Warnings and etc

  • Thread starter Thread starter Furzball
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Well. If something comes out of this that will better the board then all I have to say is my work in this subject is done.

But I agree with Kudi, the whole shoot first ask questions later, is not a policy that should be taken onto forums. I'll take a poke around and maybe write up a "newb" POV of what goes where based on what I'm reading. I welcome anyone to do the same and we all post it in one thread. That way we all get where eachother is coming from on this issue. Using those articles it may be possible to review the rules and descriptions, making them more member friendly.
 
Ahem.

This thread is silly enough. But what's worse is that we're missing a good opportunity to properly discuss the thread category rules, and how difficult it is for new members to judge what goes where. It's very nice for us to write newbies off as stupid teenagers, and gratifying to flame those who won't read the rules, but in practice, we're cutting off our noses to spite our faces, creating a massive workload for ourselves that sap moderator time.

Now, I'm not really yet qualified to call myself a technical author, or a user experience champion. But I can tell you this: it's far better to redesign your interfaces and web forms, and assume your logic is arbitrary / unintuitive / obscure, than double the support calls / admin work you endure. If our categories and rules aren't immediately obvious, they're probably confusing. Rather than marching towards Furzball's ban, let's discuss how we can avoid these problems in future.
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Agreed.
 
Well, I logged on perfectly happy and ready to mute Furzball, but since this thread has taken a constructive turn, I'll let it slide.

Shoot first ask later is how I've been trained and lived my life for years.  Complaints about it? Too bad.  That's why we also have Halkun who seems to be the ultimate pacifist, and sl1982 who's somewhere in between the two extremes.
If I happen to catch you, sucks to be you.  If it's Halkun, you lucked up.  And if it's sl.. it's a gamble.
Consider the current "argument" dropped.

As far as changing the site...Clearly everyone besides sl and Bosola ignored this one https://www.ff7catalog.com/posts/113222/  not even 2 weeks ago guys
 
Ok here is my problem with all this. People complain that forum descriptions are too ambiguous, yet I do not see anyone offering up better wording. You say that this is your community? Well maybe it is time that you help us make it better. (Note: This is a generalization, some people actually do have input)
 
For what it is worth, when I was admin of a bunch of pricks who formed a clique creating trouble for other members I went through tons of rule revisions, trying my best to appease and then later punish but it doesn't matter how the hell you word it.

People understand right and wrong, and they know when they are being shitty.  No clarification is necessary as it is ultimately futile.
 
People understand right and wrong, and they know when they are being sh*tty.  No clarification is necessary as it is ultimately futile.
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So true.

Resistance-Is-futile.jpg
 
I told you your continued whining and complaining and immaturity wouldn't go unpunished.  Just because I called a truce doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to tolerate your sh*t.  Bans for mocking/disrespecting other members has precedence, so don't think you're the first.  And yes I do fully expect you to continue coming here whining and complaining.

In case there is any confusion.  The ban is for your avatar.  Blatant disrespect to any member is a severe warning.  Continued disrespect after being told to quit by a moderator(s) is bannable.  Goodbye.

Also, for anyone wondering what he is talking about.  Matron Orlha made another account and badmouthed myself and KM.  So it was deleted and he was banned again.
 
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Ok here is my problem with all this. People complain that forum descriptions are too ambiguous, yet I do not see anyone offering up better wording. You say that this is your community? Well maybe it is time that you help us make it better. (Note: This is a generalization, some people actually do have input)
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Good point. I'll see what I can draft tonight.
 
I told you your continued whining and complaining and immaturity wouldn't go unpunished.  Just because I called a truce doesn't mean I'm suddenly going to tolerate your sh*t.  Bans for mocking/disrespecting other members has precedence, so don't think you're the first.  And yes I do fully expect you to continue coming here whining and complaining.

In case there is any confusion.  The ban is for your avatar.  Blatant disrespect to any member is a severe warning.  Continued disrespect after being told to quit by a moderator(s) is bannable.  Goodbye.

Also, for anyone wondering what he is talking about.  Matron Orlha made another account and badmouthed myself and KM.  So it was deleted and he was banned again.
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Well I am hardly in a position for a "draft" of new and interesting rules but...This rule would have helped in this situation...

Users may not argue a moderators decision publicly. Any and all complaints directed at a moderator must first address the moderator in question via PM. If the problem can not be resolved, then the moderator and user must send their positions to the forums global moderator. The forum global moderator will make or change any and/or all final decisions.

Might have avoided any problem, then again it might not have. Aether way your bases would have been covered. :|
 
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Users may not argue a moderators decision publicly. Any and all complaints directed at a moderator must first address the moderator in question via PM. If the problem can not be resolved, then the moderator and user must send their positions to the forums global moderator. The forum global moderator will make or change any and/or all final decisions.
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I like the part about arguing publicly since it is very hard for people to maintain their cool.  Were this in place, maybe Furzball and some others would still be around.  I think the publicity just causes both sides to further stand their ground so ultimately nothing is really accomplished.  As far as global moderators go, we all are: myself, sl1982, halkun, alhexx.  I'm just the only active one who gets the tag.

