AuthorTopic: To Whom it should concern.  (Read 6493 times)

Offline PyroPiranha

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To Whom it should concern.

on: August 18, 2005, 03:53:37 am

I want to apologize ahead of time if this post comes accrossed as a bit harsh, it probably is.  From what I've seen, the majority of these candidates running for these elections have treated the concept like a joke, throwing out every political cliche and more imaginable, not saying every candidate, but a majority have.  All I can say is, if you aren't going to take the position seriously, please do the community a favor and don't run for the position at all.  As for the community, sure the joke is mighty fun to run with for awhile, but in the long run it's just going to be another blow to the forums, which is having enough issues in it's own respect getting back on it's feet.  My biggest question is, as complex and perhaps at a glance funny a political forum system seems, there's a good idea in it.  If you guys choose some serious representatives, you will be able to directly address issues that affect you and everyone.  I'm not just saying this because I'm a moderater, in fact I just finished a 30 minute or so bitching to Pep on why I thought the idea of a government placed in pixelation would fail, and I realized after every word I said why it would sort of work.  Because when concerns like mine, or yours are formed, they can easily be resolved without any dispute of it being done.  We all miss the old pixelation, I know.  But guys, the old forum was lines of code, we're people.  Cowboy up and lets rebuild, without using the excuse of stubborn people don't want change, ___ is futile/pointless, or any other excuses.  Pep has presented us with the opportunity to make the forum, literally all it can and should be.  As complex and silly as the system looks at a glance, it can work.

Now that little bit is taken care of, I'd like to address the serious candidates, or the now serious candidates, and I look forward to some responses, and I hope the vast majority of serious members of the forum do.  Some concerns that I found on the old forum where the quality of posts.  I'm not talking the quality of art, in respects of a new pixel artists in comparison to a great.  I'm talking about quality in terms of well thought out replies, or something someone has generally taken time, and put pride in.  I don't really like these posts "I know it sucks, but here it is...lol!" That's no attitude for improvement, and if you're looking for sympathy, and a pat on the back that says it's good, you're in the wrong place.  Pixelation is a critique forum.  Does this give everyone the right to rip everyone apart?  Hell no, that isn't teaching someone by just pointing out faults of a piece in such a stylistic and malicious way with hopes of gaining some sort of "outlaw, no holds barred" critiquing reputation.  Sure, it's great to express views, and I'm all for being honest, but there is also some degree of morals that people need to hold when critiquing.  I'm a fan of the 1/3 ration for critiquing.  One positive aspect of the piece for every three genuine critiques.  If you can't find something good, that means one of two things.  One being, you're in no position to reply, or the other being this person took little time in a piece.  And instead of calling the second option to every ones attention with a reply such as "you took like 5 minutes on this crap, other people who's threads deserve c+c get bumped because of crap like this" Leave the thread alone.  If everyone leaves it alone, the people who need and deserve c+c will get it, without needless arguing and defacing of other members.  I have been on the other spectrum of a member, I sure as hell wasn't always a moderator.  I know how problems arise, very few are because of grand scale events, they result over little things that are easily prevented.  That's where you candidates are left, to propose to us, yes even the moderators how such issues I have mentioned should/could be resolved.

That was the past, I'd like to address the future now.  The easiest way to fix a problem, is for the problem to never happen.  I think that with a new forum, we're presented with two opportunities.  Evolution, or devolution. Sure, big words to throw around when dealing with "just a forum", but none the less, the forum can be ours, to improve skills, make friends, and debate issues peacefully.  Debating and fighting are two entirely different things.  With starting over, in a certain respect we have the duty(moderators, representatives, and users, even the casual ones) to rebuild this place to something bigger and better then pixelation.  What attracted everyone to pixelation?  You'll get similar answers from everybody.  It was an orderly forum, that had no more problems then the next one, where people where constantly improving and helping out.  It was a place for employers to find employees, basically a pixel artists dreams.  That was the appearance on the surface at least, any regular would know there was subtle problems that festered into bigger ones.  Just keep those in mind when we rebuild.  I believe that certain issues the moderation staff, myself included may have been a bit too layed back on punishment.  Or where we?  Things like this is why you guys absolutely need to take running and voting serious, the titles may sound funny, but the ideas that can come from them are dead serious.

