I want him banned from #space cus he's an eyesore and a pain in the ass
all he ever talks about is his "injustice" there and it interrupts conversations already going on. Also he pretty much gets nonstop bullied by obsidium and alien and god help him when externus comes back
although now that Exilement talked to him, maybe he'll stop being so annoying.

Quote from Drone

I'm not saying I don't get what you mean, I'm saying I don't see why it's a big deal. Infract prople that treat others like shit for harassment or abuse and eventually if they keep it up they'll be banned, or am I still missing something?

You're missing the part where we were discussing how we should approach infractions, since there's always the worry that we'll be accused of playing thought police and the worry that we're not doing enough. We're trying to come up with a reasonable to way to contain that behavior without stepping too far ourselves. That's all, I don't see how this is blowing anything out of proportion. You're acting as if I'm claiming this is the end of the site, but I'm not.

Quote from Jeff

You're missing the part where we were discussing how we should approach infractions, since there's always the worry that we'll be accused of playing thought police

Not to toot my own horn but thankfully, being the old fart I am, I tend to command respect from the sort of people prone to these types of complaints (look at how Nish talks about azure compared to me) and I can act as a mediator when it happens, I've done it in the past to varying degrees of success.

If and when it happens, feel free to let me in on it and I'll step in.

I'm on my phone at the moment, so I can't make too big of a post or Jesus will come again before I get halfway through it. I'll try and summarize.
Edit: Dammit that was a horrible job of summarizing

1. Bringing up these points about the toxicity of General has opened my eyes to a lot of things, including how bad Nish has gotten. He spent 5 pages trolling Lamitrov and then making him feel like shit when he had doubts, and it sucks because I was totally fine with it. I was just thinking "Oh Nish, you're doing your thing again" And not thinking about how messed up out was from Lami's point of view.

2. I like the idea of people getting warnings no matter what if their posts get reported. It would keep everyone grounded in thinking that being a giant douche is frowned upon.

3. I think removing->restarting the forum entirely is a bit drastic, and everything that we want to accomplish can be done without relying on that. There's a lot of tools to do it.

4. Now that the tutorial section is pretty much done, I feel like I'm floating around and helping nothing. Especially with these changes coming that will require old and stubborn members to actually take us seriously, I'd like to have a way to help. People like Jutsu and Cook and Nish will actually listen to me because I've been good friends with them for years. I may actually be able to get to them.

I know I don't moderate in those sections, but for the purpose of handing out warnings or whatever course of action we decide to take, I think that allowing me to warn/infract them despite being in Tutorials might cause them to react positively to the warnings instead of lashing back and saying the mods are trying to be thought police.

Again, I wasn't suggesting removing and restarting the forum as a solution to the problem. :( I was saying that soon when I start work on SP we're having a discussion as to what/how we're going to do it, and we've briefly talked about our options, some of which included removing the forum. Of course I am against the idea for the sake of the community, even though it would be a ton easier for me as part of my job. My worry is that we'll look at the community and decide to remove the forums because it's not serving it's intended purpose AND promotes the wrong image. I can try to steer it away from that but ultimately it's not my decision, I just think that cleaning the forums up and making it look better will stop that from happening.

If people could only know how much effort we put into thinking and planning out thoughtful actions to better the community and it members. To top that, how delicately we treat banning and punishments in the forums.

If only Travis..... if only.

Tho if they knew some of them wouldn"t care anyways lol.

If I might make a suggestion (read everything, nothing to really add), and it's mostly in regards to this:

Quote from Jeff

This forum's purpose isn't to serve as a hang out place for a bunch of old members, and I feel that's what it's become. We aren't focused on what we should be focused on: art and animation. The first thing people see when they come here is the general section and a debate section. What do those have to do with art or animation? We're promoting these places BEFORE any of the stuff we should be focusing on.

If we're moving the General Forum down into Off Topic (which I'd love to have as my jurisdiction like in the old days), why not adjust the sections? For example, with the Debate Section, why not split it in two so we can have an Animation Debate section, discussing and debating the different techniques of animation, quality, ups and downs of programs, etc, and have a General Debate for things not relating to Animation or Art? I'd say we could do similar for the General Discussion, in the way of Animation Discussion or Art discussion or some such, so that people can just generally talk about different animated things in a more lenient, calm manner. We have the "Beginners Post Your Work Here" threads, but they feel pretty restricting, especially for those who don't consider themselves to be beginners.

I feel like if we're going to try to change our overall appeal, just switching places won't help, so much as opening some new spaces, new little areas to try integrating people back in. I'd also say we should try bringing back the Portal, but that's a bit out of my experience to speak on, since I lurked waaaay back then, wasn't an actual member.

If this was stickpage in 2012-2013 when there were still a wealth of great artists around an art discussion thread might have been viable, but not so much at this point. Although an animation discussion thread besides the beginners one is something I was actually planning on making myself, but I had doubts on whether or not it would be very active, and if people just started posting animations there instead of making their own threads it would pretty much defeat the purpose of the whole section

Quote from stone

If people could only know how much effort we put into thinking and planning out thoughtful actions to better the community and it members. To top that, how delicately we treat banning and punishments in the forums.

Aww, I hope this wasn't directed at me. You guys have proven dozens of times that you do exactly that. ;-;

An animation discussion section could be good. I don't agree with a separate debate section though, I don't see any reason for one

I brought it up so that there'd be a way to have Debate and General Discussion directly relate to animation/art while keeping the old, rather than just keeping the old with mild disdain.

I don't understand what you mean. I'm just saying any "animation debate" is little more than a serious discussion that could fit just as well in the Animation Discussion section if it existed. Splitting animation sections into "discussion" and "debate" seems unnecessary, they can coexist in one area.

I mean in the sense that, for example:

Discussion: Somebody posts an animation, it's talked about, maybe somebody goes on a Terkoiz rant and that's the topic for a while until somebody brings up some new animated movie (or old one {9 for life}). There can be CnC, etc, things we typically discuss when looking at animation.

Debate: This would be similar to the Debate section we have now, where a discussion goes deeper with no sidetracking from the main topic. Sure it could've been a discussion for a while, but somebody wants to talk more. Take for example Toy Story. Why was it so successful? What would it have been like in 2-D? Would there have been more profit or work? There could be debates like the always ongoing "Which is better, Flash or Pivot?" or debates like "Which program is the best? Can you back this up?"

It's only a semi-thought out suggestion, so whether it happens or not doesn't really much bother me.