Well, think of how few mods there are, and how many users/ threads/ posts there are. There is no contest. Mods there are over worked and under staffed. Sure it is one button or so, but multiply that by all the trolls and hackers and such. Crazy.

[jumps up and down] :boogie: I have a gaia account! And well, a mule I never use, hehehe.

Originally Posted by anime_scholar

The forums on Gaia are so full of trolls and spammers! Why don't the mods do their jobs? It's not that hard to delete a thread, is it? I've modded on other forums back in the day, so unless they're using some P-O-S code for their forums, it should be just a few buttons! [ / rant ]

*sigh* Seriously, though, Gaia frustrates me. Pretty much everything is fun, except for encountering other users! Particularly now that school has started, and all the teenyboppers now have homework... <-- is a grad student who doesn't start until October

I am a site mod on Gaia for the GD and SF. We do our jobs. Unfortunately, there will always be trolls and spammers on a site as huge as Gaia. Also, if good users do not take action and report offences, we do not know they exist. We do not comb through all of the forums looking for them; that would be impossible. Legitimate users must take ownership of the forums and use that report button for us to be efficient. ;)

I am a Gaian. Now I'm also a Menewbie. (I'm new here as you can tell if you read this on the first day I posted)

Originally Posted by jellysundae

I am SO disappointed to read this :( I remember a topic in Site Feedback back in '05 from a kid who'd done the same thing; gone through all the forums and checked on the mod activity. He said there were some then who hadn't been on for over a year : /

I forever state that so much of Gaia's problems stem from poor moderation. Gaia has rules, the majority of the forums don't allow spam, but it still happens because there's not enough mods to deal with it. So sad.
It's the reason why we have attendance requirements for our mods. If people persistently can't put in their required hours then they have to step down, we have no dead wood on our staff, consequently, our forums are not a mess...

:| Moderators get tons of reports per day. On top of that they get tons of PMs from users bitching about this and that. What do they do? They hide their online status so they can get work done. You don't know that they are really offline. Like the user above me said, there will always be spam. Moderators aren't gods that can stop every violation. Your forums are supposedly not a mess because the size of your site nowhere comes near the size off gaia's site. Your site mods have time to kill while Gaia moderators are constantly working to stop the spam and TOS violations.

We get swamped by reports once in a while too. I wouldn't say we have 'time to kill' as we have more rules to enforce than gaia mods do.

And we actually enforce them.

The difference is that we are willing to bring on new mods when we realize that the need is there. by keeping the mod to user ratio smaller we're better able to keep up with the forums. Gaia didn't take on new mods for a long time, and their userbase exploded. I don't think their staff has recovered since then. It's sad really, the forums might be better if they had the time/dedication/staff numbers to handle it.


Anyway, what I came in here to say is: lol, I decided to update my avatar, and was hoping that they had updated the mouth options since the last time I was on there. They had...but OMG they're horrible! D: Black upper lips for some of them, the mouths are too big for the avatar face.... it was just so...ugly! What happened to the cute smile they had years ago? *woe*

Originally Posted by Melody Xyelle

We get swamped by reports once in a while too. I wouldn't say we have 'time to kill' as we have more rules to enforce than gaia mods do.

And we actually enforce them.

The difference is that we are willing to bring on new mods when we realize that the need is there. by keeping the mod to user ratio smaller we're better able to keep up with the forums. Gaia didn't take on new mods for a long time, and their userbase exploded. I don't think their staff has recovered since then. It's sad really, the forums might be better if they had the time/dedication/staff numbers to handle it.


Anyway, what I came in here to say is: lol, I decided to update my avatar, and was hoping that they had updated the mouth options since the last time I was on there. They had...but OMG they're horrible! D: Black upper lips for some of them, the mouths are too big for the avatar face.... it was just so...ugly! What happened to the cute smile they had years ago? *woe*

From time to time you maybe swamped but most Gaia moderators are always swamped. Having more rules is irrelevant. Gaia has more users and less rules. You have more rules and less users. Which is harder? Controlling a small group of user under many rules or controlling a huge group people under fewer rules?

