WTF is this forum coming to? Awesome discussions on life, the universe & everything!

I think all future moderators should at least have to be able to answer the philosophical "bear buttsecks" question before being considered. That said, having come up with the concept should automatically entitle you to forum-God-status.

 

Somewhere in all this there is a joke about BooBoo, Yogi, and a special picnic basket, but I digress.

 

A few facts for you:

1. My original user title was “Sarcastic f’ing devil”, updated to include “Pseudo crusher”

2. Up to the end of 2011 I found the moderators on this forum to be reasonably consistent in their moderating approach

3. The day Spec was made a moderator he chose to delete my profile pic, a pic that I had used for almost a year, which noone saw unless they visited my profile, which many of the existing moderators had seen (yourself included), not commented on, not requested me to remove and not deleted themselves.

4. Day 2 of Spec being made a moderator (at 3 a.m.) I saw him trawl through my private picture albums. Of course any mod has access to do this but what justification would a new mod have to do this within hours of being made a mod?

Try telling me those two actions weren’t personal and I’m afraid I won’t believe you.

5. I subsequently got a PM from another mod apologizing for Spec’s activities with regard to my profile.

6. Some time after all this I changed my title to “Modarator, Administrator/Staff” – ever heard of taking the p*ss?

Tim S stated:

so unless that isn’t true explain to me this: how do you appoint a new mod with a history of flaming and trashing threads and say that’s good for the forum?

You know very well he’s done it, when someone posted something he didn't like, "screaming" it in size 7 text. An example in case being when he completely trashed the Heroes of Bit-tech thread, an idea Carrie had (but wouldn’t post in her name due to the misogynists on this forum), which came from a post by GOO saying he had hardly any rep despite helping lots of people. It was to give people who’d been helped by others on the forum a place to publicly say thank you, if they wanted to. It was an idea Krikkit was so keen on he started it again in his own name, having deleted the thread poisoned by Mankz's initial flaming. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this:



Note the date, February 2011, yet you say in answer to Canon’s post:

So that means possibly as little as maybe 6 months after that example, and there are many more even after February 2011, you were talking of making a known flamer a mod? Ask Canon, Mankz has done it numerous times to him. Making the flaming Mankz a mod was the last straw as far as he was concerned.

So you ask what do I care? So Spec made it personal but I cannot believe for one second Mankz as a mod is good for the forum. That’s why.

You asked the question, I've given the truth; maybe Mankz can use his banhammer on me now (yes I know he's been in my profile since being made a mod) seeing as

That's assuming he's not too busy posting in "What's ruining your life right now?"

Now I've had my say I'll leave it there

 

Your profile picture was of a man with a penis extruding from his forehead. This quite clearly violates forum rules, and is hardly suitable for 13 year old children. We have children on this forum and I'm sure you're aware. If you have a problem with any moderating decisions then you (and all others) are welcome to get in touch. That said, I'm not entirely sure why you feel so aggrieved about a blatant and egregious violation of the rules being responded to with a simple removal of the picture. It was by far the least punitive measure available.

Indeed you did. We do that from time to time in cases where it might be appropriate. For instance in cases of people sharing pictures of an inappropriate nature (pornography, child pornography, extreme gore) with other members via private albums. Having your profile as a picture of a man with a penis coming out of his head is a good indicator that albums may be worth an inspection. Private albums are called private because other members can not view them. You have no right to privacy of anything you put on a privately owned forum, and moderators can and, as required will, view everything. This has been dealt with before Teelzebub, and I'm not sure why you still find it so shocking.

People change and grow. Mankz is already doing a fantastic job as we were certain he would.

Your agreement is not required. Moderators are chosen by other moderators, not elected. This is not a popularity contest, and this is not about who spends the most time on the forum or who has a perfect posting history. We choose who we believe will be good for the forum, and in this case you disagree with the decision as if of course your right, but that's all there is to it. You can live with that and respect our decision, or you can leave. Pick one.

Oh and, for what it's worth, prior to my appointment as a moderator we hung around completely different parts of the forum, and I had no idea who you were.

 

Oh, I've picked a good day to re-visit this thread

I'm gonna miss thehippoz though, that last post about the bear in the woods was verging upon genius (not that I'm in anyway dissenting, it's just I enjoy his alternative take on things)

 

@ Teel: ...

