If [the moderators don't see] a problem there, that's probably because they share the same "the users here are idiots" mindset that infects many moderators. Again, this is a symptom of giving authority to unpaid volunteers who then abuse the authority they are given.
Beltir said:
As for aggressive moderation of paying customers, no matter how the rules are structured, people will complain. People complain because there are any rules at all and they want a free for all.
This is the typical moderator contempt of the customer that reveals the entire problem.
As for your training, let's take a look. By your own admission, you were given the job because (1) you had to replace someone else, (2) you had the time to do it. Meaning the topmost qualification was that you showed up.
You then kept the job because you were able to get through a backlog of 600 posts, which raises questions about the quality of the work you did, seeing as how you were basically rushing a pile of overdue work. That perfectly summarizes the typical "volunteer position" problems, in that people are given authority based on their willingness to do the work, not their ability to do the work. Then, provided they simply don't quit, they get to keep the job.
Relative to ability, you said you had to read three threads, and had a discussion. That's it. Then you underwent observation. Observation is not training, it's observation. No training on relation to the customer, no training on how your work may impact on revenue, no training on site hits or web views, nothing.
(I never said anything about going to school, that's just more snarky straw man silliness.)
I am sure that any training at all seemed like it was something, since most forums don't do that much. But to anyone from the outside, it's woefully inadequate.
Then of course, there's this, which tells us everything about the antisocial nature of moderators and the lack of the most basic training in customer service:
Haha, you think I was just "given" it like I did nothing to deserve it? Please, if I was so bad for the job, why don't you go find what I did wrong. I'll wait.
Again, if you were a $5/hour McDonalds burger flipper, you'd be fired by now.
Let me end by quoting myself, with something that quickly turned prescient:
I didn't mean to turn this thread into a discussion about moderators, although by mentioning them in the least, it typically results in thin-skinned, defensive posts by mods themselves.
This is the typical moderator contempt of the customer that reveals the entire problem.
That quote was responding to something else. I don't have contempt for customers, but trying to take something out of context and stripping the last sentence to make it seem like I'm targeting a specific group over giving a comparison of two difference groups that no matter what we do with the rules, there will be a group that doesn't like it and says we're doing our job wrong doesn't really do much to help.
As for your training, let's take a look. By your own admission, you were given the job because (1) you had to replace someone else, (2) you had the time to do it. Meaning the topmost qualification was that you showed up.
"1) Volunteered to help take care of a massive back log, cleaning nearly 600 reports myself in one night (I think that's around the number), which included multiple page problems.
2) Volunteered to assist in multiple sections which they did not have enough staff.
3) Did my job without need of correction.
4) Spent many, many, many hours nearly every day on the forums, almost exclusively moderating until the report levels at a low number.
5) A forum admin had to quit due to health reasons, and I was the best fit to cover his position."
Yeah, there was more to it. See 1 and 3. More of a "quantity and quality" than simply time.
You then kept the job because you were able to get through a backlog of 600 posts, which raises questions about the quality of the work you did, seeing as how you were basically rushing a pile of overdue work. That perfectly summarizes the typical "volunteer position" problems, in that people are given authority based on their willingness to do the work, not their ability to do the work. Then, provided they simply don't quit, they get to keep the job.
No, I didn't keep forum admin because I went through the back log. This happened before I was forum admin. As for quality, no I didn't have a quality issue at all, and 600 reports, not 600 posts. You're making assumptions based on what? Maybe you should know I spent nearly 12 hours doing just that. It wasn't rushing, not by my standard. Again, I did all of that without a single incident of quality, yet you're questioning the quality?
If a moderator can't do the work, they don't just get to keep it. I've fired people from moderator position for not doing the work, for doing the work wrong, or for abusing their power in any way.
Relative to ability, you said you had to read three threads, and had a discussion. That's it. Then you underwent observation. Observation is not training, it's observation. No training on relation to the customer, no training on how your work may impact on revenue, no training on site hits or web views, nothing.
Again, because a mod shouldn't be concerned with that. They should be concerned with the job they're doing, not the website itself. My job was to enforce the rules as fairly as I can to every person and every report. That's what the training was for.
(I never said anything about going to school, that's just more snarky straw man silliness.)
I am sure that any training at all seemed like it was something, since most forums don't do that much. But to anyone from the outside, it's woefully inadequate.
Which is why that was a mere mention to make sure I am being clear. No, I wasn't trained via a school or something, everything was done on site. Read material on how to do my job, read material on what to/not to do, read material on additional information. At the time, then I talked to an admin about it, asked questions, then was told go ahead and get started, and any time I wasn't entirely sure, I was to ask how to handle it.
Later, when I was admin, I added a requirement of me or a specific other person if I was too busy with something else to walk through a report with them. It isn't how I was trained, but it is how I thought it could be improved. Again, even after the walkthrough with me, I told them if they are unsure at all, just ask, don't go with their gut unless they're 100% sure.
Then of course, there's this, which tells us everything about the antisocial nature of moderators and the lack of the most basic training in customer service:
Again, if you were a $5/hour McDonalds burger flipper, you'd be fired by now.
Let me end by quoting myself, with something that quickly turned prescient:
1) I'm not staff anymore, I'm retired.
2) Fired for what? For telling someone I wasn't just "given" something? For asking them to find where I made such a major mistake, since they're telling me that I must have been doing my job wrong? So no, I wouldn't be fired. The customer isn't always right and doesn't get what they want just because they said it.
3) Yeah, what do you want me to do? I'm not a mod, so I can't do mod stuff. I'm not an admin, so I can't do admin stuff. I'm effectively the same as a member, so I can do member stuff, including replying to things I want to reply to. The things I wanted to reply to are things I disagree with, which happens to have been your post.
As for not wanting to make this about mods, your entire first post is about how the mods are driving away customers. I disagreed and responded as a member with prior experience of being a mod/admin not as a mod or admin. Instead of responding to how aggressive moderation is actually effecting traffic and revenue (since I don't have the numbers it would be pointless for me to respond to those), I address your points specifically.
You have a weird view of what deserves people get fired over. In most jobs, complaints don't go directly to the person being complained about, and if they do, that person is told to tell them to go to the proper people to file complaints. They aren't supposed to handle it, they're told to ignore it and direct them to the proper place.
At nearly any job you don't respond to a customer, even one that is complaining, with the sneering contempt you displayed here. You would never say "Please, if I was so bad for the job, why don't you go find what I did wrong. I'll wait."
As for being retired staff, technically you were never "staff" if you were never paid. That also speaks to the overblown sense of purpose forum moderators have, as if this were an Engineering or C-suite position. It's not. Interns have more authority and rights to call themselves "staff" than forum moderators.
Hey, I'm sorry if you took personal offense, but I was talking about moderators in general, and you and the others stepped in and made yourselves Exhibit A, B and C. That was probably not a wise thing to do, since with each post, you show -- again and again -- the very traits I was talking about, including a complete lack of awareness of customer perception.
I think that's the core of the problem: moderators don't view forum guests as "customers." They treat them like ungrateful cattle, and no one ever trains moderators about the relationship between the site guests and how without them, the site disappears. When that happens, then the moderators disappear too, and you allbecome "retired staff."
