Ooo, staff drama. This is way overdue. Also, about you taking it personal and time and stuff, you do realize that time spent working and amount of work done are unrelated? Thus, both statements can be, and likely are, true.
Amount of work done is equal to distance moved multiplied by force. The rules were moved a lot with much force, so the staff did a lot of work.
However, because they were moved in circles, the total movement vector is much smaller, and thus, the work is too. Also work/time is tiny. In a month I could draft a set of rules from scratch. And they would be, in my opinion at least, better.
Whether you want to believe it or not, it -was- due to lack of effort and poor communication that these rules were so flawed when they were first shipped out. We may have worked on them for a month, but for the past few weeks I was not notified to, nor was I ever told that the rules would be implemented -during- my extended break period. I was not once told to review them and see if there was anything I didn't agree with. Not once. For the past few weeks it's been 'Okay guys, let's get the rules out there' and no actual discussion about them -like you guys said there would be.- I actually helped form a majority of these rules and I openly protested using another site's rules as our own because it makes us seem lazy and that we can't come up with our own things. I have every right to voice my opinion, and my opinion is that these rules are flawed and need a massive bout of rewording. You may take offense to it, but I see it as more of a wake-up call than an insult. You are supposed to take everyone's input and use it to the best of your ability to make the site a better place for the site and it's users. If you want to bring personal insults to me (Rarit E) then so be it. It proves my point that some of the staff don't deserve to be here, just as I really don't in the first place. If we can't take criticism, and if we can't take someone's opinion, especially within the staff, we're already done for. May as well throw the towel now and just give the site up. Well I'm not going to do that. Complain at me and call me lazy or call me stupid or whatever, guys. But I'm not going to give up on the site and I'm -not- going to let people tell -me- that I didn't do my job right. My job is to protect this community, my job is to enforce the rules of this community, and by my word as a staff member of this forum, I will do just that. And if I'm not appreciated all that much, well too bad. We worked on them for a month, and Bounty was the only one who used the chart that Berry had up. And it's due to lack of communication with me and other staff members that these rules got through without my knowledge, and my opinion on them before they hit. This was a long time coming, guys. This is why I said that staff meetings are our number one priority, and why we should set those up before anything else hit. A formal review of the rules -could- have been done before they were implemented. But it wasn't. And I wasn't notified. So instead of hearing my opinion then, you're hearing it now: The majority of these rules are poorly worded and are relatively poor in it's execution. I recommend a full-on evaluation of them with the entirety of the staff and recommend that they are changed to better fit the age group of this site (Which is an average of above 15) instead of restricting them and limiting their personal freedoms. Let's get to work guys.
I feel like i started some sort of rebellion... should i feel proud? my emotions are tangled. and yes, i 100% agree with a reformation of new rules. this was something the site needed for a long time. And like Ramza and i said, copy/pasting from another site just shows that the staff is too lazy to see the site of importance. If you really cared about the site, you would create your own set of rules molded and guided by both the community and members of staff.
Yeah, I just had a quick skim through the new rules, and I think the general conclusion is that they need a revamp. From what I know of, a tiny percentage of the users break the rules, it's not as if there are dozens of people being banned a day. At least the users abide to the rules, anyway...
We've talked about this way before your break. They were posted in a document we had all contributed to. How could you have possibly missed this? It was all over the staff chat for a while. We were all asked to look at them as they changed. I only have issues with one rule, and the direction change during their rewriting, but I'm minimalistic.
And I was actually there for these changes, and I saw them, and I discussed with Berry about them. The draft I saw was the one that I agreed with way before they were implemented. I wasn't told that they were being changed, mainly because everyone was saying to get these rules out and not saying anything in the staff room or mod discussion as to what actually changed. If we had been a bit more attentive and -communicated-, we wouldn't be here right now.
I've got somewhere to be, so I'll comment on just this right now and respond to the rest when I have more time. The rules have been in discussion for a long time. The others say a month, I'm more inclined to believe it's a couple weeks more than that, but I've been wrong before. While true, we did take some rules from another site, it wasn't out of laziness or lack of care for the site; it was to ensure that what we wanted was made as clear as possible. We're not lawyers. We're not writers. We don't want things taken out of context or misunderstood. We didn't pick their entire rules list, copy paste and call it a day. We took ONLY what was important to us, and ensured they still mattered to this forum and this community. Don't EVER mistake copying something for lack of devotion or laziness. We work damn hard at what we do. Sometimes we try to make the job easier for ourselves, but we always do our best to make sure we never sacrifice quality for the sake of ease. They were and always have been in the thread in the mod forums. Just because it's not discussed in the skype rooms doesn't mean we're not working towards it.
