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Site Discussion Thread
Moderator: Userbase Moderators
Forum rules
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadWell, another thread that should be somewhere in this forum and not in the archive. Why not sticky in Sandbox?
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Re: Site Discussion Thread^
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadHere is my thoughts on some of what I have read from now and in the past. These forums has always been run by younger people it seems like. Older people have in studies proven to be more mature and seem to get a better handle on things. I suggest you guys take that into consideration when looking for people to help maintain the website. Administrators are a must and if they don't have time to maintain these forums then they need to find some people that do. If they are not visiting the forums any more then they are just taking up a spot someone else could be using to help out the team. I understand Valtteri as he is deployed I believe but if your not on the forums than there is no point for you to have the title of administrator. If the administrators want to see these forums grow then they need to make changes for the better of the forum.
Another problem I have noticed is swearing and fighting. Nobody likes drama and all it does is put people at odds and allow room for members to get angry or frustrated and leave. Swearing should be a no because this is a children's game and I would not want my children coming here and yes I have teenage kids. As a christian I want them to be able to experience a forum in a family friendly environment and this environment is at times hostile. I have seen people on here fighting and swearing and that does no good for anybody. I have also seen people use inappropriate language that I as a christian find offensive such as calling something holy or using the lords name in vein. A filter for swearing is a must. The add bar at time seems to have a lot of puck adds which I don't get. There is so many things you could advertise and to have this on a children's game makes no sense. Signature pictures are just way to big and makes the site look unprofessional and some of them come off as annoying. I have been a member of several other forums for weather and politics and none of them had big annoying signatures. The political forum I visit which averages more then 4,000 posts a day and usually has over 100 members on at any one given time has no signature pictures and only small avatars and it works out pretty good. The site is growing in members and it makes it look better not to have to sift through or look at huge pictures that most people could honestly not care about. I plan to just download 2.0 and do my own thing. I probably won't be here after that but then I am also in my 30's and don't really get into these forums. They just seem to childish for me. I grew up on this game and in my spare time when my family allows it I like to play this game. My wife likes it to and I figure I could hook up a pc to my tv and turn it into my own gaming system. I also enjoy doing other things too and I just don't have much interest in coming to these forums every day but maybe that could change if the forums were managed better and looked more professional. Sadly if the administrators all leave and nobody else is moved up to the position then nothing will change and these forums will just stay the same or die off. As for requests for graphics I do understand this problem. I tried to research how to create graphics and there is no video or guide for dummies. (I did watch some videos on youtube) The learning curve is just to big. People get frustrated and think they can just ask people here to make them graphics. Then the thread gets locked because it is against the rules. Yet there is no sticky that I saw that says they can't do this. This frustrates people and makes them not want to come back. So to sum it up these forums are not very enjoyable and just feel to un profesional for most people to stay here long with the exception of kids who will enjoy this game but then you have the fighting/drama, swearing and the inappropriate ads that can turn some kids away or even turn some christians away. If nothing is done then nothing will change. 4 inactive administrators are not helping the situation at all either. The person that owns the site (maybe Joey?) need to make some changes asap. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadThat's the thing. Because Mario is generally a kid-appeal character and the idea of endless possibilities with a level editor often captures young minds, the average age-bracket of this forum is around 15 or something and so a lot of these flaws just pass over the average user. With me being older than this, I'm able to look at the forum from a different perspective than from someone who's younger. Also, the only active admin that actually fulfils their duties is ZM12, and Pseudo doesn't really do a lot; I'll never understand why he was promoted to moderator in the first place. The amount of swearing/fighting could be put down to a combination of the average age-bracket and the bad moderation, as you mentioned earlier. Teens tend to have a lot of mood swings, and what starts as a simple disagreement can spiral out of control to outright holding grudges against certain users. There was a case back in mid-2014 where there was a witch-hunt against community member SMBXxer, and the rep system was getting abused by means of using it to attack the user directly, and this got to the point where it was removed altogether. But to be honest, the bad moderation is largely a result of the fact that there aren't really enough, and sometimes those that look like really good picks get shafted aside. To be honest, we don't know who's controlling these ads. Also, we sometimes see whenever a question is raised, the user gets criticised for not having an adblocker, yet it's not their problem but the site's. Not really sure what's causing this, but again, this is another valid issue. The problem is that there are no "signature rules" as such and thus people take advantage of it and make really massive signatures, forgetting to put them in spoilers. My signature has a really massive image in it, but it's inside a spoiler so it isn't bloating up the page length. This topic explained it really well. Apparently, there is a sticky, but it's buried in the Archives forum, which further proves my point about new users not automatically knowing the rules! The reason requests were pulled was because of a lot of ridiculous requests that would almost certainly never be fulfilled, while lacking the experience to build the levels around them. As Joey put it: " If you can't make a good level with the thousands of graphics that already exist, you need to work on your level design skills." But the rest of your points hold water. If I could give this man a medal, I would be doing so right now. You have just hit the nail on the head with the forum's problems. If I were to become a moderator, I would nip all these issues in the bud the moment I got the position. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadPosting to stuff here. Apologies if I get a little off-topic at times.
