The Official Feedback Thread
- Thread starter Jeremy
- Start date
themysterybidder
Senior Member
Firstly @GooseyGuos , welcome to TBT. Everything I’m going to say is my own opinion, unless otherwise stated.
Other members have really summed up well why hosting any type of event official or unofficial is not a good idea at this time. Even the site owner has already stated there will be no events for the foreseeable future so staff can work on trying to sort out issues that many members have risen to staff dating back years.
You’ve already stated: I am new this much is to be the true and it is most difficult to understand this thread. I come to practice English and I made a let down of myself to use translation app for reading some of long posts and I still cannot all follow things and events and what every problem is.
Even if you can’t follow things or every problem, you cannot tell members to stop ‘moping’ and ‘to move on’. This isn’t a petty disagreement which has taken place to make members leave. There are serious issues here which have led a lot of the userbase to leave altogether or take indefinite hiatuses. Some of the members who are on hiatus are unsure if they will ever return.
Personally, I haven’t seen any evidence of bullying or rudeness towards you. You have also told members they are bullying you because they have liked someone else’s post! To me that is ridiculous! Please remember this is a public forum and you or I cannot expect everyone to agree with everything you write. I haven’t even seen anyone criticizing you, only trying to justify their opinions on why an event isn’t a good idea at present. To be honest, I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking part in an event if you dismiss members concerns. How would you react if someone questioned your event? This is nothing exclusively to do with you, there are a few other long term I wouldn’t want to take part in due to the same reasons.
As far as I have seen everyone has treated you with respect, however, you proceed to edit a positive post you made in -Blue- ‘s Let go to the Movies reboot, into a disagreeing post, because they didn’t feel an event was appropriate at this time!
When you suggested an event for the community, at the time of writing this, only 2 members have liked you post. That speaks volumes to me. If I had suggested hosting an event at this time and English is my native language and I have been an active member for over 3 years, I can guarantee members would have replied to me with the exact same comments. I really don’t feel this has anything against you personally, it’s just bad timing with the site in its current poor state.
If you feel that you have bullied here, I suggest you report posts by clicking the report button on the left hand side of the posts or use the Contact the Staff link and share your concerns privately. You can liaise with staff, and they can decide if any members or I have been unfair towards you or if you are being unfair to your fellow members.
Contact the Staff
This is only a suggestion from me, you could contact the staff and ask them about just you hosting an event. However, I think they will agree with most members who feel it would be highly inappropriate to make out everything is all happy and jolly here presently and to repeat myself and others, the site owner has even stated no more events for the foreseeable future, which I think it very fair. If staff agree to your idea, you could try hosting a single event yourself and then maybe others would follow your example and join in.
A few things you would need to think about when hosting an event:
1 – It ties in with forum rules, and the host has to make their own rules for the event.
2 – What do members have to do to participate? Physical or digital drawing, crafting, cooking, photography, Animal Crossing related, different theme, etc.
3 – It would have to be something very different to other events to even try and get what’s left of the members interested.
4 – You would have to keep up-to-date with members questions regarding the event.
5 – How long would it be opened for? How many entries can a member enter?
Those are just a few things you would have to consider, I’m missing many other points.
To conclude, I don’t feel as if anyone is ‘moping’ here or ‘dog piling’ on you. Blue has been very respectful from the start and even admired your enthusiasm, as have others and I. It’s great that you want to be involved in community events here, but this is not the correct time. Official forum events will return, we all just need to be patient and hopefully, word will spread and long term members who have left will return and the forum can be buzzing with activity once again.
Thanks for reading.
Other members have really summed up well why hosting any type of event official or unofficial is not a good idea at this time. Even the site owner has already stated there will be no events for the foreseeable future so staff can work on trying to sort out issues that many members have risen to staff dating back years.
You’ve already stated: I am new this much is to be the true and it is most difficult to understand this thread. I come to practice English and I made a let down of myself to use translation app for reading some of long posts and I still cannot all follow things and events and what every problem is.
Even if you can’t follow things or every problem, you cannot tell members to stop ‘moping’ and ‘to move on’. This isn’t a petty disagreement which has taken place to make members leave. There are serious issues here which have led a lot of the userbase to leave altogether or take indefinite hiatuses. Some of the members who are on hiatus are unsure if they will ever return.
