I actually had a decently long thing typed up, but I decided the details were irrelevant. It's fairer just to say that I've been in favour of changes along the lines of rule 4's spirit from the very beginning.
A-okay. I'll take your good word for it then. Thank you.
IMO, in light of the changes to the users frequenting the WCT subforum, mentoring users not to be bad or mentoring them to be good would have helped. Certainly, that's too time-consuming and infeasible, though. Yeah, me and my stock-standard "culture" kvetching post.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're in our shoes, that you really want to make WCT a welcoming place, that you feel you need a rule that allows you to close/move threads that are too controversial.
What is controversial to you is not to other people. The issue being is that you have tightened the screw down so far on "controverisal" that anyone that disagree's with someone else has the thread closed or it is moved to debate.
no one can discuss anything.
so while you are trying to make it welcoming it is having the adverse affect.
How would you word that rule? I mean, regardless of whether you think that sort of rule would ever be necessary, regardless of whether you think that rule is Evil Tyranny, regardless of whether you think that Teia and I are rabid liberal feminist Nazis intent on imposing our views upon the userbase. How would you go about it?
First of there are already rules against such things.
2ndly as pointed out 100 million times before. You guys assume the worst of a post. you automatically assume that the person is trolling even if they aren't.
Rule 4 doesn't allow for opposing opinions that someone might find arguementative or offending.
the execution of said rule is impossible. as anyone can find any post arguementative or offensive.
therefore it falls under rule 4.
the more concern parts is how teia has defined this rule so far. it pretty much shuts down any opinion unless it agrees with the mod staff and their views which is very disconserning and is running people off.
It is a bad rule because it allows for selective use and no one has any recourse.
I'm interested to hear that from you all, because I think that would shed more light on the situation than anything we've discussed so far
So far all we get is either.
1. i disagree with you and you are wrong.
2. or we get ignored.
even though for now 24 in this one and over 40 in the last one we tried to explain the issue.
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Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around. Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
I'm about to the point where Jedi and Drac are. I pretty much don't even want to bother with this site at all anymore, let alone WCT.
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I was driven from this once-great site by abusive mods and admins, who create rules out of thin air to punish people for breaking them (meaning the rule does not exist under forum rules) and selectively enforce the rules that are written on the forum rules. I am currently lurking while deleting 6 years and 2 months of posting history. I will return when ExpiredRascals, Teia Rabishu and Blinking Spirit are no longer in power.
Guys I know Teia and senori are infuriating and I understand your desires to not post or worse leave the site However that doesn't help the community at large does it.
If azrael doesn't want to be the representative of the community (I believe him best candidate), I volunteer myself to act in this role as I have read all the threads, have had communication with both parties outside of thread and have an indepth knowledge of what can and cannot be done as a potential solution.
My only restriction if the community is happy for me to do this is that I will only deal with Nai or Meggido as they are the 2 people I have seen be receptive to compromise and that I respect to not stone wall the issue.
I don't have a problem with that and i am sure that others don't either. i agree i think those are the two people you do need to deal with.
both has shown a willingness to talk and discuss. not simply ignore what people say.
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Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around. Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
Hey guys, thought experiment!
Imagine, for a moment, that you're in our shoes, that you really want to make WCT a welcoming place, that you feel you need a rule that allows you to close/move threads that are too controversial.
The problem with the current rule is that it resembles thought crime. Someone has a though they express this thought on the forums with no intention to offend and because someone could be offended the staff feel action is warranted. This makes sense the staff wants to prevent people from feeling offended by the fun part of the MTGS. Somethings need to be dealt with after the negative outcome happens. It is impossible for a person to be guilty of murder before the murder occurs. The something is true for offense. It is impossible to be guilt of offended another human before another human is offended.
The rule i would make.
WCT is a fun and engaging part of MTGS. Where you can talk about almost anything that is not magic related. Well known and extremely offensive topics are off limits like "the pros of racism" or "why women voting is ruining this country" or "the best way to dispose of a toddler's corpse."
For any other topics or posts that offend you please use the report button and give the reason why the post or topic was offensive. We reserve the right to use the reason you gave while hiding your username.
If your topic or post is reported you will be given the reason for the report and you will be given a chance to apologize for your offense. If you choose to not apologize for the offense you will be given a warning the first time and an infraction for every time after the first.
Guys I know Teia and senori are infuriating and I understand your desires to not post or worse leave the site However that doesn't help the community at large does it.
If azrael doesn't want to be the representative of the community (I believe him best candidate), I volunteer myself to act in this role as I have read all the threads, have had communication with both parties outside of thread and have an indepth knowledge of what can and cannot be done as a potential solution.
My only restriction if the community is happy for me to do this is that I will only deal with Nai or Meggido as they are the 2 people I have seen be receptive to compromise and that I respect to not stone wall the issue.
I would feel best with Meggido doing it. He hasn't come to the defense of the two offending mods in any form yet, so I believe he is most likely to be impartial in this. Nai has been defending Senori and Teia to some degree, so that makes me question his impartiality.
