[General Battuta]

We have another High Max, but you do give me some confidence that the gears are at least in motion.

[Mongoose]

There are some good concerns being raised here, and I'd like to take a stab at addressing a few of them, as my take on what we're trying to do here.  Just in general, if it turns out that some of the specific points of this new initiative wind up causing issues themselves, I think we should be able to look at them as open to revision as necessary.

However, here's what does affect me and most of the boards on HLP. You said hosted projects can no longer moderate how they want and that they must adhere to the global rules. You gave a few passing examples, but I have no ideas what you expect of me on my boards... Especially since you guys came up with or are coming up with all those rules behind closed doors. The root problem from the last outburst that I recall still exists. There is a distinct lack of 'same pageness' with individual board moderators... Except now any higher up moderator can come in and do whatever under the guise of 'we talked about it'. I suppose it's a good thing I trust 1 or 2 of the ad mins :-) .

It's my understanding that we're going to be removing most of the ordinary folder mod positions, since they don't have access to the moderation back-end, and they're largely redundant anyway: most of the global mods/admins are reading most of those folders on a daily basis.  In turn, I think we'll be adding a few additional global mods, which should more than make up for things.  Of course project leaders will still exist, but with the understanding that they're subject to the same overall moderation guidelines as the rest of the forums are.  We're in the process of cooking up something more formal regarding what those guidelines are, so hopefully that will help clear up any additional uncertainty.

As far as project leaders in general go, this is just my personal take on things, but I see them as ideally serving the same role that I have on another forum where I'm active.  The position there is tied to individual folders, and those who hold it basically act as caretakers or promoters of those folders: we can change the announcements section, add folder-wide polls, sticky threads, and move/lock threads under limited circumstances.  When it comes to actual moderation, though, we can't take any action on our own, but just report the post to the forum mods like everyone else.  I think a similar policy would work well on HLP, in that project leaders shouldn't really be dealing with the whole issue of disciplining trouble users: just use the report feature, and let the mods/admins clean things up.  I won't deny that there have been issues with this in the past, but I think this new system should alleviate those.

Are forum moderators included in this 'peer category'? Cause I happen to remember a certain semi recent incident with a global mod just going "whatever, I do what I want because I feel like I'm more important that you are" and completely bypassing this whole consulting and PMing part. Are these changes made to prevent that from happening again?
Is this system in place to provide more consistency between admins and global moderators?

One of the main purposes of all of this is to make sure that admins and global moderators are on the same page when there's action that needs to be taken against a particular user.  We're making a conscious effort to keep track of what actions are taken against users, and to have more than one voice chime in when action such as warning/monkeying is a possibility.  If there's any reason why we feel like we can't make a good call on a certain case, whether because we're part of the thread ourselves or else have some history with the poster, we won't be making the call on it (honestly that's something that most of us have been wary of doing well before now).  And we'll make sure to have multiple voices chime in before we handle any situations that aren't so clear-cut.  This ties in with the use of the Hammer of Justice account for mod actions: it emphasizes that these aren't individual decisions.

An official policy that there will be no consistency between punishments will provide grounds for real frustration. I already feel like I'm at risk of a ban for posting in good faith on several topics I'm interested in. The new rules mean that I need to make sure all edge cases are reported so I can understand when action is going to be taken and when it isn't. Is that the intent here? It does at least seem to jive with the request for more reports. Are posts by moderators safe to emulate? Can I insult someone as long as a moderator's used the same wording?

I don't think the idea here is that there won't be consistency between punishments; if you got that impression from the guidelines, maybe that section could use a rewrite.  If you have two users with similar history and breaking similar rules, they should be receiving pretty much the same consequences.  What we're trying to avoid are those cases where someone receives a certain punishment and then complains, "But User X did the same thing, and they weren't warned for it!"  There should always be consideration for a user's individual posting history, and just because there's no visible action taken against someone, that doesn't mean they haven't received a PM from the mods warning then about the action...in other words, individual circumstances will always apply.  As for the rest of this, I don't think most of the good-faith posts I've seen you make are a real problem, though I think that reporting is always the best option, and that going forward some of the more general comments you've felt the need to make won't be necessary.  And in an ideal world, no one should be insulting anyone else, regardless of position (though I can't say I've been innocent of it myself  ); I think we'll all be making a point to watch what we say in the future.

