Regarding Recent Changes to the Forum

[Corto]

Since I don't think anyone answered this:

"We've updated the forum rules!"

Well great. Why don't you fucking highlight exactly what you've changed, because we haven't got photographic memories, so there's no way any fucker can spot whats been changed, removed or added.

Thats why I stopped reading updated forum rules. Because it changes and they don't say what they changed.

That I did have a problem with.

Ok, first of all, the three point ban thing has been there forever. It was there when we typed those rules a year ago, it was there in the old rules when I registered 5 years ago. Not our fault you can't finish reading the bloody thing.

Second of all, we do "fucking higlight exactly what we've changed". The first line in the forum rules, right next to the big bold letters, it explicitly says both the date of the last change, and what the change was. Last change was revising the entire rules, so it says so there. Before it said something like "necro rules added", etc etc.

The rest of the conversation I'm not touching here, but if you wanna criticize the rules make sure you read them first.

 

[Ainoko]

The communication problems are one of the big things we've been working on with these changes. The reason that we'd go quiet on the forums is because the forum staff would literally have no information about what was going on with the main site. It wasn't because we were hiding things. We literally knew about as much as the average user. That is changing, however.

The problem with your statement is that there were three possibly four admins (who admin both here and on FA) who were active on the forums during the migration who hardly communicated and gave us lip service about what was going on. If anything, those admins should have been making regular updates, not hiding behind a wall of silence. Plus I have seen it mentioned in this thread that member suggestions and offers of help are not taken seriously, something that we do feel is the case.

Before you or anyone says it, yes FAF and the main site are free, but don't forget that the main site is at the moment the largest furry site online. FAF and FA are, despite what some admins hate to admit to and try to discourage, are social sites. People come to find and make friends, earn money, makes dates, look for venues to meet and greet, etc. Members have offered their services at no cost to the site to help improve it and make it even better than before only to basically told to "Go eff yourself". Why? Because some admins are too afraid and possibly insecure to let anyone look at the coding. Hell I am willing to bet that most admins have no idea what an NDA is or what it is used for.

 

[Mentova]

The problem with your statement is that there were three possibly four admins (who admin both here and on FA) who were active on the forums during the migration who hardly communicated and gave us lip service about what was going on. If anything, those admins should have been making regular updates, not hiding behind a wall of silence. Plus I have seen it mentioned in this thread that member suggestions and offers of help are not taken seriously, something that we do feel is the case.

Before you or anyone says it, yes FAF and the main site are free, but don't forget that the main site is at the moment the largest furry site online. FAF and FA are, despite what some admins hate to admit to and try to discourage, are social sites. People come to find and make friends, earn money, makes dates, look for venues to meet and greet, etc. Members have offered their services at no cost to the site to help improve it and make it even better than before only to basically told to "Go eff yourself". Why? Because some admins are too afraid and possibly insecure to let anyone look at the coding. Hell I am willing to bet that most admins have no idea what an NDA is or what it is used for.

I think you're confusing some of the forum admins with the actual FA mainsite admins. I can't think of any mainsite admins who are active here. Trp doesn't count since she is taking a break from the mainsite.

 

[Maolfunction]

How funny. This is almost a carbon copy of a situation I was involved with as staff of another forum.

It's common forum practice on forums that want to maintain some level of professionalism that bans and demotions are not discussed with the general userbase. I don't think it's ever been the case on any forum I've worked at that this is done to harm the userbase. It's to protect them. Now, from what I can tell (forgive me, I'm having to piece together years of stuff it looks like so I might be wrong) it seems like a number of users here were banned and the general userbase just saw it out of the blue. (Not to mention some questionable decisions by staff regarding threads, but instead of jumping down their throats for what could have been an error in judgement, something that really did no harm if the staff is sincere about communicating with users now, let's try to move on) Now then, these users who were banned were presumeably well known members who have been active for years and most likely, they would not have minded if the staff just told everyone what happened.

But, the thing is with forums, not everyone who is banned is particularly of the same mind. There are plenty of users who are banned who don't want people to know what they did or the reasoning behind said ban. So, in order to respect the privacy of those individuals who don't want stuff out there, forums generally don't disclose info about bans to their userbase. It's not hiding. It's respect. Of course, it's to be expected that staff are not perfect creatures and sometimes there are mistakes.

