"Understand the Past, Gain the Future": Dustloop Revamp General

[floatwater]

At that point it was almost a unanimous "fuck this, let em run into the ground" and that's what happened up until the revamp idea happened.

 

 

imo if a moderation staff ends up coming to a decision like this then why even be a moderator to a "information hub".

[SoWL]

I seem to have a very one-sided outlook on Dustloop, because most of the mentioned points go right over my head. I rarely hear any negative opinions about the site, mostly because my local scene rarely speaks English, so we have our own FG board to discuss. Other than that, the only non-Dustloop FG people I talk to are internet randoms, and you know how people treat anything on the internet. Because of that, I'm afraid I won't be of much help in improving the reputation of the site, because I don't know much about the scope of the problem. One thing for sure: I don't want to see the community aspect of the site disappear, because Dustloop remains the largest community of my favorite game genre, and I'm not sure if any other site would fill the void that would be left from losing it. On the other hand, I don't want to turn it into a 4chan thread full of random spam: having my translations seen by everyone is difficult enough as it is. The best way to keep that balance that I can come up with is to have different moderation standard sfor the different subforums, so spouting misinformation would be punished differently in different parts of the site. Put disclaimers like "Be careful about trusting anything that's said here" in the more lenient subforums, and hopefully whatever damage might be done there will be reduced.

As for the moderation team, I don't have much to say about its policy: every time I got warned or infracted, it was for a good reason, so I could admit that I was in the wrong. The only gripe I have with the mods is that most of the time, seeing a red text under an avatar (or a large avatar back in the day) makes me go: "Wait, who's this?". No, I do not visit every single corner of Dustloop, so I cannot always know everything that a mod does for the sake of his subforum. I also understand that Dustloop being an English-speaking forum means that the mods are likely to be American, so I can't even know them from my local scene. But then you get some cases when a brand-new subforum (about a new character, for example) gets a mod who rarely even posts there, which makes me doubt the entire decision-making process behind the scenes. I moderate the aforementioned local FG forum, I know that best moderation should be invisible to people, but the mods are not just there to edit posts and delete spam, they are the face of their subforum. I understand that real life can happen to people, but users are generally able to get it together and act like decent human beings while the mod is away. Also, that requires that they even know about the mod being gone and not just lurking. I'm this close to sharing my personal experiences that left a bad taste in my mouth, but I hope we can improve things before it comes down to that.

[Nobus3r1]

Needs more moderation. Best cases came from just using moderation tools, eating a nasty PM or two, then letting them stop posting or fix it. I'd wager 90% of the time I would do this it would work. My mistake came in just wanting to go in threads and try to steer things a bit, but I was worried if I kept just handing out infractions it would kill half the site after some users just bailed after receiving only one. Bans are really rare here outside of extreme cases. Also yeah, it sucks when people get treated like children, but some users act like children and they get treated as such. I should've dealt with that more privately, but again, the hope was the better users would see us say something and steer it back on track.

 

Perhaps bans shouldn't be so rare?  I will also say that whether it was IRL or online that I've never witnessed a positive outcome for 'act like children' -> 'get treated like children'.  All it does is pour more gasoline on the fire. 

 

A lot of that came from moderation nightmares tbh. Remember the night Kokonoe was revealed? Holy shit, I thought Circ had died cleaning that mess up, he made a statement, "hey, don't let that happen again." It happened again, and again, and again. We should've just banned the people who were doing it tbh, but we didn't because, um, they were the entire forum. We eventually gave and just made the hype threads for people to bust their bullshit into, and even then people failed to use those. At that point it was almost a unanimous "fuck this, let em run into the ground" and that's what happened up until the revamp idea happened.

 

Do I remember when Kokonoe was revealed?  Nope.  I peaced out on BlazBlue around BB:CSII and since there wasn't anything going on with P4A or GG at the time (at least that I can remember) I had no reason to be visiting this site.  As a brief aside I know that TYM gets a lot of shit (largely deserved) but the, from what I've gathered, Kokonoe reveal is what the developer of their chosen game subjects their community to ever couple of weeks in the form of DLC characters and/or balance patches.  I imagine if something along the lines of Kokonoe where being dropped on Dustloop twice a month that there wouldn't be as much of a difference between TYM and Dustloop as many seem to think there is. 

 

Disclaimer:  I do no post on TYM, I am not registered on TYM, I mearly observe them from behind a duck blind for comparison purposes. 