I'm speechless. That's it?!? THAT's the beef behind the anger that has been poisoning you for the past months? I mean, is that all?!?

Spec has already addressed this, but I can assure you that he is not the first to go through people's photo albums and delete images (it's just that other members are more gracious about it). We can't be everywhere at once so you just got lucky. In fact Carrie has helpfully made me aware of some concerning images in other people's albums in the past (and rightly so) which I duly deleted. The owners saw my concerns and apologised and let it go.

Those actions were as personal as you chose to make them.

He did not apologise for the act, just for your distress. 'Tis called being polite.

One post that could be interpreted as flame bait is hardly "a history of flaming". And people grow up. You evidently haven't.

Dude, we all have been in your profile at one stage or other because you have been causing the whole moderating team some concern. I'm just staggered that these small things have been festering away at you so much. So spec deleted a pic with a penis from your album. So he then looked at your private albums just to check if there were more penises. Big deal --we've all done it to other members. You store material on Bit-Tech's server, it is under our scrutiny. All on-line storage services work like that.

So you don't like Mankz' past posting behaviour? I can assure you that at half your age he has already shown to grow up to be twice the adult you have shown yourself to be over the last few months here. Stop making a spectacle of yourself. I know you are dealing with difficult circumstances in your own life, but that does not exonerate you from behaving like a tit. You had a valuable position here: you created a Marketplace Feedback group that actually works, and many members here liked you. You could have been one of our most valued members if you just got over yourself a little bit. Instead you throw a tantrum like a petulant little boy. Son, I am disappoint. Deeply.

 

TheHippoz will be back, of this you can be sure . Being wacky and having an alternative viewpoint is great - making constant insinuations about people's sexuality is not, nor is his strange obsession with men's behinds. He will be back though.

 

I actually thought it was me who had deleted the profile pic. I didn't find it appropriate for the forum.

 

Might have been, I honestly don't remember.

 

I'm actually wondering, is it thehippoz or Dwarfer that have the current record for most number of bans? or is there someone else I, thankfully, keep missing?

 

The Battley townswomen's guild reenactment of the battle of Pearl Harbor just popped into my head.

 

Except that one had fewer handbags.

 

...And there was me thinking Teel had some pictures of our last private mods meeting or something...

I better have a look in all his albums just to be sure.

 

I <3 bit-tech.

 

Be my guest

 

Oh good, we've all made up again.

Now, back on topic. Where were we... ah yes, quotes from the bible

 

I promised to post my opinions in this (obviously) hugely popular thread a long time ago - you might find that post back at about page 5 - but I've avoided all 79 pages of it since because honestly, I didn't think it would make any difference. When it was just a discussion about what the forum is coming to, I had some pretty strong opinions but when it turned into a discussion about lots of other things, I lost interest. I'm not going to read 70 odd pages of arguments, discussions and generally walls of text just so I can post an opinion that isn't going to make a mite of difference now anyway, but I will contribute this one post and probably leave it at that. I apologise if I'm covering old ground here. As I already mentioned, I didn't and won't read the last 79 pages.

As it stands today, bit-tech is a mere shadow of its former self. Look at my join date. If you saw a picture of bit-tech in 2006 and compared it to what you're looking at right now, it'd look exactly the same. But it's not the same. There isn't the same community spirit, there is nowhere near the same level of friendliness and warmth among all the members, the quality of content posted on the forum has taken a nose dive like I've never seen in just the past 18 months or so and there aren't anywhere near as many regular posters as there used to be across the various popular sub forums. In short, bit-tech has become a bit hard for me to stomach. With my right hand raised, I can honestly say there isn't a day I visit and read this forum without seeing an inappropriate, useless or stupid remark from some member who obviously has no idea what bit-tech used to be like.

I would hate having to name people when talking about posts like this and I won't do it, because I wouldn't want anyone to name me one way or another, but the clear trend is that people who are relatively new to the forum along with a select few who are not so new are bringing negativity and disgraceful behaviour to the forum and thinking that because they have anonymity, they can act like this and get away with it. It's clear that bit-tech means nothing to them. No regard for the opinions or feelings of others, no respect whatsoever for the moderators (no matter who those moderators may be) and no sense of pride in the community. Meanwhile, the rest of us who have been here enjoying bit-tech for years are left to watch the forum fall down around us. And don't think for a minute that I don't realize there are people who have been members here for twice as long as I have. I dread to think how they see the big picture.