I'm not sure where the whole 'administrators are inactive' thing is coming from. From what I've gathered, the other admins as well as myself are online daily. Valtteri is the exception, but he has personal reasons for being inactive. Just because we don't always make posts doesn't mean we're not doing anything. What do you mean 'not on the forums'? Do you mean activity? Again, people make it out to be an issue when it's anything but one. We discuss a lot on Discord about how to improve this forum; a ton of discussion occurs behind the scenes. A lot of that discussion isn't shared with the community because we conclude the ideas won't work. This could be something that changes though. I think it would be good to talk to the community a lot more about our ideas. I'm sorry, but nothing is going to be done about this. Yes, this is a community for a Mario fangame. It would make sense for the forum to be family-friendly, but that's just impossible now. Any restrictions put in place by the staff would really annoy the majority of the community who are used to how things are. Fights happen on the internet, sometimes they become hostile and are dealt with appropriately, but more importantly, swearing is just something that happens on the internet. Similarly, this is why nothing is going to be done about using religious terminology in a negative way, mainly because using words such as "holy" or "god" to illustrate frustration, surprise or whatever is something people have been doing for years. I'm sorry if they offend you, but this is just how language works. To put it bluntly, this isn't nor will ever be your safe space. This is the internet. Joey talked about this earlier. I personally think complaining about the ads is just nitpicking, especially as it covers a small space of the forum. If the ad is clearly offensive, then sure, but I haven't seen any examples of that happening. Some users had obnoxiously large signatures in the past, but many have put them into spoilers now. When we do notice a large signature, we usually manually put it into a spoiler or contact the user. Internet forums vary. I think it's unfair to compare a political forum to a Mario forum. If large avatars annoy you, then you probably won't like a lot of websites. You mentioned that you want the forums to be more friendly for kids. Now you complain the forums are too childish (which is ironically, an immature word to use at your age, I recommend you get out of the mindset of calling things that). What's up with that? Where is this assumption that the administrators are going to leave and no one will be replacing them coming from? I talked about how the administrators are not inactive earlier, but it perplexes me why you have this mindset. This is a fair issue. The announcement that requests are no longer allowed got archived a while ago so many may not be aware they aren't allowed anymore. I'll talk to the administrators and see how we can fix the issue. I'm leaning towards a rules thread for the Graphics forum. To be totally honest, I thought there already was one. My bad. I've pretty much covered everything here already by now. I've modified the Game Master description. What do you mean by leftovers from the level judges, though? |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadI'm 26 and yet, here I am for about my 6th year.
Admittedly, I hang out on Discord nowadays and am only still here for the friends I've made in this community and only rarely post on the forums itself. I sure don't go on here to talk about SMBX. My question is, how is this different from, saw, SMWcentral, or talkhaus, just to name a few examples? I bring those up because this forums faces very similar challenges the other two face, with different userbases and approaches. We're a community of mario fangamers. Immaturity comes with the field. I mean, you're right to step away from the forums because admittedly there's only one central topic: SMBX, and most discussion on that is done by kids giving it a try, not veterans who've moved on. We've wrestled with this for years and in the end there's not much you can do about it, other than the suggestions you offered, which would work and I'm certain the staff wouldn't mind, but a kid in a business suit is still a kid. Don't take this the wrong way, but what are admins normally suppose to do? Why should they be visiting the forums? Quill answered this, we have teens and kids. We can go from hands off to draconian moderation and we'd still face the problem. I've dealt with handling a lot of this crap before, and I can tell you from experience: there is no "right" nor "good" way to keep people from getting mad. There is none, and if you think there is, you aren't reading the character of people, nor the situation, well enough. This has never been a family community. Years ago it was enforced that if you were under 13 you could not be in this community. Since then we've stopped caring, but we will never be accessible to children. Besides, if a kid's already given this a try and started asking questions about whether or not this is legal, for example, I think he doesn't need to be sheltered from something like swearing. Not to imply children should be free, but if they're told to not swear in the wrong place then what else needs to be done? Furthermore, this has never been a community compliant with Christianity. Not all of us are Christians, some of us don't just accept Christianity at face value, and your beliefs will be called into question. If this troubles you, then you won't enjoy your stay here, I'm sorry. I mean if you don't find the forums enjoyable then I can only just shrug and ask what were you looking for in this community. The forums is a repository for SMBX info and design philosophy, and any of the actual socializing takes place on discord, not on the forums. And even then, we do a mix of showcasing SMBX, talking about SMBX, and then talking about whatever. It's not gonna trouble me that you're just here for getting acquainted with SMBX, and you do raise valid points the staff will be looking into, but where you're coming from and your expectations is honestly a bit unfair. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadZM12, Pseudo and I had some discussion and we have added Graphic Forum Rules. I've also edited the Forum Rules to mention that Sendspace is not allowed.
