Home’s Activity Board – Success Or Failure?
by Burbie52, HSM team writer
Do you use the activity board in the Hub or other core spaces?
I think that is a legitimate question, because I believe many don’t. I don’t use it much myself, except when there is a quest I am interested in, and that seems to be rare lately. During the Winter / Christmas quests the Activity Board was used quite a bit by everyone, but now the interest seems to be waning. I rarely see anyone looking at it when I spawn in the Hub.
Let’s look at what the Activity Board was intended for: quests and event announcements. Quests were a great idea. They accomplished something many have requested for a long time — making Home itself more of a game. But has Home management dropped the ball? The winter quests showed the potential of the concept, and I am sure there will be similar quests in the future. But why can’t we have them all the time? There was a quest involving “The Tester” recently, but the rewards were disappointing. We have all had enough of t-shirts. Could the questing system be used as something more, like a Home ARG similar to the much-missed Xi?
Christmas Quests
That is a question that needs to be addressed. If it were possible to do such a thing, I think it would bring many people into Home, and keep them there once they saw Home’s possibilities. Even some more involved quests, similar to the Christmas quest, would be an awesome addition to the regular activities in Home. It would also send traffic to Home’s different areas, as that one did.
But the part of the Activity Board that has changed the most from its original intent is the Events Board. A friend told me he has seen people posting unsavory things there, such as a suicide note.
I went to see what was on the Events Board the other day; there were few actual events posted. Most of the posts were personal opinions about things happening in Home and on the board itself, and calls for girlfriends or just friends. Some people had even posted requests for total strangers to give them PSN cards. Others were offering PSN cards or cash, which makes me very suspicious of what the person who wants one is being asked to do in return. There are also people openly requesting sexual acts or favors on this board. In a supposedly PG-13 environment, I think this is intolerable.
I don’t think that Sony intended this to be a personal ads page. It was supposed to be about community 
building, giving people who organize events and Home clubs access to more people. It could still do this, except for one thing: the board gets trolled, just like we do. On the day I looked at the Events Board, there was one message there that looked very predatory. It made me shudder to think some poor younger denizen of Home could be sucked into this person’s web.
There should be a built-in reporting system for abuse of the Events area of the board. I tried to send a report about one of the posts I found particularly disturbing. But all I got was the menu we use to report bad behavior by other people in the server we are on. There was no way to directly report an offensive Event post, at least that I could discover. I think one has to be implemented, because some of the things on the board genuinely scared me, like the guy asking kids thirteen and under with web cams to come talk to him. Or the one asking for a twelve year old girlfriend. This kind of thing should be immediately reportable.
(No, it shouldn’t even be allowed up on the board to begin with. –Ed.)
With so much going on in Home, and only so many monitors available at any given time, I don’t think that Sony has the time or manpower to actively monitor the Events board. As I have said before, they aren’t our babysitters. Giving the community the tools to report offensive messages would be a better option.
Give reporting power to the people!
The other thing I have heard, from more than one source, is that people who like to freeze servers will go to the activity board and look for public events so they can freeze them. I don’t know how this can be avoided, but the ones who do this freezing need to be perma-banned. Freezing harms your system, and this kind of activity should never be tolerated.
So what can be done to improve this situation? I think the first thing that needs to happen is to add a dedicated reporting system. Give power to the people who have to read this junk, and have some sort of rules built in when you try to access the creation area that force you to put an actual Home location in the Location field — no PlayStation Network addresses, or stating that the event takes place “anywhere”, or on Facebook or some other outside area.
If this is meant to be an in-Home events calendar, let’s keep it that way, and help to make Home a better place through community outreach, which is what this Activity Board was meant to do.
July 15th, 2012 by Burbie52 | 10 comments
Burbie52 is a 62 year-old published author and founder of the Grey Gamers group within Home. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived there her entire life, with the exception of a twelve-year residency on the Big Island of Hawaii. She enjoys reading and writing, as well as video games, especially RPG's. She has one son in his twenties.
I’ve seen those unsavory offers on the activity board too. We all have. I am astonished that we have not been given a button to report improper content. An unmonitored board is a temptation for abuse.
I haven’t read the “social” area of the Event Board since the first time I ran across one of THOSE ads. As far as I can tell the board is unmonitored and I’m not going to read filth like that to get to a few event notices that I might like to attend. I just depend on friends to let me know if I party is planned and I check facebook for third party developer events.
Call me dictatorial, but I believe that where ever the public at play can post anything like notices, I firmly believe that there has to be an ability for those who would be offended or concerned to voice an objection or at least file a report. We can police ourselves here, but with the activily board, lets us have an option to at least do so. There are too many people with less than admirable intentions that have no problem seeking their way that they could ruin it for the rest of us.Im all for watching what we say on Sony’s sandbox.
Yep, pretty much my experience voiced above me here; after trawling through what seemed like a sea of desperation I came to the conclusion that Home was indeed just a cesspool of lonely lesbians, idiot kids willing to die for a $10 PSN card, perverted old b*stards masquerading as younger people within Home and generally all the flotsam of life we’d rather ignore than do something about.
Since I pretty much felt sick after reading the “activity” boards that time, I just never bothered looking at them again. Hell, I hate these degenerates so much I actively avoid the news every day, just so I don’t have to acknowledge their existence!
Oh, I might just say; girls who like girls and unfortunately dumb kids I don’t mind so much really. It’s the pervs and peados I find hard to even think about.
You’re so right Burbie, these boards need serious attention by an official figure, STAT!
We’ve been told a way to report the activity board on the psn Home forums. Write alin intended for the mod telling ur reporting the asid board. Go to the offensive post to have it on your screen and then send a report…
No. I agree, we need a dedicated report system for that board… minimum. But more than that. If you want to let whomever on home to publicaly post. You HAVE to monitor it some way. And not just once a day.What do you expect? It’s obvious a “tool” like that will be misuse and abuse. Either your willing and ready to monitor it the way it should. Or you dont put it there.
Yes we can go to the forums and do this I know, but that way to do it is onerous and many people don’t have a computer and a PS3 both and they use the PS3 for the browser, so that makes reporting this way impossible which means they would have to take the time to write down all of the info there then go out of Home and report it if they can get the browser to work. A direct one would be much better for all concerned and giving us the power takes a lot of the burden off their shoulders. I think the board is little used now because of what is on it.
The board shouldn’t need to be reported anywhere. There has ALWAYS been objectionable material posted on the Events page from what I’ve seen. A Moderator should be designated to clean the board daily and deal with the posters as needed.
It’s not like the Mods need to be directed to the objectionable material. Everything is right there in one place. Just deal with it. The process of checking the Forums or personal messages for reports would be more time-consuming for them.
I’ve never gleaned any important information from the Activity Board. There is usually too much rubbish posted for me to bother digging for anything worthwhile. I rarely spend any time in The Hub overall but certainly do not venture to the Activity Board anymore.
Needed to be said. Well done Burbie. Hopefully something is done soon. That thing’s a mess!
totally agree burbs,we need to be able to report .and quests?same guy in charge of updating the pub radio must be in charge of new quests! but i did try the events post once.in one of those”this is boring and im quitting home” moods i decided not to run away from home but to do something out of character…i posted that id take peeps to off the nav spots like minis if they wanted. i got 8 responses and all were kool and we had some fun.i even am still friends with 1. great subject burbie…another fine job