Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Morgaln » Mon Nov 19, 2018 11:55 am

Krulle wrote: Mon Nov 19, 2018 4:30 am Wasn't BA banned (and unbanned) by Thunt, and not by a mod?

This post seems to refer to Thunt having done some bad and inconsistent decisions himself.
And this post is Thunt's view of the story.

And Thunt is not a "mod"erator here, he has admin access.
IMHO Thunt is not a moderator here, and his actions are not necessarily reflecting the stance and behaviour of the mods.
First of all, admins are higher in the chain of command than moderators. That means that admins can set site policies that moderators have to follow. As such, anything an admin does is setting an example for the mods (whether they follow that example or not is of course something else entirely). Also, any action taken by a team member will always reflect on the team as a whole.

Also, in my experience most forum users (regardless of forum) don't make a distinction between admin and mod. "Mod" is usually a stand-in for "team member," whether it is appropriate for the situation or not. However, whether that is true in this specific case I cannot know.

But let's take a step back; nowhere did RocketScientist specify that she was talking about moderators only. She was talking about people banned overall, which I assumed included everyone. Therefore I also assumed that the one person she referred to is BrassBaboon, who was also banned by Hunt. If that is not the person she referred to I call shenanigans; excluding people banned because they were banned not by a mod but by an admin, without even stating that distinction is deliberate misinformation in order to whitewash the statistic.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Wolfie » Mon Nov 19, 2018 12:07 pm

Krulle is right, btw. THunt is not a moderator nor an admin. He is the owner. What THunt does, we cannot control, and I believe THunt apologized for BB.
But let's take a step back; nowhere did RocketScientist specify that she was talking about moderators only. She was talking about people banned overall, which I assumed included everyone. Therefore I also assumed that the one person she referred to is BrassBaboon, who was also banned by Hunt. If that is not the person she referred to I call shenanigans; excluding people banned because they were banned not by a mod but by an admin, without even stating that distinction is deliberate misinformation in order to whitewash the statistic.
RS was referring to Willpell, IIRC. She was not trying to "white wash" anything as banning someone has to be done by either the Admins or THunt. AFAIK, Willpell is the only person, beyond spammers that we've banned completely. (99.999% of spammers are bots).
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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by RocketScientist » Mon Nov 19, 2018 4:02 pm

I was speaking of Willpell/theSlielnce, yes. He was banned by the admin/mod team. I don't keep track of what Thunt does, as he does not discuss it with the team.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Morgaln » Mon Nov 19, 2018 4:43 pm

As long as we're agreed that this statement:
In the entire history of the Goblins forums, exactly one person has ever been banned.
is factually wrong (and I am not talking about spambots), I have no further issues with anything said in this thread so far.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Shardstorm » Tue Nov 20, 2018 1:56 pm

You are apparently technically correct, the best kind of correct. But also the most unnecessary.
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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Generic » Wed Nov 21, 2018 4:51 am

Shardstorm wrote: Tue Nov 20, 2018 1:56 pm You are apparently technically correct, the best kind of correct. But also the most unnecessary.
Is it unnecessary to point out "I don't object to anything accept for this part, because it is false"? I think it's a pretty important distinction to make.
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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by RocketScientist » Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:01 pm

It wasn't false. You moved the goalposts. The original complaint was about overzealous moderators. I replied that we'd only ever banned one person. Because we have only ever banned one person. Then you moved the goalposts to hold us responsible for Thunt's personal actions.

By the way, since you seem to remember that time period so clearly, you will recall that I was the one who talked Thunt down from all of the banning he wanted to do when that horde of people came into his virtual house and made repeated personal attacks against him. So again, not on the moderators.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Jarednc » Thu Nov 22, 2018 3:57 am

I've been lurking the forums for probably around 10 years. I tried to get into the discussion one time, and got talked down to pretty heavily. I didn't log back in and forgot the account password and username. A few years later I made this account and I think I've posted a few times.

While I have always had the impression that this community is very rigid and censored (simple bannings are not the only way to silence other opinions), I do not think that is the reason the forums are dead.