 

*ahem*  Anyway I think that some amount of venting is perfectly fine as let's not forget the amount of work that some people put into these games and how frustrating it is when that works goes up in smoke for reasons outside your control.

 

So yeah, I feel like I made missteps and should've just used mod tools and be way harder on repeat offenders, but that wasn't how things went here at the time. Should probably be way stricter on some things but lax on others instead of the weird wishy washy middle ground.

 

I don't know how things are here now but something like warning, warning, temporary ban, permanent ban seems like a fine escalation to me.  All handled via PMs with any public whining about infractions escalating to the next level; i.e. a user gets warned and bitches in the Xrd news thread about it and now they get their second warning.  Could Should also have some sort of expiration on warnings such that prolonged periods of inactivity or good behavior remove warnings.  The flip side of a much more agressive ban system is that there would need to be much greater discretion in what does and does not deserve moderation.

[pktazn]

So yeah, I feel like I made missteps and should've just used mod tools and be way harder on repeat offenders, but that wasn't how things went here at the time. Should probably be way stricter on some things but lax on others instead of the weird wishy washy middle ground.

Edit: At the same time, again, figure out what we want now, the user idea of dustloop or the mod/admin/whatever idea of it.

On the topic of moderators being replaced, again, reformatting the forum so less mods are needed is the most obvious solution.

I also feel that I should have been harder on some people in the Tsu boards when I was active. Regardless, you were doing what you thought was best and yes there are definitely times where mods need to be stern. I don't like this middle ground either but it's hard when there doesn't seem to be a sort of consistency regarding the rules to me that can be used as a foundation.

But yes, this all largely falls on what the new Dustloop will be including the mod issue.

Being a mod is a position of authority and that always leads to different perceptions.

I know we all want to be friends and communicate and all, but we have mods for a reason and they have a job to do. People won't like you for doing your job, but it comes with the territory.

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Exactly, I completely agree but how it's done will still largely affect how the community responds. I feel I'm starting to talk in circles now though and like I'm trying to push my own agenda which I don't want so I'll stop.

But thank you all for bothering to read my walls of text but more importantly for continuing to give your input. Please keep going, your voice is important.

Edit: @TD it's definitely best to try and contact the inactive mod. Most iirc are on Twitter so it's not as if it's impossible.

[Anne]

imo if a moderation staff ends up coming to a decision like this then why even be a moderator to a "information hub".

 

Yeah those people either aren't mods anymore (like myself) or are around for other reasons than to directly moderate, or simply stopped doing stuff.

 

When Kokonoe was revealed, the BBCP general thread had hundreds of posts that had nothing to do with the game, just how much people loved their waifu. Any actual news or useful information was buried under hundreds of posts like that, even though it was clearly expressed posts like that didn't belong there. Circ woke up and cleaned up almost all of it as tons of people were saying "holy shit the thread is unusable now" and it sucked. It kept happening, we tried to let "hype" threads be made so people could have their fun, but they wouldn't use those, still posting in the gen thread. We actually had a lot of trouble getting people to post outside of general threads. I remember I made a tier list thread for Xrd because the discussion took over the gen thread and people were pissed I had the nerve to say "hey, make a thread for this particular discussion, it works better." Again, people get rooted in doing things with the gen threads and don't wanna move ou tof them and yeah, it gets messy :/ It's one fo the motivations behind the BBS or reddit style board I believe, because people just wanted to post in the big loud thread they'd get more responses in. Same issue as before, just highlighting examples of when it actually happened.

 

Our infraction system actually works like that atm, it's just never used as such.

[Blade]

Well, I've been around long enough that I feel the need to suggest a few things as far as protocol goes:

 

1. Respecting people's opinion unless it's off-topic or in the wrong area (not staff per se, but both staff and posters should do this, and hey, respect their opinion anyway, even if they're wrong).

 

2. If it is off-topic or in the wrong area, warn them politely first (especially if they're new) and move topic to the right place.

 

3. If you see non-staff members dissing others, try and diffuse the situation by talking to both parties.

 

I want Guilty Gear especially to be a friendly environment, and not something full of nothing but aggression and flaunting and dissing (rubbing SALT in people's wounds) and other madness (especially around EVO time where there's lots of that to be had).

 

Dustloop's been improving as far as info articles and news is concerned, but on the welcoming side of things, there hasn't been much room for people to feel relaxed if they don't know much about the scene (in fact there's lots of stuff even I still have trouble understanding, but that can change).