No more than two years ago I remember commenting several times in one week about how proud I was of bit-tech... How no guest could possibly visit this forum without being impressed with how helpful, friendly and positive everyone was. I see very little of that these days. Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places, but as someone who spends a lot of time reading and contributing to General Discussion, I can only describe it as a shambolic mess of nonsense sometimes.

To get back to my point about how I find bit-tech hard to stomach - I'm obviously not alone in that. I've had numerous PMs from several regular posting members about how much the forum has changed and what we might do to get it back to normality again. That word was actually used - normality, because the atmosphere on bit-tech of late is nothing like what I would call "normal" for this once awesome community. Look at how many members have left because they couldn't stomach it either;

Docodine was a long time member and had to leave because he didn't like it here any more. I can't remember ever arguing or disagreeing with that guy about anything, or seeing him post something inappropriate.

Mankz had to leave but thankfully came back. I have absolutely no problem with him and have never disagreed or argued with him about anything that I can remember. Maybe he wasn't an angel in the past, but in my opinion he's one of the most valuable members of this forum and I was extremely sad to see him go as well as extremely glad to see him return and get moderator status. Not because I like him, because I think he deserves it. No better person for the job in my honest opinion. The guy knows what this forum used to be like and has made a concerned effort to bring it back to its former glory.

Canon never rattled my cage or ruffled my feathers either, but he has now seemingly left the forum. I found Canon very easy to get on with, interesting to discuss things with and even though he had opinions that differed from mine on a few occasions (which is to be expected), I always respected him as a valuable member of the forum. There are several others;

Knuck doesn't post anywhere near as often as he used to, neither does Outlawaol.

Talladega is yet another long time member who I don't see much any more.

I think something may actually have happened to Mvagusta but he's AWOL as well, and the list goes on and on. These few names were just off the top of my head, but there are many more.

People who I always considered to be core members of this community are jumping ship because they can't stand the bickering and the constant tension between members. If you're starting to get the picture, you'll realize that this is the longest possible way of me saying "why can't we all just get along?". I've learned to deal with bit-tech as it stands, but I don't want to make a habit of it. I don't want this to be the forum guests come and get a glimpse of. People come and go on forums like this, that's natural. What isn't acceptable though, is when the ones who stay seemingly attempt to ruin the spirit, atmosphere and reputation that the existing members have spent so long creating.

At the moment, I approach bit-tech like this; I read the topics that I want to read. I ignore the people I see creating negativity or being overly argumentative and those who refuse to contribute to a topic in a positive way. If you post nonsense, I'll skip over your post. I don't mean friendly banter or funny replies - I mean nonsense. Moronic, idiotic nonsense. I interact with the people who I see being normal, discussing interesting topics and contributing in a positive way to the forum. If someone asks a question that I know the answer to, I help in any way I can. And that's it. If I don't interact with the people I consider to be doing the community harm, they can't suck me into it and take me down with them. It's simple and it seems to be working... Just. What I also want to say in closing is that I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of what the moderators have said in the past couple of pages. It's clear to me from just reading a few posts from these couple of pages that the current set of regular forum moderators are exactly what this forum needs and they have a clear and accurate view of what's wrong here and more importantly, are trying to make it right.

Do you want to make bit-tech better? Try my approach for a few days. Without it, I'd never visit here any more either. Have you no interest in making bit-tech better or keeping the community spirit alive? Guess what - you might be part of the problem.

 

Thanks for that Unicorn. There's a lot in your post there I agree with, but I think attention needs to be given to any options for changes. For instance, while the moderatoring team could quite manageably enforce a no-crap rule, as forums such as SomethingAwful do, this results in a very subjective and at times unfair forum. As a mod it's important to be aware that what I'm interested in and what the community is interested in won't necessarily accord all of the time. I think this probably applies to individual users too, sometimes what you see as rubbish will hold value to some of our fellow forum members.

That said, I encourage vigilance. Really, don't be afraid of hitting that report post button on a regular basis. If people being uncivil bothers you (you=anyone reading this), hit the button and report it. If a post or a thread is just complete rubbish, report it. If you see something you know is inevitably going to lead to a thread being completely trashed, report it. This forum should be a pleasent, friendly, polite place to be. Banter between members is fine, but there are (to most people) obvious lines.