If no one -- including sunperp -- sees a problem there, that's probably because they share the same "the users here are idiots" mindset that infects many moderators. Again, this is a symptom of giving authority to unpaid volunteers who then abuse the authority they are given.
If no one -- including sunperp -- sees a problem, then perhaps the site deserves to alienate its customers, and Mojang and Curse deserve to lose revenue. Since the mods are not given any responsibility for maintaining customer satisfaction, they simply don't care, and will likely say "if you don't like it, leave." Meanwhile, in any other job, if a person said that they'd be fired. Imagine if your barista at Starbucks had this kind of attitude, and defended arrogant trolling like that of Grimallq.
As others are discussing with you other points you've made I'm going to focus on the quoted points. Staff here (as a group) do not believe that the users here are idiots and if there was any indication that a staff member was acting with contempt towards members then we would talk with that staff member and if required they would be removed from their position. The staff of this forum are here to make the forum the best it can for our members, without the members of this forum we would not exist.
I think roughly a year ago (maybe 18 months) we instituted a policy to deal with problematic members who behave in a manner that compromises the experience of other members, this policy involves something called "Member Administrative Reviews". Member Administrative Reviews (or MARs as we call them) are a process where any member of staff can raise concerns about a member and then we discuss them as a team and make decisions about their presence here, for example the result could be that the member is banned from the forum for 30 days and put on a "final warning" (meaning any subsequent warnings automatically come with a 30 day posting suspension and another MAR) or it could mean that they're permanently banned from the forum. This policy is working very well for us and we recently expanded it into any form of permanent action too, meaning a single administrator cannot permanently ban a member without first going through a MAR. The issue you've raised is something we do take seriously, and unfortunately we're not completely on top of all problem members at the moment because of limited moderation capacity. If you believe a member is causing consistent issues please report them (via the Report button on their profile) and we'll look into it.
Moderation capacity is an issue that ties into another comment you've made, previously we have hired new moderators and given them "training" in the form of one to one instruction with their Forum Administrator however we are reworking this process and investigating new methods to greatly improve the onboarding process, which involves a complete rework of all the information we present to moderators. This process is essential to ensure that when we hire more moderators (in the near future I hope) they come to the forum with a clear understanding of their role and how best they can serve the forum. Although I'm confident in the moderation staff we have now and their ability to serve the forum and the majority of our current staff have been here for many years, which should demonstrate both their commitment and ability.
This forum isn't perfect and there's always room to improve but we aren't sitting back and considering it a done job, we make a serious effort towards improving process when we become aware of issues and we're constantly reviewing the way we operate and the policies we have in place. Anyone is welcome to reach out to me via Private Message at any time. I will always take the time to read and understand your concerns and where there are places we can make immediate improvements they'll be made and where there are places where we need to look at issues they'll be looked at, but it's very important to understand that we are still a very large, very active and very popular website and there is a lot going on that means we have to make incremental and carefully considered improvements.
On a personal note: I started this forum when I was a clueless teenager who had no experience managing people, no experience managing websites and certainly was not best placed to be responsible for a forum that would experience unprecedented growth[1], but that's what happened. We've come a long way since then and I believe that we have improved a significantly in the last few years, and while we do have some way to go to get the forum to where I want it to be I think we're on the right path and given time we'll get there. I know that doesn't mean much to you, all that matters to you is if the forum is good or not, which I completely understand, so I hope this post has helped you understand that we want the forum to be good for you too and we're doing what we can to get it there.
Please do Private Message me any time with your thoughts or concerns, I can't promise every idea you have will be implemented but I can promise I will take the time to understand what you've put forward and see what can be done. If you have a great idea that aligns with what we believe to be right for the forum we will do what we can to run with it.
[1] As far as I know no other forum has ever experienced the growth rate we experienced in the early years of the forum.
Edited to add the following:
Final thing I'd like to add is that a good moderator is one who follows policy, and if a moderator is doing something you perceive to be bad it's probably because you disagree with forum policy rather than the moderator, and that means you should consider why that might be forum policy and discuss your concerns with the policy rather than the moderator. "sunperp is a bad moderator" is unhelpful (and definitely untrue, I routinely come into contact with his moderation work and it's always very good) but "I was warned about posting off topic, but I don't think it was off topic, I think this policy needs to be reviewed" is helpful and something we can look at. I know that to a member it's one and the same but if you're someone who wants to help improve the forum this distinction will help you better discuss with us. An individual moderator might have made a mistake (and in that case you can PM me, or file an appeal[2]) but usually the issue is forum policy.
[2] The appeal system is an example of our commitment to ensuring good administration: policy dictates that someone independent of the warning must handle the appeal, for example if you appeal a warning I have given you it will not be me who handles the appeal.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and hopefully this post gives you a better insight into the way the forum is operated and will give you some of the information you need to better present your thoughts / feelings on what could improve the forum.
At nearly any job you don't respond to a customer, even one that is complaining, with the sneering contempt you displayed here. You would never say "Please, if I was so bad for the job, why don't you go find what I did wrong. I'll wait."
You're accusing me of doing my former job wrong. I'm perfectly entitled to respond, and since I'm retired I don't have to respond in a professional manner. While I was an admin, would I have responded like that? Probably not, but I'm not an admin anymore.
If you walk up to a person who retired from being a manager at WalMart, told them they were doing their job wrong because they got moved up too fast and weren't properly trained, do you think they're going to respond professionally? I don't, they don't have to. I'm fairly sarcastic an snarky in person, so I'd respond the same way. "Haha, do you have any proof of that?" Same thing here. I'm not staff, I don't have to behave in a professional manner at all times of my life just because at one time I was a forum admin.
As for being retired staff, technically you were never "staff" if you were never paid. That also speaks to the overblown sense of purpose forum moderators have, as if this were an Engineering or C-suite position. It's not. Interns have more authority and rights to call themselves "staff" than forum moderators.
We call ourselves staff, we call moderators staff, and we call those who retire "retired staff". It isn't an overblown sense of purpose, just an easy to use word that fits well enough.
Hey, I'm sorry if you took personal offense, but I was talking about moderators in general, and you and the others stepped in and made yourselves Exhibit A, B and C. That was probably not a wise thing to do, since with each post, you show -- again and again -- the very traits I was talking about, including a complete lack of awareness of customer perception.
Now who's showing an overblown ego? No, I didn't take personal offense, yes I disagree, so I responded. Time and time again, I need to repeat, I am not staff. Time and time again, I seem to have to explain how moderators don't need to concern themselves with site hits, traffic, etc. they only need to concern themselves with their job. You also quote my post in a way to misrepresent what I was saying, and set it up to seem like I'm responding to something I wasn't is intentionally misleading.
I think that's the core of the problem: moderators don't view forum guests as "customers." They treat them like ungrateful cattle, and no one ever trains moderators about the relationship between the site guests and how without them, the site disappears. When that happens, then the moderators disappear too, and you allbecome "retired staff."
No, you aren't treated like "ungrateful cattle". People are responding and discussing things with you. If you were ungrateful cattle to us, my post would have been "shut up and do as you're told". That, even if I'm not staff, isn't something I would do.
