The VHL Issue that Needs to be Addressed

[Horcrux 322]

6 minutes ago, Beketov said:

I still haven’t ruled it out.

it would boost forum activity and make it easier to moderate. 

then you can see the thread itself and what builds up to it instead of having to go through 50 pages of discord nonesene. 

[Beketov 8,642]

56 minutes ago, Horcrux said:

it would boost forum activity and make it easier to moderate. 

then you can see the thread itself and what builds up to it instead of having to go through 50 pages of discord nonesene. 

I mean that is my annoyance with discord.

 

Mind you I recognize it’s kinda a necessary evil. Us old school folks have been used to running leagues on forums for decades and it is totally familiar and fine for us to not have the immediate and constant communication. However newer members tend to struggle more with the forums. They are a relic of the past and often times can behave as such. They want that instant communication and reaction to get more acquainted with the community or ask questions or just be involved in something they understand more.

 

So yeah, discord has long been an annoyance for me for a lot of reasons and moderating it is certainly more difficult. However on the whole I don’t see removing it as being an option. Far more likely is that we put further structure and rules in place for it that mean more topics are off limits on discord but still allowed on the forum, IE what we do with political chat.

[Spartan 3,997]

 

2 minutes ago, Beketov said:

I mean that is my annoyance with discord.

 

Mind you I recognize it’s kinda a necessary evil. Us old school folks have been used to running leagues on forums for decades and it is totally familiar and fine for us to not have the immediate and constant communication. However newer members tend to struggle more with the forums. They are a relic of the past and often times can behave as such. They want that instant communication and reaction to get more acquainted with the community or ask questions or just be involved in something they understand more.

 

So yeah, discord has long been an annoyance for me for a lot of reasons and moderating it is certainly more difficult. However on the whole I don’t see removing it as being an option. Far more likely is that we put further structure and rules in place for it that mean more topics are off limits on discord but still allowed on the forum, IE what we do with political chat.

1. Nuke emotes in roles

2. Bring back forum chat

3. Move all discord activity to LR's instead of the monstrosity that is gen chat 

[Horcrux 322]

Just now, Spartan said:

 

1. Nuke emotes in roles

2. Bring back forum chat

3. Move all discord activity to LR's instead of the monstrosity that is gen chat 

aside from the Emotes in Roles. 

I agree to this. didnt even know Forum had a chat. is it Viable?

[UnknownMinion 726]

I vote we keep gen chat I get to chat with more people and more new members 

[Spartan 3,997]

1 minute ago, Horcrux said:

aside from the Emotes in Roles. 

I agree to this. didnt even know Forum had a chat. is it Viable?

especially the emotes in roles

 

idk ask Josh who nuked it

[Horcrux 322]

Thats whay new member help is for, and the dfat hype chanels. Gen is a chaotic mess thats hard to Moderate

[Horcrux 322]

Just now, Spartan said:

especially the emotes in roles

 

idk ask Josh who nuked it

The Emotes in Roles help me see who is holding what poistion. the GM ones are handy

[sterling 1,990]

1 hour ago, Horcrux said:

it would boost forum activity and make it easier to moderate. 

then you can see the thread itself and what builds up to it instead of having to go through 50 pages of discord nonesene. 

Bring back Arrowchat! And annoying messages from the Gows/Fong!

[Beketov 8,642]

1 minute ago, Horcrux said:

aside from the Emotes in Roles. 

I agree to this. didnt even know Forum had a chat. is it Viable?

 

Just now, Spartan said:

especially the emotes in roles

 

idk ask Josh who nuked it

It doesn’t exist any more for a number of reasons, the main one being that it was incredibly resource heavy and actually caused IPB to boot us off their hosting because it was feeling like a DDOS attack to their servers. We’re in our own hosting now but the cost to host that resource hog is still insanely high that the benefit isn’t worth it.

 

Also it was buggy as hell and next to no one used it. I don’t even know if it’s still compatible with the newer IPB versions.

[Horcrux 322]

2 minutes ago, Beketov said:

 

It doesn’t exist any more for a number of reasons, the main one being that it was incredibly resource heavy and actually caused IPB to boot us off their hosting because it was feeling like a DDOS attack to their servers. We’re in our own hosting now but the cost to host that resource hog is still insanely high that the benefit isn’t worth it.

