Whew boy, lots of replies to reply to
ogremarauder mentions a great point. I recently tried to trade some Kaijudo cards on a facebook group and got scammed right away. The Kaijudo group was a public group that is pretty much the main Kaijudo group on Facebook and yet they have no reference system, no feedback system, and they do nothing to help others that get scammed. Thankfully I was able to get a chargeback from my bank.
Forums have that advantage over Facebook "chats".
Also, nothing is permanent in facebook groups. Any discussion today can be bumped so far down it disappears by tomorrow. You can never search for certain information, and there is no way to organize it.
Facebook group chat is easy for people, that is it's main incentive. So many people stay on Facebook all day that it's easy to just chat there too.
On the other hand, I go to a Heroclix forum and a Power Rangers forum that have been around for years and are very strong in their topic's world. Facebook hasn't damaged them at all.
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Jaegar, I see what you were joking about. Over moderation can be a problem, and I personally apologize to anyone who has been on the blunt end of over moderation. It can be hard to orchestrate a group of staff to do their jobs in sync over the internet. It's hard enough to get judges at tournaments to give the same penalties for similar issues. What one mod feels is appropriate may be too harsh of a penalty to another mod. I don't think we will ever be able to get all the mods on the same page and have no issues whatsoever, but what the penalized person can do, if they feel they were wrongly penalized, is 1) Ask the moderator to appeal to a higher up 2) Contact a higher up themselves. Instead of getting mad, complaining in a public thread or on facebook, and leaving the forum forever, try to do something constructive about it. Mods are humans, they have bad days, and they make mistakes.
I think people hear about the worst cases of mod abuse the most because that is the only thing ever discussed. Nobody ever mentions times where mods deleted spam that was cluttering a thread, or when a mod did a good thing. People focus on the bad things and it makes it seem bad overall when it really isn't.
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Shadowfox, you're information is very useful, but it won't be accessible easily in this thread. If you could PM any bugs or errors you see to Bulbasnore or myself or Eeveelover, we'd be happy to discuss them internally and see if we can fix the issues.
Why did people go away from the PokeGym? There were many reasons. One reason was because the PokeGym was considered too noobish for many of the competitive players. Many of them wanted a place where they can talk freely about anything without being penalized for it, and where only the best players would be present to discuss competitive topics. The PokeGym had to silence any topics above PG-13 because of it's connection to the official game and knowing that young kids would be visiting the site. The PokeGym just didn't have the tools and atmosphere many of the competitive players wanted.
I mentioned above one reason why over-moderation is continually discussed, because nobody discusses the good things mods do, they just focus on the bad. Over-moderation, heck moderation in general has not affected much of the members of the forum. For every 1 person that gets infracted, making up a number, there has to be 10 others that never get an infraction. It's those minority people that break the rules, get infracted, and then complain about it, that you hear about so much. And perhaps some of those people were penalized unfairly, but like I mentioned above, it's more constructive to discuss it with the mod or an admin, then complain publicly about it. Complaining publicly and bringing it up many times in the future will not change the fact that that person was penalized unfairly.
Can the mods do better? Definitely. Are all the complaints about over-moderation justified? I don't think so.
You mention stories about this mod or that mod, but I've been on this forum longer than most people, and I can't remember any of those times. I've never seen the mods as a problem on this forum, and I still don't see them as a problem.
I never said the PokeGym wasn't a centralized hub of conversation. I'm saying that is the PokeGym's main purpose and always has.
You're right that the news was a lot better back in the day. Everything was mentioned on the forum or on the front page. You didn't need to go anywhere other than the PokeGym. But to continue to post that news, it requires people to do it. And although we've had some great people throughout the years helping the PokeGym, a lot of left. We no longer have a staff member in charge of reporting the news, or tracking it down and finding it first. The PokeGym has always relied on the volunteering of it's members, and as people move on to other sites, so do many of the volunteers.
But I don't think it's a bad thing if the PokeGym can't be as strong as it was in every area. As long as it's strong in it's main purpose, as a forum, a place to talk about the news, I think it will do well. I'm not saying it's doing well now, though. That's another topic.
"It is because the rules are arbitrary, archaic, and restrictive."
Do you really think that?
While I agree some infractions can be for poor reasons, I feel as a whole, the system is better than it is worse. Maybe the staff should sit down with the players and discuss every infraction, being honest here, and see how they feel about them. If you like that idea, maybe we can get it down.
But the main goal of the infraction system is to make sure the forums don't get cluttered with junk threads, to make sure conversations stay on topic and continue on fluidly, and to make sure nobody mistreats another member. Most of the infractions cover this ideas and do nothing but try to keep things healthy around here.
"How are we encouraged to get our news elsewhere and come here to discuss it but not be allowed to link to other websites?" You're 100% right.
"A rules refresh may help change that reputation without actually changing the practice of keeping PokeGym a respectable atmosphere." Sounds like a good idea.
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PokemonTrader, you bring up some good points about vagueness in the rules.
There are grey areas, and every mod does their job a little differently than the mod next to them.
We can try to improve the system.
Like I said above, if you feel you were unfairly penalized, please tell a mod or admin. I hope you did so in the past. And if you didn't, and are just now speaking about it now, then there isn't much we can do now to change what happened in the past. And perhaps if you would have spoke up in the past, it would have helped others in a similar situation.
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Thanks for the post TheRolesWePlay, you bring up good ideas.
I'm not sure what can be done about a polarizing person on this forum. It is a public forum, so that person could show on any other public forum. As long as they aren't breaking the rules, there is little we can do about them.
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I think that's all of the replies so far.
I'll keep replying to the best of my ability.
