Hopefully there will be some good candidates.
Will the "winners" be publicly announced? forget that one xD "an anonymous [..] account"

EDIT: first :D

first (to reply)

Please, please, please, let them be relatively decent.

this

Tiny poof? QuQ *points to self*

Iunno. If you're decent, never met you.

;w; you no remember tiny poof?

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/21679790/

Oh.

;w;

Ouch

iz ok. *rolls self under the fridge with all the bits of fuzz*

Nu poof dun go!

*hugs the poofle*

candidates must be able to communicate clearly and effectively in English.

i supose one of the new admins will finally end with the pedophilia porn, with no need of waiting for people to report.

I don't watch those. Not into pedophilia or its variants ...scat, diapers, cubs etc. I would have a 'time' with answering trouble tickets. Most of mine I send never get answered until months later after I figured out on my own how to fix something.

ive experienced that with reporting stuff too...
one time i waited so long for a response i had forgotten i reported something.

same same

No they're too busy harassing people like Trunchbull into quitting the website.

why do they want to take trunchbull out?

That's a bit much to get into here. Search up the drama if you want.

You're asking too much xD

And not like nazis.

Never forget how they tried to silence people about opinions.

And essentially apply their ToS however they please with no regard for, you know, THE FUCKING RULES! Can't make rules if the people you don't like are the only ones you apply it to. Seriously, the staff here is getting to be as bad as the Bad Dragon forums.

Hell in a handbasket basically. My favorite example is how there's a guy on here who's scammed dozens but it's ''Oh no talk to him about it'' even though WE CAN'T GET IN CONTACT WITH HIM. Yet they'll get right on some troll account. Ugh. Guess that's the price for free website.

Best of luck everyone ~

Hopefully we will get some mods with no bad backgrounds.

A-friggin-men

or foregrounds

or midgrounds

Or the high ground

Or the highway

or a "henway"

Okay, I'll set you up. "What's a henway?"

ABOUT THREE POUNDS!
DOOOOOHOHOHOHOHOhohohoho.... hah. aheh.
hem.

Or a priceless Steinway!

Or a Frakensteinway.

Good one!

Or a Steinfield

or a Mineshaft

or a Minecraft

Or mine, all mine!!

or a spacecraft!

But if they have the high ground, then it's over

Unlikely. They get to be confidential which means not being held accountable to the public.

then what's the point of moderators then?

to get unpaid volunteers to take care of trouble tickets. They don't want to have to pay for workers, so they get volunteers - they'll probably just hire questionable people or friends like they always do; hence the anonymous accounts and no accountability.

We'd love to pay our staff (and get paid ourselves), actually. Unfortunately, there's no money to do it with.

Moderators do not share accounts, so the accountability for their moderation actions is exactly the same as it would be were their regular account names attached to their actions - if you have issue with a call Moderator Such-and-Such made, you can dispute it and we'll know whose actions to review. The primary difference is that by keeping them anonymous, they can have "work time" and "down time", and won't have people potentially spreading malicious rumors about them over policy enforcement.

We do our best to pick the best candidates for the job, and most of the staff we've had while I've been on have not been recruited from among friends, though working as part of a tight-knit team often means becoming friends over time.

Please ease off on the conspiracy theories.

No conspiracies, only experience

Actually, looking back on that comment it doesn't even make sense, even in context.

...or was that my intention!?
*conspiracyintensifies*

I'm not saying anyone shares accounts - it's that the names of miss are not publically known and so the actual person who runs it has no accountability for their actions to the public. It has and does happen - no conspiracy about several mods and admins who shall remain nameless were friends of neer and got their jobs with no experience just because they were friends (The whole stary kitten issue is one such example - hiring someone with a shady background under an alias).

Also, now that imvu owns FA there SHOULD be paid mods. The fact that it's owned by a corporation and doesn't even pay its workers is sad, indeed. I think you and others should be paid so we can have some actual dedicated people who do this like a job - that way trouble tickets dont take 2+ weeks to be addressed.

The moderators are still accountable for their moderator actions - if you feel an overwhelming desire to compare notes with your friends you can still discuss your experiences with Moderator Such-and-Such. The difference is that they don't end up with people making malicious personal attacks over matters of policy, or bugging them to handle site issues in their downtime. See also this comment.

I've not said that no staff has come from recruitment of friends or turned out to be a poor choice. Both have happened, though in the interest of fairness I will point out that the former doesn't by far guarantee bad results. However, your statement was that we'd "hire questionable people or friends like they always do" (emphasis mine) which is not only false, but frankly insulting towards the staff members brought on through the years who do not fit either. I've worked with and come to know some marvellous moderators, who knew none of us before.

I'm going to assume you mean dedicated in the sense of "this is their primary task" rather than "they pour themselves into their job" - because I can assure you, we've already got the latter. Getting paid would be great, and would solve some personal issues for me, but I didn't enter expecting a paycheck. Dragoneer has gone into a bit more detail about what it would take to be able to turn our volunteer staff into employees here, though you may already have seen it.

My apologies for being flippant with the usage of the word always - and also, you are correct. I meant more of man-hours and not passion for the work they do. And no offense to you, but the staff doesn't work quickly enough - you are doing a very helpful and nice thing by helping a site you love deal with issues. Volunteers are awesome and many organizations cannot exist without them - I really do appreciate what you guys do! You do the best with the time you have and what you're given, but you can only do so much with the limited tools behind it (in this case, limited time and stuff). The bottom line is FA is a huge furry site and has a tone of users and submissions (ergo, a lot of problems). If it's not a job, it's just not something anyone can dedicate a lot of time to - understandably, you need to work and make money other places. If FA even had five full-time employees to JUST do trouble tickets, it would really make a huge difference. If you and a few others could do this as a job it'd be better for you and for the public. You do great work with what you offer, but there's just not enough time available to tackle the issues as they come as is.

I really do think having some kind of paid thing would work. Offer subscriptions for extra options (tweaking the profile, bigger upload sizes or something, having a featured page of all the people helping, give little badges on profiles, have a raffle or something with gift cards for everyone) or something - that could help pull money in. I know FA is limited, even though they're owned now. But there are solutions that I feel could make it better for both mods and users, and having full-time, paid staff that was trained to do it and able to put forth the time would make a big difference for the site.

Thank you. I hope you understand why I have to step in when things like that are said - you may be aware that you're being flippant or hyperbolic, and maybe your friends can figure it out from knowing you, but most of the people reading won't have that sort of context and may accept it as truth without questioning it. That can create issues for staff as our actions get seen through that lens. No hard feelings.

We try to keep up and manage to mostly keep our backlog constant, but anything that takes a staff member away for a time (be it travel, illness, or force majeure) really requires more hands on deck to keep things from falling behind. I was down with food poisoning for two days this summer and was definitely worrying about being unable to keep up with tickets while sick.

yeah, and you shouldn't have to feel bad for missing some things when you're volunteering for it, especially something like an illness or an accident or somesuch! But yeah, I hope FA can find ways to make revenue and pay some full-time trouble ticket reviewers. The important ones get knocked out quickly from my limited experience, but sometimes there are issues like spam posting YCHs that I report that don't get taken care of for weeks (by then it's gone), and yet some people get immediately warned to not do it again right away when it's reported. Just inconsistencies like that would be solved if there was a paid team.

I've got an overblown sense of responsibility; nobody blames me for being out sick but myself.

Needing to reassign tickets can often slow them down, so making sure they're filed correctly and include all necessary information is the best thing you can do, from the user end, to speed up ticket management. Who manages to avoid getting caught does sometimes come down to accidents of timing, and that's unfortunate but not something that can ever be 100% eliminated, though we're working on reducing its impact.

