What the hell happened?!

[leon1122]

I kinda like seeing alt-right Croak defend Condescension. This is refreshing

First they came for krellin, and Durga did not speak out—
Because she was not a krellin.

Then they came for Condescension, and Durga did not speak out—
Because she was not a Condescension.

Then they came for Durg—and there was no one left to speak for her.

[Durga]

I low key run this website

[ghug]

I low key run this website

I thought we agreed you would keep that a secret.

[CroakandDagger]

Please. I'm not alt-right. Those guys are too left wing.

[jmo1121109]

I want to take a minute to clarify why I reacted with a less then pleasant manner in this thread. For over a year now I have explained dozens of times, in painful detail, the technical problems the old forum structure placed on the site. A_Tin_Can, Kestas, and I have spent hours on end correcting site crashes and problems caused by the old forum’s structure. The old forum was implemented and designed by Kestas when this site was merely a side hobby for him and I highly doubt he expected it to grow to the size it did. It was also built on 10 year old technology at this point and it was something close to a miracle that it lasted as long as it did.

The new forum fixed those problems, and provided us the possibility of bringing back all the threads from before 2013, which currently do not exist on the internet anywhere. There’s a lot of site history we’re looking to regain, and the new forum lets us do that.

So Kestas and Zultar worked together for months on end to make sure that the site had a functioning forum that fixed the technical problems and would still allow members to have an open conversation ground. But at the same time, allow for improvements like categorization to better help new members find the information they needed to get adjusted to our site. The amount of work that was required to make this a rather seamless transition was hundreds of hours. In a single week I put in over 40 hours outside of my normal job to ensure the forum would be fully configured for everyone. Kestas did just as much work, and various other mods and admins contributed large amounts of time to the project.

We are a volunteer based site that doesn’t charge for our services. We don’t force you to watch ad’s while playing the game (and we easily could), we don’t sell your user information for profit like multiple other sites, we don’t heavily moderate the forums, even when the topics have nothing to do with Diplomacy. The only thing we ask is that people be respectful in return.

Coming out and attacking the two owners who make this site possible, cussing them out, questioning their fairness, decisions, and intelligence is *not* respectful. It’s not even helpful. If you have concerns about any part of the site, you can explain them and provide a suggestion. We can’t always support your suggestions, and don’t always agree with them either, but we’ll always listen to suggestions either on the forum or via email.

I have no interest as a developer here listening too a member coming out and attacking the owners in a vulgar way. They are the reason this site exists. Without them you wouldn’t be taking about this thread. They have no obligation to keep this site running, and they have far less obligation to humor repeatedly (cond had multiple silences for rather disgusting offenses) vulgar members. They can’t “abuse their power”, it is their site, to do with as they wish. I challenge you to go to another forum and attack the owners as was done here without getting banned.

But cond wasn’t banned for that, he was simply told off and eventually silenced for a cooldown. It wasn’t until he broke the main site rule that he was banned.

This site is here to provide a great experience playing the game diplomacy. Not so members can outright attack the owners for making decisions that keep the site from breaking.

*(Personal opinion, as a member who spends a shit-ton of time contributing to the site, not of the moderator team)

[bo_sox48]

Ditto.

- webDiplomacy Moderators

[JECE]

jmo1121109: You doubt Kestas? Step aside, heretic.

It's great to hear it finally confirmed that the old threads still exist! I would love to see them back.

[CroakandDagger]

I'm sorry to hear that it took so much of your own time to implement something that looks so ugly.

[thamrick]

I'm sorry to hear that it took so much of your own time to implement something that looks so ugly.

Boooooo

[brainbomb]

Im sure your family feels the same croak.

[jmo1121109]

I'm sorry to hear that it took so much of your own time to implement something that looks so ugly.

Glad to see you’re interested in a productive conversation.

[bo_sox48]

Croak, would you like to speak privately about this?

[CommanderByron]

Developers to the site are always volunteers and often not members of the moderation team. As site members they volunteer time and skill that the site would not be able to afford, as a free to play experience. It is the actions of these members that improve site functionality and user experience. Sometimes, these changes aren’t universally approved of and we welcome your feedback.

However, it is important to remember that insulting the volunteer or their work is not constructive and can be viewed as a targeted attack if not voiced in a constructive professional way. If you want to have a real impact email us at [email protected] and we’ll have a developer or administrator directly work with you and listen to your concerns.

In the end this site is more than a line of code. It’s a community of volunteers, creative minds and diplomacy (or mafia) enthusiasts. And we’d never want to alienate or hurt the people who make this site possible.

Please help us understand what we can do to improve the experience for you. Email us. :)

[CroakandDagger]

jmo, I am not particularly interested in a productive conversation about the forum itself when it has so clearly been demonstrated that the staff position on user complaints is; "We have re-done the site so that it's easier for us to maintain and moderate - if you think it's lost some functionality, usability or aesthetic value then you can go twist because we used our free time to make the changes and that means it's above criticism."

