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Threads going off topic

darlicious
Mayor / Maire

 Oracles please feel free to move this thread to the lounge as you feel fit. It seems as though a new category needs to be created to deal with community topic issues that are related to public mobile (as this is pm's community forum) that are phone related but not necessarily related to an issue caused by or offered by or not offered by pm. But are not lounge related topics like how great is it that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup?  This might satisfy users who have questions about phones, community etiquette, technology etc that are related to and can effect how users use the forum, their phone, data plans etc...with public mobile but is not directly related to solving an immeadiate issue. I.E. my data is not working! Nor will need a moderator to intervene to solve. Discussions in this new category could be given a lesser amount consideration towards community rewards but more than none that is given to posts in the lounge.

 Lately it seems but inevitably some threads have wandered off topic by no fault of any particular poster but continue off topic by way of users wanting to and interested in the new discussion. Coming from the top we have been told to avoid this but as a common user there is no way/power for us to change that other than to stop the discussion. It does not help users to be admonished by the powers that be for a thread that goes it's own way. If oracles have the power to move and merge threads...can a user make a new post/thread in the category that seems appropriate or in the future the "community" category and request that the oracles split the now off topic thread in the most reasonable place it has gone off topic and move it to the new thread and make a note to those who want to contribute to the original or the newly created thread where it is and what has changed?

42 REPLIES 42

@mimmo  It seems overwhelming the point of my post has been completely misunderstood.To put it simply the removal of rewards will not change that a certain percentage of the human population will always seek the approval of others. This is a scientific fact. This is the reason apps like Instagram and Twitter exist. Why does trump tweet? Because he constantly seeks the approval of others....he needs to be liked. The same exists here....seeking bravos soothes the need for approval its evidence they are liked. I could care less if I'm liked or not.

 

I do care....that my intent is not misunderstood....that I care about. And when the ban is lifted an apology and explanation will follow in regards to my post that was misunderstood in its intention. But until then and to satisfy @will13am  I will shut the heck up!

@will13am  I don't see how my post is Oracle bashing it is simply stating an opinion or is only an opinion agreeing with an Oracle allowed on this forum. It seems any opinion that does not tow the oracle line is considered "bashing". I suppose posting with my back up account is  defying the "spirit" of the ban but if that's the case I've been defying the spirit of the household ban for the past 71/2 months. I suppose giving a fake name defies the "spirit" of friendship as well. But if you want to display bullying behaviors with your words so be it. I guess I bash and you bully its all a matter of opinion in what is supposed to be an inclusive community forum. It seems those pedestals are far more important to you than you think they are as are exceedingly excessive bravos are to others.

mimmo
Retired Oracle / Oracle Retraité

@maximum_gato I read your post with some hostility which I find unneeded. 

 

Anyways as one of the Oracle's not near the top, I will say it lately has been hard to get a word in.  I do log in regularly, and often, but usually threads have an excessive number of replies repeating the same thing 5+ times.

 

  • I am not going to add another similar reply unless I honestly feel I can add something of value. 
  • I will try to correct a post if there is incorrect information
  • I have stopped calling posters out when they repeat something posted 30 or 60 minutes earlier as no one listens.
  • I will edit personal info when I see it, and move or split threads when warrented (don't get bravos for that)
  • I stay mostly away from the lounge as I have little interest it it's current topics Nor the negativity and hostility found in many of those threads.

Anyways have a great evening, say hi to your kitties and enjoy the Vancouver weather.

 

Edit, when I first joined rewards were much smaller.  But there was much less of this nastiness going on.  It might be time to return to the previous reward amounts.

 

 

 


@maximum_gato wrote:

@Naepalm  The removal of community rewards is a popular opinion among some.....mostly the OG's of the community many of which have free or drastically reduced phone bills due to loyalty and referral rewards or in the case of oracles a guaranteed $20 reward regardless of participation.

