Light Knight : I never said David was lazy (quote me if I did), I am saying if he puts as much effort into his site staff (hiring the right people & fixing any problems within the staff) as he did with his other features of this site he could have solved the issue before it got way out of hand to the point where he had to fire all the staff. There needs to be proper management somewhere in the staff so that this does not happen again. It's happened way too many times before and something needs to be done about it before it happens again.

legacyme3 : I agree with you there that people want stupid fun here which is kind of a shame because I don't really see a point in posting if that is the case. There are better places for stupid fun like Twitter or Daily Mail's comment section and there you can troll hardcore without getting banned.

A problem I always see happening here is one person wants stupid fun and they come across a mod who is there to enforce rules. Rules get broken, member gets pissed off and we got another fight on our hands. I am guessing that is what happened in yoshi's case I don't know, but it happens all the time. And when that member has friends (even ones in staff) it creates even more issues for the site as it did here. Staff members then fight over one another and all hell breaks loose.

Oof the salt is getting real here. While I don't like drama, I'd like to see where this is going. While it won't magically make the site more active, having an inviting environment is the main priority. I've been out of the loop for some time, coming back for the chance to make this place that was a part of my childhood and reason I got many online friends at least get back on it's feet.

JigSaw :

This is good. Discourse is good.

Here's my suggestion/thought process.

What you described is exactly true, stupid person meets moderator who wants to be heavy on the rules. Stupid person gets banned. Stupid person's friends, who may or may not be stupid, STOP POSTING.

One of two things needs to happen:

1. The stupid person stops being stupid and contributes to the board in a positive way. This person makes long, well-thought out posts, and becomes something of a leader in the community.

2. The moderator unclenches their anus, and realizes people are complex, and can't be put into column A and B.

Of these options, I think B is the most reasonable one. This is a site for children. Children are going to be immature. To ban children for being children, most of the time, is just silly. I do think serious violations, like posting porn, intentionally bullying, or anything that is truly an evil act should be punished with the top line of punishment. But for minor infractions? I think the mod should learn to let it go, and help foster a better community, one that is understanding of everyone, even if they aren't the most intellectual.

When I was a new member, I did things similarly to several of the recently banned members. I got punished with a short ban, whatever, it was fine. The only time I was perma'd was when I literally asked for it. I feel like I turned out ok, so I think it's only fair to treat other users with similar histories in the same light.

legacyme3 : I just don't see that happening with option 2 though because there is always at least one mod who is more aggressive then the others when it comes to rules and punishment.

I got a new idea for this site, a dog house forum. When banned, all other forums would disappear but the banned member would be redirected to a dog house forum when they try to view the boards. There, an auto generated thread with a poll is created based on the incident that got them banned. Staff members would vote in the poll to dictate whether the ban was warranted or not. Upon further discussion, if both parties come to agreement the case is closed and they are released back into society.

The point of a dog house forum is a more open way to handle problems between banned users and staff and would still allow the banned offender to post but only between them and the mods and no one else. This hidden forum would better allow banned members and staff to handle issues better then what is in place now.

I feel like private messaging between banned users and staff is an obsolete way of handling situations. It may leave other staff in the dark about things unless they are communicating through the mod inboxes.

I know staff have their own little forum to discuss banned members in secret, but maybe it is time to declassify it and make it an open forum so that the banned members can plead their case directly with ALL not just ONE staff member, in an open format (not visible to the rest of the public).