If I didn't care at all, I wouldn't respond, but you're taking disagreeing as poor treatment of customers. That's simply untrue. We're responding because we disagree and if we can find mutual ground, that's what would be best. How you're acting, however, is very abrasive and is going to elicit more passionate responses because you're telling all of us that 1) You're bad/were bad at your job 2) If we reply with anything but "Yes, I'll take that into consideration", we're bad at our job/former job.
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It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
Responding to criticsquid, but I won't quote it (because of length)
Thanks for chiming in. Again, it is a shame that we don't have this level of moderator attention unless the conversation is aboutthe moderators, but I'll take what I can get.
I really hate to belabor the "deleted post" argument because it appears childish and obsessive. I generally have a thick skin about these things, and am only raising it because it provides an excellent illustration of what I am talking about. I've been here since 2012 and have faced a handful of deleted posts and warnings, and not griped all that much. (I swore once, so I had that coming, for example.) But you have wrongly paraphrased my comments regarding Sunperp, and that's troubling. First, you claim I said "sunperp is a bad moderator" which is utterly false. I provided an explanation of what happened: someone posted a question asking why people don't like 1.9, and I posted an article explaining Microsoft's involvement in 1.9, and offered that as a possible answer. I was directly answering the OP's question, and it was entirely on-topic. Nevertheless, Sunperp deleted my comment and warned the group only afterward. I received no private warning, no opportunity to edit the post... it was just deleted. Poof.
Next you advised me to report it, without knowing that I did exactly that. Better yet, I did it in the exact manner you suggested. First, I posted on the forum to Sunperp and gave a calm explanation of why I felt his decision to arbitrarily delete my post was wrong. I even reviewed my post against both the Discussion Forum rules and the Global rules. You can see my post to him here. Sunperp dug his heels in and insisted it was off-topic, ignoring the rules I had quoted him.
Knowing I was now facing a ban for simply discussing a deleted post, I reported both of Sunperp's posts and provided a similar explanation, requesting that the admins look into it and either counsel Sunperp not to invent rules that are not documented, or to have the site modify the rules so users were informed. I provided TWO possible options, to give the site the benefit of the doubt. Nothing happened.
Then, I took the post that Sunperp deleted (which I fortunately had saved) and opened another thread, here, thereby trying to maintain my thought without disrupting the original thread (and get myself banned). You can clearly see there was nothing in the least bit controversial about it, and in fact, it was utterly on-topic with the original thread. Had I not kept the post, it would have been lost.
So I literally did everything according to your suggestion (because I am a professional and an adult, not a child, and have run commercial forums myself), and yet you've chosen to comment -- without knowing the details -- and take a default posture that I was merely griping "sunperp is a bad moderator" and dismiss it as "it's probably because you disagree with forum policy rather than the moderator." Neither statement is true.
I also cannot fathom how any moderator, such as Sunperp, can look at the history of users like Grimallq and not take action. I've been here since 2012 and eventually had to ignore him because his insults and condescension ruin every thread he joined, and he joins every thread. There's no escaping him. And of course, he's not the only one.
But this default posture -- to defend the moderators, and ignore overt evidence of bad behavior -- is the exact problem I am discussing. It's not unique to this forum, it's a problem in nearly every forum which relies on volunteer staff.
The one thing you should take away from this discussion -- and you don't even have to publicly acknowledge it, but just do it in private -- is that forum users are paying customers. You were able to transition your original "teenage" forum into this massive enterprise for one reason only: the customers. This simple idea will then put you on track to begin to study customer satisfaction and customer retention, and allow you to maintain the site for decades to come (God willing) and not have it devolve into a Reddit troll-frenzy (or worse, simply be replaced by Reddit entirely.) This means training your moderators on the points I suggested: understanding how their actions affect customers, and how those customers relate to Mojang sales, Curse ad revenue, etc. It means providing actual training, not quickie training followed by observation, since all observation does is verify the quickie training.
I would also suggest paying mods as employees, rather than using volunteers, so that training is justified and enforceable, as well as uniform. By offering pay you can attract a better quality of applicant for moderators, and thus reduce your moderator turnover, and increase retention. With the level of users this site has (4 million??) the ad revenue should be able to handle it, even with server costs. If not, something's wrong.
Finally, there should be some sort of "How are we doing?" outreach to forum users, either through a survey or some other means, so you can start gathering aggregate customer satisfaction feedback data. This forum is already a database, so the back end already exists.
I see Beltir just posted, so I'm gearing up for another flame. Ugh.
You're accusing me of doing my former job wrong. I'm perfectly entitled to respond, and since I'm retired I don't have to respond in a professional manner.
Which proves my point that some users are "protected" since you admit as much that you can flame with impunity. In the professional world, we call this "cronyism."
Time and time again, I need to repeat, I am not staff.
Go back and read the thread. You said it once and I then acknowledged it.
Time and time again, I seem to have to explain how moderators don't need to concern themselves with site hits, traffic, etc. they only need to concern themselves with their job.
Wrong, but that's the point. So long as you don't know the moderator relationship is between a customer and a vendor, they will always get it wrong. So this proves that whatever training you did get was off the mark, as I said.
If I didn't care at all, I wouldn't respond, but you're taking disagreeing as poor treatment of customers. That's simply untrue. We're responding because we disagree and if we can find mutual ground, that's what would be best. How you're acting, however, is very abrasive and is going to elicit more passionate responses because you're telling all of us that 1) You're bad/were bad at your job 2) If we reply with anything but "Yes, I'll take that into consideration", we're bad at our job/former job.
The "abrasive" comment also reveals the trick here. Rather than discuss the issue, you take offense to the tone, and then use that as an excuse to attack. The thing is, a moderator should know better -- so should a "retired" moderator.
I train organizations for a living. I've done so for decades, including for people who you've seen on the cover of Wired and giving TED talks and people you wouldn't imagine. In every case, I teach them that they need to respond politely, calmly and professionally no matter how the customer complains. In every class someone chimes in with the exact same argument, that the complainant should be calm and professional and respectful, otherwise all bets are off. And always, those people flunk out, and the CEO's rain scorn on them for "not getting it." Yes, sometimes they lose their jobs.
What you want, however, is for the mods to do whatever they like, and then for the CUSTOMERS to be calm and polite when discussing bad mod behavior, otherwise they get what they deserve, and you can call them "abrasive". It's so backwards, it's like a Bizarro world version of a customer retention seminar, where the customers get shot in the face at the end of the day. In my seminars I call it the Paul Cristoforo School of Customer Retention, and we know what happened to him.
No, mods have to be on their best behaviour ALWAYS. Without exception, even when people are complaining. That's how it works. That's what drives the money and ensures they have a site to moderate. Without that, there are no moderators, there are no forums, and you don't get to lecture anyone on your experience, because you would have never had it to begin with.
Your posts remain indicative of the depths of the problem. You should be caring about retaining me as a customer, but instead it's all about protecting your fiefdom, your personal reputation, and your tiny little power base.