Im mostly a lurker on these updates but i feel i have to say something about your last bit-

the reason no one responds to your complaints on 'spamming' ych reminders is because thats allowed now. Its in the code of conduct/rules.
There are artists on here who rely on ychs being the most effective means of making money. This sites traffic is incredibly fast and ychs get buried so quickly because of how many people are uploading things. And sometimes, the first ych submission gets accidentally overlooked in people's submission boxes. Its happened to me a few times and posting a reminder about my ychs brings in new people and new watchers that havent seen my work before or those who wouldnt have seen it due to the ych being on the next two pages within 30 minutes.

If you truly have a problem with ych reminder 'spam' i would say to just unwatch those people. Usually they end up deleting the reminder anyways.

We as sellers need to advertise for ourselves in order to make money and to provide services to you and the rest of the community. Without these reminders, it would be so much harder and ychs would sit for weeks.

Sorry this is two days old by the way, i only noticed the news update today, lmao

No problem on the late reply! I know it used to be allowed but then they made a rule day of only one submission for you auction (counting the original) and no reminders via art submissions for the sole purpose of advertising (copy pasting the old one or even editing it) was allowed. I know one popular artist who was suspended for this and I had a friend get a warning for it. I was unaware they had changed this rule back!

As for the advertising, yeah I agree to an extent. I'm an artist as well and have done ych auctions before. I have reposted it before the rule change and was merely annoyed that some people kept bypassing the rule. But if it's changed, I recant my statement!

Yeah! It was a recent change in the upload policy~ (i originally said code of conduct, my mistake lool) They made the rule that 4 hours must pass between each reminder! Which I feel is totally acceptable

Now, with that said, I tooootally understand when people crazy spam ych adverts. Like, Ill wait 4 hours or half a day or longer to repost my ych reminders. But people posting them every 30 minutes? I completely get why that would be annoying!!

@Tatao, because these comment chains hoo boy

Because I don't want to give up my free time and work unpaid when I'm working full-time and spending my free time with my family and art? That's such a naive excuse, too - it's implying no one is available to criticize even constructively if they're not willing to do it. Like oh if you don't like doctors just be a doctor, or if you don't like the site just code your own. People have different strengths and weakness and you don't need to be a moderator or an admin to know bad moderation when you see it, just like you don't need to be a chef to know something tastes bad or a mechanic to know something is broken and doesn't work.

I'm more than willing to support FA through subscriptions (I've said so for YEARS) to actually hire professional paid moderation teams. So yeah, I'm willing to help in whatever ways I as long as it'd go towards something that would actually help the site, because FA has gained me business for my art that would be hard to find through other sites. I'm not trying to shit on all the mods, because they do what they can as volunteers, but FA needs more than just volunteers - my complaint is more of the times they've hired people they've hired friends a lot of times over other individuals (I'm sure there were a couple that qualified more, because last time they had several hundred apply) and promised more transparent moderation (and then hired a person with a bad reputation). I'm not really trying to cause issues, merely pointing out things aren't done the best and could be done better. I shouldn't have to be a moderator in order to offer solutions or give my insights on it.

This statement just begs people too start complaining about IMVU again you know. After all if the staff aren't being paid then...what was the point of selling and becoming a subsidiary of the company? They as the major company are supposed to offer financial aid, or at least that's what we as users assumed. if this is not the case then explain what the actual purpose of selling to said company was?

Oh and can you PLEASE do us a small favour with this recruitment thing and make sure that Dragoneer isn't just hiring his friends and confidants? that's one major issue people tend to have with who he hires, it's not simply their history, but the fact is we question how they got the job, if we learn of better qualified candidate was asking for it. Saying its because saying their were issues and never elaborating on them isn't just unhelpful, it further paints FA staff in a collective bad way (as in two faced liars that shouldn't eb trusted) because of the claim of being transparent about things. No offence to Dragoneers judgement skills, just...it doens't help when people keep proving that the people he hires aren't exactly on the up and up and they turn out to have been his friends BEFORE getting the admin post. FYI I had no issue when he hired Scriggles when they were together, I only had issue with him claiming he'd never do so on twitter.

On and as a suggestion of the financial front...why exactly hasn't anyone set up a Patreon for running FA? IS there some sort of legal issue, if so elaborate on it and give us clarification.

OH BTW out of curiosity how do WE put forward information to request people NOT be added tot he team? I ask because I know of one user who shouldn't be based on their inability to listen to counteractive arguments against their own actions, which could lead to arguments among staff in the future, and has yet to display an ability to understand such factors.

IMVU has given us hardware we'd have had a hard time finding the funding for without their backing, for one. I'm not involved with budget matters so I can't really speak on them beyond that.

Dragoneer hasn't been "just hiring his friends and confidants" in any recruitment drive I've been aware of starting with the one where I applied and was accepted onto staff. At this point suggesting that he has, or will, is more a malicious rumor than anything resembling factual.

Thank you for the info about some of IMVU's provoded aid. If you could find the time could you inquire with or ask a member of staff that would know and ask them to elaborate further, or ask Dragoneer about posting a public journal to this account about it, as an act of transparency.

The comments of him only hiring his friends (which I know predate mine here) most likely stem from the fact that he hired Scriggles after saying he wouldn't since they were dating. Which have only been worsened by any known staff that turn out to be his friend (even if such friendships only came about because of their interaction as staff members plus any other drama associated with staff members that turn out to be friends with Dragoneer. There's also the fact that the promise of transparency has never actually been kept very well. We users seemingly get half the info about something, which when the other half becomes known from sources other than FA, makes us question his and all the staffs sincerity, not only with said promise but altogether. I'm sure things will improve as time goes on its just hard sometimes as users dealing with a site and it's staff as they seemingly grow, and mature.

On another note, I would actually apply, but I'm not keen on the secondary account factor so I won't.

I understand feeling the hiring of Sciggles was not handled the best way it could have been. It was also many years ago, and if people continue to hold it against the site (especially since Scigs did an absolutely fine job from early on - I had her answer some of my tickets back then) indefinitely, improvement is pretty much by definition impossible.

All I or any other staff member can really do is attempt to answer any questions truthfully, and be upfront when there's something we can't go into detail on. Without going into specifics that might paint someone as a target or violate someone's privacy, I can say with confidence that not all "sources other than FA" have given an accurate representation of the state of things. There's not enough transparency in the world to fix that long as there are people willing to believe what's being claimed.

We understand that not everyone will be comfortable with the requirement for anonymity, and we don't hold that against you. That's one major reason we're upfront with it, so you'll be able to make an informed decision as to whether the moderator position is for you.

I don't think users still hold FA accountable for the poor way in which Sciggles was hired, but I do think that every time any of us fear that something similar is going to happen again (like that staff member in recent years that turned out to have quite the shady past when handling users private data, to which they had access). Kind of like when a company continues to make any bad move repeatedly, the past gets brought up every time. Electronic Arts are never going to be able to get away from some of the issue fans have with them simply because they make similar mistakes now and again which refreshes everyone memory. FA is no different. To us the size of the organisation matters very little when they continually make the same mistakes over an over again. After all take the anonymity of the moderators. I'm sure you can see how that directly conflicts with the claim of being more transparent that Dragoneer made. Hence why it's rubbing people the wrong way, to most it's just another example of Dragoneer going back on his word, even though any rational mind would know about the dangerous legal minefield one might have to contend with if say you as a volunteer, after being open an honest about whose behind the account, get regular letters through the traditional postal service from annoyed or angry FA users about how they'll do terrible things to you. Those few, problematic individuals force you to remain anonymous because of how psychotic people can be.

