Sunn O)))
INTL Alumni
14 year RP master
Zan-beef
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Posts: 5456 (0.816)
Reg. Date: Mar 2002
Location: Laputa
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Reply 62 of 182 (Originally posted on: 03-12-09 11:56:14 AM)
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Quoted from vissario:
It is the result of her wishing to have increasing amounts of say in the forum in various arenas of management. As far as specifics, from what I have learned, it is mainly that sunny would like to be personally involved in all of the aspects of moderation and administration of the various forums on the site. The best example is her insistence on creating the beauty forum whether IF0 approved or not, and insisting that he had to consult her prior to instituting anything himself. a worse example is probably how she, contrary to the first intentions of her being added to the forum, is taking up an increasing amount of the actual moderating duties such as bannings, appointments, et cetera.
Either way you shake it, there is a power struggle that if0 didn't want to participate in and that sunny was ready to endure. Like I said, normalcy, not revolution, is what INTL needs in terms of its administrative staff.
None of this was thought out or planned or whatnot. In 2006, I offered my server to be used as I was getting sick and tired of watching INTL die from server crash after server crash. Through 2007 and early 2008, Rich and others would come up and ask me to do things, and I would do them. Most of these things were linked to the forum software; 'can you fix the arcade?', 'can you make these settings to X forum?', 'could you add this to the ToS?'. Others came from policies Rich and others were completely behind 'let's recreate BB and the Arena!' and 'maybe we should have one moderator per forum.' I painstakingly went through every forum, using archive.org, to find the original threads for both forums (as Rich had previously merged them with ID, RS and the Halls). Rich did not want to deal with it, so I went ahead and tried to find out who wanted to stay as a moderator and who didn't.
The only time I dealt with moderation is when someone asked me. "How do you IP ban?" - "Here, I'll show you how it's done." "Is there a way to take away X permission, this person has broken Y rule with it, and I can't seem to find it." There was no decision to continue to ban people left and right. With INTL's activity being lower since 2005 then ever had been, nobody saw a major need to ban someone for longer than a day or a week. As time went on, it became the status quo that even messing with users for no reason was frowned upon, despite how common it was in older versions of INTL. Why would you want to make people constantly angry if it only encourages them to not want to come here?
Since INTL5 came out, I became more and more relied upon for fixes to the forum software. Sandy is for the most part done with it. Rich never really bothered to learn how it operates. I've set up scripts and new features since then, put up emoticons and arcade games, slowly been working to update the FAQ, set up a chat, created themes, set up stats, etc.
The fights I would have with Rich didn't come from serious issues. It didn't come because I created a forum without him saying so - H&B and The Champagne Room were both something that was agreed on, and pushed by a few INTLers. It didn't come because I did what he asked - as in adding the forum game "BlackNova Traders". The fights came from stupid shit. Rich had a tendency to edit people's profiles and permissions; he would change a user's name, give them an avatar they did not want, he would take away their ability to give karma, or see karma, or give titles, whatever. He would do this to users who haven't been around for a while or never did anything immediate to deserve it, just to see the fallout from it. He wouldn't ever bring it up, or say "oh yeah, I did this for a week because of X reason" as was normally shared between other admins. What would happen is these users would come up to me and complain; through PM, AIM, chat, sometimes even in the forums. "Someone has changed my permissions, I wish this would stop, I don't like it, it doesn't make it fun to come here." So I'd switch it back and apologize, not knowing who did it. I didn't want to see INTL lose a member - however possible - because of this. When no reasonable reason is given or known, it makes it seem that much more malicious.
All I had ever asked from Rich was just to give me a heads up about this stuff, so I would know beforehand why these users were complaining to me. So I would back off, and let him deal with it himself; which did happen when he would rarely tell me. He took this to mean that he needed permission to do things. All I had wanted was him to share what he was doing, so we'd have an idea who did what and why. I'm not guiltless of this, too, I went ahead and added minor scripts without necessarily informing everyone else; as in the public display for the stats. However, when it came to forumers, it seemed more important to have some transparency. Most admins and mods go about this well.
Over time, he took the fact that I kept asking "what the hell?" in the things he'd do as me taking charge over him. He opted to leave on the basis that he didn't see himself as the boss anymore.
There wont be anything different in how this forum operates then it has in the last 2 years; the only significant difference being that Rich no longer has the stress of feeling like he's losing power, or no longer in charge. All the good to him, as it seems family life is making him busier.
This reply was last edited on 03-12-09 12:03:40 PM by Sunn O))).
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