My OCD is really mad this isn't 4444 words long exactly.

I'm not going to address everything. I've worked as a global, I know what it means to work for/under David. I did it for a long time. I stepped down for a reason way back when. It's draining work. You can't continuously do it. If you do, you wear yourself too thin, even if you are an amazing moderator.

The role of global+ is not to be taken lightly. My hope is whoever becomes a global understands that it can be a lot of work, with very little reasonable reward.

I don't know if this should have been made so public, but then, I'm not sure we should be having elections to determine moderators at all.

I do agree with the concern that this is "David passing the buck", so to speak, because it can definitely be perceived that way, and should he blame the community for making the wrong choices later, I'll definitely be pointing at this thread when the time comes. In the end, he'll be making decisions, and vetoing anyone he thinks is a terrible fit, which I think is his rationality in this case.

I'm not going to comment on Vanelan any further publicly, I think all that can or should be said has been said, nobody is changing their opinions one way or the other, and dragging the argument/debate through the mud/dirt is only going to serve to drive a deeper wedge in the community. And that's against my current goals.

I think the most important thing for anyone to take out of this thread is the following, from an outsider's perspective, who wasn't on the current mod team, but hails from mod teams past (and yes, situations described by Yuna have existed long before she was a mod herself, and may even predate my own time as a moderator). The message is this: There's a lot that happens privately, and nobody is going to know the full story, ever. Even in the interpersonal relationships between globals+ there are secrets. It's fine to have these secrets, I even encourage them, nobody should know everything, because it can lead to an obsession that destroys a community or mod team.

It's fine that the community doesn't know everything about what's happened. They don't "need" to know everything. But I do think it is important for the community to know "some" things. And I feel as if there's a startling lack of information for the lay-person to deal with, because right now, public information boils down to he-said/she-said inanity, where you have two sides with clear biases and agendas (even if they profess not to have them). There's only one truly impartial observer we should really have for this EXACT situation, but that person has not given us much of anything other than the fact it wasn't working out.

Why would this one user be impartial, whereas the others wouldn't? Because this user runs the site, and has a self-interest in keeping the site running. It serves as a source of income. In this respect, we SHOULD be able to trust the owner, and to believe he's always doing what's best for his own self-interest, which will usually, hopefully, tie into the interests of others.

Even if someone like me tries to be unbiased, I do not have this same self-interest, because if Vizzed dies one day, the only effect on my life will be I lose a cool hangout. The stakes are not nearly as high, so I'm able to afford more leeway with how I word things, and how I choose to share information.

TL;DR - I'd like more transparency from David, I think globals should have term limits because any time they are around for over a year, it generally goes poorly, and I think secrets are good for a community to have.

If nothing else, I appreciate you trying to start some sort of discussion so it's not one-sided.

If I may, I would like to give my 2 cents on this. I am not trying to be rude and I apologize if I sound rude in this post. While I will agree that yes, communication between an owner and his staff team is one of the most important aspects of a website, and that David should have notified everyone before demoting the entire moderation team, I believe he is trying to change his ways as of now. I have read multiple posts of his recently of him expressing his desire to balance out him working on things for the site, his life, and him interacting with Vizzed and its users. I truly do believe this is the beginning of another chance to help make Vizzed at least somewhat of what it was like before. Nothing was stopping the moderation team from stepping down, multiple people could have stepped down as they please. I am sorry that things were like that back then, but I would not put all of the blame on David. In my opinion, (and many other user's opinions) there is some fault within the former moderation team. Both on the forums, and in the discord server. I believe most of it came from the discord server. Vanelan was sort of a tyrannical admin in the discord server, and while I do understand his frustrations with communications between David and him, there was no excuse for him to act how he did in there. Favoritism and bias has been shown to be amongst both the forums and the Discord server as well. I understand how stressful being a moderator can be, trust me I really do. However, if it really was as bad as you said, there was nothing stopping you all from stepping down.

I apologize again if this reply seemed a little rude, this is just my opinion on the matter. As of now, it seems David truly does want to make an effort to rebuild Vizzed and help make it active again, and I appreciate him for wanting to make this effort. I do not think the entire blame should be put on David, however.

Yuna1000 : No worries, I understand that you want to focus away from modding, that is cool.

Plus you mentioning about how life is as a Local and Global as of late, it can be quite tough to manage all of the stresses of being a mod, trust me, I know how it is. Yes, I was one of these former mods that has been around during the peak, just before the downfall of Vizzed.

But yeah, things has been rough for the entire site of Vizzed, and I was one of those people that walked-out, only to return 1 1/2 years later, so I really missed the core of the situation.


But I do agree, if anyone that is applying should take out of consideration on what they are getting themselves into, being a mod isn't all about rainbows and unicorns. Trust me, I wasn't just a Local Mod here on Vizzed for nearly 2 years, but I have been a Local, a Global, and an Admin in other online forum communities for 3-4 years (which makes a total time of modding of 5-6 years), and depending on what BS you have to endure, it can leave you quite stress, with some occasions, sleepless nights. So, it doesn't matter on who you are, you better think twice before you realize on what you could get yourselves into.

So, whoever is chosen for Locals, Globals, and even Admins, be on alert on what's ahead.(and yes, I applied as well, I'm even telling myself this as well, and I'm aware on what's coming up).

Yuna1000 : Just gonna do this for you Yuna, hopefully David is able to see this summon.


Davideo7 :

Holy smokes that was a massive post took a while to read, but it shows you do care a lot.

I honestly think that if Davideo7 informed mods before the demotion that it would cause even more drama and David doesn't have time to go back and forth why he did what he did. It's a good thing he ended it quickly and swiftly with a mass demotion. If you are at all upset by it, shrug it off and re-apply. The worst that could happen is you won't get re-hired.

I see two sides of Vanelan, I don't know the person but some people say he is bad others say he is good. I noticed that he has not even bothered to re-apply and that is expected I guess since it appears lots of people hate him for reasons I don't know fully. In fact, I have not even seen him post since I returned a few days ago when this stuff erupted into the public.

I was on staff a long time ago and here is my experience. Do NOT expect David to reply to you let alone agree or approve your ideas. It's unrealistic. If he doesn't reply, then good luck every seeing the day of light with whatever that issue may be.

This is the biggest problem with Davideo7, his limited time. By him not responding promptly gives people the impression he does not care or people will eventually give up trying to contact him knowing he will never ever respond. This eventually leads to the site having all sorts of problems as it does right now.

The mods are not what I am worried about, it's how they handle situations in the future (mainly bans). That is the problem and I have just proposed an idea to david in another thread on how we can fix this problem in future in a more productive way that does not cause mass amounts of drama.

Asking for Davids thoughts on every little thing is unrealistic, but there are solutions that can be implemented to where we would not need his input to make important board decisions. In terms of features though, yes, everything must be passed and approved by him. But disgruntled members can be handled without his input if done properly. And if it is a mod that is disgruntled then there is also ways to where we would not davids input either. I got solutions for all of that. It's up to him though if he wants to implement these ideas into the site.

I believe everything I would want to add to this thread I said a while ago when I made this thread.

This is how the modding system worked back then, and I hope we can return to it. No, I KNOW we can return to it. 