I think the real issue is a lack of information. Journals like this should be posted on the Fender account every month detailing what the hell is going on with FA's development. Giving us regular updates and revealing all that is possible to reveal without compromising anyone's safety...isn't too much to ask....but apparently it is, because I've suggested this thing to Dragoneer twice before and so far it's not been done even though he's promised to be more transparent. Such actions feel like am knife in the back since he's telling us one thing and then doing another. Either he needs to actually start posting monthly journals to the Fender account detailing all that's been accomplished the past month and the aims of the next month, or he needs to admit he can't be transparent and will either talk to IMVU about it (they might have a suggestion or put him on a course or something, I don't know), otherwise he's just going to face the accusation of not being transparent every time an announcement is made, which reflects poorly on you as a volunteer because it paints him as a liar and thus makes it seem like you can't be trusted because your job is to enforce the rules put forward by said liar. It's all a mess made from assumptions that people will make in anger, which is easily avoided by simply posting monthly journals.

Also I'll ask my question again, is there any way I can push for soemone to not be offered the position because I know of details that would make them entirely unsuitable?

Here's a decent question for you. Of what has changed in the past few months that is different from the last batch? I hear it was a rather toxic atmosphere for the last batch of volunteers when it came to the higher ups. Lack of communication, pushing issues down the line, ect.

Last round of mod recruitment was significantly longer than a few months ago, just to be clear.

Obviously I can't speak for the situation prior to my joining the team, but "toxic" has not been an apt descriptor for the internal communications at any point while I've been on staff. Quite the opposite; we enjoy open, honest communication and I've never had reason to doubt the people above me on the chain of command appreciate the job I do. Yes, the buck has to stop somewhere, which means sometimes people get overruled, but that is a far sight from "pushing issues down the line" as you put it. The people above me have my back, and I can voice disagreements without fear of repercussions, which already puts this position above much of what I've heard of e.g. working retail, especially in the US.

One nitpick I have with this is that when I got a suspension, I was not informed of which mod was responsible for ruling against me.

I understand why mods want their judgements to be anonymous and want all issues to be resolved behind closed doors, but if people cannot face their accusers, then there is little to no real accountability, no matter how much the owners may argue otherwise.

What difference would it make, realistically, to the situation, if you knew what staff member enacted your suspension? What would you do if you knew their identity, that you cannot already do?

I'm actually getting confused about this issue.

Since moderator actions are anonymous on our end, how can they be held accountable when they overstep their authority and we report said overstepping?

There is no need to know the identity of the individual behind a moderator account to dispute moderator actions or escalate their decisions to the Administrator overseeing the concerned area or a Director. The only difference knowing the individual's identity would make is that it would make it easier for users to target the moderator directly, which unfortunately is something we've seen happen in the past.

Well, if they aren't anonymous on the site end, that shouldn't be a problem?

"Hi, I want to report the moderator who deleted my gallery for being overzealous."

Neer and whoever else admins there are can check which of the mod accounts did that, investigate, and react accordingly. The mods are just anonymous to us, so they can't be harassed or singled out by the users.

You don't need to be involved in the investigation process at all. If you witness an issue with a moderator then report him and allow the staff to handle it. If they have further questions for you then they'll contact you directly.

The anonymity on their end protects them from harassment if they make an unpopular decision about a page. Unpopular does not mean unnecessary or incorrect, it simply means that a person may have a lot of fans that can spam someone's account if they're made to make a choice that said member might not like and prevents feed back. It helps to prevent a mob mentality from running the site.

So again, if you disagree with the decision that a moderator has made then you can feel free to report it and have that decision amended. A moderator is held accountable to the upper staff and each mod account is designated to an individual person so that every moderator can be held responsible.

I would assume that, despite the moderator being anonymous to the general users, each anonymous account would still have some kind of separation to the other accounts of that nature. Thus they would be able to tell who it was who had failed to help/had escalated the situation.

For example: Say I was made a moderator, overstepped my authority towards you, and you reported me. Even though you would only be able to say "The moderator who was assigned to my ticked f***ed things up!", because it was MY anonymous account that was listed as taking control of your trouble ticket, it would directly point to me as the problem.

Hope that makes sense...

They probably have an audit log that they are able to access.

*Unfortunately, IMVU, Inc doesn’t want to.

Fixed that for you.

I don't like telling people what to do with their time, but "volunteering" to work for a money machine like IMVU, Inc seems like a poor use of time.

They're not paying you because they don't want to, not because there's "no money".

That's making a large, erroneous assumption: that all money available to IMVU is also money available to FA. Fur Affinity has a budget, just as most corporations' cashflows are separated into several distinct budgets.

Nobody's asking you to apply if you're not comfortable with the terms. I volunteer because I care about our users and community. That's my choice to make, and I do not regret it.

Even ignoring the notion that IMVU owns this site and therefore as a business the people should be paid...

Whatever happened to the "Transparency" that FA was supposed to be touting?

I have answered both of these questions in one form or another. In an ideal world, all people would accept staff rulings gracefully and there would be no need to keep moderators anonymous. The few ruin things for the many.

Very well. Maybe those would all be true in an ideal world. We already established that this is not an ideal world, so I fail to see how any of what you say makes any difference to my statements.

For one, I actually preferred Yiffstar over SoFurry. You can deride it as a poorly designed smut factory if you want, but in "updating" and rebranding, not all changes were unquestionably for the better. Going through multiple major versions in a relatively short timespan is also not a pure positive; ask pretty much any programmer.

I removed my comments for the sake of it not being relevant to the conversation, but I will say this then:

At least they've made progress, and created a venue in which people enjoy using.

In an ideal world, there would be no need for mods in the first place.

Fair point, and I largely agree. We do handle some issues that have nothing to do with rules violations, so even then at least one or two staff members handling tickets might be a good idea.

The statement that "because x company owns this site, the people should be paid" is a fallacy. Red Cross has paid employees, but relies heavily on volunteers for most of their operations. Volunteers that knew what they were signing up for, knew what the job entailed, knew they wouldn't be paid for it, but signed up anyway.

It's not some massive conspiracy. Nobody's pulling the wool over anyone's eyes here, so stop looking for scandal where it doesn't exist.

It's also a non-profit organization, this Red Cross you talk about. IMVU is not, so your statement is invalid in that regard, as if it wasn't there wouldn't be ads all over the place for people to buy stuff in IMVU on FA.

I would just like to expand on this.

I'd like to argue that volunteers are a much better choice than paid employees. Volunteers WANT to do the work, for whatever their personal reasons are. How many people have you guys dealt with who refuse to put more than the bare minimum effort in a job? When people see it as a job, it becomes a drag and nobody wants to put the full effort into it. Volunteers on the other hand accept that it may not be the most fun of activities however they want to support the community in whatever way they can.

Thank you, you put that much more succinctly than I did X3

I am rather happy that the Mods are anonymous because of the reasons you gave. I heard some nasty stories regarding Mods and even Admins of sites that got harassed and some of these stories did not end pretty and harassment happened in RL to them too.
Regarding the money discussion and if it is not a thing that is under an NDA then maybe you could get in touch with other sites and ask how they handle that. For example e621.net, some of their admins have accounts here and the site is as far as I know part of a company too. Or dA, I had been active there for years as a normal member, they offer the now "Core" called Premium membership that offers name changes and more customizations for the members user page(but don't look at their points system it is horrible).

I think talking and even discussing this conspiracy theory with members that say the same theory over and over in many comments is a lost cause. They seem to not want to listen to reason and just want to believe and spread this one sided story

(X files theme plays in the background)

Um... Ads? That money doesn't just vanish into a black hole...

Bandwidth, rack space (or hosting on a third party's servers, if you're going that route, like some other furry websites), and other necessities for running a website don't come for free, I'm afraid.

