Staff Concerns

[bluedudeman]

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.