[Fury]

Administration
Admins are not infallible either and they make wrong decisions from time to time. In HLP's case though, that decision making is slower than snails and wrong decisions happens far too often. Not only that, but there's no transparency to actions of admins. Admins have kept their total authoritative ruling system where they are far and beyond common folk of this community, a stance that does not serve well being of the community in the least. Of course, admins should have the last word on matters when the situation calls it. But how often has a situation really called for it? There's no transparency to actions of admins, no accountability for being inefficient, in the wrong, a dick, or just plain unfit for the job.

How do we ensure that any single admin of HLP is actually fit for the job they signed up? It should be remembered that each admin was chosen for their unique skill set and specific job in mind. But never were they selected for betterment of the community. Admins were and probably still are terrible at managing such situations. Probably fearing that soon they might find themselves at the receiving end of such scrutiny. Right this second I could name two admins who should be outed for their lackluster performance. But it will never happen seeing as there's no accountability even within administration itself.

The community could see this if administration was transparent. But as it stands, the community at large is mostly clueless about internal workings (or lack thereof) of the HLP adminship.

As has been previously pointed out, it is the administration's responsibility to develop and make HLP a better place. Instead, they have instead opted for status quo year after year. We really haven't seen any real changes around here aside of occasional re-organization of the forum layout. The few admins that are actually active members of the community, have their eyes only towards their own projects. Not the community at large.

All issues pointed out in this topic are extremely valid. But at end of the day, let's ask ourselves the big question. Did we really had to have all these issues in the first place? All through these years, HLP administration have dealt with issues long after they appeared. It seems that not even once they have made any real strides towards eliminating the very source of the problem, inefficient administration, one that is not accountable to the very community they are supposed to serve. The word here being serve, not rule. This also seems to be a point of confusion among some of the admins.

When can we expect admins to deal with these issues? Inside source reports that this has not even been discussed internally. When are admins going to stop treating HLP as if it was Blackwater Operations and instead treat it as if it was Diaspora?

HLP deserves better.

[Zacam]

Yes it does. Whether or not it will ever get it... we'll see.

Trying to be a force for the community isn't easy though. Everybody has their own ideas as to what that should mean, and that invariably leads to many arguments.

I know I've owed it to my self and the rest to "live up" to being an Administrator. Why I was picked is beyond me, but I did accept it and I'm not regretting that in the slightest.

I think it's a shame that this conversation died down and (while vocal) had but a few general participants on it. Because still nothing is generally resolved.

I'm personally more in favor of a more permissive short rule set that basically outlines following Wheatons Law, points out the -isms and warez/piracy as "don't even think about it" and focusing more on getting people on board with the idea that the very first disciplinary action should always be "communicate". And not just in some confab amongst ourselves, but with the people reporting the posts or issues and the people being reported.

If the issue is serious enough to really warrant more immediate action, well, there are lesser stages that can be taken rather than the drastic ones first.

Fury has added some salient points to this conversation, as have MP-Ryan, Battuta and The E (if I've missed anybody, my apologies).

[Fury]

Why I was picked is beyond me, but I did accept it and I'm not regretting that in the slightest.

I campaigned for your selection as an admin because I knew from personal experience you had certain qualities other admins lacked. That you came with technical expertise required to maintain HLP was extremely lucky and even more luckier is that you essentially brought rev_posix with you. Made your selection as an admin a no-brainer. If anything, I am saddened that the administration seems to be exactly the way it was when I left it. Nothing has changed. Now I've watched from the sidelines for years and the emotion I can mostly associate with is shame.

Shame because I couldn't make a difference and correct the situation I described in my earlier post regarding administration. Shame because I gave up and left. Shame because I gave the ball to someone else who I knew would feel the same way I do without me having to nudge the person towards that end. But most of all, I resent the administration not realizing their own shortcomings at all and dealing with them properly. They've had years upon years to do some self-reflecting and failed to do anything about it. If I didn't know better, it almost seems as if they are more concerned about staying in power than actually acting in the best interests of the community.

Trying to be a force for the community isn't easy though. Everybody has their own ideas as to what that should mean, and that invariably leads to many arguments.

Very true. This is why I advocate transparency and accountability from administration and for their actions. They are not supposed to rule the community but serve the community. If we were drawing analogies here and assume that HLP was a modding project, they should treat members of the community as members of the project and not as people who play the finished product. Those would be the people who visit the community but are not exactly participating in it.