Ahhh. Gotcha.

give me a bit but i have found screen caps of mods admitting to taking the "extra money" from the top of the donation pool when they go over the required....
Also IMVU should be able to afford a mod as they put so much advertisement here, I can see a non paid 3 month trial and THEN paying them but a non paying mod in general, no.
with all the drama the new mod will have to drudge threw, it should be a paid spot. Not alot but something

but give me a bit to find these screen caps as im on the phone now and i just dont function fast on that as i do my computer

I hope you realize how easy it is to fake screencaps; I've heard similar accusations before, and they were fabricated out of whole cloth then. That hasn't changed.

We have multiple people on staff who have been volunteering for the site for multiple years without pay. I'm coming up on five years in January, myself. As nice as it would be for us to be able to pay moderators, the advertisements are there to cover other things. We'd have to have a different monetizing method in place in order to have the budget for paid moderation staff. As Dragoneer noted in another comment, we'd be looking at at least $20k/year per moderator.

May have forgotten to add but mods who ban people that go for the loophole on child porn. Along with cartoon characters that are underage such as Jake Long.

I believe we all have bad background in a way.

Too bad my English is bad. ':v X'D

although luck to the participants. :3

_{Roger out boss!}

Perhaps I could try. I have had many occurrences where I've found myself in management positions.

go for it :3
Best of luck

40 tickets a week for anonymous unpaid work? Sheesh.

That's what keeps this site alive. Unpaid workers who do the management in their freetime.

I expect a lot of those tickets boil down to:

"Hey mods, I think this submission {link} violates the rule against {banned content}."

Which can generally be resolved with a quick look.

I'm willing to bet that over half of them are basically, "This person said something mean to me in the comment section of this page. Ban them for life immediately!"

If past experience with mods has taught me anything, you can dedicate a minimum effort to each thus ensuring the quota will be met.
(Hey, it's feedback. Don't hate y'all)

It's actually child's play compare to what's expected in cubicle jobs.

You are being paid for your time in a cubicle job.

And nobody is holding you at gunpoint telling you to sign up. That's why it's a volunteer job.

I wasn't saying they were.

Yeah, too true.

"act in a professional, polite manner." i like the new angle you're trying out!

Inb4 people somehow break out into another unnecessary argument about nazis, Antifia, politics and religion for no real reason in particula- Imeanwut

lol that's why I came to read the comments.

That or someone preaching one side or another of politics. MAYBE ITS OVER

I admit skunk, i was looking for those people also (mostly the ones that go heil hitler)

lol

Hope to get new mods who can see obvious pedophilia/underaged art and not loophole it.

"this character is 18+"
*chibi-like proportions, no breasts, no muscle mass, very short/small, huge eyes, loli/shota in general* BUT HEY, IT'S MY ARTSTYLE AND THIS CAHRA IS OVER 18! XD

I get these BS excuses.

"This character might be 18+"
"This might be size differences"

Excuses and the ppl in ticket system dont check to see if that's true. The artist doesn't label that in their info or tags. For me, i'm mainly speaking of Canon underaged characters, who aren't draw as 18+/adult but the same way they look in general. Key word they use is "might" which means they're not sure if it's underaged or not, and.... use those for loopholes to let it pass/allowed so anyone can get away with posting pedo/underaged sex art with that logic. T_T

I understand sizeplay and i understand charas that are drawn as in their canon but if their canon is underaged and they look the exact same, hey.. that is clearly underage! it's not fair to say it miiight be 18+ if the canon says the chara is not U3U unless there are noticeable differences where it shows the chara has aged.
There are some other sites where underage NSFW art isallowed so why insist on posting it where it's not allowed via loopholes? ;v;

Yess, Inkbunny, So Furry allows it....Weasly takes their underaged rule serious and according to their rule about it, they actually care about canon, and only allow them in sexual situations if they're aged up, Furry Network some time ago stop allowing underaged/pedo works. But on here, they don't take their own rule about it seriously, it's just excuses.

Thank you. You hit it right on the nose with this one darlin. I'm glad someone else see's this beyond myself and a few other people on this site. Good on yea man.

Can't escalate the ticket to someone like the main admins of this site or something, it's always the same person, and that person agrees and goes along with the previous. It sucks too. There's no way to tell the owners of the site of these issues, and it's getting out of hand, the matters is being taken care of shitty, im always dealing with the two same loophole rule abusing ppl all the time, everytime I report these things.. -_-

Same here, so I seriously feel yea on this one darlin. Your hitting the nail on the head, glad I'm not the only one who see's this.

The problem with this is it is very difficult to be un-baised. What looks aged up to one mod may not be the true to another.


Which is why there needs to be a meeting ground for the mods. Several places I worked for in management positions did this system. If there was a dispute of policy, we would do a board meeting, discuss, vote and implement. I don't see that happening anytime soon with FA since all of the staff is "volunteer". It takes a significant amount of man power and organization to do something like that.

Long story short: Since there isn't a payroll, FA's management can't dedicate the manpower to properly police and update their polices. It's a hell of a system trap.

Yeah, I noticed. I hear complaints about FA mods all the time doing stuff like this and allowing worse things to pass. I didn't believe it til I interacted with them myself. Not getting paid does seem to make sense why rules aren't being enforced. Wish I didn't get the same two mods with my main issue all the time about underaged porn, they stick up for eachother and agree with what the other does. It's always a lost cause for me....Smfh...loopholes everywhere.

You're actually describing something very close to how we do handle things internally. Just because we're volunteers doesn't mean we don't take the time to do the job properly.

Oh no. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that the majority of you don't take the job seriously or do it properly. I simply meant to draw attention to the fact that it isn't your fault. It the system that is flawed.

To maintain a site this large, you need to have an army of moderators all like minded. It is nearly impossible to find people passionate enough to take time out of their day to do a job that mentally demanding for no pay, especially if they are adults working on their own jobs. If there was some way to put this job on a resume I could see this system being much more successful; kind of like an unpaid internship. The fact of the matter is the only thing one gets from doing this job is satisfaction of saying: "I did it," and that isn't enough for most people.

I wish I had a solution. I really do. The site is too large in my opinion to have a complete overhaul. My post was meant to draw attention to the fact that everyone blames the moderators and the administrators for being stupid or crappy at their job, but they don't understand the situation that you guys are in.

Your post did read like you did not believe we communicate to ensure equal enforcement of policies. Again, the system you're suggesting is very close to what we have. The underlying problem is that people like to think they're right; no matter what we do to ensure uniform enforcement, if at any time we disagree with someone, accusations of bias are likely to come up.

There is a way to put this job on a resume, though, particularly if you've been in for the long haul. It's on mine. Along with my degree it's probably the most impressive item on there. Close to five years in a vetted volunteer position is nothing to sneeze at.

???

I doubt that.....not anything you want, especially with recent changes made on here... (Not sure if you was replying to me since your comment didnt appear under mine like the other ppl.)

RIP Half of Zaush's profile.

Who is Zaush?

Admin hid the original comment shortly after I left mine, lol. He's a guy who draws a ton of underaged stuff and gets away with posting it here cause he labels the characters 18+. But on other websites he labels them as underaged.

Loopholes.

Damn... that's a major loophole..., and im pretty sure ppl showed that proof and admins on here still ignored it or came up with an excuse.....typical..

I am here about 10 times a day. I would like to be considerd OK?

couldn't handle all the trouble tickets from the last change to the TOS about advocating violence?

I considered trying out as a moderator but I would only be interested in helping out with personal disputes and what not. I'm not sure I'd want to look at disgusting art for the purpose of evaluating whether or not it should stay up. *^^*

Alright. ^^

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

Best of luck!

How exciting! ♥

I'm glad you've opened it up!

I can't wait to see the fall out of this one , considering last time there were leaks.

so your basically asking if i want to do something with my life that won't get me anything.

right?

also, there is no... "punishment" for being awful at it?

I can answer that one.

