Is it true that the mod forum has an anime thread?
That is 100% fact. Tube's favorite anime is currently Assassination Classroom and Kids on the Slope. He won't shut up about them. Please PM him your thoughts.
I don't even know what those are.
+1
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
If I were a billionaire I would totally buy reddit just to enact the glorious edict and it would be amazing.
Typically I find that the forums are a very pleasant place where people are encouraged to air their views and discuss things
And that's good, but it's also where the dog-piling comes from, because when someone has a different view everyone then wants to talk about it
Thing is (as someone who, I think, tends to have views that often don't share a lot with the norm, when it comes to movies and comics and such), when you are arguing with literally five or six people at once, even if none of those people are saying anything that would individually cause you upset or annoyance or whatever, it starts to get to you. The thread speeds up, you are trying to whack out responses to people, but you're hasty and you maybe don't articulate well, and then that inevitably gets seized by several people, and you start to get agitated, and upset, and angry, and then you flame out and there's that "okay guys we did it again" where there is some introspection and some PMs sent to smooth things over, and such.
Which is good, it's good that those things are blips and we do smooth things over. And I also think that people very much do argue in good faith on here, like, you can tell that people are genuinely having this discussion with you because they are actually reading your posts and responding to them rather than making assumptions on their skimmed read of your post and general sense of your position, or changing it subtly to be something they can argue against.
So I think that it's a problem but that it doesn't come from people being too unpleasant or aggressive, more it comes from people being expressive and passionate about stuff and as such they want to mention it. I'd really just say, like, if you see someone saying "I don't like thing" and other persons saying "okay well I do and this is why" and vice versa, then maybe jumping in to add your point too is just going to cause agitation.
So I don't think, actually, that this is a mod problem. It's something that the community creates, and perhaps we should all look at trying to be more aware of the times where we need to step back and let someone cool off rather than jumping in themselves.
Tube: What's your favorite music to relax to? Also, what's your favorite hobby that helps you unwind from dealing with all of the forum madness?
I don't really listen to music to relax. As far as hobbies, I like to find a game that I can chill out in and go a bit zen. Otherwise it's still weightlifting.
As an addendum:
Will we get to see you (and any other PA staff) again at the next SouthPAX?
Unless something weird happens, yes. I imagine Robert will probably be there too.
most dedicated message boards have shrunk a lot since their internet heyday in the mid 2000s - did anybody keep numbers? what are trends like?
People have more places to go now, but I don't really track those trends. Forum traffic isn't a KPI.
do Penny Arcade's new publications - podcasts, assorted online tv series - have any noticeable effects on forum activity? I'm guessing each PAX creates a bump of users who then vanish.
Sure, they bring more people into the forums. Not necessarily into the community though. Whether we want to convert more of that traffic and how we do it is an interesting question.
Which E3 announcements have you the most excited? What hardware and software can you not wait to get your hands on?
I like the look of Fallout 4, but it's mostly the Rift that I'm looking forward to at this point. The Elite announcements sucked, and I'm fast losing faith in that property.
Have your aims as to what kind of community you want to foster changed over the years? And what informs that? Do you get instruction from above (ie Khoo or whoever) about the things that should/shouldn't happen here, or is it all your own discretion?
I receive essentially zero instruction from Robert. If he has a problem with something I'm doing, he'd tell me. It's only happened once that I can recall.
My goal is generally "create an environment that I would want to spend time in". As I get older and pass the point where I would realistically have left the forums under my own steam, it's closer to "create an environment that people I consider good and worthwhile would want to spend time in". It used to be "govern the community based on a set of arbitrary and ill-thought out ethical principles", EG, "we can't ban that person because they haven't technically broken a rule".
I mean, we still talk on Facebook and stuff. But still.
Actually I miss all the old XBOX Call of Duty crew. And they are why I'll always be fine with people calling me Metzger even if I do kinda fuckin hate my forum handle nowadays.
Insane murderers are no one to commemorate, younger me. Even if Rammstein wrote a rad song about them.
