Lets make this short and quick because I'm enjoying this quiet time. A few weeks ago following random GC outbursts I got everyone to PM my test account with their concerns. The result? Not many concerns. < 15 PMs and many were sorted out straight away (and some weren't even concerns!). This suggests that this topic is only going to actually benefit a small few and if that's the case it can't possibly be the end of the world.


Originally I was going to group these in a big bundle and act on popularity alone but no one point was picked up on by half the members so that idea just won't work. So I SHALL ANSWER QUESTIONS INSTEAD

I'll leave out the crazy member-related stuff because some people might get a bit annoyed


TERMS AND CONDITIONS

You might want to look away if you're not going to take the staff's views very well. Many of the answers listed here might not be what you're looking for but they're not likely to change so the key phrase here is "live with it or go elsewhere". The mod team is running the place, this is our answers, and the solutions we're planning to take.

It's also good to note this is a fangaming forum, not a public debate forum, not a political forum. It is more of a club than a society, and we manage said club. Many of the political arguements I'm sure I'll receive do not have to apply here so don't assume they do. All of these points have been passed through forum 12 and the decisions surrounding them should be final. The mod team does not wish to continue discussions on some of the big points here anymore - as far as we're concerned most of these are solved. We would all like to move on with our lives and concentrate on better things instead of running around in this silly circle.

Also I distinctly remember saying problems AND solutions... not much of the latter was delivered so we've had to come up with them. But that account is still waiting for PMs so you could always post better alternatives there!

that being said

LETS GO

*****************

BANS

I'm going to get this particular section out of the way with first because we're spending too much time caring as it is. I think more effort from the members should be put in to not getting banned rather than complaining about them.

"unban rath for his alleged spam"

To be honest I really think it's probably going to work out better if this point was dropped. There's a significant number of people against this as well as for it. I am now officially on the fence, though I suppose in many ways MFGG has catered for one side for a long time, now it's the turn of the others'. I was considering dropping the charges when reading through these PMs but the rest of forum 12 seems to be in support of the measurements already put in place. Yes the circumstances were not perfect and I have admitted to my mistakes several times now but I think it's probably best to move on with your lives. Feel free to rant about it elsewhere offsite - this decision's pretty much final.

OSM

a lot of people pointed that out again, though not as a request to have him back. Just to clarify that one will not be revoked so no worries there.

"Staff and members are not on the same page with what justifies a banning. Too many gray areas and banning between the rules"

The only reason members would not be on the same page as the staff is if they haven't read the rules or can't quite grasp them for some reason. This has always raised questions because following a set of forum rules is not a hard task. Bans are delivered on a case-by-case basis, as such it is impossible to effectively define a set number of days for each type of ban. A moderators' job is to keep the forum clean - if they do not believe it is, they'll clean it. Again I can't possibly give a solid definition of "clean" but in most cases it's obvious when something is dirty.

The "grey area" arguement often appears when discussing the forum rules and I've never really understood why. The only reason you would find it is if you were looking for it, and if you're looking for loopholes in the rules that's never a good sign. Our forum rules are considerably more detailed than most other forums of its type - most go for a broader approach and we may be doing the same. The majority of the people of this forum have got by with little or no bans - it is entirely the fault of the members if they are banned. If you don't think something should be posted it usually shouldn't be.

Coincidentally "banning between the rules" is very difficult with this line in place

"This list of rules is not final. Exploiting loopholes is not a good idea. Judgements and final decisions are the responsibility of moderational and administrative staff alone."

We're not prepared to write a several hundred page document on forum rules for the benefit of a few that don't use common sense. There's a common sense rule too.

"Ban lengths are strangely determined by length of ban log, not usually determined by the seriousness of the action or the length of time between bannings"

^{[Citation Needed]}

ban times are determined on all those factors. Big ban logs do come into the equation as big ban logs = bad. Only a very small percentage of MFGG have been terrible enough to receive one. If you've effectively been told to improve your behaviour half a dozen times and still fail to, the punishment needs to get bigger so get the message across. Not much else can be done apart from permabans. And obviously the green ones and the silly ones aren't taken into account. But the equation has more variables than size of logs alone. Hell nowadays we barely let anyone work up a big banlog.

But you can't effectively come up with a counter arguement against banning due to previous history unless your banlog is filled with garbage. There are no big banlogs filled just with garbage.

