The more time I spend on the Starbound forums, the more apologetic I feel towards how some of us treated the moderator fiasco... I mean, I already feel stupid about it, but the more I see what they have to deal with every day... Ugh. Imagine a job where you have to try to calm down people who have no thought in their mind other than to cause turmoil and chaos, or groups of those who have entirely different opinions to eachother and are militant in their beliefs, or have to punish those who've made honest mistakes no matter how sorry they are. And all the time they have to try to remain completely neutral both in their position and emotion. Spammers, trolls, haters, ignoramuses, many of which end up returning even after you've stopped them one way or another. And endless stream of them. And even then much of your work goes unnoticed, or if it is noticed, unappreciated. And some people take active offense, accusing them of messing up their job and trying to rile up hatred like some kind of Trump rally.
(03-31-2016, 06:07 AM)Shaadaris Wrote: [ -> ]The more time I spend on the Starbound forums, the more apologetic I feel towards how some of us treated the moderator fiasco... I mean, I already feel stupid about it, but the more I see what they have to deal with every day... Ugh. Imagine a job where you have to try to calm down people who have no thought in their mind other than to cause turmoil and chaos, or groups of those who have entirely different opinions to eachother and are militant in their beliefs, or have to punish those who've made honest mistakes no matter how sorry they are. And all the time they have to try to remain completely neutral both in their position and emotion. Spammers, trolls, haters, ignoramuses, many of which end up returning even after you've stopped them one way or another. And endless stream of them. And even then much of your work goes unnoticed, or if it is noticed, unappreciated. And some people take active offense, accusing them of messing up their job and trying to rile up hatred like some kind of Trump rally.
HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS FOR A LIVING?
*collapses*
that's probably isnt their day job they mostly moderate in their free time is my best guess
(03-31-2016, 06:07 AM)Shaadaris Wrote: [ -> ]The more time I spend on the Starbound forums, the more apologetic I feel towards how some of us treated the moderator fiasco... I mean, I already feel stupid about it, but the more I see what they have to deal with every day... Ugh. Imagine a job where you have to try to calm down people who have no thought in their mind other than to cause turmoil and chaos, or groups of those who have entirely different opinions to eachother and are militant in their beliefs, or have to punish those who've made honest mistakes no matter how sorry they are. And all the time they have to try to remain completely neutral both in their position and emotion. Spammers, trolls, haters, ignoramuses, many of which end up returning even after you've stopped them one way or another. And endless stream of them. And even then much of your work goes unnoticed, or if it is noticed, unappreciated. And some people take active offense, accusing them of messing up their job and trying to rile up hatred like some kind of Trump rally.
HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS FOR A LIVING?
*collapses*
I still feel like the biggest offense in that whole debacle was "we can ban you for any reason, we only bother telling you the reason because we're nice like that"
I don't really approve of the "because I'm in charge and I make the rules!" mentality or the "I don't care who started it!" conflict resolution as both are mostly reminiscent of a school teacher disciplining children who do not understand how authority or responsibility works. When you are dealing with adults on the internet you do not NEED these techniques because the people you are dealing with either understand authority and responsibility or will need to be disciplined extensively either way. Never mind they tend to establish an "air of superiority" where the moderators can be perceived as considering themselves better than users, which isn't good for anyone because it just makes the users resent the mods.
I think it's better to treat people as if they are capable of acting like rational adults, punishing them accordingly when they refuse to, and generally trying to cultivate a feeling of being down to earth and approachable.
In less depressing Forum news, I also posted on the Minecraft Forum:
Quote:...if Microsoft did jump the shark by all but discontinuing the Java version, it could be a blessing in disguise - hold the pitchforks and wands, hear me out.
For a long time, many people have been wanting MC to stop throwing out (to be perfectly honest, often underwhelming on the surface and overwhelming at the roots) updates for a while now. So what then if they keep adding greater and greater roadblocks for modders... And the modding community at large has enough of it?
Imagine if the majority of high-profile modders stuck with whichever version was the last one with the most modding capabilities. Imagine the possibilities, when modders don't spend half or more of their time modding updating to the newest version with tons of unnessessary code changes. Instead, Forge could just keep adding new features for modders to make use of. Modders could just keep updating and changing their mods instead of reworking them constantly and trying to salvage as much as they can. It would be the golden age of Minecraft mods.
Perhaps even new tools could be made like what exists in the Bethesda game communities - ones to generate compatability patches between mods, change the load-order, and stuff like that. The amount of mods that could work well together could increase drastically. The amount of high-quality mods would keep growing, and even if an author stopped updating their mod, people could keep using them with their other updated favorites because it would all still be on he same version of the base game.
Of course, it would be a lot simpler if Minecraft just stopped updating. I mean, the base game has only added a fraction of the content of any mod in the last 5 major updates, and much of it has already been done better, while constantly reworking the inner workings of the game for little apparent reason.
Of course, this is coming from someone who hasn't been interested in the base game since 1.1 when they first played it, so take it as you will.
I think something happening to make modders stick to one MC version is, unfortunately, the only way the modding community will ever come out of the increasingly large slump its in right now... Which sucks, because Minecraft mods have a lot of potential.
"I've considered surge something of an intellectual rival for several years-"
"WHOA WHOA WHOA. I don't need people thinking I operate at that low a level."
Haaaaa *high fives himself* you're on fire tonight me!
