I guess this is a start... but site has a loong way go before its as entertaining as it used to be. Ive been on this comic book site for a few weeks that has a games forum and we talk more about video games there than this site has in last year or so.

btw when is the site split happening? I think that would be jump in returning quality.

I guess it's still going on.

OT: Welcome back.

I think the participation of the forum dropped cause

1. Quality of replies dropped. It's harder to have mature discussion these days. If you don't agree with someone, you must be a fan boy of the other system. 

Someone mentioned GAF. Although I still don't understand how someone gets banned on there, I can at least have offer my opinionw without getting called biased toward a system.

2. The redesign. (forgot what version it was; it's the one before this latest one) Forum became a lot less user friendly for a while although it gradually improved. However, it's hard to get people back once you drove them away. 

On a related notes, the latest change on the landing page is positive change to me even though I finally got used to the last one. It feels so much cleaner.

I just ripped the idea off of other forums where it's worked well.  It's a pretty common feature.

@montana:  I haven't been around the site much as of late, and to be honest, I spend most of my time on the internet discussing non-gaming stuff these days, but I'd be very interested in helping to mold the community into something as good as (if not far better than) it once was.

Though I wouldn't be surprised if I come off as more of an annoyance than anything else at this point.  Like 90% of my posts are complaining about some aspect of the site or another lol.  I promise, I do it because I care!

I'd like to bring back my idea of IP banning California, It would stop the worst posters we have ever had on this site; Yeswiican, Wessle, angrypoolman, and other hippies. The only problem Max had with it was that e3 takes place in Cali. We could work around that!


btw: Dtewi is a troll and no attempts of communicating with him should be attempted! I know, I just finished talking to him

Also, monti, my opinions on what makes a forum function well have changed quite a bit since our time tag-teaming the mod forums back in '08.

While I still believe an account approval system is crucial for keeping those who have been banned from returning to the site, I think the most important element of a community is its moderators.

On most forums I've been on moderators are viewed as policemen or wardens of a sort, following specific rules (don't talk about pirating, don't use blatant insults, etc.) to keep people in line.  They lock threads and they ban people.  That's about it.

This is a view I too once held.

Now I view moderators as something quite a bit different than that.  I view them as molders of the community.  Their main priority is to encourage intelligent discourse.  They should do this first and foremost by setting an example for the community through their own words, but also by using their powers as moderators (editing titles, deleting posts, moving threads, combining threads, etc.) to help improve the quality of threads made by other people.  Actually removing posters from the site should be a method of last resort in pursuing this goal.

Moderators should be active, for example, in pointing out flaws in the logic of others.  Pointing out various types of trolling, like concern trolling, and demonstrating why such tactics do not make for good methods of debate.  Only when a poster seems unwilling to change for the better - if they repeatedly use debating methods like strawmen, insults, and ad hominem attacks to try and derail threads, or if they are just plain rude - should they be removed from the site.  (And such people should be removed from the site permanently after only a few chances.  It should be pretty easy for posters to catch on to what's accepted and what's not around here.)

I'd like to use an example from neogaf to demonstrate a bit of what I mean.  The females of neogaf have occasionally been interested in creating threads where they can focus on all the girly things they like to talk about.  Whenever such a thread is created, however, it's usually overrun by male posters who aren't necessarily breaking any rules, but who are just being annoying and moving the thread away from the topics it was initially created to discuss.  Such threads usually get locked after just a few pages.

However, a new "girl-gaf" thread appeared back in September, and one moderator, Stumpokapow, was determined to make it a success.  So he shows up in the thread, and well, I'll just quote him:

Nobody was banned.  Nobody got in trouble.  The intent was simply to make the thread better, and allow its primary topic to remain as unadulterated as possible.  And it's been quite successful over the past three months, reaching 57 pages at 50 posts/page.

Also, Stumpokapow was very transparent about what he was doing.  On neogaf, moderators are always willing to discuss why/how something went down, and it's not limited to a short ban reason on somebody's profile that barely explains whatever crime the person committed.

Of course, this approach requires that moderators be given substantially more freedom than they have on most forums, which also requires that moderators be held to a very high standard.  Any moderators who abuse their power or simply make bad decisions need to be removed from duty relatively swiftly.

We've had a number of moderators over the years that had the intellect and the motivation to excel at this type of moderation, in my opinion:

sqrl
Bodhesatva (who now happens to be my favorite moderator on neogaf)
BenKenobi88
rocketpig
naznatips

And many of these people did moderate in such a way back during the site's early days, when ioi/dkii were handling the forums themselves.

I think such posters are rather hard to find these days, but there is one person that always comes to mind.  I believe Khuutra has always demonstrated the qualities necessary to be an excellent moderator, and I have pointed that out to a couple of people over the past couple of years.

Welcome back. Good to see a bunch of older members post in this thread as well.

It'll be difficult to do that post justice with my response.

I frequent NeoGAF a lot too, so I've seen plenty of the creepiness that can pop up (and the great moderation of it). Yeah, the mod team at GAF is fantastic, and Stumpokapow does a great job. I think, going forward, building a strong team of quality moderators will be integral towards guiding and shaping the Vgchartz community. I've always thought Khuutra was a great member, but I wasn't sure if he'd want to be a mod. If so, he would be great for the position. I'd also love to see you back on the team, but I can understand if you're not as attached to the community anymore.

Just curious, who is Bod now on NeoGAF? Opiate?

You guess well.  He, Stumpokapow, and Charlequin are incredibly intelligent individuals, and they're responsible for some of the best discussions on gaf.  Though Nirolak and others can certainly hold their own.

As for me being a moderator, there are other issues at play that would probably (and understandably) prevent that from happening.  Plus, then I'd be forced to re-enable sigs.  :P

Edit:

In the interest of proper vetting: a younger, stupider me let clan activities get in the way of removing a certain individual from the site who had created an alt and should've been removed, and once it became obvious that this member needed to be gotten rid of, pride got in the way of me dealing with the problem myself or notifying others who could handle it for me.

Dang, never knew Bod was such a good looking guy too.

I don't know the full story of this clan situation, but come on. You're a great member and you were a great mod. I've called a guy an asshole, said the community was full of idiots, had a steamy sex chat on my wall, made snarky posts on the mod forums, told sex stories on the VGC IM, made 10 paragraph rants on the forums, and pissed off plenty of people. You're a saint compared to me .

edit: way too late