Why is there no formal rule about moderating discussions you're participating in? What kind of recourse do we have when a thread ends up locked while a couple moderators complain about how dreadful everything is?

We do have a stipulation now that we won't be involved in the decision process for threads that we're actively engaged in (unless it's extremely blatant stuff like splitting out a derail), and it's my understanding at least that we're going to strongly avoid trying to get the last word in.  I know that I personally don't like to see promising threads wind up being locked because of the negative actions of a few posters.

Unfortunately I think these rules are going to push forum discussion farther along in a direction it's previously tended to go: threads dominated by stubborn, underinformed people who can repeat the same points over and over again no matter what they're told, leading to frustration, irritation, page after page of posts trying to cover the same ground, and (under these new rules) a lot of recrimination for the people most likely to bring substance to a thread. A set of forum rules that sees MP-Ryan banned and Liberator left posting is not a set of forum rules that will provide an interesting culture.

If certain users exhibit a pattern of behavior destructive to good discussions, regardless of whether or not an individual post of theirs breaks a certain rule, we're certainly going to take a serious look at them.  As kara pointed out, these guidelines don't necessarily enumerate every single pattern of action that can land a person in trouble.  I'd like to think that, collectively, we'll be able to step in when necessary and try to create an environment that fosters good discussion.

There's also one huge, inherent flaw with the moderation system as it is right now: it rewards sniping. Let's say the issue in question is India vs. Pakistan and it's something a ton of forum members care about. It's easy to slip in a line or two aside about this issue in a place where it doesn't necessarily belong. It's difficult to reply to this point without creating a derail or being accused of soapboxing. This creates incentives for political and personal statements to be made obliquely where they can't be safely or productively engaged.

If you see that happening, by all means report it.  Off-topic posting is discouraged in general, but when it's done with the malicious intent of dragging another argument where it doesn't belong, that's a pretty clear-cut misstep.

(gonna split this here, because it's already getting crazy long)

[Mongoose]

It's because a few members think of HLP as a military hierarchy in which they can dickwave their e-power around instead of seeing what things really are. A community forum about a 10+ old spaceship game...Because a community is not about Rank and Seniority. That's Military. Community is about collaboration and commonality. And discussion regarding that can often be flavorful and colorful and not without its issue, sure. But that is to be expected.

The thing is, pretty much every decently-sized forum out there has some level of hierarchy involved in running it, whether it's as formalized as it is here or not.  You're always going to have moderators responsible for keeping the peace and such, and some sort of admin/owner above them setting the general policies and keeping things running; many forums also have some sort of position below mods with more limited responsibilities.  Regardless of your personal feelings, under the old system, admins were above global mods, who were above folder mods, who were above ordinary users; that was literally the definition of their roles.  We're simplifying things now by essentially eliminating normal folder mods, and making it clear that project leads need to follow the overall forum guidelines, and utilize the report feature appropriately.  Being an admin or a global mod doesn't imply that we're "better" than some other poster, just that we have certain responsibilities that we uphold here.

I for one don't trust most of the existing moderators and admins to perform these tasks appropriately. The years spend here have sort of bruised my confidence.

I'm sorry you feel this way, but I hope you would at least give these new guidelines the benefit of the doubt, and see how things go moving forward.

There is also the problem that when there are certain members that are just being a constant source of negativity there is nothing that is being done or under these rules can be done. Since you 'can't take matters into your own hand'. It's okay for certain people to continue being venomous but since there isn't any clear cut rule being violate there is nothing to really use the report button for. If you call them out on such behavior you are actually in violation of the 'no backseat moderating' rule and get punished instead.

