MMBM Rules Announcement

The Council is instituting a new rule for this board, which takes effect immediately. The rule is:

No one may post comments about mod-making, or the chances of success of any particular mod. Posts in MMBM threads by members who are not the author of the thread may only respond to information that has been released by the creator. These responses can be in the form of compliments, comments, or questions.

Some examples of prohibited posts:
-This mod will surely fail.
-There are so many noob mods, and this is just another.
Comments like these belong in a separate thread which you are welcome to make, or in the Advice thread.
( marbleblast.com/index.cgi?board=mbmodoth...display&thread=11053 )

Some examples of allowed posts:
-I like that texture you posted.
-Have you considered giving the marble a gradient effect?
-It looks like you don't have enough staff members to make the 200 levels you said you plan to.

Staff will react to offenders by giving out five to ten percent warning levels, depending on the nature of the abuse. Repeat offenders will garner increased warning levels, eventually leading to a suspension and ban.

The Council would also like to take this opportunity to advise any mods that are shutting down to release whatever materials they have, such as levels and textures. That will minimize the destructive powers of failed mods on the community.

Feel free to post in this thread if you have comments or questions about the rule.

Thank you and good day.

The so-called borderline case of constructive criticism, in a case where I have truly nothing positive to say, I don't want this giving me *more* warning.

Nice new rule. People always just let their mods die after seeing offending posts like, Your mod sucks, or something like that.

@RC which is exactly the goal of those posts

Ok, now that my performance is over, I can fully expand on my thoughts on this new rule. Essentially, this encourages the mindless promotion of mods, through transparent compliments towards whatever scant progress has been accomplished.


Apr 27, 2011, 8:46pm, pablovasquez wrote:Staff will react to offenders by giving out five to ten percent warning levels, depending on the nature of the abuse. Repeat offenders will garner increased warning levels, eventually leading to a suspension and ban.

This is exactly one of the problems with some of this community. While obviously, some posts can be direct abuse to the mod without constructively helping, putting a blanket statement over all negative comments is very misguided. Most, if not all proclaimed n00b mods, deserve large amounts of negative feedback, mainly because they are sparsely planned, and usually created by people with little to no experience. Furthermore, even negative statements without help are warranted. For example, if someone posts a link, such as this thread, where the purpose of the mod site is to spread a virus, no constructive criticism is necessary. I find it unfair that I would actually receive a warning for calling out an obvious virus threat, especially where I never did anything wrong in the first place.


Apr 27, 2011, 8:46pm, pablovasquez wrote:Posts in MMBM threads by members who are not the author of the thread may only respond to information that has been released by the creator. These responses can be in the form of compliments, comments, or questions.


And just when I thought the new rule was going to be slightly helpful. On the premise that a lot of mod threads are created to start hype and get attention, this rule essentially allows self-dubbed modders to pull forum-goers by a virtual string. This is actually bad for both parties, as explained here:


Modders. If they are essentially allowed to post whatever they want, and not receive suggestions or guidance on what to do next, or how to plan out their mod, they are much more likely to fail. Without heavily playing the system by rewriting suggestions as questions, helpful advice will become very difficult to give.
Community. Part of the fun of being an active part of Marble Blast Forums is helping support successful mods, and essentially sanitize ourselves of ones that are obviously doomed. Because this is restricted, it essentially takes away one of the biggest reasons that I'm here, and presumably other people as well. Also, no one really wants to pick through an error-riddled post just to find one decent thing to compliment about.



Apr 27, 2011, 8:46pm, pablovasquez wrote:The Council would also like to take this opportunity to advise any mods that are shutting down to release whatever materials they have, such as levels and textures. That will minimize the destructive powers of failed mods on the community.


This is pretty much the only beneficial part of the rule. In fact, if this is done aggressively and not slacked on, it should actually improve the popularity and flow of the forums, solely due to the increased number of levels. Also, a member is much more likely to stay after success with levels, rather than an epic failure with mods.

Agreed 100% with nobody

IMO, there should be a new rule created that prevents people with less than a certain number of posts or who has contributed nothing to the community (levels, codes etc) from viewing or posting in the MBMM board

also, I find nobody's GET OUT post perfectly justafiable as thats what almost eveyone wanted to say but he had the guts to say it!

