How Do I Deal With Instigators in the Forums?

I’m so sorry you’ve lost sleep over an uncouth ne’er-do-well. It sounds like this player may have managed to come extremely close to violating the TOS, but didn’t quite make it over the line. Alas, you will run across folks who don’t play well with others from time to time, and as someone who wants to be an example of a good debater, your best bet is to support those who do play well with others and report or ignore those who don’t.

I took a brief look at the 34 pages of postings, and while it certainly does get quite heated, most of what I saw were people expressing their opinions and being polite. It’s possible I may have missed this particular poster, or possibly her posts have been removed.

Either way, you are kind to be concerned about the forum newbies, and I applaud you for wanting to make sure that they feel welcomed. My suggestion to you, and to others who enjoy civil debates, is to be welcoming to new posters even if you disagree with them. You could post something like “Welcome to the Pogo Forums! I understand what you’re saying, but here’s my feeling…” or if you see that they’ve been unfairly taken to task, you could simply say: “I’d just like to remind everyone that we’ve got new folks on here (welcome newbies!), and while things may get a little heated, we should be careful not to scare them off.” That way, you’re not only welcoming the newbies, you’re helping them understand that forums can be a little brutal at times. And you’re also letting them know that there are a lot of nice players as well.

For those readers who do use the forums, or readers who are thinking about it (if you haven’t done so already) please take a look at The Dos and Don’ts of Pogo Forum Posting! You’ll find some basic guidelines of forum etiquette.

Thank you for your letter and for your support. And I’m glad you like the new prize system.

To answer your question, let’s try to understand why players are feeling this way. There have been a lot of changes on Pogo, and for many people, these changes were unwelcome and unexpected. It’s normal for people to react unkindly about changes that have altered what they expect. Most likely these players, like you, were quite happy with Pogo just a little while ago, and due to these changes, they are now upset. Hopefully, we will be able to make them happy again.

There are the changes to the jackpots. As many players have eloquently and politely pointed out in the forum thread mentioned in the previous letter, they found the fewer, but higher, jackpots from before to be preferable to the new system of greater, but lower, jackpots of today.

Some of our games have been ported from Java to Flash. While Java has been problematic for a great number of players, so has Flash. Some players are having difficulty running their favorite games. To further the upset, Flash doesn’t allow you the use of the right-click function that was used in several games as part of the game.

So, it’s not surprising players have been complaining a lot more recently. Who can blame them? They are absolutely entitled to those feelings, and it’s not at all surprising that they would want to talk about it.

Of course, Pogo cares. We’ve been monitoring the message boards, reaching out to those having Flash issues, and addressing problems as soon as we are able. We continue to investigate how we can best resolve some of the Flash issues players are experiencing, and we have some very fun games and features coming.

As a business, Pogo must make changes to continue to grow and attract a greater audience. The last thing Pogo wants is for players to be upset, and we are doing what we can to address the Flash issues. The new prize system, however, won’t be changing. It does provide a greater number of prizes to more people. After some time hopefully the players who prefer the larger jackpots will accept it for what it is and move on.

Why do they still play? Why not go somewhere else? There are a couple of reasons. They hope that their Pogo fun will come back soon, and in many cases they have a lot invested in Pogo – badges, ranks, ratings, Mini items, etc… On some level they are still fans and they have hope that they’ll be able to enjoy Pogo again as they used to.

What can you do? Well, if you want to engage them in conversation, I recommend you do more listening than talking or defending Pogo. Sometimes people just need an ear to bend. Or, if you just want to play your games in peace, I recommend you employ the mute.

Oh the power of the forwarded e-mail! I’ve seen the origin of this rumor appear as a forwarded message in my Pogo Messages account, and several folks have, over the course of several years, asked about it.

Nobody has ever been booted off of Pogo for being overly talkative or chatty. The closest thing to “excessive chat” that can get someone into trouble is “screen scrolling” – the repeating of the same word, or general gobbledygook over and over again in the chat.

Basically, if you’re just engaged in a conversation and not violating the Terms of Service by using foul language or attempting to disrupt the flow of normal chat, then you have absolutely nothing to worry about.

Find out more about other rumors in the Pogo Rumors, Myths and Lies– Nettie Cuts ‘Em Down to Size! column from a couple of years ago.