I have a lot of things so I am going to try to not be tl;dr so if I need to explain something better please say so. These are things I have noticed and picked up when talking with other members of the site. But first I would like to say public complaints seem like a good idea, sometimes it's good for problems to be out in the open instead of handled in secrecy. Also we might be able to help if things are made public, I for one love this place like a home and will do anything I can to help make it be the best it can be! Staff Complaints Which is kind of my first one. There seems to be a bit of secrecy. There have been times I tried asking questions and the answers weren't answers at all and were hardly related to my questions. I felt somewhat ignored. Also there isn't much communication between the staff and the members. A lot of us members care about the EP just as much as you all and we would like to be in the loop too. There is to much "behind the scenes" stuff I would like to say it doesn't happen often though, the staff is very helpful most of the time. -I have just a simple suggestion; be more open with us. There are periods of time where there is an inherent lack of staff activity, and there isn't anyone to turn to. The community patrol doesn't seem to "patrol very much". Nothing against any of them though they are all brilliant. The idea of community patrol is brilliant as well. -A suggestion is the Community patrol should be around as much as possible, so there is always somepony there to help. -Another Suggestion is, the time someone is active should be one of the most important things in staff selection, so the staff could always have a presence. Staff Communication, sometimes staff have wildly varying answers to the same question. There has also been varying interpretations of the rules. I understand everyone is different and interprets things differently, but A good staff needs a certain bit of unity. -Staff meetings just to make sure everyone is at the same place. And everyone makes mistakes. Rule discussion and how to react to problem members could go a long way. This is not a personal complaint but I feel I should make it known. Basically some feel the staff, specifically the mods in chat are much to strict. I was told by a friend that was the reason they haven't been hanging out on chat as much. While I was totally in disagreement, and in fact I feel mods are a little to forgiving. I couldn't help feel terrible that they essentially felt chased off by the staff. -No one likes being told to stop they are being bad while they are simply having a good time. My suggestion is maybe instead of "that's inappropriate please stop" They could calmly open discussion and explain why the rule they broke is important and how some would find their actions impolite, and how everyone deserves to have a good time. An explanation will go a long way. I see some don't quite fully realize how important the rules are and see how they are guidelines to let each member have a good time. Site complaints There are A LOT forums and sub forums. It's crowded I think is the right word. -Some organizing. For example Episode/Character/Story threads aren't that popular for them to be separate into so many categories. The whole Library Section could probably just be Show and Community, and maybe throw meet up discussion Forum in there for neatness. Or even Story/Equestira and it's inhabitants/ Community, just 3 forums instead of four. You know just a bit of merging. The above might be the cause of this one, it has really been annoying. Lately there has just been so many threads posted in forums they don't fit in as well as they would in other places. This is happening the most in General Discussion it's just full of threads that should be put elsewhere, and are really only put there because that’s the only place some members visit making it where the activity is. So a member will post there because it's the only place they get replies. And no one checks other Forums if they are about to make a duplicate thread. -Really the only suggestion I can come up with is stricter enforcement of this. And really stress that general discussion is for "other" and should really be the least used section. Pony topics go in "The Library", and brony topics have "community discussion". videos, music, and game stuff have the "media" Forum. Then hopefully with this the rest of the site will start coming to life again and the number of out of place and duplicate threads will go way down. A problem with wording. Like some rules are hard to understand Like the Necro-bumping rule. What exactly is considered Necro-Bumping? Is it totally prohibited or wouldn't it be more appropriate to revive it instead of making a new thread, especially if it's really old and can get a lot of new traffic and maybe old posters have a new opinion from a couple months ago. Another Example is Forum descriptions, like Fan-Fiction Forum says "MLP FiM tales and epics, share them and discuss here" And the Literature Forum says "Discuss, Critique and Display all forms of non-fanfic literature here." So where would someone put a link to one of their non-MLP fics? -My suggestion would be just a bit of rewording some stuff and better explanations. Disclaimer: This is all my personal opinion and I am a very strange person with very strange tastes. So I apologize if all of this seems Ridiculous or silly. Sorry it ended up being tl;dr anyway Ps: Also anyone else notice the excessive amount of pony? I propose an effective immediately ban on ponies. except Rex, Rex is best pony.