Just my 2 cents worth

Kurt

I've said it before and I'll say it again now - the only kind of negative feedback that should be posted in mod threads is constructive criticism. It really is not hard to post constructive criticism at all, you guys. The community should be a welcoming and helpful place for people to promote their mod, and not a place where people jump down his/her throat and demotivate him completely. Posts that do nothing but slam the mod or insult the mod's creator have no place in any mod thread. All the posts saying stuff like this mod sucks because you don't have a plan or Here's another noob mod that's going to fail just results in tension, bickering, and flame wars in the mod threads, and I think everyone can agree that we've seen quite enough of that over the last several months. If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it at all.

So what I think people should post is links to the advice thread in this board, comments on any levels, textures, skies, etc that are posted by the mod's staff, gently ask questions about what the creator's plan is, etc. It is possible to do all these things without attacking the mod or the person. It's the mod creator's job to acknowledge these criticisms and (hopefully) take them to heart. It's the people who respond to constructive criticism well and those who don't listen to it or get overly defensive about it that separate the successful mods from the mods that have died.

@Nobody if that link really was a virus then you certainly had a right to call it out and thus your warning isn't warranted at all. We've gotta check out the link first.

I'm sorry but I'm going to have to say that this thread is pointless, and that Nobody is correct in everything that he said. His warning is unjustifiable and should be removed.

Or am I not allowed to say anything that bashes people anymore, nor give my opinion? Might as well give me warning for that too.

And also, Pablo, I distinctively remember you having a title about Proud destroyer of a number of mods or something like that. I find it ironic that you held that title and posted this thread.

Nobody, if no one has anything positive to say about a topic, they shouldn't post it. They shouldn't even FORCE themselves to post compliments. If they don't like it they shouldn't post. This way mod creators will know that they're not given good comments because no one really pays attention anymore. Meaning, they have to improve.

That said, you should also be posting constructive criticism, something you rarely do. So the blanket practically covers you who are currently prominent about that; others may be but I don't see them popping their heads over as much.
FYI, Pablo slowed down/stopped on being negative and that's way before this post-- you should learn from him (this also answers Rokoshu's post). I didn't even bother to post to begin with, something I suggested to you already.

If you had told me before about the virus link (tbh I had suspicions but I was like 'meh' since the member did register 1.5 months ago so I figured otherwise) then I would've taken faster action-- the 10% is because of the GET OUT comment which didn't have anything else in it when you originally posted (and I viewed). I was instantly pissed off by the 'GET OUT' and didn't think twice like you haven't (because lets be honest, just about every mod here you hate and have been negative to the original creator so I took it the same here, so you got nothing to complain about to begin with as it's really your fault). I'm removing the warning but next time I see something like that (especially in topics without 'viruses') expect a heavy penalty. I've warned you way too many times now.

Additionally, you wrote that ...not receive suggestions or guidance on what to do next, or how to plan out their mod... helpful advice will become very difficult to give..
I'd like to make sure you realise that you never give helpful advice to them, you only post negative comments to begin with. Regarding how to plan a mod, there are a lot of posts in the sticked topic and that covers it, if people can't read, their problem; we ignore them. You can link to it if you want, but repeating whats been said 100 times is pointless and derails the thread.
Suggestions/guidance are welcome (did you ever try This looks way too much like MBU textures just inverted in colors; we really recommend you to make your own textures? thought not) but I don't recall the last time you gave something like that.

tl;dr: what I always told you: ignore everything. Can't? you need to learn a valuable life lesson then.


This is pretty much the only beneficial part of the rule. - thank you, I said in the council we need to mention that. Failed mods that release stuff get positive comments and respect from this community, which then leads them to remain by making levels seeing as they managed that successfully.

Kurt: this isn't possible on proboards.


The original purpose of this board was to welcome any mod, good or bad. The fact it's degrading by the presence of dozens of your mod sucks that every topic begins with (even Opal) reflects badly on this community, and reflects in the opposite way than Ian's blog post. If anything you should be thinking that you should quit viewing this board or just view specific topics (I rarely view the spam board, so this shows such things are possible).