(03-31-2016, 07:40 AM)Surge Wrote: [ -> ]"I've considered surge something of an intellectual rival for several years-"
"WHOA WHOA WHOA. I don't need people thinking I operate at that low a level."
Haaaaa *high fives himself* you're on fire tonight me!
Ohhh dayum...
I'm definitely going to have to find an excuse to use that one.
(03-31-2016, 06:07 AM)Shaadaris Wrote: [ -> ]HOW DO PEOPLE DO THIS FOR A LIVING?
*collapses*
that's probably isnt their day job they mostly moderate in their free time is my best guess
They don't.
In fact most of the forum moderators you'll run into out there are volunteers who have normal lives and day jobs and stuff to deal with.
If you were on the Kerbal Space Program forum from mid 2013 to mid 2015 or so, I was one of their moderators. It is an exhausting and thankless job, dealing with brats who think they don't have to listen to you because your rules are too strict and they can do whatever they want.
And I can tell you it completely ruined the game for me. Between the drama of moderation, the politics of being on the inner circle between community and devs, and just the overall grind of constantly dealing with bad characters, I literally cannot enjoy KSP anymore. Completely and permanently ruined it for me.
(03-31-2016, 06:41 AM)SCN-3_NULL Wrote: [ -> ]that's probably isnt their day job they mostly moderate in their free time is my best guess
They don't.
In fact most of the forum moderators you'll run into out there are volunteers who have normal lives and day jobs and stuff to deal with.
If you were on the Kerbal Space Program forum from mid 2013 to mid 2015 or so, I was one of their moderators. It is an exhausting and thankless job, dealing with brats who think they don't have to listen to you because your rules are too strict and they can do whatever they want.
And I can tell you it completely ruined the game for me. Between the drama of moderation, the politics of being on the inner circle between community and devs, and just the overall grind of constantly dealing with bad characters, I literally cannot enjoy KSP anymore. Completely and permanently ruined it for me.
Pretty much this. I mean I don't get it really from here because hardly anything goes on, but I've talked to Dunto (one of the starbound forum moderators) from time to time about it and he had the same sort of sentiment. It really is tiresome and people don't see how much busywork moderators do that goes completely unheard of.
You're basically doing the garbage collection of the forums. You're deleting inappropriate threads and spambots, moving topics to the appropriate place and whatnot. Whenever you see a dispute you can't just back away and do something else because you're the person who's expected to resolve it, no matter how petty or silly. People mostly just get mad at you for taking moderator action against them, no matter how justified.
People assume you think you're better than them because you have a fancy name tag and were afforded a tiny modicum of power to enable you to do your job. Some people aspire to it and all I can think is why would you want to do it at all? I suppose if you really love the community and stuff.
In fact most of the forum moderators you'll run into out there are volunteers who have normal lives and day jobs and stuff to deal with.
If you were on the Kerbal Space Program forum from mid 2013 to mid 2015 or so, I was one of their moderators. It is an exhausting and thankless job, dealing with brats who think they don't have to listen to you because your rules are too strict and they can do whatever they want.
And I can tell you it completely ruined the game for me. Between the drama of moderation, the politics of being on the inner circle between community and devs, and just the overall grind of constantly dealing with bad characters, I literally cannot enjoy KSP anymore. Completely and permanently ruined it for me.
Pretty much this. I mean I don't get it really from here because hardly anything goes on, but I've talked to Dunto (one of the starbound forum moderators) from time to time about it and he had the same sort of sentiment. It really is tiresome and people don't see how much busywork moderators do that goes completely unheard of.
You're basically doing the garbage collection of the forums. You're deleting inappropriate threads and spambots, moving topics to the appropriate place and whatnot. Whenever you see a dispute you can't just back away and do something else because you're the person who's expected to resolve it, no matter how petty or silly. People mostly just get mad at you for taking moderator action against them, no matter how justified.
People assume you think you're better than them because you have a fancy name tag and were afforded a tiny modicum of power to enable you to do your job. Some people aspire to it and all I can think is why would you want to do it at all? I suppose if you really love the community and stuff.
as someone who also was moderator on the largest starbound RP server...yeah
people went "oh you think you're so much better than everyone else" all the time when i pretty much always thought i was worse than everyone else, and everyone blamed the mods for everything that was wrong if anything did go wrong.
i do not miss not being a mod there e_e
(03-31-2016, 11:42 PM)Ehksidian Wrote: [ -> ]as someone who also was moderator on the largest starbound RP server...yeah
people went "oh you think you're so much better than everyone else" all the time when i pretty much always thought i was worse than everyone else, and everyone blamed the mods for everything that was wrong if anything did go wrong.
i do not miss not being a mod there e_e
You either step down while you still have any respect for the user base or you live long enough to think you're dealing with the dregs of humanity.
(03-31-2016, 11:42 PM)Ehksidian Wrote: [ -> ]as someone who also was moderator on the largest starbound RP server...yeah
people went "oh you think you're so much better than everyone else" all the time when i pretty much always thought i was worse than everyone else, and everyone blamed the mods for everything that was wrong if anything did go wrong.
i do not miss not being a mod there e_e
You either step down while you still have any respect for the user base or you live long enough to think you're dealing with the dregs of humanity.
I think to be a mod for any amount of time for any large community, you have to already have the lowest possible expectations of the userbase you're moderating. That way, you're pleasantly surprised by anything that isn't the worst possible. If not, then stuff like this will wear you out.
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