We have broken down walls with this project. We've come together as a community, we've listened to suggestions, and we're well on our way to having a forum that all our users (or at least the majority) can be happy with.

At this stage I think it's time to ask ourselves how much we really want to change. From my point of view, the jedi are evil the past 6 years of Minus World's existence have been mediocre at best. We've constantly flip-flopped on whether or not there will be a mainsite, we've consistently denied suggestions that are deemed "not serious", and worst of all, we haven't done anything noteworthy. For the better part of a decade we've been an MFGG clone, struggling even to match our source material. MW could be called a failed experiment by any outside observer, and most inside observers as well.

But this year, we, the most active members, the ones who care, have taken a gigantic leap toward uniqueness, and more importantly, fun. We've broken the shackles and created what I truly believe is the most enjoyable message board on the internet. Several talented individuals, some programmers, some artists, some idea-makers, have come together with our years of forumgoing knowledge to craft a truly incredible experience that is unmatched by MFGG.

Let me make it clear that I don't want to disparage the MW staff - they've done their job well enough in past years, if you consider the job to be as simple as maintaining the forum. But there's more to it than that. You have to build upon a great thing and make it greater. You have to turn it into a game, and you have to constantly one-up yourself. You have to keep people coming back. Think of the years that were spent simply deciding whether or not there SHOULD be a mainsite, or whether there SHOULD be a move to new software. Around two months ago, the community decided to just DO it. And now look where we are. Look what can be accomplished by a staff that truly cares about innovating, rather than just keeping the ship sailing straight until it sinks.

Again, I don't want to sound rude, because the staff HAVE done a good job at maintaining the forum, hiding hurtful comments, etc. But I really do think more is involved than that. And I think that if we all really care about the future of Minus World, and the history that comes with it, we should start considering alternatives.

MFGG, and subsequently MW, has always been run on a nebulous sort-of meritocracy system, in which admins and moderators are appointed based on who the existing admins/mods think will do a good job, then keep their position until they either step down or demonstrate a lack of interest. I think we can do better than that, which is why I'd like to propose a yearly nomination thread + poll where we can discuss the current staff, determine their weaknesses and strengths, and adjust them accordingly. In essence, a direct democracy.

In the interest of fairness, we should let the current staff keep their positions for the first year, giving them the opportunity to show how their administrative/moderation styles gel with the new Minus World. However I'd also like to nominate @"wtl" for the position of admin, because he's shown that he cares about this community and he's been heavily involved in the development process.

Thoughts?

This post was last modified: Aug 3, 2016 at 5:58 PM by kaZaam.

well i think in theory elections exist at all in order to keep the Citizenry from feeling suppressed even if the people in power are OK so yeah i think elections would prob lead to a happier userbase. mayb. i mean you can't please eberyone and idt the idea of elections have eber really worked like theyre supposed to so idk

also it seems the mods Try to be democratic (or someth like that) in their mod action alr so ehhhhhhhhhj idfk

This post was last modified: Aug 3, 2016 at 5:58 PM by Spritanium.

Yeah the mod actions have been pretty democratic. I'm talking more about feature additions and stuff like that (of which there were essentially none ever on old MW)

Although I also think there should be a Mod Code of Conduct so there are consistent and measurable ways to enforce punishment and assign regret, fairly.

idk i think in an environment like this eben punishment should be democratic

idk i think in an environment like this eben punishment should be democratic

Maybe. imo it seems enough to have a clear and publicly-visible system of punishments, enforced by elected moderators

maybe atl the system of punishment should be dem

Oh yeah we should also vote on rules, and the consequences for breaking them. So that way everyone's in agreement that the consequences for specific actions are at least fair

I don't really like the idea of mod campaigns or anything like that. I did like the system where people could apply to become staff when someone was needed to fill a role and the idea of suggesting members, but making everything 100% democratic has a good chance of leading things to popularity over effectiveness as a determining factor.

I'll admit that MW's old staff was a bit fucked up in terms of how active everyone was, and there were issues relating to how things were handled as well. Having a system where a mod has to have a certain level of activeness and be transparent about their availability when it's low (People have lives after all, but disappearing with no warning for literal months is a bit insane) may be a good idea so that we don't have people practically vanish like in the past.

Though I have a feeling moderation on this site will wind up better just from the technical aspects of it alone since we won't have situations like someone being banned and then me being unable to do anything to reverse it because my admin account was lower priority than Elyk's. At least I hope not anyways, that was hilariously dumb.

