Administrative changes needed.

Graal Reborn Suggestion Box
1

First off let me notify you that closing, deleting or editing this thread will be meaningless as I will be sending copies of this post to the emails and IMs of original Graal Reborn top staff.

There needs to be a fundamental change in the way these forums are moderated. Right now it seems a bunch of little Proto-Nazis with a napoleon complexes are moderators of this forum, which is completely unnecessary and hurtful to the openness and advancement of the community as a whole.

Just glance over the forums, nearly half of all topics are either closed, deleted, moved, or edited unnecessarily, most of these are due to political reasons or people having opinions of which the moderators disagree with. If a post is unpopular or just plain bad then let people either agree or disagree with it then fade away naturally. Closing a thread due to opinion or political belief is just plain asinine and needless.

The large number of moderation staff is unnecessary, and their actions stifle the community. Ask what positive aspect have any of these moderators contributed to the Graal Reborn community? If the answer is nothing except for closing legitimate threads then perhaps it’s time they are relieved of their positions.

These forums are now nearly dead and silent partly due to these reasons, and this oppression has spread to scaring off people from the Graal Reborn servers as well.

My advice and solution is to take a liberal approach to these forums, only banning, closing or deleting posts when they spam-bots or extremely vulgar and illegal.

Deleting, and closing posts is the digital equivalent of book burning and censorship.

Our energy and resources at graal reborn should be focused on development and free exchange of ideas, not feeding a bunch of mini Hitlers in stifling speech.

If a post or idea is bad then the person making it will be ridiculed and each person will make up their own mind, closing over half of every post is not helpful to anyone!

I am not naming any one person in particular, I just ask everyone to look at the large list of moderators, look through the forums and see all the posts that have been closed, and judge them by the fruits of their labors, then the problems should be obvious to you if your IQ is above even 70!

2

My IQ is not above 70 but I understood it. :3

3

Very well Stated. I’m normally a little hesitant in opening any thread GOATSE starts, for… well, obvious reasons… But I think he made a great point.

4

I like Riley’s post too… :suicide:

5

he didn’t say “every thread”

take a look at the anima section, you can’t post a topic without it being locked unless it’s about pokemon . it might be a bit hard to understand but not everyone from that era likes to post about anima, but the only ones able to get away with posting about other anima are cadaver or nalin . no offence to you riley as i know it’s not you who does it .

the bit about Proto-Nazis with a napoleon complexes I’m guessing is about the “do what i say or I’ll ban you” attitude and the constant derogatory words being thrown around like fag and the N word . Tho i disagree with the large number of mod’s , there are only two . I’ve seen this Coat person lately but only seen two post in the whole time I’ve been here . The small community tho can’t be blamed on one thing . There are many reason’s people will leave .

1.small community
2.abuse on the forums
3.too much work to make a server partly due to reason 1
4.limited creation due to lack of an npc server
5.lack of will

so on and so forth .

6

Saying half of all threads are closed, deleted, or editted is a very large exaggeration.

He wants the community to go back to the way it was when it a was just Marlon, Billll, Joey, ViceVirtue, and Dangerless as admins/moderators, but even then there were complaints about how it was managed. “QQ Not enough moderation! QQ” Now that we have moderators -gasp!- moderating people are going to start crying about too much moderation.

It’s a cycle that keeps on going.