The forums are dead because forums as a medium are dead. I can say generally that every forum I visit has heavily declined in traffic over the past 5 years. I can provide hard figures for my own website:
Image

I think the rise of things like whatsapp and discord have pulled away a lot of traditionally forum discussion. Lots of people prefer the instant notifications and the simplification of a discussion unbound by "threads" and "forum sections". As well, the youth of today don't use forums. As the 20s-30s forum users grow up and get jobs and families, their time to devote to a forum community diminishes.

I have fought with the "how to fix forum activity" problem for years. I've seen communities blame "too much banning" "not enough banning" "strict mods" "lack of mods" "this reason" "that reason" and so on. But they're ALL suffering the same problem of declining activity.

Is there a solution? Probably not. :|
Last edited by Jarednc on Thu Nov 22, 2018 4:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Jarednc » Thu Nov 22, 2018 4:02 am

To add to that post, I got this message:
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This message has been submitted successfully, but it will need to be approved by a moderator before it is publicly viewable. You will be notified when your post has been approved.

Return to the forum last visited
Yeah, I would say that the community is pretty harshly closed to new members. Account is at least a year old and has at least 1 post, but my posts are still moderated? I can't imagine many new members sticking around if they have to wait potentially hours/days to see their posts show up.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Krulle » Thu Nov 22, 2018 4:50 am

There is a post count minimum, once you've reached that your posts will go up unmoderated.
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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by M0rtimer » Thu Nov 22, 2018 5:03 am

Post got approved within ~5 minutes (not that it's impossible a post slips by for longer, but we've moderators in different timezones so hopefully never too long), and it's only for the first two posts a member makes. Sadly it's kind of a necessity, because even being on the latest phpbb version, bots still easily bypass security and manage to make accounts... But the post verification makes it so no one ever has to see it.

With all that said I do generally agree with your assessment though, forums in general are falling a bit out of style. We've a discord now where there's an occasional good bit of chatter too if you'd like, though I do think the forums definitely still hold a place, if far from being as active as they once were.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Jarednc » Thu Nov 22, 2018 5:11 am

From a forum management perspective I do understand. Luckily on vbulletin I was able to install a recaptcha plugin that completely stopped bot registrations. I simply wanted to point out that a potential new member might try to join a discussion, see their post moderated, then leave and never bother to come back and see if the post was approved and discussed.

I don't know the technical capabilities of phpbb, but if possible you might want to modify the message to briefly explain that account with less than 3 posts have their new posts moderated, to combat bot spam.

Or not. Doesn't bother me either way. I can just see how it would be off putting to a potential new forum member.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by M0rtimer » Thu Nov 22, 2018 5:33 am

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Don't think it's a default option to do, or I'd change it myself so it's a bit more clear.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Morgaln » Thu Nov 22, 2018 5:38 am

RocketScientist wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:01 pm It wasn't false. You moved the goalposts. The original complaint was about overzealous moderators. I replied that we'd only ever banned one person. Because we have only ever banned one person. Then you moved the goalposts to hold us responsible for Thunt's personal actions.

By the way, since you seem to remember that time period so clearly, you will recall that I was the one who talked Thunt down from all of the banning he wanted to do when that horde of people came into his virtual house and made repeated personal attacks against him. So again, not on the moderators.
It was you who moved the goalpost. There is a distinct difference between "only one person was ever banned" and "only one person was ever banned by the moderators." You expressly stated the former, not the latter. You even worded it in a way that excluded the use of personal pronouns, so the "we" you claim to have used wasn't actually used. In the quote you replied to, you also removed all parts that were referencing moderators. There was no qualifier that implied in any way that you were talking about the subset of people banned by the moderators instead of the full set of people banned (note that people/person here is a qualifier that excludes bots from the list).
I also never said that you were responsible for Hunt's actions. On the contrary: I said that since he is an admin and owner of the site, he has a certain responsibility for the actions of the team (at the very least in form of being a role model), which is the complete opposite. I also said that many forum users will not make that distinction and will use "moderator" as a stand-in for "site official," since the actual duties and powers of the various groups are often unknown to a regular user.