Wow, this was one massive post, but it did have lots of things to say and they were conveyed pretty clearly.

I stepped down from Mod due to a change in the quotas I disagreed with, and which David had failed to notice. The change was brought in after months of discussions, so it wasn't anything new. Some would think that David didn't care for us, but I'll say that David had simply enclosed his views towards the Nintendo incident going on by then and how it would affect the site, thus leaving many other things unchecked. To this day, he still leaves many other things unchecked for focusing too much on a few select ones, a byproduct of his limited time. In all honesty, and speaking through my own experience because I also have that issue in my life, David should reconsider in what he invests the time he can dedicate to this site, which will hopefully happen after his announcements of changing the direction of the site (and somewhat demonstrated in his direct implication of demoting and reconstructing the mod team).

No one should ever doubt that David cares for this site, but maybe it has become too much for him to handle alone with his limited time. He knows the site's priorities more than any of us, but if he wants to have the last say on some matters regarding the community he should be available more often. I personally don't want David to rely on others to run this place so he can focus on the behind-the-scenes development, because as it's been said, we'll always respect more the decision of the owner and creator of this place rather than someone appointed to a position, no matter how democratic was said appointment. I'd have no issues with an Admin running this site in his stead, but if that happens, David would be the target of the complaints against that Admin for having a higher rank and authority, and his inability to respond due to not having time to would only imply more drama and more sudden departures from this place due to a misunderstanding of David's dedication towards the site.

I sincerely wish that David enacts the changes you request. His recent actions, regarding more the community and attempting to blend in with us once again, make me hopeful of it, but we'll have to see if the changes will come in drastically (and some probably would be needed ASAP) or bit by bit (and hope they come at enough speed so the wind of change doesn't stop blowing).

Since there's a lot of finger pointing and all of it at me (I know we all love declaring someone as the bad guy, the person we can blame for every single one of our problems), I want to point something out. Vanelan was suppose to be the one who was ultimately ahead of the moderators and was the one who was suppose to oversee everything. I wasn't suppose to be the boss of the moderators, that ended years ago and I don't understand at all why I was being viewed as the boss of the moderators and responsible for things that I gave up responsibility for years ago. Quite literally, one of Vanelan's titles was "Mod Manager". I was not the "Mod Manager" anymore. I haven't been in years. Vanelan was mostly free to go about modding the forum however he wanted as long as things remained family-friendly and welcoming. Many years ago I gave up my role as the head of the staff in order to have more time to invest into site development but obviously that was the wrong decision and I've come to realize that recently.

I definitely could have handled the mass demotion a lot better. I wanted to make a change sooner rather than later though and giving out a warning or getting permission from the staff could have taken a while, especially if the staff fought the idea, that would have only delayed the process even more and really the forum was running out of time. The forum was dying so quickly that the only thing capable of reviving it was to do something radical because clearly nothing else was working. Grabbing the attention of the users and showing them the change in action that I promised months ago. Taking initiative rather than sitting around throwing out ideas and making empty promises.

I've taken care of most of Vanelan's requests fairly quickly as far as I know. I don't see my thread summons though since my Notifications page is very backed up and I haven't had a full week to dedicate to going through that in a while. tRIUNE's on the other hand have taken me more time because his requests tend to take many hours to fulfill and obviously when I don't have the many hours to take care of what he wants taken care of, it's obviously impossible to do them. I don't think it's fair to say "because Davideo7 was too busy to care" though because life is too time consuming for me sometimes outside of this site (full time job, wife, kids, house, etc) and so my time invested into this site is so limited and when so many things are brought to my attention, those things eat up my team very quickly. If I only have 20 hours a week to invest into the site, having a bunch of things that require me to read, investigate, and respond eat up that 20 hours very quickly if each of those things take a few hours each. I've already used up well over 10 hours this week just reading and responding to stuff.

I don't agree with the "good cop" and "bad cop" thing. I'm usually always viewed as the bad cop. There's going to be users that respect and understand me, but for a lot of users, I'm the scapegoat and the person to blame for everyone wrong with the website. The person at the very top is almost always the most hated person of any organization, whether they deserve it or not. It's easier to have that 1 person to blame, that 1 person that you can make fun of and insult with your friends when that 1 person isn't around to defend themself. I sometimes see and hear about the things that go on outside of this site, and sometimes the angered users get brave enough to publicly harass me or bully me during a stream or any other "public" event. That bullying happens far more than what people realize and it can really bring down a person's spirit.

Something I hate about the internet is that people are so quick to be nasty toward someone. It's easier to trash someone or ruin someone's life when you don't have to see how it physically affects them. I think we sometimes forget that everyone behind these monitors has feelings and a life outside the internet.

Everyone on the previous moderator team was more than welcome to reapply. I honestly assumed that all of them would apply and easily get their positions back. The goal with the old team coming back was that each of them would have a slightly new purpose and possibly new motivation.

I would have been fine with Globals and Admins taking care of TdV DQs. I don't ever remember fighting that idea. I usually took care of the TdV DQs though when things were reported and no one objected the requested DQ. The TdV from this summer I don't recall how well I took care of it though so that might be the one time I wasn't on top of those things (I quite seriously have very little memory from events that took place this past summer due to potentially life ending events and days without sleep). I think this is incredibly unfair to cast all blame on me for TdV problems.

Maybe I just have a stupid brain but reading a ton of really lengthy posts is incredibly time consuming for me. And I don't like to just skim over a post and not understand what I just read, I like to think about what I'm reading while reading it. I probably do tend to put some things off to the side when a thread has a lot of really long posts that require me to invest hours of my time and then I get so overwhelmed with things that I forget about taking care of the problem in the first place. But as mentioned earlier, I don't see a lot of things requiring my attention because of my Notifications page being backed up.

The new direction with the new staff team is intended to give the staff more say in everything. I also don't understand why so many things currently require my oversight, I don't recall expecting so many things to be that way. Globals and Admins have almost as much power to do things as I do so it's not like the team needed the powers that my account has to do these things.

A lot of time I invest into the site is not known and is not trackable. It'd be time consuming to post about everything I do. A lot of work goes into managing a site this size with having to maintain multiple massive servers, a massively growing database, taking care of various urgent issues that users report (publicly or privately), etc. Even during the times I appeared absent, there were still things I had to take care of. Most sites this big have a big team of developers, I'm literally the only developer and so I do the workload of an entire development team. This is something that no one realizes or wants to consider. Before getting a full time job, I would often quite literally invest 60-80 hours into the site a week, sometimes even more. And even while having a job, I often times would put in 40+ hours a week, all while working a full time job and having a family to attend to. And even during those times I was sometimes accused of not caring or being distant. If ever I was distant, sometimes I did so to free myself from distractions so I could focus on what needs to be done, because distractions slow you down and you can't get anything accomplished when you're constantly being distracted or having to read, take care of and reply to a ton of things. I should have prioritized things better and that's what I'm trying to do now.

I think you're making a lot of unfair accusations and assumptions. The rebuilding of the staff isn't based on me not wanting to take blame for everything. I do realize that I'm at fault for some of the problems of this site but I don't believe I'm the reason for every single problem with the forum. I already gave my reasons elsewhere (and briefly in this post) about why I chose to rebuild the staff from the ground up.