The "punishment" is you get removed from being a mod. And, if you somehow manage to use the abuse your power, it may result in action being taken against your main account as well.

well i guess i don't really have much to lose other than time then.

if i had time to "lose" that is.

Will someone be actively monitoring the work of the new mods, at least for a while, to make sure that they're not simply imposing personal ideology and taste? Or will the system wait for complaints from people who have been adversely affected? In the latter case, you'd need some way to make sure that that complaint didn't just go right back to the mod who made the disputed decision in the first place - you would need some sort of "appeals" process.

We do a mix of both. During the training phase mods are paired with admins who walk them through things, give them feedback, suggestions, and work with them to crank out a bunch of tickets. Admins also can monitoring what others are doing, and we do pick tickets at random to check on what responses are being given and how they're handled. And, if we get a complaint, we review the nature of the complaint, whether the admin took improper action, or the action wasn't as clear as it should have been as to WHY we took said action.

snail mail a pink slip

Well, this is new... As much as I like this idea, I think I'm more of a ticket filer than a ticket responder. With how emotional I've been lately, I really don't think I'd make a good candidate. I don't think I want to try...

Also, pleeeaaase let there be no bad eggs.

Are you still required to provide legal name, driver's license and address for this position?

Who will have access to that information? Can users applying for this position get any guarantee that their information will not be leaked, shared, or otherwise disseminated to other users or organizations (outside of a legal subpoena) without their consent.

Is the post REALLY that dangerous?

Keeping moderator identities on the QT serves two main purposes:

- It keeps them from being harassed over decisions that were unpopular with some subset of the userbase.
- It keeps people from trying to skip the queue by contacting a known moderator directly.

It's not so much dangerous¹ as potentially very annoying.


1: Then again, I have come across furs where I would not be shocked if they were to engage in RL violence over a moderator decision against them.

Yeah. Right after I hit send I remembered "swatting"...sigh...

Dangerous? Not really. It's more that it can be mentally draining having to deal with drama or users retaliating. Nobody wants to have to deal with additional stress than they have to.

I find it absolutely ridiculous to request highly personally identifiable information (PII) of mods. The only telecommunications/cyber based job that asked this of me (and more) was one working with military defense contrators. FA is a far cry from any entity resembling a defense company, a credit company, or any high PII requirement job.

Why exactly is this highly sensitive info collected? This site does not exactly have a great security track record. I also find it excessive to require an NDA for a volunteer position moderating an art site. This is a massive deterrent to potentially amazing mods.

As someone that has served as a mod and an admin on other sites, these requirements are highly ridiculous. I loved being a mod, and I'm damn good with copyright and fair use issues, as I'm well read with these specific laws in the US, and that position interested me in terms of FA moderation, but these requirements are, in my opinion, excessive, invasive, and ridiculous.

Isn't it illegal in the US to ask for identification before hiring someone anyways?

I'm not too sure on that one. This isn't exactly a traditional volunteer position, so these requirements are ridiculous and invasive.

Not to mention I had my fellow fur friend show me the Id photo I sent to FA when I turned 18 to unage restrict my acc. He literally found it because it was leaked and warned me about it. How can we trust them to keep this info safe, they failed to keep mine safe.

Why would that be illegal? Don't we want to know that we're hiring who we think we are?

its required

No its not, most employers need the information in order to cheek your back ground . If you have a criminal background you most likely won't get into the hiring step.

Come back to Weasyl Menagerie! We miss you!

Even if I'm horrifically pokey with this job o' mine ;p *offers hugs*

It's called cover your back side from litigation, it a moderator breaks the law while using his/her position then FA can either go after them legally or the authorities can go after them for whatever offences that occurred, really this is pretty standard practice. I would be remiss to tell you that any job handling personal information of users would have an NDA requirement and your name/date of birth, address and ID would be to ensure you ARE 18+ since you as a mod would have access to adult content and will have to view adult content as part of the job, thats just meeting the US federal laws in that regard, not to mention that IMVU will also want it's back side covered. I mean the last thing they need is a federal investigation because some mod lied about their age and they had no way to prove it.

Add to that that this isn't even a job. I also feel I'd make an excellent admin, as I've been using the site through several accounts, since its beginnings. Literally signed up in the first week, and have seen everything come and go. It's pretty safe to say that I can see what the FA community wants and needs, and I'm really good at being impartial, no matter what my personal feelings are towards a person's tastes, behavior, and opinions. (Something that sorely lacks in a lot of moderators over time.) But this is a deal breaker. Anything personally identifying on the site is voluntarily placed there. Given FA's history of security breaches, anyone giving their legal name, address, or phone number out, even in private messages, is not wise. I know people sell things and have to mail them, but the artist/ seller should be giving out a dummy email for the delivery of physical addresses. Admin volunteers shouldn't be forced to cough out a life history to protect idiots from themselves.

I would be very curious to see the NDA in its entirety if you could provide.

There is also the matter of requiring personal information to be a moderator, the FA leaks and the archived twitter drama has shown FA is the last place one wants to have IDable information even stored, let alone accessible in any way to certain staff members. I have a suspicion that your rule regarding is to prevent more mod leaks, which have showed the true colors of certan people here.

How do you check standing in community
I know YouTube has a way to see it but not sure with FA XD

Define "drama". Virtually EVERY 'sjw' and 'troll' causes SOME sort drama and it usually comes down censoring free speach(sic).

ANY censorship hinders communication. This CAN NOT be allowed.

well...

i'd say that i got blocked from a lot of people and...

i forgot what point i was going to make.

"Drama" in this case can that the user instigated or created some sort of rumor or falsehood. Because we can't foresee every definition of what drama is (each case is different) it's something that we look at. For example, if somebody was spreading a rumor about somebody that would be something we view as a potential red flag. Drama can be a nebulous term, so we tend to look for more "has this person spread rumors about other FA users" and go from there.

I've never spoken an outright lie on FA before, I never spread any falsehood or sought to create rumors... but does that effectively mean I never caused Drama?,
I'm wondering because I've been suspended for things before... many of the times I've been suspended it was for breaking a rule in a way that I didn't directly break the rule in any form it is written in TOS, AUP, or CoC but in which it was vaguely interpreted that my actions were similar to the things that are against rules.
If anything, I'd never seek a position the offered so much power and so much control, considering if a moderator abuses their position with what they are given, they could do major damage, and I'd not take a position where I could be viewed with fear, and suspicion.
On SoFurry, the staff have a good reputation for very quickly removing and banning moderators that seek to break rules and abuse power, and SoFurry as such has a good reputation and is well loved for it's protection of its users from anyone.
But here on FA, folk continue to fear the staff, and even I joined this bunch during my life recently at this website.
I would want to make sure that, I'm not considered unqualified, and I'm not consider feared, if I were to ever be part of anything at my only place where I have true friends and family in the world, the furry fandom, and at FA.
You had been the one person I originally trusted and constantly supported as staff, until recently... but I can't feel that you'd ever show spite or hate to me and would be happy to be truthful and honest with me without focusing on any hate for my mistakes and 'misdeeds'.
So, if you could put things that way, I'd be happy to accept whatever judgement it is.

How many Moderators will be chosen?

Have a bit of a bad feeling about who's going to apply for this considering the uh...recent uproar.

May the odds be ever in your favour?

Which uproar? Please elucidate. I do tend to ignore alot and miss alot of the social stuff. Tho' Ive got considerably more time now.

It's NEVER a good sign when sites start scrambling in fear of the sjw trolls. ESPECIALLY in the current trends by the evil google youtube facebook twitter okcupid morons trying to erase free speach(sic).

The last public announcement. They made policy changes involving hate speech and content and the comment section was like a zoo outbreak (lol get it cuz furries).

