Straight from Grav. Zelaron Improvements

What the flip is this? You guys (staff) are acting like blatant tards, aren't you?

I was told by titus not to post, but hell you've gone and got me mad with your bullcrap. I was going to make a thread incorporating some of these ideas; what Slim posted (and titus already had, why are you playing dumb?) was just what people had originally sent me.

What's with the twisting of shit back around at us and the childish games?

Me! Oh, me me me me me! I see it! I think they mean by more freedom of speech that they don't want their posts being Edited. They'd rather see it get trashed then edited? Maybe more Moderation simply meaning, less Sov? I don't know, I'm just trying to throw a bone at these "geniuses" who made this list..

Damn you're a fancy ass aren't you? Should I give you the sarcastic schmuck of the year award? No wait, that goes to DFD. At least he's funny.

You want a list? I'll fire one up now. Here's a list, if you can handle that without insta-spewing a fourth grade retort.


Moderators are not better than Members.
(Special treatment and double standards)

Simply put, if they fuck up, they should get punished the same way we do. I don't see any of that going on here. In fact, the only thing I can recall on Zelaron that relates to staff being persecuted is when a staff member suddenly becomes a common target for other staff, a la taco or penguin. I'm not siding with them, but you know damn well what I mean.


Stop being so damn controlling.
(People want to say what they want, when they want)

Staff should be here to take care of emergencies. The sort of thing I'm talking about is when people from brawl hall or wherever make many accounts and spam up the forums. Slaynish making a thread about his dog shitting on his face in gen con is not an emergency. We don't have that many members that we need to have our threads and posts neatly sorted and filed away to begin with.

And what is up with anti-cursing rules, or having posts edited or trashed? The only time you really need to do that is if someone is being hugely and blatantly racist or insulting their mama. Because it's their damn mama, man. Not cool.


Insulting is fun, so deal with it.
(Moving shit to the flame forum if it contains anything more negative than a proton)

I'm not sure when all this "no flames outside the flame forum" shit started being enforced more than traffic laws, but making snide remarks outside the flame forum shouldn't be such a huge deal. Titus and Bob made about 8 in the their last few posts in this thread. Hell, Titus alone probably did in his last 50 posts. But wait, that doesn't count, right?


That's what I wrote up in the last half hour or so on limited sleep and even less caffiene. I'm sure titus is going to nitpick at every little word, because he always does, but our points stand that this place is way too strict. I went to this forum for the past two and a half years because this place was carefree. When did you guys decide you were going to run this like Auschwitz? Bad move.


For reference - http://zelaron.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31495

I really like this list, theres alot of decent points in there.

Maybe some of the staff will read this.

I agree with many of the preceding and or postceding points to be made.

Sounds good Grav. I agree with you 110%~~!!!!!111oneoneone

I'm basically in total agreement.

Grav basically restated what people have been saying all week.

And yes, the staff should take these 'improvements' seriously.

Let me add another one.

Get rid of D3V

I mean, All he does is hassle other members. I'm not trying to be too bold or anything, but just about everything that he says either doesnt make sense, or is too insulting.

Bah.

Negative comments are different from flames. If someone posts constructive criticism, even if it sounds like a flame, it is fine. The problem occurs with simple name calling and cursing that have no point, other than to degrade someone without intent to improve upon anything. There was a big discrepancy with what should be Edited. Simple enough, the Staff are now aware that only advertising posts should be Edited. Everything else should be Split and Moved to the Trashcan. Mods are now going to PM a member if they think a specific topic isn't deemed appropriate. Then, if it is done again, action will be taken. There are no swearing rules. Swear the fuck away for all I fucking care.

Wow, so glad that you elaborated on what was already known. Good job fellas! If you want more than a fourth grade retort, you best give me better than fourth grade ramblings and cry baby tactics. All these issues have clearly been addressed already, and done so once again by Raziel.

We all know there is not a no cursing rule, and we've already gone over, at vertabim, that a few trite remarks here and there are by all means fine, and even encouraged from time to time, since they are pretty funny.

