Zoop

I've got an idea, yes. It'll only make sense to people that were here very early on though - and they probably won't remember

I volunteered.

I tried taking a vacation once. It didn't work. I think I'm screwed here to stay.

Don't worry guys, I'm still here.

To be fair, it is possible to make mistakes when appointing moderators - some concerns are entirely valid, and certain aspects of an individual may not be known to the existing staff. In the event that an individual has a reasonable concern regarding a moderator for whatever reason, they should open a 'moderation dispute' ticket in the support area - these tickets are visible only to administrators. While we may ultimately opt to take a 'wait and see' approach to the concerns expressed, the ticket remains useful in the sense that it draws our attention to a potential issue. Ultimately it is a simple matter to do a full audit on every moderator action that a specific staffer has undertaken.

Time and availability, for the most part. The role of section moderators (and global moderators, for that matter) is going to evolve a bit to include certain tasks not directly related to moderation as we move forward on our plans to lighten the load on certain staff members by spreading their duties around a bit further. Section moderators will find themselves assigned certain tasks related to the sections that they help maintain. We have not yet approached anyone regarding staff positions, though we've already got a list and were in the process of checking it twice before this thread was posted. As for what determines who gets picked for staff positions... there's honestly a lot that goes into it. I've seen people complain in the past that we've selected members that they've 'never heard of' before, but... honestly, I don't see the issue with that. This is a large community, with a lot of active posters - you can't know everyone. How do you think I became a staffer?

and @Evilshy nailed it, I think. We try to be cautious when it comes to creating new boards and sub boards for the sake of keeping clutter on the main index down to a minimum. Given that we've yet to be absolutely flooded with clan/guild threads, I don't think we're in any dire need of dedicated board space space for them.

There is presently no way to permit users to select their own badge built into the forum software, unfortunately. Sorry to disappoint.

Aye. I can understand the concern, but rather than doing it one way or another I think the balance we've managed to strike so far between visible folks and invisible folks has worked fairly well. Gotta keep people on their toes somewhat, after all.

Unfortunately I don't believe something of this nature is possible for us - Scoot's to-do list is fairly massive at the moment, and I get the feeling that this would be a more complex tweak than any of us might think. I took a quick look over at the IPS marketplace to see if there were any readily available extensions available that would provide the desired effect, but didn't see anything, I'm afraid. I do agree that it would be a handy thing to have for certain Life Advice issues, though. That said however, we very strongly frown on mean and/or rude behavior toward people in Life Advice threads. If you're nervous about talking about something, keep that in mind - no matter what someone may think about whatever it is you're speaking about, abusive behavior will not be tolerated in the slightest.

I think I vaguely recall that it was removed due to the fact that the ever-growing user list was starting to look a bit messy down at the bottom of the page. Once you start throwing that many names into a massive list it starts to look a bit cluttered.

See, the thing about that is that through the course of the thread, not one person, to my knowledge, contacted an administrator with any specific concerns regarding any of the people appointed. Most of the complaints in the thread itself were vague to the point that were difficult to really give serious consideration. If people have specific concerns regarding a moderator they should really speak up - In many cases we'd be happy to hear about any misgivings people have, as long as they're communicated to us in such a way that it doesn't feel like we have an angry mob trying to slay us. The boatloads fallout quite honestly stressed me out to the point that I seriously entertained the thought of just calling it quits right there and then, even if I do joke about it nowadays. Two sides to every coin, I guess.

Loved Napishtim's setting, even though the lack of a jump button was a bit saddening (I played Felghana first)

