Changelog thread? Maybe? Yes? No? Toaster?

[Clamestarebla]

It has been made clear these past few days (and on other occasions in the past) that whenever an update to the website comes, people start to ask questions about the reasons behind addition and removal of features. Instead of having those posts be mixed with those of the twitter thread, I suggest that a thread that keeps history of all changes made to the website be created. This thread should also state the reasons as to why these changes were made in order to avoid as many repetitive questions as possible. We do not ask for a four paragraph thesis as to why they were made but rather a simple and clear sentence or two that explains the thought-process behind the decision.

Furthermore, it would be nice if the users of the forum had their thing to say before any changes are made to the website. Nothing too special, just a post that would go as follow:

Alright, here are the changes that are planned for the next big update of the website:
1-Stuff
2- More Stuff
3- Even More Stuff

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please reply to this post

This would get rid of the following problem exposed earlier by pholtos:

Here's my opinion on the whole matter.

I have no clue why or what the reasoning for any changes are... and that's the biggest problem. If those who have the ability to change the forum do so, it should therefore come with an explanation as to the reasoning behind such a change. However here that is not happening. Why? I don't know.

Edit: As a further point, the less that gets told to the average user, the more of a disconnect is resulted. I'm beginning to feel that way.

If anyone else would like to add anything to what was suggested, feel free to do so and please do try to remain civil and not jump to personal attacks. This thread is not meant for drama but rather a way to avoid any, present or future, regarding the updates made to the forum.

[Ditocoaf]

My biggest complaint is that there's no "toaster" option on this poll.

As long as this forum allows me to make posts and read posts about LPs, collabs, contests and videogames, I don't think I care about any of the other silly stuff. Personally, it's kind of a relief to have a forum where the staff is casual about all this stuff. Small forums like this don't need to be formal affairs.

[Jesuiscontent]

I don't think you realize the time and energy that would need to be dedicated to this

As long as this forum allows me to make posts and read posts about LPs, collabs, contests and videogames, I don't think I care about any of the other silly stuff. Personally, it's kind of a relief to have a forum where the staff is casual about all this stuff. Small forums like this don't need to be formal affairs.

THANK YOU, I was starting to wonder if anybody felt this way at all

[sedron]

I don't think you realize the time and energy that would need to be dedicated to this

We do not ask for a four paragraph thesis as to why they were made but rather a simple and clear sentence or two that explains the thought-process behind the decision.

Furthermore, it would be nice if the users of the forum had their thing to say before any changes are made to the website.

I'm going to believe that asking users if they want a change ahead of time (or making any attempt to explain it,) probably isn't such a huge undertaking. It doesn't need to be a huge thing, but it'd be nice if it felt like community opinion meant anything.

Plus, like,

I''ll never give a real answer I am just fanning the flames.

When one of the mods is going out of his way to make this stuff worse, I find it hard to believe that the solution isn't doable because of time or energy constraints.

[Argumentable]

if you want a changelog thread go ahead and make it! Really, most changes seem pretty insignificant that I don't really notice them myself. This would be your changelog though:

Postcounts are dumb so we removed them (this is the actual reason we did it)

Maybe worded nicer if you don't like sassy argumentable

In either case, you guys are pretty good at finding what's different and it's openly discussed anyway

[Ditocoaf]

People talk about forum moderation like it's a government too much, I think. Forum staff aren't Beholden To Their Subjects like a political leader or something. We're a bunch of people hanging out talking about games, and they're the ones with the key to the room where we hang out.

If they do something wrong, say so, but don't couch it in language like "petition" and "responsible" and "moderation serves the purpose of X, but should not Y" like it's some formal structure. It's more like, they erased something from the whiteboard in the club room without talking about it first, something you liked having on there. Rude! We should talk about this! Talk like folks with a very very minor disagreement, though. Like, "I preferred the picture hung on the east wall, not the north wall" minor.

[Clamestarebla]

if you want a changelog thread go ahead and make it! Really, most changes seem pretty insignificant that I don't really notice them myself.

Hence why the suggestion was not directed at you but rather the person making the changes

Postcounts are dumb so we removed them (this is the actual reason we did it)

Lots of people seems to be disagreeing with the you guys' decision then

Maybe worded nicer if you don't like sassy argumentable

Actually yes, many people are tired of sassy argumentable as a matter of fact but I'm not here to talk about that.