#1 double post, fix that so admins dont double post too. #2 You should have read your rules you copied, "Everypony.com provides a large, close-knit community where people can share their joys and their troubles. It cannot, however, provide a formal counselling service." that goes against the "pinkies friends in need" sub forum. if this rule is to not be changed, the sub forum should be immediately closed or EP is breaking their own rules. i would think private counseling from formal staff is known as formal counselling. anyone can say copying is a sign of laziness. If you copy someone else's homework, even if they allow you to, is that not being lazy? if you decide to plagiarize, is that not being lazy? In america, plagiarizing is punishable by law. In school's, copying and plagiarizing is punishable by detention, suspension, or expulsion. Copying other peoples work is not positive thing, even if you put months of work into it. if anything, it just shows that you lost your will after a while.
@Skyraze This. We're not formal counselors, nor do we ever pretend to be so. It's "Pinkie's Friends in need" not "Pinkie's Official Therapy Area". Don't think we didn't read them. This came up more than once in its discussion.
Skyraze, do you really believe we didn't read the rules? We were working on them for over a month, and you think we didn't read them? Also, the rules aren't copied per se. We used the other site's rules as a base and rewrote or tweaked them for what works best for our site.
It's a FACT that we wouldn't have a great deal of modern conveniences were it not for someone copying someone else. Half of Apple's ideas were stolen. Steve Jobs himself stated that he copies ideas. And as Yami states, we didn't just copy/paste and call it a day. We read the rules, we removed what we needed and changed things to suit our forums. However, since it's clear that you guys want something different, I'll see what I can do. Just realize that we are not obligated to do this. If you don't like the end result I hope you remember that it was you guys who complained about the rules as they were.
we usually expect a set of rules that started from scratch since the beginning, and as time moves, it becomes fixed and edited until it reaches a point of max potential. copying and pasting from a site, even if you severely edited, just doesn't fit with the community. it's like a president reading off Steve jobs last speech but with different words. as for Steve jobs copying, he didn't the copy the product, just the idea. if we didn't have rp rules, and another site did, then you decide to create rp rules, that's fine, that's copying someone else's idea (bad example, but you understand). Steve jobs copied the idea of Microsoft Tablet PC's, BlackBerry Copied Steve jobs Ipad product. there is differences. I am trying to let you understand, people don't like copycats. As well, changing that one rule from saying "formal counseling service" to "official therapeutic center" or something similar. because we do counsel, we do help those in need, we are bronies, that's what we do, love and tolerate. Counseling doesn't require a license, therapy does. ***edit*** If you didn't know, Steve jobs and Bill Gates were great friends. if it wasn't for Steve, Bill wouldn't even have Microsoft.
You do realize that rules among 90% of forums are universal and interchangeable. Rewording the same rule just because it might have a similar wording as one of the million other forums out there is a complete waste of time. We want them to be straight forward and easily understandable. There's no need to unnecessarily make them more eloquent or unique.
Sky, I hate to say this, but your arguments are very weak. Personally, I can't see anything wrong with the rules, apart from that they need to be reorganised.
Is having that section even a good idea anymore? Some questions: 1. What makes the staff more qualified than the rest of the users to help people with their problems? Enforcing site rules somehow makes you more empathetic to users' issues? 2. With all the drama and shenanigans that are going on with the site and the staff, who here honestly trusts them more than any other user here?
1. In my opinion, it'd be more preferable than to have them ask the open forums where people could be less sensitive to openly abusive towards them, potentially making a bad situation even worse. 2. This is a good point, and I admit I have no real answer for it right now. The only response I can really think of is that there is likely just as much (if not more) drama amongst the users. With the current area, we are aware of the personal situation of everyone who posts in response, so we can avoid this drama getting in the way. I'll point out, the only people who are allowed to respond are the community patrol (Merriweather, Yetione, Poetic Pony, myself) and to my knowledge they've had little to no trouble with the members of this community, thus their position on the community patrol.