Personally, I haven’t seen any evidence of bullying or rudeness towards you. You have also told members they are bullying you because they have liked someone else’s post! To me that is ridiculous! Please remember this is a public forum and you or I cannot expect everyone to agree with everything you write. I haven’t even seen anyone criticizing you, only trying to justify their opinions on why an event isn’t a good idea at present. To be honest, I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking part in an event if you dismiss members concerns. How would you react if someone questioned your event? This is nothing exclusively to do with you, there are a few other long term I wouldn’t want to take part in due to the same reasons.
As far as I have seen everyone has treated you with respect, however, you proceed to edit a positive post you made in -Blue- ‘s Let go to the Movies reboot, into a disagreeing post, because they didn’t feel an event was appropriate at this time!
When you suggested an event for the community, at the time of writing this, only 2 members have liked you post. That speaks volumes to me. If I had suggested hosting an event at this time and English is my native language and I have been an active member for over 3 years, I can guarantee members would have replied to me with the exact same comments. I really don’t feel this has anything against you personally, it’s just bad timing with the site in its current poor state.
If you feel that you have bullied here, I suggest you report posts by clicking the report button on the left hand side of the posts or use the Contact the Staff link and share your concerns privately. You can liaise with staff, and they can decide if any members or I have been unfair towards you or if you are being unfair to your fellow members.
Contact the Staff
This is only a suggestion from me, you could contact the staff and ask them about just you hosting an event. However, I think they will agree with most members who feel it would be highly inappropriate to make out everything is all happy and jolly here presently and to repeat myself and others, the site owner has even stated no more events for the foreseeable future, which I think it very fair. If staff agree to your idea, you could try hosting a single event yourself and then maybe others would follow your example and join in.
A few things you would need to think about when hosting an event:
1 – It ties in with forum rules, and the host has to make their own rules for the event.
2 – What do members have to do to participate? Physical or digital drawing, crafting, cooking, photography, Animal Crossing related, different theme, etc.
3 – It would have to be something very different to other events to even try and get what’s left of the members interested.
4 – You would have to keep up-to-date with members questions regarding the event.
5 – How long would it be opened for? How many entries can a member enter?
Those are just a few things you would have to consider, I’m missing many other points.
To conclude, I don’t feel as if anyone is ‘moping’ here or ‘dog piling’ on you. Blue has been very respectful from the start and even admired your enthusiasm, as have others and I. It’s great that you want to be involved in community events here, but this is not the correct time. Official forum events will return, we all just need to be patient and hopefully, word will spread and long term members who have left will return and the forum can be buzzing with activity once again.
Thanks for reading.
GooseyGuos
Senior Member
I remove this comment from @-Blue- thread because @-Blue- did do me a disrespect by making a like on a bully post by @Tude saying this I am troll and ridicule for words I say when you are awareness of English struggle. Why can you expect me support a thing I thought would be a great include in group community project after they do join bully? No such. Not unless apology. You like apologies from other but not forthcoming yourselves when you cause a person that is not your group distress.
You did do this like the post also I can see, so why can you expectation I be of trust you?
Comments become made about my language be this broken and it is bigotry. Bulgaria be a country of struggle to access English because I am Roma of Bulgaria and we not even allow us in schools until it is university. People make comments call me ugly bully name like this troll . Saying I speak not right. I make them wrong by study this law. I not make a cry and refusing to be do work or job. But here I am have this User say this to me and people I was respect to turn on me and tell lie about it and make excuse for behaviour but remain unkind to me.
It is the right thing to do to make it 4 hours because too many make an enjoyment of Dog Piling this and is already too hard to read everything and then everyone says long posts to me at same time. So I will not read a long post about this just to make a gaslight and ignore this my own words and make a brush away that my English broken. It take this much time to translate to third language and not going to when you do not afford same respect to my words.
I had idea, you want no idea, you want to mope and say all is bad and staff not giving what we want and must meet our demands or nobody be allowed fun. You want make a shoot of everyone who want to make it better. Good luck my friends.