I'll try to give my 2 cents here, even though the community patrol isn't exactly my department. I agree that availability should be an important part of staff selection, yet I have to remind you that there's more to it. What's a mod who's on all the time, but has no plan of how to deal with a situation? We're definitely trying to have staff available in as many timezones as possible but we cannot allow ourselves to lower the bar of requirements in favour of times. Rest assured, we're trying to get as many timezones covered as we can. I like the idea of staff meetings, at the moment we're mostly discussing things whenever they pop up. A sheduled weekly meeting might be something worth thinking about. What chat are we talking specifically? The EPN chat or the radio's chat? I can't comment much on the EPN chat since I'm not involved with it most of the time. The radio chat I can take care of though, so if there's any problems with it, I'd like everyone to direct them straight to me or practically any other DJ/Mod. I can agree with this one, I'll forward the idea to maybe merge some of the sub forums to make it a bit more compact. While I can see how this is an issue and that it is annoying, I have to remind, we do have a report button. So if a thread is out of place, a simple click on that button with a short explanation is enough to draw our attention to it. We can easily move or merge any thread if it's out of place, just report the thread and we'll get a message popup notifying us. I personally see no harm in bumping a "dead" thread. If there's a new topic on the same subject, the members themselves could 'moderate' it by simply pointing to the new thread e.g linking it, or as stated above, report it so we can merge it. Agreed. We can probably get that fixed in the process of merging some of the sub forums if it comes to that. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, rest assured, we'll look into it and find ways to fix most of these points.
The thing that bothers me is people who have been here for 1+ years can still be junior members while new members can come in, spam 100's of posts and be a senior member in a few weeks. Not worth making a new thread, so I figured I'd mention it here. I never go to the chat since I'm not really close friends with anyone on EPN and I'm terrible at starting a conversation. I may not have thousands of posts, but I have been here 99% of the days in the last year. The only time I wasn't online was when I was on vacation. Now I feel like I'm pouting.
^ my friend here isn't the first to of said this. A chat friend of mine was complaining how he is still a junior member despite being here a year. All because he doesn't care for posting on the Forums. and if you ever decide to visit chat I'll be your friend. Sorry, I understand that completely. My appologies, it was EPN chat. But thank you Flash I know who to come to if anything happins on radio. Yes I was made aware im alowed to use the report button for out of place threads earlier today, sorry I actually typed this last night. And thank you Flash
I know that feel. As for the OP's post, I agree with the community patrol bit. I already said my two cents on another thread though. As for the forum needing organization, I definitely agree. I've thought that pretty much ever since I first got here. I've been on many, many different forums and this one is probably the least well organized. I've been thinking about writing up a better solution, a template if you will, on how better to organize it. But I haven't had time and to be honest, I'm not very good at organizing things so there is prolly someone better suited to do it anyway. The only part I disagree with is scheduled weekly staff meetings. As has been stated, not all the staff are in the same timezone, so it may make it impossible for some staff members to make it, not to mention that it isn't worth having a meeting unless there are actually things to discuss. I've been a mod of several different MMORPG's, both site and ingame, and a mod on another couple forums. We always just had meetings whenever something came up that required it, and it seemed to work out alright. Anyway, a lot of these issues have been brought up and discussed with staff before, and I know Zephyr and Foxy have hinted at coming changes to the site, so I guess we'll see how and if they handle it.