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I was driven from this once-great site by abusive mods and admins, who create rules out of thin air to punish people for breaking them (meaning the rule does not exist under forum rules) and selectively enforce the rules that are written on the forum rules. I am currently lurking while deleting 6 years and 2 months of posting history. I will return when ExpiredRascals, Teia Rabishu and Blinking Spirit are no longer in power.
Once again, I would like to put a numerical value on how many second chances we're giving these guys before it stops. Why are Senori and Teia still running the WCT? Is there any precedent for this kind of outright public backlash, in addition to stonewalling in the face of it?
Imagine, for a moment, that you're in our shoes, that you really want to make WCT a welcoming place, that you feel you need a rule that allows you to close/move threads that are too controversial.
How would you word that rule?
As I've said before, the issue is not the way the rule is worded. The problem is not the fact that the rule is flexible.
The issue is who is enforcing it.
All rules on this forum need to be flexible by the inherent nature of it. Take this rule in debate:
Quote from Debate Rules, Nuisance behavior »
Other. There’s no way I can write a complete list of the ways to make a nuisance of yourself in Debate. Usually, you’ll know when you’re doing it; if not, others will certainly make it clear to you. Please avoid such behavior.
Now, if we had this rule in WCT, we'd all be in an uproar. But I have no problem with this in Debate. Why is that?
It's because I have no reason to distrust Blinking Spirit and red_0mega. The latter has given me no reason to believe he'll be anything other than a fine mod, and the former has a well-established track record of it. I have no problems giving them flexibility.
You guys have five threads of overwhelmingly negative criticism since bLatch's in August 27, not even a month, which brings us back to the key problem: The problem is not that the rule has flexible wording. The problem is that the rule must be worded flexibly, but we do not trust the enforcers of it with flexibly worded rules because it's been demonstrated that you don't handle them well.
The only reason we're quibbling over this rule is because we're doing everything we can to try to limit what you and Teia can do because you've done nothing to earn public trust. This is not fertile ground for anything productive, and the fact that you've managed to do all this in not even a month is astounding.
If you guys want what's best for the WCT, accept the fact that you are not the right people for the job. By all means, continue to feel free to be part of the staff. If you wish to still be mods, moderate other forums that you would actually be fit for, I can think of several, but this is just not one of them. You two just don't work in this setting. I'll say again, it's not your fault. I'm not even sure at this point if it's a fault of the hiring process, because there's only so much you can know before putting a person in the field. You two just aren't a match for this job. These things happen.
So, Highroller, what you're saying is the rule is actually fine, you just don't like me? That's kinda petty.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
So, Highroller, what you're saying is the rule is actually fine, you just don't like me? That's kinda petty.
He didn't say he didn't LIKE you. He said he didn't TRUST you.
Can't say that I do either, especially after you resorted to threats after being called on the carpet about these complaints only you and Teia know about and refuse to share.
Come to think of it, I've received a lot of complaints about you. But sorry, I can't share them or the names of the people complaining. You see, it was in PMs and I was told in confidence. So you'll just have to take me at my word that a lot of people are complaining about you.
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I was driven from this once-great site by abusive mods and admins, who create rules out of thin air to punish people for breaking them (meaning the rule does not exist under forum rules) and selectively enforce the rules that are written on the forum rules. I am currently lurking while deleting 6 years and 2 months of posting history. I will return when ExpiredRascals, Teia Rabishu and Blinking Spirit are no longer in power.
Solaran_X: Seems like after Senori provided an explanation of why WCT needs to be moderated in a certain way, you realised you were proven wrong, so now you're resorting to implying that these PMs don't exist or are exaggerated. Sorry but you're not the mod, so if these PMs were sent in confidence you won't be able to see them.
I'm sorry Danny, but imaginary PMs that only Senori and Teia know about are not justification for these changes.
Nothing was proven beyond claims that there are these legions of unhappy users that only talk to Senori and Teia. And they will not, or can not because they don't exist, prove it beyond claiming that we should take them at their word because they are mods.
I will be proven wrong as soon as Senori or Teia release the PMs. Until then, I am not proven wrong. And I doubt I will be proven wrong, because I am almost positive that the PMs do not exist. They are a fabrication to justify our dismissal as a "vocal minority" by Senori and Teia, because we are actually a clear majority of people actively posting and Senori and Teia so dearly want to marginalize us.
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I was driven from this once-great site by abusive mods and admins, who create rules out of thin air to punish people for breaking them (meaning the rule does not exist under forum rules) and selectively enforce the rules that are written on the forum rules. I am currently lurking while deleting 6 years and 2 months of posting history. I will return when ExpiredRascals, Teia Rabishu and Blinking Spirit are no longer in power.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're in our shoes, that you really want to make WCT a welcoming place, that you feel you need a rule that allows you to close/move threads that are too controversial.
How would you word that rule? I mean, regardless of whether you think that sort of rule would ever be necessary, regardless of whether you think that rule is Evil Tyranny, regardless of whether you think that Teia and I are rabid liberal feminist Nazis intent on imposing our views upon the userbase. How would you go about it?