I mean, we still talk on Facebook and stuff. But still.
Actually I miss all the old XBOX Call of Duty crew. And they are why I'll always be fine with people calling me Metzger even if I do kinda fuckin hate my forum handle nowadays.
Insane murderers are no one to commemorate, younger me. Even if Rammstein wrote a rad song about them.
Regardless of Zay's question on thread-specific banning, I do think it would be great to have some more transparency in how and why moderation decisions are made, and potentially some sort of actual escalation path in the case of disagreements. As it is now, your choice is; speak to the mod who punished you directly and express contrition (regardless of whether the punitive action was legit or not in your mind), or GTFO. It would be good to have some sort of clarified process that allows the community to understand (and comment on) the way the community's being managed, and to resolve those differences of opinion in a way that isn't completely black box.
The "bans" thread did this to some small extent but I think a more up-front and open process would foster the perception that mods are accountable for their decisions and ultimately help diffuse the discord around those controversial disciplinary situations.
There is a procedure for escalating. It's described in the rules thread in some detail. The short version is, talk to the mod from whence the action came. If you are not satisfied with the answer given, talk to the Administrator. If you are not satisfied with the Administrator's response, too bad.
Of course, but that process is still completely obscured from the community at-large and the result is ultimately contingent on the opinion of, at most, two people. Even if it's rarely utilized I think just having a more-detailed and transparent process would help the vibe in contentious situations.
I think it's obscured to a point because we don't want this to be a forum about how the forum is run, lest the whole endeavor collapse in a puff of meta. When we have rules like "don't bitch about mod decisions in the thread", it's not because we're capricious or secretive or unaccountable. It's because a discussion of someone's behavior and subsequent mod actions would get in the way of what the thread was ostensibly designed to discuss, and that tangent would only be of interest to a tiny number of people anyway.
In addition, it's inaccurate to say that any mod decision or appeal is seen by two people at most. Every report and every infraction gets logged, and most mods browse at least some of those, so that everything any of us do gets seen by a fairly large fraction of the mod base. We also comment in the mod forum about appeals or complaints, and introspection is fairly common - mods flat-out asking "Did I make the right call here?" happens often.
If you approach us with courtesy - not necessarily contrition, but simple courtesy - you are guaranteed to receive at least a polite assessment of why we think something went wrong that required action.
Also, based on my observations, Tube isn't inclined to side with a mod just because he's a mod, or ignore complaints out of hand. Hell, I got dinged recently because I called someone an asshole and told them to get fucked. I screwed up, Tube called me on it, I ate my points, no big.
Absolutely; the place for this sort of additional transparency would definitely not be within the thread where the moderation occurred, or even (necessarily) the forum. I don't want to sacrifice the integrity and clarity of the discussion itself for the purposes of clarifying moderation.
In terms of the "formalized", public process for dealing with moderator disputes (as zerzhul paraphrased it), it is a two-stage system. I tend to assume there's more discussion going on behind the scenes, but none of that being exposed, I could absolutely understand a user not making that assumption.
Even in consideration of all you've detailed; none of these mod conversations are exposed to users, so even if they are happening, and demonstrate that the mods are in fact quite capable and conscientious in their decisionmaking, it's having relatively little effect on how moderation is perceived.
Well.
Imagine you are the poster in question. You get an infraction. Do you really want the entire forum to see half a dozen posts of mods discussing exactly how we feel that you screwed up?
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
+1
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Regardless of Zay's question on thread-specific banning, I do think it would be great to have some more transparency in how and why moderation decisions are made, and potentially some sort of actual escalation path in the case of disagreements. As it is now, your choice is; speak to the mod who punished you directly and express contrition (regardless of whether the punitive action was legit or not in your mind), or GTFO. It would be good to have some sort of clarified process that allows the community to understand (and comment on) the way the community's being managed, and to resolve those differences of opinion in a way that isn't completely black box.
The "bans" thread did this to some small extent but I think a more up-front and open process would foster the perception that mods are accountable for their decisions and ultimately help diffuse the discord around those controversial disciplinary situations.