People seem to be misinterpreting the intention of this rule. The point is not to kill mods, nor to help them by stifling criticism; it's simply to prevent the same exact posts from being posted over and over again in every new noob thread. It's a rule to make the forums more pertinent and focused, and to stop them from being repetitive.

I agree that people should be complimenting any new mods, mod creators will surely feel supported and hence work better on the mod if they receive positive comments. Everyone wants to be praised and none of them want to be told that their mods will fail. I therefore support this rule and hopefully it will allow future mods to be more long-lasting and more of them can be successfully released to the public.

It's a good rule, I don't think it's right if anyone posts negative thoughts about a new mod, that could turn out great, and it just makes the owner of the new mod usually want to leave the mod because of bad comments. Posting good comments for example: saying that the mod could be greater than MBA or MBP, and so on, even if it doesn't, it could still turn out unique and great, you never know. And that can make them want to achieve more and make the mod great, sometimes it doesn't, but it's not good to post bad comments about someones mod and the person who posted the bad comment, may have no idea how great it could be going, because the owner of the mod, may not want to post any textures or pictures incase anyone takes them and uses them for their own mod. Sure they could post some updates and tell how it's going but they may not want to do that, people should'nt say bad things about a mod that in the future, could be great.

Apr 28, 2011, 6:46am, imperialcuirassier wrote:I agree that people should be complimenting any new mods, mod creators will surely feel supported and hence work better on the mod if they receive positive comments.

But what if the mod itself is an obvious failure? What if the creator simply says I'm making a new mod and it will be the best even though I have no pictures, plans, knowledge, or anything required to make it! Are people going to cheer that person on, wearing fake smiles, just pretending to be enthusiastic? That sounds more like a forced kind of rule which I think is unfair. If people obviously don't know what they're doing and people are just cheering them on, how in the world are they ever supposed to get better?

If the mod has any plans whatsoever, then supporting it is fine with me. But if the mod is just an obvious failure, cheering it on is as good as trying to feed a dead animal cheese.

My thoughts.

New rules are good idea. After seeing many mods failing and reading coments i understand why many mods died. Usaly comunity members insulted mod makers and they eventualy quit. Of course we all know that many new mod makers dont understand what real mod making means and its not easy to do ,but we also know that there is posibility for mod to be sucsesfull. I understand that knowing all history of MB we know how they turned out but as matan said: ''If you have something normal to say than say it. If not than KEPP YOUR MOUTH SHUT''. If new mod makers will try they will earn some experience with all the stuff and propably wount leave comunity. So my conclusion is that comunity sould support mods instead of just saing ''DIE DIE''.

-RDs.empire

Apr 28, 2011, 7:43am, tehmarbler wrote:
Apr 28, 2011, 6:46am, imperialcuirassier wrote:I agree that people should be complimenting any new mods, mod creators will surely feel supported and hence work better on the mod if they receive positive comments.

But what if the mod itself is an obvious failure? What if the creator simply says I'm making a new mod and it will be the best even though I have no pictures, plans, knowledge, or anything required to make it! Are people going to cheer that person on, wearing fake smiles, just pretending to be enthusiastic? That sounds more like a forced kind of rule which I think is unfair. If people obviously don't know what they're doing and people are just cheering them on, how in the world are they ever supposed to get better?

If the mod has any plans whatsoever, then supporting it is fine with me. But if the mod is just an obvious failure, cheering it on is as good as trying to feed a dead animal cheese.

No one asked you to cheer, the rules don't ask you to cheer either. Simply ignore the post and don't reply to it. I did that easily for a couple of mods (some are now dead). I don't see whats your (or nobody's) problem in just holding it in and not pressing the reply button.

You sound like you're fine with the entire flame war that happened when MBOpal started when Nobody was just anti-Opal (and still was for a long time) and there was a fight back and forth. Opal made it through and I supported it from day 1. If nobody hasn't posted, we wouldn't have a fight and Opal would still survive.