    Despite the competition for bravos and the top 3 positioning that nearly always equates to a top 1% badge and a $15 reward what is forgotten is that for approximately $500 monthly public mobile gets an online customer service platform that saves them millions of dollars in expenses, overhead and salaries to maintain a call based customer service system. Eliminating the community rewards would not eliminate the human need in some to gather bravos, likes or whatever else that certain people crave on this forum or many social media platforms. This is an ingrained psychological need stemming from people's childhood to gain approval from their parents that left unsatisfied has transferred in adulthood to seeking approval from anyone in the online world. Taking away rewards will not stop this kind of behavior for it is not the monetary reward they seek.....its a pseudo-popularity reward. Only some intense psychoanalysis can curb these attention seeking behaviors.


@darlicious , I tried really, really hard to bite by tongue and not say anything.  I am tired of the routine oracle bashing.  You can explain your point without giving us a poke in the eye.  I am certain that most members, yourself included would like to be anointed one day.  It is really career limiting to take these pot shots. 

 

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Sorry. I didn't realize I had responded to darlicious. She does a great job with customers but this endless freaking war is beyond ridiculous.

*poof* and my post magically reappears  for @Naepalm and @ShawnC13 perusal.....Screenshot_20200412-204753.pngScreenshot_20200412-204802.png

@maximum_gato maximum ruthless! 


@maximum_gato wrote:

@Naepalm  The removal of community rewards is a popular opinion among some.....mostly the OG's of the community many of which have free or drastically reduced phone bills due to loyakty and referral rewards or in the case of oracles a guaranteed $20 reward regardless of participation.

 


@Naepalm , what  @maximum_gato is saying is untrue, Oracles still need to participate and bring value to the community.  You can not get nominated and invited to the program and then do nothing to collect the monthly reward

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *

@Naepalm  The removal of community rewards is a popular opinion among some.....mostly the OG's of the community many of which have free or drastically reduced phone bills due to loyalty and referral rewards or in the case of oracles a guaranteed $20 reward regardless of participation.

    Despite the competition for bravos and the top 3 positioning that nearly always equates to a top 1% badge and a $15 reward what is forgotten is that for approximately $500 monthly public mobile gets an online customer service platform that saves them millions of dollars in expenses, overhead and salaries to maintain a call based customer service system. Eliminating the community rewards would not eliminate the human need in some to gather bravos, likes or whatever else that certain people crave on this forum or many social media platforms. This is an ingrained psychological need stemming from people's childhood to gain approval from their parents that left unsatisfied has transferred in adulthood to seeking approval from anyone in the online world. Taking away rewards will not stop this kind of behavior for it is not the monetary reward they seek.....its a pseudo-popularity reward. Only some intense psychoanalysis can curb these attention seeking behaviors.

 


@iliketotalk wrote:

@Naepalm goodnight all happy Easter!! opps I wasn't supposed to say that, here comes the phone police again 🤣😅😜😱


night! 

@Naepalm goodnight all happy Easter!! opps I wasn't supposed to say that, here comes the phone police again 🤣😅😜😱


@Naepalm wrote:

@ShawnC13 wrote:

@Naepalm , PM would like people to raise a trouble ticket through SIMon.  Many people direct members to private message the moderators and in most cases that is not how Public Mobile wants their customer service to run.


@ShawnC13  thanks makes sense so the mods don't get bogged down. 


@Naepalm SIMon will actually collect data they can use to see if there is a certain issue that is affecting more users at once and focus resources on that issue to get the biggest result.  It also helps the Moderators prioritize issues.  I missing reward is not as important as a line with no service.

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *


@ShawnC13 wrote:

@Naepalm , PM would like people to raise a trouble ticket through SIMon.  Many people direct members to private message the moderators and in most cases that is not how Public Mobile wants their customer service to run.


@ShawnC13  thanks makes sense so the mods don't get bogged down. 

