05/26/2011 04:15 PMPosted by Fedorah

Is there some new policy against posting in DDF? This is getting ridiculous.

From the Guidelines posted at the top of this (and every) forum:

Petition posts are frowned upon.

These are discussion forums and, as such, we ask that you hold discussions. Creating a thread to ask for replies as votes is not a discussion. Threads violating this guideline are subject to deletion.

From the forums Code of Conduct:

Spamming and Trolling

This category includes:

Excessively communicating the same phrase, similar phrases, or pure gibberish
Creating threads for the sole purpose of causing unrest on the forums
Causing disturbances in forum threads, such as picking fights, making off topic posts that ruin the thread, insulting other posters
Making non-constructive posts
Abusing the Reported Post feature by sending false alarms or nonsensical messages
Numbering a thread, IBTL, TLDR, or any other fad statements

If a player is found to have been spamming or trolling, he/she will:

Be given a temporary or permanent ban from the Battle.net forums, depending upon severity.

Our goal in these forums is to "provide you with a friendly environment where you can discuss ideas, give game play advice, role-play, and converse about any other aspects of Blizzard's games with other players," and we really enjoy conversing with you when we can (and it is appropriate to do so). Please don't forget that we're constantly looking for such occasions, and threads where posters are mainly insulting one another are the opposite of constructive.

On issues like this one, we have a lot of opportunity to talk and better understand the possibility of changes and how they will affect the game. Let's try to do that.

There is nothing asinine about them. They are, in fact, very lax rules, and Blizzard gives a lot of leeway in how people are allowed to post. The point behind them is to actually foster a discussion, rather than just a bunch of worthless trash.

Saying /signed in some petition thread doesn't really tell Blizzard anything about what the players are thinking. It also makes for a damn boring read, which is exactly what the DDF has become lately. Too many people whining that something or other is broken and how mad they are about it, but not enough discussion on why something is broken, how something is broken, and how it could be better.

Class designers read these forums. I've seen them doing so. I've seen such at all hours of the week. They have very good reasons to do so.

Players should want the most direct line possible to the designers, since what we're talking about is communicating data and opinion on the game.

Anything that gets in the way of that communication should be stuff that most everyone wants removed, because doing so improves the signal. Ranting, contending that we don't understand a class, bumping, petitions... all have the effect of interfering with getting valuable feedback to the only people in the world who can actually do something about it.