Rant time!

[rossmum]

fap told me to put this into a thread, so here you go.

This forum has been going downhill for months. It started with CMT and even now they're 'gone', the filth they left is still here. I'm sick of seeing threads spammed to hell or turned into flamewars because of moronic fanboys and wannabe internet crusaders thinking some sod needs 'saving' from the 'cruel and horrible flamers' who are just being honest. I'm sick of seeing foul rubbish spouted in any thread about anything that doesn't conform perfectly to somebody and his borderline neo-Nazi, extremist views. I'm sick of certain people constantly bitch-whinging about Metroid even though he stopped trolling long ago. But worst of all, nothing has been done about it at all. Dole was banned for - wait for it - a week, after Dr had the decency to go warn some of his posts (including his little hate-sprees on Russians and homosexuals) which I'd reported at least a month earlier. Timo, Ghost and jfap are almost never on, and Zeph is too busy with college and his little pranks to really do shit. As a result, even the attempts at intelligent discussion get driven into the mud by idiotic bickering over the most petty of details, and the few threads that the mods actually bother to lock are locked about 30-odd pages after they went off the rails.

Quite frankly, I believe this site is in need of a major reform - like the one we had when the new theme was installed, except focusing on cleaning out users rather than threads. Long-time members, myself included, are allowed to get away with nothing short of blue murder without so much as a slap on the wrist, while not-so-established members are either banned for a mere week for something that warrants at least a month, or are absolutely raped with infractions for one moment of stupidity. Being 'fair' has turned into 'doing the least amount of warning possible to keep the masses happy', and even the new detention section set up specifically for repeat offenders so the staff can discuss their situation with them has seen almost no use whatsoever. Decent threads where people could discover new things or learn about each other's tastes in music were deleted as 'spam', despite the fact that they contained less spam than most other threads.

Some action needs to be taken, and fast. I know that a lot of us came here to escape Gearbox as it was gradually overrun by stupidity - jumping ship before it went down, as it were - but without something being done, this site will go exactly the same way, and then where do we go?

[p0lar_bear]

As a first step, some ground rules really need to be laid down, written in PLAIN SIGHT, and enforced as strictly as possible. It has recently occurred to me that we have no rules set in stone; only a warning system that is loosely enforced because the moderators can't view every goddamn post on this forum.

If you ask me, there need to be rules governing what can and can't be discussed here; similar to Gearbox, but MUCH stricter. This would kill some of the flamewars that occur over stupid shit, such as nationality, religion, politics, etc.

[Con]

I agree that things are getting off-track, let's be grateful for what we have at the moment and that we aren't like some of the other sites out there. We've still got the chance to turn things around. If only the admins would take some sort of action. I don't see why we can't have more mods; it's common sense that's required for the job, not experience.

edit:
p0lar brings up a good point; we need some rules that keep out the flaming but let us keep our nice and natural debating. There's a fine line that people can get pushed over quite easily. Right now, nobody's there to stop people from going over it.

[SnaFuBAR]

I agree. Less tending to the masses needs to be done. When someone is just looking for fights, their intent is obviously to dredge for drama. Acting like that can't be tolerated. I've really had enough of people posting without any punctuation what-so-ever, posting hate messages, accusing people of being this or that negative thing and trying to call people out while being the exact definition of what they're "fighting".

People are constantly acting like real incompetent JERKS around here, and nothing is being done about it. Rules are rules, you break them, you bite the dirt. You moderators and admins are so worried about being "fair" you lost sight of what that was a long time ago.

Get your acts together, please, for the sake of YOUR forums.

[Kornman00]

Hey rossmum, how about you take the first step in reform and stop making alts used to just get people fired up?

[Rob Oplawar]

^lol but that was funny!
the problem is the people best suited for being mods are the ones who are least interested in doing it.

hmm, i think part of the problem, maybe all of the problem, is that the mods want people to like them just as much as any other member does. just thinking out loud, but maybe mods should be anonymous, and have alts that they use for regular friendly discussion. you know, keep work and personal life separate.

idk, I've never led a site like this before, so I have exactly 0 experience with this.

[rossmum]

Hey rossmum, how about you take the first step in reform and stop making alts used to just get people fired up?

What?

[Kornman00]

Do I need to provide a quote?

[rossmum]

What quote?

No really, what are you on about?

[n00b1n8R]

..Long-time members, myself included, are allowed to get away with nothing short of blue murder without so much as a slap on the wrist, while not-so-established members are either banned for a mere week for something that warrants at least a month, or are absolutely raped with infractions for one moment of stupidity. Being 'fair' has turned into 'doing the least amount of warning possible to keep the masses happy'...

best part IMO.

now as of this post there are 1,873 members and about what? ghost, fap, timo, zeph, goat.. 5 mods. so that's a ratio of about 374 - 1. wow.

I think some new mods are really called for tbh.

then there needs to be some stronger inforcing of the rules. I remember a while ago ghost or fap or someone said that when H2V came out and we got an influx of newer members people wouldn't be aloud to do crap like use "fuck" anymore. I don't think that that is at all nessicary, but it's certainly time to pull up our socks.

there was a thread the other day where alot of the older members where talking about some crap about doing atty or something, totaly derailing the thread and not a thing was done.