I'm interested to hear that from you all, because I think that would shed more light on the situation than anything we've discussed so far.
With my earlier post, it provides for moving threads, with a small rewording, it provides for locking threads. It *does not* provide for thought policing threads.
I guess OP wants it to be 'keyworded' like "dies" was. What word would you replace ETB with though?
When Aegis Angel is born?
When Huntmaster of the Fells arrives?
When Kitchen Sphinx lands?
When Faerie Imposter busts in?
When Dread Cacodemon pops in?
When Malfegor shows up?
I'm sorry Danny, but imaginary PMs that only Senori and Teia know about are not justification for these changes.
Nothing was proven beyond claims that there are these legions of unhappy users that only talk to Senori and Teia. And they will not, or can not because they don't exist, prove it beyond claiming that we should take them at their word because they are mods.
I will be proven wrong as soon as Senori or Teia release the PMs. Until then, I am not proven wrong. And I doubt I will be proven wrong, because I am almost positive that the PMs do not exist. They are a fabrication to justify our dismissal as a "vocal minority" by Senori and Teia, because we are actually a clear majority of people actively posting and Senori and Teia so dearly want to marginalize us.
How much redaction(sp?) would you feel would be allowable so that Senori et all could post those pms while still making it impossible to track down who sent the pms so as to keep their privacy intact?
And @Senori et all, would you be willing to post actual specific pms so long as you could redact(sp?) enough of the pms so as to make it impossible to track who it was to protect their privacy as requested while still providing some additional proof to quell some of this disbelief that these exist?
How much redaction(sp?) would you feel would be allowable so that Senori et all could post those pms while still making it impossible to track down who sent the pms so as to keep their privacy intact?
And @Senori et all, would you be willing to post actual specific pms so long as you could redact(sp?) enough of the pms so as to make it impossible to track who it was to protect their privacy as requested while still providing some additional proof to quell some of this disbelief that these exist?
Considering the level of trust we have for Senori and Teia, I don't believe any redaction would be acceptable. At this point, I would not put it past them to just type up some false PMs that came from [REDACTED] as proof that the PMs exist. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I will, however, trust Meggido. I would accept Senori and Teia forwarding ALL the PMs to Meggido so he can verify their existence and that they are legit. And I know from personal experience that Senori has no issues forwarding a PM to admins.
I will trust Meggido's word in this, and Meggido only. He has not come to the defense of Senori and Teia, so I believe he is impartial in this (or as impartial as an admin can be when potential staff abuses of power are involved).
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I was driven from this once-great site by abusive mods and admins, who create rules out of thin air to punish people for breaking them (meaning the rule does not exist under forum rules) and selectively enforce the rules that are written on the forum rules. I am currently lurking while deleting 6 years and 2 months of posting history. I will return when ExpiredRascals, Teia Rabishu and Blinking Spirit are no longer in power.
I actually had a decently long thing typed up, but I decided the details were irrelevant. It's fairer just to say that I've been in favour of changes along the lines of rule 4's spirit from the very beginning.
And this is the problem right here. You and Senori have been on this little crusade of making it the "best place on the forums" without thinking of what actually needed to be fixed, it anything. You didn't solicit the public at large to get a general consensus of what they thought the shortcomings might be.
In fact, you've pretty much said (at least Senori has) - and I'm going to pretend that I believe what Senori says is accurate even though I do not - that you only took into account the "private opinions" of people who came to you guys in PMs. You didn't ask for our thoughts. Put simply, you already had your mind set. You didn't care about the community at-large, just the community you thought would back you up.
So I'm going to be honest: it didn't surprise me when your helpdesk exploded the way it did. It didn't help when you told us to get it off your helpdesk. It didn't help when a threadnaught was created.
It didn't help when you told us you guys didn't care, you were going to do whatever you want because you were the moderators and we could all go **** ourselves.
It didn't help, and still doesn't, when you selectively pick apart posts to answer the simple questions to thank someone who may have come to white knight for you. It doesn't help when you completely ignore the posts of specific users because of whatever reason (and I'm assuming you guys are using the "I have a history with him" defense still), said user calls you out on it, you apologize, and then go right back to ignoring him.
You have told us, in no uncertain terms, that you do not care about what we are saying, because we are a "vocal minority". You have told us we are wasting our breath talking to you, and that we should "take it up with the admins".
Fine. Stay out of this thread. You are no longer wanted. We want the admins (without Nai; no offense, Nai, but it really feels like you're only giving lip service at this point) to talk from this point on. You have had ample opportunity to cast yourselves in a positive light. I will say that instead of doing so, Frox and Nai have left you to take the heat, only chiming in when your foot is supremely inserted into your mouth that they are giving yo ua few precious minutes to extricate it.
You are so ingrained in this belief that your head is shoved so far up your butt that lump in your throat is your nose.
We have tried to be nice about all this. We have tried to keep ourselves civil at pretty much every time up until these past few days. We have made points, and you spout the same old rhetoric: It needed to be changed, for the (insert group here)! There is no evidence to show that it needed to happen.
