Regarding the look of the forum, the forum software had to be upgraded, and it forced the forum into the look it has now. I just tried to add the yellow and blue that the old look had. I'm not sure if we could ever go back to the old look.
I get that you designed this look, and you're proud of your work, and want to defend it. I'm the same way, but the site looks very..."beta," very "unfinished." The no colors works nicely on sites like Hey Trainer because it's consistent throughout the site, there is not bright colors clashing with it, the tone remains the same. However, on here we have color clashing with a "no color" look and it is not only displeasing to the eye, but gives off an overall unfinished look. I don't know the limitations of the forum software or the UI you have access too. This is just my honest opinion.
I've never understood why some people get rubbed the wrong way by mods. Don't break the rules and you won't get in trouble. If you break the rules, accept the consequences, and be an adult about it. Maybe the issue was that a lot of people with complaints were teenagers or young adults that didn't want to accept the consequences and now have an open forum (Facebook) where they can do whatever they want and never have to pay the consequences for their actions.
This statment puts the blame solely on the players who left and makes them seem like they were all delinquents. That is horribly incorrect.
This is a post I made a while back. It was prompted by a specific event, but I stand by that the reasons I stated in this thread were major contributor to the player-staff animosity.
http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?168137-Some-honest-thoughts
Also it is no secret that I, and the other leaders of the Werewolf/Mafia group, who never had an ill-intentions for the RTC or the Gym believe the staff acted irrationally and inappropriately concerning the incident that led to us leaving the Gym.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12509167/PokeGym Werewolf CANCELLED.png
I have a lot of experience with leadership, both online and in real life. In fact, I am trying to make a career in leadership with the Military. I am also a Sociology major. I've spent a lot of time studying the relationships and interactions between people, so I do have a little bit of insight in this.
It's not about "wanting to break the rules and not accepting the consequences." It's about interactions with the moderator staff. It's about inconsistency, power abuse, mis-communication, and a failure on the staff's part to accept responsibility for when they "mess-up."
I'm not talking about isolated events either. I'm talking about patterns and trends. Not every staff member is guilty of all of this, some are of all, some of none. I have nothing but respect for
most of the staff on this site. However, the point remains that it's not the "player's" fault that they left. The facebook groups and several of the other sites were made initially as a "refuge" for players who felt they no longer had a home at the Gym. Hey Trainer and it's "no moderation, Freedumb" policy was actually originally made as a parody for the Gym's moderation policies. Hey Trainer (EDIT: this is still censored?!?!) is actually pretty moderated at this point, at least enough to prevent utter chaos. The fact of the matter is that for these players, they no longer felt accepted in the Gym atmosphere. I recognize and acknowledge that troublemakers and trolls exist. I was the co-admin on a 2000+ person open Minecraft server. I spent so much time policing that I never had time to play the game on my own, I was always busy fixing someone's mess, or resolving conflict, or enforcing rules. Trolls and troublemakers make up the minority of players who left the gym. The long-time members, the mass contributors, the top players, they were not "teens who didn't want to accept consequences" and to say as much is an arrogant statement to make. They were chased away, or at least, that's what they believe and feel.
Believe it or not, I'm not trying to insult the staff on here, though it may seem that way. I'm attempting to make an accurate analysis on the situation. I don't know how the Gym staff feel about the situation. Maybe they don't care and I'm just spitting in the wind. They are running the site the way they want to, and that's their prerogative. However if the Pokegym wants to see the return of players, then the staff has to learn to connect with the members again. I'll say it one more time. The members did not leave and stop contributing because they wanted to "break the rules and go crazy." They left because they felt mistreated, unappreciated, and disrespected by the moderation staff. My statement in the Werewolf farewell post sums up my feeling exactly
absoltrainer said:
What is worse is that despite being a contributing member since 2006, with almost 8,000 posts on this site, and less than 20 infractions since I joined 7 years ago, I have been treated as little more than trouble making troll for trying to help.
I wasn't exaggerating when I said this. I know what was being said about me in the mod-forum too and I wasn't happy about it. The mods had a problem with something I was doing, something that wasn't actually against the rules, but they believed I was stepping on their toes. No one sent me a message to say "yo, I see what you're trying to do, but not cool." Instead I had posts deleted and edited with NO explanation, no communication. However I digress, my thoughts are summed up in the two links I provided above.