 

Also it was buggy as hell and next to no one used it. I don’t even know if it’s still compatible with the newer IPB versions.

AHHH Thank you for the clarification Beketov

[Josh 1,598]

ArrowChat was basically impossible to moderate because it wasn't integrated with the forum moderation. Like Bek said it also didn't make a ton of sense from a technical perspective to be paying for the software and additional hardware capability that was required. It's over $100 a year and Discord serves the same purpose and is free. 

[Spartan 3,997]

8 minutes ago, Horcrux said:

The Emotes in Roles help me see who is holding what poistion. the GM ones are handy

We have color coding, and role titles though. It's worked for a while, the extra emotes are unnecessary and look dumb as hell since they're all different sizes and designs, especially when compared to people's names right next to them. Roles for teams is fine, that's optional. I really don't like a random GM emote next to my name that is twice the size of it.

 

We have a sidebar for people to know what roles are correlated with the color, and you can also click onto someone's profile to see all their roles. Discord has existed for years without this feature, and people have been fine. Just my two cents with role emotes.

[Beketov 8,642]

2 minutes ago, Spartan said:

We have color coding, and role titles though. It's worked for a while

 

3 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Discord has existed for years without this feature, and people have been fine.

I love that this has brought out the old man in you. “It’s always worked fine before, why are we changing going things”

 

This isn’t sarcasm, I’m actually serious haha.

[Horcrux 322]

5 minutes ago, Spartan said:

We have color coding, and role titles though. It's worked for a while, the extra emotes are unnecessary and look dumb as hell since they're all different sizes and designs, especially when compared to people's names right next to them. Roles for teams is fine, that's optional. I really don't like a random GM emote next to my name that is twice the size of it.

 

We have a sidebar for people to know what roles are correlated with the color, and you can also click onto someone's profile to see all their roles. Discord has existed for years without this feature, and people have been fine. Just my two cents with role emotes.

I am using a chrome book and its harder for me to see things on the smaller screen, I think its an added benefit. 

if you dont want the GM tag ill take it

[Dom 1,440]

I’ll be honest, if the discord server get nuked because some people can’t be civilized, I don’t even know if I’d want to remain active. I like the forum but where sim leagues really shine is on discord, like it or not, it is a step forward and yes it comes with issues. The truth is that we are a community and unfortunately having drama and a***oles is not something we can 100% avoid, so instead of nuking the one thing that made everyone even closer, can we just look after each others and try to make this place better?

 

in short, nuking discord is a terrible idea

[samx 1,095]

I agree. I don't think nuking Discord is going to solve anything. if anything it will seperate the community further. I think you would end up losing more people 

1 minute ago, Domg5 said:

I’ll be honest, if the discord server get nuked because some people can’t be civilized, I don’t even know if I’d want to remain active. I like the forum but where sim leagues really shine is on discord, like it or not, it is a step forward and yes it comes with issues. The truth is that we are a community and unfortunately having drama and a***oles is not something we can 100% avoid, so instead of nuking the one thing that made everyone even closer, can we just look after each others and try to make this place better?

 

in short, nuking discord is a terrible idea

 

[sterling 1,990]

10 minutes ago, Domg5 said:

I’ll be honest, if the discord server get nuked because some people can’t be civilized, I don’t even know if I’d want to remain active. I like the forum but where sim leagues really shine is on discord, like it or not, it is a step forward and yes it comes with issues. The truth is that we are a community and unfortunately having drama and a***oles is not something we can 100% avoid, so instead of nuking the one thing that made everyone even closer, can we just look after each others and try to make this place better?

 

in short, nuking discord is a terrible idea

Well it needs to be better moderated then. This isn't the first time we've had issues with it. No members should be feeling uncomfortable regardless of where the discourse is taking place.

 

How/why are there only 3 moderators for a forum that has grown so much? We used to have more mods back when the forum was a tenth of the size.

[samx 1,095]

1 minute ago, sterling said:

Well it needs to be better moderated then. This isn't the first time we've had issues with it. No members should be feeling uncomfortable regardless of where the discourse is taking place.

 

How/why are there only 3 moderators for a forum that has grown so much? We used to have more mods back when the forum was a tenth of the size.