Senori has spouted off this "less than 20%" lie. When pressed for more data, he says he doesn't have the time to do the work. But miraculously, the number that will most benefit your view is prepared, maybe even with a bow! The problem is, these are forums. Eventually, stupidity reigns, and the louder side generally wins. We're trying not to escalate it to that point, out of respect for the staff in general.
You don't seem to get it. Several of the moderators don't seem to get it. We aren't doing this for the sake of stirring the drama pot. For all it's shortcomings, we still genuinely care for these forums. Try to brand us as rabblerousers all you want, it's not going to change the fact that your decisions are based on your own personal feelings and not any substantive evidence, nor reasoning for needing them.
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"The above post is the opinion of the poster and is not indicative of any stance taken by the President of the United States, Congress, the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, the Department of the Navy, or the United States Marine Corps."
It's difficult to read your posts due to the radiant sun glinting off your tin-foil hat, but I'll try my best to respond.
What would the mods actually gain from lying about this? It's always better to leave rules as they are, for both the mods and the members. But the rules were changed because the mods were trying to solve a problem.
A problem only the mods see, and when pressed on it...they claim these PMs that they cannot release were the catalyst.
I'm sorry if you cannot see the suspicious nature of the sudden appearance of these PMs that they cannot release. The duplicity is obvious to pretty much everyone in this thread.
Senori and Teia wanted to change the WCT, a fine subforum when they took leadership, into some kind of feel good politically correct subforum complete with a thought police rule. There was a massive wave of backlash, their moderator help desks exploded, and then the CI forum exploded. Then, all of a sudden...Senori and Teia claim they had all these complaints they were told in private about WCT and that is why they made the changes.
These PMs were never mentioned until the users of WCT rose up against the mods. As far as I am concerned, the PMs DO NOT EXIST. They are a fabrication to give justification to the power grab Senori and Teia tried to pull on WCT. Of course, they could exist. And I have said I will acknowledge their existence if every single PM Senori and Teia got that was a complaint about the WCT is forwarded (not cut and pasted into one message, but every individual message is forwarded) to Meggido so he can confirm that they exist and give us a number of how many users complained.
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I was driven from this once-great site by abusive mods and admins, who create rules out of thin air to punish people for breaking them (meaning the rule does not exist under forum rules) and selectively enforce the rules that are written on the forum rules. I am currently lurking while deleting 6 years and 2 months of posting history. I will return when ExpiredRascals, Teia Rabishu and Blinking Spirit are no longer in power.
Considering the level of trust we have for Senori and Teia, I don't believe any redaction would be acceptable. At this point, I would not put it past them to just type up some false PMs that came from [REDACTED] as proof that the PMs exist. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I will, however, trust Meggido. I would accept Senori and Teia forwarding ALL the PMs to Meggido so he can verify their existence and that they are legit. And I know from personal experience that Senori has no issues forwarding a PM to admins.
I will trust Meggido's word in this, and Meggido only. He has not come to the defense of Senori and Teia, so I believe he is impartial in this (or as impartial as an admin can be when potential staff abuses of power are involved).
I believe that would be a fair compromise, as if the users who posted the pms were okay with sending to Senori et all, I would imagine they would be okay with an admin seeing them. I guess it would be up to Senori et all and the admin in question as to whether they would be willing to do this.
As someoe who has just recently taken in everything that has been posted I've formed somewhat of a small opinion.
To me it seems anything that stifles conversation on a forum is just heading down the wrong path. A moderators job is to moderate, that's what happens. If a topic gets out of hand then you step in, moderate it and then let the children go back to playing. Instead what we have here is an overreach of authority, almost panicked that work may have to be done so instead of settling into their positions they tried to lessen the workload. Well that doesn't seem to work as this board seems generally dead, why not just close it up if the conversation that apparently happened in here in such great amounts belonged in other forums? Is WCT really needed if you feel that the conversations going on here were cancerous to the climate you were trying to create? I don't see much sense being made by the moderators.
Someone earlier said it best, your jobs are that of a janitors, not a CEOs. You clean up the messes made here and leave the rules lawyering to the admins, if you feel things are getting out of hand, let them know and they can make a decision. As it stands now you're just killing a board because you didn't want to do work.
Teia, if you believed change was necessary all along, why did you never express your concerns to me when I was on staff?
I, too, would like to know the answer to this question. I have a very real and distinct feeling it's because you had power and she didn't, but I will wait.
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"The above post is the opinion of the poster and is not indicative of any stance taken by the President of the United States, Congress, the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, the Department of the Navy, or the United States Marine Corps."
As an added note to my above statement, I generally believe it is the users job to determine the required climate of their surroundings. Human's are not ignorant and stupid creatures, we can make decisions for ourselves about what we can and cannot tolerate and do not need to be coddled and handheld along the way. Thoughts of this just progresses the idea of a generation of children raised to be children.
