So, it has come to this.

Published by Dragonbait in the blog Dragonbait's Adventures in South Florida and Beyond!. Views: 593

I came back to take a look around. What is the first thing I see? This.
In there I see quoted:
• Adult/Mature/Explicit content such as nude/sexual/gore content is STRICTLY forbidden across the Everypony network.
From the rules page: Here.

Then the next thread I go to is: The 18+ song thread.
Ok, let’s go listen to the radio… Oh my. I guess the radio is not a part of the Everypony network. Or are songs about performing oral sex acts on other musicians not Adult/Mature/Explicit anymore (Saturday Morning 2, I think it was)? Let alone the other songs mentioned in the thread.

Alright then, let’s continue our journey back into the forums. Hey, look a new theme – oh and there’s a discussion thread for it. In complaints? Huh. Okay, let’s take a look. Theme discussion thread and wow, the staff is responding rather harshly aren’t they?

Hold on, I remember seeing something about staff rules and how they are supposed to treat the users. Here it is!
I guess they missed rule 1: Be Respectful and professional when dealing with matters. We are the staff. It doesn't reflect well on the site if we insult and disrespect users. Hooray for customer service!

C’est la vie I suppose… Wait, what’s this? A stickied thread from our dear departed Derpy Hooves? And this was in January. Let’s keep reading. Oh, this is delicious. Not remembering what we said 7 months ago?

Onto the staff list we go, all TWENTY FIVE of them (I counted) for a site this size? Hold on, 25. And it takes how long to get anything done? Didn’t I read something about commitment in one of the application threads? Eeyup, I sure did:
Funny how the staff that made sense all left. Actually, that’s not funny at all; it makes me sad. Before anyone gets on me about how I didn’t apply to be staff, I knew I wouldn’t have the time to devote to the site so I decided not to apply. It seems as though my perception of how important that is was misguided.

Even if the ‘active users’ count on the forum is true (which I doubt), that’s approximately one staff member for every 25 ‘active’ users.

So, now that I’ve gone through actual threads and quotes and rules I can get down to my opinions.
1. We have too many staff members and I believe they are treated as above the law. In the No Clop thread, users have been threatened with a permanent ban for a first offence; A mod breaks the rule are gets a three day ban AND keeps his mod status. I won’t respect decisions coming from a mod like that. Or is the rule I have quoted above is not clear cut enough? Is the Everypony network much smaller than I thought, confined to the whims of the staff? Another rule:
• Ignorance is not an excuse, it's each every users' responsibility to read to and agree with the rules in order continue using and enjoying that provided by Everypony.com.
That does include staff, right? Shouldn’t they be held to an even higher standard than the common user?

2. Are there set goals and projects for the staff? In the spirit of transparency, can we see what the plans are for the future? How about a schedule for the Radio DJs? Hold staff accountable and responsible for their actions or lack thereof. You have 25 staff members, all of whom were taken on with dedication, passion, and commitment as prerequisites. List the projects, the goals, the completion status percentage, and the deadlines of the site. Let us know who is working toward each project goal. You want to make the site better; I want the site to become better than it currently is.

3. After reading through the threads I linked above, the staff (I am not naming anyone in this, it may not apply to all of them, but they are ‘The Staff’) is acting with arrogance and my perception sees them as having an elitist culture. You have your ‘Members Only’ jacket. Congratulations. The users see you strut around with them on and they want one for themselves or they fear you. I’d prefer not to go into detail here; I am not posting this to attack any individuals.

This is merely my humble opinion on the state of the site to the Bourgeois members from one of the Proletariat.
Aug 14, 2012
  • B-Dog1996
    B-Dog1996 Aug 14, 2012
    I have to agree with you for most of it. Although I don't think that the staff were too mean in the theme discussion.
  • Saikyo
    Saikyo Aug 14, 2012
    I agree whole-heartedly with this. A lot of the staff on-board think they are above the law when it comes to the rules, and me and a select few staff have been fighting for the equality of the staff and users.

    Believe it or not Dragon, I (And a couple of others) are doing our best to make sure that the staff becomes fair and that we aren't above the users. This is a message that I'm trying to convince everyone that is trying to happen, but the incident of Yami's breaking the rules was unacceptable.

    I personally think that even though he didn't know it was against the rules, he should have been far more disciplined. Even moreso since he was staff. But that's just me, I'm sure the staff won't agree with me on that.

    If you want to talk, contact my via PM and I'll give you my Skype, and I'll try to keep you up to date.

    This site needs fairness and it needs the right people such as yourself to make sure it gets done. Thank you for this Dragon.
  • Rashall
    Rashall Aug 14, 2012
    I threw this up a while back as I'm sure a few members are aware of: http://www.everypony.com/blogs/entry.php?298-What-do-you-think-about-me so yeah go nuts.

    I'm serious though through hate mail at me all day I can take it.

    Otherwise I'm pretty much that quite person in the corner of the room waiting for everything to either blow over or just self destruct.

    I am trying to stay on the member level instead of the mod level, wether I'm doing that well enough or not I don't rightly know you members, junior to senior, are the ones to decide that. What I think is what I think, but what you all think now that's something I'll listen to.
  • ThePoeticPony
    ThePoeticPony Aug 14, 2012
    You know what I feel about your points, and I know how strongly you feel about yours. I've listened to what you've had to say and tried to bring some of these points to attention, how the other staff have responded to them is yet to be seen but I'm just one member of staff out of twenty five others.

