Long post incoming. Overall I feel like EP is slowly heading back in the right direction after a downhill period. I don't feel that there's a whole lot that needs to be changed, however, I do feel as if the site is quite unorganised. The biggest problem seems to be that people are confused about what is actually going on. Ok then, let's simplify things, get the information across as quickly and easily as possible. It's obvious that one of the big problems is people want to know more about the staff in general, who are the staff, what are their roles, what are they doing, what are the plans etc etc etc. Why not put it all in one easily identifiable place? Yes we have "The Pavillion" for this, but have you seen that place? Excluding links there are 12 separate areas within The Pavillion, most of which only have a hand full of threads within, it makes things unnecessarily convoluted. Condense things a bit, simplify them, and people will be more likely to use the area imho. I don't think we need 3 separate areas all for Announcements do we? Merge the "Radio Announcements" and "General/Community Announcements" simply into the "Announcements" topic. I'm sure we're all smart enough to discern what the threads are supposed to be about by reading their titles. I won't go through listing every combination but I think it's something that can be done across the board. I saw Mike's note about name colours for the staff which is good. I've been here quite a while and until today I had only a vague idea of who the Staff were, I found that there is actually a list of the Staff members but it's in a thread titled "Navigating Everypony.com", it certainly wouldn't have been the first place I would look for that kind of information. Maybe a dedicated "Meet the Staff" thread is in order, one place to have a complete list of who the current staff were, who is no longer staff, and any newly appointed staff members. This can also be used as a place for members to, well meet the staff, if people have questions about or to the staff members themselves they can be asked here. Now, Community Posts, I think they're a great idea. Keeps people in the loop and they're right there on the front page. In my experience a lot of people don't tend to ever use the Front Page or Blogs though, many will keep to only the forums, and while they're still here surely it wouldn't hurt to move them up from the depths of The Pavillion. I did have some other points but they seem to have escaped my mind :derpe: So I'll leave it there. EDIT: Oh yes, Community involvement! I think someone kind of mentioned this earlier that while the MLP:FIM show started us off, it's the community that keeps us going, only not a lot of community orientated things really tend to happen here. We have a great bunch of people here let's do more with our collective minds (I have a few of ideas, but again, I won't turn this post into a list of things)
I think the site is doing ok, and I also think the staff is doing an amazing job, it's actually because of the fact that they are working so hard that makes me want to stay, that and I have made some amazing friends on this site. Some people haven't noticed but it's the users that hold a site together, and if people are adopting a negative approach saying our site is going to **** then it probably will. I can guarantee you guys though, this place will liven up like wild fire when season three and the whole secret santa thing starts.
I don't think we've gone past our prime just yet. I feel that there are still things that can be done to keep Everypony going, and it would be great to hear from the members if they have any ideas. I will tell you right now that I intend to stick with the site no matter what. I know I haven't been as active as I could be lately, but I've had a lot of things happen to me recently. If I can manage some more spare time this week, I'll try to get a blog entry up.
A: There are moderators here who think they have God-given powers and can smite people willy-nilly. You all know who I'm talking about. B: Jaret isn't here. Come back, Jaret!
The path of righteous men is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. An I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. In other words, none shall be smitten unless thee screw up-eth. All moderators here act fairly towards all users. The decisions we make are always discussed beforehand, and every case of an infraction or suspension is discussed with the rest of the staff whenever possible. Anything that happens around here is hardly ever the choice of only one moderator. So your comment is highly inaccurate.
I'll be honest. I think the site has been running on neutral for a while. We haven't really descended but we haven't really rose up to anything. Part of this is my fault and my lack of direction to take the site to. I have complete confidence that Zephyr, Mike and Berry know what they're doing and can do what I couldn't. But this isn't just the mods job. Part of what's holding the site back are some of its users. I won't say who as it's fairly obvious who they are, but there are some who are on this site that I feel do nothing but hold it back in some way, be it in what they do, what they don't do, what they support and what they protest against. For this site to improve, we need to get rid of them, plain and simple. As the quote goes: "Perfection is achieved not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away." That's not to say the staff is completely without fault, but a portion of problems within the staff stem from how to deal with some of the issues that the users needlessly present. The staff are not here to rule over you, they're here to ensure your experience here is a pleasant one. Often this means dealing with not so pleasant users. We all have to consider what those who protest the removal of a user who is clearly detrimental to the sites intentions are and if they protest because of unfairness or because of other less noble reasons. I could go on, but I feel this is deviating from the original topic, so I'll end on one last statement. A forum is only as good as the people who use it. If there is a problem with the forums, then there is either a problem with the way people are using it, or the people themselves. Food for thought.