Like I said, if you see a Staff member getting away with breaking rules, inform someone! Simple as that, no more double standard. I have not received one (1) PM or IM from anyone complaining about any member of Staff, with actual backing to their claim, other than, "I hate them! DE-MOD DE-MOD!" That just doesn't cut it.

I'm not playing dumb, I just didn't want everyone's "fire" to run out by the time Grav got back, which isn't for another week, and in the course of the first week of his Ban, much of the umph was already lost.

Like I said, if you see a Staff member getting away with breaking rules, inform someone! Simple as that, no more double standard. I have not received one (1) PM or IM from anyone complaining about any member of Staff, with actual backing to their claim, other than, "I hate them! DE-MOD DE-MOD!" That just doesn't cut it.

That's precisely what I'm getting at. I agree with pretty much every point listed above, but I don't agree with them at all as complaints. I have yet to see solid evidence that any of those things are consistent or even worthwhile occurences on this forum. Like I said, if people would provide me with links or actual hard facts that these things run rampant on the forums, they would have my complete support in this regard. So far, all I'm hearing is a lot of bickering with no reason behind it.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was just one giant joke on behalf of Grav just to get you guys all riled up.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised either, which is exactly why I am not riled up at all.

It probably isn't a joke, but really, people are struggling to form any sort of complaint that makes sense.

Alright, you want cold hard facts? Let's take D3V's case for instance. He was asked by Bob not to post something, he didn't listen, and he posted that something. That something was not against the rules in any way, shape, or form. Yet, he was banned.

Penguin asked Sov not to post his picture. Sov didn't listen and posted it 4 times, along with PMing me the picture. Granted, this wasn't against the rules either but Penguin specifically asked him not to. Sov didn't get banned. Woah?

The reason why we did/do think there's a no-cursing rule is because of Penny's thread entitled, "Why is most of the Zelaron staff SO GOD DAMN FUCKING ANAL!?!?!?!?" It was later changed to say, "Why is most of the Zelaron staff so ANAL!?!?!?!?!!" - along with a few posts edited in that thread because of the use of cuss words. Woah?

Thanatos is correct about everything in that post.

Are you arguing that you didn't want D3V banned or that you did want Sov banned? By your logic of presented hypocrisy, you can't demand both.

I didn't get banned, no, but I did get warned, and a user note was added to my name. Any mod should be able to see it, I think.

And mind you that was my first major flare up against a staff member in a while.

The reason why we did/do think there's a no-cursing rule is because of Penny's thread entitled, "Why is most of the Zelaron staff SO GOD DAMN FUCKING ANAL!?!?!?!?" It was later changed to say, "Why is most of the Zelaron staff so ANAL!?!?!?!?!!" - along with a few posts edited in that thread because of the use of cuss words. Woah?

Also, D3V was briefly banned for cursing, but that was quickly retracted. It still enraged me at that point, though.

Allright Raziel, I will try to proviede examples of each.

Moderators are not better than Members. (Special treatment and double standards)

I know this one has been said countless times, but the comparison between D3V's situation and Sovereign's situation has been made. Titus has attempted to justify D3V's banning with his 5 user notes, but I'm not buying it. D3V has been banned on multiple occasions, and many times, I have looked back in disgust and said to myself "What the fuck are they doing." Me and D3V have had our differences, but even then I believed that how he was being treated wasn't right. But I'm going off on tangents. My point is, that it is a known fact that many people don't like D3V. Is it also coincidental that D3V has been banned multiple times? I haven't seen him do too much wrong as of late.

Another example: I remember a new member came in trolling the forum with a perverted picture of a horses head up a girl's pussy. I assumed that Sovereign was going to ban, or warn the newbie, but on the contrary, he started trolling with that same picture. Given, he took it down after a while, but for around half an hour I couldn't go into a thread without puking all over my keyboard. What were his reprecussions for this? Nothing.

Stop being so damn controlling. (People want to say what they want, when they want)

This seems to be brought up here at Zelaron every few months. Lately, it is true, some of the mods have been disgustingly controlling. Especially as of late. When we make a thread, we generally don't want it closed or trashed.

I can't cite too many particular examples here, because I simply can not remember them.

