Petition: Things need to change.

[Moonlight]

Ok guys. I have a petition, suggestion, whatever.

Long story short: I'm tired of the way things are going on around here. There has been a big decrease in member activity, mostly because of the way things are being run and how the community here is reacting to it.
As a dedicated member of this community, I hate to see things go down like this, and that's why I made this thread.

I really feel the need to list out what I feel is wrong with things around, hopefully y'all can back me up.

Not enough active staff: There are 4 active staff. RiotingSpectre, Killswitch, DrunkPunk, and Starfighter (and occasionally Bagheadinc). Every other Moderator I rarely see, which is a big problem. There needs to be some sort of staff overhaul.

Chatbox boundaries: I get that rules are rules, but seriously, "Can't reach, can't play" we cant use CENSORED words? Thats ridiculous.
People are worried that little kids can interperet censored curse words when in reality, they dont even know how to sign up for the forum.

Everyone's too damn worried about the rules: Jeezus. We aren't the CoD community. We don't have a ton of hatin' trolls. But when they do pop up, they need to be put in their rightful place. I got an infraction because I told a troll he was doing something useless. Like really? Please.

It's turning the community on the staff: The stricter the rules are, the more infractions are handed out. More people disagree, and the staff (who are only doing their jobs), are disliked and ridiculed.

Those are my complaints, I may add, but you get the point (I hope).

[Hydrus]

Not enough active staff: There are 4 active staff. RiotingSpectre, Killswitch, DrunkPunk, and Starfighter (and occasionally Bagheadinc). Every other Moderator I rarely see, which is a big problem. There needs to be some sort of staff overhaul in which new staff are introduced, and inactive staff are terminated.

I tried to hit that once. Didn't turn out pretty.

[XanXic]

I agree. I'd go further into it but Moonlights summaries cover the more common issues fairly well.

[Cherry_Balloon]

I haven't really noticed any changes, but that's probably because I'm newer here. But, I also don't want this place to tumble down, so I guess I'm signing this. However that works.

*signature*

[Wraith_Vague]

I don't really care about the rules or what the mods do. It just doesn't interest me. I'm here to hack and chew bubblegum and I'm all out hardware to improve. I'm bored with the OUYA and will be moving on go the GameStick since every facet of its introduction is more professional. I dont even care if these companies survive as long as I get my hands on their hardware. There are more important things than double posts, making sure threads are on target and advertising plans. Politics was always a boring subject for me. Nothing personal, just my way of saying you all have better things to do. If I'm not personally active here as a member lately, its because I have a real life with a mother that's battling cancer. Not everything is due to forum management.

I suspect most of the issue is that people are tired of empty promises. This forum will live or die by the decisions of OUYA.

[RiotingSpectre]

Your words didn't go on deaf ears, Moonlight. I'm the most potent member of this community in every aspect and my words should be taken in return with what I'm going to say next... To come out straight. I don't like the staff I work with one bit and there are numerous reasons as to why which I will be addressing further down, but it's gotten to the point where I don't even want to moderate anymore and am seriously considering demoting myself because of how things are run around here.

I've been a staff member for a little over a month now and even before that, I knew there were some issues with how things were run. I had gotten my way and got everybody I wanted to get demoted, demoted and moved on. However the problems didn't stop there as the people who I helped get promoted along with what few staff remained from my previous massacre were causing issues. The other staff members here are nothing but decoration and a few members like Meltdown and I were the only ones who did anything. Not only that, but when the other staff members did do something, it was counterproductive in the least.

We had a incident recently where a member said a blatant joke that literally the entire staff agreed that we should let slide because it was a blatant joke and an administrator completely disregarded our entire conversation and then proceeded to warn the member without consulting us. This caused the member to be angry which forced my hand to infract him along with another moderator and while he may have deserved those, there's no reason as to why this warning should of existed in the first place when it could of just been swept under the rug, or deleted if it really was a issue with the admin. This was a very ugly situation as I didn't want to infract him, but was forced to. He is a extremely helpful member of this community and sure that he made the mistakes afterwards, but I felt he wouldn't of made those if the staff member we disagreed with didn't break the rules, take the situation within his own hands, and disrespected the entire staff.

When this admin finally did speak on his behalf as to why he did what he did, he said it "wasn't funny" and no "sexist" comments of any kind shouldn't be tolerated, but when you look at the rules...

- No Excessively Offensive Posts - Do not excessively post anything (including pictures and videos) which are offensive, hateful, racist, sexist, discriminatory, and/or obscene. This does not count for forum humor, where forum posters are merely joking around with one another.