Thank you for your response. I miscommunicated in part of my post, I wasn't responding to your specific issue with the moderation of sunperp (I have not yet looked into it because I couldn't find it in your most recent posts and have a number of things to get squared away today before spending much time on new tasks), I was using an example of how criticism can be more valuable to us because if you assume a moderator is following policy (which they are almost always) and in the minority of cases where they aren't we will find that out when looking into the concerns you've raised. That said I muddied the waters by mentioning that sunperp is a good moderator, in hindsight that was a mistake, sorry about that. I will look into your specific issue tomorrow, but at a quick glance I don't see any reports on the posts you've linked by sunperp, although I might be misunderstanding what you've explained here -- if I am then a PM containing a short summary for me to start from tomorrow would be greatly appreciated.
Something worth noting: moderators cannot issue bans, they can only issue warnings. Warnings (as outlined in the rules) have points associated with them which can result in bans, but this is an automated system that moderators have no control over. A moderator picks the applicable warning from a list (eg: "Off Topic") which has predefined properties (1 point, a Private Message notification) that are used when the warning is issued. Also if a warning is issued you have the option to appeal (and the same option exists on bans). This is information we should make more clear (we have an improved FAQ project in the pipeline), one of the things we're working on at the moment is improving transparency between staff and members.
If there is a member causing you concern please use the report system, you can report anyone via their profile and these reports are managed by administrators. It's very helpful for us to be able to see how people are impacting other members, and while in an ideal world (and hopefully someday soon) we would be able to take the time to proactively moderate the forum and find people causing issues we don't have the resources to right now, and reports are an essential part of our moderation. As outlined in my previous post we have a process for handling trouble members so reports of them are something we can deal with.
I do broadly agree with the idea that our members are customers and there's things we can do to improve the relationship between members and staff but I also believe it's important that moderators do not have any vested interest in helping this forum maximise sales for Mojang or ad revenue. The moment moderators are instructed to act in the best interests of the businesses this forum impacts is the moment we start making decisions that are not in the best interests of our members. There are decisions we've made in the past that I believe were the right decisions that would not have been made if page views or Minecraft sales were the bottom line.
Outreach is definitely something we need to be doing but I'm very conscious of the reality that we're currently catching up to where we need to be (and we have a clear understanding of the state we're working towards) which means any outreach we do is going to have a big caveat: we can't do what you want yet, because we have bigger priorities, and I know that as a user of other websites it's very frustrating to be told that your opinion is wanted and to invest time on that basis and then to discover nothing is going to happen, it feels like it's all for show and disrespectful. If there's a middle ground we can definitely look into it until such a time that we can make commitments, for example we could perhaps have a monthly "What's happening with the forum" type thread that communicates what's happening behind the scenes?
Which proves my point that some users are "protected" since you admit as much that you can flame with impunity. In the professional world, we call this "cronyism."
No, I didn't say that at all. Not responding professionally does not mean flaming. I haven't insulted you at all. If I flame someone, I'll still get an infraction. Doesn't matter that I was a mod or was an admin.
The time and time again isn't specifically at you, but I do admit I should have been more clear on that one since I do reuse the same words. For that I do apologize for my lack of clarity. In many occasions, I've had to clarify that I am not staff anymore, and my responses are not official statements.
Additionally, I'm not attacking you. I'm disagreeing with you, and then you make assumptions that I do not support or agree with and argue those. Much like I disagree with you saying that mods should be concerned with maximizing traffic. I disagree, site admins should be concerned with traffic, telling forum admins to make changes where necessary, which are passed onto moderators. Mods themselves should be concerned with anything beyond their job (which includes what the forum admins and site admins tell them).
No, mods shouldn't get away with anything, they should be held to the same exact rules as everyone else, with the addition of a reminder that because of their title, what they say can and will be read as official in nearly every capacity.
I also don't have a power base. I post here infrequently, normally I don't get into long posts like this because I don't have the time, but I felt like responding to you in short form wouldn't be ideal either, as I thought you'd likely feel I wasn't reading your entire post or were just quickly reacting to a single snip and not reading the context.
Also, seeing as how I am not staff, why should my concern be specifically be retaining you as a customer?
Edit:
I see Beltir just posted, so I'm gearing up for another flame. Ugh.
I do not see what I am doing as flaming, but very well, I will stop. Didn't see this before I had already made this post. Sorry if you did not want to continue the discussion, I will not respond further.
Sometimes, my posts get deleted, and no-one tells me why they were deleted in the first place. Even worse, they're discussions about things that no-one even bothers to talk about, but I find interesting myself, eg. when I posted about why Mojang were too slow to update, my post that created the thread was deleted for no apparent reason (could be because of a one-line post that I made straight after, but that post should have been deleted instead or moved to the initial post of that thread). It was as if I never typed up that post.
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4 years ago, I started played MCPE/Minecraft in general. Now, I have MCPC, and I'm still not bored of the blocky sandbox indie. Cuz awesomeness! Got a problem with that?
Sometimes, my posts get deleted, and no-one tells me why they were deleted in the first place. Even worse, they're discussions about things that no-one even bothers to talk about, but I find interesting myself, eg. when I posted about why Mojang were too slow to update, my post that created the thread was deleted for no apparent reason (could be because of a one-line post that I made straight after, but that post should have been deleted instead or moved to the initial post of that thread). It was as if I never typed up that post.
Maybe it's because that spam filter. No mods should do that.
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I'm a programmer. I use C/C++, BASIC, Assembly, and Python. If i sound too technicial, that's because it's the way i think.
Sometimes, my posts get deleted, and no-one tells me why they were deleted in the first place. Even worse, they're discussions about things that no-one even bothers to talk about, but I find interesting myself, eg. when I posted about why Mojang were too slow to update, my post that created the thread was deleted for no apparent reason (could be because of a one-line post that I made straight after, but that post should have been deleted instead or moved to the initial post of that thread). It was as if I never typed up that post.
You may have occasional posts which are deleted if you are replying to a post which gets deleted or one of the parent posts in your reply thread gets deleted. The forum staff are generally required to clean up subsequent replies to posts which are deleted. We will not notify people if their post is deleted unless they are being issued a forum rule warning or reminder.
You may have occasional posts which are deleted if you are replying to a post which gets deleted or one of the parent posts in your reply thread gets deleted. The forum staff are generally required to clean up subsequent replies to posts which are deleted. We will not notify people if their post is deleted unless they are being issued a forum rule warning or reminder.
- sunperp
Edit: Wow, my grammar in this post is terrible.
That post was the OP that created the thread.
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4 years ago, I started played MCPE/Minecraft in general. Now, I have MCPC, and I'm still not bored of the blocky sandbox indie. Cuz awesomeness! Got a problem with that?
I'm not sure if it is exactly dead, more likely that the experienced players left, and the later noob-ish ones have taken their place; so quality has gone down.
I didn't mean to turn this thread into a discussion about moderators, although by mentioning them in the least, it typically results in thin-skinne, defensive posts by mods themselves. (See above). But let me ask you this: they made you a mod and two months later you were a forum Admin. What training did you receive? Any at all? My guess is that this forum, like nearly every other forum, has no formal training program at all for moderators, since it's an unpaid volunteer position, and as such it's largely dismissed as not something the site owners are going to spend money on.