There is a procedure for escalating. It's described in the rules thread in some detail. The short version is, talk to the mod from whence the action came. If you are not satisfied with the answer given, talk to the Administrator. If you are not satisfied with the Administrator's response, too bad.
Of course, but that process is still completely obscured from the community at-large and the result is ultimately contingent on the opinion of, at most, two people. Even if it's rarely utilized I think just having a more-detailed and transparent process would help the vibe in contentious situations.
I think it's obscured to a point because we don't want this to be a forum about how the forum is run, lest the whole endeavor collapse in a puff of meta. When we have rules like "don't bitch about mod decisions in the thread", it's not because we're capricious or secretive or unaccountable. It's because a discussion of someone's behavior and subsequent mod actions would get in the way of what the thread was ostensibly designed to discuss, and that tangent would only be of interest to a tiny number of people anyway.
In addition, it's inaccurate to say that any mod decision or appeal is seen by two people at most. Every report and every infraction gets logged, and most mods browse at least some of those, so that everything any of us do gets seen by a fairly large fraction of the mod base. We also comment in the mod forum about appeals or complaints, and introspection is fairly common - mods flat-out asking "Did I make the right call here?" happens often.
If you approach us with courtesy - not necessarily contrition, but simple courtesy - you are guaranteed to receive at least a polite assessment of why we think something went wrong that required action.
Also, based on my observations, Tube isn't inclined to side with a mod just because he's a mod, or ignore complaints out of hand. Hell, I got dinged recently because I called someone an asshole and told them to get fucked. I screwed up, Tube called me on it, I ate my points, no big.
Absolutely; the place for this sort of additional transparency would definitely not be within the thread where the moderation occurred, or even (necessarily) the forum. I don't want to sacrifice the integrity and clarity of the discussion itself for the purposes of clarifying moderation.
In terms of the "formalized", public process for dealing with moderator disputes (as zerzhul paraphrased it), it is a two-stage system. I tend to assume there's more discussion going on behind the scenes, but none of that being exposed, I could absolutely understand a user not making that assumption.
Even in consideration of all you've detailed; none of these mod conversations are exposed to users, so even if they are happening, and demonstrate that the mods are in fact quite capable and conscientious in their decisionmaking, it's having relatively little effect on how moderation is perceived.
Well.
Imagine you are the poster in question. You get an infraction. Do you really want the entire forum to see half a dozen posts of mods discussing exactly how we feel that you screwed up?
No, not in particular. Though what about just a single line pointing to the general idea? Like "Violated Glorious Edict" or "Spamming" and such. No specifics, but gives people an idea what's occurred.
This is a weird question, but can any mod find out what happened to my original account that was named just "timspork"? Back in 2006 I was typing a post and hit submit right when the entire server crashed and when it came back up my account seemed to have disapeared. I emailed a mod at the time, no idea who, but never heard anything so I made this account instead. It wasn't a big deal. I only really lost my original join date which was older.
I've always been curious what happened.
@timspork's ghost The exact same thing happened to me at the exact same time. I think alphamonkey (maybe?) was the guy I emailed about it, and he created a new account with the same name for me. I think about five or six of us all lost our accounts, posts and any threads we'd started, as well as the old join date.
i would participate in Munkus' census but participation in the census is also consenting to participation in the forumer opinion thread and i hate those
so
i don't participate in the census
if Munkus separated those two things or made participation in the forumer opinion thread optional maybe he'd get more census data, idk
The census data is worthless. The forumer opinion thread is the only point.
Regardless of Zay's question on thread-specific banning, I do think it would be great to have some more transparency in how and why moderation decisions are made, and potentially some sort of actual escalation path in the case of disagreements. As it is now, your choice is; speak to the mod who punished you directly and express contrition (regardless of whether the punitive action was legit or not in your mind), or GTFO. It would be good to have some sort of clarified process that allows the community to understand (and comment on) the way the community's being managed, and to resolve those differences of opinion in a way that isn't completely black box.
