Zoop

Being delicious. Nom.

10/10 This guy is ALL OVER Cloudsdale. =)

Unfortunately there were no good pictures.

^ Nothing. If BP slaps me I probably deserved it.

This banner. I approve.

In other news, it is confirmed that no matter how mundane, boring, or otherwise minor an announcement might be, it will still get a bunch of brohoofs.

While a number of you are no doubt already aware, some adjustments have been made to the character minimums on a couple boards. The following areas have been modified: Feedback & Suggestions minimuum dropped to 10 from 100. Given that this is not a discussion board, it was decided that requiring longer posts when an extremely brief answer might work was unnecessary. Commissions minimum removed entirely to avoid interfering with attempts at doing business. Roleplay OOC minimum dropped to 75. As a reminder, the minimum character requirements are not set in stone and will continue to be adjusted when deemed appropriate. We will keep you posted on any further changes that we make.

HEY THERE HAVENT SEEN YOU HERE BEFORE

Honestly, there was a period of a couple months where my mood and mentality here were... well, not the greatest, to be honest. I was starting to fall into the trap wherein I was barely participating in the community at all, and looking upon everything I was doing as a staff member as some sort of chore. I was being extremely negative about damn near everything, and it was probably showing in my work. Thankfully I was able to pull myself out of that particular hole - do in no small part to the fact that we've had more soldiers in the field, which has helped quite a bit in reducing the burden I was trying to carry all by myself. That said, I very much appreciate your words - it does mean a lot to me.

A bit of perspective: Within just under one year, our member base has reached about 18% of theirs, which they've had nine years to build up to - our present registration rates are in the 700-850 range, with 2,500-4,000 posts per day reaching anywhere from 90,000 - 110,000 posts per month. None of us on the staff do this full time - we all have education, jobs, hobbies, and other things that we want to save our time for; and that's not even counting the fact that we want some time left over to use the forum and be active on it. With that said, I'd like to quote a post I made during the original Boatloads thread that not one person directly replied to: I shall now cease to be a grumpy site staffer and speak from the heart. Totes sappy, yo. I -WANT- to be more active here! I accepted the role as the first moderator on this community because I bloody floogin' love this place! The fact of the matter though, is that with how much this place has grown, it has been almost impossible for me to have any time to actually enjoy it myself. There have been many evenings where I've spent the better part of my evenings after work dealing with forum drama, putting out fires, sending out and responding to PMS, so forth and so on. The same goes for all of our other moderators. The reason we've added so many moderators is so that none of us HAVE to spend all of our forum time on dealing with moderator stuff. By spreading the burden amongst a larger number of users, we can all become more active. That is the main reason that I myself have been pushing for increased staffing here for a fair while. I want to have time to be a part of this community, and actually ENJOY it again, instead of being a bloody boogieman all of the time. If you can't tell, I was a bit distraught at the time due to all of the drama being slung around regarding the staffing additions. Anyway, I'm not trying to come down on you or anything, but... honestly, we all want to be members first, staff second. We can only do that if there's enough of us that we don't have to be full time staffers.

All moderators are invited, rather than forced - I think we've had three people so far decline the position, if memory serves correctly.

Actually, it should be noted that my initial PM topic to AC read "In recognition of your beautiful avatar" - though I ended up changing it at the last minute.

I am glad to hear that this system works well for them. I offer them my sincere congratulations and best wishes for the future. I for one, however, enjoy having time to actually take part in the community that I help operate. If this place were all work and no fun for me, you can be quite sure that I would have quit long ago. =P

So uh... I'm still alive. No angry mobs have come to destroy me. What's going on? D:

I think we've lost about nine moderators since the original 'Boatloads' recruiting spree, so this is only about half of what we lost - we'll be bringing some more folks on in the near future though (thus the 'episode I' in the thread title )

Wait a minute, you mean to imply that I am a serious individual? Have you ever seen any of the stuff that we post in the Random General Chat Thread?

That's the reason why we're going to be bringing a fair number of folks in - spread the burden sufficiently so that it doesn't have a massive impact on any one person's ability to participate in the community. Additional staff members will also give the old staffers more free time to enjoy the community that we all enjoy so much.

As was alluded to in this thread I made a few days ago, the time has come to start rounding up our most recent batch of new recruits to the MLP Forums staff. We've given consideration to a vast number of users and feel that the candidate pool we've come up with is fairly good and well rounded. While we're aware that many members are not always terribly fond of large-scale recruiting efforts, the addition of new staff members, to both replenish our ranks and to prepare us for the onset of season three, is necessary in order to maintain the same level of quality across the community that we are presently accustomed to. With that in mind, we ask you to please give the newbies the benefit of the doubt. It is worth mentioning though. that if you do have any preemptive concerns regarding any of the people we've selected for staff positions you are very welcome to notify the MLP Forums administration of your concerns via a Moderation Dispute support ticket - these tickets are visible only to administrators; any concerns that you raise will be kept confidential. With that said, this is only our first wave of new staff members - further reinforcements we be brought on in the near future once we've had a chance to break in our new recruits and get them accustomed to life as a moderator. Taking them on in relatively small groups will allow us to give each of them closer individual attention during their initial days as staff members, and ensure that we are able to properly monitor their initial actions to ensure that there are no missteps or grave mistakes. Without further ado, these are the new staff members that have been added today: Chaotic Discord (Global) Chigens and Kay (Section - Beyond Equestria) Apocalyptic Chaos (Section - Octavia's Hall) Evilshy (Section - Roleplay World) (\SBB64/) (Section - Friendship is Magic) At any rate, they are new yet - try not to break them; or us, for that matter. As stated, let us know if you have any concerns, or witness any untoward behavior. We'll be keeping an eye on the new folks to make sure that they don't break the forum - that is, after all, Scootacool's job.

I bet you're gonna quit that game too, aren'tcha?

@@NewCalamity, NC is breaking out the heavy artillery, it seems.

Quite good, I think. Singleplayer is kinda iffy though, and the multiplayer is largely dead at this point though.

Someone like you? You make it sound like it's some sort of honor reserved only for the most important people around. I add messages to it - member blurbs or otherwise - when random bits of inspiration strike. It's more a matter of being in the right place at the right time than anything else. xD I've been adding to it pretty regularly.