Even still, the general userbase is not staff. You don't get to make those decisions about what's right or wrong on the forum and who deserves to stay. It's not your forum no matter how many posts you have, or how many years you've been here. Ideally, the staff understand that it's a bad idea to drive away users with constant errors in judgment and constantly work to correct themselves to align with the natural direction of the forum, but there are limits to how far staff can go with that.

While I can't have any sort of opinion on the character of the people on staff themselves due to just not being here long enough, I do understand that they have to work to maintain the forum the way they want the forum to be run. And it's not ever going to be perfect and not every user will be satisfied by how things are run. There's always going to be improvements, and if you're willing to work with them, staff will take your input (if they're good) and decide whether or not they want to implement your input. Raging at them for...doing things...doesn't really, well, help.

And if I can just shoot a quick little suggestion to staff. There's really no point in defending yourselves or your actions. If you feel as if you've collectively made a mistake, apologize for it, address any concerns that arose from the mistake and move on. Constantly defending your actions does make it seem like you've done something wrong which needs to be defended. Just, be professional and remind people that you're in charge. I don't think this is a situation where everyone will be happy, so instead of burying yourselves in a hole trying to do that, just realize there will be a few casualties here and work to prevent it from happening again.

 

[Littlerock]

...but if you wanna criticize the rules make sure you read them first.

I could take this seriously, if only for the existence of a certain [insert alt-acc. callout here]. :L

 

[Runefox]

I think you're confusing some of the forum admins with the actual FA mainsite admins. I can't think of any mainsite admins who are active here. Trp doesn't count since she is taking a break from the mainsite.

It's funny you should say that, since at least one of the admins who was canned actually was active here.

 

[Ainoko]

I think you're confusing some of the forum admins with the actual FA mainsite admins. I can't think of any mainsite admins who are active here. Trp doesn't count since she is taking a break from the mainsite.

I do recall seeing 'Neer, Cerb on the forums during the migration, as for yak, I won't go there. Regardless, when there are major issues with FA that results in the site either going into read only, off line or what ever, ALL admins whether here or on FA needs to be up to date on what is going on, and able to answer most questions and concerns that are brought up. That is the problem, you guys are constantly dropping the ball and you wonder why there is so much drama?

You are saying that you will be working on better communication between admins and members, all I am hearing right now is "BLAH, BLAH, BLAH LIP SERVICE, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH" Believe it or not this is 2014 NOT 1992, most of us have a fair amount of knowledge concerning computers, networks and the like. So you don't have to baby us, or give us overly technical detail, but something detailed enough that will allay our concerns not add to our growing frustration.

 

[Trpdwarf]

I'm sorry Runefox but no. I don't know where you are getting your information from but one thing that is not going to happen here, is were are not going to have discussions based on assumptions about staff, and bringing up misinformation especially at that level. You can note me if you like but cease that line of topic immediately. People already don't really know what led to what happened, and seeds for misinformation are not necessary.

 

[Runefox]

I'm sorry Runefox but no. I don't know where you are getting your information from but one thing that is not going to happen here, is were are not going to have discussions based on assumptions about staff, and bringing up misinformation especially at that level. You can note me if you like but cease that line of topic immediately.

Alright then, let me cut off the "speculation" part and stick to what we know.

Maolfunction, many users were banned after the admin shakeup in response to inquiries and outrage over the situation, which to me, in conjunction with extremely rampant thread/comment hard-deletes points to an active suppression effort. That's the main source of my outrage. It wasn't just a couple of people getting banned at the same time by coincidence, and it wasn't just one or two staff members getting the axe for any specific good reason (at least, not that can be discerned without talking to the admins who got cut - MLR specifically stated he got canned because Chase said he was involved with a "competitor site").

 

[Rilvor]

Never mind, this was a mistake. So long folks.

 

[Ainoko]

if someone was hit with an infraction that they really do feel was unfair, PM me about it and I'll take a look.

