These are things i'd have discussed during the meeting today, but due to lack of presence, it was apparently postponed until next Saturday. I'd like to post my views on the Everypony Staff and their conduct, though most of it is directed at the admins of the forum. There will be (constructive) criticism, but i sincerely hope you all view this more as helpful advice, since that's what i'm trying to accomplish here. As you all know by now, there were reasons why i left the staff last week. Now, i'll be elaborating on those reasons. This is my final attempt at trying to change things for the better, but it's entirely up to the admins to accept it or not. After all, I'm only offering criticism and advice where it's due. Nothing more. -------- 1. Doubt and indecision Far too many times, discussions in the staff room drag on and lead to nothing. Mainly this is because admins can never decide on an option. We look to administrators of the forum to make tough decisions. Tough decisions need to be made to get through a situation swiftly, and risks have to be taken sometimes. In fact, sometimes admins see risk when there is none. As an administrator, fear of consequences is NOT an option. A good example of this is the Serious Discussion section. A section like this was suggested by many, and as such it has been a topic of discussion in the staff room many times. The only thing that held this section back was fear of the consequences, and look at it now! Have we ever infracted anyone in this section? Ever removed anyone? Have we ever even had to warn anyone? No. Fear leads to doubt, doubt leads to indecision, indecision leads to regression. 2. Administration Issues We have three admins, each in charge of a particular section of the forum. Aside from his duties on the Everypony Radio, Berry has another particular job to do. Namely thinking of, and organizing projects for the rest of the staff to work on and get them done. In other words, he has to make sure the staff is and stays productive whenever possible. Berry claims to be working hard on this, and i would like to believe him. But it's hard to believe this considering we never see any results. I understand he can't simply pull something out of his behind every other week, but keeping the staff updated on these things is a necessity. Another issue Berry suffers from is his timezone, and it disallows him to be online alongside other members of the staff most of the time. This causes communication problems with admins and other relevant staff. It often takes days for him to talk to us directly about things that matter. It is vital for administrators to be online on the most effective times possible, and if they can't, then make sure their progress and opinions on certain things is made known to the rest of the staff in the form of a thread in the staff section of the forums. Berry's argument has always been that he can not communicate with us, but the basic use of a forum makes this argument entirely invalid. Zephyr is in charge of the forums and blogs, and in extension, it's members and staff members. Moderators are there to oversee and moderate the forums when necessary, but are hardly allowed any freedom at all when doing so. This is the third line on the introduction to the Everypony Rules: This means moderators have the right to decide how to moderate a situation, and to what extent they moderate it, yet these decisions are more than often criticized or even reversed by admins because they don't agree with our judgement. Admins are technically breaking their own rule by limiting the moderators' freedom like they do. Often enough, it happens that a moderator's request or suggestion is overruled by an admin. In some cases this is understandable, but if moderators have no say in what happens on the forums in regards of moderation, be it a thread, post, or even a user, then what is the point in having moderators at all? These are people you selected to do this job FOR you. The point of having moderators at all is useless if you decide to moderate the moderators after they made a decision. 3. The rules are being taken too literally. For members, it is important to read the rules, understand them, and follow them to the best of their abilities. While these rules do apply equally for staff members, for them, there's more to it than just following them. When it comes to moderating a situation that breaks one of these rules, they should look beyond the literal meaning of what is written, and base their judgement on what is actually happening on the forums. Far too often i've seen arguments that "he's not quite breaking any rules". And that's what prevents moderators from acting on things that people have literally complained about more than once. That is why even after so many complaints and misbehaviour, two certain members were still not banned until more recently. Recently, there was a new member who joined our forums. In his first post, he mentioned he was a brony hater, had intentions to harm our community, and blatantly said he could not be bothered to read the rules. In that thread, he has been harrassing the community and we have received complaints about it. A moderator should have the common sense to know someone like this ought to be banned on the spot, yet the argument for him still being here is that he didn't break any rules. Staff members can act more effectively and in the better interest of the forums, by not looking at the rules when moderating a situation, but rather looking at their own common sense and treat the rules as guidelines. This will be the third or even fourth time i've said this: Moderators are not machines! Stop treating the rules like a huge block chained to your leg. 4. The Moderation Guidelines and Infraction System The pride and joy of my time in the staff was working on these two. The Moderation Guidelines are a set of guidelines posted in the staff section of the forums, that moderators can follow if they don't know how to handle a situation. It's helped the staff develop their conduct on the forums, but it appears to me that the true potential of it is wasted on what i mentioned in the previous points, that things are being taken too literally. The Moderation Guidelines serve as... well, guidelines. They're made for staff members who can use these guidelines IF their own judgement fails them. Moderators should have the freedom to act on their own if they can, or ask for help if they can't. Admins only need to jump in if the moderator's conduct is unacceptable and breaks any of the Membership Agreement rules instead of jumping in every time they don't agree to something. -------- If this is acceptable, I may consider joining the staff again if they choose to have me.
Those are very well explained, clear and laid out thoughts Rarit. From the sound of it, and having seen a few of these points myself happen around the site, I could not agree more.
Goes to show how little you actually care to know about me. I'd prefer it if you could put your blind hatred for moderators aside for once. Heck, why don't you just put it aside forever? :derpe:
I didn't have to know about you, I simply had to see how bad you were at moderating. As for the blind hatred, nah, it isn't that. I love some of the moderators.