I'm kind of repeating myself and kara with this, but someone constantly acting in a negative fashion without justification would certainly be grounds for possible action taken against them.  When in doubt, just hit Report, and we'll take a look at what's going on, and consider the poster's history.  I think I can speak for everyone in saying that we're not blind to someone being a pain in the ass for no reason.

'Running' the place but barely involved with what is going on with the modding scene. At least Fury had the sense to 'step down' when he realized he just didn't had the same level of involvement as he did before.

See I strongly disagree with this sentiment, because it implies that those of us who aren't modders don't have anything to contribute here.  I often get the impression that a lot of creative types can't appreciate this, but not everyone is capable of generating new content out of nothing; it's not a question of lacking certain technical skills, but of simply not being particularly creative in the first place.  I don't have any spaceship designs in my head that I want to realize, or any stories that I want to tell via FRED.  That's just not me.  However, I greatly enjoying experiencing the creative efforts of other people and responding to them about what they make.  Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them.  After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular.  I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.

[General Battuta]

The problem is that moderation by the top-tier admins/moderators is handled differently within different projects. Someone being a dick on Wings of Dawn isn't going to get any real attention (or, at least, they haven't in the past) because none of the moderators or admins play or give a **** about Wings of Dawn.

The task of trying to get the community involved in each others' work in a real collaborative sense - advertising for other peoples' projects, drawing attention to things beyond 'I will use this in my mod, Gigacock of Shiva' - has basically fallen to Axem and, on occasion, myself. The admins and global moderators of this board are for a large part either not involved in FreeSpace or not involved in the current community beyond their own projects; I think BW and The_E are the sole exceptions, though I might be missing someone.

[NGTM-1R]

Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them.  After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular.  I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.

I think even by the lesser standards of "engaged with the community as a whole" most of the existing structure would fail. There's little visible indication outside of Axem, BW, and The_E (and sometimes Goober, I'll give him that much) that most moderators/admins actually consume content that's coming out.

We used to joke about how Karaj was a respected authority on the workings of FRED, but had not released any missions since the VBB era. If you were to make that joke about some of the people who run the forum and replace "released missions" with "played missions and commented on them since the last Ransom release"...well, you begin to see why we might worry.

[Black Wolf]

Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them.  After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular.  I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.

I think even by the lesser standards of "engaged with the community as a whole" most of the existing structure would fail. There's little visible indication outside of Axem and The_E (and sometimes Goober, I'll give him that much) that most moderators/admins actually consume content that's coming out.

We used to joke about how Karaj was a respected authority on the workings of FRED, but had not released any missions since the VBB era. If you were to make that joke about some of the people who run the forum and replace "released missions" with "played missions and commented on them since the last Ransom release"...well, you begin to see why we might worry.

Um... hello? In the last little while (don't know the exact span of time) I've played (to one extent or another) Luyten Civil War, Shadow Genesis, Dimensional Eclipse, WiH Act 3, Mephistophele and Diaspora. Plus probably others I can't think of right now.

[NGTM-1R]

Um... hello? In the last little while (don't know the exact span of time) I've played (to one extent or another) Luyten Civil War, Shadow Genesis, Dimensional Eclipse, WiH Act 3, Mephistophele and Diaspora. Plus probably others I can't think of right now.

My sincerest apologies, sir, I do recall your postings on at least three of those. I have no excuse and shall rectify the list.

EDIT: For the record I don't consider myself terribly good about this anymore either; there was a time when I was, but I haven't played Mephistophele or Luyten Civil War myself.

[karajorma]

The problem is that moderation by the top-tier admins/moderators is handled differently within different projects. Someone being a dick on Wings of Dawn isn't going to get any real attention (or, at least, they haven't in the past) because none of the moderators or admins play or give a **** about Wings of Dawn.

