Thread: Sound Off
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Old 11-20-2006, 02:11 PM   #1
mx
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: cyberland
Posts: 5,809
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.
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