Then you could have written a thread about me in site discussion if you had a problem with me. Infact, you should do that instead of derailing this one.
As a former admin of another forum, I'll just input my opinion. I'm not really too active here, so forgive me if I'm off on something. The Staff mods do seem nice; they don't act super elitist or anything. I agree with all the points in your post; once a moderator/staff member has been selected, they have the power to take care of the forum and punish anyone if necessary. Rules are there for a guide, but there should be appropriate judgment used for each case. Communication between staff members is very important; if a new mod doesn't know what to do, they ask an admin or older mod for their opinion or they act based on rules/their reasoning. Swift action is necessary in some situations; a mod has been chosen in order to handle most issues so they should be capable of giving out the appropriate ban/warning. An admin needs to be a leader; they set up most of the events or work with the forum's coding in order to make the forum run smoothly. Admins also have the right to pick Staff; from the way it sounds in this thread, some of the Staff may be inexperienced or don't want to ban or warn people. I've never been warned before so I don't know if warnings here are permanent or not, but most warnings expire anyway. I've warned people before and most of the time, they didn't know what they were doing was that bad or they decide to stop. I've become friends with some people I've warned in the past for spamming. The people who don't stop acting immature/inappropriate, they usually get the ban. I'm all for second chances, but don't give everyone too many chances to break the rules; otherwise they will keep doing it. I think the points in this thread are valid. Personally, I don't have problems with this forum in particular. I like the Secret Santa event and hope future events will be successful.
If this is what you class as derailing then it kinda backs up my point further. Either way, WoT time.
I think you're confusing literal moderating with lenient moderating. If anything, i'm trying to discourage leniency based on the situation, rather than blind leniency just because "the rules say so".
I agree with most of what you've posted, and you have to understand that as a relatively new administration we're still finding the balance of being firm and being lenient with not only the site, the users, and the staff, but with ourselves. Yes, we've reversed quite a few decisions on discipline, but this also ties in to your mentioning of the rules being taken too literally. While this has happened quite a few times in ridiculous ways, even myself being the one to do so, the converse was equally true as well; the rules were taken too abstractly. It was at times like these that it became notable to reverse judgment because despite the noble intentions the person in question might have, it may come off as something else entirely and it was desired to have that avoided. I've said it before that, yes, leniency with problem users needs to drop. However, we need to find ourselves a balance first instead of jumping from one extreme that only inhibited our actions, to the next extreme that would only make it seem like we're looking for an excuse to sweep problems under the carpet. Essentially what I'm trying to say is, while the rules and infractions are nice as formalities, I think they're for the most part unnecessary in the way we've been attempting to use them. Rather than use them as a base for reasoning behind discipline, it should be the other way around and act as an affirmation of our own judgment. Simply put, we shouldn't look to the rules and hope to find something to peg on somebody when we need to, or want to, but we should, like you said, use our common sense and back it with a moderately loose interpretation of the rules. So yeah, we're working on that.
Nah. I've done plenty in the past and the only one I saw used was moving the rules. I'll just sit back and watch from the sidelines.
I think if we can hold off any more drama, then that will help us to get back on our feet. That isn't so hard is it? I believe one of the points Betweenblackandwhite Knightmare made was that people on the staff weren't acting professional, and to an extent I agree. There was quite a lot of unnecessary petty arguing. So if you guys on the staff are able to listen to the other staff members and discuss rather than outwardly defend your own points/totally attack others, then that will make for more productive time. Nobody cares about excuses, nobody cares about who did what that they shouldn't have (unless it was really serious), all we need is solutions. And just because someone's not being the nicest guy in the world, it doesn't mean they deserve punishment right away, it's human nature, be a little more lenient unless they're properly offending somebody. Once the onslaught of constant dramas comes to an end, then you can rebuild the network if everybody just chills the hell out for a change. I've seen paranoia on the staff for crying out loud. Don't start trying to create new projects for the site, fix the basics before pimping it up with fancy new features. These are the things I've noticed, do not give me excuses, do not tell me my opinion's wrong, just use what I've said to help fix things and make set targets. I don't want someone replying to me trying to make the staff look good by listing reasons for why things haven't worked, I don't care, let's face it, there were some mess-ups, time to deal with it. *EDIT* Just noticed the argument, in this of all threads. You're as bad as one another.
How about looking through old threads in the site discussion and suggestion box? There may be some golden oldies lying around. But yeah, Poetic has a point as well. A point even i've been guilty of once or twice. That's something that needs work too. what argument? O_O
Thiiiiiiiis. Guys seriously. I have ideas and you NEVER listen. Some of the mods in the chat stated "Saikyo wont shut up and let some one else talk" A week or so ago. ......Well now i know who to pin the blame on!
You've brought up valid points Rarit E. Hopefully, with our new admins, more things will get done once they settle in. Although you bring up a good point about the rules being followed too strictly, rules should be precise and accurate. If someone can find a way to act like a jerk without directly breaking any rules, it doesn't mean that the mods should use common sense. It means that the rules aren't clear and they need fixing. Let's take the example of Dansze and greyOne (who I'm assuming were the two members you were talking about in the OP). While I thought that they weren't too bad and they weren't breaking any rules, they were certainly doing a good job at just keeping within the rules. Stuff like this should be ruled out. Other than that small point, they are good points and they're what the staff need when someone leaves (as opposed to "I've stopped liking this place so I'll completely ignore it and complain")
