Restructuring the Marble Blast Community

Most everyone has been unsatisfied with how this community has been run, but now we have a chance to restructure this community in a way that the community wants. The previous staff haven't listened to the community about what they wanted for this place, but that will be the case no longer. This place needs to change, and we have some idea of what to do but we want to hear your opinions. Please suggest things that you think should change around here, no topic is off limits. This discussion is centered around the community, forums, discord, webchat etc. not about PlatinumQuest itself. Please don't suggest ways to change the game but rather the community as a whole. I look forward to our discussion.

List of things we plan to do
- Rewrite the Terms of Service
- Rewrite the rules for the forums, webchat, and discord
- Aayrl will work on figuring out how to separate the Leaderboards and the Forums so people can be banned from one but not the other.

An incomplete list of things to discuss.
- How moderators should moderate
- What should/ should not go in the rules/ tos.
- Removing MegaMarblers role from the user list in discord
- Opt-in Channels, make them always visible? Add/ remove various channels.
- More things I can't think of, suggest your ideas.

In regards to how the moderators should moderate, it should be more on the hands-off side. It means that moderators shouldn't interfere, at least not too much. They don't need to jump in where they don't belong when someone else has already taken care of something. I've seen plenty of instances where moderators would continuously interfere even after a situation has already been taken care of. Stuff like the webport debacle and the drama after Yoshi's unban come to mind. I have nothing but bad memories from those times because of how the moderators handled the situation.

If moderators take the hands-off approach, they wouldn't have feel as stressed as they would when taking the opposite approach.

Blasted wrote: In regards to how the moderators should moderate, it should be more on the hands-off side.

I agree. My previous experience as a moderator has left me more on the micro manage everything side of moderation, and with good reason. In the community I moderated it was much larger than this place and frequently had chat spammers and trolls and other troublemakers. The only way to manage them was to be very strict about everything people could say. I've realized that I carried that over here when its clearly not necessary, this community is nothing like the one I moderated before and I need to adjust accordingly.

Lovely to see this here. Can we still suggest things related to the "List of things we need to do" rather than the list of things which are specifically to discuss as a community?

Okay, here are my thoughts about what's in that second list right now.

(i) Moderators should moderate with transparency and with less interference than they have been so far in the time that I've been in this community. Mutes and bans should always be public, with good reasons given every time, and moderators should be open to constructive criticism and feedback from the community.

(ii) The terms of service should be concise and straightforward, ideally just a few bullet points, and shouldn't contain some scary message at the end saying that you will always defend Marble Blast.

(iii) I have no opinion about this, although I do like mega marbles in general.

(iv) Add channels if enough people request them, and as for opt-in, I think the current system is fine, but I also don't use the opt-in channels so my opinion doesn't mean much here.

(v) I think we should talk about the forums and improving their use within the community. We don't use them enough and it makes me sad. I think Kalle said several months ago that he was going to suggest some ways to involve the forums in our community more, so I'm really looking forward to that. Also I miss when people used to use Webchat more but that is probably more nostalgia than anything else.

Nature Freak wrote: Can we still suggest things related to the "List of things we need to do" rather than the list of things which are specifically to discuss as a community?

Absolutely! I just wanted to make clear that we were already planning to do these things with some ideas in mind. Additional discussion about these is of course welcome.

What's wrong with the Mega Marble role?

I think the argument against it was that it kept the elitism going in the community by putting people who were good at the game over everyone else. I could be wrong though.

I can see it both ways. It's not good to value people based purely on skill at the game, but I can also understand why people wanted more "relevant" members to be at the top of the list. Although maybe colored names are distinction enough. Although maybe we want to talk about colored names in general as well—I think there was also an argument that anyone should get a colored name on Discord. So how do people feel about that?

We could maybe see #life-talk coming back. One of the things that makes the new server so much better is that people can actually talk about themselves. This certainly isn't all of it, but this is the first thing that comes to my mind.

Yes! The life talk channel is a lot of fun. People could also use the forums' blog section for that but that doesn't tend to get used as much. But who knows, maybe there could be a revival.

I didn't really use any of the opt-in channels apart from life talk. That's why we should have #general, which works very well in other servers. I don't think there's any reason to restrict discussion to just Marble Blast talk. We're people and we want to talk about normal people things. I much prefer the way the other server is structured with a general category at the top, and then Marble Blast talk below all the general channels. It makes it feel more like a community of friends rather than a community of competitive gamers.

I think discussion of illegal activities shouldn't be banned.

I think it largely depends on what the illegal activities are. Might be better to handle each topic as it comes up or something, but I agree that a few illegal activities are okay to talk about, as long as it's not anything that's actually harmful or offensive. But again, that's a subjective thing, so it's kind of hard to draw a line about stuff like this.

Re: Mega Marble role
We wanted the list of users to be more relevant and there was this easy already existing role of coloured names, so it became really simple to just use that. I don't know how I feel about letting everyone have a coloured name I quite like the system of you get it in Marble Blast you get it on Discord. I think this discord should first and foremost be about the game so incentivizing playing the game and discussing the game. But there is more to be done about allowing normal conversation again, like bringing back #general, perhaps renaming #off-topic, and putting that above #speedrunning again.

Re: Discussing illegal activities
Uh... can you be more specific about what you mean by illegal activities. Because something about that just feels inherently wrong. Perhaps we're thinking of different illegal activities. I imagine ur talking about using substances and I'm thinking about like plotting a murder or something. Explain please.

i love to see threads like this, thanks for opening up the discussion, and taking considerations into account thus far!