@Naepalm , PM would like people to raise a trouble ticket through SIMon.  Many people direct members to private message the moderators and in most cases that is not how Public Mobile wants their customer service to run.

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *


@gpixel wrote:

@darlicious I was actually gonna make this post, but I thought it would be too rude. I've noticed the exact same thing where all it does is point you to a moderator. it's just rinse repeat, rinse repeat. it's just spamming the post. a lot of members aren't even reading through the whole post realizing that what they're posting has already been said. most of the answers aren't even helping the OP. if the OP was already directed to the moderators then leave it at that. if you're not gonna give  quality answers that actually helps the OP and just direct them to a moderator then don't bother. I think this discussion is good because they're definitely reading it. saving a buck or two isn't really worth it to me, but for me seeing all the complaints on Facebook and then actually having a different experience than them I actually wanna try to lead people to PM cause it's actually a good company. maybe not for the older generation (technology inclined) but for someone with a little bit of knowledge it's a great company in my opinion. that's why OP's need quality answers cause most of them are people who don't know much about technology. the community is supposed to be the help instead of the moderators. 


Speaking of going off-topic, I might just do that now, let me know if I need to make a new thread. Does it make sense to always point people to the moderator? I thought it made more sense to point them to the help page or SIMon. Some questions I noticed you can solve with a quick google search. But I'm good with doing the google search for them and posting a solution if it helps people out.


@darlicious wrote:

@computergeek541  I just realized my post commenting on the tweaking of the quality of posts.... disappeared just as i posted because i briefly lost my internet connection. Aargh and were as i can usually find the whole thing in my unmoderated items in this case i only have the first line in my drafts.....more to come on that later.

@will13am  Yes it is very interesting who has chosen to discuss this thread as I was expecting a few participants to be quite active and opinionated on its subject and the fact that it is still considered a discussion. All of the presumed interested parties are still online with the exception of one. So perhaps they are just monitoring and choosing not to comment for reasons only they know.


Feeling like an outsider looking in... are comments not actually calling people out promoted? If you guys ever felt that hey Naepalm dude you need to watch how much your posting or stay on topic or whatever the issue is I can tell you guys I don't have a problem with that. Again coming from guy that's been here three days LOL 


@srlawren wrote:

@will13am wrote:

How do you police this kind of nonsense?  No amount of post movements and categorization will fix it.  What people need to do is take stock of the effort they put in against the potential rewards they get out of it and recalibrate their time here.  Get a life so to speak.


@will13am I've said it before and I'll say it again:  there's an easy solution--stop giving out communtiy rewards.  Once that happens, the people that are actually in it to help will continue to do so, the people looking to make a quick buck will head to greener pastures, and the communtiy will be way better for it as a result.  I know that I'm in the minority with this opinion, but I really do think it would be for the best after the dust and outrage settled.


I totally agree with you on this remove rewards, but I'm new, so maybe that is frowned upon...


@will13am wrote:

@darlicious , TL;DR.  I am going to say the community at large is at fault, no specific finger pointing but guilt is not evenly spread of course.  When I joined the community forum 3 years ago, it was not nearly as active as today.  It has become a competition for the tiny amount of community rewards to the point that the waste of human capital is just astonishing.  Yet, people want that glory to be on the top of the leaderboard.  They are willing to camp here 18 hours a day and take short cuts like make multiple accounts and do self promotion to get there.  When there is nothing to respond to, people will continue to discuss existing and old threads to page 5 just to keep the post count up! 

 

How do you police this kind of nonsense?  No amount of post movements and categorization will fix it.  What people need to do is take stock of the effort they put in against the potential rewards they get out of it and recalibrate their time here.  Get a life so to speak.

 


This makes sense for sure. One question I would have is for the new people that have questions like myself. I have been looking through Old post just to see how this community started where they are going etc. I didn't realize that was frowned upon to discuss in the forum? 

