Kelas, by your definition, any 'real' member would just be whoever agrees with you, more than likely, since you just seem to dismiss any who disagree.

But I WOULD love to be on a Ban Death Panel :3

If you look, I haven't attacked other members that don't agree. Bentus, has one post. As far as I'm concerned, he knows nothing about what's going on in this forum. He could be agreeing with me and it wouldn't be worth it's weight in salt.

Today, history is made on DRLFF with the opening of the Kelas Ban Panel!

You've attacked moderators, or do they not count as members of the forum?

I figure it's time I throw in my (useless) 2 cents.

Kelas, you're making things seem way worse than they really are. From what I can tell, you appear to be blaming the moderation team for everything gone wrong in this forum, from a lack of sales and a supposed increase in piracy, to the forum going down the shitter because of weasel and others. While I don't think everything that has happened is necessarily good, you can't blame the mod team for everything, which you seem intent on doing.

Your suggestion that we need more moderators is silly, because as of right now we have less than 100 actively active members. We do have a small stream of new members, but I think 8 moderators plus grif is enough to deal with them. Maybe when B24 gets released, we'll see more active members, but until then, I think it's safe to say 9 active moderators is enough.

Those are my thoughts.

Maybe a poll of user satisfaction would be a good end to this?
Oh wait, polls are broken.

The arguments voiced by Kelas here only even matter if there is support behind them from others; the board does not exactly need to cater to the individual.

Edit:
The mention of increased piracy needs either support or retraction. Talk about arbitrary.

Well then I suppose you can lump that in with the other bad judgements made by Duh102, because I think that that would be more trouble than it's worth. Not to mention, finding the judges themselves would be a chore in itself, because apparently you don't trust the moderators to find them.

True. Then I suppose neither of us can make judgments about who supports our sides of the argument until we've waited a day or so. Also, I don't know what you're talking about the ragequitters. The only two I'm aware of off the top of my head are numgun and NaxX, and they left for entirely different reasons than moderator action. numgun for over-harsh criticism of his modding and NaXx for a personal problem with Grif.

Kelas, we have maybe 50 active users. A good 8 of them are moderators. I think 16% moderators is overpopulated already. (I'm ignoring Alenth because I haven't heard from him in a while, but if you want you can increase the moderator count and thus the % population moderation team).

You're falling back on postcount = knowledge? How do you know that guy isn't a lurker?

Keep in mind, Kelas, that Bentus is one of the people that Data wants to be more included in this forum. You'd have to include him in your special panel as well.
The other issue here is that, despite what you may think, it is simply impossible to have a fully rigid set of rules that applies to every post every time. In fact, it's nearly impossible to do that for most posts. We've done what we can to have rules, but at one point or another, it falls to somebody's discretion. This is why we have moderators - they are people the administrators trust to make decisions. Otherwise, we would leave it to addons that check the character count and ban after a certain number of warnings. For this forum, it never has, and now that we are rapidly gaining and losing new members, never will. Data wants this forum to be policed depending on what both he and weasel think, and weasel has selected people to carry out that wish. He has no complaints, therefore the moderators will be staying as is until he sees a problem. This forum is owned by Data, and what either he or his proxy (weasel) says, goes.
The fact that the community you claim to speak for has literally come into the thread and told you you're wrong sort of suggests you may be overblowing your status as speaking for "the forum as a whole" just a wee bit.

tl;dr
This forum cannot be automated. It is not a democracy. It is not going to become that way any time in the near future. Making false accusations and statements is not going to help your position on this either.

Nyaw... I'm being ignored.
Alright, since you want more feedback on your ideas, what about your failed logic on this. You want all moderators to be involved in group moderation. But if we add MORE people, it only increases the likelihood that one mod doesn't respond for a while and the decision-making process slows down. Make sense?

You're starting to sound like one of those crazy guys at the corner of a street. You know, the one's shouting illogical statements about how they're always right?


