djt832

I may be newer to the staff side of things, but I've been kicking around nerd since S rev 13, so I've been around a while, as well as involved in a revision well known for the massive amount of drama it caused. I dont mean to start a pissing contest here, just clearing things up. Anyway, I am glad someone has come forth and addressed this publicly and I agree with what you are trying to accomplish here. My point about the "behind the scenes" stuff was that I think a private meeting between the members of this disagreement and a head or two is a good first step. But hey, if this cuts down the drama faster, I'm all for it.

I think it is nice of you to step forward and admit fault towards some of these situations. If this whole situation has arisen due to the fact you could not compromise with other staff members, it may be time to take a step back and relax for a bit. I am also glad you have mentioned the Expectations for Staff post. Not too long ago I brought up a reminder of this, when I noticed staff members were being rather "dickish" in their responses to users on the forums. I am a bit confused in how you are doing the job of the Head Admins though. From my understanding, its not their job to babysit us. As staff, we should all be mature enough to iron out our own indifference's, or at least not let it escalate out of control. MrLoud stepped in when this became too much and asked to speak privately to those involved. Is it "behind the scenes"? Yeah, maybe. However, seeing as it was between a few staff members, I think it was appropriate to handle it in a private matter. While we all love our drama, its best to keep it to a minimum if possible. I have sat here trying to formulate a response to this in a way that I will not sound like an ass. I am not sure my efforts were successful, as some points I felt needed addressing were not really ones to pussyfoot around.

Thanks for replying Beast! Now if we could only get that last Sadmin to put a word in... Communication can definitely be tough, but I think it would be a good start to establish more moderators<-->admin and staff communication. Im not sure what steps we could take to achieve this, maybe just an open thread in private mod chat. Again, nothing too formal, we don't need this feeling like a second job for anyone (unless you really love your first job). As for grouping together ideas, maybe lump them into an organized google doc? The results from surveys are easy enough to record. That would be nice! Keep us updated on that. I'm sure all of the moderators would be willing to take on some of that responsibility. I would be more than happy to help run SAL. I would not be able to do it solely on my own, as my schedule limits what times I would be able to host them. However, if we could get a group running and planning it, we could have a successful SAL this upcoming revision. Some has got to from time to time :D

Sorry mumber, I didn't mean it like that :(. Just some more opinions would be nice.

Bumping for a Sadmin other than Mumber to respond

This is a really good point Torn. We may be jumping the gun here, having only heard from one Sadmin so far. With the ideation culling thing, I was trying to figure out a more efficient way to address all the great suggestions brought up to us. I think the polls are doing a great job of this for their specific questions, but the suggestions that do not fit into polls take more time to read through and discuss. I could be misinterpreting this too, its hard to tell. I agree with not having this turn into an extremely formal "have to be voted in", hierarchal group. The way I have envisioned it is, like you said, more of a voluntary thing. However, I do think having some sort of steady commitment from mods/players to it is essential.

I am probably just echoing diz here.... The idea is to spread some of the work out. We only have 3 Sadmins, who we cant expect to handle all ideas/ concerns/ complaints brought upon by players. This would be a way to have multiple opinions sort through ideas. Ideally, the council would be comprised of moderators that are active in game. This is important because not every user is active on the forums or responds to our surveys. As far as structure... We need it. I think before implementing this idea, there needs to be a clear cut focus for the council. I believe communication should be a big focus, because it has been severely lacking as of late. The discussion should not drag on though, as some of ours tend to do. If this, or any further ideas, are going to work, they need to be discussed and brought to fruition in a timely manner. This should also give us an opportunity to restructure the admin-mod-community relations for S entirely. Some things the council or other councils could be responsible for.... Events and Arenas- There was already an idea floating around for specific moderators to be in charge of nerd events, I am unable to think of the user who brought up this idea at the moment. Hopefully someone can give that person credit for me. Communication- Making sure actions decided on by Admins or moderators as results of surveys, opinions, etc. are effectively communicated to the public. Ideation culling- Sifting through the many ideas brought to us by the community and narrowing it down to a few plausible options. It should be a touch easier for those who are actively involved in game to get a feel for what the community might want. Moderators seem to have a bit less on their table, allowing for more general play time. Hopefully we can get some responses to this and move forward with something. I am looking forward to hearing (reading) all your opinions on this matter!

Im not sure about that. From my memories, it sparked a lot of PvP and it seemed to be one of the more active revs. I guess we would have to really look back in the archives to see if anything pops up about it. A good start for the history project maybe! Edit: After a quick look at the wiki, the revision I am remembering is 19. I was not active during 18, seems to have been during a time I was busy with irl stuff. In 19, we had enchantments on bows and all non-pvp related enchants as well. It worked great, however if repeated, we might want to consider rebalancing bow enchantments.

Morrowind is one of my all time favorite games too! Any big projects in the works for Thrax Industries in the near future? Where does Thrax Industries rank on the "best companies to work for" list?