When I left this thread last night, it was actually somewhat civil and things were starting to look like they were progressing. Now we seem to be back to the usual dogpiling and other attacks against the WCT staff.
I'm going to be frank: When people say that they will brook no compromise, that rules they dislike must be thrown out ASAP, when people seem to feel it their duty to try and get us removed, it's quite clear that certain elements of the userbase are much more interested in working against us rather than with us. That's a significant problem because nothing productive will ever come of it.
To those same users, I question your intentions here. For what purpose did you come into CI and start posting in this thread? Was it to improve the rules? Was it to work with us to make WCT better? Or was it, as I suspect, primarily to attack something you don't like? That latter mentality is actually very dangerous, as it makes secondary all elements of productive discussion in favour of championing attacking us. I assure you, we as WCT mods aren't here with the primary goal of engaging in debate or argument with the users. We're here with the primary goal of improving the rules. When users are here with the primary goal of attacking us and we're here with the primary goal of improving the rules, when each party's intentions are so radically different, the result is an extended, unproductive thread such as this one.
Highroller mentioned a lack of trust was his primary concern here. Unfortunately, it seems that no amount of assertion on our parts is going to garner that trust. His position is also one opposed to our very existence as moderators, which means that I honestly feel nothing is going to earn his trust. He doesn't seem to be open to giving it at any point. He seems to prefer we'd resign or be removed. His ship has sailed. Given that, I feel the best approach at this time to earn the users' trust is not to remain in this thread arguing, but to enforce the rules as best I can, and show my trustworthiness through my actions. My attempt yesterday to have productive discussion seems to have backfired, and given what I'm currently seeing, it doesn't even seem possible with the more vocal members of the userbase. So to users who hold these kinds of opinions, who make these kinds of arguments, I'll leave you with a few questions: What, specifically, are you hoping to accomplish here that's productive? What are your intentions in this thread? And if your intentions are as I've been talking about, ones of seeing us removed from our positions and/or our new rules being discarded out of hand, what do you expect either side to gain by continuing these attacks?
Finally, my answer to Brandon's question is that I felt any concerns would simply go unheeded.
Why did you feel that I would not listen to your concerns? What could I have done differently that would have encouraged you to share your concerns with me? More simply, how could I have been a better moderator?
I'm responding to this post alone just because I'm doing Greek right now and don't really have time to respond to everyone, but rest assured I read all of your posts.
"This is Water Cooler Talk, not Debate. Please try to keep this in mind, and try not to make posts that will degenerate into a formal Debate. If you find yourself wanting to name obscure fallacies with Latin names, it probably is best to go to Debate.
While some discussion and disagreement is welcome and wanted, there are some things that we cannot allow. For that reason, we will reserve the right to close threads at the point when they become unnecessarily confrontational. If a new thread is opened on the same subject within a week and it is clear that it's only purpose is to continue the same problematic argument, Infractions will be handed out for Trolling.
Obviously, Site-wide Trolling and Flaming rules are also in effect, and Infractions will be handed out for these two problems."
Note that users aren't going to be Infracted for confrontations.
I'd actually be 100% fine with this as a rule. I think it makes a lot of sense.
Quote from Harkius »
It's worth mentioning, though, that I think that trying to prevent problems is a losing battle. You already admitted that you can't control people's opinions, only their expressing them. You also can't stop people from saying things, you can only Infract them for it. These rules aren't going to magically make this the place that these mystery individuals are looking for...it's just going to make it more likely that people will be removed from WCT and/or Banned.
It may well be. I'd like to give it a try, though; worst comes worst I don't think we'll be any worse off.
Quote from Harkius »
I'd be happy with you or Nai representing your side. Megiddo, too. Belgareth or Azrael would be great for the other side.
+1
Quote from Harkius »
This is good, but it would arguably require too much bookkeeping, because they'd need to remember who'd been warned about what.
Yeah, that's my thinking too.
Quote from Harkius »
We're clearly the majority posting in threads about complaints. That's not necessarily the same thing. The fact that all traffic has precipitously dropped is a better metric.
Yeah, I don't want to diminish you guys. You're a huge part of WCT, and we want to make you happy.
Quote from Harkius »
Two things of note.
First, even if the PM's don't exist, that doesn't mean that users didn't express those concerns. They could have expressed them in person. (Personally, I think that this is likely to be the case with Sen's sources.) I'm not sure that they ever explicitly said that there were PM's.
Very few of them in PMs, yeah. Mostly in IM conversations + real life, which I obviously don't have logs for.
Quote from Harkius »
Second, pressing for these PM's is a nowhere issue. We're not going to get them and, frankly, we shouldn't be asking. I understand that you all want proof that people said this. On some level, though, we have to either trust that Sen and Teia are trying to make this place better (even if their better is not something we agree with) or trust that they are just making this up entirely. If the latter, there is no point in discussing it with them. At that point, they've burned too many bridges and could never be trustworthy on staff. As such, the issue needs to be taken up with Senior Staff, not with Sen and Teia. They're obviously not going to step down, and pressing it is making people dig in, rather than discuss.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Why did you feel that I would not listen to your concerns? What could I have done differently that would have encouraged you to share your concerns with me? More simply, how could I have been a better moderator?
