nice work guys

[Xog]

Yes it's true, we could encourage more usage of ?help, as a side effect it could cause more abusing of ?help, but I guess that's just something you have to accept. If we would get lot of new players ZHs would of course be needed. Arobas did work on a system to find out "real" newbies, but asking for a mentor kind of system for new players might be too much to ask as the game is so old, not so many new players, and old players are losing interest in other things than TWD, Elims and other leagues.

If anyone would know how to edit the ESC+F6 help messages we could include more information to newbies, that haven't turned it off, about events, leagues, squads and staff and what not. Although learning the basic keys is important too..

that would be in the client and not the zone settings, so priit would have to change it. not to mention it would wind up being for all the zones, not just trenchwars. so it's just not doable unless TW converts to ASSS which isn't happening.

[Zazu]

Were the ZHs taken out before or after someone realized no more legitimate help calls were being made?

If you're not giving newbies an offer of help, they probably won't ask for it. The ZH tag is an offer for helping someone.

If I were a newb at soccer I wouldn't ask the referee how to play and what the rules were, I'd ask my friends. However if there was someone designated for assisting players with showing them the rules or how to play (like a coach aka ZH) i'd go straight to them before my friends. See where I'm going with this?

These days the ERs are doing the ZH job as well. So it's not like you only dare to ask a question to someone wearing a ZH tag. That wouldn't make much sense.
The ER's are the ones around to help you now. So the job remains the same. I don't see how important a tag can be to someone...

[kthx]

Staff doesn't have the time to deal with players on the forums? What a great reason to close and delete threads.

[Lizard Fuel]

IMO I don't think anything but EXTREME circumstances should result in a ban, both on forums and in the game.

Forums: Lets assume I decided to start being an annoying twat and posting garbage in every single thread, why not just leave it up to the players to ignore me. Ive been on these forums for almost 7 years, and Ive ignored a grand total of 0 people. At the same time, I've learned which posters to simply overlook. For example, I don't even bother reading anything ever posted by Telcat or Megavyslectable (and exalt as of late). The activity is lacking on here as it is, banning people for being a nuisance is only contributing to that. If you instead resorted to bans only under extreme circumstances such as porn, links to cheating, whatever else, and made the bans permanent, then you'd likely have less issues. If I want to revive a thread I thought was funny 5 years ago, I should be able to do so if I desire. If I want to make a thread about how much cock a certain staffmember sucks, I should be able to do so without fear of repercussion. If you don't like it as forum staff, who really gives a fuck, these aren't your forums, they are ours.

In-Game: First off, I do think its gotten a lot better as of late, but 2 steps in the right direction would be better than 1 step. I'll use the most recent example....Even though i personally hate the_paul, banning somebody for using ?help is just retarded. Whether he was abusing or not, or being a twat or not should be immaterial. Just silence him, and then he can no longer be a nuisance. If somebody is teamkilling, *setship them....if they don't like it, they can leave, as they shouldn't have been teamkilling so much, but at least the choice to leave would be their own, instead of being forced out of the game. If somebody is being racist, silence them. If somebody is double squadding, TWD ban them ONLY. As staff you have a ton of resources available to you in dealing with trouble makers, banning people should only be used as a last resort. Whether they deserve it or not, they will likely be pissed off which increases the chances that they won't come back, which eventually will leave the rest of us with nobody to shoot at.

You should be able to talk about bans without releasing said "sensitive info". If your evidence is a players IP, MID, etc, then say "Our evidence is the players IP, MID, etc"...You don't have to say "Player A's IP of 123.456.78.90 matched player B's IP of 123.456.78.90 thus resulting in his ban". Such a simple statement doesn't really leave any room for debate, and closes the topic rather quickly. If I got banned for evading ignore and bitched about it on forums, come on and say "You were banned for evading ignore, as your aliases had the same IP". THEN close the discussion. Referring to that stupid complaints email is just retarded.