[spoilerbox=The “Staff are Meanies” Cycle"]
Not enough moderation
Billll becomes Super Moderator
Dangerless becomes Super Moderator
Too much moderation
Billll is always inactive
Dangerless goes inactive
Not enough moderation
Spooon becomes Super Moderator
Dangerless returns
Spooon/Dangerless War
Too much moderation
Billll becomes Administrator
Dangerless becomes an Administrator
Dangerless goes inactive
Spooon stops moderating
Not enough moderation
RileyFiery becomes Super Moderator but doesn’t do anything
Not enough moderation
Urza becomes Super Moderator
Spooon starts moderating again
Too much moderation
Spooon stops moderating
Urza stops moderating
Not enough moderation
Dangerless returns
Spooon starts moderating again
Too much moderation
Spooon quits as a Super Moderator
Alex uses a personal grudge against Spooon to pester Marlon into staff changes
Spooon has rights removed
ViceVirtue is removed from Administration for inactivity
Billll is changed to Super Moderator
Dangerless is changed to Super Moderator
Joey deletes Spooon’s posts
Spooon uses Urza’s account to delete the forums
Dangerless leaves Graal Reborn
Not enough moderation
Urza starts moderating again
RileyFiery starts moderating again
Forums recovered
Too much moderation
Urza disappears
Not enough moderation
Spooon becomes Super Moderator
Forums are upgraded
Too much moderation
Domains are attacked several times
Massive drop in member activity
Staff are being blamed again
[/spoilerbox]

7

Post more content and less shit and all will be forgiven. This isn’t FOX News, it’s a god damn forum.

8

I liked Beholder’s post.

9

To be honest I think some nice points are made, but the moderation is fine as it is. Just make more content like Beholder said. :smiley:

10

For the most part some very legitimate points of view and opinions have been brought up in response to my post, and it has not been closed “yet” which is refreshing.

[quote]
Spooon
He wants the community to go back to the way it was when it a was just Marlon, Billll, Joey, ViceVirtue, and Dangerless as admins/moderators, but even then there were complaints about how it was managed. “QQ Not enough moderation! QQ” Now that we have moderators -gasp!- moderating people are going to start crying about too much moderation.[/quote]

To be perfectly honest yes this is what I want, and yes people will QQ either way no matter what the status is, so why not go with the side of openness? Also note back during those days we had hundreds of members on at a time, now what do we have?

[quote]
Beholder
Post more content and less shit and all will be forgiven. This isn’t FOX News, it’s a god damn forum.[/quote]

That kind of baseless bashing statement is kinda sad and pathetic and disappointing, especially coming from you.

I hate FOX news and am actually liberal leaning.

Yes this is a forum, people post things in a forum even if they are things that you happen to disagree with. We have sections for everything in this forum, if something is posted in the wrong place it should be at worst moved to the appropriate section, not closed.

I have ran a multitude of Graal, IRC, HTTPD, Ventrilo and other servers over the years and recently. I was helping Matriark Tervel 39ster and others as far back as 2002 with the 1.3.9 Gserver project! You dare accuse me of not contributing content? Perhaps you should look in the mirror as to what you have become as of late.

I do not require or want forgiveness from you, especially seeing as how I have done nothing wrong.
What I would appreciate is an apology for taking a false and needless stab at me, although I doubt I will get it.

11

I would like to quickly say that if I seem unduly harsh I do apologize for that. I also apologize for using the term “proto-nazi” it may have been a bit off and unfitting.
I would also like to add that the moderators that have replied in here while not sharing all my views have been for the most part reasonable in their responses. I am not out to cost anyone their positions, nor do I want a position of my own. I merely want there to be attention and discussion on the way things are done without it being closed.[COLOR=“Silver”]

---------- Post added at 02:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:10 PM ----------

[/COLOR]

I have done a lot more in one day in 2011 than your whole life since you were born in 1999-2001
Or maybe you forgot about Graal Legacy, Graal Downloads, UGCC, SG111’s Soundoff, Galrovik, GOATSE Land, and half the Baddies and levels from Classic 1.2.7
All you do is insult people pointlessly and close legitimate posts because you disagree with them.
Also if you look at this thread, my first post contained no insults, but rather factual comparisons using the term “proto nazi” my only error was not specifying who it was attributed to, for almost everyone else that term does not fit, but with you Riley it comes awfully close.
I will admit YOU are the primary problem and should not have any position of power or censorship, and you do have a very bad napoleon complex and ego.
I am telling you right now. GROW UP kid!

Look up hitler’s policies, and also look up national socialism which the term “NAZI” refers to. Then take a look at your own actions recently. Also I rescind my previous reply in relation to you.