For starters, you still let WCT get to the point where I saw a very real problem in the Debate-like nature of the subforum, to the point where that very problem was my "what would you change about this forum?" answer on my mod app. This isn't a problem that you alone perpetuated, but it's also one you didn't seem to address.
Nevertheless, are you willing to take part in the 1-on-1 discussion? There's every reason to hope that it will be more productive.
My answer remains, as ever, that I'm open to it as long as there some kind of guarantee that we won't just be right back where we started afterwards. Given that several users have expressed resistance to the idea you're proposing, it seems that the possibility of such is unfortunately remote.
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IMO, in light of the changes to the users frequenting the WCT subforum, mentoring users not to be bad or mentoring them to be good would have helped. Certainly, that's too time-consuming and infeasible, though. Yeah, me and my stock-standard "culture" kvetching post.
What is controversial to you is not to other people. The issue being is that you have tightened the screw down so far on "controverisal" that anyone that disagree's with someone else has the thread closed or it is moved to debate.
no one can discuss anything.
so while you are trying to make it welcoming it is having the adverse affect.
First of there are already rules against such things.
2ndly as pointed out 100 million times before. You guys assume the worst of a post. you automatically assume that the person is trolling even if they aren't.
Rule 4 doesn't allow for opposing opinions that someone might find arguementative or offending.
the execution of said rule is impossible. as anyone can find any post arguementative or offensive.
therefore it falls under rule 4.
the more concern parts is how teia has defined this rule so far. it pretty much shuts down any opinion unless it agrees with the mod staff and their views which is very disconserning and is running people off.
It is a bad rule because it allows for selective use and no one has any recourse.
So far all we get is either.
1. i disagree with you and you are wrong.
2. or we get ignored.
even though for now 24 in this one and over 40 in the last one we tried to explain the issue.
Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around.
Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
I don't have a problem with that and i am sure that others don't either. i agree i think those are the two people you do need to deal with.
both has shown a willingness to talk and discuss. not simply ignore what people say.
Thanks to Epic Graphics the best around.
Thanks to Nex3 for the avatar visit ye old sig and avatar forum
The problem with the current rule is that it resembles thought crime. Someone has a though they express this thought on the forums with no intention to offend and because someone could be offended the staff feel action is warranted. This makes sense the staff wants to prevent people from feeling offended by the fun part of the MTGS. Somethings need to be dealt with after the negative outcome happens. It is impossible for a person to be guilty of murder before the murder occurs. The something is true for offense. It is impossible to be guilt of offended another human before another human is offended.
The rule i would make.
WCT is a fun and engaging part of MTGS. Where you can talk about almost anything that is not magic related. Well known and extremely offensive topics are off limits like "the pros of racism" or "why women voting is ruining this country" or "the best way to dispose of a toddler's corpse."
For any other topics or posts that offend you please use the report button and give the reason why the post or topic was offensive. We reserve the right to use the reason you gave while hiding your username.
If your topic or post is reported you will be given the reason for the report and you will be given a chance to apologize for your offense. If you choose to not apologize for the offense you will be given a warning the first time and an infraction for every time after the first.
I would feel best with Meggido doing it. He hasn't come to the defense of the two offending mods in any form yet, so I believe he is most likely to be impartial in this. Nai has been defending Senori and Teia to some degree, so that makes me question his impartiality.
As I've said before, the issue is not the way the rule is worded. The problem is not the fact that the rule is flexible.
The issue is who is enforcing it.
All rules on this forum need to be flexible by the inherent nature of it. Take this rule in debate:
Now, if we had this rule in WCT, we'd all be in an uproar. But I have no problem with this in Debate. Why is that?
It's because I have no reason to distrust Blinking Spirit and red_0mega. The latter has given me no reason to believe he'll be anything other than a fine mod, and the former has a well-established track record of it. I have no problems giving them flexibility.
You guys have five threads of overwhelmingly negative criticism since bLatch's in August 27, not even a month, which brings us back to the key problem: The problem is not that the rule has flexible wording. The problem is that the rule must be worded flexibly, but we do not trust the enforcers of it with flexibly worded rules because it's been demonstrated that you don't handle them well.
The only reason we're quibbling over this rule is because we're doing everything we can to try to limit what you and Teia can do because you've done nothing to earn public trust. This is not fertile ground for anything productive, and the fact that you've managed to do all this in not even a month is astounding.
If you guys want what's best for the WCT, accept the fact that you are not the right people for the job. By all means, continue to feel free to be part of the staff. If you wish to still be mods, moderate other forums that you would actually be fit for, I can think of several, but this is just not one of them. You two just don't work in this setting. I'll say again, it's not your fault. I'm not even sure at this point if it's a fault of the hiring process, because there's only so much you can know before putting a person in the field. You two just aren't a match for this job. These things happen.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
He didn't say he didn't LIKE you. He said he didn't TRUST you.