[Tari]

The current infraction system is set up pretty much the way you described, Nobus. It's fairly rare for anyone to actually get enough infractions to escalate to a temp ban or beyond, but I believe it's happened at least once or twice before. I honestly can't remember the last time it happened in a situation I was aware of, though.

 

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with writing a warning to someone without infracting them, either, assuming there's reason to believe the user may not have been aware of his mistake (obviously racism and other obvious things are a straight infraction). Politely warning them as an open response (as in, publicly) isn't really an issue in that case, as far as I'm concerned, but I don't know if other folks would disagree with me there. It's likely something that can only be argued on a case-by-case basis.

[Psycho]

Dont be afraid to be a strict because a couple of bad users got angry. If the rules state "misinformation will be deleted" they KNOW whats supposed to happen. Think of it this way. You shouldnt infract unless you can point them to the rule they broke. Once they see that if they bitch its completely on them.

I kinda feel bad for anne. I agree with most of what hes done but lack of strictness from other mods made him seem worse. If we lose some users who ignore mods and forum rules its better for the site anyways.

Tldr Im all for stricter mods. We just need to find some good mods now

[Nobus3r1]

The current infraction system is set up pretty much the way you described, Nobus. It's fairly rare for anyone to actually get enough infractions to escalate to a temp ban or beyond, but I believe it's happened at least once or twice before. I honestly can't remember the last time it happened in a situation I was aware of, though.

 

Doesn't seem like it's being properly utilized then.

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with writing a warning to someone without infracting them, either, assuming there's reason to believe the user may not have been aware of his mistake (obviously racism and other obvious things are a straight infraction). Politely warning them as an open response (as in, publicly) isn't really an issue in that case, as far as I'm concerned, but I don't know if other folks would disagree with me there. It's likely something that can only be argued on a case-by-case basis.

 

I can agree to disagree on the publicly calling someone out without infracting them though that said I've never seen such public warnings being what I would consider polite OR (and this IMO is the bigger issue) sufficiently targeted.  They've been more like a blanket "You kids get off my lawn" sort of warning where, if any infraction does get handed out, it seems like the person most likely to suffer mod wrath is not the most egregious offender but rather the most recent.  That is, quit simply, shitty moderation. 

[wenzel]

Revive and get constant update in Social media like FB fanpage and twitter, like SRK ( notice from the front page, tournaments, streams, video tutorials etc.)

Despiste that a don´t care from all the SRK frontpage news, totally love the GUI design to presented, would be useful make something like that to catch the eye of the users and attract anothers.

( I don´t know if already exist on DL) Create a Top Ranking char for all the official games from here!

[Hollysmoke]

Revive and get constant update in Social media like FB fanpage and twitter, like SRK ( notice from the front page, tournaments, streams, video tutorials etc.)

Despiste that a don´t care from all the SRK frontpage news, totally love the GUI design to presented, would be useful make something like that to catch the eye of the users and attract anothers.

( I don´t know if already exist on DL) Create a Top Ranking char for all the official games from here!

 

People already use FB and Twitter because of what's been happening. News can be gathered from other outlets. The vision of Dustloop has always been about being a hub of information. This also includes people getting news from JP before everyone else. This is why I love Dustloop. There are News and Gameplay Discussion Threads, there should just be alternative General Discussions to let people shit post on. It's a video game community, about anime games. It's unavoidable. Why censor when you can just filter and separate?

[wenzel]

People already use FB and Twitter because of what's been happening. News can be gathered from other outlets. The vision of Dustloop has always been about being a hub of information. This also includes people getting news from JP before everyone else. This is why I love Dustloop. There are News and Gameplay Discussion Threads, there should just be alternative General Discussions to let people shit post on. It's a video game community, about anime games. It's unavoidable. Why censor when you can just filter and separate?

Use FB and Twitter to get people to DL, not to post the same info in all the sites, to grow the active community, im talking about growing/ revive / make more active, the whole point about this thread!

[Hollysmoke]

Use FB and Twitter to get people to DL, not to post the same info in all the sites, to grow the active community, im talking about growing/ revive / make more active, the whole point about this thread!

 

The community has already splintered off into Facebook and Twitter. We want them to come back. I know lots of top players who don't post things here, and just keep things on Evernote via Twitter and use Ask.fm to answer people's questions instead. It'd be so much easier if all that information was consolidated in one area (here) and made more accessible. Information is scattered across different threads and the wiki. The video threads were already mentioned. Discussions need to be allowed to rock.

