it.
They do receive warnings…
What exactly are you saying?
Sorry, but I have to correct you here.
It's literally the CM's job to write a report every single week on sentiment regarding a wide variety of topics including specific issues brought up, questions we see frequently, and general sentiment. That joins a larger report that makes its way up.
The Forum is not the only medium through which we get feedback, so keep that in mind. There is Discord, Twitch, Social Media, Supertest, Clan Supertest, Privateers, Community Contributors, and even the Wiki Editors. When an issue shows up across multiple feedback sources, we know it's pervasive. If one person tells me in the forums that the Ohio is objectively worse than the Montana because 12 barrels is clearly better than 8, then that feedback won't likely go anywhere meaningful. When folks come into the forums and let us know that the survey regarding insurance questions really upset them - we notice.
I would be very surprised if you or anyone else were banned for saying something mundane to another user. We ban people for violating the EULA and Terms of Service - and it's not draconian. One of the most constant pieces of feedback we've received is that we're often too lenient on people causing trouble in-game, so we recently took a look at our rules and talked more thoroughly about how and when to enforce them.
Bans do get lifted. Sometimes we do make errors. Folks will write our CS and explain why they believe their chatban was in error due to a language or cultural discrepancy and we will have an internal discussion about it to see if we can verify that maybe we misunderstood. Sometimes that results in the ban being lifted. Sometimes it results in us determining the person is just trying to dodge consequences. It's not a guarantee either way.
There are actually many ways to poll the general Wows-playing population, and we frequently do!
How can you have a “wrong answer” on a survey?
I see folks make this claim frequently about the surveys closing when a “wrong answer” is given. There are surveys that are looking to find out answers and opinions to specific questions or subjects, so answering in a way that indicates little to no interest or experience in the subject may just end the survey.
”Wrong answer” would imply that there is a “right answer”. That’s not what a survey does - that’s what a test or quiz does.
Ah, I get what you mean here.
If the survey is asking how likely you are to recommend and your response of "Not likely" leads to the survey ending, people will feel as though their specific reasoning is not important, which makes it feel like a "wrong" answer because "right" answers lead to further questions.
I get that! Surveys are targeted, so it could be that the person was looking for "what are we doing right?" specifically rather than a broad-scale, "How do you feel about the game?" kind of survey. I can see why people would begin to infer things from that. Broadly speaking, the forums are most often a place where people come to air their grievances and give critical feedback, so I see where a survey on good things would be wanted and an in-game survey is a good way to do that.
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