Just my explanation on this one, I haven't been very active in the past two weeks due to being away, thus limiting the capability to go on EP as regularly as I usually do. And trust me, I'm on regularly. When I'm not out somewhere, or I'm not asleep, I ALWAYS have EP and my e-mail account open in a tab each. While I may not post an awful lot, I'm constantly refreshing, looking at my yahoo account, and checking every new thread that I can that is posted, kind of like the ultimate lurker. :derpe: I'm trying to post more and get into things, but with several projects, drawings, real life problems, and new distractions constantly on the go, it can be a bit hard. I am always there even if it seems that I'm not if you need me though, I'll catch any PM, reported post, or Skype IM straight away. 'Will probably edit this post later on the other problems.
well, for last month or so, it was accidentally that Poetic went to Florida, and I went to Australia in about same time, so neither of us 2 was active at the time as we are usually active that left Merri and Foxy alone from community Patrol, and that was impression. I'm still in Australia, so no, or little activity till Tuesday (tomorrow melbourne meetup, and then 2 day flight and london meetup)
I honestly think the entirety of the staff should be more active on the forums. Just because you're a radio DJ doesn't mean you shouldn't care about the forum, too. If the DJ's or Radio mods or anyone else would spend some time on the forum, I think a lot of these complaints about staff not being active enough would stop.
Well, I'm still a new pony here, so I don't feel I have much room to talk, since I've only been here for around 2 or 3 weeks now but here's my 2 cents(just replying to each main idea from rex's OP). Staff Open-ness: Yes, I agree with this to a point. The staff here, from what I've seen the short time I've been here doesn't seem to be open to the community as much as I would like them to be; makes the community feel alienated. I do know there are some issues that the community shouldn't see, such as disagreements amongst the staff and the such, so I can understand not telling the community about that kinda stuff. I also know quite a few of the staff members were off on vacations too so that's understandable as well. Community Patrol/Staff Presence: The community patrol is a great idea, as long as the community patrol is active(which, to me it seems to be) but like I've said, I'm a newer pony here so I can only say so much on it. The staff presence...I've done quite a few assignments of times for forums that I've worked for, so I agree with rex that "active times" should be taken into consideration when hiring new staff. Yes, it is more fun to have most of your staff on at one time and its easier to communicate with other staff members, but maybe you guys should think about having like 3 or 4 shifts of mods so the forums are covered most of the times. And if one shift need to contact another shift, you guys can leave a note in the staff section(if you guys have one) to make the other shifts aware. Staff Communication: Staff meetings should be a MUST in my opinion, simply so, like rex said, to make sure all the staff are on the same page with the rules and current go ons, since it is easy to misinterpret things, especially when they are all typed out. Crowded Forums/Sub-forums: I agree with rex, no need for me to elaborate on this. Posts In The Wrong Sections: I feel that these just need to be looked into more actively. Its seems to me that threads are just moved into the proper sections if they are in the wrong section, and not checked to see if there was a duplicate thread posted anywhere (examples would be the two threads for "recent buys" to show off). Wording: I agree with rex, no need for me to elaborate on this. Anyways, that's my thoughts on your stuff you posted rex.
Thanks for your input Psuedo. We are currently looking into the majority of this, believe me. Thanks for taking the time to write all this out.
Absolutely no problem^^ Anyway, yes, the user title (Junior, Senior and so on)is currently determined by a user's postcount. We might be able to change it to registration date or even make it so that embers can set their own titles (I beleive this was dicussed at some point but was turned down). I can't promise anything as of now, but I'll bring it up with both, Foxytail and our technician, Mike. On the topic of the necro bumping rule, I beleive we're gonna get rid of that rule altogether petty soon, since, as mentioned above we do have the technical abilities to keep the threads in check one way or anther. I'll bring this up with the others as well.