Gaia moderators enforce rules too.

Gaia has an application to apply for moderators now. In the year I've been there, the sticky has been wiped once. There are many people who I know that I met as a normal user that turned moderator. Honestly why are people looking down on Gaia's forums? Spam? Trolling? That's basically trying to tell me that each user obeys every rule and doesn't spam or flame or troll or break God knows what rules.

Woah, calm down please! Different people have different opinions. Being a mod/ staff member anywhere has its difficulties, though they vary from site to site. True it is hard having their hundreds of thousands (have they hit one million?) users online at one time, but even without the spam and trolling, which are easily ignored and are more of a small hassle, there is the massive inflation in the market place which is pretty much uncontrollable because if they changed the gold earning ways, users would riot, the hacking reports that they are too flooded to respond to in a timely manner, though they are trying their best, it will take a few thousand moderators or more to try and control gaia. I personally have no idea how many they have now, but... it's crazy.

And I don't understand your last sentence.....

Gaia has gotten old, boring, and taken over by n00bs.
I've been on gaia [under differen't account names] for five years.
At frist I bearly used it, I used neopets more. Then I found out you could subscribe to threads so that they wouldn't die in a few hours and vanish from the face of the earth.
It was great. Real great, till about a year ago, then suddenly all the n00bs from GD came and took over Barton Town. It was a sad sight. Suddenly I felt like I couldn't find any RPs anymore, at least that were lit. or had a good, unseen plot, so I devoted all my time back to the proboards I'd been RPing on since 2007 with a tight knit group of friends.
After a while I went back to Gaia because our group had fallen apart due to various conflict and reason. Then from what I saw Gaia had turned into a free for all for the n00bs and I couldn't take it.

Honestly that's why I came to this site. To see if I could get back into grove of things. Hopefully I can. <3 But overall Gaia has become n00b ridden... and /b/-tard ridden. ://

Originally Posted by Hatake Ayumi

Woah, calm down please! Different people have different opinions. Being a mod/ staff member anywhere has its difficulties, though they vary from site to site. True it is hard having their hundreds of thousands (have they hit one million?) users online at one time, but even without the spam and trolling, which are easily ignored and are more of a small hassle, there is the massive inflation in the market place which is pretty much uncontrollable because if they changed the gold earning ways, users would riot, the hacking reports that they are too flooded to respond to in a timely manner, though they are trying their best, it will take a few thousand moderators or more to try and control gaia. I personally have no idea how many they have now, but... it's crazy.

And I don't understand your last sentence.....

I am being calm, I'm just not agreeing and worshiping menewsha. Honestly has anyone checked the URL gaiaonlin.com? Look and see where you'll be re-directed if you go there. They've hit 19 million. I meant to ask how long hacking reports took to be resolved.
What I meant was that out of all of the 19 million users do you expect them to all be good little kids?
@Justice Chicken That's what happens when a site becomes popular. If Menewsha was as big as Gaia you would be saying this exact same thing on another avatar site.

I thought I was doing well on Gaia, but after looking at how well some of you are doing on Gaia and Menewsha.... I'm jealous. >.<
hahaha

There are wayyy too many threads on Gaia. I can't ever find what I'm looking for when I search for something.

@darkspineshadow2
Yeah, I know. It's sad to see a site you've been dedicated to for so long to go to hell. ; - ;

Originally Posted by JusticeChickens

@darkspineshadow2
Yeah, I know. It's sad to see a site you've been dedicated to for so long to go to hell. ; - ;

That's why you must help by reporting anything that are against the ToS often to help mod catch up with what's going on. ;)

But honestly though, in my opinions, everyone will compliment a new site for being "clean", "prettier", and less "noobs" than the other "old" sites they went to. Why? Simply because the new sites haven't have that much users to "screw up" the fun yet. Wait until the site is bloated with more than 70K of users, then you'll know no online game sites are perfect. :sarcasm:

This why just like with large cities and cops you have to keep a mod to user ratio going. I think 1 mod for every 20 users is a good ratio personally.

:lol: That's quite the ratio Gary...

It's around 1 mod to 50 users right now online.
=)
And it is pretty amazing.