Naepalm
Mayor / Maire

@darlicious 

 

I know I am new to the forum, like 3 days. And don't know much about what bravos do. But that being said have definitely seen threads that seem to be more like inception where there are two or three threads inside a thread. Which kind of organically happens. I don't think people try to do this but it ends up happening because of a comment made or something like that. 

 

Would you suggest if the comment being made is not on the same topic to open a new discussion and tag the person that you want to talk with about said topic?

 

I'm not sure how to handle this, as I said new to the rules, but say it and it shall be 🙂

 

Cheers

 

this reply has been deleted! 


@darlicious wrote:

Oh my! How interesting the way this discussion has wound it's way into "gaming" the system in the interest of earning community rewards. While mentioning this in my original post the intent of starting the conversation was more about where off topic conversations should be moved to....and whether they should be in discussions, a new category or the lounge.


This thread was very recently brought to my attention, and yes, this thread IS rather interesting, not only that it contains some of the same people that seem to be obsessed with so-called "gaming" of the forum, but also that the portions of the thread that have meandered their way into "gaming" are actually off-topic, and yet they remain in this forum, instead of the Lounge..... very interesting indeed. 🤔

Oh my! How interesting the way this discussion has wound it's way into "gaming" the system in the interest of earning community rewards. While mentioning this in my original post the intent of starting the conversation was more about where off topic conversations should be moved to....and whether they should be in discussions, a new category or the lounge. The lounge being a category for non pm related subjects and therefore contributions there do not have any influence on community rewards...and rightfully so. My proposal of a new category that is related to pm and it's community and may or may not count towards rewards but would satisfy those who feel their posts have merit in contributing value to the community as a whole rather than counting toward a possible community reward.

 The top secret formula and those who administer it seemingly have the ability to distinguish between a high post and/or bravo count and actual value added contributions made by members. My own curiosity of one new users bump from top 25% to top 10% and comparing my stats to his and then his to other top 10% and top 5% contributer s revealed a very interesting fact. More than anything the quality of the post and the value it adds to the community is the single largest factor in deciding who receives rewards and at what level. Otherwise how would a member with a comparatively very low post and bravo count recieve a relatively high top % ranking? Because that member had an almost exclusively high quality post ratio compared to all others. Hardly a solution from any of them, no stock answers hurriedly copied from a clipboard. Just insightful, educational and helpful posts that enriched the community and deservedly rewarded by the powers that be.

New public mobile customers or older ones who flood the community with poor posts will soon tire of ther efforts when they see no compensation for their time. This should not discourage those of you who know your contributions are valued and needed because of your individual expertise on certain subjects. But at the same time purposely taking to task certain members whose contributions are needed and wanted by many but feel slighted , annoyed or irritated by criticism  that is really unwarranted should only be directed at the actual would be gamers is directly causing members that we need and many who have responded to this thread to step back from the community. This is a very sad reality and i for one would hate to see public mobiles community become average and just like all the other "community forums" out there.

dabr
Mayor / Maire

Wow...trial by innuendo!  Unamed participants who are supposedly gaming the community rewards and haven't responded to this thread because they know they are guilty as charged by some in this thread? 

 

Disappointing and sad comments.

 

 

 

 

mh1983
Deputy Mayor / Adjoint au Maire

@sheytoon wrote:

@will13am wrote:

It has become a competition for the tiny amount of community rewards to the point that the waste of human capital is just astonishing. 

That's one of the reasons I've dialed back my time here. When someone responds to a question thoughtfully, it gets drowned out by 10 useless responses within a minute.

 

I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to the people asking for help. They're bombarded with irrelevant and contradictory information.


I agree. Sadly, community-driven forums without rewards are not much better.

Thanks @ShawnC13 and @darlicious, that's very kind of you to say.

 

@Anonymous I think your contributions are excellent and none of my criticisms were directed at you.

Anonymous
Not applicable

So nice with the veiled implications.