Ideally I'd like a situation where personal biases do not have any weight on the moderation and I feel like that may come into play more than it already does if pure democracy gets involved, more or less. I have slowly been trying to get better about this very issue myself over time and adapt to what the userbase wants as well without putting as much weight on my own opinion, though I have a feeling this has made me seem like I flip-flop on things often.

Do want to say that we probably don't need that many staff positions period though. Given how the forums have been operated lately, the general lack of a need for much moderation in general even before this testbed for the new forum revision came up outside of some incidents where a larger staff team would not have affected the outcome of at all, etc. I feel like more people on staff has only ever caused problems internally instead. Like a while back we had a system where we'd try to wait on everyone's input to do something and it would delay it indefinitely because of people randomly disappearing and there being too many heads to keep track of.

As far as the proposal in the first post, I'm not against it. @wtl has indeed shown that he can put a great effort forth in improving the forum, though I don't know if he particularly wants a moderation position rather than just a technical one like he had on the old site's team (though it was late in the game) due to how busy it seems like he can be sometimes.

Draku is on point. Moderation shouldn't be a popularity contest, which if we had some sort of formal election it would no doubt become one.

wtf why shouldn't mods be based on popularity? this is a community after all and the ppl w more power should prob be trusted

This post was last modified: Aug 3, 2016 at 7:50 PM by kaZaam.

and mod action definitely should be. idc who will or who wont be more effective than popular since that implies the mod's wants are more important than the community's. feel like i said this a couple times before on mw1 but mod action against the community is anti-community and only creates mistrust. might as well not have a forum at all if thats the stance we're going to take

Like I said in my post, I am not afraid to admit that many mistakes have been made in the past regarding the site's moderation. I'd like to advance it to a point where most people can be happy while action is handled fairly, though obviously not everyone will end up pleased since bans/warns hold inherent negativity behind them that cannot be easily removed from the public conscious.

There's always been an issue of private dissent VS public dissent, where members may feel like they have been wronged because in public, all they see are people wanting someone to not get punished for something that they feel the staff went and banned someone for on a decision seemingly come to all on their own. However, in private, many things will get sent or reported by members who are more quiet and would rather just have their issues handled in a way that doesn't draw attention to them. The voices on both ends are appraised, and decisions made based on private reports and concerns of members have been reversed in the past by public outcry after a decision has been passed if additional information made an action seem unjust. Other times, it is ruled that the issues presented in private outweighed that of the public resistance, and thus remained unchanged.

I will say that public opinion of the staff -is- important and hasn't been treated as such enough. I'd like to have some form of open review thread every so often (Seasonal?) for people to say their thoughts on each individual staff member without threat of being reprimanded. I'd like a system of members recommending potential staff members as well. Just not for it to become fully democratic as that may lead to quite a few issues.

OK

This post was last modified: Feb 10, 2017 at 8:05 AM by Mario. Edit Reason: deleted

[deleted]

This post was last modified: Aug 3, 2016 at 9:12 PM by Draku.

we should try to incorporate some more democratically chosen positions but that doesn't have to equate directly to mod powers. I was thinking we could Elect a few people to be involved in staff discussions / have direct line to the staff in case of emergencies as community representatives, and if they do a good job and it makes sense they could become officially Staff. These would have Terms and theyd have to be re-elected if they dont Become Staff (i cant imagine too many would become staff through their first term alone- itd be better to officially hire people that have proven to work well with the community multiple times)

I like this idea a lot. Solves almost all of the potential issues I was imagining with direct moderator elections. If people are okay with this I would be 100% behind something along these lines.

well yea community is relative to circumstances but i feel like thats kinda missing the point of what i was trying to say

representatives sound OK though

i was voted into a moderator position on mw by popular demand but if that doesn't stick i don't mind, since the community's changed since then

This post was last modified: Aug 3, 2016 at 9:27 PM by kaZaam.

really i'd say that mw is stronger simply as a community than most other forums because of our lack of focus, guess that's why it was never a problem to me.

like if we're all together because of The Website then what exactly abt The Website pulls us? until really recently idt mw had any pull at all outside of the community. and eben now everything that makes mw stronger as a website only works because of the community

like why do you think turning mfgg into Literally Just Mario was such a failure? they turned a community into a website