Recap of thursdays meeting.

[Tallgeese]

A meeting was held thursday, October 28 in the Cardinal room of the UC. This was not a general meeting, but more a get together of the students on campus to discuss complaints within the club and possible solutions for them.

 

The articles in discussion are:

1. Reworking the forum rules. After looking at Liam's post on forum rules, what we proposed is actually pretty close to what we already have. What those at the meeting wanted was to have more definition of articles such as trolling, flaming, and off topic posts; and slightly more in the way of punishments for breaking said rules.

 

2. The second article brought up was on on the private and executive discussion boards. The current executives feel there should not be 2 separate private boards on the forums, if any at all. We propose an "Archive" board be created to hold all the sensitive data such as passwords, and logs, but should only be used to hold this data. All other discussion should be public. IF private discussion are still required on here, only one section should be made for it, and those with access to this section should be limited.

 

3. The final item brought up was creating a "moderator" position on the board so that only a handful have the ability to edit threads and moderate posts.

 

 

The above are only IDEAS we are discussing. At this time I am asking everyone on here to weigh in on these idea, and give counter ideas. The current students are by no means trying to *edited* off anyone with these ideas, and are simply trying to make the forums better for everyone.

 

I will be watching this thread carefully and I will be removing any off topic posts or flames. I hope we all can be constructive from here on out.

[MasterP]

1) We've had the same rules here for years and until recently have never really had any issues. If someone stepped out of line it was dealt with quickly and effectively and threads very rarely got out of hand. If the students feel that the rules need more clarity then by all means add it in but you need to be careful not to limit or overstep the scope of the rules. If you ban dissention you'll never get any ideas that aren't in step with your own, which makes the entire discussion meaningless. Now there's nothing wrong with honest debate and well-mannered arguments, and I know you know this, but any rule changes will have to keep such "disagreements" in mind. There's a fine line between disagreement and flaming. The current rules allow for those treading that line to be dealt with even though they may not be directly stepping over, if you get specific in the rules you may not be allowed to take action until they clearly step over it.

 

Banning trolling, flamming, and thread derailing is a novel concept, and we all know the endgoal is to banhammer me for it, but are you prepared to ban Liquid the next time he does it? Or Kazka? More importantly, do you think the next administration will be as willing to enforce the rules equally? What if there's a disagreement about whether or not a post is in violation of the rules? What happens when someone is banned and complains to SGA about it? Are the club execs prepared to take the flak for it or will they cave and unban them with a "warning"? What if a negative post is made about someone not doing their job, does commentary on indisputably poor performance have to be spun in a positive manner? These questions have to be considered when deciding to strengthen the rules here.

 

2) A private board like that already exists. It's visible to root admins only and that likely will not change because passwords and serial keys don't need to be available to all club execs, lest we get a disgruntled VP or secretary hacking into the database or taking down the gameservers remotely, even after resigning. Before you say that won't happen, it's already happened before and the database password in the hands of the right *edited*ed off exec can be devastating. One command, run remotely, could delete the column that stores everyone's passwords and then we're pretty much boned.

 

As to the private sections, we started out with only one but split it off into two to allow for more people to interact in private discussions without infringing on the discussion of execs. The "exec discussion" board allows the current execs to discuss issues privately amoungst themselves and the "private discussion" board is open to the current execs as well as all previous execs, CLs, and alumni. If you want to remerge it and only have the exec discussion so be it but considering the recent downward trend in discussions held on here prior to being brought forward at meetings to be voted on I think you'll be ignoring a ton of good advice that past execs and alumni have to offer. You are MUCH more likely to have flaming and extreme negativity on here if you don't allow, or "forget" to have, a discussion on a big change before voting on it, especially if something's been tried before and failed. When you strip a car down, you'll always find an engine, the same can be said with gaming clubs. No matter the location, the students, or the games, there's a fundamental set of variables that will always remain the same. The past execs, CLs, and alumni have been around long enough to know what those are and help you avoid the pitfalls that many other univerity clubs face when changing between generations but we can only do that if you let us.

 

Now I know who's pushing this, and I know why he's doing it, but like I've said several times now this is a great idea in theory but never works in practice. There's always going to be discussions that don't need to be seen by the public. Perfect example is from the WCUGA's own message board, a private AIM discussion was posted that included things like stealing money and a half dozen other things that SGA frowns on but since they didn't have a private section it was posted in the open for everyone to read. And everyone did read it. It was later deleted after they figured it out but by the time execs remove something it's almost always too late to kill. An example that relates to us: what if you have an unruly member and you want to ban him from the board or remove him from the club? Are you going to discuss his banning in the open, where any member can comment on it including the member in question, or do you want that to be kept a little more private? Without a private section you would likely have to call an exec-only meeting to discuss it, which not only wastes everyone's time but it usually takes a day or more of notice to get the entire exec council in the same room which means any truely pressing issue is left unresolved. The private section would eliminate the need for an executive meeting and all the hassles that go with it while simultaneously decreasing the time it takes to have execs weigh in on an issue and come to a consensus on the course of action.

 

3) The problem with a single moderator is that one person, or small group of people, are responsible for keeping everything in line. As it is now, if someone spams or derails a thread, any current exec or root can deal with it. That's like 12 people. You're much more likely to get things done than if 2 people are doing it. When was the last time an on-topic thread was editted or a non-trolling/flaming/derailing post removed? I think the driving force behind this issue is a fear that admin abuse will occur rather than stopping actually occuring abuse. Aside from a tiny handful of execs, which are no longer active here, we've never had admins abuse their powers to squash legitimate discussions or remove posts that weren't in violation of the rules. Sure it happens occassionally, we're all human here, but a few isolated incidents is no reason to overhaul the entire system. If something isn't broke, and this obviously isn't, it doesn't need fixing.