Mentova, the problem is, if we get hit with an infraction that results in a temp ban, we have no way to appeal it. Trust me I know, I got a weeks ban for reporting a former admin for violating the FAF TOS, When you are banned on the forums, you have no access while logged on (meaning if you wish to appeal you can't as you aren't allowed past the ban message. And if you log off to access the forums, you can't PM an admin because OH MY!!! YOU HAVE TO BE LOGGED IN TO SEND A PM!!!!). Basically getting banned means EFF OFF, as you are forbidden to appeal and when you get back we will laugh at you for appealing your ban as we ignore you. If we try other means to contact an admin to appeal, we are ignored.

 

[Maolfunction]

Maolfunction, many users were banned after the admin shakeup in response to inquiries and outrage over the situation, which to me, in conjunction with extremely rampant thread/comment hard-deletes points to an active suppression effort. That's the main source of my outrage. It wasn't just a couple of people getting banned at the same time by coincidence, and it wasn't just one or two staff members getting the axe for any specific good reason

Hmm. Again, completely outside the loop here, but the situation again doesn't seem to point to malicious staff to me. I've been the victim of malicious staff when I and 15 other users were banned because of admin criticism and were never given an explanation or reasoning that pointed otherwise. That staff was malicious and the forum would have crashed had I not gone over the admins' heads completely and went straight to the forum owner who wasn't even aware of anything, but tangent aside, this doesn't echo the same sort of vibe.

It seems to me, and from my experience here it lines up, that after the admin shuffle, the users became, as you said, outraged. Now, when people are outraged, they tend to say or do things that may invariably cross lines and offend people. Offended people also tend to invariably say or do things irrationally. So. From what I've seen of this place, people tend to be, to be polite, blunt and forward with their opinions of people. And I'm being polite. People are people, even if they're staff, and people (especially people here) probably have issues with being attacked and/or put down in some fashion. That probably doesn't justify all the bans, I'm aware, but I don't have the info staff has. And neither do you, despite what you think of that.

And I still don't see what your point is. Do you want something from this, what are you looking for that doesn't involve everything just going back to how you're used to because that's not going to happen. You're going to have to stop looking at what happened and go forward, or be upset and probably leave because of your differences.

I hope I don't look like an idiot here being so utterly new.

 

[Armaetus]

I am done here (for now).

The mods most certainly aren't getting my silent wrath, it is the actual staff that is irritating me. You want respect? You gotta earn it through positive changes and not pussyfooting on the site's design, which the other 3 sites have already surpassed you in features. Why is that? There is no excuse for FA to be in the catacombs in 2014.

Laters, chumps.

 

[Smelge]

I'm intrigued.

So forums and site with one login, right?

How exactly would that work. Forums, you're only allowed one account, no alt-accounts. FA, as many accounts as you can think up names for. But even before you get to that, how in the fuck are you actually going to implement anything like this? Your coding team is a laughing stock, the one existing person who occasionally does stuff to the site keeps leaving holes in the coding for exploits, vulnerabilities and general persistant downtime, and the "new and improved" coding team consists of a guy with massive ego issues and apparently little knowledge of the scripting language he's chosen, and his bunch of buddies.

And somehow you expect a shining new site with across-the-board integration to rise out of this steaming pile of dog dicks?

 

[CaptainCool]

It has been pretty bad here on FAF but to be honest, I think that has changed quite a lot. The atmosphere has become a lot friendlier.
But what I did notice is that the quality of the community (if such a term exists) goes down every time there is a bigger downtime on the main site! At that point people often flood the forums with pretty awful posts. Asking for porn comics in the comics subforum or new threads in the den and rants and raves that are essentially devoid of all content are examples that come to my mind.

Then there is the fact that the regulars here are pretty blunt. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Most of the regulars aren't assholes. So when they start criticizing you banning them isn't exactly the best route to take...

As for the whole Chase being the in the lead thing:
Your job isn't just to regulate the community (both of FA and FAF). You have to listen to them as well. And guess what? If the majority of the users don't want Chase as the lead moderator (personally I don't give a damn who it is as long as the job gets done) then keeping him and banning people who criticize the staff is a terrible thing to do. That is not how you manage a community.