As a result, volunteers with no training are instantly given a position of authority. That combination attracts a certain type of person (in general, as I said, there are some very nice mods here) that is drawn to authority, but who lacks the temperament for concern about paying customers. So you have mods acting as "control freaks" forgetting, nearly universally, that the people they are controlling are the customers of Mojang, have spent money on the product, and are likely to keep spending money in the future. Alienating them through aggressive moderation and posts that complain about forum users (see your "mentality" gripe above) works against the basic business model, and increases the risk that Mojang will lose customers. It means Curse loses more -- it loses those valuable site hits, and thus ad revenue.
Mods nearly never connect the dots. They don't think "if I am overly aggressive, or openly dismissive of forum users, we may lose them as a customer, and our site revenue will drop." Instead, it's typically a personal thing, "mods have to deal with idiots, you don't understand." To which I say, if you don't like dealing with people, don't become a mod. Simple.
It takes a specific skillset and temperament to moderate a forum board. You don't throw people in and then "two months later" give them promotions to Admins. That's just the site owner (Curse) ripping off the mods themselves, by exploiting their willingness to do free work. It never works out.
I literally just had a huge post deleted for a rule invented entirely out of thin air. It wasn't flaming, it was just deemed "off-topic" and erased, even though the post discussed (at length) the exact topic at hand. Fortunately I kept a copy, and was able to repost it elsewhere. But the mod didn't care that he took something of mine, that took some time to write, and simply erased it. Then, of course, discussing the deleted post risked further deletions (and eventual ban) because talking about the deletion WAS off-topic. So I was forced to shut up. I reported it to the Admin, but nothing was done.
This kind of thing makes me not want to come back. It puts a bad taste in my mouth about Mojang and Curse. It makes me resent giving them my money and my site hits.
How many other people felt this way, and abandoned this site? That's my point.
Moderators coming here and posting a defense of their actions won't help. Instead, the site management needs to take a careful, introspective look at what its own staff are doing to alienate people, and if that has an impact on the decline of the site overall.
Was it the guy with the gmod profile pic? I'v had bad experiences with him. So yes, I do think there are some bad mods/admins, however there are plenty of great ones too, including Citric, who does a great job as owner.
So yes, I do think there are some bad mods/admins, however there are plenty of great ones too, including Citric, who does a great job as owner.
I suspect you're on their good side. You're the guy who posted that children using this forum should post their personally identifying information, and the mods didn't even blink. In fact, your posts are a hotbed of personal attacks, trollposts, and more. And yet you survive and thrive.
I get that being "edgy" is hipster cool, but giving potentially LETHAL advice to children is a bridge too far. You should have been permabanned.
We will not notify people if their post is deleted unless they are being issued a forum rule warning or reminder.
And this is why your forum is dying.
This is what I am talking about. It's like watching a local school board. Everyone acts like a Senator, because it's as much power as they will ever get. The self-appointed authorities run roughshod over basic decency, but all while sounding very nonchalant, very bland, and very official. Meanwhile, there's no policy to support their decisions, and it all works against the interests of the paying customers.
The great thing about deleting posts without notifying anyone is that the poster may not even know his post was deleted, so can't report it to an Admin. Then the Admins operate under the false assumption that everything is fine, since no one is reporting the Mods' bad behavior. Good arrangement, if you're a Mod.
So long as moderators can delete posts at will, not notify the poster, and then cite made-up rules when confronted, this forum will be nothing more than a Reddit or 4Chan clone, but without the traffic and ad revenue. Because having a meaningful discussion is secondary (tertiary?) to whatever mood the mod happens to be in on that day.
By the way, even after reporting sunperp's actions (through the official channels, TWICE) and even AFTER talking about it here, and even after the owner of the site weighed in, the Admins have done nothing, and sunperp is still openly advocating for the same behavior. So all this talk about reporting Mod misbehavior to Admins is, of course, a placebo. Once someone is put into the Mod circle, they are answerable to no one, and no meaningless quoting of "rules for moderators" is going to convince anyone otherwise.
I said:
Beltir said:
This is the typical moderator contempt of the customer that reveals the entire problem.
As for your training, let's take a look. By your own admission, you were given the job because (1) you had to replace someone else, (2) you had the time to do it. Meaning the topmost qualification was that you showed up.
You then kept the job because you were able to get through a backlog of 600 posts, which raises questions about the quality of the work you did, seeing as how you were basically rushing a pile of overdue work. That perfectly summarizes the typical "volunteer position" problems, in that people are given authority based on their willingness to do the work, not their ability to do the work. Then, provided they simply don't quit, they get to keep the job.
Relative to ability, you said you had to read three threads, and had a discussion. That's it. Then you underwent observation. Observation is not training, it's observation. No training on relation to the customer, no training on how your work may impact on revenue, no training on site hits or web views, nothing.
(I never said anything about going to school, that's just more snarky straw man silliness.)
I am sure that any training at all seemed like it was something, since most forums don't do that much. But to anyone from the outside, it's woefully inadequate.
Then of course, there's this, which tells us everything about the antisocial nature of moderators and the lack of the most basic training in customer service:
Again, if you were a $5/hour McDonalds burger flipper, you'd be fired by now.
Let me end by quoting myself, with something that quickly turned prescient:
That quote was responding to something else. I don't have contempt for customers, but trying to take something out of context and stripping the last sentence to make it seem like I'm targeting a specific group over giving a comparison of two difference groups that no matter what we do with the rules, there will be a group that doesn't like it and says we're doing our job wrong doesn't really do much to help.
"1) Volunteered to help take care of a massive back log, cleaning nearly 600 reports myself in one night (I think that's around the number), which included multiple page problems.
2) Volunteered to assist in multiple sections which they did not have enough staff.
3) Did my job without need of correction.
4) Spent many, many, many hours nearly every day on the forums, almost exclusively moderating until the report levels at a low number.
5) A forum admin had to quit due to health reasons, and I was the best fit to cover his position."
Yeah, there was more to it. See 1 and 3. More of a "quantity and quality" than simply time.
No, I didn't keep forum admin because I went through the back log. This happened before I was forum admin. As for quality, no I didn't have a quality issue at all, and 600 reports, not 600 posts. You're making assumptions based on what? Maybe you should know I spent nearly 12 hours doing just that. It wasn't rushing, not by my standard. Again, I did all of that without a single incident of quality, yet you're questioning the quality?
If a moderator can't do the work, they don't just get to keep it. I've fired people from moderator position for not doing the work, for doing the work wrong, or for abusing their power in any way.
Again, because a mod shouldn't be concerned with that. They should be concerned with the job they're doing, not the website itself. My job was to enforce the rules as fairly as I can to every person and every report. That's what the training was for.
Which is why that was a mere mention to make sure I am being clear. No, I wasn't trained via a school or something, everything was done on site. Read material on how to do my job, read material on what to/not to do, read material on additional information. At the time, then I talked to an admin about it, asked questions, then was told go ahead and get started, and any time I wasn't entirely sure, I was to ask how to handle it.
Later, when I was admin, I added a requirement of me or a specific other person if I was too busy with something else to walk through a report with them. It isn't how I was trained, but it is how I thought it could be improved. Again, even after the walkthrough with me, I told them if they are unsure at all, just ask, don't go with their gut unless they're 100% sure.
1) I'm not staff anymore, I'm retired.
