Sound Off
 

So I've reached a point to where I am pretty much fed up with the forums. There's some good things that go on here, sure, but ultimately it's a hassle and no fun to run at all. Our community is generally sarcastic, rude, disrespectful, and immature. Not the kind of site I'm proud to be running.

Everybody knows about the hackings and the spammers. Also those who feel like they are above all the rules and the site is their personal playground. There is a site, nicely hosted by Klown, that is filled with personal attacks on the moderators and on me personally. Petty if you ask me. Do you guys have anything else to do with your time? Seriously, find a girlfriend, play sports, do something useful. Apparently, it's more fun to be dicks on the internet.

So what I'd like to ask is.. why? Did we moderators screw up by not having enough oversight to begin with? Is there just an influx of members who are too young? Is there a bad culture on the boards? Are there too few rules, too many?

In short, what's it going to take for you guys to shape up? We need to have a board where people can have fun, but that also has rules and where moderators and members are respected. There are plenty of examples of successful boards across the internet where this is the case... I honestly spend my time at these boards instead of at my own when I seek conversation. This shouldn't be the case.

So I guess we have two options:

1) Moderators and me can become draconian and enforce our authority (which does exist, and has to exist to keep the site running). We can go on banning sprees, delete posts entirely, and clean up spam by deleting anything remotely close to it.

2) You guys can stop acting like jerks to the moderators and members at the site, and create a peer-supported culture that discourages trolls, hackers, and flamers. This means that instead of laughing or posting spam posts in spam threads, you tell people to stop. Pretty simple. It's perfectly possible to have fun without being idiots.

Right now #1 is probably going to happen very soon if things don't shape up. We've lost the impetus to explain our actions to the community, hence the removal of the site forum. We're close to the end of the line.

The whole insane flaming of mods is ridiculous =/.

If one bans you, it happens, deals with it. If I'm banned I don't particularly care if it was 100% justifiable. That mod thought so, so it happened... And even if there's no "just cause" for it (can't believe I'm using that phrase to describe actions on an internet forum), then whatever. Take the internet too seriously? Apparently so.

They are mods for a reason...

number 2 sounds good to me

'ey yo, check this out. I'm new. So I don't know anything about nothing. But it's like. I dunno, I guess people see this as a place to just kick back and say whatever, and that's a good thing. I think it's like... you guys have created a site that offers that freedom, so I would say, no, the mods aren't doing anything wrong. But when people overstep this freedom, I don't think the solution is to be like, "We screwed up by letting you have freedom. The end."

Because the truth is, even if some people insult the mods, most of us respect you. Like, if somebody is really honestly offending someone, then sure, give 'em the boot, but most of the outrageous behavior here is good natured, you know?

[quote]Because the truth is, even if some people insult the mods, most of us respect you. Like, if somebody is really honestly offending someone, then sure, give 'em the boot, but most of the outrageous behavior here is good natured, you know?[/quote]

Such as posting obscene p*orn pictures with my head superimposed.

Or this, posted yesterday about me:

[quote]Someone photoshop a picture of like a gaping ****hole (preferabally goatse) and his huge dildo and label the dildo RIAA or any number of people he's potentially scared of. [/quote]

Pathetic

[QUOTE=mx;13665231]Such as posting obscene animal photographs pictures with my head superimposed.[/QUOTE]

What the? =/.

You put up with so much crap. You're a saint for even keeping these up forums this long.

There's pictures of you on the internet!? :eek:

I dunno. If someone did that to me I would probably just chuckle

Actually, that has been done to me.

But that is a bit over the top. But still.... MOST of us respect you, and MOST of it is good natured, as far as I've seen, anyway

I feel;

First off, MX (the site) and mx (jeremy) doesn't owe us a website. This board is here out of the goodness of his heart, and whatever revenue he makes from ads. If you get banned by an appointed mod, you get banned. If a mod continuously abuses his powers, it will become apparent and he will be removed.

Secondly, there is a culture of non-sense and childish (yet harmless) humor on MX that I fully endorse and partake in. If we weren't allowed to post in a light-hearted manner, this place would suck. I'm talking the Pit/GD here, which has no post count+, and isn't meant for advice on any specific matter. Seriousness is, in my opinion, best left to the forums that have an actual purpose.

I feel like there is a lot of common ground in between that - it's not like one of those things exclude the other.

[quote]First off, MX (the site) and mx (jeremy) doesn't owe us a website. This board is here out of the goodness of his heart, and whatever revenue he makes from ads.[/quote]

I honestly created the site for fun -- hence why the review site currently doesn't even have ads but I still pour time into it. When it stops becoming fun and gets personal....

[quote]Secondly, there is a culture of non-sense and childish (yet harmless) humor on MX that I fully endorse and partake in. If we weren't allowed to post in a light-hearted manner, this place would suck. I'm talking the Pit/GD here, which has no post count+, and isn't meant for advice on any specific matter. Seriousness is, in my opinion, best left to the forums that have an actual purpose.[/quote]

Perfectly agreed, but there is a difference between humor and idiocy.

It's users that can't accept the fact when they get banned, since screen names with big post counts are "cooler."

[QUOTE=mx;13665264]Perfectly agreed, but there is a difference between humor and idiocy.[/QUOTE]

mx humor is amazing :)

I don't know if you ever actually enjoyed all those mx episodes FMK used to make, but those were hilarious.

I just don't understand, from ANYONE'S perspective, why hacking and posting animal photographs is fun at all.

Like two years ago (when Adam was all cool and was trying to spam mx); I pretended to want him to do it, and (this was stupid of him), convinced him to give me every screen name he made, which I just passed along to DBJ =).

