I thought that the small bit I posted in the last announcement covered this, but it seems not. One of our staffers, Luptor, decided to retire and leave suddenly today. I'm still wondering, why are people getting fed up with TTFF? Is there something wrong?


So, basically, this topic is to post your thoughts, your TRUE thoughts. On TTFF, its administration and moderation, the quality of it as a whole, the community here, and everything else that goes along with this site.

PLEASE spare no details. Constructive criticism is appreciated. Please remember that we can't do anything unless you tell us what you think is wrong. :] If you've got any complaints about this place, please post them in this topic now. We will try our best to make the place better based on this feedback.

If you have no complaints, thats fine too. This topic is mainly aimed at those who have for a long time been cutting this place down.

Well, I don't have much a complaint, and this issue can't really be helped, but the only problem I have is people can be real stupid and ignorant at times, some will make tons of errors, I can't tolerate it, don't know why, but it just isn't tolerable with me, other than that, the forum is fine.

I think everything is okay right now. We need to share more with members, we don't tell them enough...

What do you mean by that?

Anyway I think TTFF is good! I dont have any problems with it. ^_^

I think sometimes the staff can be a bit too frivolous with important issues.

That I think is true. Sometimes people overreact when they see someone is banned or allowed to return and they don't know the full story. It makes people feel like some are being treated unfairly when they haven't seen (and we don't allow them to see) the ins and outs of the circumstances.

I know this is a useless cause but...I'm good. xD For me, the forum is fine, very good stuff and a good staff. ^^

I just think that that mod had a bad day and decided to let his anger out by insulting the boards and everyone. It's happened to me before.

Which mod are you referring to?

Luptor/weegee/whatever name she's most known by.

I think TTFF is fine, a bit more activity wouldnt hurt however

I always thought that TTFF was fine. I mean, a lot of my friends would complain about how strict the rules were, but I found no problem, since it didn't bother me. I think that this is a great place. I haven't found anything that I don't like.

I think It's a great forum, alot better than most I've seen to be honest. Things get abit dramatic at times, but doesn't that happen everywhere at some point? and the troll problem is gone, so things are running pretty good in my opinion. No complains from me

My complaint...

Okay so I get a bunch of fail posts and all that crap in the spam section. And ONE night I decide to act like a few other people and there's a topic made about me... am I supposed to be super cheery all the time or something? I mean seriously, just because I write "Just when you think things here couldn't fail any worse" doesn't mean I'm insulting you. To be honest it was just a test to see everybody's reaction... well that and I was in a little bit of a bad mood anyway. But everybody posts fail messages and there are a couple of people who aren't that nice, so why jump on my back if I decide for one day to act a little differently? It's not your place to tell me to stop or that my "man period" is over, that's totally unfair. >_>

Just put that in the "Community" category. ^^;

TTFF is a great site and is very popular among Tails Fan's. I don't see any problems with it as a whole.

Now that I think about it, there are sometimes where I feel that the staff may sometimes hide things from us. I mean, yeah they'll tell us updates and stuff, but mostly what's been going on is that they're trying to make this place better, when it's fine the way it is. I mean, when the whole shoutbox thing was experimented, I thought to myself, "why?" I was glad that it didn't work, actually. The skin selector is nice, but is it really nessisary? I just think that all the unessisary stuff is being added on.

And then the question on how to make this place better? Let everybody know what's going wether big deal or not. All unessisary things like I mentioned, don't really need to be nessisary. I think when trying to make this place better, don't always assume it's the image or atmosphere.

Well, that one shocked me.


As far as the shoutbox, it was added on because alot of people seemed to have wanted it. Hence, the "member feedback" approach. According to what i've heard, there used to always be topics here asking for one.

The reason it didn't work was because it was outdated. Something was wrong with it that the newer, more up to standards browers such as opera and FF3 were picking up that older, not as up to par browsers didn't comprehend as a problem. I was working on that to fix it and make it a bit better, but now that I see this post.. o_O

Really, the reason that i've been on the whole "New stuff!!!!" kick lately is because the forum seems a bit dated with the invisionfree standard and etc. Though the place definately isn't dependant on it, I thought some people might enjoy something new. But this comment will definately be remembered.