I would like to hear feedback from not just representatives, but other moderators, and users, so that I can have an idea where everyone stands with some of the issues I brought up :)

- Mike

Offline Doomraider

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Re: To Whom it should concern.

Reply #1 on: August 18, 2005, 04:03:02 am
You make alot of good points in this post, I'm sure alot of people will agree with me in this. Especially the part about making changes, we definitly should work together to get this forum built nice and simple,educational and fun  ;D

Offline Dogmeat

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Re: To Whom it should concern.

Reply #2 on: August 18, 2005, 04:57:00 am

Now that little bit is taken care of, I'd like to address the serious candidates, or the now serious candidates, and I look forward to some responses, and I hope the vast majority of serious members of the forum do.  Some concerns that I found on the old forum where the quality of posts.  I'm not talking the quality of art, in respects of a new pixel artists in comparison to a great.  I'm talking about quality in terms of well thought out replies, or something someone has generally taken time, and put pride in.  I don't really like these posts "I know it sucks, but here it is...lol!" That's no attitude for improvement, and if you're looking for sympathy, and a pat on the back that says it's good, you're in the wrong place.  Pixelation is a critique forum.  Does this give everyone the right to rip everyone apart?  Hell no, that isn't teaching someone by just pointing out faults of a piece in such a stylistic and malicious way with hopes of gaining some sort of "outlaw, no holds barred" critiquing reputation.  Sure, it's great to express views, and I'm all for being honest, but there is also some degree of morals that people need to hold when critiquing.  I'm a fan of the 1/3 ration for critiquing.  One positive aspect of the piece for every three genuine critiques.  If you can't find something good, that means one of two things.  One being, you're in no position to reply, or the other being this person took little time in a piece.  And instead of calling the second option to every ones attention with a reply such as "you took like 5 minutes on this crap, other people who's threads deserve c+c get bumped because of crap like this" Leave the thread alone.  If everyone leaves it alone, the people who need and deserve c+c will get it, without needless arguing and defacing of other members.  I have been on the other spectrum of a member, I sure as hell wasn't always a moderator.  I know how problems arise, very few are because of grand scale events, they result over little things that are easily prevented.  That's where you candidates are left, to propose to us, yes even the moderators how such issues I have mentioned should/could be resolved.


Quality of posts: From what I saw then ( a year ago ) and what I still see to this day, maybe more so then before were the ammount of silly posts gone too far. It's ok to have fun and post funny stuff, but honestly I think it gets out of hand a lot of the time. One of the things I hate the most is when someone posts a serious topic, and it gets "raided" by silly posters and I almost always want to look for a "delete this response from your thread" button because not only is it disrespectful to the person who's posting, but it's really a let down for anyone reviewing the post for serious information.

As for replies to someone asking for crits, honestly, I see a great crit every once in a great while, lately, it seems only when cohersed, and by that I mean, when a mod, or a respected member of the community voices their concerns about such issues, and suddenly you get a few folks posting what seems to be "forced" crits, and this is usually short lived. Honestly, I think people can tell when you're being genuine about your crits. I never see anyone giving an awesome crit on someone who is well, awesome, like kenneth or something. I still remember a crit I gave to, I think his name was xanthier, he made this alien looking thing, and it had a lot of mistakes, but I took about a hour to actually circle points in the piece, give them numbers and go step by step in my crit on what I thought could make it look better. The problem is, criting is alot of work, even for some of us older members, especially a good crit, which we would all like to give.

My suggestion, and this is inspired by my last trip to craigslist. They have a system on there, on the forums, where if someone posts something decent they get a few points by someone, if it's really out of place, they get negative points. This could work on the forum, getting crit points maybe, and I know someone right now is thinking " well this can be seriously abused by those who are silly, the same people that post ridiculous stuff" well, my solution to that problem would be, only people who "have" critpoints can "give" them. So we would all begin with maybe 5 crit points, and in the beginning the newly appointed reps and mods would be responsible for monitoring the entire forum, and giving/taking away crit points. Maybe people can have a special flag, coded into the forum, which designates it a "crit wanted" post, and only people with positive crit points can actually post there. Only mods can give negative crit points beyond 0 so if someone had -25 crit points, they may be on a "time out" from the forum for a day or something, I think this might be a good behavoir control tool, but not too extreme, it would keep order and also give people a little incentive to actually post good crit, and also to recieve it.