I want to finalize my response by saying that I get a lot of messages, reports and complaints from users and they're usually about other users. After a while, I get so many sides to so many different stories and so much information that contradicts information that someone else gave me that it gets overwhelming. There's so many sides to every story and there's so many stories fill with drama that stir up or around this site. I think democracy is the best way to handle the forum with where it's currently at and having rotating responsibilities might not be a bad idea either to prevent mod burnout. And if it does fail, we've got nothing to lose because did you see the activity of the forum before I took initiative to change this place? You can't really get worse than a few posts a day.



legacyme3 : Some users for some reason believe that I'm out to destroy the site. It's my site, why would I want to see it go up in flames? lol. More than likely I care about this site more than anyone and I'm going to make decisions that I think benefit the majority of the users. It's impossible to please everyone. Every single decision no matter what it is will piss someone off or create a clan of angered protestors.



EX Palen : I've made it public and known for a while that I'm trying to change how I prioritize my time. It takes time to take on a completely new tactic but I'm slowly getting there. The time it takes to read, look into and respond to all of the requests that I get can't be measured and goes unnoticed. For example, I just now invested 2 hours into reading this thread and responding to it. And I'm expected to read through and respond to a lot of massive threads, a lot of massive private messages, a lot of massive emails, a lot of lengthy messages on Discord/Skype/Facebook/Cometchat. In no time, all of my time is sucked up and I have no proof of what I've done but I'm left with people pointing fingers at me, accusing me of not caring about this site.

I gotta finish up a few much needed fixes, I need to get caught up with Private Messages and tons of little requests here and there. I also need to get caught up on my Notifications page. Once these things are done, I'll feel far less overwhelmed and in more control over what's going on. There's been too much on my plate for years now, which is why I had originally given up all responsibility over the forum and moderators to the admins.

And now I am going to say something. I don't really need to put in my express of worry of things to do wit the site. I believe certain people have spoken up for others. David has replied. All we want to see is this site do better, the activity and the people in it as well. As most or some of you know vizzed is like a second home to us, and we do what we can as a community to fix some problems that arise with David. So now we can move forward to help the site as small changes have been happening. Would something like that continue? I don't know myself but I can hope so that's all I can do. We actually have had a good amount of activity for the past few days regarding one of the new changes with hiring new mods. Everyone wants to help, that I can see. So now instead of carrying on the blames and what not or pointing more out things that would cause people to be angry with. Lets move on with David to continue to fix vizzed.

Eniitan : Well said, Enii. We can all learn from the past, and focus on improving the future. 

legacyme3 :  Thank you for taking the time to share your insights. =) Also, the final word count is always different from what it shows before I make the thread so I actually have no idea exactly how many words there will be until after I post it. Sorry if it triggered your OCD. It sort of made me want to change it too. lol

Lexatom :  This is a request for modifications/change, not a rant for assigning blame to anyone or anything. I don't play blame games.

Also, multiple awesome people did step down. Let's see... In no particular order: Minuano, ZeroTails, Furret, A user of this, Zlinqx, yoshirulez!, gamerforlifeforever...

Everyone has their own reasons for stepping down because we all have a life, and that's fine. Every decision to leave or take a break just makes the team smaller though, and that will eventually have an impact on the amount of input for making team decisions.

As I said, we were the last ones remaining. If we'd stepped down as well, there would have been no one Modding. A team requires at least 2 people, ideally more. I get the feeling none of us wanted to leave only 1 person in charge since we'd tried our best to make decisions as a team, just like the Mod teams before us.

You're looking at the team that was fighting to survive against all odds while understaffed, overworked, tired, etc. I had once suggested that we hire new staff, but that didn't end up happening since the new hires stepped down as well. Since we weren't getting new people, I chose to stay until new staff was hired because we were so understaffed already.

Again, this thread is by no means for pointing fingers. It's a request to let Davideo7 know part of what's been happening (what I could see) so that he can consider what's been happening, using the information I provided. If he reads the request, great. If he doesn't, it'll still be here for him. We know he doesn't have much time for many things.

IgorBird122 :  Nice! If you understand that, then you should already be well-prepared. Good luck in the election! =)

Boured :  Thank you! My summon for him failed so I removed it from the thread. lol

JigSaw :  It appears you understand some of the situations with Davideo7, but hm... Your experiences are different from my experiences then. The Davideo7 I met around 4 years ago did talk to me. If he hadn't at the time, I would have already left. I also wouldn't have been so excited to apply to become a Local Mod later on. I guess I'm just hopeful that he's still the caring Site Owner I met when I first arrived, and the one that patiently and kindly took the time to read all 8? or so pages of my posts during one TDV one year. If he's changed since then (he's been away from the site for a while), then I wouldn't know how much he changed exactly. I'm still leaving the requests here though in hopes that the Davideo7 I met is still here, even if it's now taking him a bit longer to think about and process our requests. As some people have mentioned, he is the one with the most to lose if Vizzed shuts down. After all, isn't that one of the main reasons why everyone is still applying to help? On some level, they must all still care about and trust Davideo7 is still truly sincere about restoring Vizzed and they want to help him to protect the place we all love. It took Davideo7 years to finally get back to processing site requests and creating the features that everyone asked for years ago, but he's doing it now and I hope he's having a better time of balancing his real life responsibilities with his work on Vizzed. Vizzed is his home but if he's been away too long, it might take some time to settle back in. I'm really looking forward to seeing the next Mod team thrive, so I felt I had to post this, even if Davideo7 does not end up accepting or approving of these requests. The ball is in his court again and he can do with it as he wishes. I just hope he'll at least read my thread when he gets to it and consider why I'm making this request.

That said, the new Mods could also read this request and use it to improve their own ideas about how to better serve Vizzed without running into the same issues. They can learn from our experiences and if they can implement something to prevent a situation similar to this from happening to them, then this thread would have also served its purpose.

Also, I said I wasn't sending this message/request out of spite or because I don't want to help Vizzed or anything like that. On the contrary, I am sending these messages because I care even though I planned to step down because I'm worn out from Modding and I'll be trying to contribute in other ways. In other words, it's time for me to make a Christmas theme without any fire in it. 

Finally, you probably haven't met the mods that still stayed on our team, or you would know that all of them were mature enough to step down without causing any problems. In fact, some of us would have preferred to have an official notice notifying us that we would soon be relieved of our duties. Not knowing was what would cause more consternation within our team. We were a team that made decisions together after all.

In my opinion, Vanelan is a good person. In the opinions of others that have been banned by him though, he's probably oh I don't know, a fire-breathing dragon or something? lol

All Vanelan mainly wanted at the end was some kind of acknowledgment for the 5 years of what I described above for him. Just a simple thank you or something from Davideo7 would probably have sufficed. To my understanding, he is staying off the site to keep himself from doing anything rash on Vizzed despite his frustration with everything, because the site means a lot to Vanelan, he doesn't want to hurt anyone and what Vanelan himself worked on for 5+ years, and he understands Davideo7 is afraid of people taking out their anger on the site. In my story, Vanelan did his final job of ending the Official Vizzed Discord server (since he's no longer an Admin here) even though that made him sad and afterwards, he took off with his beloved and who knows if he's coming back.