 

[Kalmor]

As for the whole Chase being the in the lead thing:
Your job isn't just to regulate the community (both of FA and FAF). You have to listen to them as well. And guess what? If the majority of the users don't want Chase as the lead moderator (personally I don't give a damn who it is as long as the job gets done) then keeping him and banning people who criticize the staff is a terrible thing to do. That is not how you manage a community.

Again, we do not ban people who criticize the staff. We can however ban/infract if the users go about it in a way that breaks the forum rules (see: malicious callouts, "be civil", for example).

As for Chase, personally, if I wasn't comfortable with him being forum admin then I would've been gone as soon as things started going down.

 

[CaptainCool]

Again, we do not ban people who criticize the staff. We can however ban/infract if the users go about it in a way that breaks the forum rules (see: malicious callouts, "be civil", for example).

As for Chase, personally, if I wasn't comfortable with him being forum admin then I would've been gone as soon as things started going down.

Well sure, if they break the rules it is obvious that a ban is in order. Etiainen's post up there? Yeah I would have suspended him for that as well.
But there is also the whole "listening to the community" part. 'Neer said that he wants people to be comfortable here so the forums can be used as a support base. Well, good. I think that is a great idea. But to achieve that you have to do more than just getting the community in line. If there is someone at the top whom people are uncomfortable with then no one is gonna come here anyway, even if the forums really were a giant hugbox.

 

[BRN]

As for the whole Chase being the in the lead thing:
Your job isn't just to regulate the community (both of FA and FAF). You have to listen to them as well. And guess what? If the majority of the users don't want Chase as the lead moderator (personally I don't give a damn who it is as long as the job gets done) then keeping him and banning people who criticize the staff is a terrible thing to do. That is not how you manage a community.

I disagree, even though I also don't give a damn who it is as long as the job gets done.
The most terrible decision would be to implement a community leader at the whim of the community. That's no governance, that's self-elected leadership.
The only permissible route would be for Dragoneer to implement someone he trusted to do a good job straight off the bat... and as has been explained, Chase was that sole person.

-----

Effort posting! \:3/


Every ostensibly questionable decision made by the administrators here has been given sufficient justification, it really has. The moderator shakeup - that is, the removal of Arshes and others - was to reduce the hostility of the moderator team; everyone I've talked to has agreed with the changes. Caught in the crossfire were those moderators that were removed because of a consideration of conflicts of interest. These are all good management decisions, they really are.

A lack of communication led to panicked conclusions and dramatic, angry posts began to circulate. This was the community over-reacting but it could have been easily stifled by earlier and more granular elaboration of what the forum owner's plans were. However, people who posted inflammatory posts and attacked management were off their heads and infractions were the right thing to give out.

Furthermore, there should never be elaboration of what someone has been infracted for - ever. Even when it's public and obvious, or private and obscured.

Hopefully the recent wave of moderator action represents the very change in moderator culture that is required. It doesn't matter -who- said it, because if someone's acting in an antisocial manner, moderators need to act. Critiquing management decisions is fine, but FAF continues to confuse all of critique, satire, attack and affront as one big hegemonous mess. Regardless of who is being attacked - new poster, regular, or moderator - destructive posts need to be dealt with in order to promote the health of this community especially as a nexus for the fandom.

To wit, the forum now needs harsh, quick-acting moderators backed up by lenient, empathetic, investigatory super-moderators.

Antisocial behaviour's gotta be sniped quickly and decisively to promote the health of the forum by a set of active moderators, while the rights to appeal and investigations need to be preserved and handled by personable higher-ups.

Personally, Chase's charm seems right up to the task as opposed to Arshes' selfserving irrationality, if you'll pardon my choice of words.

 

[Willow]

Every ostensibly questionable decision made by the administrators here has been given sufficient justification, it really has. The moderator shakeup - that is, the removal of Arshes and others - was to reduce the hostility of the moderator team; everyone I've talked to has agreed with the changes. Caught in the crossfire were those moderators that were removed because of a consideration of conflicts of interest. These are all good management decisions, they really are.

