I am your new admin & MFGG Logic topic, with pointless graphs and everything

Dammit Tragic I had a long speech ready to go and everything and you went and covered half of it in a paragraph and now I'm going to look stupid

--SPEECH BEGIN--

Good day, long read ahead.

So I was looking through the PM database searching for my name and I found everyone wants me as an admin!

Seriously though, I am your new administrator, Black Squirrel - you may remember me from such films as "Global Moderator 3: Rise of the machines" or "PPP Mod: The living daylights". I have swapped roles with Tragic, who will now be taking my place as Global moderator out of his own choice. Take this time to thank your computer monitors for the work he has done and hopefully will continue to do. Maybe they'll flicker slightly to thank you back, i dunno. Maybe Tragic will travel to your house to give you flowers and a box of chocolates or wax your car.

Now for a big fat speech including a whole heap of crap I made because I have too much spare time.

We've had some dodgy mods over the last few months. Like, really dodgy. Not dodgy as in "bad", but dodgy as in "wtf iz mfgg doin". In fact ever since ShadowMan left about this time last year it's been a dodgy road for MFGG. We've had several revisions of the mod team - it's almost completely different to a year ago. The general attidude of MFGG keeps changing as new mods come in and old ones go out. The forums have literally gone to hell and back, and not even the leaders appear to be trustworthy.

NO MORE

We will hire Wheeljerk. In the coming months I am going to attempt to make MFGG "livable" again. Not "BETTER THAN EVARRR" but "livable". It isn't livable at the moment (well it is, but it can be a lot better), it's a mess. A mess because we've been playing musical moderators all night and nobody's bothered to put the chairs back how they were and now they're tipped over and broken and we've had to make a run for it so as not to pay for the damages. What has this proven? Well, have a look:

Above is a handy dandy admin "reputation" graph, which I've based on the general vibe of MFGG. Admins against "coolness" taking into account all the positive things they've done as admins and what they've achieved in that position etc. The transparent sections are what certain admins achieved as global moderators. Yes, their "reputation" has dropped. It's not nice. I don't like thinking negative so anything bad that they've done has not influenced this graph that much. Amazing huh.

Notice our latest admins. Oh dear. The promotion to adminhood compiled with the recent incidents has caused the entire administration and moderation team to look weak and confused. Bummer. Can it be fixed? Well yeah. That's kinda half my "Squirrelplan". Some of these figures will have changed after resignations or whatever. One thing to note is that none of them have gone below 0 - every single one has made a positive impact. There are no terrible admins, just a few "unlucky" ones. To say that none of these admins deserve credit is just plain stupid and if you're thinking like that perhaps you should consider using the door!

Just to point out that other people's perspective on this will be different, but I don't care, it's my post/admin bragging thing k. When you make admin, you can post some quickly made graphs and boast about them.

My estimate? Yeah it's a bit big, might not get that high at all, might collapse in on itself if this post ends up coming out worse than I expected, I dunno. Don't worry about it. Though I have written a huge post here about myself so

BEHOLD, my expected path. Might be a different story, but I'd like to think I've already made a difference, even if I haven't, and it's my graph so screw you. There are two branches as to where my admin life will take me - the green path, being some positive thing and everyone loves me and wants to give me cars or something, or the red path, where I screw up and make a mess of everything I've worked for. The latter has happened several times in the last few months, I don't want to continue that trend. It's been a similar situation with pretty much every other admin in charge at some point. If this trend is allowed to continue this place will need some serious work so that we can actually have administrators... or moderators.

"but teh ccc already fail wut"

I'll get on to that in a mo.

"ATTACK"

Well that brings me onto the userbase. OH GOD NO. MFGG, like many forums, is a two way street. To manage and effectively run the forums admins and mods need the co-operation of members. The members... don't seem to want to co-operate. If an admin slips up, GET OF TEH HOUSE. Not good. I'm not going to accept that sort of attitue anymore. If you have a problem with anything use our fancy PM system. If you make a public outcry filled with lies, spam, ignorance and without purpose you can enjoy your month off. If it makes me unpopular, so be it. This ain't no play, so keep your "drama" away. Everyone makes mistakes, deal with it. You'll have to. If you're super unhappy with the administration, door's open. Not saying you'll all remain in silence as I lay down laws, I'll come to that in a moment, but absolutely nobody deserves the amount of disrespect, attidudes and general rudeness that Yoshiman got even after admitting and apologising for his mistake. From now on if you mess with anyone, you mess with me. Rarr.