Even though Vanelan is still dealing with the feelings and stress and maybe even felt somewhat misunderstood or betrayed by Davideo7 at times (please refer to the guidebook scenarios I mentioned in the request), Vanelan is still refraining from doing anything that he might end up regretting later. I think he understands that these types of frustrating scenarios sometimes happen when we're Modding. That, to me, is a sign of maturity.

Eirinn stepped down earlier and left quietly, in the way I wanted to, with no drama. He is one of the more mature Mods I've met so far.

m0ss and I understood why Davideo7 probably wanted to rebuild a team (as I said, we were understaffed), but we would have liked to have been given some time to pack our bags and say our official goodbyes to the team. You know, hold a nice little farewell party with confetti and bad memes or something. Then, m0ss would be on his way to reapplying to join the team, and I'd be happily stepping down as I'd told Vanelan and Aria I would, and stay to continue working for the Site Staff team (with tRIUNE's approval of course).

All of us had been prepared for either stepping down, for Vizzed to shut down, or for new troops to arrive to relieve us, but we didn't end up receiving any notices. That, to us, was a great cause for alarm, greater than if Davideo7 had simply come up to us and said, "Hey, guys! Want to join this new team I'm making in a week or so? You'll have to work to get back to your positions again, but I'm sure you guys will be fine since you've made it this far with just the few of you, and the next team will have more people so it shouldn't be that stressful anymore. And btw, thanks for all your hard work all these years. No one will ever know exactly what you did or how hard you worked, but know that I appreciate everything you did. "

We would probably have been like, "Whoa, we're going to be part of a new team?" Some of us would probably have been like, "Sorry, Sir. I appreciate the opportunity but I think need to rest a bit first. x_X It's been a real pleasure working with you. I hope you'll let me keep helping out as a Site Staff member though. =) "

Others would probably have scratched their chins thoughtfully and said, "Well, I've already spent so many years here with no pay... Sure, why not? What's another year or so? When's the interview?"

Light Knight : For better or worse, that is still how it works. (Content hidden from non-Trusted users!)

Thank you all for taking the time to read and think about my request. =) It's nice to see that so many people care about the future of Vizzed. 

This thread has been an interesting read for me. As someone who has been around since the beginning and worked at basically everything level on the site I feel like I need to chime in as well.

First off - I quit being a mod multiple times not because of the site but because of my personal life. If life hadn't gotten busy or stressful or whatever else I would have probably never left. Sure there were aspects of Vizzed that were frustrating but I don't think I would have left if my personal life didn't require the time it did.

Second - I agree with a lot of what David has said. He gave admins a lot more power (I believe at my request) but most of us failed to do much of anything with it. I think part of that problem was a lack of communication as to how far we were allowed to go with said power. I don't think anyone ever bothered to find out exactly how much the globals or admins were allowed to do on the site so they never did as much as were able to.

Third - the good cop, bad cop routine was probably my fault. I sort of made it my mission to be the bad guy who enforced the rules so David could focus on doing other things that people would appreciate him for. I probably set a bad precedent for how mods/admins were to act in some cases. I do think it is unfair to say David didn't care enough to play his part in the routine. He has mods and admins to do all this for him. Banning some random person who spammed or posted something inappropriate wasn't the best use of his time.

Fourth - the time commitment. This was probably the hardest one to deal with but I think for a lot of people it was self-inflicted. Most of us spent way more time on the site than we needed to. If I could do things over I would have spent at most 1 hour a day during the week on the site and then force myself to do other things. I think there were certain global mods and admins that really went overboard. I was definitely one of them. I don't think anyone actually expected that of us except ourselves.

I really hope this new team can take the load off of David when it comes to the forums. Hopefully it is clear what is expected of the new group and what they are allowed to do with their mod powers so David doesn't have to spend much time dealing with it.

I also hope that David has more time to interact with the staff and members. There really is no winning for him when it comes to all the time he has to spend with the requests he gets. There are lots of things that people ask of him that he simply doesn't have the time to deal with. If people would use the forum for suggestions or the development forum to make suggestions a lot of the issues could either be resolved or feature ideas could be discussed by staff before David sees the idea and has to try implementing it.

And now that I've made this big post I'm not really sure what I hope to gain from it . I guess I'm just trying to say to give David some slack and try and make the site better than cause more problems for it.

EX Palen :  To my understanding, if any Mods had any issues with their quotas, they were supposed to report it to the Mod Managers. One cannot really expect Davideo7 to be the one to notice these kinds of things. As for what Davideo7 was doing around some of the times you mentioned, he was busy with trying to keep the server from going down, and at one point, he was transferring the site to different hosts. This caused many links to break and major things like that were what he was repairing for the longest time until his schedule changed to become even more demanding of his time. However, I'm glad you appear to understand that one of the reasons for why I made this thread is to request that Davideo7 think about and figure out how to better invest his limited time in the site.

As you said, the words from the Site Owner himself will usually carry more weight to the users but if it is made very clear and if it's well-known that Davideo7 is not going to handle certain types of situations and another Admin will, then one should not and cannot really have any reason to say that he is responsible for whatever went wrong, Site Owner or not. For this site, Davideo7 takes care of the server and handles most everything to do with the site code, so we go to him if we have a problem with the server going down or if one of the features he implemented no longer functions properly. We were supposed to go to Vanelan if we wanted to complain about the Mods and we go to tRIUNE when we have issues relating to the Site Staff, but for some reason, a lot of people ended up asking for help from Davideo7 instead, probably because they don't realize he doesn't handle certain issues or because they think that just because he actually can handle everything, then he should.

Well, my thread is a request for him to make some changes that would make it possible for him to NOT have to end up handling or being expected to handle everything by himself, and so if he ever needs to step away from the site for an extended period of time, people won't end up saying things like, "Davideo7 wasn't around so certain things couldn't be implemented and certain issues couldn't be taken care of," especially if those issues didn't necessarily need him to have the final say, or if they could have been taken care of by another Admin.

There are many sites in which the site is run with all of the Admins being pretty much equal although they have different responsibilities. One of the Admins could be the Site Owner, but the other Admins are no less important. In cases like those, users have to find the correct person/Admin to fulfill their requests, and the one that's in charge of those tasks is the one that will be responsible for taking care of the user's issues.

While structures like those have their advantages and disadvantages, many companies use those structures because it is unrealistic and too stressful to make only one person do everything alone. This is why some places require you to find the Customer Service department rather than sending you straight to the boss/bosses. If somehow, you do make your way to the boss/bosses without taking the usual routes, you'll sometimes still be transferred by the boss/bosses to another department because your request is a job for that specific department. The boss/bosses are not responsible for handling those matters, and frankly, they have better things to do with their time because they have their own jobs to do, even if they care greatly about the company and your issue. If the department you are transferred to ends up failing you, then you might feel upset that the boss/bosses have incompetent people working for them, but you can't say much about the boss/bosses themselves because they were not the one(s) that ultimately handled your issue. Right now, on Vizzed, if you want to PM Davideo7 to ask if it's possible to add PS2 games to the RGR, I get the feeling that he will take the time to answer your PM... well, when he gets to it anyways. If he gets 50 of those requests in a day and if he really does take the time to personalize each response, how much time is he actually using up on replying to something that even the Site Staff can answer in his stead? Wouldn't you think that it would make more sense for him to stop answering those kinds of questions and just transfer the user and their question to the Site Staff? In fact, wouldn't it be even better if he didn't even have to see that question in the first place so he could concentrate on creating another feature that would benefit Vizzed even more?

