Community Coordinator Interview with Wayne "Yakomo" Soong

[Martuk]

Funcom's US Community Coordinator Wayne "Yakomo" Soong does a lot of work on the Official AoC forums, but very often he doesn't get enough credit for the good job he is doing. Yakomo is responsible for gathering community feedback for the developers which in itself can be a daunting task when you take into a count that he has countless people screaming at him and Famine daily. Still, Yakomo keeps a cool head and manages to get the job done and keep smiling in the process. This week we take a look at the man they call Yakomo. (Firefly fans will get that one.)

Wayne: My main duties include monitoring and interacting with our online community as well as acting as a liaison between the community and our various internal departments (Development, marketing etc.). I also assist with moderation and administration on our community forums and advising our player base of upcoming events.

Read the full Interview here.

[Acidbaron]

I still remember him as a GM in AO, where he as many others loved to mess around with people.

[Savanja]

Great interview! It's always a lot of fun to learn a little about the people behind the titles.

[Lizante]

Decent interview but it seemed rather short and shallow to me.

The "forum troll spray" pic was cute, yet comments about it were ignored -- such as FunCom's heavy ban hammer and other considerable and still serious issues on the AOC official forums -- and that stuck out as considerably conspicuous by it's absence.

[Acidbaron]

I never got banned of any FC forums and i was rather vocal at all times.

It just depends if you can't controll yourself and resort to insults over and over then you get banned easly, what should be the case in my opinion cause if you can't handle the freedom of posting on forums, you shouldn't be allowed there in the first place.

I often report posts that are just there to flamebait and get them deleted rather fast, those people often complain under the lie of 'my constructive post got deleted'.

[Savanja]

I've moderated a few busy, high profile forums and it is a balancing act. Generally, what it comes down to is trying to keep both sides of the coin (the vocal versus the tame) happy. Whether you have strict moderation or lax, someone will always be complaining about it.

[Lizante]

Interesting and valid comments, Acidbaron and Savanja.

My point, simply, is that there are concerns (legitimate or not that exist) regarding FunCom's approach regarding my original points here and it would have been interesting to see some discussion about it in the interview itself beyond the picture of the "Forum Troll Spray."

[Acidbaron]

I don't think you would see that Lizante just for the simple reason it's all on a case to case basis.

And final of all they got a strict policy in place protecting their moderators;
"Moderation is not a subject to discussion, ever"

[Martuk]

Originally Posted by Lizante

Decent interview but it seemed rather short and shallow to me.

The "forum troll spray" pic was cute, yet comments about it were ignored -- such as FunCom's heavy ban hammer and other considerable and still serious issues on the AOC official forums -- and that stuck out as considerably conspicuous by it's absence.

I'll make note of that when I do an Interview focused more on Funcom's policies. This one for the most part was aimed at getting to know Yakomo. Who he is and what he does for Funcom. As such that was my focus for the Interview. I stated that up front in the news blurb that that was pretty much what it was going to be.

I could make (and probably will in the future) a whole Interview based on community admin and the forums concerns. As for the forum troll spray, that was my attempt at a bit of light humor.

[Lizante]

Awesome. Thanks, Martuk.

I, and many of us, are looking for that.

You could even do a series on "official forums." There's certainly a lot of interesting stuff to write about, not just FunCom