Yes I agree which is why I brought this issue forward and it's now being worked on. As for why there are so few I don't know that isn't my call.

[Beketov 8,642]

14 minutes ago, Domg5 said:

I’ll be honest, if the discord server get nuked because some people can’t be civilized, I don’t even know if I’d want to remain active. I like the forum but where sim leagues really shine is on discord, like it or not, it is a step forward and yes it comes with issues. The truth is that we are a community and unfortunately having drama and a***oles is not something we can 100% avoid, so instead of nuking the one thing that made everyone even closer, can we just look after each others and try to make this place better?

 

in short, nuking discord is a terrible idea

TBH I was joking because @sterling and I are famously old men of the VHL and like shouting at the new fangled stuff. While I still prefer the forum I recognize the necessity of discord.

 

3 minutes ago, sterling said:

Well it needs to be better moderated then. This isn't the first time we've had issues with it. No members should be feeling uncomfortable regardless of where the discourse is taking place.

 

How/why are there only 3 moderators for a forum that has grown so much? We used to have more mods back when the forum was a tenth of the size.

We are looking to hire more. The trickiness is that while the size of the league has grown as has the requirement of moderators. Gen chat alone for an hour is probably triple what the mods of old had to deal with for a full day. Therefore hiring good mods to do the job means mods have high requirements which makes it hard to find people to do the job.

 

Anyway, we're working on it; both by looking at rule changes and by hiring more hands.

[Dom 1,440]

2 minutes ago, sterling said:

Well it needs to be better moderated then. This isn't the first time we've had issues with it. No members should be feeling uncomfortable regardless of where the discourse is taking place.

 

How/why are there only 3 moderators for a forum that has grown so much? We used to have more mods back when the forum was a tenth of the size.

More moderation is a better solution than nuking discord, I also want to add that in 1 year in the VHL the ratio of drama on discord and the forum has been probably around 50/50. The forum is not drama free, just easier to moderate so removing discord is just making it easier to mods, thats all. I don’t think removing features for easier moderation is an improvement as a community, there is better ways to fix that.

[sterling 1,990]

6 minutes ago, Beketov said:

TBH I was joking because @sterling and I are famously old men of the VHL and like shouting at the new fangled stuff. While I still prefer the forum I recognize the necessity of discord.

 

We are looking to hire more. The trickiness is that while the size of the league has grown as has the requirement of moderators. Gen chat alone for an hour is probably triple what the mods of old had to deal with for a full day. Therefore hiring good mods to do the job means mods have high requirements which makes it hard to find people to do the job.

 

Anyway, we're working on it; both by looking at rule changes and by hiring more hands.

Good work team. Time to go back into my hole.

[Baozi 1,635]

25 minutes ago, sterling said:

Good work team. Time to go back into my hole.

 

Did you pay the bill for this year yet or when is the annual forum going down for the "Did Sterling pay the bills?" riot.

[sterling 1,990]

5 minutes ago, tfong said:

 

Did you pay the bill for this year yet or when is the annual forum going down for the "Did Sterling pay the bills?" riot.

I relinquished the bill paying to have more time for bannin'.

[Spartan 3,997]

1 hour ago, Beketov said:

I love that this has brought out the old man in you. “It’s always worked fine before, why are we changing going things”

 

This isn’t sarcasm, I’m actually serious haha.

Lolllllll, a small hill to die on. I'm not OCD, but I don't like when things aren't visually structured. Hence why Moscow names/roles/colors are the way they are, styled and organized enough that they all fit a theme. If the role emotes were standardized and meshed with the normal name/text font size, I'd probably be fine. But they're all different from each other and that's like if nails on a chalkboard was a visual stressor lol.

 

1 hour ago, Horcrux said:

I am using a chrome book and its harder for me to see things on the smaller screen, I think its an added benefit. 

if you dont want the GM tag ill take it

Fwiw we only have these roles because we're at level 2 for boosts, not a tier we've had before for longer than a month iirc. I think that the color coordination in the main server is pretty easy to get used to over time, and that's really what people should be familiar with than these emotes. But if we maintain level 2, good for us lol, some good perks for everyone outside the role emotes.

 

As for GM tag, good luck on those open positions!