12

Was it not YOU that insulted me first and refused to actually debate me on the issue? again read my above response provided it does not get edited. “I saved the original to external hard drive” And also why close a whole legitimate thread because one person disagrees with you? That is not flaming. I am done in this thread for today and will no longer waste my time until later. The truth is there for all to see, I will let the people see the truth and decide for themselves, and if at the end of the day they all disagree with me I will be fine with that, but the discussion needs to be had. What are you afraid of? P.S. even if I get banned and this post deleted, I will merely return with a proxy and re-post this whole thread. I am not out to break the rules or flame, but the rules cannot be twisted into what a few tyrants what them to mean.

13

I think that you, Riley, should spend some time on the TouchArcade forums and look at how the mods there run (specifically ImNoSuperMan). Then there wouldn’t be any problems at all…

14

i’ve actually been admin more than any of you on forums
it’s just a s e c r e t

15

Im taking neither side in this argument as I disagree with both. I disagree with how Riley will close a thread if one person starts spamming/flaming then other idiots follow. This just ruins the original purpose of the thread and everyone gets pissy. Apart from this and some similar scenarios I think Riley makes a sensible moderator and does well to cope with the amount of shit that passes through these forums, he could just do a better job on sorting the legit stuff from the crap instead of taking the easy way out and closing the whole damn thread…

16

[quote]
tricxta
Im taking neither side in this argument as I disagree with both. I disagree with how Riley will close a thread if one person starts spamming/flaming then other idiots follow. This just ruins the original purpose of the thread and everyone gets pissy. Apart from this and some similar scenarios I think Riley makes a sensible moderator and does well to cope with the amount of shit that passes through these forums, he could just do a better job on sorting the legit stuff from the crap instead of taking the easy way out and closing the whole damn thread… [/quote]

I think this is a fair assessment and gets the overall point.

[quote]
RileyFiery
Alex, I’ve been a super-moderator/administrator on several boards. Do not lecture me when you yourself have probably never been a super-mod/admin. I knew you of all people would side with Goatse when he took to insulting me because of your personal grudge against me. [/quote]

Wow paranoid much Riley? The whole point of this thread was not to side with any one person, but rather maturely discuss the issues. Had you not broken down into that little fit I would not have even mentioned you by name.

You have no idea who has or hasn’t had experience as a mod or anything, Alex has a very legitimate example, you should try arguing the fine points of the matter rather than just blindly assuming he has “no experience”. You assumed I had no experience and did nothing for the community, you probably didn’t even know I was the original Viper.

I have hosted several forums and even ran some myself without other moderators, and I have been a moderator on several other forums and sites. I wouldn’t have even made this thread had I not had those years of experience. I understand that being a moderator isn’t easy.

Try running the SQL database and admin panel or even the server itself for a few days. I know there is lots going on behind the scenes including bot attacks, spammers, and awful trolls. The old anti-unixmad and UGCC forums were attacked daily, yet we kept them up pretty well with minimal interference to the threads there.

[quote]
RileyFiery
Some threads are beyond help. I wind up deleting a lot more posts than I have closed threads. Closing is done when a thread has fulfilled it’s purpose, beyond hope of saving, wrong place, or just idiotic. [/quote]

You are correct for the most part, but this tool takes careful chiseling and in my opinion only on rare occasions, not just blind swinging with a sledgehammer.

We should all stop the personal attacks and assumptions and stick to the discussion and all the issues that surround it coming from all points of few. I realize I may have ruffled a few feathers too and for that I apologize. Just note that if I figuratively get spit on or slapped in the face, I will respond by figuratively punching back, it’s just a instinctive response nothing personal.

17

when i read this thread title i thought it was about the 2012 election

18

Fuck this thread. Bitch or “I told you so” all you want, Viper, but I’m closing this thread up. It’s causing nothing but unneeded tension in the community, and it’s restarting a fight that I was happy to see end a month or two ago.

I see why you are concerned, I really do. You’ve been with Graal Reborn from the start and you’re a valued member of the community. However, I feel that a large conversation like this outside of more restricted areas of the forums (VIP area) will do no more than frighten away new members. We cannot have the community acting so hostile if we have any hope of attracting new members.