Davideo7 can make all of these decisions and more. The possibilities are endless, but only he can make many of these types of decisions.

Also, just so you know, there are plenty of things I couldn't mention in my thread because they're technically "classified" on Vizzed. I mainly listed the things that I thought normal users might be able to understand and one of those things just happened to be the TDV. (Content hidden from non-Trusted users!)

If Davideo7 won't or can't make those changes, then he's going to need to commit himself to spending a lot more time on Vizzed to do everything like he did in the past when he didn't have a different job. If he thinks it's not possible for him to do that right now, then he's going to have to make changes to either allow more of his staff to take over performing certain tasks that may not actually require his presence, or come up with other ways to have the site keep running as if he's still around all the time, even if he actually isn't. It's entirely up to him, but if he thinks that will entail appointing 10 Admins to do the work and he's comfortable with the idea, then so be it. If it means that he has to get other people to run some of the competitions, or he has to write more code to automate some processes, then so be it. The possibilities are endless, but all of these are decisions only Davideo7 can make since many of them involve him handing over control of some part of the site to someone else or implementing some feature that would help in making some things run/work more efficiently. It's just like how he gets to decide how often he will check his PMs and notifications. No one else can make those decisions for him.

In short, my thread also lays out why some things weren't working in the system that we used, so that the next group of Mods won't end up meeting up with some of the same problems we faced. It also asks Davideo7 to please spend some time on figuring out how to make his limited amount of time work more efficiently for him. With the way things are right now, he will never have enough time to do everything he wants. I'm not a developer and I can't tell him how to make a new system for sorting his PMs and notifications, although we can all see that he badly needs one. I remember seeing comments like, "David is going through PMs again " and while that was funny to me at the time, that was around 4 years ago when I first saw that. I sometimes wonder why his inbox hasn't imploded on him, but then again, knowing him, he probably has something in place to keep it from imploding.

For users like us, all we can do is suggest something when we think of it, and even then, I trust that he can come up with better ideas about how to implement/code some of those things than we can. I've always thought of him as being a brilliant person, and I'm not about to change my views on that now.

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read the request and for presenting your views on this matter. =)

Davideo7 :  

Hello, Sir! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and reply to my thread, I truly appreciate your time! =) You don't know how happy I am that you responded to my request. Also, your response to me showed that you do appear to understand some of the issues, although it's possible that I might not have made some of my points as clearly as I intended, so this reply should hopefully clarify everything.

First off, I don't know if you know this but I don't play blame games. To me, nothing good ever comes out of pointing fingers or blaming others. The blame game is just a massive waste of time and I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time every time I have to explain that. x_X Therefore, I hope you will just ignore whoever/whatever suggests I'm trying to blame you or assume things or whatever, since that is not the point of my thread. My thread is a request for modifications, nothing more. Suggestions for improvements and requests for modifications differ from complaints since they specify possible changes. In order to specify changes, one needs to mention what has happened and identify what might need to be changed or else there is no information to work with/no way to begin discussing anything at all. In other words, anyone that thinks this thread is something else probably needs to work on their reading comprehension skills. I worked on this request for several days, going through several drafts until I was finally able to put some of my observations into words, so I really appreciate that you took the time to read it. Also, I submitted the request to you because you are the only one that can actually take care of this request, if you do decide to consider it.

With that out of the way...

The issues I discussed are based on my own observations, not hearsay or anything like that. I have screenshots to back up what I say but I didn't add them to the thread too, since it's probably not a good idea for me to post things that should stay in certain forums. As for the issues you mentioned, many of us have a decent idea of how hard you work on Vizzed and none of us wants to see Vizzed go down either. Just like everyone else, I'd like to see Vizzed thrive. That's why I thought it was important for everyone to understand the current condition of Vizzed so that after they join the new team, there would not be any surprises that cause them to immediately back out (although if that does end up happening, then it can't be helped). Ideally, they should already have a plan for how they are going to work together with the other Mods and possibly even have a list of changes they'd like to make so that they can immediately start working with the greatest efficiency possible.

Now to address the issues you brought up...

Personally, I think your decision to give up your roles as head of the staff to invest more time into site development is not so much "wrong" as it was probably just... not fully implemented.

Since it appears that a lot of people in the community still thought of you as the "boss of the moderators," and went to complain to you about issues that you were not supposed to have been dealing with, that meant that your attempt to give up your roles as the head of the staff must have failed on some level. Why it failed doesn't much matter by this point (nope, no blame games), but the issue needs to be addressed so you can continue to work uninterrupted as a developer without stressing over messages from users complaining about everything. To address that issue, perhaps there needs to be a post or something that prominently states what each Admin's role is supposed to be and what kinds of requests they will be handling (I addressed part of this in my reply to EX Palen). Then, if you receive messages asking you to do this and that about the Mod team, but you no longer handle anything to do with the Mod team, you can simply transfer that request over to the appropriate staff member/department. That might also help to free up your time so that you can do the job you actually chose to do, and that you enjoy. After all, no one likes to work at a job that they don't enjoy on some level, right? This should include you as well. When Vizzed stops being fun for you, then Vizzed might as well be doomed. Therefore, deciding what you want to do should actually be of utmost importance to you.

When we live a long time without seeing a different type of scenery, we often start to box ourselves into a certain kind of "reality" that we then think "cannot be changed." People often forget that they can decide how they want to change things, and you (of all the people on Vizzed) have the most power to change anything you want about Vizzed to your liking. Don't want any more PMs/messages? Change your inboxes. Don't want to deal with the community complaining about everyone else and every little thing? Set up a department specifically to handle that. Don't want the community complaining about you not doing another Admin's or someone else's job? Put up a big sign stating what your job is, and why you have no time to do anything else. If they can't read it, then that's not your problem. Simply redirect them to your new department that handles complaints like that. It doesn't mean that you're being callous or that you do not care. Everything in this world takes up time, but not everything in this world necessarily requires YOUR time.

If you still want to focus mainly on site development, then I hope you will continue with it, but you might have to make some changes (to the teams, forums, inboxes, features, etc.) to ensure that you can do the developing with minimal disruptions from now on. Just like anyone else, you should be able to choose what you want to do, and if you want to spend more time developing features, then you shouldn't feel forced to become "boss of the moderators" again if that's not what you want to do. Of course, you (and tRIUNE) may have to guide any new Admins a bit when they first step up, but you have to make sure you let them know exactly what your vision is for Vizzed so that they can carry out your rules. Also, in order to ensure that you can support the Admins' decisions (because a unified front almost always looks better and works more efficiently than a house divided), you may want to take steps to make sure you won't be contradicting the rules you and the Mods set up.

