I'd like to say something about the state of the Moderators.
Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2016 3:40 am
They're inactive and don't do anything when they do bother to be online. Tbh, they're not even needed anymore and are just around to clean up after spam bots that should be blocked in the first place, and move topics every now and then. Even the admins are barely needed; they just need to do their actual job once in awhile and take care of this place instead of closing off threads that don't break the forum rules. The forum chugs along in spite of these groups rather than because of them at this point. You have admins like Valtteri who just don't give a shit about what about member concerns and openly say that topics can just be ignored:
Jul 20 16:48:19 <Valtteri> you know i could have just completely ignored the level judge topic
And Joey isn't as helpful, and Pseudo-dino doesn't seem to be doing much on his own. I wouldn't say they are as worthless as the Level Judges group, but they're up there with how little they do with their oversight. In the staff forum they just talk about how to handle specific users by making a thread with a username for the subject, and then collude from there. That's pretty much it besides closing legitimate reports with no further action. It's just Joey and Valtteri that bother to go on IRC - they're not necessarily be active but they're there - leaving the place to be moderated by Mithos. There's not as much spam as there was over the past two years, but there's still cases where human trolls/idiots sign on and go undetected by Mithos while Joey & Valtteri are afk. Not much has been done about that, but that's an old issue I tried to raise to no avail.
If you do a run down you'll see that we would be the same (or even better) if most of the staff were demoted, but it's mostly Mivixion and m3m3br0s that can go out quietly. Both are not active as they should be with one not making a post since last July, and the other rarely using his position to take care of forum issues. There was one point when Korean spam was piling up, was reported, and when Mivixion came online he did nothing about it and left. I had to keep bumping and pinging just to get the H&S forum stickies looked into, when that should have been a quick 5-minute task done a long time ago. It's pointless talking to them most of the time because they have this weird sense of unearned superiority when talking about things. Have a problem with how something works? It's none of your concern. Is something being managed? That's none of your business. Normal people don't talk like that, and it's only this forum where some think they have status over a bunch of children and it's probably the most authority they will ever have. It's just weird, and silly and that's what's supposed to be holding this forum together. I'm actually kind of starting to think that some problems are kept around purposefully so they can justify their positions (i.e. the spam, inefficient systems that imply moderation like how the LJs are to move levels around, and non-transparency) but I don't want to speculate. The forums would be self sustaining if a few changes are made, and that's a good thing. There wouldn't be any more SMBX communities splintering off from this one, and this one might actually be able to grow.
I know this topic is breaking my own rules for this forum, but those don't seem to matter when threads are locked here (hint look at the last poster in threads locked here and see if you spot a trend). This is all coming from a former mod, and there's other former mods that you can go to for insight about the staff and how they do their work. I bet by now at least there's a thread with my name as the subject in the Staff forum, and I can almost tell for sure who made it and who would respond to it. Since there's a don't ask don't tell policy, there's plausible deniability but that goes into what I mentioned above about the lack of transparency. I also have this post backed up in case of shenanigans.
Please let this be a civil discussion about the mods so that maybe something can actually come of this thread.
Jul 20 16:48:19 <Valtteri> you know i could have just completely ignored the level judge topic
And Joey isn't as helpful, and Pseudo-dino doesn't seem to be doing much on his own. I wouldn't say they are as worthless as the Level Judges group, but they're up there with how little they do with their oversight. In the staff forum they just talk about how to handle specific users by making a thread with a username for the subject, and then collude from there. That's pretty much it besides closing legitimate reports with no further action. It's just Joey and Valtteri that bother to go on IRC - they're not necessarily be active but they're there - leaving the place to be moderated by Mithos. There's not as much spam as there was over the past two years, but there's still cases where human trolls/idiots sign on and go undetected by Mithos while Joey & Valtteri are afk. Not much has been done about that, but that's an old issue I tried to raise to no avail.
If you do a run down you'll see that we would be the same (or even better) if most of the staff were demoted, but it's mostly Mivixion and m3m3br0s that can go out quietly. Both are not active as they should be with one not making a post since last July, and the other rarely using his position to take care of forum issues. There was one point when Korean spam was piling up, was reported, and when Mivixion came online he did nothing about it and left. I had to keep bumping and pinging just to get the H&S forum stickies looked into, when that should have been a quick 5-minute task done a long time ago. It's pointless talking to them most of the time because they have this weird sense of unearned superiority when talking about things. Have a problem with how something works? It's none of your concern. Is something being managed? That's none of your business. Normal people don't talk like that, and it's only this forum where some think they have status over a bunch of children and it's probably the most authority they will ever have. It's just weird, and silly and that's what's supposed to be holding this forum together. I'm actually kind of starting to think that some problems are kept around purposefully so they can justify their positions (i.e. the spam, inefficient systems that imply moderation like how the LJs are to move levels around, and non-transparency) but I don't want to speculate. The forums would be self sustaining if a few changes are made, and that's a good thing. There wouldn't be any more SMBX communities splintering off from this one, and this one might actually be able to grow.
I know this topic is breaking my own rules for this forum, but those don't seem to matter when threads are locked here (hint look at the last poster in threads locked here and see if you spot a trend). This is all coming from a former mod, and there's other former mods that you can go to for insight about the staff and how they do their work. I bet by now at least there's a thread with my name as the subject in the Staff forum, and I can almost tell for sure who made it and who would respond to it. Since there's a don't ask don't tell policy, there's plausible deniability but that goes into what I mentioned above about the lack of transparency. I also have this post backed up in case of shenanigans.
Please let this be a civil discussion about the mods so that maybe something can actually come of this thread.