It's been expressed to me that maybe people in the thread felt like we "came down" too hard yesterday. I don't think that was any of our intentions. I hope that some of you are able to read it as more a "gentle nudge" to try to get some of y'all participating in the main forum as well as here and to keep the thread a little more on topic, rather than a demand-at-gunpoint.
If anything we said seemed like an overreach, then know that the only main objective was to convey the following: "If you have a good idea for a good post and it's relevant to people on the forum outside here, we'd love for you to share. If you can't because the forum outside here frustrates you, we'd like to try to help with that. The primary focus of this thread should ideally be on Sonic games and other Sonic stuff"
And it's really funny that this thread and the Persona thread got a talking to, and yet the Halo OT is on its 18th thread, and it's always filled with stuff like this. The double standards astounds me and honestly makes me question whether or not I should bother posting on this forum at all given that there isn't this clear foundation as to what should be happening in community threads.
The Halo thread has been a consistent thorn for a long time. It was closed down for a few months because of the issues we've had with it. One of the reasons we brought on GhaleonEB on the moderation staff is because we thought that his tenure there would contribute to help keeping them a little more on topic. I honestly couldn't evaluate whether or not we've succeeded because at least in terms of my own time I don't have a lot to be able to follow up on it. The nominal purpose of the Halo OT at this point should be discussing and planning Halo news, matches, games, etc. I am sure there's a lot of chat room stuff going on in there too. :/
Please know that if you see a thread that seems like it's not being dealt with, it's either a case that we are trying to deal with it, or that it's actually sneaking by under the radar. There's never a deliberate double standard and I promise you it's not a matter of picking on threads. I've never had a conversation with a mod where they've tried to "protect" their own threads, or exempt threads from rules.
We have some coverage gaps and so it may be fair to say that some community threads get more attention on the basis that some of us actually happen to go in them. For example, I know our sports moderation is a little inconsistent because we don't have mods that watch every sport. There's no easy answer to that. Unfortunately even if every mod was active 12 hours a day we still wouldn't be able to deal with everything.
To try to provide some clarity: The aim for community threads was to allow people to discuss ongoing series and games without having the same long-running threads taking up half the slots in the main forum. It was about balance. Obviously there would never be a rule like "no deviating from the strict topic or else!!!!", but more that we do want to encourage that at least the main purpose of the thread is to discuss the topic.
That's why Aeana posted what she did--to try to help encourage you guys to get involved in helping make this thread a little closer to what the intent was, because we don't have the resources. I think in her case it was also a little bit being bummed that great posters were bummed out and not wanting to engage with the rest of the forum. We wish we could do a little more than we can.
It would be a real bummer if the posters in the thread interpreted a few of us posting in here in a way that we thought and hoped would be positive and encouraging as a negative or strict ultimatum.
edit: That said, following on from the rest of Stump's point about how they don't have enough people, the answer is probably to improve the ability of the users to direct mod attention to shitposting rather than pleading with them to rely on a staggeringly inefficient mechanism like PMing three mods about a single issue at once. Take a hint from GameFAQs and implement a report function and a moderation queue. Lock the report function down to a selection of preferred users to keep it from being flooded by morons.
We are super extremely aware of this. I am not sure what can be done from a software POV.
Sorry for keeping this thread of discussion going, I know it's counterproductive to the point of asking for more focus on Sonic discussion. Just wanted to let people know I'm reading what people are posting, taking people's opinions into consideration, etc. Feel free to PM me or reply in here, but Sonic discussion is good too!
