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Announcements and site development / Re: An apology
« on: 2020-06-16 17:31:47 »From an outside perspective I'm sure it seems like it's all of a sudden and out of nowhere. Fact is he's been warned, moderated, muted multiple times, and has even been banned multiple times. He was told to if he instigated one more time, that he would be banned. He instigated, so he was banned. This thread is an apology that we let it go this far. He was given many more chances than other members would get, and that's not fair to everyone else.
@ Prince Lex, sorry he drove you away all those years ago, but glad to see your forum doing so well as well as your youtube channel.
Thank you, I appreciate that <3. For what it's worth, TLS did go through a phase not long after I joined (just as a member initially) where mods took a backseat and a startlingly similar thing happened - there was a huge divide in the community, stronger personalities were getting away with things they shouldn't have been getting away with and leaving others feeling victimised - It was a rift that took a long time (and a bunch of new staff with new attitudes) to mend.
I've been in your exact position before a few times, where warnings etc were dished out behind the scenes which led to temp or permabans and then some members of the community were often mollified and questioning the rules or fairness of the decision. I think it's easy to lose sight of that when you're a staff member because you can see the whole picture - all the reported posts and discussion threads with other staff members. One of the ways I've tried to address this over the years is by offering transparency as much as possible, and our current board software (Xenforo) has a really neat feature that allows warnings to be pinned to posts themselves. I think this gives members visibility over what's been violated, why the member is being warned and also sends a message to folk about the kind of inclusive board culture you're trying to create (assuming you're trying to create an inclusive board culture lol). I'm not saying it's a solution that could work here (I don't even know if SMF has a feature like that - or a plugin that would enable it) but it's something to think about. This thread is a great example of being transparent about a decision that's been made, and I think that's how you build trust in staff.
I think you folks all together (not just staff) need to decide what kind of community you want to create and then work towards it - it's a haven for mods and mod creation of course, that's what it's always been, but off-topic sections are where the meat really lies in terms of what people post about day to day. Use polls, votes, read opinions, hire more staff to help you sort through it all if need be. I remember once upon a time staff here were considering getting rid of "Completely Unrelated" and "General FF Discussion" altogether and just keeping the place the technical haven it used to be - code, mods, nothing else. But given that you've retained and built a community who get to know each other and chat in the off topic sections, I don't think that would work for you now.
Anyway I didn't want to come back to tell you how to run the place because there are definitely other schools of thought, and I'm by no means claiming to be perfect. Just hoping to lend some insight based on my own experiences, because eff knows I've made my own share of huge mistakes over the years! My inbox is always open if you're looking for help of any kind.