The "bans" thread did this to some small extent but I think a more up-front and open process would foster the perception that mods are accountable for their decisions and ultimately help diffuse the discord around those controversial disciplinary situations.
There is a procedure for escalating. It's described in the rules thread in some detail. The short version is, talk to the mod from whence the action came. If you are not satisfied with the answer given, talk to the Administrator. If you are not satisfied with the Administrator's response, too bad.
Of course, but that process is still completely obscured from the community at-large and the result is ultimately contingent on the opinion of, at most, two people. Even if it's rarely utilized I think just having a more-detailed and transparent process would help the vibe in contentious situations.
Transparency isn't high on our list of priorities, for reasons that deni elaborated on. I'm interested in transparency only as far as it lets people know how they can reasonably avoid breaking the rules. The pretence of democracy can be extremely damaging to the community. The escalation process is designed to deal with potentially dozens of inquiries per week, and each infraction is already seen by over a dozen eyes. It's an effective system, and I don't see any pressing need to change it. It's not the system some would prefer, but I'm afraid that I don't find the arguments for (significantly) changing it to be compelling.
Bobkins brings up a good point, and this is also a question for Tube:
Is there something that can be done to give more transparency to when moderator action is being taken? Right now, we can't see when a post gets infracted, and we can't view a user's infractions, and you don't make a point of updating the infractions thread for everyone's general infractions because it is admittedly a pain in the hole. This can sometimes lead to the impression that unless we can literally see a user get jailed or banned, that a user is getting away with something with impunity and a post is perfectly kosher even though it's totally not and they ate an infraction for it because we're not seeing what's going on. Unless the moderator publicly shows up in the thread to yell at the person for it, we don't necessarily know any moderator action has taken place.
Are there any steps being taken place to fix this issue? Displaying a post got a user infracted seems like the easiest fix, but that might be a serious technical challenge for Icy, I don't know all of why that changed.
We'd like to fix infraction banners not showing up. I'll chase it up with Vanilla.
That joke anime thread last year caused a few forumers I really like to leave the forums (notably, MikeLL and RFilyaw)
This is incorrect, but people keep posting it as if it were true.
I mean, they've come back from time to time, but feelings were hurt, and even if I've forgiven y'all for it, I'm still a bit sour about the honeypot thing and how the joke got pushed a bit too far
Ronnie has literally said he's left to focus on streaming, and Mike has never commented on it as far as I can tell.
You're inventing a narrative based on almost no evidence, and then passing it off as What Actually Happened. People ask where the weird goofy threads went, and I think this is a reason why.
I dunno, fuck it, I may have read that thread wrong, but I definitely remember things being that way
but it's not about the anime, it's about the fact that every once in a while, moderation here is capable of acting in poor faith and taking it too far
and I would hope things move in the right direction
Regardless of Zay's question on thread-specific banning, I do think it would be great to have some more transparency in how and why moderation decisions are made, and potentially some sort of actual escalation path in the case of disagreements. As it is now, your choice is; speak to the mod who punished you directly and express contrition (regardless of whether the punitive action was legit or not in your mind), or GTFO. It would be good to have some sort of clarified process that allows the community to understand (and comment on) the way the community's being managed, and to resolve those differences of opinion in a way that isn't completely black box.
The "bans" thread did this to some small extent but I think a more up-front and open process would foster the perception that mods are accountable for their decisions and ultimately help diffuse the discord around those controversial disciplinary situations.
There is a procedure for escalating. It's described in the rules thread in some detail. The short version is, talk to the mod from whence the action came. If you are not satisfied with the answer given, talk to the Administrator. If you are not satisfied with the Administrator's response, too bad.
Of course, but that process is still completely obscured from the community at-large and the result is ultimately contingent on the opinion of, at most, two people. Even if it's rarely utilized I think just having a more-detailed and transparent process would help the vibe in contentious situations.
