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[8:19 PM] Rembrandt: @brb banning xeno again  serious question about the direction of UC.  I'm looking at the recent staff additions, and while I have nothing against any of them personally, I'm wondering if they are being acquired for more of a janitorial job than a moderatorship.  I've looked at some (not all) of the latest adds and they don't seem to have the same quality as the mods of the past.  I'm speaking about technical ability and maturity.  I could be completely off the ball here, and I hope you disagree and see things differently (and I hope others do too and not in this negative light).  But this is just my view.  Wondering what your thoughts are.(edited)
[8:20 PM] uhh1ind: despacito
[8:20 PM] brb banning xeno again: because realistically, moderating isn't all about your technical prowess
[8:21 PM] brb banning xeno again: I mean, its fantastic if we get someone interested in a moderator position and also knows a lot about a heap of different stuff, but that's the same in the professional careers too
[8:21 PM] brb banning xeno again: but realistically, getting people with that knowledge and also interest in moderating which comes with more than its fair share of bullshit, it's honestly not all that enticing to a lot of people
[8:22 PM] brb banning xeno again: but i guess it also comes down to the fact that the cheating scene has changed a lot too
[8:23 PM] brb banning xeno again: years ago it was pretty easy to just do whatever and cheat in games, anti cheats sucked balls and there wasn't this borderline malware bullshit being pulled to stop people from cheating
[8:24 PM] brb banning xeno again: so there wasn't exactly a high bar to get started and go from there, whereas now, a lot of it relies on exploits and kernel development in more popular games so the entry bar is significantly higher which I guess in turn, turns people away from learning cause its way harder to get started
[8:25 PM] brb banning xeno again: I wouldn't say thats exclusively the case though, but there is defs a trend in recent times towards that direction
[8:26 PM] brb banning xeno again: and then lots of people have moved on too, careers and new interests and etc so a lot of the older people who I guess you could almost call pioneers of the scene have either vanished or no longer interested
[8:26 PM] brb banning xeno again: so pretty much because of that, we need to make do with what we have available and I'd be lying if I said that we had enough people to do the job
[8:28 PM] brb banning xeno again: a lot of people in staff have work, school, other obligations and nobody gets paid, UC donations don't even break even on running costs and it does run at a loss, but that's an acceptable loss given that we'd be throwing away absolutely fucktons of content if we ceased that
[8:28 PM] brb banning xeno again: so we take what help we can get, some people stay immature and they don't last long
[8:28 PM] brb banning xeno again: others become mature over time and stick around for ages
[8:29 PM] brb banning xeno again: much of the older staff that aren't around anymore went down that route
[8:29 PM] brb banning xeno again: join staff as a younger person who isnt necessarily mature but you mature over time and become a reasonable person i guess lol
[8:30 PM] uhh1ind: an anonymous source wants to know why all the cool people are getting booted
[8:31 PM] brb banning xeno again: because they didn't do anything
[8:31 PM] brb banning xeno again: we're not going to keep people on staff that don't do anything
[8:31 PM] brb banning xeno again: that would be retarded
[8:32 PM] brb banning xeno again: for some extra transparency, we don't remove people as soon as they drop down below a threshold or something, realistically there isn't really an activity threshold
[8:32 PM] brb banning xeno again: we've pretty much always gotten in touch with people over the course of a few months and ask whats up, see if theres some RL problems that they're having issues with or whatever cause shit happens and that's totally understandable
[8:32 PM] Rembrandt: Have you considered restructuring the mod system for this 'new era' of game hacking in an age where the talent level, as you say, has declined and responsibilities are higher?
[8:33 PM] Rembrandt: I would argue that there are still plenty of qualified candidates, they just need requisite incentive to participate.