TotodileStars
Nah
I've popped back on for a couple of moments over the past few days to see these... "developments", I guess, and I have a couple of things I'd like to say here.
On the topic of accusing someone of being a troll for calling strangers "friend"... I will point out that this could possibly be a cultural difference - there's some countries where it's more normal to be friendlier with people you don't know (e.g. Australians calling each other "mate"), and then there are others where it's less appropriate (e.g. America, I assume - I don't live there, but it does seem more individualistic in this regard). I don't know if calling people "friend" is normal in GooseyGuos' country, but I do think that accusing him of trolling over that, alone, was uncalled for.
Now, the reason I've liked a few comments that have criticised your behaviour, @GooseyGuos, is because you're not taking "no" for an answer. It's okay if you don't understand the issues being raised in this thread - there's a LOT of information to go over, especially for someone who isn't a native English speaker - but just because you don't see the seriousness of those issues, doesn't mean that they're not important to other people. You kept trying to push people to agree to something they clearly don't want, which would involve ignoring problems that still haven't been fixed.
You have no right to tell people to just "move on" from something that they haven't been given closure for. Especially while you, yourself, keep bringing up other members' actions in other parts of the website, and saying you won't drop it until they apologise to you. Why are you the only one who gets to hold people accountable for what they do?
On the topic of accusing someone of being a troll for calling strangers "friend"... I will point out that this could possibly be a cultural difference - there's some countries where it's more normal to be friendlier with people you don't know (e.g. Australians calling each other "mate"), and then there are others where it's less appropriate (e.g. America, I assume - I don't live there, but it does seem more individualistic in this regard). I don't know if calling people "friend" is normal in GooseyGuos' country, but I do think that accusing him of trolling over that, alone, was uncalled for.
Now, the reason I've liked a few comments that have criticised your behaviour, @GooseyGuos, is because you're not taking "no" for an answer. It's okay if you don't understand the issues being raised in this thread - there's a LOT of information to go over, especially for someone who isn't a native English speaker - but just because you don't see the seriousness of those issues, doesn't mean that they're not important to other people. You kept trying to push people to agree to something they clearly don't want, which would involve ignoring problems that still haven't been fixed.
You have no right to tell people to just "move on" from something that they haven't been given closure for. Especially while you, yourself, keep bringing up other members' actions in other parts of the website, and saying you won't drop it until they apologise to you. Why are you the only one who gets to hold people accountable for what they do?
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No one is saying you can’t have fun. I am curious as to know what you think people are demanding? I think if you understand some the problems maybe you would understand and maybe care why people are upset. People are not demanding we be given anything. They are asking for rule clarification and changes to the site and event rules. There have been many misunderstandings and problems causing people to get upset and take a break. People would like to know why a person got banned and understand the rules. We had a problem with an event at the beginning of the year that left people confused and upset. Events should be fun. I don’t think it’s a lot to ask for a break in events so that rules can be changed and clarified. The staff also needs a bit of a break with all the events that happened last year. I know some are very busy outside of here so people just need a break.
Are you seriously dismissing her entire post because she liked a post that you think is bullying you and you still believe there’s some kind of hate bandwagon against you (when it’s already been established that you can like a post because you agree with part of it and not all of it)? There’s things I want to say about the rest of your post but that alone reassures me it’s not worth my time to argue with you anymore.
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Okay, hold up, wait a second, something ain't right. This is what I mean when I say we have a community problem. Y'all are bored as there has been no update from staff to continue the drama and thus are finding any reason to get a pot stirred, with the latest focus being GooseyGuos
Obviously, Goosey is new and has no idea the context for the time and energy that forum events require. But instead of ignoring it and moving on, y'all are engaging. And yes, you all are band-wagoning against this person.
Sometimes you have to let a person not understand until they understand themselves.
And out of all the things you argue about, you're arguing about why an event cannot happen, when it's already been announced that it can't happen? Be for real right now. There's actually no reason this had to be a drawn out argument.
This is what I mean when I say we are not welcoming to new people. This is what I mean when I say that the forum's priorities for what we allow conversationally are skewed in a weird direction.