Now, as for "Hiding things". The staff here have been told not to allow any information outside of the staff room. This is out of my, and all of the other staff's control. Sadly, we can't do anything about that one. You'd have to talk to Trixie.

That's fine with me. Meh, I have a mind of a staff member sometimes and I can go a bit psycho.

But as I will add onto my new stuff thingy. There are others who don't have a fast internet *coughmecough* and adding things on slows down the loading process for them *coughmostlikelymecough*

Then you could turn em' off. I was planning to add off switches to most anything that got put on here. ^^; With the exception of a few minor things that woudn't slow you down at all. And when I say minor, I mean very, very, very minor.

Nothing extreme was planned currently. Aside from one thing which I won't mention, but it would not in any way effect the forum at all.

Some people have said they'd rather have an IRC channel (Chat room) than a shoutbox. Does anyone second this?

I guess it would be fine If it won't slow down the forum.

Nooo, lol. Nothing will be on here that harms your ability to browse the forums. =P

Alright, good. Because I don't want anything to stop me from enjoying my time here.

I wouldn't do anything that would stop you, trust me. Care for a cookie? xD

Thank you. ^_^

You know, I'm glad that this topic is up. I've always wanted to talk with a staff member about the whole adding on stuff. I'm glad that I got this cleared up.

Yahoo: Crystatic@yahoo.com
MSN: Crystatic@hotmail.com
AOL: Crystatic2@aol.com

If somethings every bugging you like that, add me on one of those and IM me. Or PM me on here. However you'd like to contact me. I'll have it sorted out as soon as I can.

Alright, thank you very much. I appreciate this.

I've been back here not only a month so far yet but I can already tell that this place has changed quite a bit, including the staff. When I was here, and even on the staff myself, the staff was usually always on top of things, not keeping TO many secrets from the members and catching them off guard, and to tell the truth I haven't been seeing a lot of decipline/warns being given out. Yes I know that most of the members lately that step out of line have been doing stuff that would normally cause for an instant ban or suspention but from some of the stuff that Luptor has been telling me (not a ton, don't worry staff), seems that the staff is a bit more laid back then used to be. Maybe it's because Trixie isn't as active as used to be it seems and causes for some staff to step up the plate a bit more then others, therefore making some of the lower status staff to not do much. I don't know full details, since haven't been back to long, but I defiantly see a change to what I'm used to. All the trolls are starting to get quite annoying to.

There used to be an IRC channel a long while ago, but the person who set it up got banned from TTFF for unknown reasons.

First of all, that was an insult to me, secondly, you haven't a leg to stand on with me, i'm already frustrated with you, the only thing you're doing is adding to it.

The only complaint I have is that there have been some issues with topics getting out of hand way too quickly. I work as a Mod as well as an Admin at some other sites and I do know that this job ISN'T 24/7/365 and it can be hard to catch if no staff is currently online. There have been a few topics that I watched helplessly get worse and worse and wanted to have them stop. I did hit the report button but it can be VERY frustrating to watch.

As for them not telling members much, well, it is a STAFF affair. If they made a staff decision, then let it be. Appeal but leave it to a PM. Many times complaints should be put in PM and NOT a topic. If you appeal your case to staff in a mature way, well, you may not get what you want but at least you didn't cause more of a ruckus than needed and you will be heard.

I do have a suggestion now...

why not whenever there is a new staff member, why not like give them training or something? It'll probably be a fact that they already know how to be a moderator, but like train them to moderate on TTFF or whatever, so they know what they're up against?

And here I go again on another one of my total suggestion thingies. :blink:

Lack of respect.

Seriously, when TTFF got trolled and I tried to prove who the troll was, all I got was a big STFU and an even bigger GTFO.

And I´m not talking only about respect to me, I´m talking about respect in general. And then people even wonder why have I changed. =/

Regarding the 'topics getting out of hand' issue:

It's very hard to tell when people are being serious or not. The "it was only a joke, jeeze calm down :rolleyes:" card will be played too many times if we were to warn every member who is slightly insulting someone, which would make the place "far too strict" according to others.