2) Fired for what? For telling someone I wasn't just "given" something? For asking them to find where I made such a major mistake, since they're telling me that I must have been doing my job wrong? So no, I wouldn't be fired. The customer isn't always right and doesn't get what they want just because they said it.
3) Yeah, what do you want me to do? I'm not a mod, so I can't do mod stuff. I'm not an admin, so I can't do admin stuff. I'm effectively the same as a member, so I can do member stuff, including replying to things I want to reply to. The things I wanted to reply to are things I disagree with, which happens to have been your post.
As for not wanting to make this about mods, your entire first post is about how the mods are driving away customers. I disagreed and responded as a member with prior experience of being a mod/admin not as a mod or admin. Instead of responding to how aggressive moderation is actually effecting traffic and revenue (since I don't have the numbers it would be pointless for me to respond to those), I address your points specifically.
You have a weird view of what deserves people get fired over. In most jobs, complaints don't go directly to the person being complained about, and if they do, that person is told to tell them to go to the proper people to file complaints. They aren't supposed to handle it, they're told to ignore it and direct them to the proper place.
It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
At nearly any job you don't respond to a customer, even one that is complaining, with the sneering contempt you displayed here. You would never say "Please, if I was so bad for the job, why don't you go find what I did wrong. I'll wait."
As for being retired staff, technically you were never "staff" if you were never paid. That also speaks to the overblown sense of purpose forum moderators have, as if this were an Engineering or C-suite position. It's not. Interns have more authority and rights to call themselves "staff" than forum moderators.
Hey, I'm sorry if you took personal offense, but I was talking about moderators in general, and you and the others stepped in and made yourselves Exhibit A, B and C. That was probably not a wise thing to do, since with each post, you show -- again and again -- the very traits I was talking about, including a complete lack of awareness of customer perception.
I think that's the core of the problem: moderators don't view forum guests as "customers." They treat them like ungrateful cattle, and no one ever trains moderators about the relationship between the site guests and how without them, the site disappears. When that happens, then the moderators disappear too, and you all become "retired staff."
As others are discussing with you other points you've made I'm going to focus on the quoted points. Staff here (as a group) do not believe that the users here are idiots and if there was any indication that a staff member was acting with contempt towards members then we would talk with that staff member and if required they would be removed from their position. The staff of this forum are here to make the forum the best it can for our members, without the members of this forum we would not exist.
I think roughly a year ago (maybe 18 months) we instituted a policy to deal with problematic members who behave in a manner that compromises the experience of other members, this policy involves something called "Member Administrative Reviews". Member Administrative Reviews (or MARs as we call them) are a process where any member of staff can raise concerns about a member and then we discuss them as a team and make decisions about their presence here, for example the result could be that the member is banned from the forum for 30 days and put on a "final warning" (meaning any subsequent warnings automatically come with a 30 day posting suspension and another MAR) or it could mean that they're permanently banned from the forum. This policy is working very well for us and we recently expanded it into any form of permanent action too, meaning a single administrator cannot permanently ban a member without first going through a MAR. The issue you've raised is something we do take seriously, and unfortunately we're not completely on top of all problem members at the moment because of limited moderation capacity. If you believe a member is causing consistent issues please report them (via the Report button on their profile) and we'll look into it.
Moderation capacity is an issue that ties into another comment you've made, previously we have hired new moderators and given them "training" in the form of one to one instruction with their Forum Administrator however we are reworking this process and investigating new methods to greatly improve the onboarding process, which involves a complete rework of all the information we present to moderators. This process is essential to ensure that when we hire more moderators (in the near future I hope) they come to the forum with a clear understanding of their role and how best they can serve the forum. Although I'm confident in the moderation staff we have now and their ability to serve the forum and the majority of our current staff have been here for many years, which should demonstrate both their commitment and ability.
This forum isn't perfect and there's always room to improve but we aren't sitting back and considering it a done job, we make a serious effort towards improving process when we become aware of issues and we're constantly reviewing the way we operate and the policies we have in place. Anyone is welcome to reach out to me via Private Message at any time. I will always take the time to read and understand your concerns and where there are places we can make immediate improvements they'll be made and where there are places where we need to look at issues they'll be looked at, but it's very important to understand that we are still a very large, very active and very popular website and there is a lot going on that means we have to make incremental and carefully considered improvements.
On a personal note: I started this forum when I was a clueless teenager who had no experience managing people, no experience managing websites and certainly was not best placed to be responsible for a forum that would experience unprecedented growth[1], but that's what happened. We've come a long way since then and I believe that we have improved a significantly in the last few years, and while we do have some way to go to get the forum to where I want it to be I think we're on the right path and given time we'll get there. I know that doesn't mean much to you, all that matters to you is if the forum is good or not, which I completely understand, so I hope this post has helped you understand that we want the forum to be good for you too and we're doing what we can to get it there.
Please do Private Message me any time with your thoughts or concerns, I can't promise every idea you have will be implemented but I can promise I will take the time to understand what you've put forward and see what can be done. If you have a great idea that aligns with what we believe to be right for the forum we will do what we can to run with it.
[1] As far as I know no other forum has ever experienced the growth rate we experienced in the early years of the forum.
Edited to add the following:
Final thing I'd like to add is that a good moderator is one who follows policy, and if a moderator is doing something you perceive to be bad it's probably because you disagree with forum policy rather than the moderator, and that means you should consider why that might be forum policy and discuss your concerns with the policy rather than the moderator. "sunperp is a bad moderator" is unhelpful (and definitely untrue, I routinely come into contact with his moderation work and it's always very good) but "I was warned about posting off topic, but I don't think it was off topic, I think this policy needs to be reviewed" is helpful and something we can look at. I know that to a member it's one and the same but if you're someone who wants to help improve the forum this distinction will help you better discuss with us. An individual moderator might have made a mistake (and in that case you can PM me, or file an appeal[2]) but usually the issue is forum policy.
[2] The appeal system is an example of our commitment to ensuring good administration: policy dictates that someone independent of the warning must handle the appeal, for example if you appeal a warning I have given you it will not be me who handles the appeal.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and hopefully this post gives you a better insight into the way the forum is operated and will give you some of the information you need to better present your thoughts / feelings on what could improve the forum.
You're accusing me of doing my former job wrong. I'm perfectly entitled to respond, and since I'm retired I don't have to respond in a professional manner. While I was an admin, would I have responded like that? Probably not, but I'm not an admin anymore.
If you walk up to a person who retired from being a manager at WalMart, told them they were doing their job wrong because they got moved up too fast and weren't properly trained, do you think they're going to respond professionally? I don't, they don't have to. I'm fairly sarcastic an snarky in person, so I'd respond the same way. "Haha, do you have any proof of that?" Same thing here. I'm not staff, I don't have to behave in a professional manner at all times of my life just because at one time I was a forum admin.
We call ourselves staff, we call moderators staff, and we call those who retire "retired staff". It isn't an overblown sense of purpose, just an easy to use word that fits well enough.
Now who's showing an overblown ego? No, I didn't take personal offense, yes I disagree, so I responded. Time and time again, I need to repeat, I am not staff. Time and time again, I seem to have to explain how moderators don't need to concern themselves with site hits, traffic, etc. they only need to concern themselves with their job. You also quote my post in a way to misrepresent what I was saying, and set it up to seem like I'm responding to something I wasn't is intentionally misleading.