I just don't understand the motivation for some people...

i'm neutral on this issue; both the "hackers/spammers" and the mods have messed up quite a bit and i'd rather just say what i feel from my middle vantage point

the first step to fixing everything is that we need to lighten up and also stop with the [size=2]p[/size]orn/shock image posting :-\

i'm just here to wind down from the travails of school and social life and i can't really enjoy the same old horse being beaten over and over again by both the "hackers/spammers" and the mods

Maybe we (read: I) should make a humor test that new and current users need to pass in order to be allowed into the Pit.

\:D/

In all honesty though, I can't stress enough that this is a problem purely on the user end - some people are petty and pimple-faced losers who desperately would want to take mx's advice (get girlfriends, excel at sports, etc) but can't so they compensate by googling ways to hack vB. They do it because they want to stir up a reaction, and we react because it negatively effects a website we enjoy using. There's really no way to stop any of this, except maybe for some people to realize there's a world outside of the internet, and that the internet nor the people populating it owes them jack sh!t.

Yeah- I haven't seen any mods causing any trouble as of yet, but I've only been around for like a week

[QUOTE=Justin;13665284]

Like two years ago (when Adam was all cool and was trying to spam mx); I pretended to want him to do it, and (this was stupid of him), convinced him to give me every screen name he made, which I just passed along to DBJ =).

I just don't understand the motivation for some people...[/QUOTE]

justin, internet spy.

i think it is probably just me, because i am only on here a few days a week and i have only been back here for a month or so, but i don't notice that many bad things going on. i hadn't heard of klown's site, but i don't see why people would take the piss out of the mods when most of them do their jobs pretty well and aren't elitist or anything like that. yes, there is a fair bit of spamming, but i doubt that there is a single forum where there isn't. sure, it usually isn't cool, but as long as it doesn't get out of hand/personal/rude/hackerish then it shouldn't affect the functioning of the forums too badly. there are a lot of people on here who post well, and i think that the minority are the ones spoiling it. and yes, if someone comes on here and posts badly all the time in a way which is obviously on purpose, of course they should be banned. i know that you don't owe us this jeremy, so i am not surprised that you are mad at users for mucking up what is really a favour from you to them, so thank you for keeping mx going as long as you have and hopefully for a lot longer.

The problem on the mod end is that we can't always take care of a large clique of spammers, hackers and trolls on this site

The problem on the user end is that we shouldn't have to

In all honesty, I doubt those users will stop creating trouble

is there a problem in GD? I haven't really noticed anything, so I can only assume the trouble is going on in other forums. Yeah, I don't read every thread--especially those that are closed--and I'm not here as frequently as some others are, but everything seems okay to me here. There isn't much disrespect towards mods as far as I can tell, and if there is, it's mostly in good humour.

^The hackings by toasty boy and chad are the most recent trouble overall I think...

[QUOTE=bebubly;13665324]justin, internet spy.[/QUOTE]

:cool:

He almost caught me too! And this is the first time I actually said anything about it on mx :eek:


/false sense of importance

i think people just want to talk. when there is anything going on people continue as normal as long as they can untill everything is shut completely. that is the community imo, the people that talk to each other. when the mods talk to us and post as normal users and respect us, everyone respects them and will back and accept any descision. example i can think of now is superpeer or when burt was in here a few months ago.
also there is a level of annoying spammers that are dealt with notmally and there are a few super problem users that should be dealt with differently. when one or two users post the things you say you shouldn't say all of us do it. the forums shouldnt be punished for the actions of a few.

I know nothing about hackings. I guess I'm in my own little world here.

It might have been a while ago, I don't even remember. I just returned like a month ago after being gone for like six months so.

The few we're talking about in Site was ten to twenty people, and we simply don't have the time or the energy to constantly coddle them

[QUOTE=Justin;13665387]


:cool:

He almost caught me too! And this is the first time I actually said anything about it on mx :eek:


/false sense of importance[/QUOTE]


and there was me thinking you were a trustworthy geuine internetter. jeez.

personally, with gd, i think that because threads are more like genuine conversation than in the other forums, things are bound to go off track. when people start a conversation in real life, it leads onto other subjects, and i guess that is what a lot of threads do here. i wouldn't call that spam, that to me is just what happens when people talk.

the intention of tnp was never to attack the mods or be a dick to anyone and i don't really see that happening. it's a forum just like here. it's meant for people to talk and they have. about all sorts of things. that's it really.

Who mentioned TNP?

[quote]There is a site, nicely hosted by Klown, that is filled with personal attacks on the moderators and on me personally. Petty if you ask me. Do you guys have anything else to do with your time?[/quote]
[QUOTE]i hadn't heard of klown's site, but i don't see why people would take the piss out of the mods when most of them do their jobs pretty well and aren't elitist or anything like that.[/QUOTE]
and there were 20 people hacking and posting pron?

[QUOTE=semi;13665441]and there were 20 people hacking and posting pron?[/QUOTE]

there were??

Ah

No I'm talking about the people constantly spamming in Site, it was on heavy rotation and there were still at least ten people constantly doing it

I don't care much about TNP and hacking is overplayed on MX for the most part, it doesn't happen insanely often

I remember there being a huge problem with hacking a while ago. Been gone for a little while, don't really know what's been up here, but while grievances are being listed, I'd like to add to it avatars of women posed provacatively. I think it's bad forum culture to allow trashy and demeaning avatars. I think people with avatars of a woman's chest or of some random "totally hot babe" seem immature, and do we really want to further project the image of immaturity beyond what some users create through idiotic, childish postings?