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadDo these rules also exist for graphics packs? Because in my opinion it is better not to make a screenshot of every single tile of every single tileset. For large graphics packs and updates I think it's fine to just have a bunch of screens that show some of the new content to prevent clutter and still make some things a surprise after downloading.
As an additional note, you might want to make the rule against requests a bit more restrictive to other things aswell. Lately people have stopped blatantly requesting and started to ask for stuff. Since they are no longer allowed to request people started avoiding the rule by posting shit like this and this One of these is basically a request but for whatever reason the mods don't lock it (it's been there for a week). The user in question made a pretty terrible attempt at hiding the fact he is requesting someone to rip those megaman sprites. The second one is a great example of something that also happens quite a lot. Namely people asking if a graphic exists allready and where to find it. Is looking for a graphic really the responsibility of the community? It's their level isn't it? |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadTo add to what the others have been saying there's no such thing as "staff spots". Somebody who's qualified enough will never not be made a moderator just because we already have enough staffers. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadFrom all it says, there just needs to be evidence that there are custom graphics. Just because you only showcase like, three of them, and there's like 10, you most likely won't get your topic locked because the fact is that the custom graphics are there. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadYeah, this. For graphics packs, a few examples highlighting what can be expected from the pack will do just fine. First example should have been locked. I'll go ahead and do that now. Second example should have been redirected to this thread, as should all people who make these kinds of threads in the future. I'll let the staff know and also edit the rules to make notice of that thread. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadThat definitely seems to be true. I know that on Forge of Empires, you have to be at least 21 to be a game or forum moderator (and is probably the case for all other games by InnoGames). It does not appear that age enforcement to becoming a mod exists here, but if you look at the most recent application thread (which is probably in the archived announcements forum) it does seem to ask for things that would put older users at an advantage. I don't know if that is the (or even part of the) reason they asked for those specific things but stuff like 'what qualifications do you have?' would mean that going to university and college would help with becoming a mod/admin, and by the time you have such qualifications, you would be in your early or mid 20s, depending if you continue onto higher level degrees, and it is around that point that most people begin to behave more maturely than they were during their teens. Also the same game leaders enforce that the game mods are active at least 14 hours per week while the forum mods are active at least 10 hours per week. Also you have to bear in mind that people hide their online status, making them seem less active than they may actually be, though I would personally discourage that mods and admins do this since it can lead to misconceptions like this forum is badly maintained and they are inactive, though it is agreeable that the admins aren't perfect at modding and maintaining the forums. |
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Re: Site Discussion Threadok so first of all i have no actual clue why im still invisible. it may be that there's still a session where I set myself to be invisible on my old phone maybe? idk lol
Mods having to be online X hours a week seems arbitrary to be quite honest. Not only can you argue what actually counts as being online, it also works off the assumption that there's a limited number of mod slots and you have to get rid of the inactive ones so new ones can join, which is just not the case. The admins are able to judge how much the mods do based off interactions in the staff forum/discord channel, and that should be enough. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadI really don't see how age should affect how mature someone has to be to be a mod. I've met people on the internet younger than me that act older than their age. I'd say the same for myself tbh, if people can show that they're mentally mature, then I don't see why they can't be a mod, especially since the ones we have now obviously act older than their age.
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Re: Site Discussion Thread
I'm not sure whether this has to do with the thought that since you're older that you're superior than people younger than you, or if it's a legitimate opinion that age = maturity. While I don't doubt things, you have included no sources for the studies you have cited. The staff here are fairly matured, at least to the extent that they have stayed as staff members, so I really don't think replacing them with older forum members is going to change anything. They also are active, much more than you would believe. First off, people should have the common sense that the Internet in its entirety is not family friendly, unless you specifically monitor your kids' activity and restrict where they can go. Second, you also bring up being a Christian a lot, and while I don't exactly hate against religion, you can't expect people to bend to your lifestyle just because something offends you. Yes, people swear, it's a thing that happens, but you're not going to be able to get an entire community to change like this, or even put up a filter, because a filter completely destroys free speech, and that's something I at least advocate for. While it is related to Super Mario Bros., this has no way been advertised as a children's game exactly, even back on the original forums in 2009-2010. I'm not exactly certain that can be compared to a Mario forum. I mean, not to sound bad, but what is someone in their 30's exactly doing on a Mario forum, especially one that is preaching about immaturity, being a Christian, and having kids. I'm sure there are much better things to do in life. It's also a Mario forum.