But no seriously like if it had happened in a real life event there prolly would've been gunfire. So some people may be heated regarding the happenings and policy changes, and be motivated by negative intentions and have targets in mind.

sigh when will people understand that ONLY way to protect ANY speach(sic) is to protect ALL speach(ibid)

Saying "evil must die" is fine; exhortations to do violence to evil isn't.

If we restrict ANY speach(etc) the "bad guys" start hiding and we'get surprized when they DO attack.

By letting them cry baby in public we can ALL point and laugh and shame (Ha!) them into becoming better citizens if not better humans.

And maybe; just maybe, the tender snow flakes will also quit being morons (I can hope, right?) too.

I wholeheartedly agree, however, PA comment sections are minefields, and I don't really have the energy to deal with if someone decides to explode over anti-censorship messaging x3

When I have the energy I just post my own journals on the matter :P

As a senior moderator on one of Reddit's largest subreddits, I can tell you with absolute certainty that this view of "free speech" doesn't hold up whatsoever when faced against the real world.

Take this case study: you've got a user who posts on a certain thread with a view that someone else doesn't like. That other user searches through the first's post history, discovers they're a furry, and then begins attacking that person partly because they have a deep seated hatred of furries. When a moderator removes the personal attacks, the second user claims their right to free speech and that the mods are censoring them. What do you do?

Another case study: an anti-Semite goes to a Jewish community and begins posting in a large number of threads that the Jews should be gassed, or that the Holocaust was a hoax, or basically parrots anything that people like Alex Jones says.

Case study #3: 4chan decides to raid another community, who proceeds to knowingly post the most offensive stuff they can think of that can still vaguely be considered on topic. Even though they're called out on this, it turns out that 4chan was aiming to get a rise out of that community.

Case study #4: A user posts something offensive and gets downvoted to oblivion. The user doesn't bend to peer pressure, however, and instead doubles down on their views, attacking anyone who dares disagree.

Case study #5: Someone does something that a specific community doesn't like. Said community yells at the person, who concedes to the criticism. The community doesn't believe this is sincere, however, and advocates for vigilante justice. This ultimately ends in that person getting swatted.

Case study #6: You've got someone who is making credible threats of suicide, and another user comes into the thread asking them to stream their death.

Case study #7: You discover that a person on the receiving end of vitriol is either mentally or emotionally unstable (or a child just starting to use the internet), and they either will not or cannot disengage from that discussion. As the discussion progresses, you can tell the receiver is becoming unhinged.

As a mod, I've encountered every single case study in some form or another (pray that you never have to worry about dealing with #6). Users have come to me claiming that their removals were unjustified because of free speech. For me, your right to free speech ends where someone else's begins, and sometimes determining where that line lies will piss people off. The Internet is not the sort of ideological world where unbridled free speech can work, I guarantee you.

There is no "line in the sand" where free speach is conserned. Especially over the net. It is NOT any form of actual/physical action/attack so NO ONE'S rights "begin" or "end".

A person is free to reply/ignore/block as they please. In some of those cases the words ARE criminal actions and MUST be dealt with appropriately. In some of those cases the user should have supervision an that can be helped by nanny ware that the guardian can instal.

ANY restrictions on ANY speah is that old "slippery slope" or "camel's nose".

And THAT is a line carved in stone that we MUST NOT cross.

Alright, so let's take #5 and examine it a little more closely, since that one involves a malicious actor violating multiple federal laws (swatting). In the specific incident that I'm thinking of, the chain of events went something like this. For the sake of the argument let's assume that all of this happens within the community, and that no moderators intervene in this scenario.

1. Victim does something that community doesn't like (note: it's worth noting there was some animosity between the victim's own community and my own)
2. Backlash against victim builds within community. Victim remains silent, hoping this will all blow over.
3. Backlash continues, if not intensifying. Two or three days later, victim makes a statement apologizing and attempting to rationalize his actions. Community doesn't buy it.
4. Some really angry and/or bored members of community begin calls for dox.
5. Someone posts the victim's dox.
6. Someone else calls up victim's local police department and tells them victim had killed a person and is planning to detonate a bomb in a busy shopping mall.
7. Victim's house is raided by SWAT team, causing much terror and confusion until it's established the threat is a hoax.

As I said, this is extremely illegal and could very easily result in someone being killed. Without a doubt, the malicious actor in step 6 breaks the law. Additionally, since this took place on Reddit, step 5 would have violated the sitewide terms of service. While I'm hesitant to discuss the specifics of our case much further, do know that we received a very harsh punishment from the Reddit admins and our credibility within the larger Reddit community was decimated for months on end.

Now, let's say that you're a moderator. Not acting in this situation will result in major consequences for not just the victim, but your own community (action being taken against your community by the site administrators, relations between other communities being damaged, etc). You yourself admit that a line has to be drawn in this situation, so where would you draw it?

Would you act on step 5, where the offending dox gets posted? Sure, that might delay step 6, but the calls for dox are still up there, and this being the Internet someone else would surely answer the call. If too long a time passes between it being posted and you catching it, step 6 could potentially occur as well.

What about step 4? I find this a bit more reasonable, but then that raises the question of how much would you act on it? Would you just remove the dox requests, or would you attempt to shut the entire thing down?

Hell, if you think about it, the entire situation revolves around your community trying to censor the free speech of the victim. Remember, this entire thing starts with the victim doing something that your community doesn't like. By not doing anything, are you implicitly allowing someone else's free speech to be suppressed because your community doesn't like it?

And, to up the stakes a little bit, let's remove that restriction on everything only happening within the confines of your community. What happens if and when those angry people begin mobilizing outside of your sphere of influence? What happens if they successfully swat the victim and attribute it to your community? Sure, the actual dox didn't occur on your subreddit specifically, but you didn't do anything to stop it either. How would this impact how others see your community?

Myself, I'd begin acting between steps 2 and 3, and if it doesn't calm down then I'd clamp down after step 4. My goal would be to mitigate the chance of this event event becoming an issue for us down the line, knowing the potential consequences of what could happen were it to get out of hand. I'd likely set up AutoModerator to flag posts with certain keywords for review, maybe even to put them into an approval queue if things are beginning to escalate. I'd issue warnings on behalf of the subreddit telling people not to take things too far. For those who demonstrate even after being warned that they would want to take things up a notch, we might issue temporary bans to show that we're not screwing around. Yes, at this point we have to be mindful of the line of suppressing opinions we might not support, but if it's getting to the point where someone's privacy and safety is being threatened, that line becomes a lot easier to toe.

As I said in my first post, my belief is that one person's rights end where another person's begins. My role as a moderator is to figure out what the right balance is. Considering this, and considering all of our other responsibilities and experiences in finding that balance, I can say that having unrestricted free speech will ultimately result in someone's free speech being destroyed.

Covered under criminal activity and answered just below. (or rather above reply to Pantera above)

Tho' you do have some points to consider.

the slippery slope argument is a fallacy of logic, reasonable restrictions do exist in every day life, such as speed limits, even in speech there are clear demarcations on what is allowed and protected under free speech (in the US) and what is not, to say any speech is free speech is wholly incorrect, there are things you should not say and can't say publicly or to someone, such as threats of violence. And since FA and IMVU are private entities they can enforce rules against certain speech, I mean you would not like it so much if anti LGBTQ~ groups came on here and started saying we're all going to hell and bla bla bla would you?

NO. Slippery slope has been proven FAR too often.

Threats of violence are crimes. (besides that's why the nsa/dhs/fbi/etc collects all our words...to "protect" us...right?)

So that c!oses that.

Who cares what trolls say. Wasn't it Dr. Suess that said "It's mind over matter. Those who matter don't mind. Those who mind don't matter."

So...

so is this gonna be a straight up fight to protect free speach...?

or just another bug hunt...?