I do have a suggestion for the staff; When we warn someone, be it physical or verbal could we always post about it in the warn topic? This way, there is more evidence to warrant a physical warn when needed if the member has already been verbally warned and therefore, the member will see more of these warns handed out that they seem to not see very often =/

I will say this too, a lot of the rules that have been broken recently have been major, which results in instant bans. We don't just see this and ban, this is usually discussed beforehand. Some people however, you cannot just wait around and wait for a definate decision from everyone and for the benefit of the forum, you need to act immediately.

QFT.

And, in response to Ryan's post:

I don't know if it was done the same way when you were staff here, but it starts out like this: If we find a member to be breaking the rules here, the staff member that has noticed that instance will post a topic in the staff room. The other staff will come in and look at it, and, based on the rules, we'll all vote on a punishment. The punishment with the most support will be handed to the member. The decisions made in there are completely non-biased, and we stick clear to the rules while doing anything.

And, the staff is very on top of things, when we need to be. We're not all gonna go put on powersuits and fly into action when we see someone posting 3 words instead of 4, but the mod for that section will take appropriate action if you hit the report button, because that mod will be notified that there are topics to moderate in that section. Or, you can PM a super mod. And if it gets down to where you can't do any of that, IM me.

AOL: Crystatic2@aol.com
Yahoo!: Crystatic@yahoo.com
MSN: Crystatic@hotmail.com

And, if I do recall correctly, trolling and multiple accounts are instant ban offenses and have always been. The only difference between when you were here and where we stand now is that people seem to think they can get away with it.


And, i'll be dead honest with you. Some of our staff are having trouble finding the time to log on nowadays.. But there is nothing that I, personally, can do about that. Thats another issue for Trixie, but i'm sure she'll see this topic.

Don't ever accuse Me, Maz, or Aurorae of being "laid back" though. Because we're not, by any means. I always try to be here if anyone needs me, and so do they.

This was because of all of the issues going on that were involving you and EKS that were outside of the forum. I wasn't staff at the time, but from my understanding, i'm pretty sure that your comments on this matter were ignored because it was tied in with a situation that didn't need to be discussed here. The staff may have thought that you only assumed that that person was EKS. But, as you can see, we did take care of it. And she's banned, and she's not coming back. I'm sorry that you felt that we were being jerks to you, but I wasn't part of staff at that time, so my understanding of that situation is limited. In any case, we try not to act that way now. Or at least, I don't. And I don't see any other staffer doing this. But in the future, if you've got something to say like you did then, then PM me if you have to. I'll be sure to investigate it.

That second part is very true. There's some things in the staff section that other members simply shouldn't know, mainly because it has to do with other members, and those members might get upset if it's made public.

Now, your complaint is based on moderation. If in the future another problem like this arises, please PM Maz or Maho Momo with a list of the topics you think should be closed. Those two are on very often, and if the situation isn't addressed immediately, then it will be done ASAP when they log on. If no super mod is online, but an admin or myself is, then PM it to one of us. But if absolutely no staff is online, you first try contacting one of our S-mods via PM. They tend to be very active and will probably be able to fix it very soon, most likely the next day or later on in the day that you sent the PM to them.

And Maz, I know for a fact, is very concerned with the moderation of this board. And reports to him will be quickly answered most of the time.

Thats what we're supposed to be already doing. ^^;

While this "training" is a good suggestion, it should have been done long before the member hits mod status. Why..?

Because the rules are a moderator's handbook. If you know the rules frontward and back, then you know when to take action and when not to. This is the highest training a mod could receive here, other than using the Mod CP. In the case that they don't know how to use that, we will show them. :]

OUTSIDE?! OUTSIDE?! Are you all complete idiots or just blind?! She trolled me and TTFF, hell, she even trolled me inside TTFF for God´s sake, where was everybody when the trolling happened?! I will admit though, that some pictures shouldn´t have been included in my post but when I realized it, it was too late. Good grief, I made a mistake, now go ahead and bash me. At least I know you didn´t even bother to read what´s in the pictures. -_-

I'll bring back a suggestion made many months ago - A topic/forum showing why someone got warned/banned?

