New Moderators are in! (Update)

[arsenette]

EDIT:

Okie dokie. New mods are in.

dakohosu
sasukewarrior333
thegreatluigi
YourResidentKojiFan

******************

After talking to Eclipse (former admin/mod) and getting the lay of the land we are getting a new mod team. Some efforts have already been done in the past 2 months since the initial announcement from the previous mod team to shut down SMF (a power they never should have had) and some already have been contacted by Eclipse. I'd like to open it up formally with the caveat of explaining what EXACTLY is expected of a mod rather than what was being envisioned a mod should be going forward. I've covered some of it in my previous post but I wanted to try to simplify it here and get feedback.

Mods duties are simple.

• Sweep for bots/respond to report mod messages
• Move/delete out of place/out of forum posts (especially prevalent during tournaments)
• Rare cases - warn/remove members who break proboards rules.

That last one is a sticking point and the definition of what falls into that category has been growing exponentially. However, it is a rare occasion that it has to happen and in the distant past it was a group effort to decide what to do with those types of issues.

That's pretty much it. I will already be contacting the list Eclipse was speaking to but I also want to openly put this out there again for anyone that missed the call for mods and or have comments about the process.

I do want to reiterate something that has been lost in all of this. Look at my post count. I mention this because that number is #1 for a reason and at no time was I a mod when I amassed that number. You don't need to be a mod to start a discussion about tournaments. You don't need to be a mod to create a discussion about ratings, training, speculation, predictions.. or anything else. Years ago I used to do that for you where I'd put "x week ANW NBC Time - discussion thread", "Week X ratings thread", "Obstacle predictions for Sasuke X". I never needed a mod to do that. I'm encouraging all members to continue to do so. Some of you did take over for what I was doing but were not consistent. I'd encourage you to do that again. If you see something out of place, like a discussion that belongs in another section (current tournament discussion on a general thread) then hit the report button to bring it to the mods attention so that they can move it. You don't need to BE a mod to do that. Every member has this power. That said, if you want to help maintain the healthiness of this board by taking those reports and help cleaning up the place (and you haven't been in contact with any of us previously) then by all means contact me privately.

However, if you think moderation includes moderating people's opinions (what I call a mod police) and mediating opinion disputes (mod judge) then no you will not be considered. Differing opinions are one thing, even heated discussion. However, enforcing your will using the tools of this board as a power trip will not be tolerated. General rules of etiquette are already proboards rules (and quite frankly all online message boards) and yes we will be revising the SMF rules that are over a decade old. Also, trying to get other people banned because they don't agree with your equally protected opinion will also not be tolerated (mod or no mod on that one). And finally, contacting mods outside of the board (especially in other forms of social media) will result in a permaban.

Moderators are volunteer fans just like any one of us. Over the years we have had great mods who were an integral part of this community. From hosting livestreams, tournament games, invented unique games (anyone remember Supersheep?) and promoted other discussion outside of ANW/Sasuke during the offseason. They also were there whenever tbs sent their interns, china sent their bots, and hostile communities came in to stir trouble. This is supposed to be a place of entertainment and it should also be for them as well. Moderators are not your punching bags and their time outside of volunteer time they give to keep this board open should also be protected. I want to maintain the proper perspective of what mods should be. Too much has been added to their duties and many have shied away from it as a result. However, I want to also caution would be moderators who believe that having a title is of elevated importance over every other member will also not be tolerated.

And finally, other communities, discords, youtube channels, redditers are welcome here too. We are a community of fans with various tastes, likes, preferences, passions. We are also capable of coexisting with one another. We are the OG community from where many other communities spawned. We are proud of our community (past, present and future). I want to encourage others to once again share your passion with others the way we used to.

[Eclipse]

Just a couple questions about your outline above:

"contacting mods outside of the board (especially in other forms of social media) will result in a permaban."