And the plot thickens...the staff does not have threads to discuss banned memebers only the global mods do actually site staff have really no say in the perma ban decision process its between globals and admins, although there are report re-reg threads in certain forms....but I'd like to apply for the position of local mod, after all I have been perma banned as well as site staff and i have previous moding experience as I modded the rented megaman forum before. What i bring to the table is compassion and a fair understanding of what merits what type of ban/punishment, and i have a better understanding of the sites rules and what roles each member of the staff is supposed to play 

Before submitting this reply, I want to point out and make it known that I started reading this thread at around 07:42 AM and I'm now submitting my reply at 10:00 AM. I had breakfast in between that time, which took maybe 15 minutes, and also made modifications to a feature and made a thread to go along with it which maybe took a total of 20 minutes. But my point is, I might not always get around to stuff on the community because a lot of things are time consuming when it involves the forum. Having to read so many large posts, having to type up a response and to reply to as many users as possible, all without upsetting someone, is very time consuming. When you consider that I only have around 20 hours a week to invest into the site, spending time reading and responding to stuff adds up really fast. I'm not sure how I ended up spending 1 1/2 hours reading and replying to the latest replies of this thread but I am making it known that I took the time to think about and consider everything that I read. Another example of something that is time consuming is responding to all of the messages I get from users via Facebook, Skype, Discord, etc and by email. I do these things because I care about this site and its users but I think a lot of users don't consider the time that goes into the 'behind the scenes' type stuff.

It saddens me that I don't get to responding to Private Messages for weeks or sometimes even months but ultimately that's because it's probably the most time consuming thing to tackle, having to go through 1000s of Private Messages. Some PMs are quick to take care of and only require a few minutes but then there are some PMs that are big or require a big response or require me to look into something or sometimes even involve me to have to take care of something, and tackling just a few of those types of PMs could be an entire day of work just like that.

Anyways, probably sounds like I'm ranting now lol. My last point is that since my focus is more on the forum and its community now, I'll now be prioritizing anything that involves interactions with the users and any feature that benefits the forum



JigSaw : Those features were time consuming but were built over the course of months and years. This is something that needs to be done sooner rather than later since I don't want to go too long without having moderators on the site. Plus, those features were mostly built during years that I didn't have to work a full time job outside of Vizzed and so my schedule is a lot more busy now days.

Since my time is limited now days, it's more efficient for my time to be invested into things that no one else can do which would be development related stuff. I plan to have a bigger role in the hiring process and staff management process but being completely in charge of that stuff is very time consuming and sometimes stressful.

Another thing worth pointing out (and this is nowhere near the primary reason for me doing it this way) is that if I was completely in charge of the hiring process, people who didn't agree with who got hired would be mad at me and when users are mad at me, they generally take it out on the site. This way the community itself has to share the blame and I don't have to worry about being everyone's favorite scapegoat

Ultimately I have the final say in who gets promoted. If someone who obviously shouldn't be a moderator gets voted in, I'd overrule it. But I trust the community enough to not have something terrible happen like that. I think enough people on this site want to see this site return to its glory days.

I'm not offended, I like feedback and criticism as long as it's productive criticism and not an excuse to be rude by attacking or offending


m0ssb3rg935 : Exactly. Also worth pointing out is that if the new team of mods fail, I can just make alterations to the team. It's not a permanent team and I don't want anyone to take for granted their position. I'm pretty optimistic about it.


legacyme3 : You bring up some great points and also you've reminded me why I started this forum in the first place. I wanted a family friendly community where users could relax and feel free to have fun. A lot of the users that came to this forum initially (we're talking the very original Vizzed Board from 2002) were users that were banned from another acmlm board, either because they weren't liked or because they broke a few silly rules and weren't forgiven.

Real life is too serious. Real life is too stressful. I've always wanted Vizzed to be that cyber home where users can go to escape and have fun. For some users, it's developing friendships to compensate for the lack of social life in their own life. For others, it's letting go of responsibilities or other serious garbage by just being goofy or by expressing their wacky and creative side. Either way, I think it's good for this site to adapt to the needs of the users and to offer users what they want. Obviously the site still needs to have rules in order to prevent users from exploiting the site in some way and to prevent users from being bullied by others but I'm definitely open to ideas for the forum that allows Vizzed the primary mental escape for the members of this community.


guido222 : I would be open to the idea of adjusting the duration required for a thread to be auto-closed but I still want there to be an auto-closing feature and threads do need to be closed when they've gone a very long time without replies. This site has over 100,000 threads and so it'd be a disaster to have countless threads being bumped when the topic is no longer relevant or when the thread creator is no longer active. If you see a thread that you want to reply to that's really old but closed, the best idea would be to just create a new topic based on it. But I do agree with you regarding the thread auto-close feature. It has closed some threads that I felt like were still relevant and maybe the auto-close feature could be more lenient especially now with posting activity not nearly as high as it use to be.