In either case, you guys are pretty good at finding what's different and it's openly discussed anyway

Yes, that is true... but does our discussion post-changes affect the decision? I somehow doubt it.

[Ivy]

A changelog for a forum seems a bit unnecessary.

As long as this forum allows me to make posts and read posts about LPs, collabs, contests and videogames, I don't think I care about any of the other silly stuff. Personally, it's kind of a relief to have a forum where the staff is casual about all this stuff. Small forums like this don't need to be formal affairs.

Basically, this

[Argumentable]

Upcoming changes:

We're getting rid of the suggestion forum cause it's pretty useless and it will be replaced with a bug reports thread somewhere

Also we took down the contact page so now you'll have to be horrible and nasty to us directly

[devil†zukin]

hi

i'm no longer updating the changelog thread for a good reason - i don't feel comfortable interacting with the talkhaus community

the situation is very serious and i request that you stay out of it if you aren't involved / don't know anything about it

for the same reason i'm no longer accepting feature requests and haven't been for some time - argumentable and jsc have limited capacity to change the site, and if there's something trivial they can't do they can always ask me

every change we make is for a reason, but if you ever have an issue with them or want to discuss one you can talk to one of them about it

furthermore the process is not democratic, and we don't plan for it to be

in related news, youtube just changed their fonts today - it would be ridiculous for you to demand an explanation without good reason, and even more ridiculous to ask them to have asked you if it was okay first

nevertheless, you're still welcome to engage with argumentable or jesuiscontent (or even raocow, but i doubt he wants to be bothered) on changes to the site, as they're administrators too, and decisions about changes to the site are generally collective

if you give us enough time to heal, we'll probably start interacting with the users more again eventually

one more topic that i wish i didn't have to address was the bans i made over the last day or so - none of them were for anything done publicly on the forums (although somebody came close by threatening to get violent over changes), but they were specifically for going outside of the forum to attack me directly

[Clamestarebla]

A response that I appreciate deeply

You have in the past mentioned your discomfort over administrating the talkhaus and all the subsequent problems that came with it. If I may suggest something, for your sake, maybe you should propose that someone else hosts the talkhaus in order to relieve you of the stress? Because you truly are great at your job and it would be a shame if we were to lose you because of things that happened due to the community. I'm only suggesting this because, in all honesty, at this point, the issues you claim to have related to the forums seem to be a very bigger concern than what the average joe can estimate. And again, we wouldn't want to lose you because of such things.

Just throwing that out there.

Thank you for the response by the way, I truly appreciate it.

[devil†zukin]

A response that I appreciate deeply

You have in the past mentioned your discomfort over administrating the talkhaus and all the subsequent problems that came with it. If I may suggest something, for your sake, maybe you should propose that someone else hosts the talkhaus in order to relieve you of the stress? Because you truly are great at your job and it would be a shame if we were to lose you because of things that happened due to the community. I'm only suggesting this because, in all honesty, at this point, the issues you claim to have related to the forums seem to be a very bigger concern than what the average joe can estimate. And again, we wouldn't want to lose you because of such things.

Just throwing that out there.

Thank you for the response by the way, I truly appreciate it.

im glad youre not being a shit for once

i think most of the people who are a real problem are mostly gone - the only remaining issue is the complacency and complicity of a lot of users (you can ask just about any minority user about that, it isn't just me) who probably just don't know any better

also i've considered it for real but i think with argu & jsc at the helm things will be okay - maybe they can try and keep people in the loop too

speaking of me hosting the forum it sounds like a few people are worried i'm holding the forum hostage from raocow or something - i'd totally let somebody else take over if it ever became necessary

since it's something of a network now it's probably easier for me to keep stuff running (a pretty easy job with this setup) and have some other admins help keep things afloat

just today actually after seeing the admin appreciation thread i was saying i should give talkhaus a chance - i actually had an awesome thing lined up for april fools that never got used and something else that i think people'll really like

anyway i'll try and make sure people are kept informed but i can't guarantee everybody will get a say in what goes on since it just isn't feasible

[Clamestarebla]

im glad youre not being a shit for once

Thanks, I do try sometimes contrary to popular beliefs

anyway i'll try and make sure people are kept informed but i can't guarantee everybody will get a say in what goes on since it just isn't feasible

Perhaps I did not express myself very clearly in my opening post despite my efforts to do so but I'll try tl:dr'ing it up to clear things up a bit.