In this case, what should happen in situations where faster action may be warranted? One example of this is that in the past there have been times that the in-site ad-providers have stared serving ads that force pop-ups to scam sites and malware. Sasukepedia had the same issue and that outright stopped me from using it for weeks and led to a sharp drop in traffic. The same applies for if the site goes down, or even for threads that have become personal attacks and responding and closing to them sooner is better. Obviously they're not everyday examples, but all of those have happened more than once. As a site user I'd hope that it get dealt with immediately and I would want to contact staff to let them know. It feels counterproductive and like it is actively discouraging members from getting support for issues that would be best resolved quickly out of fear of being banned.

Another question is in regards to "if you think moderation includes moderating people's opinions (what I call a mod police)".

Of course you'd never expect anyone to step in for opinions on obstacles, tournaments in general. The situations where this would be a real problem are typically situations like racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc - situations where typically one side wants everyone to be respected and considered, and the other side is being directly hurtful but claims their prejudice is an opinion to diminish things and justify being hurtful and/or dangerous. Just because someone says something is an opinion does not mean it is - so I'm wondering what the line is here. I'd hope things bordering on hate speech aren't opinions and would still be moderated, but it wasn't clear above and is not in the (outdated) rules.

[dakohosu]

I have to agree with the above response.

Contacting mods outside of the board resulting in a ban simply makes no sense for the reasons Eclipse just outlined. Having a group of mods needs to be a collaborative approach and frankly restricting that collaboration to SMF's messaging system alone just simply slows things down. Someone who's at work may not check SMF but will get a notification on Discord updating them on an issue that needs to be resolved ASAP. Honestly I'm interested to hear what your rationale behind implementing this rule is; it's very left-field, makes no sense on the forefront, and if anything goes against what you mentioned about mods not being "mod police" as it's clearly an opinion you have and not a general rule that everyone can viably get behind (e.g. banning users who cause trouble repeatedly). It's actually a step further than moderating people's opinions, it's moderating people's online social lives, which in my opinion is plain unfair and frankly unacceptable. 

I'd also like clarity on the line on which "moderating people's opinions" is considered acceptable, or whether there even is a line to begin with (there should be 110%). Without an actual in-depth explanation of this, it leaves the rule open to arguably dangerous interpretation. I think we can all agree that telling people off for having different opinions on competitors or obstacles etc. is unfair and would be an abuse of the mod role, while fights on threads need to be addressed, etc. but I'm not going to be reprimanded for stepping in and diffusing a situation where someone is being outright rude about a competitor, purposely spreading false rumours, and so forth. There cannot be a grey area here, otherwise either we get accused of being "mod police" when just trying to do our bit, or we don't step in and allow a situation to escalate in fear of being branded as the aforementioned "mod police".

I also had a few cool ideas for SMF such as competitor and obstacle databases, and some of the things I've been working on in my career I believe I can apply to the Ninja scene. I would make sure it would not detract from the bread and butter of SMF as a discussion forum first and foremost, and would be privy to discussion with the other mods as well as users (again, something I would rather do outside of SMF as the messaging system here is a pain) but give users agency to deep dive into cool new features just to keep the forum up to date, bring in new users, and keep existing users hooked and excited for what is to come. I'm perfectly happy to adhere to the underlying roles of being a mod, I wouldn't have stepped forward if I wasn't, but I would prefer if the mod scene on SMF was a case of having open conversations in terms of what we can change, how we can keep the website fresh, and so forth. It's honestly a huge missed opportunity if this wasn't allowed to be explored.

Ultimately I just feel this forum would be better for everyone if we were all heard and seen, and allowed to contribute and consolidate a newer and brighter future for SMF, rather than a single person calling all of the shots that, as outlined in this thread, some of us may not agree with.

[arsenette]

In the past mods have been harassed outside of their time on SMF to take out other people they disagreed with. We've lost good mods to this exact thing and I feel especially protective of those volunteers who lost their passion for Sasuke/Ninja Warrior because the community took advantage of them. It would seem obvious that in dire actual SMF problems (as you mentioned with a specific example), should the mods agree with something like that happening (because all mods are volunteers and their wish for personal space should be protected as well), then it would make sense that faster information was warranted. However, the exact thing you are complaining about (harrassment) should extend to the protection of mods. No mod should be harassed nor should their personal space outside of SMF be violated. We've lost mods because of members trying to get other members permabanned because of some disagreement/opinion. It has happened in the past, I'm making sure it doesn't happen in the future. I know of SMF members who don't want to be mod because of experiences that took out their predecessors.