The last page and a half are not feedback driven posts. They are doing nothing to improve the website and true feedback isn't being given, it's just been people dog-piling on a new member who is an English-learner on a predominantly English speaking forum. What exactly is being done here that is productive?
@Tude Step into Goosey’s shoes for a second. You are a non-English speaker on an English speaking forum, and you have 3-4 people who are more proficient at a language than you attempting to argue and debate about something you have little knowledge about. This puts Goosey at a clear disadvantage. I’m not saying people are being negative about his ability, I’m saying that people are being willfully ignorant of the position we are putting this member in. It’s vulnerable to learn a new language and even more vulnerable to try to join a community where you don’t speak the predominant language and then have a bunch of people be rude to you in that language, which is what is happening in this thread.
Obviously, Goosey is new and has no idea the context for the time and energy that forum events require. But instead of ignoring it and moving on, y'all are engaging. And yes, you all are band-wagoning against this person.
Sometimes you have to let a person not understand until they understand themselves.
And out of all the things you argue about, you're arguing about why an event cannot happen, when it's already been announced that it can't happen? Be for real right now. There's actually no reason this had to be a drawn out argument.
This is an out of control thing to say.
This is what I mean when I say we are not welcoming to new people. This is what I mean when I say that the forum's priorities for what we allow conversationally are skewed in a weird direction.
The last page and a half are not feedback driven posts. They are doing nothing to improve the website and true feedback isn't being given, it's just been people dog-piling on a new member who is an English-learner on a predominantly English speaking forum. What exactly is being done here that is productive?
@Tude Step into Goosey’s shoes for a second. You are a non-English speaker on an English speaking forum, and you have 3-4 people who are more proficient at a language than you attempting to argue and debate about something you have little knowledge about. This puts Goosey at a clear disadvantage. I’m not saying people are being negative about his ability, I’m saying that people are being willfully ignorant of the position we are putting this member in. It’s vulnerable to learn a new language and even more vulnerable to try to join a community where you don’t speak the predominant language and then have a bunch of people be rude to you in that language, which is what is happening in this thread.
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Girl it's not that serious
How are members not welcoming when they've written entire paragraphs trying to explain how they're in no way trying to be mean and just want to tell them how the forum and events work and how much time and ressources they take, considering it takes real people and real artists to think about and create events. Just because members are trying their best to explain how running this site especially during events is close to a full time job doesn't mean they're dog-piling on him. And language has nothing to do with this. You can be condescending and you can undermine other people's work in every language.
It took me a while to read through most of this thread but what you call "drama" isn't necessarily actual drama, maybe there are actual issues that need to be adressed behind all of this, and maybe the commotion is justified. Calling people bored as if they spent their entire day refreshing this topic for a drop of "drama" seems weird to me tbh!
daringred_
✧ stupid lesbian ✧
bless you for trying, hat, but you're wasting your time with them because they actually are a troll, as seen in this very thread a dozen pages or so back, and also like to stir drama on and off site. it's not worth interacting with them, because they detract from the same "productive" discussion they claim everyone else is. they're part of the very community problem they're describing, ironically.
themysterybidder
Senior Member
As others have said just because a member likes a post does not mean they are bullying anyone! I’m not sure how you have concluded that members are ‘ridiculing’ your language.
I have tried my best to help you by directing you to the Contact the Staff board and how to report our posts if you feel you are being ‘bullied’ by anyone. The staff will deal with your concerns and will determine if any rules by any member has been broken. I have also tried to encourage you to contact the staff and ask about hosting a solo event, and maybe others would then follow your lead and join in, please see my previous post - https://www.belltreeforums.com/threads/the-official-feedback-thread.635901/post-10923735. I also included a few ideas to help you. However, you have thrown it back in my face. Does that mean you have ‘bullied’ and ‘ridiculed’ me? I took time out to try and help and I get this reply:
You have written about the 4 hour cooldown being a good idea:
However, yesterday you edited your post about 4-5 times to keep replying because you couldn’t wait until the cooldown ended! Keeping up with your replies were very confusing - just to be crystal clear, nothing to do with your language - because you were quoting comments which were posted by members after your original post.
You wrote:
As Yoshi has said there are many more things I could add about your post, but I don't see the point, when you can't meet people halfway.