What I was saying is it'd be nice just to be informed of what will change in an update so that it doesn't come as a surprise to the userbase when the update is done. This way, if people are upset at the changes, maybe they'll try to propose something else and then you can choose whether you think their opinion is helpful or not. Of course it's impossible to listen to everyone's two cents but it doesn't hurt to try to listen to a few's right? We don't need to have a super democratic government-like system, we just need to be informed before the changes happen. This concept applies to every sphere of social life so why not a forum?

Hope that was bit more clear than what I said in the OP
although that wasn't very tl:dr-esque now was it?

[Alice]

every change we make is for a reason, but if you ever have an issue with them or want to discuss one you can talk to one of them about it

...

nevertheless, you're still welcome to engage with argumentable or jesuiscontent (or even raocow, but i doubt he wants to be bothered) on changes to the site, as they're administrators too, and decisions about changes to the site are generally collective

The issue with this is that when people try they get a ton of sarcasm in response with very little in the way of anything productive. It ends up giving people a really bad impression of the way the forum is being run and disillusions people who still want to be a part of the community but are made to feel like it's no longer a place they belong.

[devil†zukin]

every change we make is for a reason, but if you ever have an issue with them or want to discuss one you can talk to one of them about it

...

nevertheless, you're still welcome to engage with argumentable or jesuiscontent (or even raocow, but i doubt he wants to be bothered) on changes to the site, as they're administrators too, and decisions about changes to the site are generally collective

The issue with this is that when people try they get a ton of sarcasm in response with very little in the way of anything productive. It ends up giving people a really bad impression of the way the forum is being run and disillusions people who still want to be a part of the community but are made to feel like it's no longer a place they belong.

hi alice

i heard you had some problems w/ me and i was very shocked

you say 'the issue with this' but i think the issue is that people DONT do that - like, it's completely unheard of

instead they make absurd and unreasonable posts about it in the twitter thread and often get sarcastic answers - but they usually have a point

if you ever want a serious answer to anything you can get it and i think that's been more than proven

anyway, maybe argu or jsc will respond to you since it seems like your criticism is actually more towards them

[Argumentable]

Pretty sure it was more about me since I make dumb posts but the truth is we got rid of postcounts cause [we think] they're dumb

Also see the actual upcoming changes up there ^^^^

[Jesuiscontent]

Yeah uh I'm not sure if you have an example in mind but I don't remember responding "sarcastically" to any serious question, I do try to "lighten up "when I see that people are getting unreasonably angry but idk if that's always perceived well

e : in any case it's never, ever with the intention of driving someone away

[Alice]

hi alice

i heard you had some problems w/ me and i was very shocked

you say 'the issue with this' but i think the issue is that people DONT do that - like, it's completely unheard of

instead they make absurd and unreasonable posts about it in the twitter thread and often get sarcastic answers - but they usually have a point

if you ever want a serious answer to anything you can get it and i think that's been more than proven

anyway, maybe argu or jsc will respond to you since it seems like your criticism is actually more towards them

e: btw my skype is aldryicspants if you wanna chat since i thought we were coo

Yup, a lot of it is with them. The majority of any issue I have with you is actually mostly second hand anyways because I always miss it so I'm not certain how accurate those things are such as changing someone's title to something negative when they were on the opposing side of a discussion awhile back which I think is the sort of thing that administrators and moderators should refrain from.

Hopefully Argumentable, and to a lesser degree Jesuiscontent, will read some of this and at least consider it. I get that those posts can get way over the top and unreasonable but being sarcastic at them doesn't help the situation at all. Those are people who are worried about the changes in the community and react harshly because of it, especially when they don't see an explanation given. So when they get sarcastic responses in return that just serves to send a message to not only those people being responded to but a lot of others reading them as well that communication and anything the community says means nothing to the people in charge of the site and it's a very good way of running people off the site even if that's not your intention.

And I'd add you but I actually don't have Skype. I have an account but it's been so long since I used it that I can't even begin to remember my info for it, lol.