Agreed on diffusing a problem before it arises, however ample evidence in the last 15 years exists where people just want to have a conversation (or even preface a discussion as a "fight me"/"controversial take" or something that is equally inflammatory and a mod self inserts, picks a side and then proceed to punish someone's "opinion" on a topic. THAT is what I'm referring to. No one wants to have their every comment babysat simply because they agree or they think it's a s***-take.

As for one person, that is what I'm trying to avoid. Putting guardrails on mods on their powers to avoid what we JUST went through right now with a couple people deciding to shut down the board when it was never their power to begin with. The point of the new team is to protect them as well and reiterate that modding is also a team where they know they have the protection to take care of the health of the community as a whole by taking out the people who cannot work well with others. We have a list of people that are permabanned from SMF. I know several of them by name. Many times they were allowed to stay too long at the party while others were mercilessly taken out because of a bad opinion while they were underage. I wanted to put a more neutral stance for the new team to be able to find a more balanced approach as to not make the same mistakes we already did in the past.

[arsenette]

One other thing that is not being mentioned. Ask yourself how I got here. After 15 years never being a mod.. and now I am Admin. Ask yourself why that was not just necessitated.. but implemented. I didn't get here by happenstance. There was a need and again I stepped up to take the firestorm. My allegiance is to SMF and every single member. Once everything is stabilized, I'll go back to being a normal member. Whatever "powers" I have was given for a reason. He just wants a functional, quiet, drama free place. Currently it isn't that way and I'm doing what I can to clean up this damn mess.

[sasukewarrior333]

I do understand your concerns regarding harassment towards mods, and I think that some kind of action for punishing people for harassing mods is totally fair, I just think that perhaps an instant permaban is a bit harsh. I think we should take other factors into account, like the issue raised and the tone taken. I also think it could lead to some situations where people would semi-accidentally break that rule without any actual wrongdoing. For example, let's say someone from SMF in a Ninja Discord server opts to send me a friend request, because they just wanna chat to me casually about my Ninja opinions. Should that really be a punishable action? I just think we should be a bit more specific with that rule in particular.

My other worry is the thing about policing opinions. Don't get me wrong, in most cases I agree, I love Shingo a ton but I wouldn't think to punish someone for calling him mid. That being said, there are a select amount of opinions, most of which non-Ninja specific, that are objectively harmful, like vitriolic hate/threats to competitors or anyone really, bigotry, that kinda stuff. In that case, I would think action would be warranted regardless of the tone taken, as the statements they are making would be objectively harmful.

[arsenette]

Agreed. I'm thankful you see the direction I'm trying to take. Mods need to be protected but others also need to know that their powers should be scaled back from presently accepted levels. The choice will be yours to take and decided as a team rather than what has been happening. The goal is a place people can come back to, new fans can join and where everyone respects each other's boundaries regardless how diametrically opposed their viewpoints.

As for "policing" - I believe there are 2 different conversations/issues going on.

One is straight up harassment. We are in agreement against that. I'm looking for a rules perspective and that is global to proboards and any public forum. That is constantly updated as part of the EULA. The type of harassment doesn't matter the flavor. I'm on the more harsh side where you take people out (In my previous mod capacities (most likely before you were born LOL) my job was to take out problem people and we had strict rules. I'm of the camp where a bad apple spoils the whole bunch so rather than allow someone to stay causing massive havoc, I always went with elimination of the problem. However here on SMF it has been nebulous and because of that many members have caused problems (usually against mods) and others who felt threatened just left because they were somehow protected by either the community or the mods themselves. It's been messy at times.

