Thornhillboy: In Reply To #14 Can I just check something? Are you Admin over all the forums in this little group (Main, PS2, XBox, GC, PC etc) or just at the main forum? ------------------- BANG: In Reply To #15 I don't believe that anyone here thinks that your resignation is a sign that you no longer care about the community here. I am in the same position, I cannot continue to take on responsibility for this forum without some means of knowing what direction we should be taking. In Reply To #16 I am just an admin of the main forum. ----------------------- Thornhillboy: Right, I feared as much. Any ideas as to whether your going to take other responsibilities for us, or is someone else is going to be elected? ----------------------- BANG: In Reply To #18 I have been asked this by several mods. Well, I believe everyone here was ok with me being admin for all of the forums off of the main and I am willing to take on that role while this gets sorted. However, nothing is going to happen until Monday if Homer even agrees that this is appropriate. ----------------------- CoyoteExile: Just to make sure that no one thinks I'm ignoring this (some of you know better, I'm certain) I just wanted to say that I'm still uncertain of, well, everything. I have no idea when or if I will ever be certain. Kind of in an on the fence situation. Who knows anymore.... ----------------------- fett: I'm in a similar boat. I am certainly not happy about what has happened (as I've voiced) and I think we all here have pretty much the same issues, the fact that people who have little to no connection with this community made sweeping changes to this community, which betrays both a disconnect and a lack of caring about the community from GSI. (I've always been a strong proponent of the self-regulation this community does, I think that is why it is such an excellent community) I'm ticked. But I'm not going to go off half-cocked until I understand better what is going on. While I don't hold any aspirations of surviving the next election, I enjoy being a mod and helping in what fashion I can, and I would like to remain one so long as this community is able to maintain some semblence of what it was before. Whether it will be able to maintain that semblence is the question. ----------------------- [GSI]-1313-Evil_Homer: Bang, Ill work with you on anything you need just as I did with Hardflip. Fett, what sweeping changes are you talking about? Nothing has changed at any actively supported boards in a very long time. No changes were made at any GameSpy.com boards either. So, I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate a little more? Did you guys change something? ----------------------- Cyrris: Let me give you a timeline and some commentary, over what has changed: - shaithis oversees the GameSpy forums and platform sites, Hardflip is community admin, and shai generally gives guidance over what is happening, what is expected of us, and generally handles any complaints and issues that go above Hardflip's pay grade (and we all know what that pay grade is). He's really just there for tough situations. - IGN and GSI merge, shaithis leaves. No-one from GSI comes in to replace his role. When issues arise such as complaints sent straight to customer support, the powers that be try and axe several of ours moderators/admins, multiple times, despite being completely wrong on every occasion. This would have happened before too, except we had shaithis to handle such issues, instead of the overzealous, short-sighted and narrow-minded customer support, who I can only believe are completely unqualified for making such decisions. In essence, we lose all support from GSI/IGN, and we're on our own. - The above issues mean we no longer know what is expected of us, as all of our previous methods which shaithis told us to use in dealing with problems are denied by the powers that be. Can you understand the confusion yet? Hardflip is not [GSI], so Hardflip could not handle all the big issues for us, so unlike what you said in your thread before, Hardflip is not and never was shaithis' replacement. - You start laying out bans left right and centre. Sometimes for very good reasons (spam attacks, hacking), sometimes perceivably not. Explanations for the questionable bans aren't even shared in here with the admins and mods, despite that having always been the case previously. So while on one hand you ban people (even one of our own awesome mods), on the other hand you try and say you're not the head admin here, and you're just a backstage figure. There's a contradiction of words and actions there. If Hardflip is shaithis' replacement as you say, then he should be given global forum administration powers like shai had. He should be the final word on any complaints/issues people have with the mods and admins here, and any bans you or customer support enforce should be done directly through him. Now, I can't see that happening, which means either you or some other [GSI] needs to pick up the position which you're not giving us. So there, that is what has changed. While we have people to give the technical support on ForumPlanet which we need, and we have people to open new forums or close old ones, what we don't have is someone who can oversee forumplanet's social structure, and guess what: the social structure of a forum system is the forum system. No-one cares about the spam forums. No-one cares about the code upgrade. We all care about getting someone in the company to actually run this place properly. If you