Edit: you also personally attacked Pablo, stating he was a demotivator of mods. However this, this , this, and this show no posts from him. This one and this one prove that he didn't say anything bad either. In fact, the put 1000 hours and your mod may turn out well is a lot better than Nobody's posts and surely you'd agree with that. No flames, no nasty negativity (even though there's slight negativity) and definitely no screaming anywhere. Obviously if Pablo can do it (and he's a definite master at hating all mods out there, especially n00b mods), so can you. What is the problem that you can't?

Edit 2: Sorry if it sounds attacking or anything. I'm simply curious as I've never met something like that before and I wonder what motive lies behind it and hopefully be able to come into an agreement that both parties would be happy with.

Too tired to read everyone's mega-posts, but if you don't want us to force your frown into a smile using our evil staff powers then just don't post... I completely agree that some mods are terrible, and will most likely fail. We can encourage that person to release a level pack instead which may actually turn out good.
Stifling creativity will get us nowhere, look at the activity of the forums atm. It's at a massive slump. I remember a couple of years ago these forums were BOOMING.

Not all creativity is good, in fact some is downright terrible, but at least we'll continue to gain active members if we don't quash their every dream as soon as they come here with the hopes of making a mod.

Just my 2 cents (or .22 US cents with conversion rates at an all time high, baby woo!)

IMO, I think people should be able to say your mod fails if you can't take that, then you can't take being a mod leader. It's all part of being a mod leader your going to get it, better right away then when your half way thought then you quit cause you find your not strong enough to lead.

It's the same thing with MBE, when Ian put that MBE site up awhile ago and he gave everyone some pics people we're trying to help him make MBE better, but he got mad and removed the site. Also Jeff with MBO was getting really annoyed at Matan, he kept telling me on googletalk how annoying he was. I had to convince him that Matan knows what's best because he made a mod, now he's ok with Matan telling him to fix stuff(I think ).

Good idea. The guy who created MBNuclear just left after his mod got trashed. He was really immature though, and he wouldn't have stayed long anyway.

Apr 28, 2011, 9:55am, marble2 wrote:IMO, I think people should be able to say your mod fails if you can't take that, then you can't take being a mod leader. It's all part of being a mod leader your going to get it, better right away then when your half way thought then you quit cause you find your not strong enough to lead.

It's the same thing with MBE, when Ian put that MBE site up awhile ago and he gave everyone some pics people we're trying to help him make MBE better, but he got mad and removed the site. Also Jeff with MBO was getting really annoyed at Matan, he kept telling me on googletalk how annoying he was. I had to convince him that Matan knows what's best because he made a mod, now he's ok with Matan telling him to fix stuff(I think ).

exactly marble2, just ask ian, myself, or greg25 on how much heat we got. But, we take it, its part of my job to suck it up and take the heat.

I am sorry if I offened anybody with my your mod will fail posts (i think i only did 1).

But, what about Freedom of Speech!!! if your not saying anything inappropriate, whats the big deal? (note:this is not directed towards pablo )

Why do people think that freedom of speech is an excuse for everything? It's not at all; look it up.

I know I told him, that freedom of speech doesn't mean you can say anything you want anywhere. Just because you can't post something on a forum doesn't violate that right because you can still say it, just not here. Same with TV there are certain words you can't say(at least in the US don't know about other places), but that's not violating free speech because you can say those words other places. It's mainly to protect you from the government stopping you from speaking out against it, and another thing some countries DON'T let you do it and this is the internet not everyone is from the US anyways.

I talked to nobody and we agreed on whatsup. I took the case that really every mod here (even Opal) starts out with 'hey I'm starting a mod' and not like PQ which is more like 'hey I thought about this for a year, this is all I have so far *write an essay*'.

In reality, all mods here start out with the former example and rarely have a plan (but huge ambitions); this is fine. There's no need to go down their throats. Wait until they post WIPs (Work In Progress) before you analyze whatever they have and thus criticize them on what is there. PQ didn't know what it will have in it and rejected a lot of stuff in the first 5 months before we decided on what will happen. Opal kept changing a few times in the first months too.
I've added actual games like Halo and the creation of levels for PQ as additional examples for what the real process is, so Nobody understood that there's more to it than it seems.