As far as the site is concerned, Programming Feedback should be eliminated since we now allow questions in the program's thread.  And there's Tech Support (maybe renamed Troubleshooting) for any other problems.   Also, instead of the site's own search engine I think we would benefit from implementing google to take care of that for us.  That may also help get rid of the "your last search was less than 30 seconds ago" problem.
 
Shoot first ask later is how I've been trained and lived my life for years.
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We're not in downtown Baghdad. That may be a fine policy when your life is at stake, but over here the worst possible thing that could arise from failing to act quickly enough is that a thread might be on the wrong board for a couple of hours. The two situations aren't really comparable.

Users may not argue a moderators decision publicly. Any and all complaints directed at a moderator must first address the moderator in question via PM. If the problem can not be resolved, then the moderator and user must send their positions to the forums global moderator. The forum global moderator will make or change any and/or all final decisions.
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When you solve one problem, you often create two more. In this case, making it impossible to publicly question a moderator's decision would greatly reduce transparency. Users need to know what's going on if they are to feel comfortable on the forums; keeping everyone in the dark about why Tommy Atkins or Joe Bloggs got banned creates an Orwellian atmosphere. Decisions made behind doors always feel very shady to me.

Furthermore, by having everything in the open, it forces everyone to either play nice or lose the respect of all the forum's members. You wouldn't have a court case behind closed doors, would you? No, because power could be abused and no-one would know. By making these things public, we can see who's doing what and everyone will be encouraged to behave fairly.

As far as the site is concerned, Programming Feedback should be eliminated since we now allow questions in the program's thread.
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I have no strong objection to this, but what would we do with all the threads? Things are already very messy after the last change. Would all the threads be moved to the "projects" board. (obviously, it would be absurd to just get rid of them; all that valuable knowledge would be lost)

That may also help get rid of the "your last search was less than 30 seconds ago" problem.
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I fucking hate that. The sooner the search problem is dealt with, the better.

It's also pretty hard for people to hold back the temptation to create a new thread instead of using the search function when said search function is almost unusable.
 
when said search function is almost unusable.
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Ideally, we'd embed a Google search function into the site. The problem is that whilst SMF's search engine can use different metrics to decide what's relevant, none of them are too much good for our purposes. You can make SMF prioritize long threads, but some tech threads are only a couple of pages. You can force exact keyword matches, but someone researching a field won't know what keywords they're looking for. You can emphasise stickies, but we only sticky threads about forum rules. We can make subjects more important, but that's no good if - again - we don't know what keywords we want.

The only metric I can see which would help is the 'match first message' function. Most technical threads are clear about their purposes in the very first thread. They don't tend to wander or digress, but rather stick to a narrowly defined subject ("Field action opcodes", or "The world map layout"). Because these threads stick to a particular purpose, adding extra weight to 'prioritize matching whole threads' might help a little too.

Just some thoughts.

EDIT: And another thing. You guys are aware you can autoban anyone who joins with a particular username, right? For names like 'Seifer', this would have been bad (lots of Seifer fans in the FF world). Various manglings of Norse gods, on the other hand, won't get many false positives. Or, at the very least, Herm will at least spell the names of his idols correctly for a change.
 
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Various manglings of Norse gods, on the other hand, won't get many false positives. Or, at the very least, Herm will at least spell the names of his idols correctly for a change.
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The problem is that we'd have to have over 9000 different ban words for each of the over 9000 characters in Norse mythology if we are to account for all the different ways he could misspell them.
 
But back to the topic at hand.

Ok here is my problem with all this. People complain that forum descriptions are too ambiguous, yet I do not see anyone offering up better wording. You say that this is your community? Well maybe it is time that you help us make it better. (Note: This is a generalization, some people actually do have input)
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I think we can only organize topics once we understand

1. What our topics are, and
2. How they feed into each other

Now, I think the following demonstrates the 'genealogy of knowledge' on QHIMM - the ways that one sort of knowledge begets another, and therefore where threads are likely to cross topics. Objects above are 'parents' to, or 'lead to' objects linked below them:

qhimmknowledge.png
So, we start by reverse engineering the PC and PSX builds. From this, we learn about file formats and how the data they hold is processed. This knowledge leads to, respectively, Extractors and Mechanics Documentation. Extractors soon become editors. All QHIMM members need to do now is create ideas for Mod Projects.

Once we have these ideas, we can apply our mechanics knowledge and editors to create Mods. People play them, and submit bug reports, telling us about their Technical Problems. Meanwhile, non-modders visit our forums wanting to get the PC build up and running. Because their bug reports usually concern our patches for the PC version, Technical Problems and PC Build Tech Support are effectively twinned.

If we can agree to this, or something similar, we can recognize how and when topics will merge and fork. Understanding this is key.
 
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That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
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This does not need to happen...If you to go thought the pain of adding all the "badwords" you might as well install a no proxy mod for SMF which works really well preventing any of the above problems.

Don't know what to do about SMF's search system, it sucks...
 
I cannot take anyone's complaints seriously if they run anything on gaia.
That's like working at mcdonalds to the fullest of your abilities and complaining your application to be a nuclear physics scientiest was rejected.
I thought Furz was a pretty okay person, there goes my respect.
 
He was an okay person. He had right to question why he received a warning. What he didnt have a right to do was make derogatory remarks and general disrespect towards others. Had he kept his cool and acted civil in the matter he would have still been here today.
 
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