I was one of the people that voted for enchantism and a large xp bump, solely because I did not think we had a chance of eliminating enchanting. If its going to be around, I would rather it be as easy as possible, not a tedious, monotone task that takes up the majority of my game time. That being said, I would be ecstatic to see enchants go by the wayside again. Also, welcome back Mumber :D

Whats the next step to getting these changes closer to being implemented? Maybe a tech could comment on how plausible dizney07's idea is? Should we get a poll going? I just dont want to see these suggestions get buried.

Just gotta say, I hopped onto creative during one of the speed building contests and it was one of the most fun times I have had on nerd. If creative keeps things like that up, I think the outlook for it in the long run will be great. The people on C are always fun too, which helps a lot.

Down votes were removed because they were causing a lot of issues. In the middle of threads, users would call out others for down voting and not explaining themselves. Others would just go through and down vote a specific user no matter what they said. Just take a look through some of the more recent threads on the forums. Down voting took away from the main discussion. At the moment, up votes have not caused any drama so I see no problem with them staying. If they start to become an issue, we can always discuss other options.

Simply put, the forum discussions have been a bit of a mess lately. This can be extremely frustrating for us as staff members. However, we need to remember to hold ourselves to a higher standard. I fear that recently, we have let some of our expectations slip when responding to posts. I am not trying to point fingers at anyone, we have all been guilty of this. Here are some excerpts from the "Expectations for Staff" post in mod chat that I think would do us all some good to look over. "We expect you to act professionally in all matters, even if you feel the person or people you are conversing with are not reciprocating. We expect a certain standard of conduct from our staff in serving players and dealing with each other. If there is a situation that you don't feel you can handle, defuse the conflict by deferring to an admin or another moderator. It's better to log out for a bit than to lose your temper." "The most important thing to remember: If you find a debate getting heated, and you feel you unable to remain respectful to whomever you are speaking (whether it be a fellow staff member or any member of our community), it may be best to remove yourself from the conversation." "When you become a staff member here at Nerd.nu you become a representative of our staff. This means that your actions also become a representation of us. Your professionalism will have to come into play not only while in a moderating position, but also when you are just playing the game. Users recognize our staff as being staff while on the server and they expect us to act professional at all time. This doesn't mean that you can't have fun, and laugh and joke. What is does mean is that you can't get into a big, name calling, hateful argument on the server. People will hold us to a higher standard and will end up losing respect for the staff if this were to happen. If this is a problem for you, then being part of our staff may not be the right fit for you." And probably my favorite, "We're playing a game of blocks."

why do you keep winking at me?

Originally I had voted "no" to removing the upvote/ down vote system as I thought it was a helpful tool to easily express an opinion. However, in current discussion threads it has gotten completely out of control. Members and staff are routinely down voting specific users without explanation, causing drama and derailing the original discussion thread. If we, as a community, cannot utilize the vote system with maturity and without bias towards certain users, we should not be afforded the privilege to vote. I want to be clear, I am not lumping everyone into my statement. I am well aware there are many users that use the voting system in a respectful way and thank you for doing so. It is unfortunate that the privilege may be lost due to a minority of users abusing the system.

Just stopping by to say I would definitely help out with this.

Nice work! I'm interested in seeing how the outcomes will be from the whole community voting.

PvE zones would cause a massive amount of drama. Already if someone runs away, they are constantly called out in chat. Even if you extend the combat tag, a user could still easily hide until that is over. There used to be PvE sections on S, but it was taken away because it was abused too much. I have no doubt we would run into the same issues as we have in the past.

There should not have been any attacks in the first place. It is highly inappropriate for you to ask for this to continue.

I'm glad you came to tell your side of the story. Honestly, I had no idea who barneygale was talking about in his post and was glad he left out usernames. I really wish you would have left out usernames in your post as well. It took what could have been a somewhat graceful goodbye/ explanation and turned it into something full of slander. Even if what you are saying is true, this was not, and should not, be the place to openly accuse users of rule breaking. I am sorry your return came to an abrupt and sour end, but I do not see that as an excuse for some of the comments made in your post. Just as a side note- Yesterday I was breaking an iron reinforced chest with my fist. When the protection started to weaken, the time it took for the chest to reappear became longer, allowing me to hit the block behind it. I have no mods installed other than those necessary to moderate. Seems to me there may be an issue with the citadel stuff, but that is for another thread.

I guess I wasn't clear. I would like to see discussion about players before they are given their mod powers back, due to the fact that whoever decides to give them back may not know or look into the history of that player. If we open it up to all of the staff members, we would be able to get better feedback on the person.

I'm not sure how well we look into a players past when they ask for their mod powers back, but maybe it would be worth having a discussion thread about in the future. We cant expect anyone to know or remember what may have happened to cause the player to resign from moderating in the first place.

Hmm I was under the impression the prison pearls mod imprisoned you in the end, not in someones private prison. Even though I play on S quite often, I'm not sure what the proper action in this situation was. However, from your explanation of the circumstances, I would have done the same thing. I may be biased though, because I am not a supporter of a plug-in that stops a user from continuing to play the game for at least 2 hours.

I would definitely be up for a Watson class. Training on catching x-ray would also be great