"All communication between member and mod is cut off when they are banned"
not really - I've been contacted by plenty of permabanned members. Of course it's not the staff's job to contact other people after their bans - that's theirs.

There's always a window for communication. Whether that be through the main site, email, IMs etc. I find it difficult not to be able to contact a moderator seeing as many of them visit other places too. Dunno if there's a way to really rectify this problem without throwing AIM names out every permaban. With a last chance system in place it should be dangerously clear why someone was permabanned.

Not to mention it isn't really a goal of ours to keep talking to people who we felt were so unhelpful to the community we had to remove them. I'd rather focus on the helpful community instead.

"Be sure of Punitive Measures when you decide on them"

which is a practise we all try to do

"(or) Either say openly "If Mods do nothing for it, it's going unpunished... Or There's XX days Mods can make up their minds in"

I think I get the jist of this but a case-by-case is probably more appropriate than time limits. Time limits are open to be abused, case-by-case... not so much.

"Don't permaban people for minor offenses"

This doesn't happen in most cases but it depends how you define "minor". If a minor ban appears after a long string of minor bans dating back for years, we may decide to just say "enough is enough". But the last chance system again fixes any real concerns.

However we're not going to allow a system where those who are on the verge of being permabanned are allowed to break as many minor rules as possible.

"Warning/banning members for bringing up legit issues"

This point is old and outdated and applies to a previous administration body. The idea was that people were being warned for just disagreeing with an issue. A good half of the mods in that example aren't even mods anymore. The only time I can see this happening again is if someone disagrees with something so much that they start breaking forum rules and pester the hell out of us until they get their own way, but even then their bans will probably be made due to violations of actual rules.

"Inconsistent ban length standards"

Many times MFGG's gone into a state where there's been a solid, regulated ban time system. In the past, ban times used to double each time an offense was made. We've had tables and concepts and all sorts thrown at the way the mods ban people, but every idea has fallen through because very few cases are the same and it's never been a hit with all the members.

However saying that nowadays ban lengths are reasonably consistent. In the past people used to get 30 days from one person, and possibly 4 from another. The gap is much smaller now.

As I've said from the very beginning I cannot do anything to change the actions of past mod teams. However this one is generally nicer than that period in late 07 where were ranking up several pages of bans each month. Just remember that.

"Last chance list"

some people don't like this concept but the only other alternative I can see is to go by the older system and randomly permaban people without a final warning. I seem to recall a significant amount of people against that old system, demanding more verbal warnings be put in place. Coincidentally, verbal warnings have increased again following the mod changes.

I don't think a last chance system can get any fairer than it is now unless we had multiple last chances. For a fangaming community it seems quite fine as it is now.

"make the last chance list public, set XX days until people come off it"

and to be honest the last chance list is more of a mental list - it's not written down anywhere. It could be, but as I make a point to record it in banlogs and people are often verbally warned along with them anyway... this has already been somewhat fulfilled. Not really sure if it's a brilliant idea to have it stickied anywhere, I mean it can't be good to openly say "these members are so bad they're almost at a stage where we're forcibly kicking them out". That would certainly bring down moral.

Should be painfully obvious if the moderation is considering permabanning you. Spread the information as you will but it's not really our target to tell everybody someone sucks because it's not our primary objective to put people on this list.

We can't really attach a time to the last chance list - it depends entirely on people's attitudes. If they do generally change for the better and really start producing amazing things for the community, their names will probably disappear. But this is again a case by case basis issue and people will simply abuse another time limit as many do with the CCC.


Also showing off a last chance list contradicts other people's views about the banlog being public, so this is a case where more PMs were probably needed so that I could get a better grasp on what MFGG wants.


As someone said, there is too much emphasis on the whole "banning people" thing, and really it's not much of a concern to members because they don't have to deal with it. People who are banned for doing bad things are getting too much attention anyway.

"More frequent permas: I support them"

cool

*****************

MODERATION

get more mods and admins. voted for in semi-democracy

This is a work in progress. Forum specific mods were recently bumped up to global status and Char was appointed as our new CCC mod and Yoshiman as FD mod again (a few more details on that below). Others may follow. Mod structure wasn't quite up to spec before but hopefully it's more likable now. And it'll get better.