For my lack of immediate discussionary participation...maybe I have some semblance of a life.

Excuse me for not sitting at my computer and monitoring everything. And obviously I can't be the only person that these thoughts might be directed at.

So I'll say this...interesting that many of the participants are those outside of the competitive side of this place where everybody else is competing.

I stepped away a while ago as I saw the decreased traffic due to perhaps a couple factors. 1. alleged by the host success with the chatbot. 2. seeming to have fewer problems where the mods seem to have caught up and perhaps people are bypassing the community to get their issues solved.

So with what I perceive as less traffic and all the regulars and new keeners banging away..meh...I'm good. So now I dabble. Ignore some things, answer some things. Whatever. I certainly miss that endorphin hit of seeing somebody on their way...but yeah...time.

Yes who knew the @sheytoon tag is just as effective as the bat signal? Maybe more so as I'm not completely sure but I have a feeling @sheytoon  doesn't have to don a molded rubber chest, six pack and codpiece costume and cape and warm up the batmobile to come to the rescue of user with tech issues.


@sheytoon wrote:

@will13am wrote:

It has become a competition for the tiny amount of community rewards to the point that the waste of human capital is just astonishing. 

That's one of the reasons I've dialed back my time here. When someone responds to a question thoughtfully, it gets drowned out by 10 useless responses within a minute.

 

I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to the people asking for help. They're bombarded with irrelevant and contradictory information.


@sheytoon and that is a huge loss to our community when you scaled it back.  It was noticed for sure and there are many others that have done the same.  I am glad you check in still and I know you get to posts you get tagged in so we can always do that lol

 


I am happy to help, but I am not a Customer Support Agent please do not include any personal info in a message to me. Click HERE to create a trouble ticket through SIMon the Chatbot *

@computergeek541  I just realized my post commenting on the tweaking of the quality of posts.... disappeared just as i posted because i briefly lost my internet connection. Aargh and were as i can usually find the whole thing in my unmoderated items in this case i only have the first line in my drafts.....more to come on that later.

@will13am  Yes it is very interesting who has chosen to discuss this thread as I was expecting a few participants to be quite active and opinionated on its subject and the fact that it is still considered a discussion. All of the presumed interested parties are still online with the exception of one. So perhaps they are just monitoring and choosing not to comment for reasons only they know.

will13am
Oracle
Oracle

@darlicious wrote:

 Oracles please feel free to move this thread to the lounge as you feel fit. It seems as though a new category needs to be created to deal with community topic issues that are related to public mobile (as this is pm's community forum) that are phone related but not necessarily related to an issue caused by or offered by or not offered by pm. But are not lounge related topics like how great is it that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup?  This might satisfy users who have questions about phones, community etiquette, technology etc that are related to and can effect how users use the forum, their phone, data plans etc...with public mobile but is not directly related to solving an immeadiate issue. I.E. my data is not working! Nor will need a moderator to intervene to solve. Discussions in this new category could be given a lesser amount consideration towards community rewards but more than none that is given to posts in the lounge.

 Lately it seems but inevitably some threads have wandered off topic by no fault of any particular poster but continue off topic by way of users wanting to and interested in the new discussion. Coming from the top we have been told to avoid this but as a common user there is no way/power for us to change that other than to stop the discussion. It does not help users to be admonished by the powers that be for a thread that goes it's own way. If oracles have the power to move and merge threads...can a user make a new post/thread in the category that seems appropriate or in the future the "community" category and request that the oracles split the now off topic thread in the most reasonable place it has gone off topic and move it to the new thread and make a note to those who want to contribute to the original or the newly created thread where it is and what has changed?


You know what I am finding to be rather interesting in this discussion?  Look at the participants or should I say lack of same.  Is it because the discussion has hit home for many and there is a guilty as charged feeling that prevents them from stepping forward and voicing an opinion?  I have my teflon suit on, so I am ready for a barrage of criticism for this comment.  

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