I specifically made this rule the way it is at the end so people can be themselves and joke around with one-another. There was no reason for this situation to have happened and the entire staff that was involved in the incident excluding the admin who caused it in the first place aren't happy at all. Staff who go rogue and make up their own rules isn't acceptable by any means and this includes a particular staff member who I see constantly breaking the "foul language of any kind" rule that we have in the chatbox. This isn't the only issue; not by a long-shot.

Communication is another big issue that me and Meltdown had tried to fix from day one. We have staff members that view some of our threads in staff and despite the fact that their input is needed, they don't say anything at all. I have a few threads in tabs that I'm looking at that are completely ignored by my co-staff and it's sickening. I've had constant discussions with Meltdown in private message(and still do) because if I had posted it in staff, it would just be ignored. There's no reason why this should be the case, especially when I'm asking for input on ideas that I made up to help you(the community) out.

You'd think every staff member would be all over that, right? Wrong. They make this community the lowest possible priority in their lives and while we all get that people have personal lives that will always be more important than a forum full of strangers, you can't just disregard all the responsibilities you have as a staff member. If you do, then what's the point of having you around?

Furthermore, I'd like everybody to know that the staff members I'm addressing are no longer staff in my eyes. They're a plague that stops any possibility of a healthy website we could have and it's their fault that this thread along with all the others were created in the first place. I've seen a staff member that has been logged out for three weeks and is still here. He had logged in finally, but now he's built up another whole week of not being here so that's an entire month of this moderator not doing jack around here. There's no reason why in that entire month-span, he couldn't of told us that he was going to be busy, but this touches up on another issue as well which needs to be talked about.

Communication is bad, but inactive staff members are even worse. Like I've already said about this one, literally everybody but a small pinch of us are doing anything. I see the "inactive" staff members sign in once every three days for five minutes and then rinse and repeat. This is something I've been seeing since I've been a Helper and it's only gotten worse as time has passed. Only four of us excluding Eddie are active around here and are doing anything.

It's gotten so bad that work is piling up for everybody due to multiple troublemakers, reported posts, chatbox needing more watching, and various other issues that I can't say for your sake, but they're just as bad if not worse than what's listed.

Another issue I'd like to bring to the community is hypocritical staff and they're everywhere up here. I've seen a staff member call someone a "bitch" even though we just literally made the news rules that you're seeing now and he knew full-well that we did. This not only causes us to look bad, but causes problem in itself. When a person sees a staff member of any kind breaking a rule, it gets thrown in their faces and for good reason too. Also, whenever a staff member says a curse word that violates a rule, everybody gets the impression that they can use it too along with taking it a step further with harsher curse words.

This is a issue that has also existed since day one and is very serious...

The entire situation up here in staff is downright broken and me and Meltdown have personally gone up against everything(staff members themselves included) and nothing has changed. He didn't want to stick around with a bunch of hypocrites along with the fact that there are much better ways to help out a community instead of letting them waste his time so he demoted himself. I only stuck around afterwards to do what I said I was going to do a few days back, but now I'm seriously considering dropping that and following him.

We(the staff) aren't the community. It's you guys and I want you to know that there is so much being held back because of the people I work with up here and I want you to seriously consider speaking your minds. I don't even care if you target myself as I want this forum to be the best possible place to be for everybody and if I'm considered a problem to you guys then so be it. I wouldn't want to be like the staff members I described as it's worse than anything else at this point. If I fail here then I want to be demoted, period.

[Amadeus]

I personally think the lack of member activity is because of the loss of interest in the console itself and not how the site is run, but I agree with the staff part, many super moderators are inactive and need to be replaced.

[RiotingSpectre]

I personally think the lack of member activity is because of the loss of interest in the console itself and not how the site is run, but I agree with the staff part, many super moderators are inactive and need to be replaced.

Agreed, but I've seen more than a few members leave because of how this place is run. It's not an issue that can be ignored any longer.

[DanTilly]

Wow, never realized there was so much politics/drama going on behind the scenes here. I am someone who came here just because it seemed like the only active community where people discuss OUYA. We post about games, review current OUYA topics, and look forward to new updates and new games coming to the system. As Wraith said, I believe that if activity is dwindling it's likely because people are fed up with the system itself and not the community we have created here.

I respect the staff I interact with daily such as Rioting, Killswitch, Starfighter, DrunkPunk and Eddie. If other people are involved in the running of this forum than I've never noticed them and they must not be very active at all. I know there are very few of you actually working behind the scenes and I know it must be frustrating having a 15 man crew and only 5 people doing the work.

I cant speak for the drama and issues going on, all I can say is those of you that do pull the long hours to make this community successful, I thank you.

[Cave Four]

I can agree with your feelings about the chat box boundaries

however I don't see how new or increased staff, and more relaxed rules or lenient staff coincide well.

and yes your naturally going to get less member activity when school starts, the product gets negative reviews, and the new product hype dies down.

I would expect to see a small increase in activity towards the holiday season.