As for the stick-approach, the moderating team is now taking a harder line for members of the forum who repeatedly break rules or are just generally aggressively rude and unhelpful to other members. While the vast majority of members of this forum are extremely responsive to feedback from us, some are not, and these people will find themselves receiving a series of bans of ever increasing length.

We're always open to feedback - this is your (again, you=anyone reading this) forum. We do discuss forum issues though (obviously), so let us know how you would like it to be.

 

I have to agree with Unicorn on many points here-I've the feeling lately I've come to 4chan Lite. And TBH, there are many reasons I don't hang out on the original, so getting that feeling here isn't the greatest thing.

I take no exception to the moderation style here-I would do some things differently, but that may simply be a personality difference, ad I don't think the way things are done is bad in the least. What I have taken exception to is the generally nasty tone of some people, the just plain rude people, and in large part the subset of people that seem dead set on copying MDPC and deriding all others.

Trends are trends. The hell with them, they're really not your problem, and they don't bother me in my thread. But a perfect example is the outright rudeness in the May MOTM thread. Opinions are like assholes, we all have them, most of them stink. When we operate under that ideology, we tend to think that my opinion might be just as offensive to others as I find theirs, and we tend to play nice. But we're increasingly seeing people who are dead set sure their way is the only one out there-and their advice may or may not even be correct. Unfortunately, it's not, but fortunately, nobody seems to have lost a rig yet. I'm still waiting on that day.

I avoid the demote thread these days. I honestly have less than no interest in a lot of what goes on in there (I can even pinpoint when it happened-when that gif of some chick bouncing her boob showed up.) I realized that we have completely lost our collective minds and summarily wandered off (railing against it would have done no good and left the mods a mess to clean up) but I increasingly either look at project logs, hang out here in Serious, or I go elsewhere. And I really like Bit, too. But some days I just don't have the strength to put up with stuff like feathers going on about his latest rant, or buttsecks monkeys, or hearing someone griping about how someone didn't single sleeve their cables and how tacky it is.

As I find subforums to be an increasingly alien place, I'm not sure how I'm going to spend my time on Bit in the future. Quite possibly it will only be in project logs or Serious. Everything else is light-years away from the Bit I remember. I'm not giving up the friends I've made. That's in no danger of happening. But I am starting to really wonder about the continued future of Bit.

 

I don't think bit-tech's future is in jeopardy. Is it different than it was 6 years ago? Perhaps. Is different necessarily bad? It doesn't have to be. Change is change, and it happens no matter how we might try to avoid it. Maybe the answer is to go off join another forum. Of course, then you will be that new guy trying to learn all the memes while offering something new. Maybe the answer is starting a new forum. Let me know how it's going 10 years later.

Yeah, we all gripe about a few forum members who continually toe the line of what is appropriate, but hasn't that always been the case? I remember back in the day when Penski and others would engage in some charged debate, and sometimes tears were shed. It just reminds me that wounds heal - especially the superficial ones caused by the stinging words from an anonymous person. To be honest, I've been hearing the same bit-tech doomsday prophecies so long now that I wonder when, exactly, the 4 horsemen are coming to sack and plunder bit-tech until we're all forced to serve Spec for all eternity.

I remember what brought me here (Orac pushed the envelope back then), and I admit at some point along the way I wondered if the modding scene could really survive much longer because everything worth doing had been done already. But then, Nexxo keeps teasing us with Metaversa2 (what an amazing build it will be, if it ever makes it past the design phase), and a new crop of very talented people inevitably raise the PC modding bar. I occasionally venture into the Modding and Project Log sections just to see how inspired some builds can be, even in this era of everything-has-been-done-before.

The demote thread? It's kind of like bit-tech's red light district. I peek in every now and then, but only because I have a morbid curiosity about the argument du jour. I mostly stick to the General and Serious Discussion sub-forums, as well as the Art sub-forum. I've grown to like many of the members here because each one has an interesting quirk, and each of them contributes in a unique way. Sometimes you all make me laugh, sometimes you make me think, sometimes you upset me, and sometimes you outright challenge my worldview. But I try to never take it personally because I realize that there are several thousand people here, and if I let every little thing get to me, I'd have to be committed.

Alternatively, perhaps I've already been committed, as evidenced by the fact that I keep coming back to this asylum, as nutty as it can be. Bit-tech - it's like home, except all the annoying people aren't related to me.