[VermilionBird]

Use FB and Twitter to get people to DL

With Facebook, that's almost easier said than done. Posting news will make sure you're going to be listened to and to have the point of the site conveyed. People are attracted to pretty pictures and not blocks of text most of the time.

Even then, to attract large numbers, you need to post every hour for Facebook to take any notice and to make sure that there's enough reach to those who have liked the page. Luckily enough, the Dustloop FB page already has nearly 2500 members so at least you wouldn't have to start from scratch, which can be a real nightmare if you're promoting something that has a fairly niche fanbase.

Tldr: if you want to use the FB page to promote then you need to get a team of people who post consistently with relevant topics, with links to news articles being pretty good. If a picture is included in the link, then all the better, and people will go for it.

The problem lies with finding experienced and consistent people to run the page. Generally a big page has around 4-7 admins from different timezones who post on different days around a scheduled rota if it's well organised. 

Or I could just be talking out of my arse and everyone already knows this but I thought I'd just chime in a little with my prior experience~

[Anne]

I don't think that many people use FB/twitter/docs over DL cause of any happenings here, I think they use it over DL because it's way easier and convenient. It's more or less why it became an info dump, because anything else people were better off talking about elsewhere, but evernote/google docs end up just making it easier to do that for people.

 

I'll keep saying it over and over again, try to integrate the things people are already using or have a format that is more compatible and easier to use with those options.

[mAc Chaos]

I haven't had time to post much now since I'm traveling this weekend, but I just wanted to say I wasn't trying to blame Anne with my last post. Rather, it's the vision of the site and the policies that have to be figured out. Anne and Circ were just carrying out the "infohub" policies that the site is based on. However, there's always been a tension between how to make people actually care about the site, and not letting good information get swamped by shitposting. That leads to lots of different approaches as people try to figure out a middle ground between them, and I'm not sure if picking just one extreme is the right answer either.

 

I mean even in the "News and Gameplay" threads it was always hard to pin down exactly what was on topic and off. There's always a creative art to it.

 

And I agree that there's a place for moderators to be stern. That doesn't mean they can't also be polite too though; it's not like they just can't use their mod powers to lock and delete threads as they see fit anyway, so you might as well add some sugar to make the medicine go down.

 

For the number of moderators, I never thought we had too many. Sure, there are a lot of inactive ones. But that's the same as them not being a mod at all, so realistically the number of moderators is much lower. I think part of that was what led to some drastic moderating actions in the past, because someone like Circ would be busy with real life all day then come back and find an explosion of shit posting that would require nuking from orbit to save. Whereas, if there were more moderators who could subtly direct the flow of conversation it would never have to get to that point in the first place.

 

I also like subforum moderators since it helps reduce the burden on each individual moderator. They don't need to read every single thread and post on every single part of Dustloop and basically devote their entire life to it.

 

That's only if we keep character subforums though. I saw some ideas floated in the other thread earlier about collapsing them all into the wiki, or making just a general subforum, or combining matchup threads from different subforums (ie, instead of Ragna v Terumi and Terumi v Ragna, there'd just be one combined thread) which could make the structure of moderating way different.

[wenzel]

The community has already splintered off into Facebook and Twitter. We want them to come back. I know lots of top players who don't post things here, and just keep things on Evernote via Twitter and use Ask.fm to answer people's questions instead. It'd be so much easier if all that information was consolidated in one area (here) and made more accessible. Information is scattered across different threads and the wiki. The video threads were already mentioned. Discussions need to be allowed to rock.

I know that, think like a "door" using TW/FB to get people to DL (for all the reasons that you already pointed), social media its a strong weapon that DL doesn´t exploit a lot, thats what a refering in my posts,

 

I don't think that many people use FB/twitter/docs over DL cause of any happenings here, I think they use it over DL because it's way easier and convenient. It's more or less why it became an info dump, because anything else people were better off talking about elsewhere, but evernote/google docs end up just making it easier to do that for people.

 

I'll keep saying it over and over again, try to integrate the things people are already using or have a format that is more compatible and easier to use with those options.

Yeah, I agree to your argument, all that im saying is use social media to promote DL, the site its well know and respeted imaging if DL promote themself  more?, maybe create a convening with active streamers to get sponsored by here ( posting the streams in frontpage) and they could put the logo, talk about the site etc.