The reason behind the rule was to stop all those your mod sucks you don't have a plan posts that shortly follow a new topic. Rather, this allows the ability to say something nice instead and criticize AFTER an update of some sort is done (Nobody's specialty), where let's be honest, we're all fine with.

Nobody and I talked about it on MSN and we settled this would be the best for all of us, since it achieves what both parties want and allows him to easy ask things without the need to discourage from the get-go.

Good descision.

I know many thoughts have been posted, but mine may be found...

here : marbleblast.com/index.cgi?board=blogiv&a...&thread=11830&page=1

The purpose of these set of guidelines again was to not discourage members from interactive with aspiring mod developers.

In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Matan, Pablo, Myself, and several other staff members were sick of reading the same, discouraging posts under every Marble Blast Mods thread, each one with the same users posting the same responses.

This is considered spamming the forums, where you express the same statement repeatedly in multiple replies or threads. It's no different than someone triple posting, or someone responding with multiple one-word responses. It is unprofessional, and will not be tolerated by the staff.

The Marble Blast Community aims for a safe and positive environment, and the Council feels that the constant negative posts in the mods section of the forums were bringing down the morale of the forums as a whole. The users creating these responses may also be in violation of our forum rules, in the sense that negative remarks are an act of harassment. In response, we've decided to set up these guidelines to help 'clean up' this chunk of the forums.

Again, let me make this point very clear - we WANT you to express your opinions, no matter what they may be. Do you not like Soandso's Mod? Okay, that's your own opinion. You are also free to express your opinion to the forums, just be prepared to back up your opinion and explain WHY you dislike the mod. Providing positive feedback is essential to the development and improvement of an aspiring mod. Simply stating, This mod sucks. does not help any developer pinpoint what exactly needs to be changed to appeal to the public.

So, Final recap: Yes, you have freedom of speech. Yes, you may post whatever you please. However, if you post short, unintelligent responses, with intent of harm, action will be taken against you.

Write whatever you please, but make sure you have evidence to back up your opinions and be prepared to defend your argument intellectually, and not come across as a bunch of fifth graders fighting over the basketball during recess.

~Aayrl

Apr 28, 2011, 7:57pm, aayrl wrote:The purpose of these set of guidelines again was to not discourage members from interactive with aspiring mod developers.

In fact, it's exactly the opposite. Matan, Pablo, Myself, and several other staff members were sick of reading the same, discouraging posts under every Marble Blast Mods thread, each one with the same users posting the same responses.

This is considered spamming the forums, where you express the same statement repeatedly in multiple replies or threads. It's no different than someone triple posting, or someone responding with multiple one-word responses. It is unprofessional, and will not be tolerated by the staff.

The Marble Blast Community aims for a safe and positive environment, and the Council feels that the constant negative posts in the mods section of the forums were bringing down the morale of the forums as a whole. The users creating these responses may also be in violation of our forum rules, in the sense that negative remarks are an act of harassment. In response, we've decided to set up these guidelines to help 'clean up' this chunk of the forums.

Again, let me make this point very clear - we WANT you to express your opinions, no matter what they may be. Do you not like Soandso's Mod? Okay, that's your own opinion. You are also free to express your opinion to the forums, just be prepared to back up your opinion and explain WHY you dislike the mod. Providing positive feedback is essential to the development and improvement of an aspiring mod. Simply stating, This mod sucks. does not help any developer pinpoint what exactly needs to be changed to appeal to the public.

So, Final recap: Yes, you have freedom of speech. Yes, you may post whatever you please. However, if you post short, unintelligent responses, with intent of harm, action will be taken against you.

Write whatever you please, but make sure you have evidence to back up your opinions and be prepared to defend your argument intellectually, and not come across as a bunch of fifth graders fighting over the basketball during recess.

~Aayrl

Bravo. Well said. I salute you.

Well said Aayrl. You can't say x is rubbish without saying why. I don't like x because [insert reason here] and could add on you could improve by doing y or z

Of course, you could not post at all. No one make you to.

I totally approve it. Anyone who is dissing a mod is doomed.

Jul 5, 2013, 8:16am, ralphiboy27 wrote:I totally approve it. Anyone who is dissing a mod is doomed.

Ralph, this topic is almost 2 and a half years old.