Dies to Removal

Hello,

I waited a little before starting a big thread in the ML but now is the time!

What would you say you do here? (Yep!)
As some of you might know, I'm that "Curse guy" who is in charge of MTGSalvation now that we took over. Some of you might have seen me hang out in the new Staff chat on AIM and jump in a couple of threads but I tried to lay low for a while to get a better feel of the community and let you guys adapt.

My job on the site isn't to replace the admins, I will definitely be
around if needed but ultimately most of the responsibilities still fall on admins. I'm mostly here to make the link between our team and Curse when needed (developers, marketing if we want to do giveaways, etc) and sometimes share my experience when it looks like it could be useful.

You can pretty much talk to me about any concern you have, best way to do that is to drop me a mail at [email protected] or talk to me on skype (fbonte-curse) and AIM (BoubouilleMMO). You should still go through the admin team for 95% of your concerns but it doesn't hurt to say hi and chat a little. ^^


What's going to change?
A lot and not much. We will move the site to our own platform in the near future (say 2 or 3 months) but you guys and the entire community will be involved as soon as we have something decent to show. We'll keep things in public testing for a while and make sure a huge majority is happy
before we actually go through with the change, it's pretty challenging to push something new on a 10 year old community full of people with very old habits but assuming we don't screw up, it should be make everyone's life easier.

On the moderation side, I did push a couple of ideas to the admin team but ultimately the decision will boil down to the mod team. I just assume that you know the community more than I do and I'm pretty fine with not having to micromanage moderation anyway. I'll definitely give my input to admins or in ML threads if necessary but the bottom line is that for a crushing majority of moderation-related issues my word isn't law and admins will have the final say.

In the short run I would also like to go through forums and see how we can expand them, see if we can run a bunch of contests or giveaways for example, and I'll be happy to hear random ideas you might have for the future.


So... Gutter?
The Gutter is a situation
I somewhat took over when we acquired the website because of how messy it got. Having new blood in the conversation did good and the situation isn't as bad as it used to be, to the point where we reach the critical phase: we might have to unban people.

The reason for this is that a lot of these bans were done in the middle of the summer drama and left people with a sense of injustice/incomprehension. I do realize that a lot of these people had a heavy past, but in the end we're stuck in a situation where a lot of people got banned at the same time in the middle of the summer dramas with what I think was a bit of collateral damage.

I do believe that the easiest way to "fix" the entire drama is to allow people who are willing to join the community and be positive members to come back. The admin team suggested a wave of appeal to let the mod team decide and it sounds pretty good to me, we had an example earlier this week that worked pretty well. I do realize that it might be hard but I
think if everybody involved try to stay slightly objective, the situation can be resolved.

Of course it will come as a trade off on their side, the Gutter will remain closed (and is very unlikely to be reopened), account sharing/multiple accounts will be forbidden, and we will probably keep a slightly closer eye on them (as long as it doesn't turn to harassment and trying to get them banned by all means)

Overall I think this is something that took way too much importance for the moderator team in general and that's why I really want to turn the page. The last stage on this is to get ML feedback so ... well, here we are.


Anything else?
Not much. I do realize that the situation might have been a tiny bit confusing over the past month. I took things slow on purpose to allow some discussion in the team and I think it was overall a good thing. I was also swarmed with real life, that part didn't help.

Hopefully you guys will leave me with enough
blood to go home when we're done with this thread. I'm a tiny bit scared.

Boubouille

Hey guys.

I've seen, in a lot of threads recently (most notably the 'bias and you' thread) similar comments from lots of mods about where they feel the upper staff, mostly the admins, are on the Gutter situation. A lot of you believe that we're in a place where the admins simply want to unban them.

After having spoken to Sene and ER, I thought this thread was appropriate. To let you all know where we are.

When Boubouille informed us that he believed there should be unbannings, I was unhappy. There is a lot of bile over there on MTGC, a lot of upset with us and constant
attacks on us. I've been following them off and on for a while. Believe me, I see what's going on there.

So one of the things I decided to do, about a week ago, is be honest with them. Tell them where I felt we went wrong, and where I felt we went right. And then tried to lay the groundwork so that, if appeals were made and we were to consider unbannings, it'd be done on our terms. Not 'our' as in 'admin'. 'Our' as in 'staff'. If there will be unbannings, I want us to agree to it. I want us also to be the ones to say 'here's the stipulations, deal with it or get out'. Which is why, for anyone who's been following the MTGC thread, I've been sticking to my 'get in appeals' guns.

So that's that thread. And this is this one. So we can tell you exactly where we're at.

Boubouille has said something I agree with, though he said it in the admin chat, and I'm going to paraphrase that here: If a poster becomes a good poster,
if they contribute and cause no problems, then their history becomes moot. I think it'd be a good idea to work on this ideal. So with that in mind, here's what I think.

Of the Gutter folks, here's what I think:

- N_S is outright 'no'. He's made it very clear, on that site on and on that thread, that he holds nothing but ill will for us. I can't imagine a single thing he could say that would make me change my mind on this. He can wait a couple of years until he learns that he's not in charge here.
- Kijin would probably get my 'unban' vote if he applied. He's also being very clear over there, but he's showing that he wants to work with us. To not only make the site better, but also to add content and basically be a good poster. I've talked with Kijin directly through PM and IM, in various threads and over there. I think he's being sincere, and I'd like to give him the chance to prove it.
- Kpaca is a hard one for me. Again, I've spoken to
him through PM and IM. I feel as if I know his standards of speech and his general speaking pattern when it comes to posting. The whole '**** you' thing doesn't phase me much, since I can see what he thought I was typing. I'd have responded the same way if the staff told me to 'come back on my knees and beg'. I'd like to give him a chance, but I'm also willing to ask him to wait.
- Madding has been talking to Sene for a while now, and had a whole PM that he wrote to Sene that had all sorts of information in it about the Madding and Belza accounts. I felt there was enough reasonable doubt of their identities to make an unbanning just. Nothing more, nothing less.
- As for the rest of them, I haven't seen enough of them to make a decision on that.

But at the end of the day, guys, I want them to appeal. I want them to actually do it, to show they're willing to follow our rules and do things our way. And I want us to go into those appeals threads with 'if we bring
them back, will they be a good poster and add value to the boards' and the front of our mind, not as much 'what they did in the past'. If they cause problems I'll ban them myself when it comes to it.

Most importantly, though, I'm not going to overrule you guys. We, as the staff make decisions by checking with everyone who wants to weigh in. I'm not going to simply say 'Well, I think they should come back' and go ahead and do that. I've told them that, I've told Boubouille that, and I'm telling you that. We're making sure that a great deal of the staff agree with a decision before we send it through.

That's all from me. I know Sene and ER want to post in here for you guys.

Let's get on the same page folks; your opinion matters. We're not going to act without you.