How moderators should moderate

moderators should be in place to carry out the will of the community, and make everyone feel vibe and chill and cool i see many take the approach that feels more like babysitters than anything, and all it does is make a clear divide between those in positions of power and those not in positions of power. its best to remember that everyone is gathering for a similar purpose, and nobody's opinion is worth more than another person's. that being said, i like the way things currently are. i think its a very comfy environment

Opt-in Channels, make them always visible? Add/ remove various channels.

'#aww' can be removed and those things can go in '#links-and-media', and same with '#minecraft' and '#video-games.' i always thought the channels being opt-in felt unnecessary, im ok with making them visible to everyone
^ but those things i dont feel too strongly about

though, on the topic of channels, i would very much like to see:
-#off-topic renamed to #general and moved higher on the channel list, like a more traditional server
-#life-talk
-maybe a channel dedicated to more mature conversation (NOT porn or anything weird, just a more relaxed place to chill - something similar to the vibe we have in the offshoot server) this would also be a good place for the "illegal" topics being mentioned here. though it is also worth mentioning that what is legal/illegal varies based on location, and different people have different definitions for what laws are 'harmful' and what laws are agreeable. i think its better to be specific and not use the legality of a topic as a way to categorize or reference it

Removing MegaMarblers role from the user list in discord

dont care too much either way about this, but i think anyone having a colored name on the server would be cool, and make the earning of the colored name be something more specific to the forums and webchat - though admittedly my opinion here should probably hold very little weight since i do not have a colored name. id like to hear more from people who have earned theirs.

Doomblah wrote:

Blasted wrote: In regards to how the moderators should moderate, it should be more on the hands-off side.

I agree. My previous experience as a moderator has left me more on the micro manage everything side of moderation, and with good reason. In the community I moderated it was much larger than this place and frequently had chat spammers and trolls and other troublemakers. The only way to manage them was to be very strict about everything people could say. I've realized that I carried that over here when its clearly not necessary, this community is nothing like the one I moderated before and I need to adjust accordingly.

as a closing note, this made me very happy to read. i was a bit worried at first about what your moderation style would look like in practice, but hearing your thoughts on this and seeing your perspective change a bit is comforting to see. i dont think its a secret that i prefer the style blasted mentioned above a more heavy-handed one.

I think it would be appropriate to ban casual references to God. It's a small thing to ask respect of the name of one's Creator. For atheists, it can be taken as appreciation for creation or simply courtesy, which is of course a thing here.

I recently rewrote the rules of a Discord server to be more concise. It might be worth mentioning this is the first rule:
"Exercise consideration of all in all you do. Give the benefit of the doubt."
I think obvious loopholes are caught by it (and possibly by the current ToS's "be civil"). I doubt those who don’t take this seriously would take a long-winded set of rules substantially more seriously, and I think such verbosity would be a pain. Uncertain matters are still listed:
"As suggested by the first rule, let there be no gossip, slander, or serious retaliation. Keep personal information private unless the staff have proof of permission from whom the information is about."

I opt for making opt-in channels always visible.
As for adding or removing channels: if some are rarely used but together have the activity of one channel, and #off-topic is active enough, perhaps they could be replaced with a second #off-topic.

I have thought about what makes a community more fun to be in, and in this post, I will address the issue in two parts.
First of all, I want to talk about moderation. One thing that always bothered me with the old ways was that moderators would be too harsh when there was no need for it. I always support the way of simply telling someone to let go of the subject if it’s rule-breaking, and only delete if the content is grossly offensive or illegal. I support leaving up conversations that broke rules in general, and to provide a proper reason if it actually is deleted. Reasons like “no” or “yikes” are not good. And a reason doesn’t have to be long or complicated, a simple explanation like “removed images of gore” would be enough.

I will also try to put in place a system where offences are screenshotted logged in a separate channel so if someone actually does break rules multiple times, we can simply refer to those. This will make both the offender and the community at large feel much more at ease, and accusations of punishments coming from nowhere will be a thing of the past. If there are clear instances that can be shown to the community in a moment where emotions run high, I’m sure people will be more understanding and agree that action was needed. Though I will say that I think this system will very rarely have to be used, if ever.

I fully plan on being a hands-off moderator until something actually needs to be done. People must feel like they can be free to speak, and know that they will not be punished instantly without prior warnings. I am also not against illegal activities being discussed in the server, partly because different things are legal in different parts of the world, I trust that you will have good judgement regarding what to talk about. If something goes too far we can easily deal with it in the moment.

Secondly, I will say that I think forum activity is a good thing. I want to see more things like the labor day madness event. Obviously not the exact same event, but something that is an activity that is planned and announced on the forums. This is not limited to MP-related things, but also stuff like level-making competitions/collaborations (possibly with a theme) or special speedrunning challenges for people to partake in within a certain timeframe. It could be a bi-weekly thing that people can suggest ideas for.

Regarding the points in Doomblah’s OP:
I will make a new thread for the TOS soon. I already have an idea of what to include but community input is still good.
The rules can be included in the same thread since those two largely overlap.
I’ve stated how I plan on moderating; I would love to hear other people’s input. I’m fully willing to change my ways if people have differing opinions.
I am completely ambivalent on the mega marblers role.
I am also very ambivalent on opt-in channels. I’ll go with whatever other people want.

Super excited to see how the community develops from here. I feel happy reading your plans for how you'll moderate, because I really think it makes things much more fun and relaxed around here with your style of moderation, and I'll also feel more secure knowing that the moderators will keep logs of what they do and provide clear reasons for everything.

Also! I can't wait to see the forums become more active! Love your ideas, and I especially like the thought of keeping the forums in regular use and encouraging people to participate in more events here. That way, the forums will again be an essential part of our community, just as they should be. Can't wait for the new threads as well!