That's be a great way. Unfortunately, mods have to be the "mature" type and not very much of online players are really "mature", I mean, as in the way that didn't "explode" in certain types of conversations. (Not mean to be rude, but really)

@Toriki

Oh I know no site is perfect. I've ran several small proboards and even though they were small you still had some n00bs. Not to mention I'm a admin for a large cult of VF. I understand that. It's just frusterating when they suddenly start taking over other fourms.

@Justice: I know. But that's Internet is about. No one can control a person what to do online. Even if Gaia hired a thousand more polices or mods, they just can't ban every single one. Trolls, noobs, will just make new accounts. You would never know what happen. And of course, there is a limit power to what one can do on the Internet. *kick internet*

Originally Posted by darkspineshadow2

:| Moderators get tons of reports per day. On top of that they get tons of PMs from users bitching about this and that. What do they do? They hide their online status so they can get work done. You don't know that they are really offline. Like the user above me said, there will always be spam. Moderators aren't gods that can stop every violation. Your forums are supposedly not a mess because the size of your site nowhere comes near the size off gaia's site. Your site mods have time to kill while Gaia moderators are constantly working to stop the spam and TOS violations.

Lol, hey, I know, it's the same here. But I didn't say people who had their status hidden, I said mods who hadn't been online for months, as in, check their profile and their last log in date is last year.
This is my long-running issue with Gaia, they don't seem to have any kind of structure for insuring that the mods they have are actually active. So how are the ones that are active ever meant to manage?

Originally Posted by darkspineshadow2

:| Moderators get tons of reports per day. On top of that they get tons of PMs from users bitching about this and that. What do they do? They hide their online status so they can get work done. You don't know that they are really offline. Like the user above me said, there will always be spam. Moderators aren't gods that can stop every violation. Your forums are supposedly not a mess because the size of your site nowhere comes near the size off gaia's site. Your site mods have time to kill while Gaia moderators are constantly working to stop the spam and TOS violations.

You have not been here long enough to even begin to understand what this site has gone through in it's short two and a half years on the internet and hopefully you'll be around to see us grow, flourish, and go through more. We're not strangers to drama and what users say and do, reports, forum spam, hackings, etc. Because our community is smaller, the drama has been much more personal in nature and not just run of the mill spamming and hacking. I'm sure Gaia gets its fair share of that but users here know us a lot better than the mods there.

You mention that it is due to sheer size that our forums are not in the same shape as Gaia's and I believe that part of that is true, however I also feel (and I think you missed part of jelly's point) that if they had more mods that were ONLINE (hidden like I am now or not) at any given time and working on the forums themselves (not other projects, not socializing, not lurking, but actively WORKING the forums) that it would not be in the shape it is now.

I have a great deal of empathy for their moderation staff because I do feel that if tasks were managed better in 03, 04, or even 05, that it would not be the monster of a task it is now. I don't disagree with you that those who are working are constantly dealing with spam and TOS violations, because there is a lot of that going on. They've made it easy for a certain type of user to take advantage of their mammoth system and other users which, as a young up and coming site, we are in a position to learn from their mistakes and hopefully not repeat them. We may make whole new ones but that's a part of growth.

I'm not telling you that you have to worship Menewsha or even agree with us 100% and understand that I'm not bashing you for your opinion either. I would love to know where you have the belief that we time to kill because I sure would like some of that time back ;) :D

Originally Posted by jurupamae

You have not been here long enough to even begin to understand what this site has gone through in it's short two and a half years on the internet and hopefully you'll be around to see us grow, flourish, and go through more. We're not strangers to drama and what users say and do, reports, forum spam, hackings, etc. Because our community is smaller, the drama has been much more personal in nature and not just run of the mill spamming and hacking. I'm sure Gaia gets its fair share of that but users here know us a lot better than the mods there.

You mention that it is due to sheer size that our forums are not in the same shape as Gaia's and I believe that part of that is true, however I also feel (and I think you missed part of jelly's point) that if they had more mods that were ONLINE (hidden like I am now or not) at any given time and working on the forums themselves (not other projects, not socializing, not lurking, but actively WORKING the forums) that it would not be in the shape it is now.