In short, you are the one that's responsible for creating the mission statement (no one else can do that for you), and then making sure all of your Admins/Mods are helping to spread your vision even as they enforce the rules. Without a mission statement, no company really does well. Also, if your employees/volunteers disagree with your mission statement, then it's likely that they are not a very good fit for your company and they probably shouldn't be working for you.

Ideas for fixing up the rules so that they reflect your vision for Vizzed include having the new Mod team send you the rules for each forum (with the revisions that they would like to make) so that you can review and approve/reject the rules. Sometimes, updates are necessary after many years have gone by and the world has changed. If you feel that any of the rules are too heavy-handed, don't make sense, or contradicts your vision for Vizzed altogether, go ahead and tell the team what you want changed and why. This might be quite a bit of work for you, but it'll be temporary work and should help you  to prevent a lot of unnecessary drama and problems down the road.

Your role in all of this could just be approving or vetoing/modifying the rules as they come in. If there is a rule you absolute don't want changed, you can tell the Mods not to modify it under any circumstances, and briefly explain why the rule doesn't fit your vision for Vizzed. I would imagine that rules like that include not allowing words of disrespect or hate or plagiarism anywhere on the boards.

If you disagree with a rule and really want to change it, you may want to suggest to the Admins/Mods that made the rule to modify it and include why the rule doesn't fit your vision for Vizzed. Sometimes, you might be surprised by the reasons that the Admins/Mods give for why they made the rule in the first place. If you listen to it and still think the rule is not to your liking, then you may want to give the Mods an order to change it to what you want, but you may still want to let the Mods submit the posts for changes. What you could do is make sure that the Mods that are posting are truly suitable for their positions.

For instance, the Mods could say something like, "All users can now make leaving threads, as long as it's not spam or words of hate. We considered the community's idea to allow leaving threads so that users can leave some constructive criticism/feedback before they leave, and since we are always trying to improve Vizzed,  we've decided to implement their proposal. If you have more suggestions for how we can improve Vizzed, please send a PM to the Local inbox. If you have questions about this new rule, please PM the Local Mods and they will explain our team decision. As always, we thank you and welcome your suggestions for improvement."

Or, if you don't want to allow any leaving threads, the Mods could say, "Leaving threads are not allowed. We considered the community's idea to allow leaving threads so that users can leave some constructive criticism/feedback before they leave, but we also considered the negative impact leaving threads and drama tend to have on the community as a whole, and we think the negatives outweigh the positives. Our goal is to make it so no one on Vizzed would ever have to make anything like a leaving thread, so if you have suggestions for how we can improve Vizzed , please send a PM to the Local inbox. If you have questions about this rule, please PM the Local Mods and they will explain our team decision. As always, we thank you and welcome your suggestions for improvement."

In this scenario, the community will probably think that the Mods really do listen to their ideas (whether or not their ideas were implemented) and take action accordingly. If they're still confused, they will take the actions that the Mods recommended and PM the Mods for more details. If the community continues to send messages to you anyways and you do end up seeing their messages/complaints, you can transfer them back to the Mods that should be handling the situations. In this scenario, your vision has been implemented and you can get right back to working on site development.

However, if the Mods say, "Everyone's allowed to make leaving threads now. We talked to Davideo7 and he made us change the rules about leaving threads, so here you go. You got what you wanted," or "No one's allowed to make leaving threads. We talked to Davideo7 and he decided on that, so stop begging and go find him if you have a problem with it," then more problems have just been created.

In this scenario, the community won't feel good about the Mods (they'll wonder if the Mods even listen to anything they say or have the power to do anything), the community will end up flooding you with even more requests to change the rules (and maybe even the Mods) from now on because they think that works and is the only way to get anything changed, and then you might end up not feeling like you can trust your Admins/Mods, and pretty much anyone else that complains to you about everything.

The example I gave with Vanelan (I don't expect anyone to recall that he was a relatively new Admin at the time) not having the boss's support was mainly for asking you to please consider making rules that are a reflection of your own visions. If the rules don't represent your vision for Vizzed, please modify them until they are. If you don't feel comfortable with backing up another Admin that's trying to carry out your own rules, then that rule needs to go since it's likely you don't believe in it yourself. If the rules state that no leaving threads are allowed and you believe that, then no leaving threads should be allowed and you will need to show support for your new Admins/Mods when they decide to take action to make leaving threads disappear and they trash, move the threads somewhere else, edit the threads or whatever. Similarly, if you believe leaving threads should be allowed, then you should approve of changing the rules so you can support your new Admins/Mods when they start to explain to the community why leaving threads are allowed.

If you don't want the headache of dealing with all of this, then one of the first things you could probably do is revisit all of the rules, make sure they conform to your vision for Vizzed and then ever after, you can let your teams enforce the rules. If you feel any of the rules were too heavy-handed or inflexible (for instance, if you actually did like the suggestion that some users made of allowing users to leave some feedback in the form of a leaving thread before they left the site), then you need to change the rules now before the new Mods step up and end up being confused about what to do. I'm not saying the rules must be set in stone. I'm suggesting that it's in your best interest to make sure all of the rules are up to date and reflect your overall vision for Vizzed. Then, you can implement one of the methods I suggested above or something else for making sure the rules don't change/warp into something you can't agree with, especially if you decide to allow someone else to become the "boss of the moderators." It might even make everything easier to deal with and more clear for everyone if you could write your vision into the rules so that there would be no confusion about how you would like the site to be run. Certainly, doing that may take some time but an ounce of prevention goes a long way.

The possibilities for dealing with these kinds of situations are endless. My request for modifications is thus for asking you to please make your decisions and then implement some changes accordingly.

Next, thank you for your reply about the "mass demotions." It's reassuring to know that you'll be able to handle things like that much better in the future, and yes, I do understand your reasons for wanting to make changes sooner rather than later. If I may add one thing though, while it's often great to take initiative in promoting change, not every kind of change is necessarily in a good direction, and just because something is radical doesn't mean it will necessarily be able to achieve the desired results. I agree that it may have the potential to revive the forum though, so I'm hoping all goes well, and that you will account for the fact that not all change is necessarily in a good direction if/when you decide to make changes to the teams and forums.

As for Vanelan's requests, that's why I'm hoping that you will spend some time on making changes to some of your current systems so that you will no longer lose any important messages, be unable to receive notifications, or have to spend weeks just to be able to get through everything. And for tRIUNE, I wonder if there's a way for him to complete the tasks himself...

I see now that some people appear to have an issue with me using the words, "too busy to care." Allow me to clarify then... I didn't say you don't/didn't care. I said you were "too busy to care," as in you were completely overwhelmed and didn't have time to even look at Vizzed.

Let's think of it this way... A house is on fire and a parent and child are both on fire as well. The parent tries to put out the fire on the child first and then throws the child out of the tall window so that the child might have a chance. Can the parent necessarily care that the child might land on broken glass outside? It's already hard enough for everyone to breathe and the parent is still on fire, so they might risk allowing their child to get some cuts and bruises just so at least one of them can live. Now, next to the parent is their life's work which is also on fire but it's super heavy and much harder to throw out of the window. Does the parent put out the fire on themselves first or the fire on their life's work? We all make difficult choices each day... I'm sure you understand how difficult some of these choices can be. And yes, I sort of imagined Vizzed to be your life's work, and I understand that there are times when we can become too busy to care about something, even if it's our life's work or something precious to us. If we are fortunate, our life's work will not just suddenly vanish, but there are times when we have to temporarily focus our attention on something else. I suppose I could have worded that differently though so it wouldn't have been so confusing... Anyways, I know you care more than anyone else even if you sometimes didn't end up giving that impression because you were busy dealing with real life issues and became "too busy to be able to care," not that you didn't still care.

