Forums / Maintenance / Suggest Ideas

The community feels as if the admins do not pay attention to it, and this would be an easy way to solve this problem. This is not asking too much, just have an admin message a couple times each day in the forums. Have this admin also look at 'Suggest Ideas' once a week or so and leave a couple comments. Such a simple few actions could easily solve a lot of problems so the core users at least, know the admins pay attention to the social atmosphere a small bit and we know ideas are being listened to. It'd be nice to know one of the admins was active in the forum community. Post thoughts below.

Please stop it.

Asura and Skunk can stop, actually.
 
Wyn, I don't mind you posting ideas, but think them through more thoroughly. Most users can post ideas here to get feedback, but due to the nature of the userbase and your persistence, you've certainly gotten to the point where most people (right or wrong, that's the way it is,) don't care if you have a good idea. You should know that and play the situation as it is. I don't feel much sympathy for people who run into brick walls and complain about concussions.

Unless you just like the antagonism and the attention. Then I'm just going to feel like a fool for defending you.

"Better to stay silent and be thought of as a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." I'm not outright calling you a fool, but you're being foolish by repeating the same actions and expecting anything different.

This is a good community. You'll get more out of it by being a part of it as opposed to the class clown.

Yes, having an administrator/staff look at the forums and show regular activity would create a different presence in the forums. It'd make moderators think twice about posting. Maybe.

But generally, there's no need for the admins to be active here for any moderation purposes. I try not to look at Riff-Raff, but the forums seem pretty chill outside of that to me.

Your suggestions have been shown to be ideas that we don't need to implement. Just because moderators shoot it down in a harsh way doesn't mean they were good ideas and they were just giving you a hard time, because they don't like you.

They weren't great ideas, and they were giving you a hard time while pointing it out.

As such, there is no need for an admin to look at the Suggest Ideas board on a regular basis. Moderators help the admins. We're…well, I'm…not out to get you. If there's an idea that could work and is direly needed, we will get with the admins. Heck, the admins would probably already be working on it.

Also, the admins don't need to be seen saying "No" all of the time, and they don't need to get involved on a certain "side" of drama.

Ultimately, I don't see a problem.

• If there was a good idea, then moderators would (begrudgingly) acknowledge it.
• The forums are well-, if not over-, moderated as it is.

Okay, so, this may be a little undermining to your post Verbose, but can at least one of the Admins go though the last year and a half of the mod threads that have been requesting new features, changing/clarifying rules, as well as general what should and should not be on the site. It's been piling up for quite some time.

We tried to make it so that memes would be confirmed on anniversary dates or other times when it would make sense to have them on the frontpage, and well, there was no Admin response to this thread at all, so we really don't have any evidence that any of you guys have ever looked at it. We also created a document that has over 400 potential future entries, and every time that this has brought to the Admin's attention I've never gotten the jest that any of the admins even clicked the link, only "yeah, us Admins have a similar list" (still waiting to hear back on how many is on the Admin's list Ari. Has Brad not let you see the list in the past 3 months since you said you would get back about it?) It's getting bothersome when issues like this keep coming up when people in the mod forum tried to specifically address the issue months in advanced.

Even posts explaining why certain ideas would be impractical/ would not work/ be a bad idea, would be so much more useful than just waiting and hoping that you guys would eventually get back to the thread. I get you guys can be busy, but after how many months after a thread is autolocked should we keep waiting? It's particularly frustrating when you guys go against the near unanimous mod consensus within the threads of what we believe should/ should not be done. Again, if you disagree that's fine but let us know why you disagree and preferably beforehand instead of just blazing through it and then trying to do justify what you did after the fact.