I am fully prepared to be attacked. Seems to be a popular trend to blame those in charge for everything ever. Well okay "prepared" as in "will deal with it" not "prepared" as in "can see into the future and know what you're thinking". Though I can probably have a good guess as to what some of you are thinking so...


...now for something more positive, like, MYTH BREAKING

"MFGG IS GOING DOWNHILL DUE TO SUCKAGE CAN'T BE STOPPED NO NO NO"

WRONG. Well right, but not TOTALLY right.

Check it out

Why it's a simple force diagram! If MFGG was going downhill it would look like this. Assuming of course that MFGG is modelled as a particle on a plane inclined at RII degrees to the horizontal on a rough surface. But wait! MFGG in it's current state right now this very second isn't being dragged down my a seemingly endless supply of bad members!

My theory? MFGG is in equilibrium - the forces cancel, but MFGG continues to move. So yes, MFGG is going downhill (if it is on a hill), but it's not a bad thing. Doesn't make a right lot of sense no but who gives a crap, I'm just bringing some light entertainment to this otherwise dull, big-headed post. If you have absolutely no idea what I have just posted, again don't worry about it.

How are we to make MFGG go back up hill? Well we obviously must reduce the amount of bad members pulling it down. Or move to the moon. Or go on a diet. Whatever. Or we could reduce RII degrees so that MFGG is resting horizontally. Though I don't know how you'd do that and I probably wouldn't recommend it. And even then it wouldn't go up hill.

Fixing this "problem" again boils down to the userbase

A pie chart so that this post looks even more sophisticated and "cool". I have no doubts that this thing isn't correct but it doesn't really matter. The important parts are the red/grey... or not.

MFGG's userbase is made up of stupids. I'm guessing about 30% of it, maybe more, maybe less. People who have never touched fangaming or the arts in a huge way and have no plans to do anything useful for the community. I don't like this. "LOLZ I COM FUR DA COMMUNITY". Well get this, it's a FANGAMING community. Now I'm not saying that we should all crack open MMF2 and create SMB3 clones 4 lyfe, but it's dumb to think that the caring and non-caring should get equal treatment. It's just not fair. MFGG's reputation as a whole deteriorates because our "main" community is made up of people who have immigrated from sites that are unrelated to MFGG's main purpose. Now I haven't got anything against immigration if it's of the right sort. But if you are just here to post like an idiot and waste our time then you honestly aren't welcome. Sorry.

As you can probably guess, I don't think any attempts on my part to flush the useless away is going to work. Yoshiman tried it to some degree, though making the CCC a second PPP wasn't a wise choice because it just brought them back. I reckon that red area has grown over the years and will continue to do so until it has devoured the other categories. I am not going to waste time and resources pleasing those who don't deserve it. The reds and greys should either leave or get better. Up2u wut u du

Whereas I'm not a fan of MFGG becoming a chatroom for YouTube or whatever, I don't like the concept of super-strict fangaming forums which some sites like SFGHQ have. It works yes, but it's hardly welcoming. I want the good to be rewarded with the opportunity to... well, "chill out" with other fangamers, artists etc. Have conversations about stuff outside of the main focus. There's no way in hell that everyone is always going to have a strong interest in fangaming or game making in general. If you've got an artist's block why the hell should you be excluded until it comes back? MFGG is the only online community I've come across that's got the potential to be really quite fun, despite being made solely around one subject, but that subject is not set to change.

The CCC will be operating on a casual member based system. I don't give a damn if you don't like it, we had that discussion last November. I would go as far to say that the only huge success we've had this year is that system, and I'm fully behind it because I half invented it. Woooooooo. The "strikes" system has been dropped. Hell you may not have realised one was in place. That's why it was dropped. If you can think of a better system to remove idiocy that won't result in public outcry, I'm here to listen, but for now, Casual Member system it is.

Elitist? Probably. I don't care. I like to reward the good and make the bad work to be good. Yes it kinda means the Casual Members can look down on ordinary members... but they're not going to steal your toys and make you do the washing up. And hey, it means the ordinary members have people to look up to! If getting a happy heart badge is such a struggle chances are you'll be out of here eventually anyway.

If you're banned... it's your fault. I would have thought that was obvious. No doubt occasionally moderators make mistakes, I mean many of them are in the same boat as I am. If you do feel your ban was unnecessary I'll check up on it, but even as a global I sorta did that and very few were unjustified. Either way, I'd say 95% of the time it's deserved. Sometimes it's a compilation of long-standing things that were left unpunished. We might let you off occasionally but if you think this will be a common pattern it'll catch up on you.

