THTB This thread was obviously made out of frustration, but it gives us the opportunity to have an open dialogue with the members about how moderating is done and what is going on.
MK9 is definitely in it's waning months. The game is 2 years old, almost everything is known about it. Players are definitely getting a little anty and stir crazy. It's not surprising. I saw this same exact cycle happen when UMK3 began to have less people playing it on XBL. Then again with MKDC...as the players left the game, the remaining players got bored. Now, it's happening with MK9.
Here's what happens. Players get bored...they don't want to give up being on the forum, but at the same time, there is less and less to talk about game-wise. Instead, they have to talk about other things. Many times this means resorting to calling out, putting on blast, trash talk, off topic discussions, creating drama, creating hype, flaming, name calling... so on and so forth. It's a pretty natural cycle actually.
I honestly expect that it will begin again with the release of Injustice.
The thing is, some of the "secondary discussion" categories are fine... and some are not. Calling out for the sake of creating a little hype or some rivalry is ok. Calling out so that you can name call, be insulting, or otherwise denigrate another member is COMPLETELY out of line and those people should expect to get infracted/warned/banned...and they should expect their threads to be closed as well.
Drama is another problem our community faces when players get bored. It's one thing to have an open discussion or debate with someone or with multiple people. It's another thing entirely to create your own personal version of a Jerry Springer show just so that you can cause unrest in the community, piss people off, give yourself reason to otherwise argue/defame/cause problems with other people. If you're bored, then don't bother creating unnecessary drama, just join a debate forum and go have fun. Sometimes, as a moderator, it even feels as if members have created threads to purposely get closed so that they can immediately create another thread to call out the "illuminati". How ridiculous is that? But it's happened!
We have even had members "leave" our community because they claim that without the drama, the forum is boring! But the forum WASN'T boring when the game still had things to learn.
Are things over-moderated? Maybe... but it's the natural cycle. When Injustice comes out then there will be less to moderate because people will be engaged in tech talk, legit questions, learning the game, and game discussion as opposed to the current state of MK9 where it's all about drama.
So yeah, maybe the level of moderation has risen due to the content that the site is producing at the moment...but it's necessary when the focus of conversation shifts from game related to topics created out of boredom that stray outside the context of the game.