It's funny, I actually suggested something a long long time ago, probably back in June, then more recently towards my departure in September, but like I say, I was ignored/ganged up on by mods flaming the idea the second time, completely unwilling to try and work with it or create a form of compromise because it would allow members into super top secret ultra undercover mod discussion about ideas and site progress. The first time in June, the idea was discussed by the existing Community Patrol at the time (me, Yeti, Merri, and Foxy), but it faded out and never got talked about or made progress on again, which personally I think is because the Community Patrol was not recognised as a crucial part of the team. If moderators are willing to work with and listen to member's ideas now, great, because the attitude I saw in the staff room before the final straw was "We're the mods, we run the site how we want to, if the members don't like it then tough."
I get where you're coming from, and i don't mean any offense, but the bolded part is how people do it everywhere else and no one seems to mind. We're the only website where the staff allows the users to have an actual input in some matters. We do the best we can to give people what they ask for and it's led us to nothing except the arguments and differences in views that made you leave the staff in the first place. Not even the moderators, but the administrators only, should decide what happens with the site. No one else should have a say in these matters if we want the site to actually move towards improvement. Too many opinions cause too many discussions. Too many discussions cause the inability to decide. The inability to decide has led us to where we are right now.
Likewise I mean no offense, but I wasn't seeing any positive discussion on user input coming through, in one clear instance ideas from someone had been completely shot down and flamed because they were believed to be a troll/aggressor in the past and that they couldn't possibly change to help us out. To a certain extent, yes, the mods and admin decide overall what actually happens and go through, or else there'd be no point in having a set staff, but there wasn't enough of a balance. However, that seems to be one of the things being worked towards now hopefully from what I've heard. I know the difference between what you bolded out and what I fully said, but I won't make a statement without having some reason to do so, or else there would be no problem, and I wouldn't fabricate non-existent problems because there'd be no point and thus no progression on actual matters.
So im well still new to the site and i have to say theres one thing, that really annoys me: When you first sign up here and start going through some threads now and then you will always find someone whining about "how old Everpony was much better and now its just a piece of sh**". Yeah i dont know the old times, but they are past, maybe it will never be again as it was before, but maybe it will get even better with time. You can never know right? Its okay to learn from the past, but we are now in the present and need to think about it and the future, its not a good idea just to sit there saying "everything is stupid" instead of really trying to change something. So now that the rant is over i wanna tell you an idea i had. So theres always a little fighting, when someone gets banned like "mods aber uber and blabla", so why dont you make a part of the forum, in which the senior members, which were on this side for like month, can be asked about permanent bannings. Lets say Troll A insulted someone really bad, a mod firstly gives him a 24 hours ban or 48 hours. And in this time in the new Forum part all the senior members can discuss, if it is appropriate to permaban the person. The decission must be made before the tempban of the person in question expires. The mods and the senior members have the same value. So 1 mod is the same as 1 senior. and you collect the answers given by everyone. And if someone is permabanned, no one can say it was just the mods abuseing their powers, since the decission was made by the stem of the forumcommunity. And it should be done for every perma banning. Even if its just a spam guy spamming all the forums. In this case the answeres would be very clearly and fast given, since i dont think there would start a big discussion.
I know I'm new, and I probably have little say over this, but I really think we can go in the right direction. We're a nice, caring community (spare a few), and that's what the internet needs. Plus, we're a lot of fun! I'm always in the forum games! >w< And the secret santa thing is totally gonna rule. <3
Again x2, Poetic, I mean no offense, but you're overglorifying yourself, trying to make yourself seem like 'The Hero that the Users Need' (inb4 look who's talking) or something. The idea was really Dragon's, and most of us thought it was a good idea, we just didn't want Dragon doing the job because of his close relationship to you among other reasons. Saying that we all ganged up on you and attacked you is not only wrong, it is false. Maybe it is your perception, and perhaps perception is reality, but I did not intend to make the idea seem like a bad one, because, for all intents and purposes, it's something I, myself, would have come up with. @Val: That would work, but there is always the issue of which members are online, timezones, etc. We could make something like that work, but it'd take a lot of time.
Staff -> Post More ESPECIALLY ADMINS - I've been there, I KNOW it's HARD but it does wonders if you pop into the chat, the radio, the GTC every day, every other day. Make it a regular thing, talk about stuff that isn't staff related, show them you're human. Ramza -> If you have a problem with Poet PM him, I don't want to see it. What the hey happened to being professional? Drop the democracy, it doesn't work: Early Rome, Nazi Germany, The Old English Empire - Monarchies and Dictatorships are how you get things done. I'm largely at fault for thinking otherwise, but I've now seen the errors of my ways. There's too much talking and not enough doing. User input is great but staff voting? No, it just leads to argumentative procrastination, drama and user alienation. Admins should get the final say, always. That's why they're admins. It might even be worth one of you taking a 'director' position.