My concern has never really been the sad state of the forum. I didn't particularly like the changes made but that was easy to deal with: I simply did not use it as much. It's not like it's very important to "debate" with people who you will never meet in real life.

What made me outraged enough to actually post in this thread was the double standards displayed by the staff - volunteers or not, picking a fight with someone and then using your powers to silence and ban them is not something that I personally feel is justifiable in any circumstance.

Now, I suspect - because I know how this kind of thing tends to work - that while there may have been some small disagreement among the staff about what to do about this incident you have decided to close ranks and present a united front because anything else risks undermining the authority of the moderation team, as would admitting that mistakes were made and that the disgraceful actions of certain staffmembers resulted in the targetting and banishment of a vocal forumgoer and competent Diplomacy player.

Which brings me to the next point: when there is a policy decision made and a united front presented, bo_sox, speaking privately about the issue I have with the site's moderation is going to be fruitless. I will be fed the "party line" - that yes, tempers were high on both sides of the argument, but Condescension deserved a ban because he made a new account to get around the timed silence and wasn't part of the super-special club.

The fact that the staffmembers attacking him had the privilege not to face a silence for their disgraceful conduct would be entirely glossed over - and that's why you, Byron, will not be receiving an e-mail. Sorry.

The only way things are likely to change is if enough people speak up over the injustice of such a situation - but seeing as how I am clearly in the minority here, I can be safely dismissed.

[dargorygel]

OR... we meant what we said. And Condy was banned not for his content. But for the issue we banned him for.

[CommanderByron]

CroakandDagger

As one of the newer mods i don’t want to get off on a bad foot with you, I think we’ve had pretty reasonable and fun conversations in the past and I don’t see how me having a grib of blue squares near my name should change that.

I think it’s been made pretty clear that Condescensions ban wasn’t because of this thread but because of actions he took to create multi-accounts to subvert a temporary silence. He’ll be given the opportunity like everyone who is banned to appeal and talk with the site owners. That’s on his accord. In the meantime, I want to know what I can do to hear you; what do you miss about the old forum exactly? What don’t you like about the new one? Be specific and honest; “ugly” isn’t specific, would you like to see customization added in the future? What things would make you happy because it’s ideas that drive the development of the site.

[CroakandDagger]

I don't find anything about the new forum objectionable enough to complain about it, and I hold no particular animosity towards anyone of the volunteers who does their job without indulging in bear-baiting using the site's userbase on the side. There's a shortlist of minor quality of life improvements that could potentially be made, but it's nothing I would write a page long essay about.

At the top of the page, you get a welcome to the site as you do on every main webdiplomacy tab, but you cannot access your webdiplomacy profile by clicking on your name.

In forum threads, there is no simple and straightforward way to find someone else's player profile. Previously they were but a click away, but now i'm not even sure how you would go about it. I think you might have to find a game in which both you and they played and find them that way, or wait until their name shows up in the "latest posts" feed and use the link there from the site homepage?

The private messages link next to the aforementioned welcome does not seem to lead to the private messages associated with the main webdiplomacy site, which you can still only access via the expand link by the notes section on the webdiplomacy homepage.

And finally, I just think phpBB forums look kinda naff and ugly. But there's nothing really to be done about that.

[bo_sox48]

Those are three projects we are working on, actually, and that's not even close to the whole list. We have extremely limited resources for making changes to the interface, especially when it comes to styling, but connecting the site profiles to forum profiles, integrating the new PM system across the whole site, and making it so that your games are accessible from the forum like they are at the top of the home page are all projects we're prioritizing right now. We need patience, though. The schedule on these updates is slow and inconsistent, mainly because development projects take a lot of volunteer hours and it is very hard to get everyone's schedules to line up, especially when one of the biggest contributors, kestas, is in Australia. We really just need a lot of patience and those big projects will get done at some point.

[CommanderByron]

Croak, I’m not asking this to be viscous actually curious. Do you have the kind of knowledge or experience to any developmental work? If so would you be interested in helping to achieve some of our shared goals?

Personally I’m excited for when we work out the bumps; one of my favorite improvements to the PM system is the group message ability. I can’t wait to be able to have private group conversations or send out game ids and passwords to all members of a game. I do hate that the old PM system is still serperate (but it has to be til it’s fixed). You mention not being able to easily get to a players profile from the forum (totally an issue) the easiest work around I’ve found is to have the find user page under the help/donate section open in a seeperate tab and just copy and paste. It’s still a drag. But it’ll do for now.

[CroakandDagger]

I don't think I would be very helpful. An amateur is likely to be more harm than good to a serious project, and whenever I need to do some coding I generally ask a good friend of mine for advice. She's much better at this sort of thing than I am.