What staff interaction did you disagree with?

[Weasel]

Read everything below before commenting.

So the idea behind this thread comes from my personal past as a staff member on DevBest, and the interactions I've had with community members. It seemed like an interesting thread to get some talks going. As this can be a very sensitive subject that might cause frustration, there's some very important rules for this thread.

Agree to disagree
There's a big chance, at some point, disagreements will happen. Even though I don't want to kill off any discussion, if someone respectfully "agrees to disagree", please do stop the discussion. This in order to prevent any frustration on both ends. It's human to disagree too.

This thread is not about appealing your warnings or complain about staff/rules
You're allowed to ask a question about a specific warning, but don't make it personal. If it's a warning I personally issued, I don't mind to add my personal reasoning behind warnings (other (ex-)staff are also allowed to do so, if they want), but the main idea behind this is to give an explanation behind the policy.

If you disagree with a rule, open a suggestion thread. If you have a complaint about a staff member, follow the onsite policy for this. If you disagree with a warning, contact the staff who issued it in private, and if you still disagree, see the previous sentence.

Keep it civil
This one seems kind of self-explanatory. Due to the sensitive nature of this subject, it's important to try and keep your personal feelings out of this. You might dislike an (ex-)staffmember, which is completely fine, but putting emotion in your posts defeats the purpose of this thread.

We're all humans, we make mistakes
God knows, I made my own fair share. Staff members make mistakes too. In the end, we all have the same goal: make the community better. Views on how to reach this are bound to differ.

Depending on how the thread goes, rules might be added or adjusted.

 

[Haid]

Well seems like you want an honest answer so I'll bite..

Unbiased opinion is you single handedly caused a huge drop in activity particular in the Habbo section, I know a bunch of people who just won't have anything to do with DevBest because of frankly what a rude person / bad moderator you were, picking and choosing when to enforce rules, closing threads on whims, curbing discussion when you didn't like it and pushing for new rules when you disliked certain threads.

To be honest you're doing it in this thread throughout and by how you ended it, attempting to control and rule up every single thing to the point where people just don't want to participate.

I don't think you understand what the point of forums are truly.

 

[Weasel]

Well seems like you want an honest answer so I'll bite..

Unbiased opinion is you single handedly caused a huge drop in activity particular in the Habbo section, I know a bunch of people who just won't have anything to do with DevBest because of frankly what a rude person / bad moderator you were, picking and choosing when to enforce rules, closing threads on whims, curbing discussion when you didn't like it and pushing for new rules when you disliked certain threads.

To be honest you're doing it in this thread throughout and by how you ended it, attempting to control and rule up every single thing to the point where people just don't want to participate.

I don't think you understand what the point of forums are truly.

In that case, we already have a major difference in views here. Every website has rules, and the goal of those rules is to ensure you create a vibe that you want. In this case, it's a vision/strategy set by the staff team, headed by Josh. I'll break down a few of your points:

So about the drop of activity in the Habbo section. This is a big one, I'll try to break it down as much as I can. The Habbo section has changed a lot over the years, and so did the opinion about the section in the Staff Team. I'm going to skip the very early beginnings of the section. However, quite a few years ago, the tone of the Habbo section changed from collaborative to toxic. This required a strict form of moderation, as active contributors were actually leaving the site. However, that's the usergroup we want to maintain. To add to that, some active contributors actually also caused a lot of arguments and fights, and being active does not exempt you from the rules. There also have been points in time where the Staff wanted to phase out the Habbo section, which also contributed to how some things were moderated. I'm sure some people might have left due to their disagreement with some actions. However, they are fully in their right to open a complaint with a staff member who is higher in rank. People have been fired from the staff team due to complaints, including myself years ago.

The same goes for your claims against me. Everyone had the right to open up a complaint. Rules were, however, never "picked and chosed". One of the arguments I often heard was that some other post was not warned/deleted. Thing is, those posts were never reported. If they were, the same would have happened. It also depends on which member of staff handle the report. There is some liberty the staff can take when issueing warnings, for example. It can depend on the situation, how community members handle the situation, and some other factors. A good example for this is repeating offenders. If someone makes a mistake for the first time, sometimes they aren't issued a warning but are notified when their post is deleted. If someone, however, keeps breaking the same rules, that "grace period" wears off.

As for your last part, you're one of the members why I specifically added these rules. In no way you ever attempted to have a mature conversation in maybe resolving the issues you feel towards me. Instead, every chance you get, you try to publicly insult me or somehow take a stab at me. While doing so, you also state your opinions as fact. For example, stating I'm the one who caused the drop in activity. Even though you have no clue how much members left due to lack of moderation, or other factors such as the popularity of the game, rival sites, etc. In no way such remarks are productive, which is the goal of this thread.

Besides that, it's also a bit of common decency. When you enter someone's home, and they request you to take of your shoes, you don't start an argument with them because you don't want to take of your shoes. If you're against it, you just decline to come in.

 

[Macemore]

Not a single staff member has officially acknowledged my superior intellect. I mean, clearly I'm the smartest guy here. Why hasn't anyone said it?

 

[Weasel]

Not a single staff member has officially acknowledged my superior intellect. I mean, clearly I'm the smartest guy here. Why hasn't anyone said it?

We just didn't want other members to be intimidated by you