Maybe someone can design some kind of flash tool, to embed into the forum, i noticed SMF has flash enabled, and this tool would allow the criter to draw simple shapes on the image in question, like circles, so you can circle areas that you would like to talk about and stuff.

Thinking more complex into the above system, people who consistently give great crits, and actually help community members, will eventually achieve high levels of crit points, they could have a title like "excellent criter" i know criter is such a bad word, but that can be worked out. Just throwing these off the top of my head, you wanted responses, heres mine :D

I hope i've given you a little insight on how my brain works, and actually show some of the people on this forum, I actually do care about how this goes, and I've had ideas like this ever since I came across pixelation.

I think the idea of electing reps is a good one, my only concern is I hope people actually vote for people who will actually make a difference, and I'm not talking about myself, because I will send ideas to the mods, regardless of weather I am one or not. I think the idea of having it rotating, is actually a good way to control it too, because people who do a good job will probably stay in office, this prevents people from making a lot of "promises" but never delivering on them, because once they are voted out I don't think people would be inclined to vote them back in again.

To close: Pixelation is growing, it always does, yes, we've hit a lot of bumps, by moving the forum around a lot, and it's hard, but every time we grow, and we're growing now, and the bigger we get, the more organization is required. I think documenting rules, and how systems work is very important too. Anyone remember the pixelation test that you HAD to pass to join? Yea, it wasn't one of those tests you could just guess the answers on either. Anyway....

Thanks!

- Dog
Daisuke Nagano Yokoyama

Offline Blick

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Re: To Whom it should concern.

Reply #3 on: August 18, 2005, 05:25:35 am
I love the idea for you crit points system, dogmeat. It's a lot like the karma system a lot of boards use, if someone posts stuff that's on topic and meaningful they get more points and when they have to have a post moderated they lose points, at least I think that was how the karma system worked. Back to your idea, I think it'd help a lot around here for those wanting serious critique. It almost makes me think of the old days with the two sections, general critique and serious critique, where general was just quick critiques and serious was where people would write a critique the length of a novel. With your idea of these crit points, we could sort of force that sort of system again, maybe have a section in the forum that people without enough points can't even get into, it could increase their curiosity and pretty much make them compete for the most points. It'd also be easier than flagging each individual topic that certain members could reply in.

On a quick sidenote, wow dogmeat, I can't believe you even remember the Pixelation that you had to pass the test to get in... I had forgotten about that testing until just now.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2005, 05:27:50 am by Blick »

Offline Rydin

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Re: To Whom it should concern.

Reply #4 on: August 18, 2005, 05:56:59 am
A few words about the canidate system, or representatives or what ever. I feel this is a rather unique and potentially great idea. I actually think this would be the first forum to have and impliment its own government (of course, I hardly have been to any other forum...).  Now, this place right now, isn't exactly the full, raw, real deal.....yet.  It is a temp forum, a place to test out new ideas and concepts, experiment with features without very high of a risk, and most of all, something to take Pixelation's place while it is being "rebuilt".  Now imagine if we were all hard assed here, taking everything 100% seriously. Never taking time to laugh, only focusing on posting art, and handling problems, etc. I think alot less people would come here. Sure, we should have a bit of seriousness, to look respectable to all the publishers and developers, or other people on the outside looking in, but right now, its just us; there is nobody looking in. Why not have a bit of fun and challenge the new features, after all, this is what is going to be in the actual forums, and now could be the only time we could challenge the system (allthough I think Pep would be very open to change if there actually was something majorly disliked by the public), and I don't think we should waste this golden chance.  Also, think of all the humor and comedy surrounding the political debates of America. SNL, The Daily Show, etc. Usually topics brought up in these shows are real topics, but the view points are different from the usual standard, and maybe its these alternate view points being expressed freely that keep a nation from a revolution. And, if anybody can remember, Pixelation used to only have one rule, one formed and based on respect, and that rule is, and still should be, "Don't be an ass." Anyways, I think there is only one way to tell if this rep thing will work or not, and that is to try.