Can't say that I do either, especially after you resorted to threats after being called on the carpet about these complaints only you and Teia know about and refuse to share.
Come to think of it, I've received a lot of complaints about you. But sorry, I can't share them or the names of the people complaining. You see, it was in PMs and I was told in confidence. So you'll just have to take me at my word that a lot of people are complaining about you.
Senori, this is an obvious strawman that does nothing to help you.
I'm not saying I don't like you. I'm saying you've done nothing to demonstrate yourself as trustworthy or qualified.
I'm sorry Danny, but imaginary PMs that only Senori and Teia know about are not justification for these changes.
Nothing was proven beyond claims that there are these legions of unhappy users that only talk to Senori and Teia. And they will not, or can not because they don't exist, prove it beyond claiming that we should take them at their word because they are mods.
I will be proven wrong as soon as Senori or Teia release the PMs. Until then, I am not proven wrong. And I doubt I will be proven wrong, because I am almost positive that the PMs do not exist. They are a fabrication to justify our dismissal as a "vocal minority" by Senori and Teia, because we are actually a clear majority of people actively posting and Senori and Teia so dearly want to marginalize us.
With my earlier post, it provides for moving threads, with a small rewording, it provides for locking threads. It *does not* provide for thought policing threads.
How much redaction(sp?) would you feel would be allowable so that Senori et all could post those pms while still making it impossible to track down who sent the pms so as to keep their privacy intact?
And @Senori et all, would you be willing to post actual specific pms so long as you could redact(sp?) enough of the pms so as to make it impossible to track who it was to protect their privacy as requested while still providing some additional proof to quell some of this disbelief that these exist?
Considering the level of trust we have for Senori and Teia, I don't believe any redaction would be acceptable. At this point, I would not put it past them to just type up some false PMs that came from [REDACTED] as proof that the PMs exist. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I will, however, trust Meggido. I would accept Senori and Teia forwarding ALL the PMs to Meggido so he can verify their existence and that they are legit. And I know from personal experience that Senori has no issues forwarding a PM to admins.
I will trust Meggido's word in this, and Meggido only. He has not come to the defense of Senori and Teia, so I believe he is impartial in this (or as impartial as an admin can be when potential staff abuses of power are involved).
And this is the problem right here. You and Senori have been on this little crusade of making it the "best place on the forums" without thinking of what actually needed to be fixed, it anything. You didn't solicit the public at large to get a general consensus of what they thought the shortcomings might be.
In fact, you've pretty much said (at least Senori has) - and I'm going to pretend that I believe what Senori says is accurate even though I do not - that you only took into account the "private opinions" of people who came to you guys in PMs. You didn't ask for our thoughts. Put simply, you already had your mind set. You didn't care about the community at-large, just the community you thought would back you up.
So I'm going to be honest: it didn't surprise me when your helpdesk exploded the way it did. It didn't help when you told us to get it off your helpdesk. It didn't help when a threadnaught was created.
It didn't help when you told us you guys didn't care, you were going to do whatever you want because you were the moderators and we could all go **** ourselves.
It didn't help, and still doesn't, when you selectively pick apart posts to answer the simple questions to thank someone who may have come to white knight for you. It doesn't help when you completely ignore the posts of specific users because of whatever reason (and I'm assuming you guys are using the "I have a history with him" defense still), said user calls you out on it, you apologize, and then go right back to ignoring him.
You have told us, in no uncertain terms, that you do not care about what we are saying, because we are a "vocal minority". You have told us we are wasting our breath talking to you, and that we should "take it up with the admins".
Fine. Stay out of this thread. You are no longer wanted. We want the admins (without Nai; no offense, Nai, but it really feels like you're only giving lip service at this point) to talk from this point on. You have had ample opportunity to cast yourselves in a positive light. I will say that instead of doing so, Frox and Nai have left you to take the heat, only chiming in when your foot is supremely inserted into your mouth that they are giving yo ua few precious minutes to extricate it.
You are so ingrained in this belief that your head is shoved so far up your butt that lump in your throat is your nose.
We have tried to be nice about all this. We have tried to keep ourselves civil at pretty much every time up until these past few days. We have made points, and you spout the same old rhetoric: It needed to be changed, for the (insert group here)! There is no evidence to show that it needed to happen.
Senori has spouted off this "less than 20%" lie. When pressed for more data, he says he doesn't have the time to do the work. But miraculously, the number that will most benefit your view is prepared, maybe even with a bow! The problem is, these are forums. Eventually, stupidity reigns, and the louder side generally wins. We're trying not to escalate it to that point, out of respect for the staff in general.
You don't seem to get it. Several of the moderators don't seem to get it. We aren't doing this for the sake of stirring the drama pot. For all it's shortcomings, we still genuinely care for these forums. Try to brand us as rabblerousers all you want, it's not going to change the fact that your decisions are based on your own personal feelings and not any substantive evidence, nor reasoning for needing them.
Captain, United States Marines
"Peace through superior firepower."
A problem only the mods see, and when pressed on it...they claim these PMs that they cannot release were the catalyst.
