I guess what bothers me is that people who used to be cool to hang out with lose patience and start acting in a way that makes them ban-worthy, while people who are insufficiently creepy, aggressive or hateful to get the hammer but not particularly nice or friendly, either, get to stick around.
Speaking personally, the forums aren't as much fun as they used to be, and I guess maybe I'm bitter about that. And I don't like being "the enemy" of the very community I used to consider myself a part of. Which is to say, the old YF crowd, many of whom seem alienated by all of this.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I'm not sure if the old Yack Fest crowd (of which I consider myself part of) should be considered "the enemy". It's a group of people who recognize the TV tropes used to be a much friendlier, happier place and it's currently not that place.
They're simply people who have been around long enough to recognize that and a number of reasons. I think the fact that having a problem with the current state and having no outlet to discuss it without the fear of banning is a VERY tragic thing.
I wasn't clear there, sorry. I'm not saying they are "the enemy". I'm saying that I feel that I, which is to say, the mod team, myself included, are perceived as the enemy, or at least as a problem. And to some extent, perhaps we are, but in that case, becoming not a problem is not as simple as tropers seem to think it is.
And agreed that it's tragic that it's difficult to discuss these things without fear of banning. I would like to discourage that fear, but given that a number of people have been banned while complaining, well, you see the difficulty, I think.
And yet all Eddie wants to do is run a wiki in peace, and he runs the forums because he recognises that tropers enjoy having them. For that, he's gotten almost nothing but abuse, and he hasn't taken it very well.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Hmmm... I'm not sure if it's the entire mod team, per se, as one particular mod. Though opinions on that vary wildly, so I wouldn't say it's a prevalent opinion.
I think the idea that there's some degree of apathy perceived on on behalf of the mods. Certain areas aren't given the same attention they once where, and many of the mods of almost locked themselves in the Old Folks Home, which certainly doesn't help the clickyness level at the moment.
Now, I'm not saying it's necessarily a case of mods not caring. I'm sure each of them is concerned with the fora and the goings on in it. But it seems real life is simply too demanding for them to police the fora as they once did. Oddly enough, I remembering Bobby mentioning that there was plenty man-power to go around, but this was months ago and HIS schedule is not as open as it once was. I wonder what he would say on this matter now.
^^ I would say what the fuck am I doing in the Hangout, I am going to fail another module if I don't get this assignment finished and posted.
To be honest, I think when Bobby said that, the mods weren't really doing a great job and a lot more was slipping through the cracks than does now, and also there was probably an element of bravado there, and possibly also the fact that Bobby was a lazy slacker with no social life at the time factored into it.
^ OK, I can understand that perspective. But there are worse things to be than oversensitive, IMO.
And I'd also maintain that, while he was always kind of gruff, he used to have a thicker skin. He's been worn down over time.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
"And yet all Eddie wants to do is run a wiki in peace, and he runs the forums because he recognises that tropers enjoy having them. For that, he's gotten almost nothing but abuse, and he hasn't taken it very well."
He's certainly had to deal with some situations that where pretty stressful and that people didn't react with much decorum. On the other hand, it's pretty hard to deny he's mishandled some situations, or at least, handled situations in such a way that upset the community.
I think most respect that he at least can and perhaps has the right to "Shut this shit down" if he so fits and that the fora, at least in his mind, is nothing more than support to the wiki. Part of the problem seems to be he's lord and master over something he does not necessarily wish to be lord and master of and he could easily pass some of that responsibility to others. Now that may or may not do much to help the problem, but it would be a change many would perceive as good and hopefully something of a win-win.
Then again, I'm not privy to the inner workings of FE's mind.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
" also the fact that Bobby was a lazy slacker with no social life at the time factored into it."
To be perfectly honestly , the fora could use a couple of these types policing it. Or at least someone with much more free time. I'm not begrudging anyone for not having the time to monitor a web-forum, that would be rather hypocritical , but someone who really had "nothing better to do" and a decent idea of how to keep things running would certainly help.
Honestly, at this point, I'm wondering if it would be better to divorce the forums from TVT proper, and have them running on a Vanilla server or something. It seems FE isn't really all that interested in running a general-purpose forum as he is keeping it strictly to Wiki Talk and other administrivia, and if that's what he wants, he's certainly welcome to it.