can't provide that then the problems we've seen over the past while are just going to repeat themselves again, and again, and again, and again. ----------------------- [GSI]-1313-Evil_Homer: Well Shai left well over a year and half ago at this time. I had little knowledge to how he ran things or what he role was (other than what I've seen/heard). I also was not in charge of any replacement for him or any of that. In a sense I do not work at GameSpy.com. I never have. I've always worked in the community site team (Planets & Vaults) and never had anything to do with GameSpy.com itself or their boards. My role has always been with the Planets, and as you can see... ForumPlanet is part of the Planets, hence the name. My role has been more of an "overlooker" by handling any issues Site Directors/hosted site have with their boards, creation of new boards, promotion, upgrades, highlever stuff, etc. Im also responsible for anything the higher ups want action for under ForumPlanet as a whole. The closure of the spam boards are a good example of this type of request. But I've never "ran" any boards in the sense of an admin/moderation or involved in a community at that level at ForumPlanet. No one has that role or could do such a job. We have hundreds of boards. Each parent site has always been responsible for running their boards. But when Shai left a new head admin needed to be placed to maintain the mods, community and all the fun stuff here are GameSpy.com. I was asked if I could find someone since I was the only one connected to ForumPlanet, or knew anything. And since Hardflip was already close to that role and Ive always thought he kicked ass. I gave it to him. I've always told him he has full control over these boards and community, I relied on him to know what's best since he was here for a long time and knew everything, etc.... and told him to contact me for any high-level problems/issues. Which he did and I helped him as best I can - I always have. I also always helped you whenever you messaged me on ICQ. I've always been around for anyone, I'm just a message or email away. I think the root problem here, or from what I see. Is everyone is looking for someone from GameSpy.com to be more involved, like Shai was. And it seems everyone thought I worked at GameSpy.com. But like I said before, I do not work at GameSpy.com and have no connection to how they run things (never have). That's a whole separate department I am not involved in. I just support these boards since they fall under the ForumPlanet blanket. But I'm not editorially linked to GameSpy.com or involved in their relationships with their community. Quite honestly, I have no idea how they run things ;) But as I said to Bang the other night. I will look into seeing if I can get something going. The GameSpy.com peeps just might not know this void has been present, or that its effecting the community so much. I know I was never really made aware until now. Or at least it wasn't spelled out to me like this. This does explain why everyone thinks I'm more than I am around here, or expects too much from me and they think I suck because they do think of me like that. Which kind of sucks if that's what most people are bitching me out for. I think I need to change the title IGN gave me or something. ----------------------- Cyrris: OK, I think this is where the fork in the road is. Having someone in charge of the community/social aspects of the forums who doesn't have the authority to override your or customer support's decisions is where a lot of our problems have come from. It makes no sense to have you or customer support banning people or stripping mods/admins of their positions when neither you nor customer support plays an active role in overseeing the day to day operations of the moderating team itself. I think we can go places from here. What we need are the following: - Precise reasons, stated in this mod forum, as to why Tweak and Fishbaugh are currently banned across forumplanet. It's the mod forum, where all transgressions are reported, so I don't believe it's breaking any provacy policies. - Complete autonomy from customer support. These forums are a service, yes, but moreso they are a community. If they were a service primarily, then the mods and admins in this forum would all be getting paid. But it's a community they love so they do it for free and as such they shouldn't have to answer to customer support every time a complaint is lodged. If someone doesn't like what has happened, the admin here (Hardflip or BANG) should be the person consulted about it, and if action is needed that BANG or Flip can't handle, then they should be able to call you for help. - Complete transparency over your actions as community manager. Any forum closures or bans of significant community members should be reported in here for discussion before a permanent course of action is decided upon. - Maybe: Another forum on these boards, which all ForumPlanet forum admins and head mods have access to. Here they can all discuss the situation of the community at large and can give you, homer, a better picture of what is going on. Any grievances can be brought up much more easily and dealt with in a flash. All it would require is for you to read over it once a day. I think the point above this one would best be served in a forum such as this. I think doing the above would definately get us on the road to better relations between the community and the corporation. Right now it's just black and white, and no grey area in between.