I really like this thread and want to keep talking about it. I love the PokeGym so much, and anyone passionate about the PokeGym is a friend to me. The PokeGym needs people passionate about it, passionate about the good aspects and passionate about the bad aspects, to keep it going.
Then please take what I say to heart because I used to love the gym too. Yet like so many before me, I find it hard to call the Gym my home anymore. I would love to see it come back. The Pokegym is responsible for my love for this game. I've been here for a long time. Please don't make the same mistake that was made with my previous staff interactions. Don't treat me like a no-good, trouble making troll. Treat me as a long-time, contributing member who has earned his share of respect on this forum and is trying to contribute some honest advice. It may not be what you want to hear, but it might be what needs to be said.
EDIT: I posted this unsure of what the result would be. Would the post be deleted? Edited? Removed? Would I be punished? Infracted? Banned? There is a difference between stating an honest opinion and being rude and blatantly attacking mods for the sake of arguing. The fact that I am unsure of what the outcome of my expressing my thoughts will be goes to show how much the member moderation staff connection has faltered. Members should be confident that they can speak out (in a respectful and mature manner) against policies or situations they disagree with and know they will get an equally respectful and mature response. The fact that I am unsure about this now is...unsettling.
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Post PART 2
EDIT:
Somehow I missed this post, and it should be added to my reply
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.
Prime my respect for you went up so much because of this. Since my joining in 2006, it has been a very rare occasion for a moderator to publically apologize like this. This is, in my opinion an example of excellent leadership and you have my respect for this statment.
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,
Here is where I disagree with you, you can do this by setting strict guidelines and making sure that the mods are setting the right examples. The members will respect the mods who follow the right examples. In my ROTC unit, we had Seniors, Juniors, and Sophomores with discipline abilities over Freshmen. We had rules and guidelines for how and what to punish for. Consistency is key, and I mentioned that in my "
Some Honest Thoughts" thread. Did slip ups happen? Of course. And when they did, we took responsibility for those slip-ups, repaired the damage and made sure those responsible didn't repeat those slip-ups. The freshmen respected us enough that when we had the occasional slip-up, it wasn't considered a "here we go again," it was considered an anomaly. That's the problem. The anomalies have become accepted as the norm for moderation on the gym. if that makes sense.
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.
Once again I mostly agree. The problem is when everyday is a bad day and the mistakes are no longer mistakes, but patterns and trends. That's when things become a problem. As for public vs. private, I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, there is a time and place for public discussion, such as an issue that affects multiple people, such as this thread. However that must be done in a mature and adult fashion. To do so otherwise deserves deletion and punishment. As for private, I never liked the "Hideout," because it allowed mods to "gang-up" if you will on one person, even if they were not intentionally doing more than contributing their 2 cents. Appealing has always been very tricky. I say this because I don't think some of the mods approach their complaints professionally. People get mad when they punished. Usually because they don't know why they are being punished. I've gotten some sarcastic responses from mods when I tried to appeal or log a complaint about some action taken against me. Not everyone will be compliant, even if a mod is professional. Our Minecraft server has 200 banned people to attest to that, but by being professional and being the "bigger man," the mod is that much more respectable. Rouge_ Archtype is a perfect example of a mod who was very professional in his dealing with appeals and complaints. Other mods...not so much, they would respond in a hostile, sarcastic manner, then punish individuals for returning that hostile tone.
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.
Yes and no. negatives will always stand out. You can be the perfect person, and the one time you're rude can ruin your reputation. Yet it goes back to what I said about patterns or trends. I've been on the Gym since 2006. There are certain mods, and I won't name names, who consistently act unprofessionally and consistently produce worse case scenarios. As I said, I can very much respect how much work it is to be an admin on a server or website. I've done it, I'm doing it now. I know how bad trolls and troublemakers get if you give them an inch, but when everyone else suffers as a result, then the trolls and troublemakers win.
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.