I have tried my best to help you by directing you to the Contact the Staff board and how to report our posts if you feel you are being ‘bullied’ by anyone. The staff will deal with your concerns and will determine if any rules by any member has been broken. I have also tried to encourage you to contact the staff and ask about hosting a solo event, and maybe others would then follow your lead and join in, please see my previous post - https://www.belltreeforums.com/threads/the-official-feedback-thread.635901/post-10923735. I also included a few ideas to help you. However, you have thrown it back in my face. Does that mean you have ‘bullied’ and ‘ridiculed’ me? I took time out to try and help and I get this reply:
You have written about the 4 hour cooldown being a good idea:
However, yesterday you edited your post about 4-5 times to keep replying because you couldn’t wait until the cooldown ended! Keeping up with your replies were very confusing - just to be crystal clear, nothing to do with your language - because you were quoting comments which were posted by members after your original post.
You wrote:
No-one ever wrote they didn’t want/like your idea, only just not at this present time. To repeat myself, I tried to encourage you, please ask the staff and see what they say and that could be the decider whether you host a solo event.
As Yoshi has said there are many more things I could add about your post, but I don't see the point, when you can't meet people halfway.
Gabby, I've just re-read the opening post by Jeremy and this is quoted from the opening post:
Everything we post here doesn't necessarily have to be feedback, we can offer opinions posted by other users.
GooseyGuos
Senior Member
Thank you my friend, I say this before and say this now. You are wonderful person. It is of great disappointment to find this bigotry for way I speak when English is still learning.
No matter what it takes to try to cover it up it is bully to call person names, to be critic of language they still learn and to write to me many times a long post that I say time again I cannot understand it and takes me most time to translate if not use app and with use app is not perfect for this anyway.
Making to this behaviour to new member because they want to make encouragement that everything can be alright is bad behaviour and this be why there not be a community and new people will not wish to stay. Excuses to say not bullying are not truthful.
@Yoshi155 you keep say this you not go to talk anymore then keep say more to me anyway. Please do not and leave me alone now. It seem you enjoy too much making trouble.
That is same for all of you joining in Dog Piling. Please do not and leave me alone I will not waste time try to translate long posts of User. I do not need this reading many posts of organised Dog Pile of people justify way you treat new people not of your language and saying it not be bullying to call person troll, ridicule way of speak when language still learn and rude about my English be broken and being angry for my not understanding or speak like American.
You only destroy your own community doing this. You can do liking on bully post but that can be big red sign of community that only thriving on bullying.
Again I say thank you to @Gabby but it is with disgust I see people call Gabby troll too.
Uh, interesting post. There’s a lot I disagree with in here, but based on the first paragraph, it seems like you hold the assumption that people in this thread eagerly anticipate staff updates just so they can rip them to shreds. I highly doubt this is true. When a staff member posts something and it’s immediately torn apart by multiple people, it’s because they’re deservedly frustrated that we had to wait weeks for a nothing answer, not because they’re chronically online and don’t have anything better to do with their lives. Most of the people who did this in the first place are gone because having hope in a site like this is futile and tiring, and I’m sure they’d still be here if they enjoyed any of this. If I’m wrong about that and this isn’t what you were trying to insinuate, you can let me know.
Okay sir. I’m sorry, that’s my fault for not having enough restraint to ignore your posts (I’m not trying to be sarcastic by the way, that was a serious apology). That last post was genuinely going to be my final response, but I guess this one will be it now. I have no idea what you mean when you said I enjoy causing trouble. I’m not that pathetic. I only respond because you keep insisting that there’s some kind of hate bandwagon against you when that simply does not exist. This argument shouldn’t have started in the first place and I really don’t get why you had to insist that events don’t require a lot of work when that’s incorrect.
Please link one post that has made fun of you for speaking broken English. If you’re dead set in your belief that you’re being attacked and refuse to listen when people are saying that they’re not bullying you and that no one’s trying to be hostile, you are only proving my point that arguing with you is a waste of finger movements. Others have said that this entire thing would have played out the exact same way if a fluent English speaker said what you are saying, showing that this has nothing to do with English not being your first language. Despite that, you accuse them of lying and not wanting to admit that they’re really just… racist, I guess. There’s obviously no way to convince you that you’re not being attacked by some kind of English speaker nationalist hivemind.
