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Old Staff Concerns

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  #1  
Old 03-05-2011, 02:07 PM
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Staff Concerns

Let me start out by saying that this is not an attack on the staff, mods, admins, any in particular or the whole group. I think the staff here are good people who like to help. With that I think there are several issues that in my opinion need to be addressed. That's all it is is just my opinion and I would like to have a small little calm discussion on it

First of all, VMK is gone. We all know that. However, we are still here. We still need moderation as is quite clear with an incident that occured about two weeks ago or something I can't quite remember. The only member of the staff that comes on about once a day, is Jezzi. I think Jezzi is a great part of the staff, she does what she has to do, when she is online, and she's friendly too so that helps However, it really frustrated me, that when that incident occured, with several violations to our rules, the thread was up for almost a day. I had a member or two PM me about it and say (Did you see what he wrote??) Imagine if you were a new member, decided to register that very day, and you see this thread totally bashing our loved forums. Would you want to come back from what he said? This is why I think that coming on once a day is not good. Yes I know we are smaller now, but "bad stuff" happens.

I usually take it upon myself to defend the forums, I did so in that thread and have in a few others. If I see a staff member on, I know the thread won't be around for much longer so I don't post on it. However when I don't see a staff member on, which is most often the case, I know that the thread has a possibility of being up the whole day, so I quickly jump in and attempt to put down the thread creator as calmly as possible but still telling them that they are wrong.

I am not saying that I could do any better, but I am on more often as well as other members. I think that ONE staff member online ONCE a day is very problematic.

Also another complaint I heard is that people have their threads removed for no reason, not that there is no reason, but that there is no reason supplied to them. I always ask a moderator why my thread was deleted almost immediately after it is, and I usually get a pretty good answer, but I think with removal of a thread a staff member should have to PM the wrong-doing member and tell them how their thread conflicted with the rules.

Yet another complaint is that the moderator staff is biased. I don't really know about this one. I was banned twice for rightful reasons, and I think that the moderation staff (Jezzi) did their job correctly. However I do wonder if they have a new attitude against someone once they have been banned, I wonder if they hold it against them and keep it always in their heads, maybe like a stereotype I'm not sure how to explain it. I just know that when sometimes people PM me asking me something, and I say "Ask the mods" many of them that I have contacted have said "No, the mods like hate me." So I'm not really sure about this.

I think this will be my final complaint. I love everything that Tepcat has done for this site. She was great at making fun contests all the way up until December of 2010. I thanked her for this, so no I definitely do not have any bad feelings towards her. Anyways, I was trying to approve my forums competition "The Games" with the staff. I knew that it didn't really cross any lines in terms of the rules, but since I had just recently been banned I decided to PM Jezzi just to make sure it was okay with the staff.

Yes, I obviously know that Tepcat is the moderator of VMKF Contests and Games, (or something like that) but she hadn't been on since early January. So why did I PM Jezzi? Because I knew I had the most chance getting a response from her, as she is the only moderator on about once a day. Anyways, I PM her and she says "I'm rooting for you, but you'll have to ask Tepcat for approval."

This hurt me a little The last time I wanted to do a contest was in November. I wanted to do "2010 VMKF Awards" Awarding our members with stupid categories like "Best... grammar award" haha I don't even know. But Jezzi told me herself that it would not be "okayed" because of two reasons. Favoritism, and it would seem like an OFFICIAL VMKF contest, which apparently only staff can do. So I said okay... I'll try again later.

Now, with an added judge to eliminate favoritism, and no official VMKF name attached to The Games, Jezzi couldn't tell me if it was okay or not when she definitely did before? That doesn't make any sense.

Anyways, I PM Tepcat but I know that's hopeless, so I PM Jezzi again. "Jezzi, I don't think Tepcat is going to come on, couldn't you just okay my game? I don't think it breaks any forum rules, and I just wanted to get it approved." Her response: "Tepcat is the moderator of the VMKF Contests, so you will still have to ask her, I've forwarded it to Batleth though so that might speed up the process, still rooting for you!" Urgh. (Sorry for this story being so long by the way)

Problem with her forwarding it to Batleth is that he has been off almost as long as Tepcat, so it wasn't really helping me at all. I had an idea, I went to the Toontown forums, I already had an account there from when I played for a month. I saw that Tepcat and Batleth were BOTH on in the past day. So I pmed them both my idea, and only got a response from Batleth. "You'll have to get the okay from Tepcat, but she's busy in life right now"

Okay, I respect that, but obviously Tepcat had been on recently and could take time out of the whole week to read a two minute PM and approve it or not. I never once got a reply from Tepcat. I waited and waited and finally decided just to post my contest. Without approval. And nobody has approached me with a problem, not even mentioned it including Tepcat. So clearly, there was not going to be any real problem.

