so i think after yesterday we can agree that we need some more transparent communication. there's many different ways to approach this, some of which already have threads. one of the big ones would be chat participation. i think nobody can deny that if an official chat means instant access to staff when something goes awry, it's good for both parties involved as things can be taken care of in a timely manner with a good amount of community feedback. as an IM chat, it shouldn't and wouldn't follow MFGG rules to a T much like the long-dead new IRC, but would instead be run by those who have proven to be capable of adminning MFGG chats in the past. site staff would be in their own usergroup for easy access, there could be some overlap in chat admin and site admin, etc. another is to make a more obvious area where things get dealt with. sometimes, threads get locked without any reason, which is unfair to the thread OP. [url=https://phpbb.mfgg.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=20142]there's already a thread for this kind of thing, though[/url]. [url=https://phpbb.mfgg.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=20143]same with ban logs[/url].

it's weird because you'd think having a suggestions forum + like ten mods would mean open communication but you seriously can't tell what's going on other forums i frequent, when a topic is made in the suggestion board a mod or admin always replies "yeah we'll do this" or "no not possible" and updates the thread there's also a subforum where rejected suggestions go, to keep things clean those would be nice to see on mfgg

Problem with chat participation is people want to bend your ear all the time. In the case of HylianDev deleting my post that's just one example of people bending the will of an admin who doesn't have the full story and doesn't do anything to find it out because the ire of the members was enough to influence his decision.

[quote="Kritter"]Problem with chat participation is people want to bend your ear all the time. In the case of HylianDev deleting my post that's just one example of people bending the will of an admin who doesn't have the full story and doesn't do anything to find it out because the ire of the members was enough to influence his decision.[/quote] that'd actually be a benefit of chat participation. active participation means that so long as you're there, you can tell your side of the story before action is taken. this should happen regardless, it's just more efficient on chat because it takes up far less time.

[quote="Mit"][quote="Kritter"]Problem with chat participation is people want to bend your ear all the time. In the case of HylianDev deleting my post that's just one example of people bending the will of an admin who doesn't have the full story and doesn't do anything to find it out because the ire of the members was enough to influence his decision.[/quote] that'd actually be a benefit of chat participation. active participation means that so long as you're there, you can tell your side of the story before action is taken. this should happen regardless, it's just more efficient on chat because it takes up far less time.[/quote] Chat participation happens off-site and my post was on-site. Any inquiries to my post should've been made here, we have PM's for that very reason. I don't have the time to sit in a chat explaining why a post of mine wasn't serious, it's stupid to assume that everyone can just up and join a chat because you want to increase communication.

I think the bigger problem is the willingness to delete posts without communicating with poster first, not that "people whispered into HDev's ear".

We didn't whisper into his ear. We got him to be logically consistent after he fought it after making up a "raid" occurred.

[font=Comic Sans MS]Official chats can be a bit dangerous if they aren't handled right. Kritter is correct it can give direct access to a staff's ear- and those that don't want to or can't participate in the chat are at a disadvantage. A chat isn't going to solve a problem of staff that doesn't communicate well- you need to solve that first before making an official chat I think[/font]

I say have the staff just be more transparent about their actions. On the places I moderate for we always let the userbase know whats going on and we actively try to get in there be part of the community. I feel that historically MFGG staff have been very in the shadows about what they do, and I think now is the time for this to stop.

If every single other community can do an official Discord server right MFGG can do it too. The official SFGHQ Discord has 560 members without a fucking website. VG Resource's Discord should have around 500 members. Mario 2D Universe's Discord has 240 members. Flashback's Discord has 140 members. Hotel Delfino only has 75 members. If these other servers can do just fine with 7 times more members, an official MFGG server can do just fine too. To fix the overlap between chat admins and site admins simply make the site staff admins on the server, and maybe create a chat admin role for mit. And if you don't wanna use Discord then don't. PMs still exist.

[quote="Mors"]To fix the overlap between chat admins and site admins simply make the site staff admins on the server, and maybe create a chat admin role for mit. And if you don't wanna use Discord then don't. PMs still exist.[/quote] PM's should be the first call of port for things that happen on the board. I should've been asked about my post rather than people simply assuming I was being nasty and asking an admin directly in a chat to delete it. In that sense, communication absolutely needs a bit more attention.

No one asked to delete your post. HylianDev did it on his own accord.

People complained about your post (as well as vit's), Hylian Dev decided to remove it along with any resulting posts. There is no conspiracy to have your post removed, we had no idea MFGG staff just deleted posts without communicating to posters.

[quote="Yoshin"]I say have the staff just be more transparent about their actions. On the places I moderate for we always let the userbase know whats going on and we actively try to get in there be part of the community. I feel that historically MFGG staff have been very in the shadows about what they do, and I think now is the time for this to stop.[/quote] I agree, since I joined I've always felt that anything that happened with the staff was very "behind the scenes" I think as members of the community we should know exactly what goes on with the staff and why.

[quote="Kritter"]Problem with chat participation is people want to bend your ear all the time. In the case of HylianDev deleting my post that's just one example of people bending the will of an admin who doesn't have the full story and doesn't do anything to find it out because the ire of the members was enough to influence his decision.[/quote]If people are being privately swayed on the Discord, I think that's more an issue of the mod's integrity than participating in chat. Having instant access to mods does a lot more good than bad and you don't necessarily need to contact them in private to get clarification on a decision. That could be posted on the #mfgg-discussion channel or an entirely new one like #mod-discussion could be created. As-is, the problem with limiting everything to on-site PMs just increases the lack of public communication. The decisions that mods make don't just affect the OP or the person responsible for the lock. They affect everyone who participated in the thread therefore their decision should be visible to everyone. And if they don't want to participate in the Discord, the least they can do is give a public reason for locks. Of course, we have a [url=https://phpbb.mfgg.net/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=20142]topic[/url] for that so I won't go into detail here.

Stop deleting threads for no fucking reason. Also stop locking suggestion threads that haven't been resolved. THANK YOU THIS HAS BEEN A COMMON SENSE PSA.

if kritter is still salty we deleted his mean shitpost i'll make it clear that i didn't want that post to be deleted. in conversation with hdev he admitted that locking the thread was a mistake and he should've dealt with the off-topic posts, so he deleted the bad posts and unlocked the thread