I'm just going to point something out...

...and then leave it at that.

Gul, Anc, you guys are behaving in exactly the same manner that you found so offensive when Clyde was doing it--worse even. You summarily ousted him for it. What has changed that this kind of behavior is now appropriate?

Links?

I'm honestly curious.

We are issuing unwarranted warnings, closing or moving threads without merit, then heaping scorn on people who start helpdesk threads? Or are you just butt hurt that we still make effective arguments against your politics in the Red Room?

Ditto.

Here's a quick tip. Take it or don't: Just because you say something doesn't make it true. I know that is probably a hard concept to get, given your ideology, but it is true.

And this relates to board management in what way?

I'm confused.

wut? what is this thread even about? the only thing I saw clyde do was some spamming and being contrary for what appeared to be no reason.

So far I think the new admin has been a bit more lenient than the old. Still I think having separate admin names would help that way the staff could distance themselves from their own accounts.

What's all this about? No one is posting here anymore anyway...

ya'll are morons f...one of you is ....for WANTING them to post different.

it's not without merit, but it would kill the ideal of "transparency" pretty quickly.

Maybe you should have a think about this yourself Volpone.

Can you give a single example, Volpone? You've been asked several times to provide one. If you can't then maybe you should put down the Cosmo and post when you sober up.

The missteps I would throw out are:

Joking about using mod tools to fuck with people's posts.

Way too many staff people, looks seriously like hooking up buddies.

For a while the whole custom title mess.

Just dismissing people in the helpdesk if you disagree with them.

I should ban you and your faggotry from this board....

Bigger staff = more eyes behind the scenes. You want us to fire everyone and run the board with no input from anyone else?

Or do you just want to moderate a forum? Just ask if that's all you want.

And you really wonder why you can't grow this place beyond the incestuous pit that it is. It's being ran by a bunch of rank amateurs and has been for the last several administrations. Notice how the instant they get some negative feedback you completely spaz out?

No I wasn't wondering that. What would you do to drive membership? You want to be one of us? I will make you the moderator of new membership if you can actually put your money where your mouth is and bring us 10 new members in 30 days. I will take your advice and implement your ideas. So bring something to the table, please. Seriously, do something constructive. We would love to have you on staff if you can add something to the team.

1) Your suggestion to add someone to staff when one of the problems is too many staff people for current board size is silly. (or is it just some kind of "gotcha" you are trying to pull?)

2) Trust me, you won't implement my suggestions. They would piss off way too many of the clique.

1. Your opinion on staff size being a problem isn't shared by me. I'm not going to concede it as a fact to you.

2. You've got nothing. If you had something you would post it. You're a weak troll, not worthy of more response. Put up or shut up. My offer stands to you or anyone else who thinks they have a reasonable idea to drive membership.

It isn't clear to me what the optimal size for staff is, but part of the idea of adding was to avoid the echo chamber. See right here in this thread we have a staff spat of some sort, and it's in the Red Room, not hidden away. If nothing else, Volpone's post should prove that the staff isn't some frat boy network. We want a staff that has disagreements, sees things through differing lenses.

That said, let's hear your ideas @Archangel. I can't make any promises site unseen, but I think we are all pretty open to out of the box thinking, so tell us what's on your mind.

You're doing a great job of demonstrating the problems yourself.

While we wait for Volpone to explain what the heck he's talking about...

A one time thing.

Did you know that when Nick came back to fix the board he discovered that new registers/spam filter hadn't been gone through in months? There weren't a lot of actual people caught in there, but a few who had tried to register but couldn't. Now with the extra staff it's gone through daily.

Also, we wanted to make the Shelter as close to real time as possible. No waiting half a year for someone to get around cleaning it. So we got someone to do it full time and had a supermod help out (Volpone actually). Threads going back three years were released and now we're doing it weekly.

There were multiple instances where I asked for one of my threads to be moved or a title changed and it took forever for someone to get around to it. Now with the larger staff we should be much more responsive to such requests from the users.