No, you aren't treated like "ungrateful cattle". People are responding and discussing things with you. If you were ungrateful cattle to us, my post would have been "shut up and do as you're told". That, even if I'm not staff, isn't something I would do.
If I didn't care at all, I wouldn't respond, but you're taking disagreeing as poor treatment of customers. That's simply untrue. We're responding because we disagree and if we can find mutual ground, that's what would be best. How you're acting, however, is very abrasive and is going to elicit more passionate responses because you're telling all of us that 1) You're bad/were bad at your job 2) If we reply with anything but "Yes, I'll take that into consideration", we're bad at our job/former job.
It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
Responding to criticsquid, but I won't quote it (because of length)
Thanks for chiming in. Again, it is a shame that we don't have this level of moderator attention unless the conversation is about the moderators, but I'll take what I can get.
I really hate to belabor the "deleted post" argument because it appears childish and obsessive. I generally have a thick skin about these things, and am only raising it because it provides an excellent illustration of what I am talking about. I've been here since 2012 and have faced a handful of deleted posts and warnings, and not griped all that much. (I swore once, so I had that coming, for example.) But you have wrongly paraphrased my comments regarding Sunperp, and that's troubling. First, you claim I said "sunperp is a bad moderator" which is utterly false. I provided an explanation of what happened: someone posted a question asking why people don't like 1.9, and I posted an article explaining Microsoft's involvement in 1.9, and offered that as a possible answer. I was directly answering the OP's question, and it was entirely on-topic. Nevertheless, Sunperp deleted my comment and warned the group only afterward. I received no private warning, no opportunity to edit the post... it was just deleted. Poof.
Next you advised me to report it, without knowing that I did exactly that. Better yet, I did it in the exact manner you suggested. First, I posted on the forum to Sunperp and gave a calm explanation of why I felt his decision to arbitrarily delete my post was wrong. I even reviewed my post against both the Discussion Forum rules and the Global rules. You can see my post to him here. Sunperp dug his heels in and insisted it was off-topic, ignoring the rules I had quoted him.
Knowing I was now facing a ban for simply discussing a deleted post, I reported both of Sunperp's posts and provided a similar explanation, requesting that the admins look into it and either counsel Sunperp not to invent rules that are not documented, or to have the site modify the rules so users were informed. I provided TWO possible options, to give the site the benefit of the doubt. Nothing happened.
Then, I took the post that Sunperp deleted (which I fortunately had saved) and opened another thread, here, thereby trying to maintain my thought without disrupting the original thread (and get myself banned). You can clearly see there was nothing in the least bit controversial about it, and in fact, it was utterly on-topic with the original thread. Had I not kept the post, it would have been lost.
So I literally did everything according to your suggestion (because I am a professional and an adult, not a child, and have run commercial forums myself), and yet you've chosen to comment -- without knowing the details -- and take a default posture that I was merely griping "sunperp is a bad moderator" and dismiss it as "it's probably because you disagree with forum policy rather than the moderator." Neither statement is true.
I also cannot fathom how any moderator, such as Sunperp, can look at the history of users like Grimallq and not take action. I've been here since 2012 and eventually had to ignore him because his insults and condescension ruin every thread he joined, and he joins every thread. There's no escaping him. And of course, he's not the only one.
But this default posture -- to defend the moderators, and ignore overt evidence of bad behavior -- is the exact problem I am discussing. It's not unique to this forum, it's a problem in nearly every forum which relies on volunteer staff.
The one thing you should take away from this discussion -- and you don't even have to publicly acknowledge it, but just do it in private -- is that forum users are paying customers. You were able to transition your original "teenage" forum into this massive enterprise for one reason only: the customers. This simple idea will then put you on track to begin to study customer satisfaction and customer retention, and allow you to maintain the site for decades to come (God willing) and not have it devolve into a Reddit troll-frenzy (or worse, simply be replaced by Reddit entirely.) This means training your moderators on the points I suggested: understanding how their actions affect customers, and how those customers relate to Mojang sales, Curse ad revenue, etc. It means providing actual training, not quickie training followed by observation, since all observation does is verify the quickie training.
I would also suggest paying mods as employees, rather than using volunteers, so that training is justified and enforceable, as well as uniform. By offering pay you can attract a better quality of applicant for moderators, and thus reduce your moderator turnover, and increase retention. With the level of users this site has (4 million??) the ad revenue should be able to handle it, even with server costs. If not, something's wrong.
Finally, there should be some sort of "How are we doing?" outreach to forum users, either through a survey or some other means, so you can start gathering aggregate customer satisfaction feedback data. This forum is already a database, so the back end already exists.
I see Beltir just posted, so I'm gearing up for another flame. Ugh.
Which proves my point that some users are "protected" since you admit as much that you can flame with impunity. In the professional world, we call this "cronyism."
Go back and read the thread. You said it once and I then acknowledged it.
Wrong, but that's the point. So long as you don't know the moderator relationship is between a customer and a vendor, they will always get it wrong. So this proves that whatever training you did get was off the mark, as I said.
The "abrasive" comment also reveals the trick here. Rather than discuss the issue, you take offense to the tone, and then use that as an excuse to attack. The thing is, a moderator should know better -- so should a "retired" moderator.
I train organizations for a living. I've done so for decades, including for people who you've seen on the cover of Wired and giving TED talks and people you wouldn't imagine. In every case, I teach them that they need to respond politely, calmly and professionally no matter how the customer complains. In every class someone chimes in with the exact same argument, that the complainant should be calm and professional and respectful, otherwise all bets are off. And always, those people flunk out, and the CEO's rain scorn on them for "not getting it." Yes, sometimes they lose their jobs.
What you want, however, is for the mods to do whatever they like, and then for the CUSTOMERS to be calm and polite when discussing bad mod behavior, otherwise they get what they deserve, and you can call them "abrasive". It's so backwards, it's like a Bizarro world version of a customer retention seminar, where the customers get shot in the face at the end of the day. In my seminars I call it the Paul Cristoforo School of Customer Retention, and we know what happened to him.
No, mods have to be on their best behaviour ALWAYS. Without exception, even when people are complaining. That's how it works. That's what drives the money and ensures they have a site to moderate. Without that, there are no moderators, there are no forums, and you don't get to lecture anyone on your experience, because you would have never had it to begin with.
Your posts remain indicative of the depths of the problem. You should be caring about retaining me as a customer, but instead it's all about protecting your fiefdom, your personal reputation, and your tiny little power base.
Thank you for your response. I miscommunicated in part of my post, I wasn't responding to your specific issue with the moderation of sunperp (I have not yet looked into it because I couldn't find it in your most recent posts and have a number of things to get squared away today before spending much time on new tasks), I was using an example of how criticism can be more valuable to us because if you assume a moderator is following policy (which they are almost always) and in the minority of cases where they aren't we will find that out when looking into the concerns you've raised. That said I muddied the waters by mentioning that sunperp is a good moderator, in hindsight that was a mistake, sorry about that. I will look into your specific issue tomorrow, but at a quick glance I don't see any reports on the posts you've linked by sunperp, although I might be misunderstanding what you've explained here -- if I am then a PM containing a short summary for me to start from tomorrow would be greatly appreciated.