I think it's a shame that this conversation died down and (while vocal) had but a few general participants on it. Because still nothing is generally resolved.

Yes it is. While admins have done everything they do with best intentions in mind, far too often it has backfired on them. Perhaps they have begun to realize the error of their ways, as wishful thinking as it is. Unfortunately I haven't seen any indication that any other admin besides Zacam and karajorma are even following this topic.

[karajorma]

I think it mainly died down cause no one had objections to MP-Ryan's edit of my guidelines. If there continue to be no objections, I'll post them as the new guidelines in a few days.

[Luis Dias]

I've been lurking this thread, but I just wanted to jump ahead and agree with MP-Ryan's take on the matter. Fingers crossed that it may run a-ok!

Oh and thanks everyone for running and moderating this forum!

[Beskargam]

Question. Will use of the Hammer account continue?

[MP-Ryan]

Question. Will use of the Hammer account continue?

I would hope not, generally.  The "intervene early" paradigm means a face is associated with a response, not a blanket account.

That said, I think the Hammer does have a place - where all options such as early intervention, warnings, and temp bans have failed over a period of time and the last resort of a permaban has to be enacted, using the Hammer makes sense - a single admin's name should not be tied to an action that is essentially a collectively-sought act by the community at large.

[redsniper]

The Hammer also has historical value! :V

But seriously now, I've read through this whole ****-fit and I think I like the direction it's going now. Catching problems early would be way better than the usual "wait for ****storm and then lock/ban" approach. I'm going to second Battuta's suggestion that the Something Awful forums are a good model for effective moderation. That is, idiocy and asshattery isn't tolerated, the mods have leeway to punish people who aren't technically breaking any rules, punishments and the reasons for them are publicly displayed. I don't think we can afford to be quite as draconian as they are given the size of HLP and that we don't want to drive away potential talent. That said, there's still no reason we have to suffer the assholes and morons of the world.

I'll be interested to see how this plays out.

[Goober5000]

I finally caught up with this thread.  I was away last weekend, which happened to be rather bad timing in regards to my ability to follow the developing controversy, but on the other hand, there is a certain advantage to being able to read the discussion without participating in it.

I want to first mention (at the risk of reopening a wound) the whole deal with Wings of Dawn.  I'll naturally start off by being defensive: I, personally, was intrigued when Wings of Dawn came out, and although I didn't have much interest in playing it, I appreciated the effort put into it and the fact that it was a giant TC made basically single-handedly.  So I took the lead on approving the Wings of Dawn forum and unleashing Spoon on his own board with moderator privileges and my compliments (and an internal board cheekily called Wings of Derp).  And now for the concession: Apparently, Spoon had his hands full moderating Wings of Dawn for quite some time and without staff support, but I was completely unaware of this until the controversy with Black Wolf.  Since there had never been an instance of another hosted project having serious moderation difficulties, it didn't occur to me to specifically check on Wings of Dawn.  It was a black swan event.  I'm not sure why Wings of Dawn is unique in this respect; maybe it has something to do with anime, I dunno.  But the point is that if Spoon reported any posts or posted any support threads during this time period, I would have probably ignored them since I wasn't personally interested in the project.  (And I think it's reasonable to keep up with certain projects more than others; I doubt any one person has played all, or even almost all, of the campaigns or hosted projects published by HLP.)  So to the extent that Spoon requested help and I didn't provide the admin backup that he, as a hosted project moderator, is entitled to, I apologize.

Anyway, Karajorma and Zacam aren't the only ones to be paying attention to the thread; I too am very interested in this discussion.  I do have some ideas on what we can do next; I was mulling over whether it would be a good idea to start a couple of new threads here, each devoted to discussing a particular prospective issue.  (For example, one thread on how to use the Hammer and whether the admins should moderate in person and the ramifications; one thread on how precisely to elucidate Wheaton's Law; one thread on the appropriate use of moderator power, etc.)

One thing that people have been complaining about is that the new rules were drafted without any community input.  That's not really true, at least from our perspective.  We had a fairly lengthy discussion in the Global Moderator forum about the need for new rules and how to go about drafting them.  Now some may cite this as an example of the HLP staff being insular, but really, the admins viewed it as opening up the rules process to community input, because previous rules had been drafted solely in the Administrator forum.  Now obviously there are other perspectives in play, but the plus side to this thread is that we're able to hash those things out.