As to hooking up buddies, we tried to get as much variation of opinion as possible. In fact I even offered Zombie a spot, and you wouldn't believe the person we were kicking around for Workshop Mod (in the end we decided that even if he was a model poster in that forum he was a troll outside of it and membership would revolt at him having mod privileges). Far from being a buddy hook up, for about half the new staff the first time I talked them outside of a thread here was when I PMed them asking if they wanted to help out.

So yeah. Do you want to be on staff? Which room and why? Or like tex suggests do you have something you'd like to be in charge of? In the chat thread in the HD I asked if someone wanted to take point on getting set up and be in charge of moderating it and no one responded.

Which was not either me or gul, or any of the ownership group, was up for a matter of hours, only a few people complained about, and is now resolved no? If that's one of your main gripes then we must be doing pretty good!

Do you have a link?

1-Joking vs actually doing so is a pretty broad line. Lemme know when it happens, and I'll roll light a torch along with the rest of the rabble.

2-I dunno. It really isn't that bad in terms of what each one or group's function is.
Owners:
Anc
Evenflow
gul
tex

So we got 4 people, diverse enough to be representative of the board, but all centrist enough to work together to keep the lights on. They don't really need to do anything else, and quite possibly shouldn't as far as keeping the rules followed. How many bar owners work the door other than to glad hand?

Admins:
Nick
O2C
Bickendan
John
Mrs A (to organize the smilies)

Another group that doesn't have anything to do other than keep the place running. A few extra hands to handle the drudge work, but it's two of the most inoffensive people on the board.

Supermods:
Bailey
Paladin
Krieg
Volpone

So four people, three of whom have modded at least once here, to be essentially floaters because they actually use all of the forums (maybe?) Seems like a fairly balanced crew...a second circle, proportionately distant from each other as the owners in their's.

Forum Mods:
Frontline - Camp Wordforge
Foil1212 - Press Start
Dan Leach - Green Room
Tuckerfan - Tech Forge
shootER - the Shelter

And finally four mods with forums the rest of he board can post in. Only one may ever have cause to have a debatable warning to issue or even have something covered when he isn't available, and that's Dan.

So yeah, 17 staffers may seem heavy. Thing is that only 9 of them have anything to do with the posts we make. The rest are either technical or owners who, as before, might want to contempalte removing themselves from authoritah so as to be able to play freely.

3. that'd be a non issue/first world problem worth meme-ing (meming?)

4. I went looking for that when I grabbed the staff list... got a few links? Not being snide, but I don't want to spend all night trying to figure out what you think is condescending.

get outta my head Anc!!

@Volpone what on earth are you talking about?

1) No one cares about releasing shelter threads, it's just a show.

2) If you need a giant staff to go through and make sure accounts are getting approved people aren't doing their jobs.

3) You create a rules and policy post

4) You enforce the rules evenly with no "if it amuses us we will allow it"

5) You stop harassment, even in the red room. This is especially true of harassment of new posters.

6) Staff is held to a higher standard, period. None of this "we are just regular posters" bullshit. Staff is not allowed to flame, harass, or insult users EVER.

7) Then you work on busting up the cliques, this includes the old guard treating anyone new like shit.

8) Staff doesn't freak out when they hear negative feedback.


Those are just a start

Of course I don't expect any of these be given any serious consideration, it would severely upset the status quo.

I have a guilty pleasure...the one (un)reality show I watch "Bar Rescue". Often times John Taffer comes to a failing bar that has a tiny loyal customer base, not enough to support the bar. The owners are afraid to change things that may upset these old customers. Taffer tells them point blank, they have to decide who they want to cater too. This old guard which will eventually lead to their failure, or change things up and risk alienating these old customers in exchange for bringing in much more new blood.

I'd just like to hear what the negative feedback is.

Thank you. It's going to take some time to think through all of the ideas, and consider what the mechanism is around them. Some are quite frankly not going to fly, which you knew, but I like at least 3, 4, 7, & 8.

As for your TV show reference, I think our answer is that we are willing to risk alienating some old guard. I don't know whether you've read the twitter thread, but there's a good example. The goal is to keep existing members, but realistically, without changes that attract new members, the board will shrivel and die, so that point is well taken and something we already have within the ownership DNA.