That said, I'm not crazy about the state of the wiki, either (you tend to be that way after you see an article you worked hard on being deleted for purely political reasons), but that's a story for another time, I think.
I've mishandled situations, sometimes quite badly. So have some of the others, IMO. Eddie always gets some of the blame for it, though.
I'd suggest that he just left the mods to run the forums and focused on the wiki, but I don't know how the others would feel about that, and I know that I really can't be afford to spend more time moderating the forums at the moment. Plus as I tend to disagree with Eddie on a lot of things I'm not sure I'd be the best person to suggest that.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
^^Eh, a disconnected fora wouldn't work as well. Given all the ease of local hyper-linking we'd loose and ability to upload small pictures.
Current social unrest aside, the fora is a fantastic tool for supporting the wiki and creating a sense of community around it.
"I know that I really can't be afford to spend more time moderating the forums at the moment. "
Anyone whose familiar with the mods should understand that they all have real lives and don't always have time for the fora. The problem is when there's only so many mods and all of them are often to busy for the fora, we have something of a problem.
Granted, the Heralds can hopefully keep things in line well enough as someone recognized as staff. We might very well see some of the situations resolve because staff WAS increased. I, for one, thought this was a pretty decent idea for many of the sub-forums, at least.
Justice: Well, I do have some other issues with the forums as they stand, but they're mainly technical in nature (in other words, I like the way Vanilla does certain things better than I do the TVT forum code at times). There's also a few frequent posters I find both annoying and undeserving of the cliques that have sprung up around them, but I'm not naming names. :P
Tnu: Well, it's also that the mods didn't do a little, oh, three years ago when the forums were starting to get popular. Which meant they had to do a lot recently, which isn't good for anyone.
In other words, instead of having clear-cut, understandable rules from the start, it was put off until the SA thing and the Google incident caused a panic and put the place on high alert, which means the rules now are much harsher than they would have had to be if they'd been codified sooner.
And I can't believe I've been on the forums for about three years now. If I do have a first post, it was probably lost in one of the purges, though. :P
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
"I like the way Vanilla does certain things better than I do the TVT forum code at times"
Preach it, brother!
Vanilla forums certainly has some things going for it, though I'd still prefer TVT fora as sharing similar functionality with the Wiki.
I'd imagine if it where separate and felt that way, Eddie wouldn't bother supporting it at all (and who could blame him?) and without any serious financial support, it simply could not hold up to the size of community in TVT,
I don't see how democracy is responsible for this, sorry. Autocracy... not really sure, wouldn't like to say.
@ Lee: Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate to me. You'll note that several of the rules (e.g. the no sex threads) were spur-of-the-moment additions in response to unanticipated problems.
It's complicated. At that point I really wasn't even sure I knew what I was talking about. I t'd take a bit to explain and since this thread is apperently very active now typing up the post would be m ore trouble then worth it.
I'll amend that: I can't afford to spend more time moderating the forums. I cannot be afford to get on with my schoolwork, which is why I'm on there as often as I am. There, that's more accurate.
As far as the TVT forums go, I think we're a bit too unsure about when to use the kratos, and I don't see where the archy comes into it, and I also don't understand why we're speaking Greek all of a sudden.
Sorry it's the easiest way for me to describe the concept I read up a little on this book Eight Ways To Run The Country and the terms sort of got in to my usual lexicon.
To recomment my original comment, I do think that Eddie has had to deal with a lot of infuriating bullshit and I do think he's had enough and I feel sorry for him being in that situation, but honestly, I'm not seeing why he doesn't just hand the site over to someone else and take a less stressful position, or just step away from TVT entirely.
Good question. I would say Gus or Janitor but apparently they haven't been on as much (they aren't gone for good are they?). I really don't know much about any of the other mods or their moderating styles to be able to speculate much further on it, but those two seem like they would be the most likely choices had it not been for the absence issue (also isn't Gus dead?).
I think the problem is that there isn't anyone suitable, or no-one that has been found.
Janitor isn't gone for good, she's just very busy with work. Gus is sadly dead and has been for a few years now (RIP), so no, he won't be coming back.
I can't really see any of the mods taking the reins. For one thing, AFAIK Tangent is the only one who can code for shit, and he's been busy lately IRL.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I'd say many of the current mod staff are perfectly trustworthy in regards to running the wiki and fora, I'm just unsure if any of them really have the time.
