I can never tell if my PMs get sent because I never have anything in my sent box.
I agree. I've brought this up with the mods and added it to the handbook as well. Most actions should be sandwiched by communication in order to be most effective. Warning, resolution, explanation. The trick, of course, is judging whether a thread is "serious" or when a warning would be pointless.I want to reiterate that just about everyone here wants thread locking to be changed into a last resort if a situation cannot be resolved on an individual basis. Besides obvious spam and vandalism of course. But actual serious threads.
The trouble with avoiding the excuse of "vocal minority" is defining when it's no longer a minority. Bringing in the support of less bold members might turn a one-member complaint into, what, a 20 member complaint? Out of 400 members... I get what you're saying, we're not expected to do a study on exactly how many people are affected and how many feel negatively about it and such, but the larger number of complaints should give us a feeling that it's more widespread than we might think. But precisely because of this ambiguity it's not a good idea to judge an idea based on numbers in the first place. You either have to accept all criticisms as serious, or none of them as serious. More like we have to seriously consider whether all criticisms have merit or not. The voice of the "vocal minority" should be judged by its own merits, not by how few or how many followers it has, because the latter is both unconfirmable and irrelevant. I'm sure you agree with this ideal but feel we're not following it. Then we would like to improve in this area.There's usually a large number of people who are discontent. But only a smaller number who are brave enough to make larger, more well-formed criticisms with plenty of details. And this is almost always used against them to claim that it is just a "vocal minority" that should be disregarded because there's not enough of them saying it. And I'm absolutely certain that this will be used again. So you can't have it both ways. You either have to accept all criticisms as serious, or none of them as serious. Allowing more public forums for complaints like this would allow the "small minority" to provide their well formed complaints and the less bold people to see it and say they agree and possibly add more to it than they would have otherwise felt capable of doing on their own. And it'll put more pressure on the mods to be careful about what they do and they will not be able to just disregard whatever they don't like and will have to listen to what the community wants.
Again, I haven't received any such feedback about our current mods. What would you all say about a plugin that allows anonymous feedback about specific mods? While I'm trying to improve communication from our end, I also want to get members communicating with us effectively to help with this.And given how badly the mods have been at accusing people of defying them and being trouble makers, you absolutely shouldn't be trusting them right now to determine what is and isn't constructive. One thing you can do is make it a requirement to address all complaints and write up a thread for mods to look at that has some examples of what is isn't okay. Like: "Hey, I don't really agree with this decision here." versus "What do you think you're doing, you idiot?!"
Okay, that's a bit extreme.But you get the idea. There just seems the tendency to deem all criticism as unconstructive. And there even seemed to be here before it turned out many people felt the same way. And you couldn't just go and call all of them troublemakers.
As you said, a member getting ignored by a mod leads to that member giving up on communicating with that mod (or all the mods in general). Now, if that member goes around and tells everyone else how arrogant and ignorant the mods are, they'll give up on communication too. Now we have a whole bunch of members convincing each other that no mod would ever listen, while no mods are receiving any communication. Now, there are times when this specific thing is happening, and there are times when a mod might simply feel insulted by publicly expressed discontent. This is the sort of thing I need to hear about personally so I can correct it. Yes, we try to put down "toxicity", if you'll excuse the terminology, toward the administration that makes it harder for us to maintain a healthy community. Yes, sometimes we go overboard. Throw us a bone.And I also don't think you should be concerning yourselves with blogs and shoutbox posts criticizing the mods. Why should you care?
It's not that they don't have the time, it's just that sometimes (SOMETIMES) it'd be a pointless use of it.And it is hypocritical to claim that the mods don't have time to respond to every single private complaint, but they certainly have time to deal with anything that publicly embarrasses them.
And what about retroactively unlocking threads that shouldn't have been locked and apologizing to those who were wrongly warned about breaking the "rule" on it?I agree. I've brought this up with the mods and added it to the handbook as well. Most actions should be sandwiched by communication in order to be most effective. Warning, resolution, explanation. The trick, of course, is judging whether a thread is "serious" or when a warning would be pointless.
