<Snipped quote by Odin>
Hank as Co-Admin has changed things on a Moderator level. All the functionality the position could use may not be there yet, but from a point of view you don't have access to there have been changes.
Let me put it this way - what little he can do, I am supposing that he did. This doesn't change the fact that he still can't do most of the meaningful things, agreed? Ergo, the functionality has been helpful to a degree but otherwise, when it comes to being able to run the day-to-day adminning in Mahz' absence, it's entirely useless, agreed? Because that was its' intended feature - to be able to run the guild effectively and make administrative changes without Mahz' needing to do it.
Which, correct me if I am wrong, is still not possible, unless we saw a sneak-update that nobody knows about.
Things get reported, both on Discord and the Guild itself. I've actually noticed an increase in reported incidents.
Good. You'll agree a report button would still be a neat addition to simplify things?
Mahz was seen just the other day, but aside from that: this has long been a community complaint. Site staff does the best we can with the hand we're dealt, but personally I don't see this one doing a turn-around change any time soon. I knew it was an issue before I became a Mod the first time, and having seen it from both the viewpoint of community concerned RPer and Moderator, it's always an issue. This is the nature of the way he built the Guild.
I know those things. I've known them ever since guildfall. But I don't think 'this is the way things are enjoy it' is the proper way to deal with it in situations like these where things can get changed, and frankly should get changed. And when you look at it like that, then what you just told us doesn't
really tell us anything new, does it?
The entire moderator team is fairly active. Again you don't have access to that point of view, but I do, and I've seen all of them recently active and doing something. Two have been preoccupied with IRL, but that's life and the rest of us have handled picking up the slack just fine. (And we've still heard from them recently even busy as they've been IRL--one even handled an issue before I could get to it the other day.)
I can't do much with your point of view if you refuse to tell me. Regardless, perhaps I was unclear. There is a difference between your activity and the perception of your activity. It doesn't matter if you're online 24/7 if you never show your face because I would never know you are active. And even in that sense, 'active' means something different in my optic than 'being online.'
We're even pro-active: even before complaints about the Contests sub-forum, I was asking Aria about it behind closed doors.
.. this doesn't actually bring things further. If Aria/MDK are both busy then it's time to consider if they are the right choice for that type of position. Which I'm assuming it's because they're busy, because we weren't given a real explanation as to why the contests stopped. Similarly the titles previously earned by other members still haven't been given out apparently, according to someone I spoke to. Not sure who's in charge of that. Probably should've done something for that.
It's possible there's more to this story than most people, including yourself, know. That is really Kangaroo's business, at the end of the day. The group of people who know were happy to have him back though. I don't expect the people that feel entitled to knowing more to be content with that, but there is a rational reason for it all, yes.
I'm not asking for the story - I don't care for the story. I respected that Kangaroo saw that he had no time and decided to step down because it was a showing of the ability of introspection. I appreciated it, because he was a good moderator when he was more active, and he had realized that he just hadn't been active.
Regardless of the story, it feels strange to me that someone who had no time, and mostly continues to have no time from what I can see (again, perception of activity, the dude hadn't been online for 3 days when I wrote this so I can do nothing else but draw a conclusion from that because no status update was posted or anything of the like) is made moderator again under the pretense of 'we need more active moderators'.
You have your unique perspective. I don't. Saying 'well there's a good reason that I can't disclose because it's private' isn't helping. Again, I'm not after the story. I don't care in the context of this discussion. I care that we have moderators that can better fit the need of RPG. If you say that the needs of RPG are more moderators that seem inactive, I think you'd be wrong.
Already responded regarding the others. There's no "situation between us." At least not on my end. The last time I tried to reach out and be adult about it, the effort was screencapped and used to harass me on both the Guild and Discord. Safe to say this situation is one-sided. I've fielded complaints about you rather recently, and decided there was nothing to them, so I dismissed it. I've got no personal vendetta against anyone.
Word it as you may, perhaps you also have some introspection to do. I didn't really intend to talk about this to begin with, since I obviously don't like you and as I told you previously when you tried to 'bury the hatchet' I am under no real obligation to like you either just like you don't have to like me.
But I'll help you with this one - perhaps your attempt to reach out wasn't as adult as you seem to remember. You felt the need to treat me like Mr. Fung Lee who had just arrived fresh off the boat and was taking his first ESL class by clarifying that burying the hatchet was an (English idiom) as if I were some boy with an extra chromosome. Perhaps my English is a little off at times, I sincerely apologize for that, but for someone who learned English as one of four languages in school, I like to think I do pretty well for myself. I'll excuse you for calling random strangers 'honey' in the most condescending way you could have ever done so. Please don't do that to strangers. We'd never even spoken before, I didn't know you before that point, I'd prefer not to be called things like that by people I don't know.
