Comments Regarding This Forum

m4sterbr0s · Postby **m4sterbr0s** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:06 pm

Hey guys.

Since I'm a regular user now, I'd like to suggest, or at the very least, bring up some things to your attention that I've seen wrong with this forum. This is the official SMBX forums, and I would really love to see this community improve in terms of behavior and thrive.

1. Level Judging

One thing that all of us have noticed is that lack of enthusiasm for judges to review levels and actually give real feedback. I myself had lost enthusiasm time and time again, but since this has been a recurring theme, I have a suggestion regarding the level judging system.

There should be someone to track the amount of time a level judge has been inactive, and if the time the judge has been inactive exceeds a set limit (i.e. two weeks), then the judge should be removed of his/her duties. There should also be a minimum number of levels judges should review (it should vary, considering the fact that the amount of levels that are submitted weekly aren't consistent).

I only bring this up because there's over 90 levels that haven't been reviewed yet. Also, I tried implementing this system while I was an admin but it failed. I want to share this with the community to see whether or not they agree with me. It would make everything easier, and hopefully, actual progress with level judging can be made.

2. The Warning/Ban System

Back when I was a global moderator, we used to give bans based off the amount of warnings a user received. This protocol included the following:

• 0-1 warnings = no ban
• 2 warnings = 2 day ban
• 3 warnings = 1 week ban
• 4 warnings = 1 month ban
• 5+ warnings = permaban

However, I noticed ever since the reputation mods have been implemented that the amount of warnings/bans handed out has decreased. And bans were given based off actions from IRC and without a good amount of warnings (though there were some exceptions, like michel and pixels who got their bans due to constant bashing of the staff and have nothing constructive to add to the forums). I think the actual warning/ban system should be implemented again, or at least utilized some more, just to keep things more organized and actually enforce the rules. Again, I'm bringing this up only to see if the community agrees with me.

3. The Forum Rules

Yes, they exist for a reason. And yes, it applies to everyone, even staff. There were some people here who felt the need to backseat moderate mainly because they felt the need to help and look out for the staff. I'd like to remind people that there is a report system. There are some people who have been good users but always broke the backseat moderating rule. In addition, people really have the tendency to make worthless and useless posts, sometimes only one word or only commenting on something because it looks good. There should be a reason as to why it's good, or there should be something meaningful about the topic you're commenting on. Again, the forum rules are for everyone.

4. Being here is a privilege, and not a right.

I'm bringing up this point once more because some users fail to see how important this statement is. We are given the right to a lot of things in life. But in terms of joining and being part of a community, it is a privilege, and not a right. There's a lot of drama that emerge from stupid and silly arguments. I only make this point because some of you guys are young and this is a growing up/maturing process for most of you. In the real world, you can't expect to overreact and get away with it. Society will find a way to use that and continue to attack you. Yes, we all have disagreements and we have different views on many subjects, but it doesn't mean that you have to disown or hate someone for that. Instead of accepting, we're disrespecting. Instead of getting along, we fight and continue to do wrong. We're all human, and we have the right to believe in what we believe in. We shouldn't be pushing our views, and we should respect each other's views, no matter what (as long as they're logical and humane). This is the biggest problem with these forums. Learn to take a joke. At the same time, don't try to bully others just because of who they are. In addition, just be yourself.

That is all. Thoughts on this from anyone would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

FanofSMBX · Postby **FanofSMBX** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:09 pm

"However, I noticed ever since the reputation mods have been implemented that the amount of warnings/bans handed out has decreased."
Is this a bad thing?

m4sterbr0s · Postby **m4sterbr0s** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:10 pm

Well, I doubt that the staff did this on purpose; it seemed to be a mere coincidence.
But yeah, I think it's bad because the warning/ban system kept everyone in check, and actually made users aware of the ramifications due to their bad/improper actions.

Postby **DarkMatt** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:17 pm

1. Lack of enthusiasm in our judges has kind of always been a thing, honestly. Don't tell anybody I said this and pretend this is a private discussion, but I do think level judging is a bit too glorified. We should be encouraging everybody to give the Levels forum a look, not selecting a few people that posters should care about. I mean look at bossedit, he's not a judge, yet everybody knows him.

Though yeah we could just keep an eye on their production like actual supervising instead of just leaving them be to tidy up the forums. Though I dunno how they're gonna react to having their "lay back and relax all day" position supervised.

2. I'm...gonna leave talking about this to the staff forum. If they don't respond to me either then I'll just push for something different.

3. Our staff should also remind people, whenever they are backseat modding, that that's what the report button is for. As for the fluff posts, eeeeeh, I think we're still all kind of divided on our general stance for that. I mean, in general if it's just banter then it's okay, but we should like, stop horsin' around ourselves and take serious responses seriously.

4. No particular comment about this one, aside from a friendly reminder that it's there to give admins/mods absolute authority, as in, you can't use our own rules against us since we're the ones who made it. That's not how this place works, and we don't accept that kind of weaseling out. Furthermore yeah, we've been very lax on dealing out punishment whenever drama crap happens. I mean, SUPER lax. We gotta stop doing that because we gotta do something about it, and setting examples and showing what happens to those sorts of people is a way. I'm open for suggestions, after all.

m4sterbr0s · Postby **m4sterbr0s** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:20 pm

DarkMatt wrote:4. No particular comment about this one, aside from a friendly reminder that it's there to give admins/mods absolute authority, as in, you can't use our own rules against us since we're the ones who made it. That's not how this place works, and we don't accept that kind of weaseling out.

Hm. You do actually have a point about that now thinking about it, lol.

FanofSMBX · Postby **FanofSMBX** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:34 pm

m4sterbr0s wrote:
DarkMatt wrote:4. No particular comment about this one, aside from a friendly reminder that it's there to give admins/mods absolute authority, as in, you can't use our own rules against us since we're the ones who made it. That's not how this place works, and we don't accept that kind of weaseling out.
Hm. You do actually have a point about that now thinking about it, lol.

"Sc**w the rules I make them"?

Postby **DarkMatt** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 7:38 pm

Screw the rules we made them.

I mean sure we have to adhere to professional standards but we're not like you. We can bend the rules a little bit if it's better than letting things break down.

FanofSMBX · Postby **FanofSMBX** » Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:03 pm

You are totally like me. In fact we're both in the same user group!

Postby **glitch4** » Mon Jul 21, 2014 2:58 am

not allowing useless posts rule is the worst thing happen to smbxc, because it's the only forum that could done like that and some people posting these

Mable · Postby **Mable** » Tue Jul 22, 2014 6:13 am

Is the smbxc still a meme reference from Talkhaus.

TBH Useless posts are shit anyway they only there to gain +1 postcount.

Axiom · Postby **Axiom** » Thu Jul 31, 2014 8:43 am

DarkMatt wrote:1. Lack of enthusiasm in our judges has kind of always been a thing, honestly. Don't tell anybody I said this and pretend this is a private discussion, but I do think level judging is a bit too glorified. We should be encouraging everybody to give the Levels forum a look, not selecting a few people that posters should care about. I mean look at bossedit, he's not a judge, yet everybody knows him.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.
What needs to happen is regular users need to review levels. Then we have a group of people not necessarily called level judges, but maybe level moderators. Here, they can use common sense to look at the reviews, average out the unbiased ones, and move the levels to the appropriate forums. This would make their job ALOT easier as they wouldn't be forced to review if they don't want to but they still could if they really wanted to.