The other is mod police. I know several dozen members who will not post on SMF anymore because the mods were policing their opinions. What fun is it to have an opinion, share it online when the mods are overly aggressive. That is why I'm adamant about this rule. Mods are members too and they have their opportunity for their shittakes but to use that power to enforce their will over the rest of the members is something that has happened in the past. That's why I'm particular. I don't have to agree with anyone (Hell I'm used to being in the minority given the age gap and life experience) but no one should be ruled over and they have their right to have contrary opinions. This is a discussion board. To quote a long-gone member (and not sure if anyone remembers him) The Great Oti once told me something during one of our heated discussions and he was 1000% correct. "You cannot change my opinion.. it's my opinion.. disagree with the content but you can't "change" my opinion." It's when a mod decides the "opinion" is wrong and does something about it. That is what I'm trying to avoid.

[arsenette]

Just an update on the mods, the new team should be up and running by the end of the weekend. Just waiting a little bit to hear back on any outstanding potential members and communicating in private with those who are coming in. Assuage any fears, misconceptions and even agreements with both the mods and some in the community.

This is a reset. What happened in the past is done, we've discussed the issues both publicly and privately, and now look forward to learning what went wrong and move forward. I want to give assurances to both the new team coming in that someone is looking out for you guys and the community who's "under" their watchful eye. It won't fix all problems but my hope in the scorched Earth approach that attention to an ongoing (decades old) problem would be addressed. I wanted to give the mods and the community the assurance that if things went sideways again, the problem won't continue to fester and hurt the community as a whole.

That was my whole issue on the permaban. That said, if you can help it, as a member, please be patient with reports of problems. Everyone is a volunteer with lives of their own and SMF is a hobby for everyone. Practice due diligence and patience that things will dealt with fairly and quickly. From whom I've heard back, they are also part of other communities that interact with some of you and are okay to be contacted outside of SMF. That said, please respect their personal space.

No new admins will be added. My status on that is sorta in limbo, meaning that my intention is to return that back to SMF leaving the mod team to do their work unimpeded. Over the weekend I'll see what tools I can give to the team that won't be too far reaching but doesn't require someone like me to keep that running. I'll keep all of you updated on that front but for the most part the goal is to give the reigns to the new mod team and I go back to being a member. Regardless of whatever title I may or may not have by the end of this clean up, I will not be in charge of day to day.

My goal in all of this was do a reset to prevent from that stunt ever happening again. That said, I do want to take the time to thank the old mod team. They were in no man's land for several years and as life happened, passions waned and they moved on, they were left alone to run the place against very aggressive bots and outside forces that occasionally plague the place. Aggressive members that pop up every so often all the while dealing with an antiquated proboards that probably older than some of our members!

My hope is by the end of the weekend I'll hear back from that last of the mohicans and we can start the new chapter welcoming the new mods. But I would be remiss to give everyone some time to let the dust settle. In the end SMF will continue and I look forward to the cordial coexistence with other communities while still respecting each other's space and style of interaction. There is no reason why we can't intermingle while allowing each community to stand on it's own identity. While now I understand the thoughts behind why things happened as they did, my hope in all of this is that everyone sees that each community has their own identity and worth to stand on their own. Yes, the prime days of SMF are over and much of what made this place more lively is now gone (like the livestreaming and media center), the spirit still lives on. New members can still interact with the history of this 15 year old board, interact with us fossils who were here when G4 first introduced Ninja Warrior to the West, and even find new shows and activities outside of Sasuke/Ninja Warrior with other shows, games, etc.

This board is yours. Play nice. Help where you can. Use the tools we have to help preserve order around here so that everyone's safe space is protected.

[brz0ny]

Are we going to get full list of all staff members?

[arsenette]

Yes we are getting 4 new mods. I’ll have them situated over the weekend.