I mean, that's even ignoring that previously to that you decided to insult my 'whomst've'd cheap hack writing' for no real reason. And when I reminded you of that, the answer I got was basically 'hehe I thought you were a troll! lol oops' which wasn't much of an excuse as it was you deflecting.
The next time you insult my writing and English skills, however, I would kindly ask you at least try to write in an easy manner. People like me who cannot into the English language have trouble deciphering words like 'whom's'. (Or perhaps that word shouldn't belong there whatsoever because it is incorrect English, but who am I? Ah, mr Fung Lee. Never mind then.)
Do you really feel like this is the best time to talk about this though? I'm sure not. I'd
love to know what you have to add, but perhaps it's better to PM me instead. You have access to the guild right? Contact me there.
The last time I had a private talk with you, you came across hostile and more interested in throwing salt than discussing the issue at hand. (An issue which you dedicated a single sentence to.)
The last time? The last time you politely informed me I was being banned. When I replied that I was appealing it, you said 'ok'. Then I gave you some tips. You didn't like said tips.
What, did you expect me to dedicate more time to me being banned? It was and is idiotic that I got banned. That's about all I have to say. My appeal was denied, as in, I never got to have an appeal. That's the end of the line, isn't it? The next step is begging Hank and Mahz on my knees 'please please can I enter the discord again, I promise I'll be a good boy!' and that really isn't happening.
If you want to apply the rule you banned me on equally on said offense, however, just search 'bellybutton' in the discord. You'll find a whole list of people harassing someone, and then you can ban them. Be consequent (is that the right word?) with the rules please. I already explained the idiocy in the reasoning behind my ban to Nutts and I'm sure he relayed it so I won't waste words here.
I've yet to see anything reported not get at least a response to. Prehaps you could offer concrete details of reports with nothing given in response?
Terminal informed me that all his PM's to you all have been ignored as he tried to get people assigned the titles they won during the time the contests were still alive and ran by him mostly. Perhaps that's a starting point.
Mahz decided we didn't need different versions of the rules stickied, and he's stated multiple times he thinks the fastest way to get people to not pay attention to something is to sticky it. I can't recall which of us actually removed them. Some of them were even posted by accounts we don't have access to. So if many in the Guild feel that would help, we could copy/paste the site rules into a sticky for each section. This is the first time I've ever seen anyone make a suggestion of this since the new rules went up, I will point out, so maybe we haven't met the "many" part yet.
I mean, yes, I'm sure Mahz knows a thing or two about coding. But I find it hard to believe that he would say a tried and tested and universally used forum standard is somehow a bad thing. I would
really like to know what his line of logic was there because frankly I don't even believe he would say something this... well, stupendous, really.
That said, even if nobody reads them, who cares? If you pin them up there you will have even more to fall back on. If someone breaks the rules and they say 'I didn't see the big button on the front page' you can say 'well, what about the stickied threads?' It's redundancy. It's not like it hurts anyone either.
We care, and act when possible: like when I went to Aria regarding Contests. I never used Contests. Even back in the day when Jorick would try to talk me into putting in a submission, it was just never my thing, but I always loved that he enjoyed them. I still cared enough about the community to go to Aria about the section's current state, even though I personally never used it.
That's great - I presume you reached an agreement as to the future of contest then and we will either see it deleted or restarted soon then? Because that's the sort of outcome I would expect from moderator behind-the-doors talk. Something with an outcome. And not just a personal talk. So I'm eager to learn what will happen with RPG contests.
The majority of this is nothing new. We've had these issues in the past, as I stated in the above. Some people stayed and continued on with the Guild, some people went elsewhere and created new homes on other sites. We want improvements, we want resolutions to issues, we always know we work at the speed of Mahz and just try to keep the site functioning in accordance with site rules in the meantime. It's not perfect.
I'd imagine you want to keep people on this site, as a method to foster the community and make it grow. Ergo, you must work to fix problems as they arise. Perhaps not all the problems I perceive are real, I am willing to admit that, and perhaps not everything is as perfect as the moderator team likes to say it is, I am willing to show you that, and because of that we need to find a middle ground.
Then fine. Let's find that middle ground. Let's find what is working and what isn't. But for that, there needs to be a dialogue, and that dialogue is very far and hard to find. It seems that the moderators really want to work on things - at least, I'm being naive here and I believe that that is what you guys all really want. But they want to do it in their own way, entirely on their own, with nobody else interfering.
I'm telling you that won't work for all of us.
Perhaps you're .. well, not scared. Scared is a strong word and if we're being real, there is no way someone higher up the hierarchy would be scared of someone as small as me. But perhaps you're not entirely sure as to the intent I have. I don't mean to get people booted, I don't intend to harm RPG, I don't intend to be a guild terrorist. I intend to help RPG and I intend to do what I can to make it better. But I do it in my own way.