The changes mean that now it's more likely that people will say "I've not been following the thread, but X has been a dick in the same way in the past and it looks like he's being one here too"

Previously it was much too easy to simply pass the buck to someone else who did care about Wings of Dawn. Yes, that's partly due to the moderators not playing Wings of Dawn but I'd say it has more to do with Spoon's hostile reaction to anyone moderating him or his forum.

Which brings me to my next point actually.

I think part of the reason for the lower interaction with the forum is cause of all the forum drama. I can think of several moderators who don't interact with the community much any more because every time they do they become a target. You may have noticed that virtually all of the admins avoid Gen Dis. I'm probably the only one who posts there every day.

The tone of the community on this thread towards the moderation staff has been pretty hostile. It's hardly surprising that only a couple of moderators have bothered to comment on this thread so far. And it's hardly surprising that the moderators prefer to do their own thing rather than interact with the community.

That's one of the reasons behind going over to using The Hammer. Even if we tell people that it's not Goober who banned you, but the decision of several moderators, there are still people who will blame Goober. Hopefully removing that animosity will result in the moderators being more willing to interact with the community. But even if it results in them just blaming "The Man" for punishing them rather than holding a personal grudge against people who were just doing their job, it's progress.

[General Battuta]

I suspect most people will just assume that Goober banned them (using the Hammer). Nobody thinks it's a real separate person.

I also wish you'd be kinder to Spoon. He put up with one of the most exasperating, hostile subforums entirely on his own with no support or even acknowledgment from HLP mods and admins for...months? More than a year? Years? And when global mods/admins did finally get involved in his forum, it was uniformly a really negative experience for him. Can you blame him for feeling some resentment there?

If the kind of posts Spoon had to deal with had been transplanted to ST:R or Diaspora they would've been cause for action. All Spoon could do was lock threads and attempt escalations that were ignored.

On the topic of general hostility towards mods: I think this is because moderation on HLP is not very effective. I know this is a harsh verdict, but again, I'm active in a couple really big communities where the mods and admins take much more active, much harsher roles - a week off for a 'tl;dr' is standard, a ban for a racist slur without any warnings pretty common - but although the community is far larger and more diverse, the mods and admins are more trusted and respected, discussions are of an enormously higher quality, aimless flamewars and stupid circlejerks unheard of, and everybody* just gets along admirably.

Some of this may be that the mods and admins do not generally get involved in discussions they're going to moderate, and don't moderate discussions they're involved in. Some of it may be that they're generally funny, good-natured, and confident - they take pains to keep their personal lives separate and private so we can, well, take them more or less seriously. (The exceptions have by now been mocked out of the house.) Mostly I think it's the fact that there's a clear, top-down focus not on rules enforcement but on cultivating content-rich, funny, easygoing discussions on interesting topics. That kind of proactive policy might work here.

[Mongoose]

The problem is that moderation by the top-tier admins/moderators is handled differently within different projects. Someone being a dick on Wings of Dawn isn't going to get any real attention (or, at least, they haven't in the past) because none of the moderators or admins play or give a **** about Wings of Dawn.

I'll freely admit that WoD turned into a bad situation, and that it was a folder I've generally avoided since I haven't played it yet.  (I have a pretty huge FS backlog, which I have trouble getting to because of the pretty huge Steam backlog...you get the idea.)  There were a number of factors going on there, but I think one that bears mentioning is the fact that I can't remember seeing a single report from that folder for months.  That button is there for a reason; we all get an e-mail when someone uses it.  Even if I wasn't reading the folder, if I saw multiple reports coming in from it, I definitely would have taken a look.  I didn't even know there were any issues going on there until the whole thing blew up publicly.  Hopefully that's something that we can avoid repeating with this new initiative.

The task of trying to get the community involved in each others' work in a real collaborative sense - advertising for other peoples' projects, drawing attention to things beyond 'I will use this in my mod, Gigacock of Shiva' - has basically fallen to Axem and, on occasion, myself. The admins and global moderators of this board are for a large part either not involved in FreeSpace or not involved in the current community beyond their own projects; I think BW and The_E are the sole exceptions, though I might be missing someone.