This is a forum, not a corporation or a business. There's no money to be gained or lost from someone splitting their time between forums A and B. So to say there's a supposed conflict of interest sounds more like a lie than a justified reason. Nevermind that letting people go without warning apparently (according to what MLR posted) for something that, in retrospect, is underhanded especially when it was never a problem before.

In other words, people were let go based on an assumption. Which isn't fair.

Furthermore, why nix those people if the main problem was aggressive mods? It makes even less sense because their involvement elsewhere wasn't the problem and didn't really effect how they handled things.

A lack of communication led to panicked conclusions and dramatic, angry posts began to circulate. This was the community over-reacting but it could have been easily stifled by earlier and more granular elaboration of what the forum owner's plans were.

No duh. But apparently staff changes are "private" and can be justified with a vague reason

Hopefully the recent wave of moderator action represents the very change in moderator culture that is required. It doesn't matter -who- said it, because if someone's acting in an antisocial manner, moderators need to act. Critiquing management decisions is fine, but FAF continues to confuse all of critique, satire, attack and affront as one big hegemonous mess. Regardless of who is being attacked - new poster, regular, or moderator - destructive posts need to be dealt with in order to promote the health of this community especially as a nexus for the fandom.

Which is weird this is coming along now when the worst of it was 3-4 years ago.

Antisocial behaviour's gotta be sniped quickly and decisively to promote the health of the forum by a set of active moderators, while the rights to appeal and investigations need to be preserved and handled by personable higher-ups.

I think you're confusing antisocial with hostile.

 

[CaptainCool]

I disagree, even though I also don't give a damn who it is as long as the job gets done.
The most terrible decision would be to implement a community leader at the whim of the community. That's no governance, that's self-elected leadership.
The only permissible route would be for Dragoneer to implement someone he trusted to do a good job straight off the bat... and as has been explained, Chase was that sole person.

As long as things go smoothly I am all for it. But with the way they first introduced Chase to the FA staff and that backfiring quite badly I am just a tiny bit concerned.
It's true that the community shouldn't "elect" their moderators though. That would be bad.

Also, the complete and utter lack of communication that you mentioned is something that needs to be fixed very badly. That is how this issue started and that is why it escalated within the community.

 

[RTDragon]

I'm not sure considering with the recent incident just short of the new with the two people who wanted to help FA coding get treated pretty badly and just this month. And watching the less then stellar performance from the staff from the years on the main site best not to even bother merging the sites together till you fix the problems that many others have been warning you about for many years. And actions speak louder than words. What i see is even more of a complete mess then from a few years ago. Though i'm not really surprised anymore if things do go downhill from here as well as in the future.

 

[Ainoko]

As long as things go smoothly I am all for it. But with the way they first introduced Chase to the FA staff and that backfiring quite badly I am just a tiny bit concerned.
It's true that the community shouldn't "elect" their moderators though. That would be bad.

Also, the complete and utter lack of communication that you mentioned is something that needs to be fixed very badly. That is how this issue started and that is why it escalated within the community.

Honestly, I think letting the community elect staff may work for the better.

Why?

Think of it this way, if the staff here and on the main site know that if they don't do their jobs properly, we can 'elect' someone else to replace them

 

[Aleu]

Honestly, I think letting the community elect staff may work for the better.

Why?

Think of it this way, if the staff here and on the main site know that if they don't do their jobs properly, we can 'elect' someone else to replace them

Yes but then it'd be basically a 'popufur' contest. Some mods may do their jobs well but because they might do them TOO well, people would get upset. It's like that in Utah where everyone is getting butthurt that a judge let gay marriage legal even though they said that he was the best for the job. Now he's an "activist" judge.

As much as I like the idea of electing...it might not work out all that well

 

[chesse20]

wow this is a preety awful idea? everything is fine on faf fix the mainsite!!!!!!! You're complaining about it not being newbie friendly but it weeds out all the scrubs and idiots (mostly) so we don't have to deal with them.

 

[Batty Krueger]

wow this is a preety awful idea? everything is fine on faf fix the mainsite!!!!!!! You're complaining about it not being newbie friendly but it weeds out all the scrubs and idiots (mostly) so we don't have to deal with them.

Says the scrub.