Semi-democracy apparently implies that the members have a say in the decision. This is fine and dandy on paper, however we're concerned that popularity votes will overthrow votes for good mods, so for the time being we'd prefer to have it internally.

maybe make an "honorary mod" user group

this is apparently a group for Jeff - people who can do things like change forum titles/descriptions though have no amazing powers. Unfortunately that one cannot physically be done due to the limitations of this board system, HOWEVER, moderators without the ability to ban can and have been done and could be done again if wanted. There are potential candidates for those roles already. Nobody said anything about that idea so I dunno

"Not enough positive member and mod interaction is introduced"
"Communication between board members on valid issues is not allowed because the staff can't tolerate dealing with flack like older mods did."

I can't speak for other people but I've said PMs and IMs for many months now... I can't do much else as far as communication goes. I have this mental image of people waiting by phones for people to call, but not actually making the first move and phoning them.

Dealing with "flack" is not something moderators can be effectively trained in. You'll have troubles finding someone who is. People often make it their place to repeatedly point out problems but not solutions, and then cannot cope when a mod disagrees with them. If a mod is unable to convert people to their way of thinking then there's no point in them continuing to argue - they probably have better things to do. I'm not going to attempt to make the board appeal to everyone - I just can't do it, and it's not my duty to either.

Also worth noting is that a lot of previous moderators have keeled over and resigned due to the pressure. Is that "dealing with flack"? This topic should "deal with flack", but... I know fine well that it won't be accepted by some individuals no matter what is done so I'm not sure what the best solution is here.

"other members like at least knowing part of staff plans"

I'm the sort of guy that kinda makes things up as I go along. The original Squirrelplan was just a vague list of things that might be nice to fix. I can understand perhaps things like GenMod being more explained, but to be fair, that's really the only thing that hasn't been explained while I've been in this chair (at least I think - I'd have thought some things like last chance lists spoke for themselves)

also the element of surprise is a fun thing to have

"I'd like to see Generic Mod gone"

done

The GenMod debate is an odd one because until its last bunch of posts it didn't really do anything "wrong". People were so hyped up and scared of its mysterious identity they devoted their lives to getting rid of it. But really, it didn't matter, and the "I don't know who to contact" comments are very stupid considering you know fine well I'm always open to this sort of thing. And if you don't... where have you been these last 12 months?

"Don't be afraid to weigh-in as the Administration of MFGG(all mods, not just you)"

ok

"Moderational bias"

the example attached with this was also a bit outdated but the thing about moderational bias is every mod is a subject of it at some point. The way I'm seeing it nowadays is if there's a dispute between a member and mod #1, it's up to mod #2 to sort it out, and mod #1 should back out. Recent upgrades in the mod team should help this. Works for both positive and negative bias.

This ties with similar comments about "emotionally based bans". I can't fix the past but I'm hoping to reduce it in the future. But you people must accept that I cannot fix what happened years ago.

Though to be honest you'd have to be rather silly to get yourself on the wrong side of moderators such as myself, so a lot of moderational bias can be resolved by people behaving nicely.

"Inactive mods"

I have no idea where FanGuy is. Our new set of globals should fill that slot though. Jeff does have a habit of appearing every time I think he's gone for good, and Rage does browse the board more often than some of you think.

Char is a lucky guy because he lives in India and therefore has a different time zone. This means he's active when the Americans/Europeans aren't, so ties in well with similar comments about MFGG not getting round-the-clock moderation. These timezones are not highly populated here at MFGG which could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps it's all down to the fact that Nintendo have neglected the world that isn't America or Japan?

Though we're still going to take steps to fix this issue, it's certainly improved since this particular PM was sent. I should probably apologise for not having a big fat welcome topic for Char too - I had planned on getting all this out of the way a week or two ago but I just haven't had the time.

"We need another active administrator who thinks differently from BS to keep BS's rulings in check"

don't need an admin to do a global mod's job. Though we did need globals to do that job. Now we have them.

People should be less reliant on admins and more reliant on global moderators. Some of them are more qualified than myself to run this place, but no I don't really just want to give it up because I do go into phases where I enjoy this job (amazingly)

There are really only two steps to this hierarchy thing: Mod Team -> Members. Though an admin has more physical powers his views are pretty much equal within forum 12. I am more active than some mods and took on the responsibility of posting topics such as these but I am not in a league of my own.

If a mod/admin makes a mistake in their ruling, they need to be able to 'fess up to it and correct it

yep

same with members too

*****************

COMPLAINT TOPICS

what a surprise, only a small handful of members were against my move to stop them. And their reasons are still quite weak. But thanks anyway.