You're right that this is something we need to work on, and Axem in particular deserves all the credit in the world for writing up these amazing newsletters.  If I can get myself playing regularly again, I most definitely want to get involved in the feedback side of things, and hopefully pimp as much awesome stuff as I can.  If you can think of anything specific beyond simply playing things that could happen on a mod/admin level, just say the word and I'll do my best to help out.

(also I would play the **** out of "Gigacock of Shiva")

Regarding some of your next post that snuck in ahead of me, when you refer to these other communities, are they more general or issue-oriented forums, or are they cases like ours that are primarily focused on a specific fandom?  I mean I'm certainly not denying that a more hands-on approach can produce a better level of discussion (one of my other haunts makes this place look like a scholars' debate), but I have to wonder if that could work particularly well for us as a whole.  Most folders here cover the FS series itself or the mods that have arisen from it, with many of them being primarily technical in nature.  The only place we deal with the sort of discussions you're talking about are one or two folders down at the bottom of the forum index, which as kara mentioned many of the mods and admins don't even actively participate in anymore because of their traditionally toxic environment.  (No, the irony of that self-perpetuating cycle doesn't escape me.)  If you're proposing that we treat just GenDisc and Gaming with that level of control, that's something maybe worth considering, but I think a more hands-off approach is in keeping with the majority of our folders here.

[karajorma]

I suspect most people will just assume that Goober banned them (using the Hammer). Nobody thinks it's a real separate person.

The point is that no one will know it was Goober. If an admin posts using his own account, everyone blames the admin. If an admin posts using the Hammer, maybe you can guess who did it, maybe you can't. Add the fact that more than one person is responsible for the ban and you can't simply shoot the messenger any more.

I also wish you'd be kinder to Spoon. He put up with one of the most exasperating, hostile subforums entirely on his own with no support or even acknowledgment from HLP mods and admins for...months? More than a year? Years? And when global mods/admins did finally get involved in his forum, it was uniformly a really negative experience for him. Can you blame him for feeling some resentment there?

If the kind of posts Spoon had to deal with had been transplanted to ST:R or Diaspora they would've been cause for action. All Spoon could do was lock threads and attempt escalations that were ignored.

As has been pointed out before he didn't ask for help. You can't complain about having to do everything alone if you choose to do everything alone. The point of the changes are to discourage forum mods from trying to do it all themselves. I'm happy to discuss with Spoon how to better moderate the WoD forum and always have been. But if he wants to act resentful towards the moderators, that's only going to have a negative result for his forum. The point of the changes is to do things better. But that's a two way street. WoD's moderation issues are not all the fault of the HLP staff.

On the topic of general hostility towards mods: I think this is because moderation on HLP is not very effective. I know this is a harsh verdict, but again, I'm active in a couple really big communities where the mods and admins take much more active, much harsher roles - a week off for a 'tl;dr' is standard, a ban for a racist slur without any warnings pretty common - but although the community is far larger and more diverse, the mods and admins are more trusted and respected, discussions are of an enormously higher quality, aimless flamewars and stupid circlejerks unheard of, and everybody* just gets along admirably.

I'd quite happily hand out bans for that sort of behaviour but people get pissy about the mods being too draconian whenever we try.

[General Battuta]

As has been pointed out before he didn't ask for help. You can't complain about having to do everything alone if you choose to do everything alone. The point of the changes are to discourage forum mods from trying to do it all themselves. I'm happy to discuss with Spoon how to better moderate the WoD forum and always have been. But if he wants to act resentful towards the moderators, that's only going to have a negative result for his forum. The point of the changes is to do things better. But that's a two way street. WoD's moderation issues are not all the fault of the HLP staff.