    You have my Skype so I'll still listen.
  • Eight Star
    Eight Star Aug 14, 2012
    I do wonder in a way what members of the staff exist to regulate other members of the staff.

    Other than the admin, of course. That could be a mod position relevant to the interests of community appearance preservation.    ​
  • Zephyr
    Zephyr Aug 14, 2012
    I'm really not sure how I can respond to much of this, really.

    I look at your points and I think to myself, "God, all of this is true isn't it?"
    I could sit here and look at your points and go "Well /I/ certainly do /that/" while keeping silent on a few points, but that would only prove to make me look even more arrogant, like I'm trying to make myself out be one of the 'good' guys in this whole mess here.

    I've taken your words to heart in the past, Dragon, and I will continue to do so.
    After all, there's always going to be room for improvement, and from the way you've described the state of things, there's a lot.
  • SoulEmber
    SoulEmber Aug 14, 2012
    In regards to the radio, it is part of the Network. We're waffling about removing songs, because we haven't compiled a concrete list of what needs to be removed to comply with the rules of the site and some of the staff and users don't want the songs removed.

    I looked through the thread regarding the site layout, and the way some of the staff worded their responses could have been left out for sure. Overall, I don't think any response was too harsh though. They still addressed concerns without outright insulting anyone.

    In that No Clop thread, I don't recall anyone being threatened with permanent bans. Echo was actually requesting to have a similar ban to Yami and Darkmoon, neither of which were permanent. We gave the regular users a shorter TEMPORARY ban than we gave the staff member, who was the one that brought everything up in the first place. I do agree that staff members should be held to a higher standard.

    I cannot agree with you more on this second point. Sometimes we just don't have anything to mention, but we could do better informing everyone when we do have an idea that the staff has agreed to go for. So far we have done better, such as letting everyone know about the rules being reworked.

    As for this third point, we could also do better in moderating our own posts to ensure they don't come off the wrong way.
  • Legion
    Legion Aug 14, 2012
    I'm not going to pretend to know anything about this. I simply obey the rules and treat everypony with as much respect as I can manage. That's really the best I can do, unless I become a Mod. If that happens, and I become involved in this big mess...well, I don't know what I'll do.

    I don't think I am very informed on what the staff's "staff" activities are, so I can't say anything about how they act. All I know is that the staff that I know, like Zephyr and others, have treated me well, and I've treated them with respect as well, I hope. I think that perhaps some of the complaints (not all of them) against the staff may be personal grudges, and perhaps others are entirely legitamate concerns and problems. The thing is, I can't tell which is which, as I am usually not present for the events which are mentioned.

    Personally, my opinion is that as long as the Mods continue to treat me with respect and we get along, I have no complaints. I'm not going to break the rules, I can promise you that. If the mods break the rules and I witness it, I will call them out on it, but so far I have not witnessed anything like clop or gore from any of the staff, nor have I seen them act blatantly disrespectful on a regular basis.

    TL;DR: I haven't seen anything wrong, so I'm not going to agree or disagree with this post.

    All those words just for that, eh? xD
  • JoninFoxNinja
    JoninFoxNinja Aug 14, 2012
    That left a lump in my stomach to read. I understand that the staff is certainly far from perfect, but I find it a little intolerant to actually feel a staff member should be stripped of their title, or whatever punishment you had in mind, because of such a silly misdemeanor. Yami didn't hurt a single person. Not one. And the rule did in fact need to be clarified. He is one of the more empathetic and professional staff members and I hate to hear him be talked to like that.

    What irks me is that the staff and members have been "separated" in a sense, like the staff is some sort of clique. There seems to be a lack of communication between regular members and the staff. And the numbers do seem to play a role in how much power the staff holds. There is a certain degree of abuse of power, and it can easily be fixed by opening up lines of communication between staff and members, something that Yami has done excellently both to me and many of the other members here.

    I appreciate you voicing your opinions, and I agree that there is an excess of staff, there needs to be more respect for members and scheduling for the DJs, etc. But it guts me when you speak so badly about Yami like you did. He is one of the least arrogant and the most approachable members on the whole board and I can hardly comprehend how undeserving he is of a harsher punishment.
  • Yamiookami
    Yamiookami Aug 16, 2012
    You bring up many valid points, but I feel one thing in particular needs clearing up.

    I did not "escape" harsh punishment because I am staff. In fact, when I found out what I had done was against the rules, I turned MYSELF in and, when they were considering a slap on the wrist as punishment, I demanded more, because let's face it: that's unacceptable. I made no excuses whatsoever for not being aware that the rule extended to PMs as well, and resigned myself to whatever punishment they came up with.

    At first, they were going to give me a one day ban, since they decided the rule really was unclear. This is the same punishment Prince Darkmoon received. I refused. I fought long and hard to keep Darkmoon from being punished at all, since he only shared the clop on my request and otherwise would not have. But they insisted he received some form of discipline. Ultimately, they decided on 3-day ban for me and 1-day for Darkmoon. I was more than prepared to accept still harsher punishments, but that's what the staff decided on, so I complied.
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