[Talon] On The Forums
Talon Karrde
My Friends,
I’m taking a step back from my usual CP updates today to talk to you about a hot topic in UK political life at the moment: The forums.
The UK forums have been around for about four years now, and are run by an old player from the UK, Kumnaa. He pays for their hosting out of his own pocket, and has final say on anything to do with them. Kumnaa is an expert coder, and along with Nelsaidi, another very old player who has since quit the game (but still looks after forum code) makes up the ‘founder’ team of the forum. Without these two guys, their time, money and expertise, the forums would not exist.
In the UK, we use the forums for a variety of different purposes, with various different sections for different purposes, most of which revolve around eRepublik government, military and politics. Of late there has been a lot of discussion about these forums and their place in the UK, revolving around two main viewpoints: First, that more discussion and communication should take place in game, and second; that people dislike the way in which the forums are run.
Both valid viewpoints, and I’m here today to address these points as best I can; both in my capacity as CP as forum use is a government policy of sorts, and in my capacity as an administrator of the forums.
Recently we had a party summit on IRC, in which a couple of suggestions were made on how to improve the forums. One of these was the deletion of subforums to make the boards look more tidy- we've done this to an extent, and will continue to do so. Efficiency!
This next part of the article will have three main sections:
Why I think the forums are useful
How / who runs the forums
Global Moderator applications
Why the Forums are Useful.
For me the forums have been immeasurably helpful during my time in the game. They’ve brought me some fun times, they’ve furthered my political career, and most importantly for me, they’ve enabled me to make a difference.
For a long time (probably over a year at the start of my time in the game) I was one of those players that didn’t enjoy forums, or IRC chat, and just wanted to tick along in the background, working and training, fighting sometimes, and voting for my party at election time. I think because I started out that way, I can certainly understand that some people will prefer not to use the forums, and indee
😛The forums aren’t for everyone!
That said though, I did indeed decide to make the jump to the forums in the November of 2010, and ran in my first congress elections that December, because I saw the opportunity not only to do so, but to get support for my run, on the forums. From there, my road to the top wasn’t a straight line, not without challenges, and by no means only due to the forum, but it was certainly a contributing factor due to its role in facilitating communication.
So, I guess my main point here is that, if you think your desired role in erepublik is one in which you need to facilitate communication, the forums almost certainly will be useful for you.
The forums- Useful for you?
Now, with all that said, I do think people have a point when they say a lot of our communication should take place in game. That’s why I’ve endeavoured to make all my ministers post in game articles, and not neglect those players that choose to communicate only in game. I would hope all succeeding governments would continue this trend too.
On the other hand, there are some discussions and bits of communication that really can’t be put in game. Some discussions might break the erepublik rules; people want to be able to speak freely sometimes and the game (quite rightly) limits this, and so a different forum is needed.
Some discussions contain sensitive information; information we wouldn’t want certain groups to know, sometimes for diplomatic reasons, sometimes for other reasons. The forums are very useful for these, particularly for congress to discuss contingencies, wars, alliances and more without the threat of security breaches. Most of these (certainly under me) are released to the public after the fact anyway, but at the time need to be kept secret. The forums facilitate this.
Likewise, politicals parties like to scheme and plot behind closed doors, planning their next big strategy, discussing and perfecting their policies, deciding on candidates, all the things that political bodies do. The forums enable this.
There are more examples than this, but in a nutshell, this is why I think the forums are useful.
My next section is on who actually runs the forums. This is one of the most frequently asked questions I get so I’ll explain this as simply as possible.
As I mentioned above, Kumnaa and Nel are the forum founders, the head admins. They do behind the scenes work with the boards and are responsible for the coding. They also make the final decision on appeals against bans and the like.
On a day to day basis, the forums are run by myself and Dan Moir, or ‘the administrators / admins.’ We were both picked by Kumnaa / Nel to maintain responsibility for the running of the forums. We perform a variety of tasks, like the creation of party / private forums, picking and organising the moderator team, and more besides. We’re also the first point of contact for anyone to appeal against bans, or for complaints against the mod team.
Finally, we have the GMods, or global moderator team. They are responsible for managing content on the boards and ensuring the rules are followed. Currently we have Minecrafting Instead (Appleby), Invalidation, Frerk, Kcirp and Thomas765. We have had others in the past, but those guys are the current team.
We recently had a discussion on the forum rules themselves, and the conclusion reached seemed to be that the rules themselves were fine, but that the interpretation / implementation from the mod team was too harsh. We are addressing that in two ways- first by passing direction down to the mods on how to interpret the rules, and second by adding to the team. If you don’t like the way the boards are modded then I invite you to participate in the system! Engage with us and discuss constructively about what you want. I won't say your changes will be implemented, but I will say that you'll get a fair hearing.
Do you want to join the team?
So, as I mentioned above, we’re up for adding to the team. If you’re an interested party then read this carefully.