I never said it was my idea, I said it was a user's, nor did I say I was the one being ganged up upon in that instance, but from what I saw, Dragon was in a sense basically told "cheers for the idea, now go back to your trolling." I didn't care whether he was the one who got the "job" or not, but if memory serves, people got way too riled up about what it entailed and weren't willing to listen to it. Like you, and Dragon, I thought it was a great idea, not just because of the close relationship, which let's face it, beyond what's posted on the forum, people know next to nothing about. I don't agree with everything he says, but what got me annoyed was how a concept was brought forwards by a member, which could have been anyone, but then it was taken a look at by most (I'm not saying you were one of them) and people started getting really super serious and over the top about it. It certainly didn't seem any other way. I still don't see why there was such a problem/come on that's a bias towards Dragon in the first place. The fact that his idea was taken, then he was just discarded and given no chance at discussing ideas further, was what I found a tad shocking. I'm not "The Hero the Users Need", I haven't promoted myself saying that I'll always be there to care for people, I'll protect people from the nasty mods or anything like that, I've just posted things I noticed in the staffroom, things that happened to me, and things that I saw around the site, i.e. just the straight forwards truth. So think again before making that accusation, especially with your reputation. I'm not here to start an argument, I'm just going to give my point of view and experience like many of the other people in here are.
Okay, I'm just gonna say that all I'm seeing is negative stuff here... I mean, I know it's a "say what you think" kind of thing, but would it KILL anypony to say something that's going right on the forums and work off of that?
The time is not the question if the actual thing was working. With the timezones, well, before permabann someone tempban for 48 hours. That are two day of and if the person is not permabanned, it will not kill him. In 48 hours i think the most of the seniors visit the forum for at least 5 minutes. And well, just take the answers that come in this 48 hours. if someone really has a good idea why the person should not be perma banned after the 48 hours, he can PM you or anyone else from the staff. Also if this is going to happen, i would also erase or archieve the threads, or at least close them, so there can not start any badmouthing, while mods are asleep. Oh yeah so what happened to ancient rome? Didnt look that well in the past you know. And Nazi Germany. Yeah... got things done... until Hitler lost his mind and fuc*** everything up... Yeah really worked well *cough* Thats why still every german Person is a nazi, the third reich didnt fall and stuff. Democracy is the best that can happen. Every forum i saw, used or even managed, worked really good with it. If there only one leader for everything its more like the overpowered uber leader doing what he wants and not what the community wants. - - Auto Merge - - Well, than it doesnt need to be senior members, that was just my first idea. How about a comitee, elected by all the users of everypony. Lets say like the 10 or 15 most elected normal users will be able to use that new forumpart. They need to have stayed here longer, be active, caring, tolerant but also rational. Stuff like that.
That makes sense. I suppose we can try to find a way to incorporate that into this whole thing. I'm sure a lot of the answers will be answered on Monday.
I can't really talk atm, I'm just using the site as it is and will try to stay out of the actual organisation of the staff right now personally. If you try and ignore it you can enjoy yourself. Only reason I posted experiences in this thread is because I'm hoping the things I bring up will be resolved as opposed to having excuses thrown at me. You can't ignore problems, you can't excuse problems, but what should be happening is that solutions are being found for these problems. This staff meeting idea sounds like a step forwards, although I can see it'll take a while to fully take off efficiently but that happens with any new project anywhere.
Actually, both you and Grey have a point. Val, you're right in saying that there shouldn't be just one person calling the shots. There's too much room for corruption and egotism, someone going out of control. Grey, you're right in saying there's too much democracy. We need site leaders who will step up and do something, to make choices and lead the staff to do it. I stepped down because I simply can't do that. That's why the staff we have right now is good to change things for the better. There are three admins, all three not only grounded in reality but also with the capability to do the tough things that need to be done. The fact there are three of them leaves a lot less room for corruption or misuse of power as long as the others keep the sites interests at heart. That isn't to say the mods shouldn't have a say, but that's what's important. Like many of the mods feel the users should have a say, but not make the final choice, that should also work the same for the mods. They have their input, albeit with a bit more weight, and the admins make the choice. Sometimes they don't make the popular choice, sometimes they do, but it's the admins choice in the end. I know I made a fair few choices people disagree with. Some I regret. Some I don't. But I will always stand by the fact I had the will to do what I thought was important, not what was popular. @Solarflame - A happy event is like wetting yourself in dark clothes. You get a warm feeling, but it often goes unnoticed.