Something worth noting: moderators cannot issue bans, they can only issue warnings. Warnings (as outlined in the rules) have points associated with them which can result in bans, but this is an automated system that moderators have no control over. A moderator picks the applicable warning from a list (eg: "Off Topic") which has predefined properties (1 point, a Private Message notification) that are used when the warning is issued. Also if a warning is issued you have the option to appeal (and the same option exists on bans). This is information we should make more clear (we have an improved FAQ project in the pipeline), one of the things we're working on at the moment is improving transparency between staff and members.
If there is a member causing you concern please use the report system, you can report anyone via their profile and these reports are managed by administrators. It's very helpful for us to be able to see how people are impacting other members, and while in an ideal world (and hopefully someday soon) we would be able to take the time to proactively moderate the forum and find people causing issues we don't have the resources to right now, and reports are an essential part of our moderation. As outlined in my previous post we have a process for handling trouble members so reports of them are something we can deal with.
I do broadly agree with the idea that our members are customers and there's things we can do to improve the relationship between members and staff but I also believe it's important that moderators do not have any vested interest in helping this forum maximise sales for Mojang or ad revenue. The moment moderators are instructed to act in the best interests of the businesses this forum impacts is the moment we start making decisions that are not in the best interests of our members. There are decisions we've made in the past that I believe were the right decisions that would not have been made if page views or Minecraft sales were the bottom line.
Outreach is definitely something we need to be doing but I'm very conscious of the reality that we're currently catching up to where we need to be (and we have a clear understanding of the state we're working towards) which means any outreach we do is going to have a big caveat: we can't do what you want yet, because we have bigger priorities, and I know that as a user of other websites it's very frustrating to be told that your opinion is wanted and to invest time on that basis and then to discover nothing is going to happen, it feels like it's all for show and disrespectful. If there's a middle ground we can definitely look into it until such a time that we can make commitments, for example we could perhaps have a monthly "What's happening with the forum" type thread that communicates what's happening behind the scenes?
No, I didn't say that at all. Not responding professionally does not mean flaming. I haven't insulted you at all. If I flame someone, I'll still get an infraction. Doesn't matter that I was a mod or was an admin.
The time and time again isn't specifically at you, but I do admit I should have been more clear on that one since I do reuse the same words. For that I do apologize for my lack of clarity. In many occasions, I've had to clarify that I am not staff anymore, and my responses are not official statements.
Additionally, I'm not attacking you. I'm disagreeing with you, and then you make assumptions that I do not support or agree with and argue those. Much like I disagree with you saying that mods should be concerned with maximizing traffic. I disagree, site admins should be concerned with traffic, telling forum admins to make changes where necessary, which are passed onto moderators. Mods themselves should be concerned with anything beyond their job (which includes what the forum admins and site admins tell them).
No, mods shouldn't get away with anything, they should be held to the same exact rules as everyone else, with the addition of a reminder that because of their title, what they say can and will be read as official in nearly every capacity.
I also don't have a power base. I post here infrequently, normally I don't get into long posts like this because I don't have the time, but I felt like responding to you in short form wouldn't be ideal either, as I thought you'd likely feel I wasn't reading your entire post or were just quickly reacting to a single snip and not reading the context.
Also, seeing as how I am not staff, why should my concern be specifically be retaining you as a customer?
Edit:
I do not see what I am doing as flaming, but very well, I will stop. Didn't see this before I had already made this post. Sorry if you did not want to continue the discussion, I will not respond further.
It's hard to follow your dreams when you run from your nightmares. --
Sometimes, my posts get deleted, and no-one tells me why they were deleted in the first place. Even worse, they're discussions about things that no-one even bothers to talk about, but I find interesting myself, eg. when I posted about why Mojang were too slow to update, my post that created the thread was deleted for no apparent reason (could be because of a one-line post that I made straight after, but that post should have been deleted instead or moved to the initial post of that thread). It was as if I never typed up that post.
4 years ago, I started played MCPE/Minecraft in general. Now, I have MCPC, and I'm still not bored of the blocky sandbox indie. Cuz awesomeness! Got a problem with that?
Let this tell you that I'm not a noob.
And I'm not a 6-year-old whinger either.
Maybe it's because that spam filter. No mods should do that.
I'm a programmer. I use C/C++, BASIC, Assembly, and Python. If i sound too technicial, that's because it's the way i think.
My Suggestions
Please stop discussing about that here and make a new thread about moderators and admins being unfair, illogical or whatever you're complaining about.
GENERATION 38: The first time you see this, copy it into your signature on any forum and add 1 to the generation. This is a social experiment.
You may have occasional posts which are deleted if you are replying to a post which gets deleted or one of the parent posts in your reply thread gets deleted. The forum staff are generally required to clean up subsequent replies to posts which are deleted. We will not notify people if their post is deleted unless they are being issued a forum rule warning or reminder.
Edit: Wow, my grammar in this post is terrible.
- sunperp
many people have over 200 posts and those people played minecraft for at least 6 months and there is a terrible amount of them so it's not dying.
That post was the OP that created the thread.
4 years ago, I started played MCPE/Minecraft in general. Now, I have MCPC, and I'm still not bored of the blocky sandbox indie. Cuz awesomeness! Got a problem with that?
Let this tell you that I'm not a noob.
And I'm not a 6-year-old whinger either.
It's ok, I'm here.
Was it the guy with the gmod profile pic? I'v had bad experiences with him. So yes, I do think there are some bad mods/admins, however there are plenty of great ones too, including Citric, who does a great job as owner.
Only 13,000 sucker >:)
I suspect you're on their good side. You're the guy who posted that children using this forum should post their personally identifying information, and the mods didn't even blink. In fact, your posts are a hotbed of personal attacks, trollposts, and more. And yet you survive and thrive.
I get that being "edgy" is hipster cool, but giving potentially LETHAL advice to children is a bridge too far. You should have been permabanned.
And this is why your forum is dying.
This is what I am talking about. It's like watching a local school board. Everyone acts like a Senator, because it's as much power as they will ever get. The self-appointed authorities run roughshod over basic decency, but all while sounding very nonchalant, very bland, and very official. Meanwhile, there's no policy to support their decisions, and it all works against the interests of the paying customers.
The great thing about deleting posts without notifying anyone is that the poster may not even know his post was deleted, so can't report it to an Admin. Then the Admins operate under the false assumption that everything is fine, since no one is reporting the Mods' bad behavior. Good arrangement, if you're a Mod.
So long as moderators can delete posts at will, not notify the poster, and then cite made-up rules when confronted, this forum will be nothing more than a Reddit or 4Chan clone, but without the traffic and ad revenue. Because having a meaningful discussion is secondary (tertiary?) to whatever mood the mod happens to be in on that day.
By the way, even after reporting sunperp's actions (through the official channels, TWICE) and even AFTER talking about it here, and even after the owner of the site weighed in, the Admins have done nothing, and sunperp is still openly advocating for the same behavior. So all this talk about reporting Mod misbehavior to Admins is, of course, a placebo. Once someone is put into the Mod circle, they are answerable to no one, and no meaningless quoting of "rules for moderators" is going to convince anyone otherwise.