I'd hafta be a mod "infernal affairs" type modder...

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

me, buddy, me...

i hesitantly extend the offer of helping, providing i have a graceful way to say "nope in way over my head" and have zero jard feelings or such with it

Good luck to the new mods who get picked

Aw, I'm tempted, but I don't know how hectic my life will get in the next few weeks...

I feel bad for the current mods if they have to ask for unpaid positions. It's not like FA isn't owned by a parent company, so things must be rough... ;^;

WHO CAN UNBLOCK MY ACCOUNT, PLEASE??
I cannot saw NSFW artworks...

I already open a ticket once.

But no one wanna unblock me... :(

How old are you?

I am 20.

I seriously don’t understand why FA blocked me.

I'm happy you're giving the FA community a chance to help out : ]

Technically that is a nice thing as it's a more open system. Practically I worry whether it's giving a gateway for angry users to harass people who they don't like, and take revenge on artists who post things they feel triggered by. We all know that sort of thing happens, and it's why larger sites (like Facebook or Youtube) could never do such a thing as community based moderation.

I understand where you're coming from, but be mindful that this community have been around over a decade, I think they've been through these situations before lol (And FA is not a big of a community like Youtube and Facebook). I believe, who ever they pick as moderator, they'll respectively pick those they believe will help the future in this community. : ]

If things unfortunately goes south, they'll fix it. ; ]

I'm sorry to hear that FA is having a hard time finding people who can delete immoral artwork, sanction users for writing bad words in random comments, punish folks for what they link to or do on other art sites, etc. Furaffinity has softened up to the point where you don't even see the galleries and lives of artists being nuked off the site with no warning, for breaching weird and interpretable rules that no one had any idea existed. It wasn't like this back when I was in my early 20's and life was harsh... now everyone has so much freedom to express themselves, users of the website are being so happy... we need more angry moderators to put a stop to this heresy, all hail new moderators!

(Obviously I'm just kidding and messing around. I... I think. I mean on the part where... never mind.)

Joke aside though, the thought of considering this has actually ran through my mind for a moment. Ironically I'd consider this position to better protect the freedom of artists from misleading reports... though it would also be a nice thing I could do in return for the site and community. Only problem is I might not have all that much time to dedicate to the task nowadays, and I also wouldn't want my inability to be attentive causing me to make a mistake.

Also the idea of semi-open (community based) moderation might not be all that bad for a site of FA's size! Only problem is making sure the people who are given the position can be trusted, which I don't foresee being an easy task. As such I'm rather divided on this idea, and worry whether it could ultimately be a gateway to trolls gaining control of dangerous admin tools.

Please, no drama tied to these moderators.


Well, this is the fandom - so we will get one who will somehow get their ego really brushed.

Hey look, another high-traffic area to leave my icon.

Hopefully we can get moderators worth a single damn who don't just cause drama with shitty personality/background and dubious legal problems and can actually do something for once.

And not like, constantly harass some people while also ignoring what other people do that are against the ToS and potentially illegal.


I'm not going to hold my breath.

Whoa, tickets are a thing? If it's on the forums then no wonder I don't know about that...

So you have an estimate of how much work that 40 tickets a week thing means? I'm not really sure I would have the time.

Not on the forums; you can find your (user) ticket interface at https://www.furaffinity.net/control.....roubletickets/

The time it takes to handle a ticket can vary anywhere from a few minutes for simple straightforward AUP tickets to an hour or more for complicated tickets that require a lot of investigation. The number is a goal, and we understand that some tickets take a lot of time, so coming up a bit short once in a while isn't the end of the world.

Lol it's right there, guess I'll add "facepalm" in my TODO list. Thank you o3o

Who design heart and photos well to all ?

ABORT! ABORT! YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU DO!

geebus XD

I signed up. If there any problems with what I filled in, feel free to send me a private message about it I guess.

Well, probably not gonna happen, but i gave it a shot, figured it's worth a try, right?

I have no strong feelings one way or the other, I just hope I never have to interact with a moderator for any reason (again).
Go about your business FA, just get some decent folks in. That's all I care about.

I know this is probably a dumb question but why are they anonymous? Otherwise Good luck to those who sign up. I hope we get the help FA needs.

Moderators are anonymous to protect them against harassment and outside pressure. Unfortunately enforcing site rules often ends up making people unhappy, and not everyone handles it very well.

It's not when site rules are enforced that makes people unhappy. Rules are rules, them's the breaks. It's if/when they're enforced poorly that causes displeasure (to put it charitably).

Usually yes

That's always an issue, and I recognize that we have room to improve on that -- and I have some ideas to make that a better reality.

Forgive the cynicism, but I won't be holding my breath on that one. It's nice to hear it's recognised at least, a step is a step if nothing else.
Sadly my experience has already been and gone and had a line drawn under it. Hopefully anyone unfortunate enough to be forced to open a ticket will have better resolutions.

All that aside, have a nice day Dragoneer. You're a pretty chill guy.

This is a refreshing, new, and wonderful thing to hear.
Previously users having the idea and saying that staff or the site needed improvement was considered a form of attacking the staff and website.
Now its considering a way to find ways to get better.
This is already a part of the better reality I want.

Sadly, when rules are never outright broken by someone, but they are punished for vaguely breaking rules by 'interpretation', it shows that there is a problem. One of my problems is that enforcing rules is done on a relative basis.
I've never said a single outright lie in my history at this site, and if anything, even when I was nasty to folk, I had been truthful, the worst is I've said is a half-truth, and I've never attacked a religion or race... yet I must admit, I've had heavy problems with staff, and users.
All I want is for the staff and site to get better... and hope they do well.

That's what everyone wants. We all want a pleasant time. But sometimes the rules are simply not upheld properly, or punishment is not given where it is clearly warranted. As I said previously, them's the breaks. But in this case, it shouldn't be.

I just hope going forth there's an improvement in that department. We all want a good time here, and equally we want rule breakers punished.

I have seen users become incredibly disgruntled when caught doing bad things so this makes sense. So it makes sense. I understand what you mean by pressure as well.

I can't agree more to the policies you have in place. I have been a moderator in several other places (and still am) and man sometimes it gets exhausting when you cant do anything with anonymity. Especially in places you spend a lot of time. When your only option is to sign out and stay away from the place completely to get away from it, it makes your desire to return diminish after people start with the harassment. In fact I've even had someone stalk me and find me on Facebook and start spreading my photos thanks to salty sailors. It isn't fun. At the end of the day every moderator is still a person.

While I have, like most, had moderators make decisions I didn't necessarily approve of, I can see where all of them came from and why the decision was made.

Keep up the good work, Mungo

Thank you!

I think most moderators eventually end up having to make decisions they would rather not. Some cases are going to suck - you're reviewing something that is definitely against the rules, but you can understand and sympathize with why it was posted. Thankfully, those cases are relatively few and far between. One of the things I most enjoy seeing is people reacting to administrative action with "yeah, okay, my wrong" - owning your mistakes earns you a lot more respect in my book than trying to save face.

Amen to that! And getting to an end resolution that, even if someone is a bit disgruntled, makes everyone understand the reasoning and accept it is always the preferred way to do things in my experience.

Text based communication can be a pain because there is no tone of voice or body language with it, making it hard to fully understand the context. Which can lead to people being more upset than necessary and then things can end on a sour note. Which is always unfortunate. But I find that if both parties can have a civil chat and try to understand why something is wrong, why it happened, etc can bring things to a better resolution. Even so, as much effort as you put in someone will eventually be upset and go off on ya. Gotta be able to step back, log out and take a breath sometimes. Adminnin' requires some thick skin sometimes for sure.

Its a fair question.