There's nothing really up with TTFF - all of the items which could be mentioned from many months ago have been fixed, there's nothing that I can pick on.

There's no problems

[EDIT : problem solved]

Of course I didn't. It was none of my concern, and I wasn't on staff at that time.

And like I said, that was just my guess. I wasn't on staff at that time, nor was I too concerned with that kind of situation. And once she started trolling here, you saw what happened to her. The whole thing was a misunderstanding. Not only that, but you're gravedigging. That issue is gone and has been gone for a while now. We took care of it. Though the mistake was made of not banning her sooner, she's gone now. Though we can respond more quickly to situations like this in the future, theres nothing that we can do about the fact that EKS wasn't banned more quickly than she was.

I know I was gravedigging, but I just had to cleared up some things.

First of all, IMHO, I’d consolidate some of the Forums. It makes it easier to patrol them. May I suggest:

_______________________________________________
Board information and rules
Rules
Forum news and Updates
TTFF awards as needed
Contests
________________________________________
General
General Discussion with Subsections: Intros, Goodbyes, Birthdays
Links
Suggestions
_____________________________
Sonic Stuff
Tails
General Sonic with Subsections : Video Games, Theories, Toons and comics
Other Characters
_____________________________________________________________
Fan Section
Artwork Subsection: Characters, sprites, drawings Comp art and other creations
Comics
Stories
Requests
____________________________________
Media
Stays the same
_________________________________________________
Extra
Games
Kitchen
Roleplay
Chat
Spam

I know I’ll get some arguments from members here but I think it is something to consider. It may take the board less time to load as well.

The ones that need most patrolling are General (specifically Personal Info)and Extras(specifically chat and spam) which I personally found to be a tad problematic. Put 4 Mods/Admins on those sections and require that they do those sections first then mod the rest of the board. That would be the way to do it with the current staff you have. That leaves you 3 more to play with. Personally, I’d have all 11 mod those sections first and I assume you do already but I’d assign them there.
I mean, you could do 3 or Mod/Admin (the reason I say admin is they are also modding) in the General, Sonic, Artwork and Extras being the main focus. But that means you need to increase your staff, and by that I mean global mods, by 1 to 4 members. If you have more than 2 sets of eyes looking at those particular sections, you are less likely to have problems and it takes pressure off the staff as well. Let’s face it, it can be hard to be objective and sometimes Mods and/or Admins need to consult other staff for help. Sometimes they need to abstain from a decision if they can’t be objective.

As for keeping an eye on members, you should have a "View Member's Posts" for a post history but I'm not too sure if Invision Free, has that option in the ACP. It's a quick way to get an idea of a member's behavior if you find a member who's behavior is problematic.

As for the suggestion of a section to tell why a member was warned, I'd say no to that. That's between the staff and the member, not the whole board.

These are just some suggestions to help improve the board and its function. You can take my suggestions and improve on them or not. I’m fine either way.

I havn't seen such a function named "View member's posts" in the ACP before. Also, the ability to list out all of a member's posts isn't availiable to members like it is on IPB 2.0 and etc. Not here. We run on a modified copy of Invisionpower Board v1.3 Final that has alot of its features stripped away.

As for your arrangement, I don't believe that its going to speed up anything dramatically enough to be necessary for an efficiant load-time decrease of this place. However, it is a nifty setup. This would be yet another decision under Trixie's discretion if we were to consider changing it, however.

And, our board isn't large enough to have 11 super mods, if this is what you're suggesting. Everyone would be staff..

We have this already. Its a topic in the staff room where we list out warnings that we give and why we give them, in case we ever need to explain one. But its not public. If it was, everyone would be able to see everyone else's warnings, and the chances of that being allowed is highly unlikely.

Also, if you're saying that the spam section needs mods...We don't really mod that area. Pretty much anything goes there unless its gruesomelly offensive. Like, we had someone post a butchered chicken there once, and that was removed. But really, the mods here don't bother with that part of the board too much. You're supposed to be crazy in there and not make any sense at all, theres no real need for moderation.