The Gym wasn't considered noobish until all the big name players left and took their contributions with them. Before then the Gym was the to-go-place for the best information. As for topic appropriateness, I witnessed the "transition" from un-official not connected to Pokémon Gym to "connected to the official, but still unoffical Gym." Even during that time, we had some very adult threads that were kept at a PG level. Stuff such as threads about God, the Drinking Age, drama in the Pokémon Community, etc. Yeah no cursing, and no porn, etc. That's no-brainers. You can have intelligent conversation without dropping curse-bombs and linking inappropriate material. I've seen it happen, here on the Gym. It just stopped happening when the players left.
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.
Again I disagree, and as a mentioned before, it's not the people who constantly caused trouble and left who are the issue here. It's the members who didn't cause trouble and left. They left because of the atmosphere of the Gym. I also go back to what I said. Trends and patterns. On other sites, no one who ever posted a thread about how he got banned from the gym for calling X a Y was ever considered a martyr. The people that everyone rallies behind are people with stories that are blatantly unfair example of moderation. People can relate to that because as I said before, there's a pattern and trend to some of this behavior. That's the problem. In my "
Some Honest Thoughts" thread, I talk about how respect is earned, not given. If the mods had the respect that they SHOULD, then people would not rally against them the way they do, they would support them because they knew that the mods are looking out for them. The majority of players do not think the mods are looking about them, rather they are looking out for themselves. As I said before, more often than not the mod in question (and it's only a few I might add who consistently do this) respond hostile and with sarcastic intend. They do it over and over, and it sullies the reputation of the other mods.
Can the mods do better? Definitely. Are all the complaints about over-moderation justified? I don't think so.
I think against certain mods, they are, against the majority of mods, they are not. The problem is how vocal those "certain mods" are.
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've been on the Gym a while too (3 years less than you, but still a while) and I have to disagree. It goes back to what I said, patterns and trends.
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.
That's the ideal plan, but things are not healthy here at the Gym, not as healthy as they should be, and it's something that should be addressed.
"A rules refresh may help change that reputation without actually changing the practice of keeping PokeGym a respectable atmosphere." Sounds like a good idea.
Personally I think it goes more into a mod refresh, or to word that more correctly, a mod training refresh.
During my post, I tended to apply to all the mods as a whole. The truth is, that nothing I said applies to every mod, or to even one mod specifically, but the moderation as a whole. The staff is a team, and if one fails, the entire staff fails. The failure of the few and their actions have ruined the reputation of the other mods on the site, and the reputation of the site at a whole. This is the truth. There is a consistency and pattern to some of the unprofessional actions on this site that caused the big "power-players" to leave. They took with them, their expertise, their followers, their contributions, and their opinions. Pokegym CAN come back, but it requires the staff, as a whole to take a good hard look at their policies, their guidelines, their procedures, and their team and be able to reconnect and earn back the trust of the members. That will not be easy to do, but I think it possible.
EDIT 3:
I recognize that I may be on thin ice/shaky ground. My intent it not to insult or attack. My intent is to be honest, but to do so maturely and calmly. Some things I said will probably upset people. That is the nature of this post, but not the nature of my goal. My goal is to provide a honest analysis of the current situation and discern the reasons for Pokegym not being as good as it was, or as it could and should be. I recognize the hard work that the staff puts into this site, and I refuse to believe any one of them purposely intended to chase away so many players. I know how hard it is to moderate, to admin, to lead. It this very reason that I posted this very long, and very honest post of my thoughts. Pokegym is part of my history with Pokemon. I would be sad to see it decay as I have seen countless other wbsites, forums, and servers do. I post everything I post, and say everything I say in this thread with the intent that may raise debate, and bring forth issues that need to be addressed. I am not being so critical because I have ANY grudges about any past history on the Gym. Let me be VERY clear on that. I accept that the past is the past. NOTHING I have said in this post, or this thread has ANY personal emotion attached to it. I used personal examples as evidence because they worked to support my points, but I am not upset or angry at any one person, or the Gym staff. I am saying what I am saying because I hope it will invoke the discussion that needed to be invoked and create debate about some key issues.
EDIT 4:
Project #1 is revising the infractions and infraction system. Right now we're discussing internally which infractions have merit and don't. If anyone has any thoughts on them, feel free to add them here.
This is progress.