If my wording bothers you a lot, I don't mind editing my request if that will give you some peace of mind. I just mainly have issues with trying to get my word count to be anything that I want.

For the "Good Cop" and "Bad Cop" thing, I think one can almost tell who was who just by looking at what has been posted so far by the others about you and Vanelan in this thread. Neither position is enviable though, so I agree with changing the system to be something that will be less stressful and much kinder to everyone. No one should have to take on such pressures or be harassed or bullied. I hate that about the internet too.

About the example with the TDVs, I chose to talk about that because it wouldn't really require me to discuss anything that's considered "classified" on Vizzed. (Content hidden from non-Trusted users!) Now that you have said you would have been fine with Globals and Admins taking care of the TDV DQs, I'll be sure to remind the new Mod team to add that to their list of things to post in a prominent place.

As for why so many things currently require your oversight, it's probably also a result of the system that we were using. It seemed to me that not many of the Mods+ really knew the limits of their powers, and during the times when I wanted to test mine, I would often be reminded that people could be demoted for taking things too far.

I worked with Vanelan, so I understand your frustration with people not understanding or knowing how much time and work you have placed into the site. In fact, I thought you'd be able to understand what I was talking about immediately because you have already been there yourself. It makes me sad to see that both of you are often underappreciated for your efforts. This is why I sincerely think some changes need to be made to the current system so that you can enjoy doing only what you want to do, raise your productivity levels without being distracted, and also prevent people from piling everything from complaints, suggestions, and spam on you while you're at it.

Time is something that has to be made, and only you can decide the best use of your time. While prioritizing something is nice, one should make sure that there is a point to prioritizing it in the first place. Repeating the same routines will only perpetuate and reinforce the routines, so if you don't like how you're having to juggle too many things/there's too much on your plate, create a new system to do that work for you.

Again, I am not accusing you of anything or making assumptions about you and what you have been doing or not doing. I read posts but I am also constantly looking around the site to see for myself what has/has not changed. Everything I mentioned is based off of what I was able to observe, given my positions and my time in those positions.

That is how I formed my views, and that is all I can mention because that's the extent of my knowledge. If there is something you know but I do not, I cannot help that because I was only a Global. That's why I prefaced my thread with, "(I'm) present(ing) what I saw during my time as a Global in recent years. It's a view that pretty much no one else could have except for me..." I'm not sure anyone else would have been able to tell you about all of this either because they simply can't when they couldn't see it. While that could be fine with me, that shouldn't be fine with you. When the system fails, the engineers and mechanics have to figure out what went wrong so the people on the train won't die. The people on the train, if they're scared, might start to jump off, but some of them that managed to see something unusual might want to tell whoever can fix the train what they saw. If they saw smoke rising from an unusual place on the train, they might want to tell the engineers and mechanics that are still running tests, because if they don't and if the problem really does happen to be what they saw... This is why I didn't feel like I could leave these issues alone even though I could have also chosen to say nothing. I happened to be one of the attendants that saw something and I thought I should mention what I saw before anything else happens, because even though I'm not an engineer or a mechanic on this train, I've been working on this train and others long enough to know there might be something unusual about what I saw. There's no reason for me to "assume" anything or "accuse" the engineers or mechanics that are trying to fix things of trying to do something to crash the train. After all, I'm just an attendant and I don't want to die either. The least I could do though, before I become a passenger again, is hand over my log of what happened in the days leading up to the disappearance of Main Mechanic/Engineer #3.

Next, everything I stated in my paragraph about how you were "letting the community decide" on who should be the next Mods was theoretical. I was thinking about various ideas while not trying to rule anything out and wondering, "What if this is what Davideo7 is trying to do?" Because I was exploring various possibilities by that point, I used words like "appears," and "possible" and "could" and then ended it by saying, "However, we would like to think that you're trying your best too," to suggest that blaming others is NOT what we think you're really doing. Also, I thought that if you wanted to make it clear to the community what you were doing, you would speak up on your own. Since you did, I'll make a note of what you said. Thank you for your response. I don't know about the others, but I feel a lot better now.

Anyways, I guess you could consider that last part about what you could "simply say and do" to be my warning to the next Mod team to do their best to get along and not fall apart, because even if you say to me that you're not trying to get "(what's left of) the community to share the blame," if they really do end up falling apart, then other people (not you) can and likely will say whatever they want about the team, whether or not it's true (you know how the internet works). In other words, anyone still applying even after I mentioned that possibility is a brave soul, and seeing as a lot of people have applied, I'm hoping the new Mod team will be just fine.

I'm glad you came right out and stated that the rebuilding of the staff "isn't based on you not wanting to take the blame for everything." If it comes to pass that the team does end up falling apart and if anyone starts to point fingers at you or the new Mod team, I can show them your statement here and they can see that you were not trying to blame anyone.

Finally, I do know about how inactive the forums were. It was pretty much my job to know. That's why I'm excited for the creation of a new team, but I hope you won't expect the forum's activity levels to immediately skyrocket or anything like that.

Once again, thank you very much for taking the time to read my requests/posts! =)

(Content hidden from non-Staff members!)

Yuna1000: I mean this in no disrespect but for David's sake I'd try and keep your future posts short, simple and to the point in regards to anything involving Davideo7. As David said earlier "Reading a ton of really lengthy posts is incredibly time consuming for me." I don't blame him, I have a terrible time keeping up with all of what is said here

Again, sorry if that offends you because you spent a long time writing all that but I think in future try to cut it down a bit or maybe add bullet points above each new topic so it is easier to read for him and others.

Eniitan :  I hope the changes continue as well so that Vizzed can move forward in a good direction. I'm glad to see that everyone is doing their part to help, and this is me doing my part.

For progress to be made, there are times when certain things need to be said, even if that ends up making certain people angry. If there is one thing I've learned over the years, it's that change doesn't happen unless people speak up. When the public becomes afraid to voice any of their observations, ideas or viewpoints because of the fear of not being able to please everyone, that's when progress screeches to a halt.

The past cannot be changed but the future can still be reshaped. As LightKnight said, "We can all learn from the past and focus on improving the future." This is why I maintain that my thread is a request for change and improvement rather than some pointless and useless "blame game." One can also consider this thread to be my observations of the past, which can be used to help improve the future.

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my thread. I appreciate your optimism. =)

geeogree :  Thank you very much for reading my request! =) I agree with many of your points, and I appreciate you taking the time to share your insights as a former Admin.

First off - Welcome back! It's nice to see you participating in the election.

Second - I mainly mentioned the TDV as an example of how I was curious about one of the functions (Content hidden from non-Trusted users!) but I received no response. Knowing that staff members were sometimes demoted for making certain types of requests or for testing out their powers, I decided not to press the matter in case something bad happened. (Content hidden from non-Trusted users!)