I suppose it isn't exactly a secret that we've lost a few staff members recently, with the remainder being shuffled around a bit. One needs only look at the section moderator group - or what remains of it - in order to notice this. I know a lot of you are curious as to just what in the seven blazing hells is going around here... rather than force everyone to sit around and speculate on matters, most likely reaching horrifying and probably inaccurate conclusions I figured it'd probably be a good time to talk a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes here. For those of you that are not in the know, as it were, next week - October third - marks MLP Forum's first birthday. By that time we will have amassed roughly eight hundred thousand posts, and over seven thousand members. I believe those two numbers deserve a moment of consideration. Say it with me, now - "holy shit!" When this forum went up, nobody had any idea that it would grow nearly to the size that it has, nor did anyone expect it to do so so quickly - quite frankly the speed at which this place has grown managed to outpace the speed at which we, the staff, were adapting to it and dealing with it. Early on there was little need for much in the way of organization - the forum was still young and relatively small; it was easy to deal with and keep things under control. Then we started getting roughly fifty zillion posts per second. Then, in order to deal with that, we recruited approximately two hundred billion moderators, or roughly one boat load. Suddenly, though it should have come to no surprise to anyone, our lack of organization and less than perfect communication started to bite at us a bit. It started gently enough, just an occasional nip at our ankles, but quickly grew to the point that it was really starting to bite us in the collective and proverbial buttock. Bit of a pain in the ass, really. At the moment our primary focus is resolving these issues that have plagued us - with that in mind, we have been taking good, measured steps toward mitigating them. One thing we're doing is creating a proper organizational hierarchy. I realize that this probably sounds like a pointless waste of time for a forum of all things to most people, but when you've got a massive and multifaceted community that has proven itself to have ridiculous growth potential, it's a good idea to make sure that everyone knows exactly what they should be doing - what areas they need to be focusing on, which tasks fall within their domain, and who is best equipped to provide assistance with whatever they may be faced with. By listing all of this out, it allows us to see who's workload is too large, and who can help lighten it without being overburdened themselves. This, in turn, will reduce strain on the staff, and help keep them from feeling potentially overwhelmed or disgruntled. In addition to that, we are going to be bring on additional staffers - since the 'boat loads' incident we've lost about nine moderators, a decent portion of which were fairly established and experienced staffers. Quite frankly, we need additional boots on the ground - while September has been relatively slow in terms of post counts compared to July (due in no small part to that accursed thing called school, no doubt), I don't think it is any stretch to say that there is a bloody good chance that we're going to be hit pretty damn hard once season three starts. We need to get people in place, trained, and ready to go - before the new season inspires another upswing in activity. This is especially important because many of us are already feeling stretched a bit too thin for our liking at our present staffing level. We realize that appointing new moderators is kind of a sensitive thing, but it is vitally important for the sake of preserving the sanity of the existing team. Seriously, we're a bit out-gunned over here by you guys, so try to be gentle when the Boat Loads sequel comes to a theater near you. We're probably not going to bring a huge ton of people in all at once (for practical reasons, it's easy to mentor and train folks when you bring them on in smaller groups), but will instead probably have a multi-phase recruiting process in place. In addition to the above, we've also got a few things cooking in the back room (not meth, I can assure you) to help smooth things out and make things flow a bit better. Most of it's fairly mundane, and a bit too boring for me to want to bother talking about, but I can assure you that it's all very vital. Strategic stuff, munition stockpiles, and all that sort of hogwash. At any rate, I guess the point of this massive chunk of text is just to reassure you lot that things are all fairly kosher back here. We recognize that some (though not all) of the departures we've faced have been a result of issues in our own internal management, and are doing what we can do to resolve them, and keep the issues that have cropped up from causing any additional damage and frustration - there are issues, but there are also solutions. With all of that said and done, I'd also like to assure all of you that the remainder of the staff is completely dedicated to the site and community, and will continue to do everything in our power to see it succeed and reach its full potential. Everyone on the team loves this place, and the people here - otherwise they wouldn't (or shouldn't) be donating their free time to keeping the place going. Before I wrap things up completely though, I'd like to give Arylett a shout-out for all of the work she put into roleplay world, and this community as a whole - she was exceptionally active as a moderator, and a damn good member to have around - we will miss her quite a bit.

I think I jumped the gun on this one and misinterpreted the situation. Apologies.

Having a portion of the staff browsing while anonymous is a good way to keep people on their toes, and to keep potential trolls from being able to tell when exactly it might be 'safe' to strike. More to the matter at hand though, Arylett and Klopp nailed this one fairly well - while we may only have a single European staffer at the present moment, we do have a number of North American staffers with extremely silly sleeping schedules that allow them to fill the same function. And honestly, in most cases a brief gap between when an issue is reported and when it is dealt with isn't going to cause any huge amounts of harm, I'd say - especially when you consider that most of the warnings that get issued (every single one of which I am notified of and review) are for things like minimum character violations and off-topic posts.

bonk

World of Tanks and/or Tribes Ascend + Skype = Yay.

who let you out of your cage? >:V

OHH ME ME ME ME PICK ME

GUYS HEY GUYS GUYS GUYS HEY HEY HOWS IT GOING HEY GUYS GUYS WHATS UP HOW YOU DOING HEY WHATS UP GUYS HI SUP GUYS HEY HEY HEY HEY GUYS

D'oh! Good catch on that, I'll get this forwarded over to Scootacool - shouldn't be any trouble at all to get it added to the drop-down list.