Could one of you guys possibly be active enough so that a thread that suggests good frontpage content could actually be a thing that could work? The short version of separate conversations on IRC basically went like:
Don: If there were any videos that weren't Anita or Fine Bros worth frontpagging we'd do it
Mods: Can we create a thread that suggests good stuff to frontpage?
Don: You can, but we'd probably never look at it

A lot of the stuff you guys frontpage are reposts, sometimes embarrassingly so (and before you say "why are the reposts still up, there was a question about what to do when reposts were frontpagged, in the mod forum… still waiting to here an answer about that…). There's also been times when the frontpagged version of an image literally cuts out everything that makes it relevant to the galley it was uploaded to

Then of course, you guys keep frontpagging stuff by people who have no idea what they are doing, meaning that images that we had to move out of problem galleries that are contributing to gallery abuse often get more attention and upvotes than image by people who make much greater effort in what they upload and make consistently good contributions.

Back when 21 still came on the irc regularly, we both talked about how very few if any images on the frontpage had anything to do with anime or manga. I get that some of the artwork relating to that stuff can fall into problematic areas due to much of it being original artwork, and I get that an English site would have a hard time frontpagging an image with moonspeak, but considering the volume of it that is uploaded to the site, it is underrepresented on the frontpage. Something like this wouldn't have to face either of those hurdles.

Additionally, I know there were multiple requests to frontpage the updated KYM image gallery guidelines back when they were finally agreed upon (which was over a year ago). The fact that they were, to my knowledge, never frontpagged lead to lots of unnecessary warnings and possibly avoidable bans.

Should be noted that much of this was discussed with Ari on irc last night. She said to go ahead and post it here though, so yeah.

Don: If there were any videos that weren’t Anita or Fine Bros worth frontpagging we’d do it
Mods: Can we create a thread that suggests good stuff to frontpage?
Don: You can, but we’d probably never look at it

As odd as that one sounds, that legit happened. I was there, we asked Don in the IRC if a thread to post frontpage requests (within acceptable standards) was a good idea, and despite it being a good idea it was shot down by Don literally for the exact reason that they probably wouldn't read it.

I know it can sound like our issues with staff communication seem overdramatic sometimes, but this is the stuff you have to deal with.

Jacob and Verbose both already covered most what I would say.

Only addition I got is that we did have a Community Manager: Amanda (RiP ;-;7).

She would be active on the IRC and would happily post on the forum, and it worked. If she was in the office, she was readily available to approach. And despite that she could still deliver on entries like was expected from her.

Of course she now works for Tumblr. We now have Ari, who is pretty chill and probably someone open to approach if necesary. So adding community management, like was the case with Amanda, to her job description wouldn't be the worst idea.

BUT… OP's idea isn't working here.

This is not asking too much, just have an admin message a couple times each day in the forums.

The staff is a small team, 4 peeps, one who is the coder and one who is the boss, so you got only two who focus on entry writing. So there isn't much breathing room.

To ask one to be "active" on the forum is demanding. You're not simply asking them to post sometimes, you're asking them to be active. They have an entry quota to meet. They are paid to write entries, not to browse a forum. We can't expect them to browse through all threads.

You might say it's not asking too much, and with a bigger team I would totally agree, but with the small team that runs this site what you're asking actually is too much.

Mods are at all times readily available and 99% of the issues people need specific powers for can be fixed by mods. It's unnecessary to have an admin focus on the least visited section of the site (the forum).

Have this admin also look at ‘Suggest Ideas’ once a week or so and leave a couple comments.

As I shared in your other thread: Mods have a decent understanding of what is and isn't necessary for the site. Having an admin browse the section as well is redundant and a waste of time. You're not getting any different replies, the same ideas will still be shot down but just by different people.

If an idea is good, we can approach them no worries.

Hey I just wanted to post on here that we might not be as active as we need to be, but that these are all really valid points and we ARE trying to listen a little more right now, with the understanding that you guys feel neglected right now and that is super uncool for you to feel that way.

We're still trying to come up with a way for us to get better at community management but in the meantime, you should expect to see me in IRC way more and I'm going to do my best to start looking at the forums. and OF COURSE you can always PM me and I will attempt to get back to you in record time – trying to beat james for fastest responses through PM.

In the meantime do always ping me directly if you think there is something that needs attention that I haven't seen. Even just sending me a link to a forum post is incredible helpful.

We really appreciate all the work you do and the site literally wouldn't exist without you!!! So we have to do a better job of showing our love.