I’d first like to add a qualifier here- we will not be appointing anybody, on any grounds, or for any reason, other than on merit. We will assess every application carefully, and pick the individuals we think will be best at the role, regardless of any party affiliation, past exploits, or other factor. If you are good enough in our estimation, you will be picked. (though we won't be appointing more than a couple, having too many mods would be rather pointless.)
So, with that in mind, if you would like to be a GMod, please PM me an application ON THE FORUMS with the following information: (Yes, on the forums and not in game, due to the character limit of 2000 and the lack of any code, also to show that you are actually on the forums and know how to work the buttons.)
Who you are in brief
A paragraph or so detailing who you are as a person, what sort of style and personality you have
Why you want to be a GMod
Quite simple- why you want the role
What experience do you have that you think will be useful
If you’re a mod anywhere else, tell us. Likewise any life experience you have that you think makes your have good judgement or something like that.
What you bring to the team
How would you change things if appointed? How easily could you work with the current team? What benefits are there to appointing you over somebody else?
Make sure you answer all those points thoroughly, and do feel free to give us any extra info you think is relevant.
With that, I’ll finish. Feel free to discuss / comment below!
Talon Karrde
Country President
Comments
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http://forums.erepublik.co.uk/
It would be interesting to see a breakdown by party of how the forum is moderated. Or was this deliberately missed because it's heavily biased towards one party?
Or because it's irrelevant but to those with tinfoil-hats (Y)
I have to say thats a very noble gesture Talon. Very well written and open article.
I might make you shiver and apply for one of the positions myself : D
You've explained quite efficiently why 'a' forum is needed - but haven't really addressed why the particular forum you mention in this article should be 'that' forum?
Fair point Alfa- mostly because it's there already, has someone coding / paying for it, and has admins that are genuinely trying to make it the best for the UK.
"It would be interesting to see a breakdown by party of how the forum is moderated. Or was this deliberately missed because it's heavily biased towards one party? "
Probably more biased to the players that have been around for a longer length of time and proven themselves trustworthy irrelevant of party. The majority of which I'd guess have migrated to TUP or ESO.
I doubt it'd take you long to look up those names on here and see what party they were in though if you really cared.
TUP associated - Dan Moir, and Talons (obv.), Invalidation (now Swedish),
UKRP Associated - Minecrafting Instead (Appleby), Frerk and Kcirp.
Thomas765 has switched between both.
To clear that up without judgement.
Nice explaining article.
Forum moderating - a non-paid job where you get to spend your time listening to Goku et al. rant about the injustice of the eUK
SOUNDS FUN
Great article and I particularly like the way that there are in-game articles for those who prefer that kind of communication and then, some more content on the forum. Personally, I think this is a fair approach but again, it is for eUK community to decide what is the best way to implement this.
Vote!
I'm glad that you agree that moderation has been too harsh.
One harsh event which stands out was when a user linked a website which said that the owner had done work on a similar game. I was curious and said, "Whose website is that Darkmantle?". I was banned. I then had to explain to (Appleby I think) how I wasn't trolling? He didn't belive me.
Do you understand the utter frustration I felt when this happened every other month over really silly things and I had to ruin my weekend arguing about it to get it undone?
Now the admin team back then agreed that it was harsh and unbanned me, but the warning stayed and doubled the length of subsequent bans for equally weird things.
I finally snapped when it hit 3 months for a ban and a good few of the warnings had been overturned.and yet more where for really silly things.
So you agreeing that things are harsh doesn't nesesarily mean that anything has changed when the conflict of interests happen again and a mod runs for CP or doesn't like someone.
Indeed I do buddy, if you remember I was one of the ones that gave you the time of day back then, never had a problem with you; still don't, apart from the theft.
Your article won't help me. I doubt that there is anything you can or will do for the people who got screwed by the old system and are now past the point of no return due to things escalating.
Great article and I do think that there have recently been attempts to address some of the criticism to the credit of yourself Talon and Dan.
I hope that some good candidates come forward for mod and that they'll make good additions to the team as well as perhaps bringing some new perspectives.
Ayame for moderator?
Voted.
very informative, voted
I guess community will get more good mods now.. hope so... we cant expect that admins to be here all day long and they will do all transformations on community stuff...
What I never understood is the way the forum staff stop players creating private sub-forums with the '10 active player rule'. Its immoral that only larger partys/MU are 'allowed' to use community tools while you advertise it as the official UK forum. You're actively discriminating against smaller party's/MU's.
I've tried a couple of times to involve new players in the forum (surely good for the community) by inviting players onto the forum to help create a private sub-forum.
Both times I was told no and offered ridiculous excuses - 'It's to much work for the forum staff,' 'it the rules, deal with it.'
As the admins don't read private forums anymore I'm guessing the massive amount of extra work for them involves clicking on the 'create sub-forum' button. I tried asking in the forum but no admins were interested in discussing the issue.
And that's why I dislike the forum, but good luck changing it o/