I have a great deal of empathy for their moderation staff because I do feel that if tasks were managed better in 03, 04, or even 05, that it would not be the monster of a task it is now. I don't disagree with you that those who are working are constantly dealing with spam and TOS violations, because there is a lot of that going on. They've made it easy for a certain type of user to take advantage of their mammoth system and other users which, as a young up and coming site, we are in a position to learn from their mistakes and hopefully not repeat them. We may make whole new ones but that's a part of growth.

I'm not telling you that you have to worship Menewsha or even agree with us 100% and understand that I'm not bashing you for your opinion either. I would love to know where you have the belief that we time to kill because I sure would like some of that time back ;) :D

I've been here long enough to know how users treat a site like as being better than Gaia when this site has already claimed the domain name gaiaonlin.com in hopes to get users who misspell Gaia's domain on your site. Which is just as if not more underhanded than Gaia's way of doing things.

From what you said in the second paragraph you are telling me that Moderators shouldn't have their online status hidden nor socialize with other people? That's basically treating them as workers which is not what they are. They are volunteers. They should be allowed to socialize because if they aren't allowed to socialize with others then why be a moderator in the first place. Sure you get to help the site but why should you limit your freedom to be a moderators which is most of the time a thankless job. I have to ask why is every avatar site treating all the Gaia forums like they are all the GD. Most of the forums I frequent there are well kept, organized and clean.

Tasks WERE managed better in '03, '04, and '05. You are speaking as if the huge influx of n00bs and users didn't affect the forums and that poor moderation was killing Gaia.

I admit I went overboard when I said time to kill but I meant that as the Gaia moderators have way less time on their hands.

@Jelly Moderators are stripped of their powers if they are unable to log in for a certain time. When they are finished with their conflict and everything is alright they are then granted the powers back. I haven't heard of any moderator who hasn't logged on in a while and still has a green name. Do you have a link?

this site has already claimed the domain name gaiaonlin.com in hopes to get users who misspell Gaia's domain on your site.

Well i will be damned, that is pretty sneaky ...I cant say i like that at all ... >>;;

Anyways I have my own reasons to hate on gaia for example having a minor argument with a mod ended up getting me banned because "two unknown people had cyber sex in my private guild" and since i didnt stop it i was banned? Of course the guild was shut down before any evidence could be found and all my active guild mates said they saw nothing but .... I try not to stomp on other people and their love for the site though. Even if i will always hate the damn thing.

Actually you are missing the point completely and reading something entirely different in to my post.

As far as moderators hidden, that's fine. I'm hidden all the time. My point was that, hidden status or not, if they were all working on their assigned forums at the same time (depending on where in the world they are located of course), rather than solely socializing or solely working other projects, it would make a huge difference.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't socialize and that they should never work additional projects to improve the site or grow their own skills. They just need to make sure that there is ample coverage to allow that. If Joe Moderator is going to be offsite for a while taking a vacation day or working on learning how to moderate a different forum or whatever the project or training is, that Jill Moderator covers Joe's forums while he is gone.

And whether you or anyone else likes it, moderating is a job. Granted it is often a thankless voluntary position, but it is a job nonetheless, and I know that Gaia treats it as such. I've seen some of the tools they are required to use to track their activity and gold grants on their "pay days". If it was strictly voluntary "be here whenever you want" it would be in worse shape both here and there.

Yes, the influx of users and noobs did affect moderation. It affects it here and every other site out there. My point was that if there had been foresight to plan for that influx and have more staff readily available things might be different. At this point the economy is a shamble, and yes the chatterbox and GD are horrendous. You also act as though we have never been on Gaia. Most, if not all of the staff here are 03-06 account holders there and have been there since the days when there were times you couldn't log in because the server was having issues or wonky things would happen.

We all visit Gaia, some of us daily. We have places we go in order to escape the noob hoards and town hacks and whatnot. Yes, there are mods that do their jobs and aren't made of fail. More than likely, where you hang out that you mention is neat and tidy, is probably the same places you'll find most of us.