I think it's obscured to a point because we don't want this to be a forum about how the forum is run, lest the whole endeavor collapse in a puff of meta. When we have rules like "don't bitch about mod decisions in the thread", it's not because we're capricious or secretive or unaccountable. It's because a discussion of someone's behavior and subsequent mod actions would get in the way of what the thread was ostensibly designed to discuss, and that tangent would only be of interest to a tiny number of people anyway.
In addition, it's inaccurate to say that any mod decision or appeal is seen by two people at most. Every report and every infraction gets logged, and most mods browse at least some of those, so that everything any of us do gets seen by a fairly large fraction of the mod base. We also comment in the mod forum about appeals or complaints, and introspection is fairly common - mods flat-out asking "Did I make the right call here?" happens often.
If you approach us with courtesy - not necessarily contrition, but simple courtesy - you are guaranteed to receive at least a polite assessment of why we think something went wrong that required action.
Also, based on my observations, Tube isn't inclined to side with a mod just because he's a mod, or ignore complaints out of hand. Hell, I got dinged recently because I called someone an asshole and told them to get fucked. I screwed up, Tube called me on it, I ate my points, no big.
Absolutely; the place for this sort of additional transparency would definitely not be within the thread where the moderation occurred, or even (necessarily) the forum. I don't want to sacrifice the integrity and clarity of the discussion itself for the purposes of clarifying moderation.
In terms of the "formalized", public process for dealing with moderator disputes (as zerzhul paraphrased it), it is a two-stage system. I tend to assume there's more discussion going on behind the scenes, but none of that being exposed, I could absolutely understand a user not making that assumption.
Even in consideration of all you've detailed; none of these mod conversations are exposed to users, so even if they are happening, and demonstrate that the mods are in fact quite capable and conscientious in their decisionmaking, it's having relatively little effect on how moderation is perceived.
Well.
Imagine you are the poster in question. You get an infraction. Do you really want the entire forum to see half a dozen posts of mods discussing exactly how we feel that you screwed up?
I mean, in any case the reality of what has already been said exists. It's not as though the community ramifications of that decision aren't already felt as a result of the decision itself (making the offending post). It would not be more embarrassing, to me, to see a group of moderators calmly discuss how the post was a violation and why the punishment was what it was. I presume that these mod discussions don't consist of mean posts that could hurt users' feelings.
I also wouldn't suggest a "permanent record" of every single thing a person has ever done wrong so that it can be pinned to their chest for eternity.
More than anything; I want to underscore that I don't have a detailed, specific recommendation for how to rectify this state of affairs (I don't even have the backend knowledge to truly suggest any sort of "better" system), but I do think the overall criticism is valid and contributes to some users' lack of trust of moderation staff and moderation decisions.
JohnHam on
0
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
I can't remember ever being surprised upon seeing a user kicked from a thread (discounting joke kicks). Like, this is not a grand mystery, shrouded in arcane smoke and mirrors.
The only time I'm surprised is seeing users essentially perma-kicked from threads. Though this is mostly in G&T and certain game/franchise threads where a some people are not welcome anymore and the mods enact the kick in the first page of a new thread.
0
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
I mean, we still talk on Facebook and stuff. But still.
Actually I miss all the old XBOX Call of Duty crew. And they are why I'll always be fine with people calling me Metzger even if I do kinda fuckin hate my forum handle nowadays.
Insane murderers are no one to commemorate, younger me. Even if Rammstein wrote a rad song about them.
I don't feel comfortable contacting moderators because I'm afraid they're going to privately bully me
I'm just one data point, but every time I've ever privately contacted a mod either to apologize for something (creating a thread that went to hell, posting an image too big, losing my cool, whatever) or just to ask about something they've been real nice about it.
Now, every time I've done it I've been very genial. If you PM them and start a rant my single data point probably won't be useful to you.
The guideline moderators are given is "don't be any ruder in your response than they were in their message". I do random spot checks to see if it's being followed, and it is.
My assumption around these parts is that it's always ok to ask why a decision about you was made, if you're not a jerk about it, and that if you find any action of a mod towards you questionable you can ask tube about it. (again, if you're not a jerk about it)
Would this be accurate, or not accurate?