Too much focus on complaint topics and threatening members, not enough on pushing for more positive things

I agree but there's nothing that can be done as long as members are choosing to be terrible. The forum is too big to address these individuals individually, and we're not even entirely sure how many members need to be told how to behave.

This "pushing for more positive things" comment annoys me however, because several of my more positive topics have been ruined by moaners or ignored completely. Not very inspiring! Despite not actually having the time to throw protons at people the mod team and I have done plenty of positive changes, far more than some forums and the main site is stronger than ever.

public opinions in topics

this existed for so very long and was abused to the point where I've had mods wanting to silence people entirely. Usually I'd have no complaints to having complaint topics but MFGG must first learn how to utilise them properly. People rush in blurting out garbage, and minor arguments occur for that reason on top of people taking sides, on top of the original proposal. I have had far more success in understanding MFGG's minds through this little exercise than in a 4329 page GC topic. That may be different with other people, but I am not "other people".

Complaint topics will still be scrapped.

"Until an actual rules violation, keep them open"

we need a concrete set of rules for complaint topics first. But again I don't see how it's any better to post it publicly than give it to me when you can guarantee I'll read it privately. Why not assume posting complaint topics is against the rules? Mods don't generally like them!

"these issues should at least let be handled in the News forum"

this is a good idea in the respect that it keeps it out of the GC or CCC, however the news forum is the first forum people will see if they enter the boards for the first time. It's off-putting to see the community that you are considering joining bicker like little kids. People need to start posting more maturely first and unfortunately it's incredibly difficult to enforce that without stirring up other problems. This is a MEMBER ISSUE, not a mod one.

if it were going to be done it would be done elsewhere, maybe in its own little world, maybe stickied in the CCC. The world of MFGG doesn't need to know how terrible MFGG apparently is. Start your own forum and ***** all you want.

"insta-lock any [controversial topics] the moment anyone makes a personal attack on any other member"

this is similar to the system in place though allows the topic to live a bit longer. Yoshiman has a count of all the religious-related topics locked over the years - most of them will have been locked because of flaming or whatever. My proposal was to stop it before it got to that stage so no damage was done. Really it doesn't change much and I still don't recommend religious debates on MFGG.

Of course a problem with religious debates for example is that if you criticize a specific religion people take that personally. Controversy is often started due to specific groups and I cannot guarantee members here won't be in said groups. It is difficult to define a "personal attack" in a lot of cases. When it's flaming or trolling or something, it's obvious, but some people get wound up about very little.

If I were crazy I could say that making a complaint topic is a personal attack because I said not to! I'm not crazy though

or am i

"Complaints: They should never happen openly on the forums, mods should be able to take it"

no they shouldn't and hopefully this topic proves that they can

*****************

FORUM

Make Cave of Flames public

an odd one that hadn't really crossed my mind at all. I assume the real reason for this is to see deleted posts (because the Cave of Flames WAS public years ago, and was made hidden after people thought it would be fun to continue old locked arguments). My major concern with this one was that it was done via Klobber's "Worthless Post Palace" and that didn't work well at all. It isn't an awful idea though, however, the thing with the cave of flames is that it currently has five years worth of spammy garbage in it as well as "interesting" posts as is bannable material from years past such as porn for example. The Cave of Flames is very unprotected and would require an enormous amount of moderation cleanup before it was opened to the public, and even then, I can't see many goals being achieved.

I can see where you're coming from here but I'm not too fond of the idea and it didn't go down well. It is a concept more suited to a revamped MFGG forum system rather than this particular one.

limiting CCC access needlessly increases workload for the mods, in addition to pissing members in general off

to be fair I've been moderating the CCC since day one and if anything the workload has dropped over time, not increased. Getting people into the CCC is a bit awkward but to have it done automatically requires mod perfection, as that system would not take into account revoked bans. There are also other cases such as Tri who willingly came to me asking for CCC access to be removed - an automatic system wouldn't like that. Besides I've only upgraded like, one or two people so far this month.

as for "pissing members in general off"... I'm not sure if it really does that much anymore. When the General Friendliness became casual 75% of the votes were in favour of that move... surely it wouldn't have been the case if nobody liked the system (unless nobody liked the GF)

the whole MFGG system is due for a change soon anyway. It's less nice on those deemed poor members, though the entry requirements to the CCC have been reduced. Info on all that stuff will come with time. I can't really comment on it right now since nothing is set in stone yet.

