recently I received this e-mail (in fact I received it twice!)
You have have received a new merit on a comment you made!
Check out your new merit on this page: http://armorgames.com/comments/show/5272/game
=============== You are receiving this notification because you have enabled the option in your account. You can disable this option by visiting your account page on Armor Games. ===============
I followed the link to see what it looks like to receive a merit but I found no merits, in fact I also couldn't find my former "thoughtful" comment either.. Now there are 3 possibilities for me:
1. I was not capable of finding my own comment between all of the others.
2. I received really merits but the "merit mechanism" did something wrong with my comments and my profile page, because I see my merits by zero on my profile page.
3. Someone thought I did broke with some conventions in my comment and deleted it immediately and I am informed of having received a merit, whereas it happened the opposite. It could perhaps be that the comment is deleted because of some irritation of someone, because I stated the game is bad balanced regarding the forces that oppose eachother in the game and I related it to a similar but much better balanced game outside of AG. I did this comparison only because the games are very similar to each other in many ways and I think that this SHOULD be allowed on this site!
Hmmm... This seems horrible. I'll wait for a moderator to come here. Your profile's points counter doesn't say you have a merit. How did you get an e-mail then?
Also, I once got five e-mails for the same one merit.
A common thing around here is that the points counter may not update immediately. If so, it may take up to 24 hours to finally have the merit counter working. If it takes longer, then there's a problem. I would wait a full day to see if that merit finally gets added.
Also, #3 doesn't happen unless a mod deletes the comment, or users flag the comment enough times to have an admin deleting it. If they flag a comment only to have a mod/admin see a merit-worthy comment, then....
Maybe people flagged your comment and it got automatically deleted. Flag should be disabled for merits.
If this were true than it would be very illogical (I'm not Spoch though!) and false, because then I could flag every single comment on any thread without reading and it would be deleted immediately but yes flagging should be disabled for merited comments. I'd rather believe what Freakenstein said about it
...unless a mod deletes the comment, or users flag the comment enough times to have an admin deleting it
But if a mod deletes a comment immediately then I should (perhaps one do already) receive an email about it and when it was deleted for being flagged a certain amount then I should also be informed about it. I would also want to have a means to see how much flags a/my comment already has. Again, I simply stated how unsufficently power-balanced the game is and merely compared it to a similar game and this should be allowed, I think.
If so, it may take up to 24 hours to finally have the merit counter working.
I received the email on 4. May at 5:41 european mean time and now we have 6. May 7:10 european mean time, so your 24 hours are elapsed :-).
Perhaps someone can find my comment on the comment page from the link I gave above or (more probably) confirm, that there isn't any comment of mine anymore. To avoid too much of a searching look up the comments since 4/21/2010 because it is the date of my registration.
Another thing: On my profile I have 0 games rated, that's not because I don't want to rate them, rather because I don't know how to rate them. I did not find a button or something to do this.
I checked the game's comments, and no, your comment does not seem to be there. So that's reason 1 of yours ruled out. It also eliminates reason 2, since the comment is really gone. Reason 3 of yours is also something that wouldn't happen. Comments only get deleted for breaking rules, not for what you mentioned was in it.
So what could have happened? My best guesses would be either a glitch - the comment got eaten by the system somehow - or a mod who misclicked the delete button. This can happen, threads have previously been stickied by accident, so it's not impossible for a click to slip somewhere. But these are nothing more than somewhat qualified guesses.
Maybe people flagged your comment and it got automatically deleted.
Flagging does not cause a comment to be deleted. Flagging alerts admins to the comment via some database, and then they manually choose whether or not to delete it. (Again a place where, if the merit comment was flagged enough to put it there, a misclick could have removed it.)
Another thing: On my profile I have 0 games rated, that's not because I don't want to rate them, rather because I don't know how to rate them. I did not find a button or something to do this.
You see the green rating bar below the game? Under that there's an empty rating bar. Mouse-over it, orange blocks should fill in as a rating, following your mouse. Pick what you want to rate it, click. The orange blocks now lock in as your rating.
My best guesses would be either a glitch - the comment got eaten by the system somehow - or a mod who misclicked the delete button. This can happen, threads have previously been stickied by accident, so it's not impossible for a click to slip somewhere.
Since the other hypotheses are debunked, this is probably the best one. I seriously stress to the web developers to either 1) have this 'roblem' fixed or 2) have whatever's in your post box to be copied so problems like this don't arise again. There are many other instances of this with the same outcome occurring to me that just made me want to facewall for 2 minutes straight. Hey, we don't know whether our post is going to be glitched out or not, so we can't exactly copy/paste all of what we post/comment on the basis of "safety".
True words Freakenstein, and thank you Zophia for your explanation efforts. I have to say that this is the first forum where I have encountered such problems and glitches. It would be very peculiar for me if some mods and admins would tamper with our sometimes very elaborately composed comments and cause them to disappear forever, this should not be!! Like Freakenstein I would stress to the web developers, too, that these problems should be fixed or prevented so that comments doesn't disappear or people don't get emails about new merits they received though they did not etc.
I don't even know how to get merits, but I don't really mind, I'm just hear to rate games so the public knows what the general consensus thinks about said game.