I think he may well have asked for help (the escalations I talked about before), but even so, it just doesn't seem to me that there was any incentive to do that. There was no policy in place to help him out, no sign that the allegedly global moderators were paying any attention to this weird mod they hadn't played, and no reason to believe they'd necessarily take him at his word about the need for action. When a global mod did eventually get involved the experience was not positive for Spoon - he was ignored and overridden, and, ironically, the actionable issue was one he'd suffered himself a few times with no higher intervention.

The issues may not all be the fault of the HLP staff, but acknowledging that they were in part the fault of the HLP staff couldn't hurt. I acknowledge that you've done that here to a degree.

In any case the WoD forum's issues are now to a significant degree all of HLP's issues, given the current problems with holding any kind of thread in GenDisc or Gaming Discussion.

[General Battuta]

All I'm suggesting here is to maybe cut Spoon some slack if he wants to be suspicious of broader moderation. There are other reasonable and well-liked parties who can speak to this issue if they're so inclined.

[Black Wolf]

I suspect most people will just assume that Goober banned them (using the Hammer). Nobody thinks it's a real separate person.

Probably. And if anything at all happens in the WoD forum, Spoon will assume it was me even if it wasn't. That doesn't change the fact that the new policies mean that actions are being and will be taken based on consensus - actions wont be the result of a single mod's or admin's opinion/decision, but multiple opinions. If several of us agree that action needs to be taken, it will be taken. This process has already started working, and I expect we'll streamline it over the next few months.

You've also regularly brought up the fact that you're on several other forums with much stricter moderation. I'm sure that works great for them, but that's not how we work here, not least because we're a small community. We can't ban people for slight perceived provocations because, frankly, we would have lost some really good and/or really productive community members if we did that, yourself included most likely (as well as, top of my head, Cobra, Spoon, Topace, Trashman, NGTM-1R, MatththeGeek and probably dozens of others I can't think of straight up). Our focus here is producing content for FS. That has to be our priority, and if that means taking a less rigid approach to moderating than you seem to be advocating, then so be it. What we can instead do is try to make the moderating at least consistent, and the best way i know to do that is to aim for a consensus, so no one persons bad day or dislike for any individual member will result in over or underwhelming responses.

[Fury]

User was issued a warning for this post.  Post adds nothing to the discussion, and is liable to provoke additional drama.

I suspect this was done through the moderator warning system of SMF, which does exactly nothing to let the user in question know something was in fact done. If I hadn't noticed the edited post, I wouldn't have known either. I suggest you revise your guidelines to notify users.

At least Fury had the sense to 'step down' when he realized he just didn't had the same level of involvement as he did before.

Actually I stepped down because I got sick and tired of how HLP was managed. And yes, I did try to shake things up. Didn't work.

[Spoon]

I really appreciate it Battuta. But as demonstrated here and before this, its completely useless. Karajorma will continue being a tremendous jerk that will shift the blame solely onto me forever. While I only got negative **** from HLP 'staff' he was carving out this own nice little diaspora place with his admin powers. Everything that ever happened was my fault alone, nobody bothered to give a **** and because I didn't click the report button I am solely to blame. **** this **** and **** that retarded stick up the ass logic.
Yeah, I feel more than a little bit of resentment and I'm long done trying to argue about it since its pointless.
And now as a last final '**** you' the HLP has decided that having to deal with board moderators is too much of a hassle and they might aswell not exist. Cheers guys, really smooth.

Probably. And if anything at all happens in the WoD forum, Spoon will assume it was me even if it wasn't.

Stop being a dumbass, seriously.
You ****ed up once and you ****ed up badly. You refuse to admit that and will turn that **** around on me because your pride was hurt.

I'll freely admit that WoD turned into a bad situation, and that it was a folder I've generally avoided since I haven't played it yet.

Says ever admin and mod ever.