As far as ban time goes, it's up to the moderators. If you think the timing is unfair feel free to give me a ring (or them a ring, depends on how many "rings" I get from this topic. If I get 50 or more I might disappear into a special stage to get me a chaos emerald) but unless it's absurd I can't see it being significantly changed. I'm going to say that any rule breaking can result in a ban time of up to a week regardless. 7 days for a first ban? Fair enough. Chances of getting 7 days are unlikely, but I won't be sacking mods for that. I don't mind people appealing their case, I do want to be as fair as possible, but I won't listen if it's 7 days or less - it just isn't worth it, especially when it could take a couple of days for me to sort out, and half your ban time in theory you wouldn't even be on a computer. By the end of it you're essentially arguing for a couple of days, if that, and I think you can wait. I mean taking time off an internet forum is hardly punishment anyway.

As implied, if you are unable to post decently you'll just lose your CCC access, again and again and again. But if you want to post crap, then feel free to some other forum. I'm not stopping you. Not endorsing it either, but some boards like mindless garbage and may really want to get to know you. The CCC is NOT the PPP. Things have been sliding as we've been waiting for this system coming online, but it's not going to happen anymore (at least on my part). The CCC, General Friendliness, Wii Discussion, WiFi and even the General Chat are "extras" to MFGG's forums. We're kind enough to let you use them under certain conditions, but we could ditch them all if we wanted. We're not going to, but if we were, the CCC would certainly be the first to go. It is a priveledge, not a right to have it, and considering it's frequently abused you're actually really lucky that some high authority hasn't scrapped the concept entirely.

I mean even with all this stuff the CCC is proabably going to remain more-or-less the same, just with a lot less rubbish posts. And uh, casual conversation. It's not super nazi fun time. Quality control will be still loose enough to have fun in. Just think of the stuff that lived in the WPP as a guidline of how NOT to post, and if your topic isn't going to make decent conversation, might be better to not post it.

Also tbh none of the stuff I've mentioned should be "new" to anyone. I've put my own little spin on a few things but all I'm really doing is tightening up security for the mods and admins. I don't want a community that pushes them out all the time.


I'm not going to be doing much as an administrator now that the CCC has re-opened, because in fairness, this board can just about survive without them. I'll obviously be taking care of IP bannings and shizzle but I won't be re-ordering things around and introducing amazing new systems and whatnot unless it's really needed. I'm only planning on fixing what is broken, and I must say, for a forum to last 7 years it can't be a bomb site despite what some of you believe. Things that will probably be happening though are:

• Removal of Brawl discussion, because one game does not deserve a sub-forum for a huge length of time. In fact you can probably guess why I've kept quiet about it
• The possible closure of the Community Fangame Project, depending if it actually becomes active. Yoshiman's a key player to that and he's gone, so have several others. Not much keeping that afloat unfortunately, and although I'd love to see something fantastic be created... it's been half a year and I've seen nothing of interest really. Engine tests that don't amount to anything and sprites that aren't in use aren't my definition of fangame success. Not to say there isn't some success there, but it doesn't need an entire sub-forum. It might just become a single sticky. Maybe two if the "two halves" method is continued.
• Some other possible changes in the Fangame discussion. I'd rather it were like the old system without all the sub-forums and before it was a duplicate of Help! I can see it turning into something like the Arts Board, with just a WIP subforum. But I've barely mentioned this so far and it affects Guinea the most so yeah. "Released" subforum is a ghost town in comparison to the rest. I don't think it's fair coverage.

Though nothing's set in stone and of course I'll probably bring up the last one with you guys when the time comes. If it comes.

If you want a "DJ Yoshiman's Weekly Announcements" thing again I could run that, though I don't think there'll be enough stuff for a weekly programme. Very difficult to know exactly what MFGGers want nowadays which is partly the reason why you people should contact me, or others, or post. Details about that below. Who knows I could even kill two birds with one stone and do that long talked "fangame of the month" thing to. But I've just come up with this idea while making this overly long post so yeah.

"Global mod with benifits"

SOME OTHER THINGS

TROLL FEEDING & REPORTING:

Troll topics. Ignore them. Do not post in them, only REPORT them. REPORT. REPORT. REPORT. If you're unfamiliar with said button here's the whole family

Don't they look pretty. I heard Fireflower and MegaMan got together and are expecting a baby. FIRE MAN skin... where all the images are two frame anigifs of low quality fire and the only forum viewable is the cave of flames. And Fire Man and Heat Man moderate the place and flame absolutely everything except their stages in the MegaMan games and other things related to fire.