[arsenette]

Okie dokie. New mods are in.

dakohosu
sasukewarrior333
thegreatluigi
YourResidentKojiFan

have volunteered to mod for us for the foreseeable future. Thanks for stepping up and taking over when the old mod team wanted to step back on the day to day. As mentioned before, everyone is a member, volunteer and fan of SMF. Be kind to our team and our team be kind to our members. Should any issues arise that require Admin help (like permissions things - adding a hidden board for new tourneys) or anything like that, it seems I'll be around to do that until blt changes it. Blt owns the board and has global admin but he has historically been hands off. In the past people like scnoi (in the beginning) and Eclipse (until recently) did the day things that require more permissions than mods. That said, provided I didn't screw up something, they should have the tools to move and delete stuff that should be there (like discussions outside of their threads or even boards..) or even warn and ban people. Hopefully it doesn't come to that but they do have the power to do so.

As a precaution, I do ask everyone to be patient should a request for admin/mod takes a bit. Some are in different time zones and they also have their own busy lives. Only in emergencies should they be contacted outside of SMF. In the end how each mod individually handles that you will find out in time. Should any issue arise that requires an admin I should be able to help. In the grand scheme of things I will be just another member and the mods will be the ones who run the day to day. If that changes I'll let anyone know but for the most part these 4 will be what is considered site staff. If I did the permissions correctly and whatnot their names and contact within SMF should be visible. If not... I'll fix that. I was never into the tech of this ancient board (which I found out is older than at least one of our mods.. LOL). Just bear with us as we all settle in.

One final note, despite how messy it was at the end, I want to thank all the old mods (some of which retired either months or years ago) for your help in keeping SMF afloat. Everyone is still a member and I hope despite how quiet it is around here by comparison to our peak in the past, you will always be welcome on SMF.

[sasukewarrior333]

Dec 10, 2023 22:36:02 GMT -5 arsenette said:

Okie dokie. New mods are in.

dakohosu
sasukewarrior333
thegreatluigi
YourResidentKojiFan

have volunteered to mod for us for the foreseeable future. Thanks for stepping up and taking over when the old mod team wanted to step back on the day to day. As mentioned before, everyone is a member, volunteer and fan of SMF. Be kind to our team and our team be kind to our members. Should any issues arise that require Admin help (like permissions things - adding a hidden board for new tourneys) or anything like that, it seems I'll be around to do that until blt changes it. Blt owns the board and has global admin but he has historically been hands off. In the past people like scnoi (in the beginning) and Eclipse (until recently) did the day things that require more permissions than mods. That said, provided I didn't screw up something, they should have the tools to move and delete stuff that should be there (like discussions outside of their threads or even boards..) or even warn and ban people. Hopefully it doesn't come to that but they do have the power to do so.

As a precaution, I do ask everyone to be patient should a request for admin/mod takes a bit. Some are in different time zones and they also have their own busy lives. Only in emergencies should they be contacted outside of SMF. In the end how each mod individually handles that you will find out in time. Should any issue arise that requires an admin I should be able to help. In the grand scheme of things I will be just another member and the mods will be the ones who run the day to day. If that changes I'll let anyone know but for the most part these 4 will be what is considered site staff. If I did the permissions correctly and whatnot their names and contact within SMF should be visible. If not... I'll fix that. I was never into the tech of this ancient board (which I found out is older than at least one of our mods.. LOL). Just bear with us as we all settle in.

One final note, despite how messy it was at the end, I want to thank all the old mods (some of which retired either months or years ago) for your help in keeping SMF afloat. Everyone is still a member and I hope despite how quiet it is around here by comparison to our peak in the past, you will always be welcome on SMF.

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to helping this community, and honestly it feels incredibly trippy to be in this position, and it's not something I could've ever imagined a few years back, but nevertheless I'm immensely grateful for the opportunity!

[YourResidentKojiFan]

Agreed with sasukewarrior, never thought I'd see my name there when I registered. Thanks to everyone here for being so fun to chat with and making me want to help out!

[dakohosu]

Great update and thanks for the opportunity.

Looking forward to a bright future for SMF and will help out in the best way I can to make sure of this.

[thegreatluigi]

Just adding on my thanks as well! Much like Kojifan and Sasukewarrior, in all the years I've been on these forums, I never for a minute thought I might become a mod one day, but I'm so grateful that it's somehow happened. I look forward to helping out this community as best I can.

[loboticialtree]

Congrats to our new mods for making it in