Now, some words about these so-called 'problems'.  I quite personnally, during all of my time as a member here, and back when pixelation was around, haven't saw any forum threatening problems at the member level. The main problems were stuff like where to host images, how to post an image on the forum, and other similar stuff. But personally, I really don't think there was much problem with the users. If a user got off hand, she/he got warned or banned when needed, and it forum life resumed unharmed.  I personally think we are trying to protect ourselves from something that isn't even there. Paranoid. I think we should focus our efforts to the real problem; the forum's stability. It should be addressed before all of this member fortifying, renforcing, and methods; we aren't trying to make a fallout shelter or a panic room, but rather, something more like a coffee shop or a cafe.

I feel really bad for typing so much, and I feel that I have gone against my biggest policy, so I am going to have to pixel overtime to make up for this :D...
« Last Edit: August 18, 2005, 06:01:18 am by Rydin »
Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

Offline lief

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Re: To Whom it should concern.

Reply #5 on: August 18, 2005, 06:20:08 am
Quote
It should be addressed before all of this member fortifying, renforcing, and methods; we aren't trying to make a fallout shelter or a panic room, but rather, something more like a coffee shop or a cafe.

I heartily agree.  Not everyone does though.  This is not bad, it just means pixelation means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  For some it is where they come to learn, others come here to inject some collagen into their egos, some people even come here because they are not wanted anywhere else.  Most cafes do not have behaviour rules per se, besides social etiquette.  Pixelation just is.  We can see what is bad, and we can try to correct it.  But we must also let it become what it may in its own way, otherwise there are too many ways it can fall short.  Maybe rebuilding causes too many expectations?  I for one like the rebuilding process, it offers great opportunities for evolution! onwards and upwards!

Offline Peppermint Pig

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Re: To Whom it should concern.

Reply #6 on: August 18, 2005, 03:38:37 pm
To generally respond to the posts:

Yes, SMF supports Flash. I was hoping to find someone who's either good with Flash or Java to create a collaborative tool suited to pixel artists.

Yes, SMF supports karma. I'm not sure how well it can be tuned to our needs, and well, I'd rather remove postcounts and other things to strengthen the focus. We do want a 3 strikes system, though that's not quite the same as praising people for good critique. PixelZone2 was going to have the monetary system, as I have disucssed before. I think we'll keep things a little more straightforward in that area.

Speaking on the basic problems, how should we solve the image hosting issue? Who are the options? Should we find a way to host. PixelZone died because of abuses in hosting. We have 65gb of bandwidth per month currently. Might we want to set something up?

I make regular backups of the server data now, because I have access to it (YESS!!!!).

Good comments from everyone about rebuilding and evolution. To show we are evolving and thinking, we will have rules separated from etiquette, and as each quarter goes by, different representatives will take power, and hopefully the voting process will get 'wise' to what works.

I did want to say that we COULD give members the ability to delete threads in their own topics. We could even give it to members of a higher postcount rank so that it's not abused? If we're to respect the abililty for everyone to be responsible, we ought to give people more powers/rights. I would like to state that I was morally opposed to the idea that Diced proposed of deleting threads in your topics: Diced felt it was a good way to self moderate, and I thought it was open to the possibility that people would delete threads made by the people they don't like. Postcount doesn't absolutely determine the fairness of a person, so this is something we'll have to weigh. I also think representatives could be given some powers, such as locking. Feedback?

BTW, I hope I'm not raining on your parade, but there's no consecutive term for the same position! But there is more I haven't explained yet. You can be a representative for two consecutive terms in different positions (wonder what that means). I'll explain more later today.. I have to get the rules finished (There was a power outage last night).

Offline Evan

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Re: To Whom it should concern.

Reply #7 on: August 18, 2005, 05:35:26 pm
I think one of the main reasons I joined this election thing was to prevent the massive flood of useless posts, as you said Pyro. I got sick of the old pixelation (well, not OLD pixelation, but the pixelation near the [insert-whatever-happened-here]) where you would make a post, and it would either get no replies and pushed to the third page, or it would get a bunch of replies just saying "wow, that's great, is it for a game?" If I'm elected, I'll put the kabash on that. Even if I'm not, I'm still not gonna stand for it. Hell, there is a report button.