The reasons for not feeding trolls?

a) Topics are likely to be deleted so your post is pointless anyway
b) Bumped topics will go back to their pre-bumped state if the bump post is removed. If you keep posting, we'll have to remove more posts. It is not cool or hip to get in b4 delete. Amazingly trolls like that sort of attention! Who'd have guessed!
c) i said so and i are admin nw rofl

But don't abuse the report system either, because that would be stupid. Reporting will tell ALL of our handy dandy moderators that there is a problem. And chances are they'll fix it if necessary. Do not be afraid to submit reports, but there's no point in reporting more than once and certainly no point if it really isn't worthy of attention. You have no right to complain about lack of mod action if you haven't reported a problem! Well you can, but it'll be stupid. If we're in the wrong, feel free to say so through PMs, but we're only human and sometimes some issues are just too difficult to decide apon. Don't force a decision out of us - it's only when you get into a position of "power" that you realise how many issues are "on the fence".

We've lost a lot of international moderators - I think it's only me and Guinea left, the rest are in the US. If something really bad is truely going unnoticed and there's nobody around, I'd suggest maybe reporting again every, I dunno, four or five hours? The chances of a mod not being on in that time seems very slim but still. But do remember there are timezones and mods may be sleeping or be living their real lives.

RULES:

Despite you people telling others to read them not many do so yourselves! SO READ THEM. They haven't changed in a while but they're slightly different to a couple of years ago, so if you're thinking "lol I read these rules in 2004" you may need to top up your internet knowledge. The member expectation thing still mostly applies.

BIO MENACE:

Play it because I'm currently addicted it seems and nobody will get the best part of my new game if you don't. It sports 16 colour enemies and 80s haircuts.

MAIN SITE:

We have one. Coincidentally I am an admin there too. Support it and love it for what it is, not just for what it was. We don't need that gap between the main site and forums to get wider! Forum members generally seem to post better than main siters, and intelligent posts can make a difference. (Stupid Posts + Intelligent Posts)/2 = Average Posts. Feel free to bump up the main site from "stupid" to "average"! Or "average" to "intelligent", depending on your stance. Ironically the site has been a lot more successful within the last couple of years than this forum, so think before you diss it.

GENERAL EDGYNESS:

Your join date does not make you edgy. Labelling people without proof does not make you edgy. Making crap topics does not make you edgy. The only people who have an "edge" over the rest are those who can post well, and usually those trying to be "edgy", aren't! A lot of people are trying to be the bees knees and there's all sorts of conflicting attitudes and I don't like that much either. Everyone starts off a newbie, and everyone makes mistakes. Stop exploiting mistakes or you'll make the biggest mistake of all! Getting on the wrong side of Black Squirrel who will make your life a living hell with his swarms of locusts and turning water into blood and other religious references! That is assuming I don't make a mistake either... I mean controlling swarms of locusts can't be easy.

NAME CHANGES:

Current system seems to be working fine so nothing big there. I'll do name changes if my workload is small. Don't know exactly how much work I'll get from this topic - I've set myself up for a lot it seems. I'll be running on a "Klobber System" which means although I'll only be allowing the current one name change, I'll quite happily do MINOR alterations to your username for no extra cost. I.e. Capitals, removal of numbers, spelling mistakes etc. I'll also get rid of the #<number>; errors in usernames if wanted. E.g. "Burnin#39;Leo". That being said I'll only do these alterations once or twice. Not going to make a habit of changing one letter every now and then so that you can get a complete name change for free.

NEW MODS?!?!!

None for now. And if there are to be any I can't see it being "specific" ones. Maybe one day Guinea and ShyGuy grey will be bumped up to globals but either way we don't need more specific mods. After all global mods can still be specific if they want to. I certainly can't see any more admins being hired for a long while. No. I'm going to make people WORK for this position, because lord knows I should have. That is, unless, I really do suck as an admin and someone's pulled in last minute to replace me. Could happen!

COMPLAINTS:

If my wonderful words of advice don't agree with your logic feel free to PM me! And if that fails, drop me an email! I won't listen to your complaints without a reason to back it up though. A PM saying "Casual Member sux" isn't going to do much. In fact it may backfire and I may ban you for wasting time and space! Okay maybe not but still. I'm also open to ideas and suggestions. Good ones, but I don't want to go around spreading the word of huge, unecessary change. The modern citizen prefers to pay by check or credit/debit card to avoid such complications anyway.