I do consider this an attack, personally. Not because you're ignoring me, but you're assuming i'm not "in tune" enough to make my own decisions. Essentially what you are saying now is that you want to run the forums and **** other people if they have a different opinion from you.

I've been lurking. It's conversing with people like YOU which make me dread posting. But i've had enough of this bull-****. It's in case you want to know.

Edit: NO i'm not agreeing with you. Just wanted to make that as clear for you as possible.

Not every single moderator would have to reply. A simple majority is all that is needed. More moderators = more activity = less chance of slowed process.

I'll even print out flyers to further support your conception of me.

So far as I know, Bentus, you simply log on to download mods, and no, unfortunately I don't consider you to be "in-tune" because there is no way to prove that you are. You could read every single post ever made since the day you joined but I could never know that.

Kelas, every major action on this forum is discussed by all moderators. It's rare that one of us misses the post, and it's almost always discussed at length. Once again, the final decision falls to weasel, and guess what? He almost always agrees with us anyway! Why would we bother with more moderators when we are already doing what you say, both efficiently and effectively?

See, he seems like a fairly intelligent person. While he probably hasn't been here since the glory days, he seems like he has a grasp on reality. You can't be certain from two posts, but he doesn't seem like a dipshit.
Two things Bentus. One, no need to self censor. The forum will do it for you. Two, it's lurking, not trolling, I hope.

Ok. While I'm reading the posts in this thread, would you care to discuss the issues I've brought up? Or are you going to continue to dispute my lack-of-experience, which you yourself admit to being unprovable? This is really just a petty side-argument around holes blown in your logic.

Since you've obviously had more "experience", then e-du-ma-cate us about how your rearranged forums work. I know several of us "less experienced" members and moderators are failing to follow your logic.

You were double-wrong to start a thread like this inside a different thread. Moving it here only halves your culpability. Ban coming as soon as I finish typing this reply!



Automatic measures, especially this one, is pretty stupid. Some warnings are very light; some warnings are very dire. The mere fact that I haven't even had Warguy brought to my attention tells me that he's fairly benign.

However; you, my friend, are probably #1 on my ban-forever list at this point, and I don't even know how many warnings you have (if any).

Putting a human behind the ban controls makes the process fair and adaptable to any situation. Relying on a 3-warning auto-ban merely automates a menial chore that we shouldn't be doing all that often anyway.



I actually think threads like this are more damaging than Grif's choice to not ban Warguy.



Sure, and Duh is also free to make judgement calls on the color of the sky without my permission and he's also allowed to make a judgement on how many jellybeans are in this jar. Just because he expresses an opinion doesn't make it law.

I do take my moderator's suggestions seriously, and I'll listen to their opinions and reasoning with earnest. Wheras your suggestions and counterpoints? I think I'm more likely to do exactly opposite of what you say, based on your previous history of antagonism and drama-whoring.

In this particular case, I've had a lot of experience with minimum-posting-lengths in forums. My professional opinion is the character length should be slightly higher than 2-3 words (and definitely higher than any on-forum macro). 200 is a bit too high, but I do see where Duh is coming from. He's just missed out on the proper solution to the problem (contentless posts = warn/ban, not posting limits).



It's not hard, it's just annoying. I'm more willing to punish harshly for rare incidents, than I am inclined to deal with menial daily reports on posts. It's a PITA.



Oh-ho, but I know it all too well. I know that installing plugins on PhpBB is a royal PITA and requires a bunch of individual file tweaking (it's not as simple as unzipping to a folder). Most of the changes will break on any upgrade or patch to PhpBB. It sucks hard, and I hate PhpBB for it.

I would consider giving someone FTP access if I trusted them to do it and maintain it. Given the forum's history of subversion and desire to cause damage, it's hard to find a willing and competent individual I trust. I guess you guys can blame yourselves for that.