Anonymous admin/mods are often a technique used by contact centres (call centres, helpdesks etc) to shield staff from personal attacks (outing, doxing, defamation etc) by disgruntled end-users.

Ah, That makes a lot of sense when you put it this way. I've seen users on several sites react poorly when caught in the act of being crappy.

There's a few reasons. In the past we've seen a small, yet vocal handful of people have gone out of their way to harass and attack moderators for doing their job. That person broke a rule, had action taken against them, and in return took to Twitter or Facebook to retaliate against the mod and get their friends to join in.

We DO believe that moderators need to be held to the same standards as everyone else. If they mess up, if they abuse their power, they DO need to be held accountable. At the same time, we don't feel people should go out of their way to intentionally try to break a new moderator or take revenge against them solely for trying to uphold the site policy. It can be exceedingly stressful for some. These are volunteers positions for people who are just trying to help out users and make the community a better place.

This was the middle ground we chose. We know it does not work for everyone but we want users to know their tickets are going to be responded to timely and accurately and that moderators have people seek revenge against them if they simply perform their job.

That makes sense. Is there going to be a thing where people can report mishandled tickets or moderator abuse as well? I'm curious if this is already a thing or a future thing. Knowing that they're anonymous I'm not sure how that system would work but I'm glad that mods are better protected from pressure of users and abuse.

We have a ticket category to appeal admin/moderator action, at which point that ticket is kicked up to a lead. If you feel your ticket was mishandled you have every right to contest the action taken. It doesn't mean we will agree with you, but we will take a look into it. If a mistake was made we'll respect that and withdraw the issue.

Ah I never knew that

ANYONE in a position of power MUST be held to a HIGHER standard to protect EVERYONE.

If they can't do the right thing, then they MUST get off my planet.

Sadly, 'Neer isn't known for this..

Will give this a try! It would be interesting getting to get a more intimate perspective of what the average user faces in terms of their tickets.

I nominate pron Lord for moderator

How about no?

How about adding a 'no popufur' rule when it comes to moderators? Also, artists would most likely have their hands full without checking tickets.

I second that.

Third that! Since most artists who do 3D animations say it takes forever to make, they wouldn't have time to check through all those tickets.

I'm sure artists can decide for themselves whether or not they can manage additional hours a week. They would also have better experience handling artist related tickets as they have likely encountered an issue or two during their career, empathizing from both perspectives.

This ^

There is no reason you should say "no artists." In fact, many artists on this site are unemployed otherwise and have more than enough hours in the day to devote to both art, and ticket checking.

That being said I **don't** think a no "popufur" thought is a fair one, but perhaps not a ridiculous proposal. While its not always the case and of course not intended when it happens some times, being a large figure and being in charge of something can cause problems. At least that is my experience.

But yet those same artists take months to finish a commission :/
They will just add onto the list of ways to get side tracked. Plus most artists get aggressive when you ask them about a commission that was paid for 3months ago. How do you think that will pan out with tickets when they are stressed over commissioners they deal with on a daily bases?

They aren't even required to do 1 hour a day on tickets, And if they take month on a commission, then don't commission them? I mean, its pretty simple. If you can't wait look for someone with promised turn around times.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

I was thinking of trying it out, I was an admin before on another site but I stopped because the drama started to get to me alittle. Yeah it was a fun time tho, I wouldn't recommend moderation to the faint of heart tho, it can be rather tough at times, even painful >~< but still. Good luck to anyone who applies :)

The fact you don't want to compensate these people for there time and effort for a job speeks volumes on just how important you consider this. I get the job is big, as is the sight, but much like anything else, if you want it done right and not be about ego, you need to compensate.

To be honest, yes compensation would be good but in terms of the amount of moderators and the size of the site, think of the Mods as the unpaid interns, they do the exact same jobs as the Admins except with less permissions. The Admins operate not only as the higher authority but also the role models for the Moderators. Sometimes they are paid and sometimes they are not. Wanna know why there are still mods and admins tho for sites when they aren't paid? Dedication, they are dedicated to keeping the site alive. If evey Intern was paid the same amount an hour every day, there wouldn't be enough for the upkeep of the site itself. Many sites have fallen because they lose track of this. To me, helping someone get through another day is reward enough for my hard work because then I can sleep well because I knew that I helped someone.

And tho I agree with you for that, they are asking a lot for volunteering. Minimum 40 tickets a week. Your personal information and anonaminty.

Also the upkeep thing I argue with the simple fact fa has a convention. Which do not come cheep. If you can have that yet let your product go with out needed fund pumped into its upkeep, you can budget to pay people for dealing with your products troubles for you.

Every site i've seen like this Moderation was always a voluntary job.

Ideally, I would love for any moderator positions to be paid positions, but we would need to generate a LOT more money than we do to make that a reality.

Fair. But did you or did you not sell the sight to another company to assist in these money issues, yet still have money for endevors like cons, rather then pumping that extra cash flow that generated into the sight itself? If you can't pay your own employee but pay for basically a big party, one questions how the budget goes.

We did, but every moderator would add about $20K to the budget to pay them properly. And ideally I'd like to pay people more than the minimum. We could cover those costs if we put in a subscription mode for FA and offered a monthly supporter rate, but that's not something not everyone wants. Some people do not mind volunteering their free time. Some people genuinely enjoy helping others. If/when we can get a to a point where we can pay every mod I will gladly do so. We're not forcing anyone to volunteer. If people choose to volunteer we respect that and we respect their time.

Why do we ask for a minimum, or a suggested minimum? Because we want people who can donate time, and have some kind of expectation as to what kind of time we'd like. If we brought on moderators who did 5 tickets, or 1 or 2 a day, that doesn't help the community in the long run.

Also, we pay for a large party? If you're referring to FA United our attendees pay for that through registration. All convention costs are covered through registration for said convention.

I don't know why people would be against premium fa though considering not much would be different. I think just offering extra profile stuff and even special badges and some sort of other goodies would probably be enticing enough. Like similar to how Deviantart does it.

a Premuim FA would get rid of the annoying ads and I wouldn't mind paying a small fee. Maybe access to some fancy features. Yes I'm thinking of dA stuff XD

It would also screw the site over as a lot of people who use it wouldn't be able to afford to.

I was thinking of a yearly fee like $15

If I ever went for a "premium account" I'd try to go by the old LiveJournal model. Essentially, a model where NOBODY loses functionality. We take nothing away, but give a few little "perks" which can enhance the site, but again, in no way remove functionality from the rest of the site. Too many sites strip or water down basic functionality and go "y u no pay?" which I am not for in any way.

I do not like sites that take away basic concepts and then go "Oh, you want to search for X? You'll need to pay for that."

And with that, I trust you more than I trust Youtube lol

Since most furries are here, FA has become my main art site for a while, so as an artist who does commissions, FA provides me almost all of my customers, so I would be most than happy to pay for a monthly subscription, and I'm pretty sure most artists would do it as well. I wouldn't want FA to die, but I have to admit that the site isn't the best one either, and obviously having a whole new FA, requires money. So why not? a lot of my artists friends would be happy with it as well, we do already support picarto cause they offer good features and exposure, plus the multistream... so let's us support you, make a better site, let's us have some cool features, like banners that link to other sites, perhaps a rating system for commissions, or you could implement a Commission search feature too, where ppl would go and look for open artists, perhaps have some kind of filter for what artists offers, etc, that's probably much to ask, but would be a dream. I know a lot of artists would pay for this, for me, doing art for furries is a good business, and again, I would be most than happy to pay for premium features and support my main art site

well id like a better UI to filter the comm people out

I'd easily handle 1-5 tickets a week, but 40 would be killing my time.

i dread this but what if u start putting adds up on the site? that would help with the money

There already ARE ads on the site...

Helping out the community/FA is reward enough for some.