Rules...

[Wide Eyed Wanderer]

I want to make it clear again that my original comments were in no way aimed at anyone in particular; I also want to say that I never made the accusation of 'jobs for the boys' when it comes to moderation. My original point was about the number of mods we had and that perhaps we should go easy on the rules for a while until the forum gets a little bigger.

There has been no abuse of power for quite some time on Lea, but as anyone who has read my various posts in the last couple of weeks could see, I'm thinking about the long term future of the board. As I said in another topic, the Blu Ray release is likely to see an upsurge in members. Maybe not as much as 2004 (it is another 7 years on after all) but there are still likely to be more than we've had in the last couple of years. I want to see the forum prepare for this in the best way possible and make a few changes to the way things are done and perceived around here.

As a regular member there is very little I can do except highlight potential issues and try to open people's eyes to the problems and perceptions that may occur. I may not be considered one of the 'old guard' but I was a very regular member on the first board, and saw it disintegrate into petty arguments, favouritism and power-hungry moderation. This happened once and it could easily happen again; that's what the purpose of this topic was.

If anyone's been offended personally then, well, you misread my comments. Otherwise I'm sorry if the issue is causing consternation but I feel the forum has to be set up right for the future, and this is the best time to do it.

[Sadiki]

Hmm well we do take these thing in consideration, but I'm really sorry if I don't see what the fuss is about. I do agree it's good to think a head. Not forcing the rules from beginning thought is out of the question. Rules are rules and they are there for everyone. I don't think any of the rules are that hard to follow and I don't see anyone going to over board. To be honest I'm quite curious about what triggered you to make a thread like this? Was it closing down the Mount. Kilimanjaro from the public? If so I'm informing you that we are talking about making the forum post-able for everyone, but not allowing them to make threads, why? Because it really is a forum for announcements and news considering the forum and people were using it previously to ask questions and such where the correct place for that would be Rafiki's tree. If the trigger was statement about not posting other people's art in "post your TLK fan art" it's really because that art does not fit in description of "your", if one wants to post someone elses art they are more than welcome to start a thread dedicated for showing art from other people as long as that artist is not against their art being posted elsewhere. The third thing I do have in mind what may have triggered this thread was to make Kanu a moderator which by far is feel like the biggest issue here by what people are saying. Well I can't really think of better people than we have to watch art threads than the ones that we have. KS, Kanu, Azerane and Sharifu all are artists and know quite a few artists that draw Lion king fanart and probably are one of the most knowledgeable about if there is an artist who doesn't want their art posted or if someone is trying to post someones art as their own when it's actually not. Admins... well Fuzzy and Vidan are here mostly to get things running, both know more about coding than I do. Nathalie and Amanda are both original Admins so there is no point on dropping them. So that all comes down to me really. Yeah I could give the Vbulletin for someone else I suppose, go back to super moderator or even just a regular member, but I don't really see any sense in that. But yeah basically I'm just very curious about that.

[Sharifu]

I don't really understand the problems arising from this thread... Yes there are a lot of mods and admins right now compared to the number of members, but this version of Lea Halalela is barely even a week old, of course there is not going to be a lot of members yet. But I do think it's good to have a few mods and admins from different time zones so there is almost always someone online to fix a problem. Really, I am not a moderator because I am part of a group or click or whatever. I rarely ever use my mod "powers", all I ever seem to do is every once in a while move a thread for someone or edit the title of a thread because the person who made the thread asked a mod to do it for them because they can't edit it themselves once it has been posted. I could of became an admin when this new Lea was created, but I wouldn't know how to use the admin features anyway. So I definitely don't care to have "higher" status then every one else, but I don't think any of the admins here became an admin for that reason. They just care about Lea Halalela and want to make sure everything is ok with the forums. I never tried to be apart of a group or click separate from the regular members. I always thought of Lea Halalela members as being very close to each other even if they are admins, mods or regular members, I'm not sure why having this many admins and mods is a problem, at least on Lea where everyone seems to be so nice to each other. STM becoming an admin I think is a good idea since he recreated Lea Halalela and understands how to edit things here. If it weren't for him, I still don't think we would have a version of Lea Halalela up anymore. When the first Lea Halalela went down, no one knew how to recreate Lea, that's why it took so long for a new version of Lea to be made and Simba 04 had to find and pay someone who didn't really even care about Lea to make it. I appreciate Simba 04 though for getting someone to recreate it, but now that the second version of Lea Halalela is gone, and I'm glad STM is the one who recreated this Lea Halalela, that way we know for sure there wont be another Lea "death". I will make sure of it, I go to Lea pretty much every day, so if there is a problem, STM will know about it. But I think I am rambling now... Well I hope people got my point I was getting at.

[Sombolia]

I was a very regular member on the first board, and saw it disintegrate into petty arguments, favouritism and power-hungry moderation. This happened once and it could easily happen again; that's what the purpose of this topic was.

I still don't understand exactly what's going on here... I know nobody wants to point fingers, but could you go into a bit more detail about what you're referring to? Because I don't remember any of that happening, but then again, I tended to go through long periods of inactivity, so I don't know.

I do remember we had a bit of drama way back on the original board, but I haven't seen anything like that for years.

[King Simba]

Alright, I'm a little confused too, but I don't really see any problems with this "mods vs. members" thing. Everything I was gonna say has been pointed out already. I don't feel any better being a moderator than a regular member. It's a honour, but really, I don't feel I'm better than any other member just because I have mod powers. I'll close/move a thread if need be, but only if it gets out of hand. Maybe you should provide some examples of what you're referring to, like Somby said.