On reviewing my past posts while writing this, I did come across one thing that I feel I do need to apologize for, however. In one post, I insinuated strongly that your above statement was used deliberately to obfuscate that more than one person has been banned. I think you didn't mean it that way and instead you just expressed yourself badly. So I apologize for making the accusations of whitewashing the statistics, as they were unnecessary and uncalled for.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Generic » Thu Nov 22, 2018 6:11 am

RocketScientist wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:01 pm By the way, since you seem to remember that time period so clearly, you will recall that I was the one who talked Thunt down from all of the banning he wanted to do when that horde of people came into his virtual house and made repeated personal attacks against him. So again, not on the moderators.
That horde of people?
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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Generic » Thu Nov 22, 2018 6:14 am

Morgaln wrote: Thu Nov 22, 2018 5:38 am
RocketScientist wrote: Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:01 pm It wasn't false. You moved the goalposts. The original complaint was about overzealous moderators. I replied that we'd only ever banned one person. Because we have only ever banned one person. Then you moved the goalposts to hold us responsible for Thunt's personal actions.

By the way, since you seem to remember that time period so clearly, you will recall that I was the one who talked Thunt down from all of the banning he wanted to do when that horde of people came into his virtual house and made repeated personal attacks against him. So again, not on the moderators.
It was you who moved the goalpost. There is a distinct difference between "only one person was ever banned" and "only one person was ever banned by the moderators." You expressly stated the former, not the latter. You even worded it in a way that excluded the use of personal pronouns, so the "we" you claim to have used wasn't actually used. In the quote you replied to, you also removed all parts that were referencing moderators. There was no qualifier that implied in any way that you were talking about the subset of people banned by the moderators instead of the full set of people banned (note that people/person here is a qualifier that excludes bots from the list).
I also never said that you were responsible for Hunt's actions. On the contrary: I said that since he is an admin and owner of the site, he has a certain responsibility for the actions of the team (at the very least in form of being a role model), which is the complete opposite. I also said that many forum users will not make that distinction and will use "moderator" as a stand-in for "site official," since the actual duties and powers of the various groups are often unknown to a regular user.

On reviewing my past posts while writing this, I did come across one thing that I feel I do need to apologize for, however. In one post, I insinuated strongly that your above statement was used deliberately to obfuscate that more than one person has been banned. I think you didn't mean it that way and instead you just expressed yourself badly. So I apologize for making the accusations of whitewashing the statistics, as they were unnecessary and uncalled for.
I agree with you. And even IF you would have moved the goal posts, it would not really matter. You were not the one making claims.
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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by RocketScientist » Sun Nov 25, 2018 9:47 pm

Of course you agree with each other. That's what you do. :roll:

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Formaltide » Mon Nov 26, 2018 5:01 pm

Jarednc wrote: Thu Nov 22, 2018 3:57 am I think the rise of things like whatsapp and discord have pulled away a lot of traditionally forum discussion. Lots of people prefer the instant notifications and the simplification of a discussion unbound by "threads" and "forum sections". As well, the youth of today don't use forums. As the 20s-30s forum users grow up and get jobs and families, their time to devote to a forum community diminishes.

I have fought with the "how to fix forum activity" problem for years. I've seen communities blame "too much banning" "not enough banning" "strict mods" "lack of mods" "this reason" "that reason" and so on. But they're ALL suffering the same problem of declining activity.

Is there a solution? Probably not. :|
I disagree that there is no solution! Where there is a will, there is a way. I agree that forums as a medium in general have definitely declined in popularity over the years, however they are not even remotely close to being dead in any way. Sites like Reddit or official forums for popular games like World of Warcraft are still intensely active. Not only that, but given that each forum community has its own atmosphere, moderations, and of course, people, it's not really a good comparison to weigh them against each other. Each forum is its own separate entity and can die for all kinds of reasons, while another can continue living healthily at the same time.

Since I mentioned Reddit, it actually is an excellent example of a message board that has everything you mentioned: threads, instant notifications, forum sections, etc. If forums are falling out of favor because they lack certain features, then see which features aren't needed anymore and which ones are, and adjust them appropriately.

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Re: Thunt art and story pace getting awesome!

Post by Jarednc » Wed Nov 28, 2018 2:00 am

Reddit is an example of what is killing forums.

Reddit has no sense of community where every active user has a recognizable persona. People fight for karma and then the vast majority of posts are ignored under the weight of up voted posts. Only the rare lurker actually reads everything.

Reddit was the first nail in the coffin for forums. It is *NOT* a forum itself.

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