And I was as surprised as mjn.mixael to see Zacam make a very reasonable, thoughtful, and rational post that went almost completely ignored.  If you read through that page of the thread, there's heated discussion, Zacam's post, and then heated discussion resumes as if his post wasn't even there.

I'd like to propose that Zacam take the lead on drafting a new set of rules, whether that takes the form of a few simple bullet points or a more elaborate prescription.  It may be based on consensus or community-submitted suggestions, but Zacam should be the one actually writing it.

Oh, and one final thing for now.  In the Global Moderator discussion, we focused on the mechanics of the policy, the nuts and bolts of what and how.  It occurred to me during that discussion that a rather large gap in our understanding of the situation is why.  Many admins and global mods don't want to moderate Gen Disc because their decisions and actions have been fiercely challenged.  Two global moderators felt burnt out and wanted to resign.  On the other hand, many forum members see the HLP staff as aloof, uncaring, or arbitrary.  Both sides get exasperated when talking with the other.  There's a significant human factors part of the equation that's not being addressed very well.

[Lorric]

Anyway, Karajorma and Zacam aren't the only ones to be paying attention to the thread; I too am very interested in this discussion.  I do have some ideas on what we can do next; I was mulling over whether it would be a good idea to start a couple of new threads here, each devoted to discussing a particular prospective issue.  (For example, one thread on how to use the Hammer and whether the admins should moderate in person and the ramifications; one thread on how precisely to elucidate Wheaton's Law; one thread on the appropriate use of moderator power, etc.)

Sounds good to me. There seemed to be problems with information and points getting across with all of this in a big lump. Things were getting lost in the shuffle. But since some seperate topics have clearly emerged, opening up some new threads would probably be a good idea at this point and allow more focused, easier to access debate on each point.

An OP which states where the mods and admins currently stand on each subject would be a good way to start I think, so everyone is clear and there's no confusion on what points are being debated, and then the debates can proceed from there.

[Zacam]

There are a few people that have made very well thought out posts. Fury, Beskargam & MP-Ryan have quite decently made compelling singular posts in my opinion.

I'm not really sure that an assignment of any one individual for this process is strictly necessary, but I'll be more than happy to do my part. I got stalled out the last time, because rather like we've experienced, there is an issue where one can get focused more on the nuts and bolts of mechanics rather than a broader scope canvas.

Given that we've gotten some rather consecutive concerns aired and expectations and perceptions from members (regardless of "representative percentage") this should make the next stages of discussion a lot easier to work with.

I'll post what I come up with as a general topic in this board for us to start either additional discussion on, or collective acknowledgement that it's good to adopt.

[jr2]

Just finished reading the entire thread.  Interesting read.  Anyways, just wanted to post (I hesitate to as it's really trivial): if you need niceness defined succinctly: Treat others the way you want to be treated.   That belongs about 3 pages back, I know.

[karajorma]

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

I tend to find that definition tends to lead to lots of "Well I'd have been okay with that joke, he's just an uptight arsehole" from people with no empathy.

[jr2]

Hmph, true, that. 

[MP-Ryan]

Recent events have me wondering how your proposals are coming, Zacam.  Anything new?

[Scotty]

Perhaps it's merely my recent inclusion into the ranks of Global Mod, but I've seen a whooole lot more moderation occurring lately than I ever saw before.

Granted, I wasn't exactly an interested party before, but it sure seems like it.

[Beskargam]

I concur. And its doing a good thing.

Mods/admins, thank you.

[Goober5000]

Indeed.  This doesn't seem to have been primarily one person, but rather a collective response to the threads in Site Support and Site Feedback.  And there have been more Global Moderators doing stuff, both in commenting on the Reported Posts reports and in performing moderation actions, than admins.  So I want to extend a particular thanks to our Global Moderator staff.

[Zacam]

Recent events have me wondering how your proposals are coming, Zacam.  Anything new?

Nothing new at the moment in terms of publishable. But there will be a new topic to start it off, rather than to continue hashing this one out.

It'll start with a question, and my take on an answer to it. And we'll go from there. Sorry I haven't had as much time as I would like to adequately address this as directly as it deserves, but it is my #1 priority immediately following Life Events.