But anyways, this whole story was just to show how difficult and long it is to contact just one member of the staff, and it didn't even end up coming through for me! Again, I enjoy the staff, but I just thought this needed to be addressed.

I'll write more later if I think of it.

Oh and I love VMKF sooooo don't think I'm hating

edit : wow two members of the staff would come on today haha well my points still stand.
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Last edited by bluedudeman; 03-05-2011 at 04:28 PM..
  #2  
Old 03-05-2011, 05:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedudeman View Post
Let me start out by saying that this is not an attack on the staff, mods, admins, any in particular or the whole group. I think the staff here are good people who like to help. With that I think there are several issues that in my opinion need to be addressed. That's all it is is just my opinion and I would like to have a small little calm discussion on it
I don't see this as an attack either. You seem to have some issues that do need to be addressed. We're always happy to try to address user's compaints and issues with the site. We've pretty much dropped the ball lately so you have every right to complain. We do our best to run a professional and safe site, but we've obviously been putting our efforts too much in our other sites and not enough here.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedudeman View Post
First of all, VMK is gone. We all know that. However, we are still here. We still need moderation as is quite clear with an incident that occured about two weeks ago or something I can't quite remember. The only member of the staff that comes on about once a day, is Jezzi. I think Jezzi is a great part of the staff, she does what she has to do, when she is online, and she's friendly too so that helps However, it really frustrated me, that when that incident occured, with several violations to our rules, the thread was up for almost a day. I had a member or two PM me about it and say (Did you see what he wrote??) Imagine if you were a new member, decided to register that very day, and you see this thread totally bashing our loved forums. Would you want to come back from what he said? This is why I think that coming on once a day is not good. Yes I know we are smaller now, but "bad stuff" happens.

I usually take it upon myself to defend the forums, I did so in that thread and have in a few others. If I see a staff member on, I know the thread won't be around for much longer so I don't post on it. However when I don't see a staff member on, which is most often the case, I know that the thread has a possibility of being up the whole day, so I quickly jump in and attempt to put down the thread creator as calmly as possible but still telling them that they are wrong.

I am not saying that I could do any better, but I am on more often as well as other members. I think that ONE staff member online ONCE a day is very problematic.
For as little activity that VMKF has been getting lately, we felt that Jezzi is capable of handling most of the daily issues that may arrise on the forums. She's had lots of practice and one of our more reliable staff members. We've had other mods on, but most felt they were wasting their time as there was so little new posts or mod actions to take.

I do try to get over here at least once a week, but that doesn't always happen. Being the head admin of 6 of Nick's Disney's online gaming fansites tends to take up a lot of my time and my attention often goes to the busiest sites. Though Jezzi tends to handle most of the moderation, I tend to take care of most of the technical aspects of the site.

Instead of jumping into a potentionally bad thread, you should try report it. Every moderator of that forum is e-mailed the reported post and it'll draw our attention to the site faster than anything else. Often, Jezzi or myself are online but dealing with our other sites as they have more activity and require more of our attentions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedudeman View Post
Also another complaint I heard is that people have their threads removed for no reason, not that there is no reason, but that there is no reason supplied to them. I always ask a moderator why my thread was deleted almost immediately after it is, and I usually get a pretty good answer, but I think with removal of a thread a staff member should have to PM the wrong-doing member and tell them how their thread conflicted with the rules.
Questionable threads have always been removed or threads that fit another forum's topic, are moved. It is our long standing policy not to PM a user over every minor thing we do. Only when the violation of their posts are enough to merit punishment. Frankly, it reduces our time having to PM users for stuff they aren't getting into trouble with.

If one of your threads suddenly disappear, Jezzi is probably the right person to PM. She'll be happy to answer your questions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedudeman View Post
Yet another complaint is that the moderator staff is biased. I don't really know about this one. I was banned twice for rightful reasons, and I think that the moderation staff (Jezzi) did their job correctly. However I do wonder if they have a new attitude against someone once they have been banned, I wonder if they hold it against them and keep it always in their heads, maybe like a stereotype I'm not sure how to explain it. I just know that when sometimes people PM me asking me something, and I say "Ask the mods" many of them that I have contacted have said "No, the mods like hate me." So I'm not really sure about this.
We do our best to try to remain impartial with users. We try to look at what they have done and their intent as to how that fits within our guidelines. We do keep records of violations but we use this as a tool to keep increasing punishment as a user continues to make additional violations, NOT as a way to create a blacklist of users to be mean towards. Normally, if a mod can't be impartial about a user, we hand off the situation to another mod to handle the problem, so they can be.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedudeman View Post
I think this will be my final complaint. I love everything that Tepcat has done for this site. She was great at making fun contests all the way up until December of 2010. I thanked her for this, so no I definitely do not have any bad feelings towards her. Anyways, I was trying to approve my forums competition "The Games" with the staff. I knew that it didn't really cross any lines in terms of the rules, but since I had just recently been banned I decided to PM Jezzi just to make sure it was okay with the staff.