Obviously, I can't speak for others, but it hasn't in years felt like anything wasn't up for discussion, or at least clarification, as long as you took it to private messaging. But I also haven't had any reason to need to do so, either, which is a privilege.
I don't feel comfortable contacting moderators because I'm afraid they're going to privately bully me
I doubt that happens unless said person does something deserving of being chastised a bit.
It almost doesn't matter whether there is some actual mod bullying epidemic; if the tone of moderation makes people feel like it could happen, the end result is that people are scared to have those discussions.
There was a thread some time ago where a mod I had never even heard of came in and started being really abusive towards everyone. I don't remember many details, but like I'm sure no one was reporting it because it went on longer than the normal abusive stuff did/does. I have not seen that mod since, even as a member. I don't even remember their name or where that was, I just know I haven't seen them. It was really really awkward though. I kind of have Tal's fear because of that though since then, even though I've reported my share of stuff. I've also never really had to PM a mod first either though, so.
I don't know dude, if you can't remember any details about who it was it sounds like this might have been a ghost.
More seriously, we've had bad, shitty mods before. They're not mods any more. It's possible you hit one of those. If you're ever able to recall more details, please PM me and I'll look into it.
One important thing to note: I am much, much harder on the moderators than I am on the users. They get away with very little, and the moderators who remain are the ones who aren't interested in trying to get away with things.
The worst case scenario when contacting moderators, I've found, is deaf ears (blind eyes?)
like you're just ignored and not responded to
that has happened to me on more than one occasion, where I've contacted a moderator over getting kicked from a thread or an infraction or something and had them just straight up refuse to respond or engage me
I wouldn't consider that bullying, per se
It's not especially helpful
but it's also not really their obligation? like they don't owe me an explanation or engagement or something
it would've been nice, but whatever
that's sort of the worst that's happened, just being ignored
To be fair dude, if you send us a book to read we're going to move onto other things. Brevity is the soul of getting your shit read. My first question to a moderator accused of not responding to a Pony PM would be "was it 3000 words". I get that it's your thing, but you can't inflict it on someone and expect them to give up a chunk of their day. Keep it to the point, we have things to do.
Tube, since we still have the indy game forum, I thought I'd ask: How are forum regulars treated if they launch a game title? Do they get a little more slack talking about it around the joint or should they still be confined to that sub forum?
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Based on a brief conversation Pony and I had last night.
Would you consider having some rules regarding CW (content warnings), when it comes to topics that might be traumatic for some folk? Like asking for spoilers when sensitive topics come up? Folk are usually pretty good about it, but some folk just aren't used to working with that sort of accommodation.
Miss me? Find me on:
Twitch (I stream most days of the week) Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
The user gets no points, it doesn't go on their record, and can be easily reversed should a mod feel the person has had a sufficient cooling-off period, and doesn't extend to any other thread in the forum.
no it is not
it is directly saying "you cannot participate in this topic anymore"
someone i'm sure will argue "but there's so many more threads just go to one of those" and completely ignore the fact that different threads cover different topics
again, it'd be one thing if it was a time out, and even then i would disagree with it's usage. stepping in to say "hey cut it out" is all you need to do, and in some cases may even get people to apologize, instead of just ending a conversation in a huff
No it is not.
It is directly saying "You have shown yourself entirely incapable of participating in this topic in any sort of constructive way, so you will no longer be allowed to participate at all".
At least in every single (non-joke) instance of a kick that I have ever seen.
I completely disagree, and am in fact about to post a post in a different thread regarding something someone was kicked for saying months ago. I mean -tal was kicked from the E3 thread for making posts that were criticizing the way someone looked at review scores, and if you check -tal's posts, they had a significant amount of agrees. It's a situation where you could argue perhaps the tone used was offensive, but they had a completely valid point, and were subsequently silenced on flimsy pretenses, no longer able to argue the point or even apologize for potentially being offensive in wording.