Ok so you inspired me so much, I went ahead and modified the thread auto-close script . You can read about my update here:
https://www.vizzed.com/boards/thread.php?id=101051


geeogree : I think you took on too much and held a position longer than what your personal life allowed. I'd be supportive of you to have a moderator position though, or at very least just a Local Mod position so that you could have more of an impact in decisions among the staff that impact the community. And if you pass for now, there will always be opportunities in the future


Light Knight : Yes . It is so mentally exhausting to be in charge of an entire site and to be responsible for when things go wrong. Even more so when I hear about and know about groups of users who hate the site or hate me for various reasons. Some of those reasons are fair but most are poor accusations or a misunderstanding of my intentions. It's even more frustrating when lies are spread about me and I have no opportunity to defend myself . I do what I can with the limited time and budget I have now days and sometimes I struggle with prioritizing things properly but I am finally trying to at least reconnect with the users and involve them more in the decision making around here. It usually takes a lot of energy and ambition to take on anything that involves users (even more so when lacking sleep or having to deal with problems in real life), especially since that usually involves having to please as many people as possible, read and respond to every question or concern, and risk having to deal with anger and criticism, which I don't do well with.

I'm greatly affected by users hating me or making fun of me, even when I step away from my computer, it continues to haunt me. But users like yourself make that burden so much more bearable when they're understanding and respectful .


m0ssb3rg935 : I haven't decided yet how the voting process will take place. I guess we'll find out tomorrow.


JigSaw : The site features are what bring new users to this site, which is why I've prioritized site features over the past few years. Forum features and my involvement with the community is what helps keep active forum users on this site. So it's all about finding a good balance of both things. I think I'm slowly getting there though.

I do like where you're going with the idea of how a banned users is handled. More often than not, a banned user or the banned user's friends don't know why that user was banned. Sometimes the banned user will lie to their friends or only give their side of the story. Having the reason more public can avoid backlash Also, I think it'd be a good idea to have multiple moderators involved with the communication with a banned user rather than it be just 1 user. When I've got myself caught up with the higher priority stuff, I'll revisit this idea and see what I can come up with.

Davideo7 : I completely agree. I did take on too much for at least some of the time I was a global or admin. I see more contribution to me more in keeping the forum active and an older/experienced perspective of the site and forums in general and dealing with tough situations. We'll see what other people think of me applying but I figure I can offer things of value without investing as much time as I did before.

Even if I don't get the votes needed to join the mod team, I'm still going to try and be more active from here on. Not to the extent that I was back in 2016, but still active nevertheless.

If not then I'm crossing my fingers that maybe there'll be some staff openings at some point, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

gamerforlifeforever :

If I recall correctly David said he was thinking of doing something similar to this with some of the Site Staff. Considering a lot of them went inactive it'd be only natural to change some things up with the Site Staff although I'm not sure if demoting all of them would be the best way to do it. I would prefer demoting the inactive ones and try to find people to fill in their spots or something akin to that. But in the end, it is David's call.

Can I just throw it out there that, should he decide to restructure the current staff, he shouldn't can everyone out of the blue. Just a little suggestion... I feel some may not be as understanding or analytical of the situation.

EDIT - Nevermind, Lex already said it.

Lexatom : wait, for real???
m0ssb3rg935 : I agree with you 100%.

gamerforlifeforever :



Si