See I strongly disagree with this sentiment, because it implies that those of us who aren't modders don't have anything to contribute here.  I often get the impression that a lot of creative types can't appreciate this, but not everyone is capable of generating new content out of nothing; it's not a question of lacking certain technical skills, but of simply not being particularly creative in the first place.  I don't have any spaceship designs in my head that I want to realize, or any stories that I want to tell via FRED.  That's just not me.  However, I greatly enjoying experiencing the creative efforts of other people and responding to them about what they make.  Just because someone can't make a movie or a sculpture doesn't mean they can't be entertained by them and critique them.  After all, if the only people around here were content creators, the only ones who would play your own creations would be other creators, which seems rather insular.  I personally look on my role as global mod here as something that I myself can do to tangibly benefit the community by utilizing my own skill-set, and I feel as much a part of the community as anyone even without a list of accomplishments under my name.

Well I don't really see you guys contributing much of anything. Why is it that Axem who is not only releasing tons of high quality stuff is also doing things on the board what one could consider to be the job of the people 'running' HLP (newsletter). I don't see any involvement here from admins or mods. There is absolutely zero drive to make HLP a fun place to be, coming from the staff.
Or does one have to be 'the creative type' to do things like that?


Yeah, I'm mad bro.
I'd be concerned about turning the whole staff against me, but its already clear that this is already the case. So I got nothing to lose there.

[Spoon]

I think even by the lesser standards of "engaged with the community as a whole" most of the existing structure would fail. There's little visible indication outside of Axem, BW, and The_E (and sometimes Goober, I'll give him that much) that most moderators/admins actually consume content that's coming out.

We used to joke about how Karaj was a respected authority on the workings of FRED, but had not released any missions since the VBB era. If you were to make that joke about some of the people who run the forum and replace "released missions" with "played missions and commented on them since the last Ransom release"...well, you begin to see why we might worry.

I already thought this was a concern some years ago and I was sort of miffed with the complete cold shoulder I got from the HLP staff since the release of WoD.
Things have not changed at all. Most of the HLP staff are a bunch of old members that are completely unmotivated to do, create or play anything.
Of course, if you ask Karajorma he'll tell that this isnt a bad thing at all! Because hurpdurp.

I'm sorry you feel this way, but I hope you would at least give these new guidelines the benefit of the doubt, and see how things go moving forward.

I'd give it any kind of benefit of a doubt if the staff would admit they ****ed up and would apologize for it. Promise to try to do better in the future and not **** me over for their mistakes.
These new guidelines and the reactions of the staff here are giving me anything but new confidence.

[General Battuta]

You've also regularly brought up the fact that you're on several other forums with much stricter moderation. I'm sure that works great for them, but that's not how we work here, not least because we're a small community. We can't ban people for slight perceived provocations because, frankly, we would have lost some really good and/or really productive community members if we did that, yourself included most likely (as well as, top of my head, Cobra, Spoon, Topace, Trashman, NGTM-1R, MatththeGeek and probably dozens of others I can't think of straight up). Our focus here is producing content for FS. That has to be our priority, and if that means taking a less rigid approach to moderating than you seem to be advocating, then so be it. What we can instead do is try to make the moderating at least consistent, and the best way i know to do that is to aim for a consensus, so no one persons bad day or dislike for any individual member will result in over or underwhelming responses.

Being proactive about creating good discussions doesn't have to mean banning content creators at the drop of a hat. There are a lot of other tools available to you. And in some cases, well, the disruptive elements...clearly are not content creators.

[karajorma]

But in some cases they are. And I'm certainly not in favour of creating a two-tier system where the content creators are allowed to be more disruptive than other people.

As I've pointed out many times in the past, the same people who want the admins to do more to deal with troublemakers are often troublemakers themselves. And the first ones to create forum drama the second an admin decides to deal with them.

I'd give it any kind of benefit of a doubt if the staff would admit they ****ed up and would apologize for it. Promise to try to do better in the future and not **** me over for their mistakes.
These new guidelines and the reactions of the staff here are giving me anything but new confidence.

The entire point of these changes is to try to deal with the issues that came up in the past.