Now that said it's pretty evident everyone else seems to enjoy kicking, so whatever. It's senseless to keep arguing it, but I at least am glad I was able to have the opportunity to talk about it again without being dogpiled like before.
asking a sincere question is not passive aggressive, nor rude.
i do not see a difference, at all, between "i do not like these posts, so i am ignoring them" and "i do not like these posts, so i am kicking from the thread". if you are philosophically opposed to one, you have to be to the other. they are both just ways to end any discourse with the least amount of thought.
now, i will be rude and regular aggressive at the conclusion of this post, because when you mentioned having a discussion about moderation, i was hoping it would be a sincere discussion, not a terrible AMA where you get to ignore questions you don't like.
Posts
I don't even know what those are.
Kids on the Slope sounds like an even more Canadian Kids in the Hall.
And thus Canime was born...
Winged supremacy
Canadianimation.
And that's good, but it's also where the dog-piling comes from, because when someone has a different view everyone then wants to talk about it
Thing is (as someone who, I think, tends to have views that often don't share a lot with the norm, when it comes to movies and comics and such), when you are arguing with literally five or six people at once, even if none of those people are saying anything that would individually cause you upset or annoyance or whatever, it starts to get to you. The thread speeds up, you are trying to whack out responses to people, but you're hasty and you maybe don't articulate well, and then that inevitably gets seized by several people, and you start to get agitated, and upset, and angry, and then you flame out and there's that "okay guys we did it again" where there is some introspection and some PMs sent to smooth things over, and such.
Which is good, it's good that those things are blips and we do smooth things over. And I also think that people very much do argue in good faith on here, like, you can tell that people are genuinely having this discussion with you because they are actually reading your posts and responding to them rather than making assumptions on their skimmed read of your post and general sense of your position, or changing it subtly to be something they can argue against.
So I think that it's a problem but that it doesn't come from people being too unpleasant or aggressive, more it comes from people being expressive and passionate about stuff and as such they want to mention it. I'd really just say, like, if you see someone saying "I don't like thing" and other persons saying "okay well I do and this is why" and vice versa, then maybe jumping in to add your point too is just going to cause agitation.
So I don't think, actually, that this is a mod problem. It's something that the community creates, and perhaps we should all look at trying to be more aware of the times where we need to step back and let someone cool off rather than jumping in themselves.
Come on,
anim-eh
is right there.
Dammit
I don't really listen to music to relax. As far as hobbies, I like to find a game that I can chill out in and go a bit zen. Otherwise it's still weightlifting.
Unless something weird happens, yes. I imagine Robert will probably be there too.
People have more places to go now, but I don't really track those trends. Forum traffic isn't a KPI.
Sure, they bring more people into the forums. Not necessarily into the community though. Whether we want to convert more of that traffic and how we do it is an interesting question.
I like the look of Fallout 4, but it's mostly the Rift that I'm looking forward to at this point. The Elite announcements sucked, and I'm fast losing faith in that property.
The census has zero utility as an analytic.
Nope
Nope
@Metzger Meister Bemis is the absolute best, it's true!
'Rain' and 'Only A Northern Song' are incredible
Well.
Imagine you are the poster in question. You get an infraction. Do you really want the entire forum to see half a dozen posts of mods discussing exactly how we feel that you screwed up?
All of it.
No, not in particular. Though what about just a single line pointing to the general idea? Like "Violated Glorious Edict" or "Spamming" and such. No specifics, but gives people an idea what's occurred.
@timspork's ghost The exact same thing happened to me at the exact same time. I think alphamonkey (maybe?) was the guy I emailed about it, and he created a new account with the same name for me. I think about five or six of us all lost our accounts, posts and any threads we'd started, as well as the old join date.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Probably not, I didn't stream the last one. I only stream for child's play, it's not something I'd do for fun.
The census data is worthless. The forumer opinion thread is the only point.