It's only been around since 2009-2010 and you're in your 30's, how exactly did you grow up on it? It looks pretty professional to me? Try elaborating more on how it can be "more professional". It is, again, a Mario forum.
You contradicted yourself. And this community has been around for at least 7+ years, with many of the old members and many new ones coming around every day, I think if it was going to die off any time soon, it would have years ago. Nothing's changed. Uh, you really don't have to search up videos or guides (which there are plenty) to be able to create graphics. There is no "big learning curve", and it really requires no research whatsoever. Unless you were completely clueless on how to use computers, all it takes is to get an image editing software and get cracking. Also I'm not sure how the whole graphics issue frustrates people, about the requests or otherwise. It's a pretty broad statement to make, because we have plenty of people coming back time and time again. Nobody really gets frustrated and just quits because someone isn't able to make their graphic. This place is not advertised in any way, shape, or form as family friendly, and it never has been. Yes, it has Mario plastered right on the front, but that doesn't mean anything. Does it attract kids? Yeah, it can, and has, but what can you do? The forum is in no way unprofessional, at least when it comes for the standards of a Mario forum, if you look at any place like SMWCentral or MFGG, we aren't that different, just a little more tight-knit. The ads can't be helped entirely. Joey has already taken plenty of ads off, but regardless, I'm pretty sure it's up to the advertising partner and can't be fully controlled by Joey when new ones show up. At the very least, they aren't intrusive or large, it's just a banner, so there's that. And I'll play devil's advocate here for a moment and say that if the place turns away Christians, oh well? The only suggestion I can give is to stop being so sensitive and critical of other people and their behaviors, just because you're a Christian does not mean you are entitled to be given any benefits or special treatment. Nothing needs to be done, because nothing really needs changing. Pseudo, Zeldamaster12, and Valtteri are all active regularly, and Quill does show up every once in a while. None of the administrators are inactive, though even if they were, I can't really see how they could be more active. Joey has stepped down from being the community leader and has put that responsibility into the hands of the active administrators, so it acts as a council of sorts. I've come up with the assumption that you are trolling, just based on your composure and the things you have brought up, but that's just an assumption. I still want to know why a 30 year old man is hanging around a Mario forum just to criticize it. But what do I know, I'm just a young, immature non-Christian community veteran. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadMost of his points seem odd to me, and I don't know what made him think this is a children's forum. There's clearly no little kids here(apart from some like rsuper, who would be considered tweens), most users here are teenagers and adults. First off, I don't know what made you think SMBX is for children. Second, we don't get swearing and fighting that often anymore, and most of it isn't excessive like you fantasize it to be. It's kind of sad how you're trying to keep teenage kids from seeing swearing and fighting because they're eventually going to experience it first hand when they're adults. Nobody really cares that you're a Christian, because you seem to have forgotten people here have different religions. If you don't want your kids to see this kind of stuff that they'll see anyways when they're older, you might as well lock them away in a basement somewhere. If you don't like these forums, then why are you still here? Like I said, religion is not a problem, if something offends you, don't be here then. I'm on here every day, and almost every day I've been on here I've seen an admin/mod online as well. These forums appear fine to me, and obviously the admins think the same. Joey is on here sometimes too, but I'm pretty sure he's not going to make any changes any time soon just because of one person who found something offensive to them. Speaking of one person, it seems like you're the only person who's complaining about this so far, because nobody else cares about the occasional swearing. So, this shouldn't be your concern anyways, because what other people choose to put on their profiles is up to them. I have no idea why you're comparing a political forum to a Mario forum, these two topics are irrelevant to each other. Again, if you don't like this forum, why in the hell did you even join it in the first place? Stick to your political forum if that's the kind of forum style you like, because every forum is different in some way. Said what study? Older people also have less time on their hands than younger ones, they have possibly collage, a job, a family, or other adult things to do. Teenagers are usually less busy and some are actually capable of acting older than their age. So to sum up this big mess of a complaint, I really, really can't stress this enough; if you don't like this place, don't be here. Simple as that. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadThere's been a lot of discussion about admin activity.
I ask you all this. How do you determine if an admin is active or not? I'm legitimately curious. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadBy how often they lock threads, move threads, warn users, merge topics, merge posts, ban users, etc. Pretty much by how often they do their admin duties. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadSo, how often has the SMBX staff need to do any of that? Like, this rubric to judge the SMBX staff falls apart the more peaceful it gets on here. |
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Re: Site Discussion ThreadLike, every time there's a shitposter and/or when it's April Fools. |
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