deltaplus
My biggest concern going forward is that I think many don't feel like we have an active avenue to discuss situations and provide criticism or feedback with the staff. I think this situation and thread is a perfect example. The forums came back up and there was a single message saying everything was reverted and then multiple topics were locked when attempting to complain or provide feedback over the situation until this thread popped up and apart of that was the very poor messaging in that post about 'prominent members' which has some people concerned if not outright upset despite the intent clearly not meant to do so but it was an exceptionally poor choice of words and made the situation even worse. Then you have yourself here answering questions in this thread alone when this is clearly something I think all of the staff should be willing to talk about not just you alone.
Part of the problem is a general lack of transparency, something that was a key thing that was promised wouldn't be an issue when these boards were first launched. I don't want to go into a ton of situations but new mods spring up from out of no where, others are demoted out of no where, and then you had that one Feedback thread before which had a member of the staff (I don't even remember who) making one hell of a post that made the entire staff look bad and threatened that the person they were responding to that they would be the reason the thread got locked when the entire point of the thread was feedback. That thread did get locked and has since been either removed or at least moved to a place normal users can't see it. That is a massive lack of transparency, even if it wasn't your intent the removal of that thread looks like you are trying to hide the poor actions of one of the staff members instead of just dealing with it out in the open.
I can understand if the situation was more complicated then that but by shutting down that person, that thread, it looks to us like what you weren't really looking for was feedback, you were wanting praise and when all you generally got was criticism you guys just said 'fuck it' and closed the whole thing down and haven't made a statement about it since as far as I'm aware. How is anyone suppose to trust the staff and their decisions when things like that happen? Why should we be encouraged by whatever changes you guys try and make for this board when we don't see the transparency that you guys yourselves were suggesting the staff would have from the very beginning? I have felt like there should have been big topics like this one before about the previous thread and other things but personally I didn't feel like risking a ban by making one and any others I had seen pop up were immediately locked like the ones that popped up today before you jumped into this thread. I shouldn't have to worry about being banned when I'm trying to provide criticism in a polite manner but here we are and if you don't get why I and many others feel that way the look at the actions being frequently taken and then you might start to see part of the problem.
As for a solution... I think we need a board for feedback and suggestions that has all members of the staff involved in and engaged in. If a topic is about something that staff member covers they should be posting in that topic. No I'm not saying you need to listen to people just yell at you endlessly but if someone is writing a post like mine that I think people would consider well thought out I would expect the staff to be involved in one way or another in responding to it. I also think taking community suggestions on ways to change the board would generally be a better response then just forcing the changes on everyone with only a few days warning. I'm sure a lot of the community has suggestions on various things they'd like to see for these boards going forward but I don't feel and those I've talk to don't feel like we have a way of really telling you guys that. I'm not saying this is a perfect answer but I think if we had a place where everyone could discuss things like this then we could come up with at least a better answer then none at all.