And there would be the question of who could do something about fixing it if it broke, which it's been known to do. The lack of technical know-how could certainly be an issue.
Never trust anyone to run anything. Soon as a man gets power only a matter of time before he abuses it. Besides i'm confused about the notion that we can't trust people to govern themselves b ut we can tru st people to govern others.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
The policy of "Self policing in OTC" and what has come of it should serve as a pretty good indication of why the TVT community is not ready to govern themselves at the moment.
Not to mention you NEED someone to keep all the inter-butts trolls at bay.
Sorry but I tend to relate all politics in the same way It's easier to use the same terms for RL politics as I would for forum politics rather then searching for other terms.
Basically, Solstace's userpage was like this poem/pattern thing that exploited some glitches in the software to make this really cool design. The corresponding Analysis Wiki page was a slightly smart-ass sounding explanation of how this was achieved due to, mainly, flaws in the markup parser.
I'm a bit unsure what actually happened to bring the pages to Eddie's attention; allegedly it was to do with a goon vandalising the page, but I don't really know. Anyway, the bug was fixed, not sure how efficiently, and both pages got locked and blanked. It was all a bit strange.
Well, there are definitely other tech-savvy users who can use their powers for good instead of evil pissing off FE to make cooler looking pages, right?
Well, there's Tangent. Ponica and Iverum are pretty good with that stuff, I think, and I know Tzetze's studied computer science so he might be. There's also Anemotaxis, who IIRC coded up the "show avatars" feature on the profile pages; don't know what he does nowadays.
In other words, mostly people associated with old YF and the IRC channel. The same group of people Eddie's very efficiently been pissing off of late.
Comments
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Speaking personally, the forums aren't as much fun as they used to be, and I guess maybe I'm bitter about that. And I don't like being "the enemy" of the very community I used to consider myself a part of. Which is to say, the old YF crowd, many of whom seem alienated by all of this.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
And agreed that it's tragic that it's difficult to discuss these things without fear of banning. I would like to discourage that fear, but given that a number of people have been banned while complaining, well, you see the difficulty, I think.
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
To be honest, I think when Bobby said that, the mods weren't really doing a great job and a lot more was slipping through the cracks than does now, and also there was probably an element of bravado there, and possibly also the fact that Bobby was a lazy slacker with no social life at the time factored into it.
^ OK, I can understand that perspective. But there are worse things to be than oversensitive, IMO.
And I'd also maintain that, while he was always kind of gruff, he used to have a thicker skin. He's been worn down over time.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I'd suggest that he just left the mods to run the forums and focused on the wiki, but I don't know how the others would feel about that, and I know that I really can't be afford to spend more time moderating the forums at the moment. Plus as I tend to disagree with Eddie on a lot of things I'm not sure I'd be the best person to suggest that.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I don't see how democracy is responsible for this, sorry. Autocracy... not really sure, wouldn't like to say.
@ Lee: Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate to me. You'll note that several of the rules (e.g. the no sex threads) were spur-of-the-moment additions in response to unanticipated problems.
>can't be afford
Uh... grammatical Freudian slip there, I think.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
As far as the TVT forums go, I think we're a bit too unsure about when to use the kratos, and I don't see where the archy comes into it, and I also don't understand why we're speaking Greek all of a sudden.
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
Janitor isn't gone for good, she's just very busy with work. Gus is sadly dead and has been for a few years now (RIP), so no, he won't be coming back.
I can't really see any of the mods taking the reins. For one thing, AFAIK Tangent is the only one who can code for shit, and he's been busy lately IRL.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I suppose if he appointed somebody who was good at delegating, but then you're just shifting the problem down the chain, really.
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
@ VM: Yeah, but Solstace hasn't always... well, you heard about the incident with his userpage, right?
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
I'm a bit unsure what actually happened to bring the pages to Eddie's attention; allegedly it was to do with a goon vandalising the page, but I don't really know. Anyway, the bug was fixed, not sure how efficiently, and both pages got locked and blanked. It was all a bit strange.
大學的年同性戀毛皮
aaaaa
In other words, mostly people associated with old YF and the IRC channel. The same group of people Eddie's very efficiently been pissing off of late.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Give me like 2 years and I might have a vague idea what I'm doing with it.