Third - I didn't say Davideo7 doesn't/didn't care. I said he was "too busy to care," as in he was completely overwhelmed and didn't have time to even look at Vizzed. If you would like some clarification about what I meant, I addressed that in my response to Davideo7. Thank you very much for taking the time to read everything! =)

What I really hoped Davideo7 would think about was how he used his time. For instance, while it looks nice to have the Site Owner be very involved all the time with making announcements etc., that task can be delegated to someone else depending on the type of announcement. For competitions or events in which he's going to be the host such as a music stream or the Vizzed Awards, he's probably going to have to make the announcements himself. He might also have to be the one to announce what features he's working on and what he's fixed. However, announcements for screenshot competitions, drawing competitions and certain types of game competitions, etc. can just as easily be handled by someone else.

Yes, Davideo7 can read his PMs and notifications but he can also allow someone else he trusts to sort everything for him and maybe they can even take care of some of the stuff that might not necessarily require a response from him. Messages like, "Hey, how do I change my profile picture?" can easily be answered/taken care of by the other Admins or if the Admins don't want to do that, they can send it on to other staff members. The point is, it looks like Davideo7's been trying to do too much all by himself, and that's a lot of pressure. On top of that, some of the issues have deadlines. If you don't take care of a spamming plagiarist immediately, the site will be full of problems. Locals and Globals can take care of that. However, if it's someone trying to hack the site, who can take care of that? If the Site Owner is not around to see it, will anyone even know about it? How do you make sure that the Site Owner is watching over things like security breaches instead of sorting through a bunch of PMs in which people are asking why Netplay isn't working? These are questions that Davideo7 has to figure out how to deal with because most of the time, only he can implement the features and solutions. Under the current system, the Mods and Admins can only help out so much after a while. Right now, we can vote in the best group of Mods that Vizzed has ever seen and they still wouldn't be able to stop Davideo7 from being swamped with notifications and PMs. These are features only he can create (as of this writing, he's the only developer) and changes only he can make. Thus, the point of this request was also to ask Davideo7 to please think about creating new features that could help in cutting down the amount of time and work it takes to complete his tasks on Vizzed. If the features end up helping more people, that would be even better. It's nice that several people in the community have already suggested some changes.

JigSaw :  Don't worry, I understand what you're talking about and I'm not offended. I did think for a few days about whether or not I should send such a long message to Davideo7, but I decided to make the post anyways because it's possible that that post will be my last one to him in a long time. I have been trying to keep my points clear and concise, but there's just too much to talk about and there's simply not enough time to mention everything. In the end, I just decided to respond to the issues that Davideo7 brought up in his response to me, more or less in the order that he mentioned them. I don't know if bullet points will actually help in this case, but I guess I could add some. Thank you very much for your feedback and for taking the time to read everything. =)

Of all the people that get brought back from being banned, you're upset about Lexatom? Come on, that's beans compared to other users we let off the hook.

Yeah we all agree that David could and should have handled this better. But it isn't fair to be all "David is the worst person ever, he doesn't care about anything" about it. That's clearly not the case. It may look like it from the outside, but he's always been active in some capacity. This would be a time where that's been taken to an extreme. But now we can't say he doesn't know/care about the site slowing to a freaking halt. I can't say I feel a lot of Van's pain, but that's more because of personal things. But, being ostracized and iced out of the mod team, site, and community in general gives me a more jaded look at that. But I can agree that pulling the plug just like that has to hurt.

David was always willing to be the "bad cop" until other users decided they wanted to be it. It used to be Geeo when David decided to turn this place family friendly, it was Light Knight and Play4Fun for awhile, it was a lot of people. Ultimately it ended up being Van too. But David never asked them to be that.

From my time as Mod+, I absolutely agree on your idea for this sort of center for people to ask all the dumb questions that David REALLY shouldn't be answering. Like "why cant i play pokimen" or "How do I change profile pictures?"
That and being a lot more clear in general would be really nice. That maybe contacting the owner for things the mod and Viz manager should be doing, or the admins, would be a lot more helpful.

Yuna1000 : I approached David on several occasions about finding ways to lessen the load and he wasn't a big fan of it. I can understand it in some ways and in other ways I figured he had better things to do with his time than respond to PM's from people asking about some ridiculous stuff that could have been handled by other staff.

I honestly think that we should make it really obvious that unless you're complaining about an admin that 99% of requests should go through the admin and/or global inboxes and let the staff figure out if David needs to handle it or if they can. Let people know that asking David for something will take a LONG time compared to regular users. Maybe even turn off the ability to PM him for anyone below trusted.

I'm sure there are ways to balance out what he does vs what he NEEDS to do.

Uzar :  ?? I wasn't upset about letting Lexatom and some other people back from their Perma-bans. Why would I be, since I was- Oh, wait, you're trying to make me say what my role in all of this was, aren't you? Nice try, Uzar. XD Sorry, that information is classified. lol All I was mainly trying to say was that not everyone that was allowed to return knew who helped them/was instrumental in bringing them back, or knew how forgiving some of those people were. I only mentioned Lexatom in passing to say that there is a lot that many users don't know. That is all.

Also, I clarified what I meant by "too busy to care" in my reply to Davideo7, and mentioned how I felt about the "Good Cop, Bad Cop" thing (I don't know how that routine started because I haven't been here since the inception of Vizzed, but after seeing it, I hope something will be done about it). It's up to you if you want to read my reply.

I don't think I've ever said anything like, "David is the worst person ever, he doesn't care about anything." If anything, I think he cares too much and that's probably what's making everything very difficult for him right now. It seemed to me that he ended up caring about and trying to take care of every little thing on the site, to the point where he couldn't do what he really wanted to do due to time constraints. Then, when real life issues took hold, he often spent what little time he had to be on Vizzed doing the things that could probably have been taken care of by his other staff members. Well... if we had access to those things anyways.

As for your feelings about Vanelan, everyone's allowed to form their own feelings/opinions of other people. There's no rule in life that says we must like every single person we meet, and there will always be someone out there that disagrees with all of our views or doesn't like us for whatever reason. Oh well... Haters gonna hate, and you know you're awesome, so don't worry. =)

I'm sorry to hear that you felt ostracized and iced out of everything. That just shows how badly the system we were using had been failing all of us in one way or another though. I may not have felt ostracized but I often felt like I was hitting a lot of walls when I and some other people tried to help the site by identifying specific issues that needed to be fixed (we would also suggest changes and preventive measures).

As you know, multiple people stepped down and the last remaining members of our team made it to the "mass demotion," but that didn't mean the system we were using all along was not heavily flawed. Hopefully, the new Mod team won't end up having to deal with the problems we faced.

Thank you for taking the time to read my request and for sharing your views as a former Global. =)

geeogree : Agreed! Oh, I hope Davideo7 didn't think I was trying to tell him how to run his site. I was trying to tell him what we've already tried and what wasn't (and still isn't) working. And aww... Reducing the load/pressure on himself probably could have helped him and Vizzed quite a lot. Well, good luck to the next group of Mods.