If you really want to make a change, you'd get down off that high horse and acknowledge that perhaps there were also some things you could have done better in order to not have ended up with the WoD forums being in such a mess. No one is saying the admins were blameless. If we were saying that we wouldn't be changing things. But acting like there's nothing you could do to improve the situation isn't going to help much.

You're actually doing a very good job of showing exactly why the admins gave WoD such a wide berth. Why on Earth would anyone on the admin staff want to interact with you in any way when this is the result of us trying to make HLP better? Why on Earth would I want to interact with you when you can't even be civil towards me?

So it's up to you. You can be part of the process or you can complain and moan about the past. But should the changes that occur without you bite you on the arse down the line, I doubt you'll get much sympathy over it.

[Spoon]

And I'm certainly not in favour of creating a two-tier system where the content creators are allowed to be more disruptive than other people.

Well you bloody should be. Not because people should be allowed to stir up more **** than others but because HLP should treasure content creators. Cause without them there would be no point to this site. Other wise I'd just be old grumpy&cynical men in GD.
I know you tend to forget this, because you aren't actually really involved in much at all.

And the first ones to create forum drama the second an admin decides to deal with them.

Probably because the way things are 'dealt' with are perceived to be unfair in the eyes of the one getting dealt with? The fact that consistency in dealing with things has been **** awful in the past?

The entire point of these changes is to try to deal with the issues that came up in the past.

Yeah and I know exactly in what kind of warped way.
When Black wolf ****ed up his moderating and started threating about how he would see all of my forum management rights revoked this was exactly because of the dumb hierarchial ideas that float around. He was in the wrong, his pride got hurt because he felt he was automatically in the right because he 'outranks me'.
These changes in the rules are there so to 'deal with these issues'. Translation: So global mods can 'legally' outveto everything because the rules says so.
Now I really ****ing hope I'm going to be proven wrong on that translation and that things will actually get resolved good and proper through communication and PM's but I have no faith in that left. Because in the end the staff remains the same old people who openly complain in a closed thread on how terrible everything is.

If you really want to make a change, you'd get down off that high horse and acknowledge that perhaps there were also some things you could have done better in order to not have ended up with the WoD forums being in such a mess. No one is saying the admins were blameless. If we were saying that we wouldn't be changing things. But acting like there's nothing you could do to improve the situation isn't going to help much.

You're the one acting like the staff are the ones that are blameless. That they were 'completely in their right to avoid doing their job in the WoD forum because clearly I am such a jerk'. Right?
No, YOU get off that highhorse. You are the most arrogant person on this forum so don't ****ing lecture others on that.
I'm more than willing to learn from mistakes and I've learned a lot good lessons from all of this. What I am not willing to do is see you on your high horse repeately pinning all the blame on me without a shred of willingness to admit wrongdoings yourself.

You're actually doing a very good job of showing exactly why the admins gave WoD such a wide berth. Why on Earth would anyone on the admin staff want to interact with you in any way when this is the result of us trying to make HLP better?

Oh geez, I don't know. Maybe because you are like a couple of years LATE? And I've had a lot of time of getting really cynical with HLP's bad moderating? And there is absolutely no remose whatsoever on the staff's part? The fact that you are ****ing blaming me for everything?
What do you expect? A ****ing medal and flowers from me? It's the **** like this that upsets me so much and this should be blindingly obvious to anyone with a shred of common sense and humanity. But you are so far removed from everything that you simply cannot grasp this simple concept. Don't try to sweep it all under the rug and tell me to get over it.

So it's up to you. You can be part of the process or you can complain and moan about the past. But should the changes that occur without you bite you on the arse down the line, I doubt you'll get much sympathy over it.

No its up to you. You guys prove that you actually understand what has gone wrong and is still going wrong right here in this thread. I can and will complain and moan about the past because I don't see that you guys have actually learned some real lessons out of it yet. Changing a few rules here and there in such a vague matter that people here that are only raising questions, is not promising at all.
Removing the relevance of board moderators without having any kind of real intention of having the staff actually get involved is just plain bad.