- Addons are a PITA and I will let someone else manage them (if you can find someone acceptable to)
- Automation is bad; it makes the process inhuman and causes mistakes and problems. We're small enough we can handle every incident on a case-by-case basis.
- Democracy? Hah. You have no power, nor any rights. Deal.
- I have expressed several times before that I wish we had more moderators. Again, I can trust any of you bastards. We need an influx of new users, and that means we need more game sales. To help with that we need a friendlier forum. THREADS LIKE THIS INDIRECTLY CAUSE FEWER MODERATORS.



Lol wut

I never touched anything on the server, and I definitely wasn't the cause of it going down. I think it simply didn't boot up when the server restarted one day. The fix was easy, and could have been done by 3 or 4 of us here at CC HQ. But we decided against fixing it, because of idiotic community-destroying behaviour going on in there. Take a bow.

And don't say I didn't warn you. You guys had a looong time (6 months?) to clean up your act. You even abandoned your own #DRLBROS room (or whatever it was), which was entirely unmoderated.



What's broken about it? (except posts like this)



Try telling the guy who runs the server and updates software; eg: not me. EMail ScanCode or Data.



As said before: Biggest thing I'm waiting on right now is an influx of new users. I've made plenty of changes around here (as I'm sure you can list off as "breaking" or "failures," but which I call "features") that make the board more inviting and open to newcomers. The last remaining major problem is the attitude on the forums, and people exactly like you. I am dealing with that problem now.

Second biggest problem is moderating the forums well enough. I don't expect our unpaid moderation staff to be vigilant 24/7, and I want to have more of them. Again, waiting on an influx of new users.



On the contrary: I've gotten quite a few EMails/PMs saying how happy people are that things are finally calming down around here, and Data is reporting that sales are leveling out (they were consistently drooping before).

Piracy rate? Would like to know where you get those figures, but sales is what matters, not piracy rate.



"Evidence?" Lol. I feel like I can now safely delete this thread without a my conscience getting in the way; no data will be lost.



I put in enough time to get the important things done around here. CC's community isn't big enough to be a full-time gig yet.

An additional forum assitant? That'd be nice. Who?



Mod team isn't expanding because of a lack of qualified applicants, TLB. I've put out a request for candidates several times (via PM, IRC, and secret-forum-posts) and haven't gotten any responses. If you're holding out on me! *Shakes fists*

I definitely, infinitely, think it's necessary. If I thought it would work I'd auto-make everyone a moderator here. The more distributed power, the better coverage.



I agree, Grif. In fact, I have two theories:

1) Kelas is being contrary for fun/sport, or
2) Kelas is just plain screwed in the head

Though his ideas and want for reform may be valid, and I would listen to any complaints, his aggressive calling-out style and constant back history of angst, I'm thinking neither 1 nor 2 is welcome on this board. banbanban



I will agree with this. Though I WANT more moderators, and I never think there's such thing as TOO MANY moderators, I do think we have enough as-is. I don't see a bunch of threads going off topic; there's not a sudden spam attack; people are getting their warnings. Things are good.



Believe it or not, I get quite bored day-to-day. I open the forums several times a day and read the new threads. I'm happy with the way the moderators are handling things; I smile, because the machine I setup to work on it's own is continuing to work well. I like the moderators. They do a great job. I don't need to have a super-active presence.

At the same time, I'm on IM contact lists with most of the moderators, and I will often get summoned to deal with (or give guidance on) a particular situation. Just because I don't send the warn or ban notice myself doesn't mean that I wasn't involved in the decision directly.

Again, I'm very proud of our team. They do a good job. You shouldn't need me around if I did my job right.

---

So, let's all wave goodbye to Kelas. He's been banned before, and now he's being banned again. Much for similar reasons, so it appears he didn't learn his lesson. The only thing different about this time is the question of when he will be un-banned.

I'll leave the thread open for continued rational discussion of the topic at hand. Just because I hate kelas doesn't mean I don't value the opinion of everybody else a thousand times more.

I guess this is a good point to reiterate that the moderation team is always open to suggestions, as long as you're polite and reasonable about it.

You'll get back what you put in, so proper argumentation (logical arguments with sufficient evidence) and politeness will get you a lot farther than hate mail.