[8:33 PM] brb banning xeno again: so if someone gets removed, it's because they've been spoken to several times and they've either lied to us or shown no interest anymore and there's really not much point in keeping them after that
[8:34 PM] brb banning xeno again: yeah, we've restructured it a few times, shifted responsibilities around and whatnot to see if we can have a more cohesive team I guess
[8:34 PM] brb banning xeno again: but it's hard to find something that works really well
[8:34 PM] brb banning xeno again: at the moment we've pretty much got 3 groups, mods, lead mods and upper staff
[8:35 PM] brb banning xeno again: smods are basically synonymous with admins at this point, just without as many perms
[8:36 PM] brb banning xeno again: lmod was I guess a stepping stone between mods and smods for a while but we've shifted stuff around to I guess balance the workload a bit and provide more insight into what goes on a bit more, but its hard to say if it works or it doesn't work or some parts do or dont
[8:36 PM] brb banning xeno again: but yeah, a problem is we really can't provide an incentive to people to do it
[8:37 PM] brb banning xeno again: forum incentives don't work because then you segregate the community and thats just bad news for everyone
[8:37 PM] brb banning xeno again: there used to be a hidden section way back for people to share stuff outside of the public eye I guess, but that was just causing issues within the community so that was removed
[8:38 PM] brb banning xeno again: it would be cool to provide an incentive to people to become staff and people who are on staff, but I don't really see how we can do that
[8:40 PM] Rembrandt: It would need to be a system that provides a sort of proverbial compensation in terms of their own status in the community.
[8:40 PM] Rembrandt: Thus having a strong sense of community is important so they have something to strive for.
[8:40 PM] Rembrandt: Nobody wants to earn respect from the current state of things, from my view.
[8:41 PM] uhh1ind: lucario butt slav e
[8:41 PM] Rembrandt: And I would imagine introducing at least one more level into the moderation gap between mod and super mod would add some sort of incentive for those just starting out to see a clear path for their own advancement
[8:42 PM] Rembrandt: I really like the cohesiveness when a new mod is announced,  in the respect that all other mods comment their congratulations for the party.  I would love to see this sort of support extended to the more advanced releases on the forums.  I think there could be considerably more high-end content posted if there was more recognition for it.
[8:42 PM] Rembrandt: This shouldn't be forced, of course, it needs to be organic, but there have been many posts/threads that really don't get the attention they deserve
[8:43 PM] Rembrandt: Maybe building a community in the mod team that values content and those that promulgate it would be a good first step.
[8:43 PM] 🙂aeth🙂: @uhh1ind :flushed:
[8:44 PM] brb banning xeno again: yeah, we've got some ideas in the works for that
[8:44 PM] brb banning xeno again: I guess at the moment the main idea is to support a blogging platform with weekly featured posts
[8:45 PM] brb banning xeno again: naturally we'd let them use that same content on their own blog too and link to it, would be unfair otherwise
[8:45 PM] brb banning xeno again: but beyond that, beyond some other things like concerns with the rep system and figuring out how to make content discovery more natural I guess, we're pretty much flying blind I guess
[8:46 PM] brb banning xeno again: theres not really a whole lot to go on either beyond just experimenting either cause in recent years forums have pretty much died out and nobody really did anything interesting with them
[8:48 PM] Rembrandt: It seems to me that they're not dying.  I'm not sure what numbers are, but there are plenty of popular sections - it's just low level content, mostly lazy paste, for new games or whatever the flavor of the month games are.
[8:48 PM] Rembrandt: But certainly I could see a down trend if this continues
[8:48 PM] brb banning xeno again: no I mean more generally, not UC
[8:49 PM] brb banning xeno again: but yeah, no denying that things like csgo, pubg and fortnite attract the most people
[8:49 PM] brb banning xeno again: but because of that too, content has pretty much gone stale
[8:49 PM] brb banning xeno again: there's nothing really innovative anymore cause everythings been done
[8:50 PM] brb banning xeno again: which is where the blog idea came in, spotlighting content thats different
[8:51 PM] brb banning xeno again: also had someone come forward with the same idea and express interest in writing some stuff for it too
[8:51 PM] brb banning xeno again: so I guess its pretty much the next thing to try, see if it works out and others are interested too
[8:54 PM] philipdestroyer: I have a great idea! We all know that there are some really great people on UC that aren't mods. Why don't you just slap the mod title on them without asking?
[8:55 PM] rudedude420: i hate some good ideas about interactive visuals but never had the motivation or time to do it
[8:55 PM] rudedude420: had
[8:55 PM] rudedude420: wtf hands
[8:55 PM] philipdestroyer: They then wont be able to resist using the power when they see egregious stuff.
[8:55 PM] brb banning xeno again: we approach people every now and then if we think they would be a good candidate, but a lot of the time people do just refuse
[8:57 PM] philipdestroyer: yeah, i know, my idea is terrible
[8:58 PM] philipdestroyer: but it would be pretty funny to see the reaction of people being modded without being asked
[8:58 PM] brb banning xeno again: we did that for motm as april fools years ago
[8:58 PM] brb banning xeno again: loads of people thought they actually were motm