[Ara]

Forum politics really isn't my area, I only followed the guide lines for forum Staff when handling the_paul. He was first warned and then I checked with another forum mod before giving infraction. Maybe we could have new forum staff so a forum imbesill like me wouldn't be making staff look bad.

In-game we are in transition to using bots for silencing and spec locking instead of banning. So yea we are trying to make the policies more player friendly. I'm not sure if silencing someone prevents them from sending in ?helps, and also the context of ?helps mattered in the_paul's case. Can't tell a staffer to ignore someone, when the possible harrassment is done through ?helps.

DSing in TWD does only result in a TWD ban, and a possible ban from TWL, not sure of the current policy but you can read the rules from league websites.

TWD bans for example are always based on MIDs, IPs, etc, so do we have to announce this every time on forums? Staff doesn't even want to tell all the tools that it uses so we wouldn't encourage doublesquadding and ban evasion.

[Lizard Fuel]

Im not saying post every ban on forums, just if somebody questions why they were banned in public, give them the reason in public instead of closing threads and banning people.

[Ara]

You can't oblige any staffer to do it, but I guess if all the sensitive info is given out by the banned person himself or herself then a member of staff can join the conversation if he or she wants to, but still that would probably only lead to flaming a specific staffer only doing his or her job.. This is why we have twbans@gmail.com email address which is indeed being read carefully by our in-game BanG staff. And for forum ban disputes you email forum staff. Lots of times there's emotions evolved right after the ban and objective discussion isn't possible, what's the point of arguing then? With the official way every case is handled by those trained to do it from an objective point of view, I wouldn't mind if another forum or in-game staffer lifted a ban made by me on good grounds when it's their job to handle bans and disputes.

[Lizard Fuel]

Im not saying argue. I'm saying....

Player A> wtf i got banned for no reason
Staff> you got banned for THIS, THIS and THIS
Player A> wtf no i didnt
PLayer B> Free Player A!!
Player C> Konging thread
Player A> This is bullshit

You state a fact, and leave the discussion, and let the kids be kids

[PH]

Player C> Konging thread

can we just skip to this step from this point forward?

[H.M.S. Stargazer]

The <ZH> was removed at my request back when I was dean. This was back when we had just started the new systems Jr. <ER>((basically <ZH> hosting wise) and Jr. mods.(bascially <ZH> but with pub powers). The system has since changed. That would fall under the discretion of the deans.

As for smods hosting: I host all the time, The problem is , I have ALWAYS hosted all the time. So it doesn't seem like a new thing. Secondly, most of our smods, have never been pro-hosters. They have been pro-mods. They have the abilities to host, but they lack the overall experience that comes with hundreds of events.

[Zeebu]

i still wondered what the answer to my othe question was. is it trash talk? if i think a mod/er/whatever has done something wrong in my eyes, where do i bitch and moan about it on forum without the thread getting closed?

[Kim]

Was it said explicitly that there cannot be threads made about a staffer in general? No, not really. Except most of the time its coupled with a ban complaint, and those are often useless to argue because they are one-sided.

But hey! What if the staffer fucked up? Well that's why we have other staffers checking bans frequently. If a staff member went out of their way and banned somebody without following the rules then that staffer will be suspended. If the staff member isn't suspended due to their actions, it is probably because the staff body believes that player should be banned despite what they say.

Go ahead and talk about staff. Just try not to be vindicative because it isn't a paid job. Nevertheless, we still strive to do a good job so feel free to give your opinions about issues that you value as important to the community.

[D1st0rt]

It seems to me that the threads that are getting closed now don't revolve around any so-called "sensitive information", they seem to be more behavioral in nature

if someone is trying to alias/evade with different IP/MID/etc why the hell are they going to talk about it on the forums

[genocidal]

It seems to me that this place gets more boring whenever Ara is around to lay down the law. Do you even contribute anything?

[paradise!]

public: askfjkasmfklasmfasf

translation: ease up a bit Ara, only a few of us still left. you can take the foot off the gas.