[devil†zukin]

Yup, a lot of it is with them. The majority of any issue I have with you is actually mostly second hand anyways because I always miss it so I'm not certain how accurate those things are such as changing someone's title to something negative when they were on the opposing side of a discussion awhile back which I think is the sort of thing that administrators and moderators should refrain from.

im assuming you are talking about septentrion's SHEMP's 'literal scum' flair

if you are then that was actually a lie

he just set it that way and then after he got banned went around telling ppl i did it

as soon as i found out about that i blanked his profile

Hopefully Argumentable, and to a lesser degree Jesuiscontent, will read some of this and at least consider it. I get that those posts can get way over the top and unreasonable but being sarcastic at them doesn't help the situation at all. Those are people who are worried about the changes in the community and react harshly because of it, especially when they don't see an explanation given. So when they get sarcastic responses in return that just serves to send a message to not only those people being responded to but a lot of others reading them as well that communication and anything the community says means nothing to the people in charge of the site and it's a very good way of running people off the site even if that's not your intention.

i don't think there's anything wrong with the way they're acting though

i think you should really not dismiss posts just because they are sarcastic, and not assume that something is unproductive just because it doesn't get you what you want

[Argumentable]

e : in any case it's never, ever with the intention of driving someone away

I want to drive people away who don't like my posts

[Alice]

im assuming you are talking about septentrion's 'literal scum' flair

if you are then that was actually a lie

he just set it that way and then after he got banned went around telling ppl i did it

as soon as i found out about that i blanked his profile

It was IsaneIntentions I believe. I actually didn't know about the Septentrion one at all.

i don't think there's anything wrong with the way they're acting though

i think you should really not dismiss posts just because they are sarcastic, and not assume that something is unproductive just because it doesn't get you what you want

The issue is the message they're sending though. I'm not saying that what people want has to happen. Just when people are trying to discuss things and get an explanation, even if they're being a bit unreasonable, I think that the communication from the staff should try to be a little more serious. Just because the staff knows the reason and doesn't think it's a big deal doesn't mean that those people who are overreacting see it the same way, especially when no one has explained the reasoning for a change. By reacting so sarcastically it comes across as kinda disrespectful (overreacting can be disrespectful too but that doesn't mean the responses should be in the same vein) and doesn't help the situation. The moderators are there to keep the peace, not fan the flames. And that's exactly what responding sarcastically accomplishes.

[devil†zukin]

im assuming you are talking about septentrion's 'literal scum' flair

if you are then that was actually a lie

he just set it that way and then after he got banned went around telling ppl i did it

as soon as i found out about that i blanked his profile

It was IsaneIntentions I believe. I actually didn't know about the Septentrion one at all.

somebody pointed out that i actually meant shemp lol

those two got blurred together in my head a bit so dont go biting septs head off or something

anyway i didnt know about insaneintentions but they should talk to me on skype too instead of trying to get people to jump on me about it

i certainly haven't messed with anybodies profile and neither has argu

[Argumentable]

At least not recently. There was the time way back when I changed septentrion's avatar to be the same avatar except it had "PORN AVATAR" written on it if you want to be fair.

Oh, and the name change thread. Yeah I do some profile changing.

Didn't do this though!

[Alice]

To be fair, like I said, my knowledge of the title changing deal is secondhand. I'm just saying what I heard about that situation. By the time I checked the talkhaus after that drama their title was changed back anyways. And I'd actually always assumed the Shemp thing was him changing it. I don't recall ever hearing anything differently on that in fact.

At least not recently. There was the time way back when I changed septentrion's avatar to be the same avatar except it had "PORN AVATAR" written on it if you want to be fair.

Oh, and the name change thread. Yeah I do some profile changing.

Neither of these two seem that unreasonable though. The Septentrion thing was an obvious joke that I don't recall anyone, including Septentrion, actually taking badly. And I'm not sure on the name change thread but I'd assume that is stuff like Clemasterable being changed to Clemastarebla which no one involved seems to have taken badly either and is fairly obviously not ill-intentioned.

[devil†zukin]

anyway its bed time for me

if i have to wake up and be upset again im literally going to scream and then im gonna get my bf argu on you peace