Yes, I obviously know that Tepcat is the moderator of VMKF Contests and Games, (or something like that) but she hadn't been on since early January. So why did I PM Jezzi? Because I knew I had the most chance getting a response from her, as she is the only moderator on about once a day. Anyways, I PM her and she says "I'm rooting for you, but you'll have to ask Tepcat for approval."

This hurt me a little The last time I wanted to do a contest was in November. I wanted to do "2010 VMKF Awards" Awarding our members with stupid categories like "Best... grammar award" haha I don't even know. But Jezzi told me herself that it would not be "okayed" because of two reasons. Favoritism, and it would seem like an OFFICIAL VMKF contest, which apparently only staff can do. So I said okay... I'll try again later.

Now, with an added judge to eliminate favoritism, and no official VMKF name attached to The Games, Jezzi couldn't tell me if it was okay or not when she definitely did before? That doesn't make any sense.

Anyways, I PM Tepcat but I know that's hopeless, so I PM Jezzi again. "Jezzi, I don't think Tepcat is going to come on, couldn't you just okay my game? I don't think it breaks any forum rules, and I just wanted to get it approved." Her response: "Tepcat is the moderator of the VMKF Contests, so you will still have to ask her, I've forwarded it to Batleth though so that might speed up the process, still rooting for you!" Urgh. (Sorry for this story being so long by the way)

Problem with her forwarding it to Batleth is that he has been off almost as long as Tepcat, so it wasn't really helping me at all. I had an idea, I went to the Toontown forums, I already had an account there from when I played for a month. I saw that Tepcat and Batleth were BOTH on in the past day. So I pmed them both my idea, and only got a response from Batleth. "You'll have to get the okay from Tepcat, but she's busy in life right now"

Okay, I respect that, but obviously Tepcat had been on recently and could take time out of the whole week to read a two minute PM and approve it or not. I never once got a reply from Tepcat. I waited and waited and finally decided just to post my contest. Without approval. And nobody has approached me with a problem, not even mentioned it including Tepcat. So clearly, there was not going to be any real problem.

But anyways, this whole story was just to show how difficult and long it is to contact just one member of the staff, and it didn't even end up coming through for me! Again, I enjoy the staff, but I just thought this needed to be addressed.

I'll write more later if I think of it.

Oh and I love VMKF sooooo don't think I'm hating
I know that not having official contests on the site anymore has been of some complaint from our few semi-active users we still have. It wasn't removed without some serious debate between the entire admin staff of Nick's sites. The number of participants has been dropping steadily. The number of insults about the contests has rose continully over the past last year of having them. It does take us some serious effort to go about creating and hosting the official vmkf contests. Tepcat has to come up with ideas for a contest, Sven then makes the awards, I have to put the awards onto our server and upload into our awards system, Tepcat has to create the thread and manage outcome of the contests, we get mods from all our sites to vote on the contests, then Tepcat has to give out the awards to the various users that participated. Considering the lack of participation and lack of respect for all this effort, we felt it was best to just stop hosting the contests.

I believe Tepcat has replied about your issue of having contests that you wish to host. She felt it was ok for you to proceed but staff wouldn't be involved. She wasn't thrilled about the way the manner of contest, but had no official reason to deny you - so no awards or official affiliations.

Yes, Tepcat is our admin that handles contests across all our sites. It's best to leave these actions to a single person to handle. Problem she's been having lately, is that real life has demanded a great deal more of her time lately than ever before. She's barely had time for the contests across the other sites and even had to delay some. I do apologize for the lack of faster responses from her. She has read your various messages and was trying to debate on what course of actions to take but hardly had the time to reply and make it known.

Jezzi isn't in charge of contests and could only second guess what Tepcat's replies would have been since they were unable to communicate on the topic. So I can hardly blame Jezzi's lack of response or knowledge on the topic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bluedudeman View Post
edit : wow two members of the staff would come on today haha well my points still stand.
Well, you wanted our attention and to address some of our less than shining moments of late, you got it. Plus, don't forget that we get the PMs and reported post notifications even if we don't actually log into the site.
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  #3  
Old 03-06-2011, 01:44 AM
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Wow, it must be rough to get things handled here. I really can't judge much since I only visit here time to time, but I see how this used to be large community can barely handle just small group now. Its good to see at least some of the staff to keep it active with some activity for us members to keep coming back and be occupied here. But all I have to say is keep it up!
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  #4  
Old 03-14-2011, 03:20 PM
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We just need to figure out a way to keep a lot of members coming back..

How do the other VMK Fansites do it?
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