I'm sorry if you cannot see the suspicious nature of the sudden appearance of these PMs that they cannot release. The duplicity is obvious to pretty much everyone in this thread.
Senori and Teia wanted to change the WCT, a fine subforum when they took leadership, into some kind of feel good politically correct subforum complete with a thought police rule. There was a massive wave of backlash, their moderator help desks exploded, and then the CI forum exploded. Then, all of a sudden...Senori and Teia claim they had all these complaints they were told in private about WCT and that is why they made the changes.
These PMs were never mentioned until the users of WCT rose up against the mods. As far as I am concerned, the PMs DO NOT EXIST. They are a fabrication to give justification to the power grab Senori and Teia tried to pull on WCT. Of course, they could exist. And I have said I will acknowledge their existence if every single PM Senori and Teia got that was a complaint about the WCT is forwarded (not cut and pasted into one message, but every individual message is forwarded) to Meggido so he can confirm that they exist and give us a number of how many users complained.
I believe that would be a fair compromise, as if the users who posted the pms were okay with sending to Senori et all, I would imagine they would be okay with an admin seeing them. I guess it would be up to Senori et all and the admin in question as to whether they would be willing to do this.
To me it seems anything that stifles conversation on a forum is just heading down the wrong path. A moderators job is to moderate, that's what happens. If a topic gets out of hand then you step in, moderate it and then let the children go back to playing. Instead what we have here is an overreach of authority, almost panicked that work may have to be done so instead of settling into their positions they tried to lessen the workload. Well that doesn't seem to work as this board seems generally dead, why not just close it up if the conversation that apparently happened in here in such great amounts belonged in other forums? Is WCT really needed if you feel that the conversations going on here were cancerous to the climate you were trying to create? I don't see much sense being made by the moderators.
Someone earlier said it best, your jobs are that of a janitors, not a CEOs. You clean up the messes made here and leave the rules lawyering to the admins, if you feel things are getting out of hand, let them know and they can make a decision. As it stands now you're just killing a board because you didn't want to do work.
I, too, would like to know the answer to this question. I have a very real and distinct feeling it's because you had power and she didn't, but I will wait.
Captain, United States Marines
"Peace through superior firepower."
I'm going to be frank: When people say that they will brook no compromise, that rules they dislike must be thrown out ASAP, when people seem to feel it their duty to try and get us removed, it's quite clear that certain elements of the userbase are much more interested in working against us rather than with us. That's a significant problem because nothing productive will ever come of it.
To those same users, I question your intentions here. For what purpose did you come into CI and start posting in this thread? Was it to improve the rules? Was it to work with us to make WCT better? Or was it, as I suspect, primarily to attack something you don't like? That latter mentality is actually very dangerous, as it makes secondary all elements of productive discussion in favour of championing attacking us. I assure you, we as WCT mods aren't here with the primary goal of engaging in debate or argument with the users. We're here with the primary goal of improving the rules. When users are here with the primary goal of attacking us and we're here with the primary goal of improving the rules, when each party's intentions are so radically different, the result is an extended, unproductive thread such as this one.
Highroller mentioned a lack of trust was his primary concern here. Unfortunately, it seems that no amount of assertion on our parts is going to garner that trust. His position is also one opposed to our very existence as moderators, which means that I honestly feel nothing is going to earn his trust. He doesn't seem to be open to giving it at any point. He seems to prefer we'd resign or be removed. His ship has sailed. Given that, I feel the best approach at this time to earn the users' trust is not to remain in this thread arguing, but to enforce the rules as best I can, and show my trustworthiness through my actions. My attempt yesterday to have productive discussion seems to have backfired, and given what I'm currently seeing, it doesn't even seem possible with the more vocal members of the userbase. So to users who hold these kinds of opinions, who make these kinds of arguments, I'll leave you with a few questions: What, specifically, are you hoping to accomplish here that's productive? What are your intentions in this thread? And if your intentions are as I've been talking about, ones of seeing us removed from our positions and/or our new rules being discarded out of hand, what do you expect either side to gain by continuing these attacks?
Finally, my answer to Brandon's question is that I felt any concerns would simply go unheeded.
I'd actually be 100% fine with this as a rule. I think it makes a lot of sense.
It may well be. I'd like to give it a try, though; worst comes worst I don't think we'll be any worse off.
+1
Yeah, that's my thinking too.
Yeah, I don't want to diminish you guys. You're a huge part of WCT, and we want to make you happy.
Very few of them in PMs, yeah. Mostly in IM conversations + real life, which I obviously don't have logs for.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
For starters, you still let WCT get to the point where I saw a very real problem in the Debate-like nature of the subforum, to the point where that very problem was my "what would you change about this forum?" answer on my mod app. This isn't a problem that you alone perpetuated, but it's also one you didn't seem to address.
My answer remains, as ever, that I'm open to it as long as there some kind of guarantee that we won't just be right back where we started afterwards. Given that several users have expressed resistance to the idea you're proposing, it seems that the possibility of such is unfortunately remote.