 

Furthermore, given that exec use of the forums is at an alltime low, who do you have in mind to be the moderators? I'm sure you guys want students to do it but who in exec is truely active here, or can devote themselves to logging in 5+ times per day and reading every post in every thread? That's what it takes to moderate this board. The first thought that comes to mind would be the PC VP but since he hasn't logged in for over a month I'm not sure he'd even be qualified to pick moderators at this point. Not intending to offend or flame, it's just the truth. You would need students who you know can do the job without bias or prejudice and those aren't the dime a dozen they used to be. Also worth considering is what happens when the moderators don't agree on something? You'd obviously have to have a "lead moderator", which would also have to read every post in every thread, or a way to arbitrate disputes between them which means another mile of bureaucratic red tape. Is all that really worth it to fix a non-issue?

[a waffle]

What about a tournament section, was anything along those lines discussed? I messaged Liam a while ago but have yet to hear back from him.

[Shannannonnan]

What about a tournament section, was anything along those lines discussed? I messaged Liam a while ago but have yet to hear back from him.

 

No that wasn't discussed but i remember you mentioning under the advertisement thread something along those lines. I'm sure daniel will be checking back in here again before i am able to see him due to the fact that im going straight from class to work tomoro, but i will definitely mention it to him then when i see him. I think it is a good idea, especially because we are trying to bring in lots of sponsors, some of which will be LAN centers. i was thinking though, that rather than just a tournament section, it could be a sponsor's ad section where we would advertise anything the sponsor's are wanting us to advertise for them, whether it be sales on items, tournaments, or new release dates. I dont want it to detract from the tournaments though, so maybe sub sections under a sponsor's ad section. What does everything think about that instead?

[newrayz]

Furthermore, given that exec use of the forums is at an alltime low, who do you have in mind to be the moderators? I'm sure you guys want students to do it but who in exec is truely active here, or can devote themselves to logging in 5+ times per day and reading every post in every thread? That's what it takes to moderate this board. The first thought that comes to mind would be the PC VP but since he hasn't logged in for over a month I'm not sure he'd even be qualified to pick moderators at this point. Not intending to offend or flame, it's just the truth. You would need students who you know can do the job without bias or prejudice and those aren't the dime a dozen they used to be. Also worth considering is what happens when the moderators don't agree on something? You'd obviously have to have a "lead moderator", which would also have to read every post in every thread, or a way to arbitrate disputes between them which means another mile of bureaucratic red tape. Is all that really worth it to fix a non-issue?

 

 

What about splitting the moderator duties for each section of the forums? Have someone in charge of keeping up with the pc section, someone else for the console, someone else for random, etc. You could break it down even more if you really wanted to micromanage.

 

As far as logging in 5+ times a day, who can we list here that does that? It's around what 10-15 people maybe? I'd gladly be a moderator, although no one in the current administration knows me other than people in the random/political section. Also I'm not a member of the club, or university, but hell I've been around since 06 without issues (minus some 'friendly' arguments with MasterP )

 

Refering to the OP, I wasn't aware that flaming and spamming was a problem with forums, and I check them every day. The rules always seemed pretty clear to me, and like I said, I've checked these boards for a few years now.

Edited November 1, 2010 by major newrayz

[Liam]

We have a sponsor section, its called 'Gaming News' on the forums (we pin current sponsors) and there is a sponsor section on the main site.

 

AFAIK, I havent' discussed a tournament section with anyone, but I could be crazy.

[a waffle]

When I checked the "Gaming News" I didn't see any pinned sponsors. Is that because the club doesn't have any now or what?

[Liam]

http://www.wcugaming.org/forums/index.php?/topic/11072-firedaemon/

 

http://www.wcugaming.org/sponsors.aspx

[AMerrill]

If it's not broke, don't fix it.

 

1. As far as the rules go, we have a GUIDELINE. The guideline works to satisfy all situations. We don't need a written rule for each possible scenario. We are adults and can make decisions.

 

2. The two private sections are necessary and self explanatory. These sections gives the right access to the right people.

 

The exec private section allows for current elected officials, founders, etc...to discuss sensitive club info and keep things like cd keys, payment info, LAN checkoff, etc...Which only a few select individuals needs to see/discuss. Why does the general public need to see what things we are doing to prepare for the LAN? Why does the general public need to be involved in a discussion about our staff adviser? Sure we could let them see the discussion, but WHY? I can give several reason why not, but I could not give reasons for why they should...one clearly outweighs the other.

 

The second private section is for past executive to provide input and assist in the development of the club. Past execs shouldn't have access to see current cd keys, contracts, etc...so this section was needed.

 

3. AFAIK, our moderator team is doing fine?

 

 

I think instead of worrying about mi-newt things such as this, that really doesn't need attention. The exec staff should be focusing on filling these servers and preparing for the next LAN.

[Adam Faulkner]

Thank you newrays that is a novel idea. Lets put CL's back incharge of their forums and get them active. If Everyone was active on the forums more would be accomplished by creating means for people to communicate and get things done.

 

agree with everyone where do you stand on this view president. Honestly the most important opinion is yours.