Final thing (not targeted at you), the four hour cooldown is still asinine and still needs to be reduced if not completely removed. No, doing this will not increase the amount of dogpiling that is said to be occurring in this thread because people can already just edit their posts to bypass the system, which should be enough evidence that the cooldown system contributes nothing to this thread in its current state other than inconvenience.
Edit: two more things I missed. One, no this is absolutely not why the community of the site is currently non existent. It isn’t because old users are supposedly driving out new users. Two, sorry, I actually didn’t see that part where you said you don’t like long posts because they’re hard to understand.
Alright that’s all byeeeee
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oath2order
#Porygon2024
This really isn't productive and calling people trolls doesn't help anything.
Gabby isn't wrong here. This is the feedback thread, not "let's all respond to this one user who isn't taking no for an answer about events instead of moving on".
Because that's what dog-piling is, numerous users all responding to one person and all arguing and siding up against them.
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technically, a dogpile would be people lining up against someone, unwarranted or disproportionately aggressive
it would be silly to give a milquetoast lecture to a community you are new to and then call the group of people you just intentionally engaged a dogpile, for instance.
either way, forum medium itself is sort of built around mass response so i don't know how you avoid that, especially in a thread that asks the community to talk about itself. it also wouldn't be a thread i'd engage in if i was new and still learning a language. like the eagerness to learn is good, and positive energy is good, but it would probably be beneficial to immerse themselves in the wider site before the more insular ongoing discussions
it would be silly to give a milquetoast lecture to a community you are new to and then call the group of people you just intentionally engaged a dogpile, for instance.
either way, forum medium itself is sort of built around mass response so i don't know how you avoid that, especially in a thread that asks the community to talk about itself. it also wouldn't be a thread i'd engage in if i was new and still learning a language. like the eagerness to learn is good, and positive energy is good, but it would probably be beneficial to immerse themselves in the wider site before the more insular ongoing discussions
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Events, Ads, Survey, Bans, Dark Theme, Feedback
New
Hey all, let's stop arguing about events, please! Even if you think someone is just trolling, it's obviously best not to engage, so whether the goal is to be welcoming to new members or discourage trolling, the approach would be the same. Either way, let's move on from this topic for now. As I previously mentioned, we're taking a break from hosting official events so we can instead focus on other projects that will have a longer-lasting impact on the community. Some of you may be surprised by the number of hours it takes to host an event. I can say from personal experience that they've caused the rest of my life to be put on hold for a long period of time - we're talking many hundreds of hours! While TBT may be known for its events, it's not a bad thing to take a breather now and then to reflect on other things that need to be addressed. We've had 50 events since 2020, so we'll be okay taking a break for now. In addition to the overall time commitment, we're also a bit shorthanded with multiple staff members on hiatus. And yes, we would like to add more moderators in the near future!
While I'm posting here, I'd like to quickly go over a few other topics. First, the ads have been restored today after our ad company told me that the problematic ad has been blocked. Not exactly exciting news, but please let me know if it happens again.
Thank you to everyone who filled out our recent survey. If you included your username, the bells should have appeared a few minutes ago. The survey helps us better understand the community's feelings on a few topics, such as the ignore functionality and feedback in general.
As I mentioned in my last post, there are still at least two topics I said I would cover here. The first is the recent ban of a member, which resulted in many questions. I have not posted more about this because he ended up reaching out about arranging a discussion with the staff, which has started but not yet concluded. I thought it could be more productive to wait for the discussion to play out before talking more about it here. Early on, we decided not to discuss the ban too specifically in public because of the other people involved and simply because it's not something we do. Instead, we can go over the staff's process and decision-making that led to the ban (or bans in general). For this post, I'll answer the general questions that @rosetti had previously asked about banning. While some of them have been covered by other posts since then, I believe these may have yet to be answered:
Another topic I said I would discuss here is the possibility of adding a dark theme for the site. While preparing the previous survey, I realized this is something that will need its own dedicated survey. There are many factors to consider in terms of a dark theme and how everyone would like to see one implemented here. For example, which elements are darker, are we talking full dark background with light text, just a slightly darker version of the current theme, etc.? A proper theme, at least in the way I'm envisioning it, could be years away, so instead, we want to consider making smaller adjustments that are feasible to implement in the meantime. The goal is to help people who find the site to be too harsh on their eyes at night. That being said, this will still take some time to work on, especially because we have a few other projects at the moment. I will post another survey regarding this topic in the near future.