It rarely is a one-member complaint though. There's always others who feel the same, but they're afraid to talk because they think they can't because they, rightly, believe they'd get in trouble for protesting. And don't pretend that we don't know everyone here making these points FOR this in this discussion, has been branded "troublemakers" by the staff at one point or another. You know it, I know it. So let's not waste time denying it. This branding is largely to do with trying to bring issues like this up with the other person just getting angry that it's being even mentioned at all and therefore just labeling the questioner a troublemaker and complaining about it to everyone else. It would be great if all the mods stopped thinking of us that way. We both know it's because we rocked the boat and asked questions the staff didn't want to hear. I'm saying it now, here, so it cannot be just denied as it would be in private. This branding has caused us to be treated with pre-emptive hostility and has been used as an excuse to ignore anything we say.The trouble with avoiding the excuse of "vocal minority" is defining when it's no longer a minority. Bringing in the support of less bold members might turn a one-member complaint into, what, a 20 member complaint? Out of 400 members... I get what you're saying, we're not expected to do a study on exactly how many people are affected and how many feel negatively about it and such, but the larger number of complaints should give us a feeling that it's more widespread than we might think. But precisely because of this ambiguity it's not a good idea to judge an idea based on numbers in the first place. You either have to accept all criticisms as serious, or none of them as serious. More like we have to seriously consider whether all criticisms have merit or not. The voice of the "vocal minority" should be judged by its own merits, not by how few or how many followers it has, because the latter is both unconfirmable and irrelevant. I'm sure you agree with this ideal but feel we're not following it. Then we would like to improve in this area.
To be fair, you have ignored a lot. And people know it, so any complaints that would have come to you, either here or via Skype, probably have largely not been happening because they know you will not respond or acknowledge them. You're not taking into consideration the fact that people have given up on communicating with the staff because they always get ignored whenever it's anything the staff doesn't want to hear. And any that the others are getting, can you speak for them and tell us they've told you all the complaints they've gotten?Again, I haven't received any such feedback about our current mods. What would you all say about a plugin that allows anonymous feedback about specific mods? While I'm trying to improve communication from our end, I also want to get members communicating with us effectively to help with this.
Except that's not how it works. It's not going to solve your problems. When someone complains about you, and your first reaction to them is "Hey, you, shut up, or else" there is one, and only one outcome in that situation: you're going to be CONFIRMING their allegations in the eyes of everyone who saw it regardless of whether or not the complaints had any legitimacy at all. Simply, the choice to crack down on such things is really more of a reactionary, feel-good move rather than something that was seriously analyzed for possible side effects. Censorship, and that's exactly what it is, especially for reasons like pride and image, ALWAYS backfires on you. This kind of action has intensified people's mistrust way more than you think allowing them to exist might have. Allowing them to exist, and then addressing the issue respectfully would have lessened tensions and calmed people down. Punishing people for them and removing them just confirms whatever was alleged in them and made people more mistrustful and harder to deal with even on issues where there otherwise wouldn't be as much of a problem. You cannot get out of doing it worse than you started. So... it's best to not do that at all.As you said, a member getting ignored by a mod leads to that member giving up on communicating with that mod (or all the mods in general). Now, if that member goes around and tells everyone else how arrogant and ignorant the mods are, they'll give up on communication too. Now we have a whole bunch of members convincing each other that no mod would ever listen, while no mods are receiving any communication. Now, there are times when this specific thing is happening, and there are times when a mod might simply feel insulted by publicly expressed discontent. This is the sort of thing I need to hear about personally so I can correct it. Yes, we try to put down "toxicity", if you'll excuse the terminology, toward the administration that makes it harder for us to maintain a healthy community. Yes, sometimes we go overboard. Throw us a bone.
I suggest giving all members permission to access the shoutbox archives. Every usergroup besides Member (even event staff, competition leader, etc.) has access, and there is no reason whatsoever to restrict it. It's a nice feature of the shoutbox, and should be available to everyone.
The way the navigation manager works, there's no way to tell it to just use the same links as the Forum tab. I don't want to manually reproduce them because such duplication always leads to trouble.Yeah, so... Why in the world can't I access Forum Actions and Quick Links (etc.) from the Chatbox tab?
I remember being able to access these from the SB when it first moved. But later, Locke removed it in place of the Chatbox tab glowing or whatever.
iirc, he asked which one we'd rather have, and apparently the glowing tab won. But still... Why not both?
The way the navigation manager works, there's no way to tell it to just use the same links as the Forum tab. I don't want to manually reproduce them because such duplication always leads to trouble.
This suggestion is more so focused towards an Event.
So I think we currently have a good amount of events, but it couldn't hurt to have a couple more. One idea I had would go be one centred around an American High School tradition, Yearbooks. I'm not completely familiar with Yearbooks since I'm not American, but I think it would be a neat idea.
You would have multiple categories, which would be like: "Most Likely To (insert topic)" and so on. It would be somewhat similar to the GKAs, but more light hearted and humorous. Meh, just an idea I had. Maybe someone with more knowledge of Yearbooks could expand upon this.