Transparency isn't high on our list of priorities, for reasons that deni elaborated on. I'm interested in transparency only as far as it lets people know how they can reasonably avoid breaking the rules. The pretence of democracy can be extremely damaging to the community. The escalation process is designed to deal with potentially dozens of inquiries per week, and each infraction is already seen by over a dozen eyes. It's an effective system, and I don't see any pressing need to change it. It's not the system some would prefer, but I'm afraid that I don't find the arguments for (significantly) changing it to be compelling.
We'd like to fix infraction banners not showing up. I'll chase it up with Vanilla.
I dunno, fuck it, I may have read that thread wrong, but I definitely remember things being that way
but it's not about the anime, it's about the fact that every once in a while, moderation here is capable of acting in poor faith and taking it too far
and I would hope things move in the right direction
I mean, in any case the reality of what has already been said exists. It's not as though the community ramifications of that decision aren't already felt as a result of the decision itself (making the offending post). It would not be more embarrassing, to me, to see a group of moderators calmly discuss how the post was a violation and why the punishment was what it was. I presume that these mod discussions don't consist of mean posts that could hurt users' feelings.
I also wouldn't suggest a "permanent record" of every single thing a person has ever done wrong so that it can be pinned to their chest for eternity.
More than anything; I want to underscore that I don't have a detailed, specific recommendation for how to rectify this state of affairs (I don't even have the backend knowledge to truly suggest any sort of "better" system), but I do think the overall criticism is valid and contributes to some users' lack of trust of moderation staff and moderation decisions.
The only time I'm surprised is seeing users essentially perma-kicked from threads. Though this is mostly in G&T and certain game/franchise threads where a some people are not welcome anymore and the mods enact the kick in the first page of a new thread.
He's basically the best person I know. I wanna grow up to be just like him.
The guideline moderators are given is "don't be any ruder in your response than they were in their message". I do random spot checks to see if it's being followed, and it is.
Precisely accurate.
I don't know dude, if you can't remember any details about who it was it sounds like this might have been a ghost.
More seriously, we've had bad, shitty mods before. They're not mods any more. It's possible you hit one of those. If you're ever able to recall more details, please PM me and I'll look into it.
One important thing to note: I am much, much harder on the moderators than I am on the users. They get away with very little, and the moderators who remain are the ones who aren't interested in trying to get away with things.
To be fair dude, if you send us a book to read we're going to move onto other things. Brevity is the soul of getting your shit read. My first question to a moderator accused of not responding to a Pony PM would be "was it 3000 words". I get that it's your thing, but you can't inflict it on someone and expect them to give up a chunk of their day. Keep it to the point, we have things to do.
It certainly did at some point.
And it was brief!
Would you consider having some rules regarding CW (content warnings), when it comes to topics that might be traumatic for some folk? Like asking for spoilers when sensitive topics come up? Folk are usually pretty good about it, but some folk just aren't used to working with that sort of accommodation.
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
I completely disagree, and am in fact about to post a post in a different thread regarding something someone was kicked for saying months ago. I mean -tal was kicked from the E3 thread for making posts that were criticizing the way someone looked at review scores, and if you check -tal's posts, they had a significant amount of agrees. It's a situation where you could argue perhaps the tone used was offensive, but they had a completely valid point, and were subsequently silenced on flimsy pretenses, no longer able to argue the point or even apologize for potentially being offensive in wording.
Now that said it's pretty evident everyone else seems to enjoy kicking, so whatever. It's senseless to keep arguing it, but I at least am glad I was able to have the opportunity to talk about it again without being dogpiled like before.
"the mods never bullied anyone! you can talk to them for moderation help!"
How is this acceptable?
because people thought they were "doing a thing"
and I'm usually too afraid to ask why, because I'd rather not be dogpiled
Twitch (I stream most days of the week)
Twitter (mean leftist discourse)
because I love -Tal and what other people call "his thing" I call "being a smart and insightful guy with a subtler sense of humour than most"
I'm not saying it wasn't a joke. Shit, even I thought it was funny for most of the day, until a few other people stopped enjoying it and got sour.
This is also how we lost Gary.