Finally, I'd like to talk about feedback itself. I understand a lot of people have been upset by the atmosphere in this thread, with a few suggesting it should be closed or deleted. The survey helped point this out further, with less than a third of respondents saying they feel comfortable posting here. Our current plan is to transition away from this thread in place of individual feedback threads (like the thread about banning AI from The Museum). We would instead add a feedback prefix to Bell Tree HQ that can be used by members to make suggestions, or by staff to talk about these specific issues. Individual threads would allow topics to stay organized and make it easier for staff to respond to.
For the time being, however, we would like to continue using this thread until we feel like we've addressed the topics we said we would address. Some of the topics from the beginning of this thread have been answered in pieces or may be less of a priority at this time, so please feel free to let us know which topics are important to you, and we'll either try our best to address them here or include them in a new thread.
In addition to splitting feedback into multiple threads, we also recognize that it has been challenging for us to effectively moderate this thread in the last few months. I hope we, as a community, can do better to make people feel comfortable sharing ideas, even if they're contrary to other opinions. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we'll be looking to add new moderators in the near future.
Thanks for reading!
While I'm posting here, I'd like to quickly go over a few other topics. First, the ads have been restored today after our ad company told me that the problematic ad has been blocked. Not exactly exciting news, but please let me know if it happens again.
Thank you to everyone who filled out our recent survey. If you included your username, the bells should have appeared a few minutes ago. The survey helps us better understand the community's feelings on a few topics, such as the ignore functionality and feedback in general.
As I mentioned in my last post, there are still at least two topics I said I would cover here. The first is the recent ban of a member, which resulted in many questions. I have not posted more about this because he ended up reaching out about arranging a discussion with the staff, which has started but not yet concluded. I thought it could be more productive to wait for the discussion to play out before talking more about it here. Early on, we decided not to discuss the ban too specifically in public because of the other people involved and simply because it's not something we do. Instead, we can go over the staff's process and decision-making that led to the ban (or bans in general). For this post, I'll answer the general questions that @rosetti had previously asked about banning. While some of them have been covered by other posts since then, I believe these may have yet to be answered:
There's not exactly an on/off switch when it comes to moderating, so history is something that would always be considered, especially when an official warning is sent. For example, if a member receives a warning for spamming after they were warned for the same thing a few days earlier, it would start to paint a picture that they may be struggling to follow the staff's direction about it. Sometimes, this is occurring over a much longer period. If the same problem occurred once or twice a year ago, it may not factor into the actions we take. However, if it occurred dozens of times over a long period, it may be recognized as a pattern like in the first example.
No, so there will be something that causes us to do so if we're not already familiar with their history. For example, something that warrants a warning, as I mentioned above. The warning history alone is typically (ideally) enough to show a history without digging through tons of other posts.
I probably covered this one above, but we're looking at the warning history of a member when something about their behavior comes up. To get an even bigger picture, we may skim through their post history if they already have an extensive warning history and we're considering further action.
It does apply to everyone, but I should reiterate that having a few warnings from a while ago won't typically be taken into consideration. Even if you have dozens of previous warnings, if they're very old, with a long period of active and unproblematic history since, they won't necessarily be taken into consideration as much as a consistent pattern of behavior. Escalating to a ban happens when we feel nothing is changing after communicating our concerns. So would a sincere apology help? Possibly a bit, if we think the member is serious about correcting the thing they were warned or banned for.
I assume this is about looking through post history as opposed to warning history. This is not something we normally do since the warnings usually cover members' actions, and how we've tried to communicate to them about their actions. If we feel like we need to review unwarned posts, it's probably because we're trying to be thorough before taking further action or because we're worried that posts may have been missed (unseen or unreported). The latter would typically apply to cases where the member is newer, so doesn't have a long history on the site, but has raised red flags with potentially problematic content. These are cases where we'd actually like to increase our review of post history because posts can sometimes go unreported.