I can see your point about there being a great number of mods for the size of the forum, but I really don't think it's such a big problem. Lea will grow in the future, and so it's always better to have mods on hand in different time zones to deal with any problems.

[Wide Eyed Wanderer]

I still don't understand exactly what's going on here... I know nobody wants to point fingers, but could you go into a bit more detail about what you're referring to? Because I don't remember any of that happening, but then again, I tended to go through long periods of inactivity, so I don't know.

I do remember we had a bit of drama way back on the original board, but I haven't seen anything like that for years.

It was the original board I was talking about, there was nothing like that on the last board.

I wanted to raise some points and warnings about potential issues in the future, but everyone's taken it to be an attack on the forum as it is. Whether I explained myself incorrectly or people are just being overly defensive I don't know.

Frankly I said my piece on the last page and it's clear that nobody else sees any issue so I'll just drop it.

[HasiraKali]

Eh, it's the internet, people will always misinterpret something.


Personally, I'd like to thank WEW for being concerned about the board. It really shows that this board means a lot to many people. I think that's why it got relocated so quickly after the outage just a few weeks ago. I'm glad you are concerned for the future. WEW, if you have any suggestions for things that we can do to be ready for the possibility of a member rush with the Bluray release, please feel free to PM or MSN me!


As for the mod population, I think it's going to stand as is for the time being. It's really not a big deal at the moment, and I think we need to focus on getting things up and running the way they were and fixing anything that needs fixing. After that, we can worry about staffing and see what needs to be done.

Again, you all bring up valid points which will be taken into account when more decisions are made. And again, anyone feel free to PM myself or any of the mods/admins with any other concerns, suggestions, comments. They really are appreciated and taken into consideration.

Thanks, y'all!

[Wide Eyed Wanderer]

Thanks Manda

[Dare]

Wicked, I know how it is to feel like an outcast because you don't know anybody irl, like many here do, but that doesn't make you an "outsider"(unless you are refering to Zira's pride, in which case it's personal preference. lol)

Hehe, please don't get me wrong - it's not that I feel like an outcast (though that feeling is by no means foreign to me). I meant more along the lines of...well, by my definition of what a "friend" is, there is no one here that I would honestly consider my "friend" and vice versa. This is not something that bothers me or makes me feel uncomfortable in any way, nor does it mean that simply because I don't consider someone to my friend, that must mean that I don't like them or will ignore them if they need help, etc.


At any rate, I just wanted folks to know that I wasn't "rewarded" for being anyone's "mate".


But Wicked's stratification of her online relationships is a whole 'nother Oprah apart from the (now apparently settled?) original topic, and I have nothing to say about the mod cliques/conduct on the original Lea nor the amount of mods we have now...but on the subject of enforcing rules (at least those stated in the Rules thread), I shall try not to be petty when enforcing them though I do believe that they should be enforced. There's no point in having rules if you're not willing to back them up...of course there's no reason to be a jerk when you're enforcing them either. I don't understand that mentality, both in online forums and offline with police, etc.

I shall go *poof* now.
Ciao!

[Juniper]

I don't think we'll have as many problems as we did on the first lea because I'm slightly less of a butthead now. Slightly. Just be cool, there aren't any problems going on, no one's causing issue at the moment. In fact, I propose a new forum rule: "Just be cool."

[Guntur]

I don't think we'll have as many problems as we did on the first lea because I'm slightly less of a butthead now. Slightly. Just be cool, there aren't any problems going on, no one's causing issue at the moment. In fact, I propose a new forum rule: "Just be cool."

Reminds me of John Travolta film.

Yeah, Even though I have a lot of acquaintance in this forum it would be better if we all cool regardless our status of friendship or power!

And again, this might refer to Gwen Stefani's song.

[Sombolia]

In fact, I propose a new forum rule: "Just be cool."

I like this rule.

[Aurelian]

I don't think we'll have as many problems as we did on the first lea because I'm slightly less of a butthead now. Slightly. Just be cool, there aren't any problems going on, no one's causing issue at the moment. In fact, I propose a new forum rule: "Just be cool."

Oh, please! You wern't the only one, Pnt. I was quite the immature emotional wreck back then. I used to but heads with Nephilim constantly. Now I miss her to death.(Sadly, she hasn't written in her LJ in ages, though that's not to say I have either, so I no longer have contact with her.)

Then, I left Lea for awhile at end of the first board due to a huge fight with Dani, though we made up later, and are on good terms now. We all have done much growing up in the last 8 years since Lea was born.

[TeeKay]

Since at least part of this thread is to do with me personally I thought I should say a few words.

I honestly have no idea where this idea of clickyness between the mods and the members has come from, I certainly never thought of myself any anything more than a regular member and never saw any evidence of any of the other mods feeling any different, also I have little, if any, contact with anyone outside of the board. granted, back on Lea Mk.II I rarely posted, that's a fair point. But that shouldn't be confused with inactivity, for what it's worth I visited the forum pretty much every day and kept on top of everything that was happening.

Yes, it does seem a bit redundant at the moment having more mods than members, but the site is still only a few days old and more people will be joining. I've not yet been re-instated as a mod but should it be decided necessary I'll happily continue to be one. However is this is really an issue for some people, I'll just as happily step aside, the last thing I want is to cause members upset.

This forum, throughout it's many incarnations, has been the one I've been a member of the longest, I think we have a fantastic member base and I really enjoy coming here, I had no idea some members thought the way they do about this.

[HasiraKali]

I'm closing this thread at the request of the OP.

Thanks,
~HK