One example, though, would be when Penguin and Sov were babbling over that stupid picture. I make a thread so they can go to argue there, and not clutter the Operation Dumbo Drop thread. I thought that would perhaps save the Operation Dumbo Drop thread. Instead of being thanked for reminding them to not clutter a thread, I got a snide remark from Sovereign about how he doesn't need to be told where to argue, and my thread was promptly deleted. After that, Sovereign and Penguin continued to argue in the ODD thread.

Another example is the Bob-D3V scenario. D3V's comments, though they might have been unethical, were not against any rule, whether bob told him to remove the comments or not. All of these comments were deleted. That's what I mean by too controlling.

And this is a recurring problem. It happens every few months. It happend back when Kuja tried to post that anti-christian thread. Unethical, yes. Against the rules, no. This is another example when the mods have been too controlling, and have abused their power.

It happend a few months before that as well. Recall when Titus was trying to lock down on the rules in the chat forum. Titus, and the new rules were met with resentment.

While the staff may not recognize these as valid examples of being "too controlling," I believe them to be. Now apparently this is all going to change, according to the staff, but here are some of the examples you asked for.

Insulting is fun, so deal with it. (Moving shit to the flame forum if it contains anything more negative than a proton)

We already have the staff's word that this will be dealt with more appropriately, so I feel no need to expand here.

Admin Actions Log

Here will be a 'log' of the actions taken by an Admin/Sup mod.

This is not ment to be any sort of an explenation of the actions, but it could solve some confusion about why somebody may have been banned.



I think that this would be a great idea for Zelaron improvements, this way, everybody can get their damn story straight.

Wow, aren't you the all knowing D3V.

This already exists, nice suggestion

Well I'm sure it exists in the Ad-mod , but there should be a public thread for it in (forum discussion?)

1) D3V, the staff has absolutely no obligation to cite reasons and justifications for administrative actions. That information does not warrant public display, and as such, it is the decision of the offending individual and the staff whether or not to make such information available to the general public.

2) Thank you, MJ for giving these complaints some actual validity instead of simply being baseless whining.

Now, to address these issues.

D3V, at this point, is in precisely the same boat as Grav is. He has been warned, reprimanded and scolded so many damned times by the staff that he is no longer afforded the luxury of the benefit of the doubt. Granted, he has been banned quite a few times, but he's never been permanently removed from the forum. On top of that, you probably don't recall this, but D3V was never actually banned for his misbehavior until a few months ago. He went for eight or nine months without recieving any kind of punishment for his bullshit except for the constant flame activity directed at him in the FF. Shit, I defended his right to spew his racist BS all over this forum. My opinion is that, although groutesque and moronic, he had every right to say it. Eventually, though, his behavior spilled outside of just racist remarks. He began flaming outside the FF and just causing problems in general. By that point, he should have been well-aware of the consequences, and as such, temporary banishment was an appropriate response.

In regards to Sov and the horse head, I had no idea that this had even occurred. This is just more reason why the staff needs to be notified when shit like that happens. If the staff doesn't immediately respond to the situation, most likely it means that nobody has seen it, or the staff simply assumes that the memberbase has no problem with it. You guys need to be actively making it known that these infractions bother you. Up until yesterday, I wasn't aware that you guys thought anything was wrong here.

As for Bob and D3V, Bob is new to the moderation job. Cut him some slack. If you'll recall, I went pretty overboard when I first got modded. Everybody does it. The appropriate response to D3V's antagonizing should have been to just ignore it, move it into the Flame Forum or Chat Forum and leave it be. He knows better now. You guys shouldn't be jumping all over his ass when he's only had a month of experience under his belt.

Like I said before, these are not constant problems. Yes, these things occur occasionally, but they are infrequent occasions at the most. People are capable of screwing up. Nobody is perfect. You guys are acting like this place is just overridden with these problems, and the truth is, this forum is running just fine. Bob is still getting used to his mod powers, all of the Off-Topic forums are generally very laid back and little to no actual moderation is required these days. However, I do appreciate it very much that these examples have been brought to my attention. Now that I've been made more aware of this stuff, I'll make sure to keep my eyes more attuned to what's going on in the future.