I mentioned this a bit with the first question, but this is typically already going to be outlined by warning history. If we have to look through the actual posts for some reason, I don't imagine that we'd spend a long time closely looking through all of them one by one. Instead, this process is going to start by looking at the list of warnings to see if there's a pattern of unchanging behavior. The big thing here is that if we feel we've been trying to communicate an issue to a member but the issue keeps happening, we are going to start considering the next step. No one's looking through random members' posts to dig up dirt, but even if something was uncovered from a while ago, we're not necessarily going to hold it against you. Except in very extreme/dangerous/obvious cases, our first goal is to communicate and allow chances to work with the moderators to change course in order to fit with the community and its rules.
We take every report with a grain of salt in the sense that it's just a way to highlight content. As if we came across the post on our own, we'll look into it ourselves and make our own decision, which is sometimes that no action needs to be taken. Reporting is very useful for us because we can't participate in every discussion, so it simply lets us know that something should be read.
Another topic I said I would discuss here is the possibility of adding a dark theme for the site. While preparing the previous survey, I realized this is something that will need its own dedicated survey. There are many factors to consider in terms of a dark theme and how everyone would like to see one implemented here. For example, which elements are darker, are we talking full dark background with light text, just a slightly darker version of the current theme, etc.? A proper theme, at least in the way I'm envisioning it, could be years away, so instead, we want to consider making smaller adjustments that are feasible to implement in the meantime. The goal is to help people who find the site to be too harsh on their eyes at night. That being said, this will still take some time to work on, especially because we have a few other projects at the moment. I will post another survey regarding this topic in the near future.
Finally, I'd like to talk about feedback itself. I understand a lot of people have been upset by the atmosphere in this thread, with a few suggesting it should be closed or deleted. The survey helped point this out further, with less than a third of respondents saying they feel comfortable posting here. Our current plan is to transition away from this thread in place of individual feedback threads (like the thread about banning AI from The Museum). We would instead add a feedback prefix to Bell Tree HQ that can be used by members to make suggestions, or by staff to talk about these specific issues. Individual threads would allow topics to stay organized and make it easier for staff to respond to.
For the time being, however, we would like to continue using this thread until we feel like we've addressed the topics we said we would address. Some of the topics from the beginning of this thread have been answered in pieces or may be less of a priority at this time, so please feel free to let us know which topics are important to you, and we'll either try our best to address them here or include them in a new thread.
In addition to splitting feedback into multiple threads, we also recognize that it has been challenging for us to effectively moderate this thread in the last few months. I hope we, as a community, can do better to make people feel comfortable sharing ideas, even if they're contrary to other opinions. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we'll be looking to add new moderators in the near future.
Thanks for reading!
GooseyGuos
Senior Member
It make a lot of time to translate this long and not become follow this is hard but I think I understand some.
Thank you but I must make polite decline for be staff my language not strong enough. Instead I can make nominate @Gabby to be this new moderator srsrsrs
I do this nominate because Gabby is human who do see people human and talk as a human and see more to a person than most can see.
If another nominations is be allowed I say this @oath2order and this @BetsySundrop shall be great for this staff moderator team
Thank you but I must make polite decline for be staff my language not strong enough. Instead I can make nominate @Gabby to be this new moderator srsrsrs
I do this nominate because Gabby is human who do see people human and talk as a human and see more to a person than most can see.
If another nominations is be allowed I say this @oath2order and this @BetsySundrop shall be great for this staff moderator team
I know there's a lot to discuss and I probably shouldn't bring this up because it's trivial compared to everything else, but I was wondering if there was a reason why we can edit messages everywhere. On profiles, posts, ect, but with personal messages it has a time limit of 5 minutes? Was there a reason for this originally? Were people abusing it in some way?
I don't know why it's set up that way, but I don't think it would hurt to have it not have a time limit at all?
I don't know why it's set up that way, but I don't think it would hurt to have it not have a time limit at all?