Another idea that I like its create like a weekend informative stream (?) someone reading/ talking about the relevant stuff on DL and why not get invited, casuals, etc. 

Human by nature  want to get noticed if we create like a publicity campain could be useful to active the disscusions, more active members, new members, etc.

[BlackYakuzu94]

Social media is a good way of getting known and keeping people updated about what's happening on the site, so I agree with that.

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[Amadeous]

@mAc Chaos

 

I was toying around with the pros and cons of merging all Character forums into one big forum per game, and part of that was this issue:

 

(linked offsite due to resolution): http://i.imgur.com/1LynmAo.png

 

Simple fact is we got too much shit. Blazblue's got 30 characters, Guilty Gear has two different character discussion boards (Which it should, Xrd and ACR information should be kept separate), and you can't even see the Persona boards, let alone the misc fighters. And this is after scrolling halfway down the page!

 

In addition, I agree that the discussion is too split out. Players of one character can't communicate with other players easily, and it kinda makes overall game discussion hard to promote. For instance, Jam's 3F 5P can punish Slayer's Under Pressure if IB'd, but I've ran into Sol and ABA players (and Chipp players in Xrd) that didn't use this same punish with their 3F normals.

 

This disadvantage of course is orginization. It's handy having all of a character's combo, video, matchup, etc, threads in one location.

 

I have feelings on the other disscussions going on in this thread, but having been out of the loop for so long (and honestly not intending on really getting back into things, whoops I'm terrible), I'll keep that to myself.

 

Also, I don't know if this is possible, but if @shtkn can add it, a feature where you can tag users in your posts, alerting them to the post itself. Could be nice for shoutouts or getting second opinions on posts, etc. Yomi forums use this, but I don't know if it's possible on IP forums.

[mAc Chaos]

Why don't you want to get back into things? Or rather, why did you fall out of the loop. Was it site related?

[Amadeous]

Hmm, no. It's just a matter of the game cycles.

 

I generally only play Guilty Gear, and Xrd hasn't been well recieved by myself or even my scene in Columbus. Generally we all played characters that weren't brought back to Xrd, and the new YRC mechanics along with the lack of any interest in new characters left a bad taste in our mouths.

 

We're all still invested in AC+R, however Dustloop as a site has not been since before Xrd even came out. This isn't an issue of site moderation, or even anything I think the moderation team can change, it's just the game cycle.

 

I still direct new players to the forums when I can, and any questions regarding Jam I encourage people to post in the forums over twitter so I can give a more complete answer. However, until my scene cares about Xrd, or Jam is made playable, I probably won't be rejoining in full. I still want this site to suceed, and I'm glad my voice can be heard here to give advice, but overall lack of interest in the content is all it comes down to.

[BlackYakuzu94]

Are you interested in the other games supported on the site?

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[Amadeous]

Blazblue in our local scene is very dead, and Persona is not much better. While I mash around in UNIEL (with Yatagarasu and Battle Fantasia as games I'm interested in playing), AC+R is my one main game I'll keep playing forever.

 

But again, that has very little to do with the site itself, and certainly my lack of interest in Xrd isn't the common trend.

[wenzel]

Hmm, no. It's just a matter of the game cycles.

 

I generally only play Guilty Gear, and Xrd hasn't been well recieved by myself or even my scene in Columbus. Generally we all played characters that weren't brought back to Xrd, and the new YRC mechanics along with the lack of any interest in new characters left a bad taste in our mouths.

 

We're all still invested in AC+R, however Dustloop as a site has not been since before Xrd even came out. This isn't an issue of site moderation, or even anything I think the moderation team can change, it's just the game cycle.

 

I still direct new players to the forums when I can, and any questions regarding Jam I encourage people to post in the forums over twitter so I can give a more complete answer. However, until my scene cares about Xrd, or Jam is made playable, I probably won't be rejoining in full. I still want this site to suceed, and I'm glad my voice can be heard here to give advice, but overall lack of interest in the content is all it comes down to.

My community in my city got the same issue, good players doesn´t interested on Xrd ( lack of mains chars. mechanics etc.) and slowly its dead.

[Blade]

Where it trends or where it doesn't trend shouldn't be something that determines whether or not you contribute though.

 

GG and BB almost do not exist in my home state, but I "Keep the Flag Flying" as much as possible.