Obviously though if you'd rather discuss this stuff in public post below, though I can't guarantee it'll be noticed if this topic manages to offend and causes 15 pages of arguments overnight just because I don't want bad attitudes.


anyway


(complete with very crappy logo which was made very, very quickly)

COMMUNICATION. Good members will have their say. I want to hear from YOUUUUUU. I'm going to bring this mod team a bit closer together so that we don't have to wait a month or two for a system to be turned on! =P

HONESTY. I can't speak for everyone, but if I make a mistake, I'll bloody admit I've made a mistake. I'm not going to go around and say "THIS IS A GOOD MISTAKE SHUT UP" and defend myself for no reason. This is my first BIG admin job ever (except for the main site if that even counts), and I am very likely to slip up. I'm not going to go around and claim I have 50 years of experience moderating online forums because I do not. Lots of decisions in the past were based on guesswork. I will not change anything without evidence that it needs to be changed, and it'll need to be good evidence. Before you start flogging that inexperienced statment - there really isn't that many people left anymore to take this job and so you've got me. You have brought this fate apon yourselves!

FAIRNESS. I may be uh... third highest up now in the MFGG hirachy, but that doesn't make me any better than you people. I will only treat people like garbage if they treat me, the rest of the moderation team, or some undeserving peep like garbage. There might be a sort-of ranking system but I can change ranks with the click of a button. I will listen to what people have to say, may not act on it, but I'll try not to ignore it. Hopefully all of MFGG will get a fair input on the way things are run. Not quite sure if anyone had a huge input while Yoshiman was up front. No offense of course.

GOOD LOOKS. Because Jeff's up here with me, and him plus a badly sprited crappy squirrel character MUST be better than him and a green musical dinosaur character. I mean do you think Barney the Dinosaur is attractive!?! I think not!

FUN. Yes I can be full of myself and a git at the same time, but I'm not going to let MFGG fall into some form of dictatorship. I am sick and tired of people wasting their lives arguing about trivial matters. Fangames are a form of entertainment, so smile dammit. If you're determined to not let MFGG make you happy, seriously, go elsewhere. Maybe outside to go and buy a new sense of humour. Though if it isn't making you happy for whatever reason, again, don't be afraid to contact someone. Not dealing with emo stuff though. I couldn't give a damn if some random lass dumped you and as such THE WORLD OWES YOU.

NO ABUSE OF ADMIN FUNCTIONS. Don't worry, your PMs are safe!

EVENTUAL SPRITE REPLACEMENT. So that I stop resizing the same image with rotsprite and plastering it on everything

Also going to take this time to once again congratulate Tragic, Yoshiman, Xgoff and whoever else decided to leave or demote themselves quitely. A round of applause for their efforts plz.

So yeah, keep on truckin' MFGG.

Your new friendly neighbourhood administrator
Black Squirrel

Mr.Squirell

will you bring back the long over-due CCC events?

aka events that happened during the PPP days that were fun

Possibly, depends if CCC works, and I've got a huge Admin CP to explore

We'll see if I can't make April Fools a little... better too. If I last that long.

Holy crap, that was an awesomely long post. Best of luck to you.

I doubt you'll fail as an admin after I've read that post =)

I'm certain you'll be able to return MFGG to form. Hope things go well for you.

Congrats man!

NOW! GET TO WORK!!

That was highly motivational

I think we understood already =)

i still think we should at some point have that namechange system i suggested in forum 12... seriously it's like kicking people in the balls (if they have some that is)

also that post was awesome

ever since I joined I knew you should have been an admin and it took too long, and after reading your post, I know that this forum will rise to the top!

btw you still have your mod badge

This post has been edited by The Toadster on May 28 2008, 11:47 AM

I like how you are doing you job already.

So do I still have a name change left?

Yes

Also claimed my symbol of authority

As long as you tell idiots to go away and keep the forum about making games there could be real improvement...

but harboring the riff raff will ruin EVERY plan you ever make, so be WARY of those that make a lot of noise but haven't made a game or something related in years.

I say you could kill them all by burning down General Friendliness, bombing the CCC into oblivion; and then using a minimalistic approach to the board, favoring instead oh I dunno, the site.

Congrats!I´ve always thought you´d be a great admin,but when I read your post.....I was sure.

Does anyone know where the Casual forum went?

phanks.

Read his post. But in answer to his question: you need to be a "Casual Member", which involves a certain amount of posts and being ban-free for a certain amount of time.

Unless I missed something.

Alright, I read some of it, its a wall of text tbh.

And btw, that's kinda dumb, I liked the WIP topic there. A lot of people like viewing topics there but rarely post. (Life, Universe, and Everything else board, or Current Events message board ring a bell to anyone?)

This post has been edited by Cellnkocane on May 28 2008, 12:46 PM

But it's a very fancy wall with all sorts of crazy brick formations that you can just look at for hours