FIRSTLY - I apologize if I'm repeating what others have already said. All of the staff needs to be more active. You are absolutely right. CP especially. We've been trying to create some better structure with time and getting staff to cover a wider range of time zones to span out the activity. Varying interpretations to the rules - We all suffer from this. Why? Because the current rule setup is very old and no longer works well with the current site setup. We have been working diligently to re-write the rules, making them more clear, and covering all aspects of the site. We hope with the new rules, it will be much more clearer as to what we expect from the community here at Everypony. We want Everypony to be as happy as possible. With the above quote - once the new rules are enacted, there shouldn't be much question as to what should and should not be posted. I personally don't feel that the chat staff is strict, in fact I personally think we should be somewhat more strict. But yes, I do agree with that we should be reminding what rule they have broken (especially to members who are new). Agreed, the forums could benefit from some better structuring and organizing. Thank you for stating this. We've currently completely removed the necro-posting rule. We've decided that you can post to an old thread, as long as the post is on topic of course. This gives the thread a second chance, and allows new members to have a fair chance of discussing said topic. As for those who would necro-post, just to cause annoyances, that would fall under our spam rule. We're re-writing the rules to work efficiently and in conjunction with each other. This somewhat confuses me. We don't HAVE a non-MLP Fanfic section, because we don't allow non-MLP Fanfics. The Literature forum is intended for discussion of novels, poetry, and the like. I'll get right on that. Ponies? Gross. Also, I would like to thank you for taking the time to write this all out. We truly appreciate it.
I'd say some things, but pretty much all that I could have said has already been taken care of by Mike, Flash, and Ramza. However on the topic of staff secrecy, please understand that we're already working to make this as minimal as possible. In my blog I post anything that the users might be interested in knowing behind the scenes while omitting the big things so Foxy can highlight it on his community posts. The only problem with this recently is that nothing new has been going on amongst the staff. We're still revising the rules, we did so last night through a 3 hour skype call, we're looking into ways to improve site productivity as we've said before, and anything else I would have reported but it'll be taken care of today in the Community post. Speaking of which actually, I need to go make a blog post.
It's good to hear that you guys try to keep the rules up to date. I actually do have a suggestion here, as well as a question which must preface it. Why are non-MLP fanfics not allowed? I understand that they could create needless clutter if posted within the MLP fanfic section or Literature section, but if they had a section of their own, wouldn't it be okay for them to be posted? Sure, it's possible that users might join simply to post their fanfic and gain popularity, but that would just be it's own kind of spam, and might be dealt with accordingly. It's also possible that non-bronies could join with the intentions of hosting their fanfics, but truthfully, those people would likely be few and far between, and we tend to be pretty accepting of them anyway. My suggestion is this: In the interest of maintaining a fun environment while simultaneously organizing the forum, perhaps sections just for Original Fiction and Non-Pony Fanfiction could be created. Who knows what interesting, non-pony fictions the Bronies here may be writing, or have written in the past? This, to me, seems like a good idea. I would like to know what you and the other staff members think.
Awesome keep up the good work then ^^ If it helps I am very happy with EP, and a big reason I typed this up is because I want others to be as happy as I have been. I agree completely, like I said it was only made from observation and a conversation with another chat goer. This is awesome, there have been a couple times I wanted to post in an old thread because I felt I had something to say. My appologies, I had no idea haha and thank you I appreciate being listend to
Seems kind of mean to say I don't care for posting on the forums. I read almost all the threads in recent posts multiple times a day, I just don't know what to say a lot of the time. "They see me lurking...."
Somehow I am also still a junior member, I guess I do not post that much. Where is the line anyway? 700 posts?
You missunderstand. I meant the chat friend of mine They said they don't care for posting on the forums sorry
I don't see why people get worked up over such stupid things as a title. Its a couple words describing how much you post.... If people takes such things as post count or titles as a way in which to interpret or read what the poster has to say, thats incredibly shallow. Look at your own posts and think to yourself if they have value to you, and judge for yourself in how you think you are. I look at mine at think them all as useless, and I'm one of the top posters... It would be simpler to just take them all away anyway
I agree about the post count thing Titles are cool though. I think we should be able to earn special titles.