Generally though, the CCC has worked better than previous attempts. It might not be perfect but in this day and age, what is?

"Open the CCC to public(Public Posting Place? ;B)"

see above

"CCC: make posts count"

if times were different I probably would have kept the post count there from years back, but as RII has said, it's a bit late now for it to really prove anything.

It's actually kinda cool because in 2006ish people were frequently judging people on post counts alone - that's more-or-less stopped.

"People who do the smallest 'banworthy' things get kicked out [of the CCC], lose HHs, SHHs and then can't post in it again for two months. It's good for the most part, but I think it could use some tweaks."

again more CCC stuff. I do believe UHH/SHH owners should probably get nicer treatments than HH owners, but I'll have to sort out a way to distinguish between the two first.

"Tropical Splash skin lacks the bottom three options (for auto-sig, smilies, filters). This causes all three to be set to off if you change account options, meaning you have to switch skins to turn them back on."

Think Techokami's fixed that one


*****************

OTHER SHIZ

Spmething positive... there should be more forum and site connectivity, perhaps sprite comp and minigame comp winners could be featured there as well as other things.

That's not a terrible idea. Don't know the details surrounding MFGG 3.0 - it may already be covered.

However all our competitions start and end at different times now. Keeping track of them all is one concern, another is the amount of news posts needed to announce new ones. It's something an automated system would be better at, and this current version of MFGG's main site hasn't got said system. But it helps with future planning.

"Well this is a good idea! [this Quackers thing]"

seems to be, yes

but again, Quackers' inbox wasn't flooded. Perhaps people were scared... which is odd because Quackers can swim.

"Phage stole my car keys."

LETS ROLL.

"Negative talk about specific members"

the only reason this is an issue with my administration as opposed to others' is because people keep leaking things under my administration. In the past there was an entire admin-only forum for admin ranting! Orange you glad that isn't used anymore?

Obviously if someone is breaking the rules and a discussion breaks out in forum 12, there's going to be negative comments. It would be silly to say "stop this" or all sorts of crazy bans and warns could happen.

besides the stuff could be worse. I don't openly flame people even in forum 12 where they can't see it. Many, many people do. I apologise if I'm offending anyone but I know MFGG's mod team gets the same treatment from others so it's still about 50:50.

"Nudity and sexual content"

This mainly applies to the arts board.

Any artistic nudity should be provided with a NSFW tag but it's never been recommended for it to be posted. Some nudity is more offensive than others. Views are all over the place here. Personally I don't think it has much of a place in a Mario fangaming forum but as long as people don't go overboard it can be acceptable.

Basically just make sure you've got "NSFW" in your topic description or whatever. Probably not best to have any sexual conduct in there. You can't really deny a woman her breasts, though you can deny her from having multiple ones. On her head. Erupting.

Certianly keep it out of all the other forums though.

"General dickery and bad attitudes"

oh hurray someone agrees that this should be banworthy. This is something that should be covered when we redo the system so bear with me on this.

"Persistent drama inducement"

should be reduced as complaint topics are banned. People who keep starting drama ARE banned. But to be honest there's not really anyone who fits into that category anymore and again the new system should cover it better

"Maybe you admins could try to organize more forum events and competitions, rather like that Mega Man character/stage/etc. design thing?"

I can't see into the future but things like this could happen. I don't really have the time to organise one myself but there are others. As long as it doesn't end up in me owing Techokami more cash.













AND THAT CONCLUDES OUR WONDERFUL JOURNEY

some of the duplicates were omitted. Thanks for some of those nice compliments by the way. There's a lot of indication here that it was just a blip hyped up by a few people (as opposed to total forum collapse), and it's not like you didn't have the opportunity to voice your concerns. Now, continue as you were these past few days.

I may have missed a couple of points. If this is the case, I apologise. Feel free to keep sending things to Quackers though it's unlikely that I'll announce your points publicly (though they'll still be read)

Just to re-remind you here that these decisions ARE final. It would be very unwise to expect a different response now, even more unwise to hang about if you're upset and even MORE unwise to complain further. This is also the reason the topic has been locked in advance - because I know people won't be able to cope with this whole idea that the mod team has the final say. But once again you don't have to be moderated by us - you can go elsewhere!

From this point we move on with our lives and focus on better things, except for the questions I couldn't quite answer at this time of course.

Stay tuned for this "better system". Do not continue this topic elsewhere on these boards. ty