I guess we're all going to be in the dark about everything going forward. The attitude I see, IMO... If it ain't broke, why fix it. The site is still up and running. Thats all that matters, right? The inmates have been running the asylum so far and we haven't had a riot... Yet
Riot? No. What we HAVE had is: 1. Wasted potential. So, so much wasted potential. 2. Smart, helpful users being driven away by lack of moderation/forum tools/admin promises being kept. 3. Necessary, simple cleanup/organization being passed over or ignored completely. 4. The largest and most well-known English-language AKB forum on the planet falling into abject and laughable disrepair. Make no mistake - the forum is running, but the state of it and the lack of care from the admins is deplorable. Those of us who are actually concerned about the direction the forum is headed have been silently (and in this thread sometimes, not so silently) rioting for a very long time now.
I'm new to this forum and basic threads like "Introduce Yourself" or even an updated Rules and Regulation thread (last updated 2011) are the glaring exclusions. If the current situation is such that the admin/mod is unable to moderate due to being busy with real life issues or whatever, why not create a mod team that can take shifts throughout the day. It'll be quiet only for so long until things start to crumble and chaos descends.
I noticed there is no option to upvote posts but there is a minus/plus ticker on every profile. Simple things like having a thread in each sub-forum that serves as a directory for all the threads listed in that sub-forum so that duplicate threads aren't created. An FAQ thread to answer basic questions each new member is bound to ask. Apart from this, I think of tons of features that I've seen on other online forums that do not exist over here.
I would like to see a 48G forum to handle the cross group type dicussions such as SSK, scandals, Kennin and etc...
What happened to the Studio48 thread? Anyways, the lyrics on HKT48 are wrong on Studio48. At the first part, it should be 愛し(itoshi) and not ai shi. Here is the link. http://stage48.net/studio48/hkt48.html Also, speaking about the lack of admins. If they never return, are the current mods able to override their statuses and take over as the new admins? I'm not too familiar with how this all works.
Admins only have that ability to give a mod or a member, admin status. Not vice versa In short, the buck stops here with Waffle. When ever he decides to show up again, if ever.
So. Will someone adress the current situation? Basically, will MrWaffle come back to fix/discuss things? Or will the status quo be upheld until nobody remembers what potential this place once held?
I know a lot of the stuff isn't urgent, so to speak, but having all the member threads out of date and especially, not even having a NGT subforum, I think that's what makes us look worst. The girls are all being represented as their new teams in events and concerts now, regardless of them not making the switch in the theater yet. It's almost July and our member threads look like it's still 2014.
At least for me, I'm tired of writing excuses, and I'm sure everyone here is tired of hearing them. You'll notice that it's the same problems repeated ad nauseam for the last few months or half a year or however long. I addressed the points everyone made then to the best of my ability, so there's no point in rewriting what I wrote. Continually posting the same thing here won't solve anything, and that goes for both sides. In addition, sometimes not saying anything is better than being honest if that honesty will potentially create bad blood. You're right on the money when you say one of the core problems is lacking more staff. Unfortunately, there's also a lack of qualified people to appoint as staff, and as you can imagine, I'm afraid some people will take it personally if we say so. It's a vicious cycle - most of the trustworthy, responsible posters left because Stage48 doesn't have enough staff to keep the forum in control, but we can't keep it in control without those members that serve as role models in the community who we would eventually appoint as staff. Not to mention, even though we DO have a few precious people in mind to appoint as new moderators, neither @Smilodon or I can appoint new staff, so... Finally, hell yeah we're burned out. We're two people running a forum with thousands of members, with hundreds or thousands of new posts a day. We do take care of stuff in the back, whether that be reports, PMs, stuff we just come across or the many, many other spam bots that most people don't see, that it's not exactly fun to come here and get shit on by people as if we don't care about the forum (not saying you did that, but the tone of the "suggestions" here is close enough that I generally avoid this thread like the plague unless I'm called here). The ones most demoralized by the departure of HoneyRoastedPeanuts probably wasn't the members, but the staff. I signed on...2? 3? years ago because I had the same vision as HoneyRoastedPeanuts, that we would make this site (or well, the site that everyone was supposed to be working together on) the best and only resource needed for English speaking fans of the 48 Group. I wanted to give back to the community that kickstarted my most important hobby, and the foreign fandom is small enough already that we don't need stuff spread across various forums, blogs, tumblrs. We needed ONE site for the audience and the contributors. We talked hours, maybe days altogether on Skype about how we would like the evolution of Stage48 to turn out. The miraculous thing is, this all seemed doable. Most people HoneyRoastedPeanuts spoke to was up for working together because they saw the same need. It was taking a lot longer than I wanted, but no part of it seemed impossible - and then the boss just upped and left. The worst part is, it's not something that Smilodon and I can just continue the work of in his place, because we don't have the technical know-how to add any features. We can do the moderating part just fine (well, maybe with more staff, but we know how to do it), but coding? Nope, no idea. Any normal business administration course will tell you that a company is hard to run without a goal, without a vision; Stage48 is the same. Real life duties also get in the way, of course, that's a given, but once the objective was gone, Smilodon and I were just walking in the dark on towards...nothing. My passion for idols is burning as bright as it ever was, maybe even stronger than before, but I no longer 100% believe we can improve Stage48 as the premier English website for the 48 Group, and that's the biggest downer for me. Well, I can say that Smilodon and I spent this week debating who we could appoint as new staff to at least take the first steps towards doing something and lighten the load. It's all in the staff forum, which only the staff can see, of course, but it's there. It's completely dependent on whether @Mr Waffle approves of what we've plotted out. Assuming he does, I would then send a PM out to the people we have in mind and see if they even have the time or would be willing to accept. I won't be posting updates on that here, but if you see a thread from me announcing new staff, you'll see that it worked out. If you don't, it didn't. One thing though, assuming if, and that's a big if, we were able to create a position that deals strictly with the technical side of the forum, but none of the administrative/moderation side, how many of the people complaining here actually have any experience or knowledge enough to work with Xenforo or add new features or would be able to learn to work with the forum software? I have no idea if it's possible to create an account type that's divested from the normal administrative/moderation permissions but able to change Xenforo, but if we are, it would be fantastic to know someone would actually be able to do something with it. Like I posted above, the big hiccup with the lack of changes/updates is that the two active staff are not technically inclined; someone who can actually cover that weakness for us might actually get the ball rolling again here.
Some advise coming from another mod... Understanding the stress and writing excuses for the same problem "ad nauseam"... Keeping it silent is NOT the best than being honest. If you have read this thread for the past month. All "not saying anything" made the problem grew more into hostility. Now, if you or any mod would have replied earlier and answered some questions... This thread would have never gone this far and it would have calmed the masses. All the work you do behind the scenes is fine but you also have to be in front of the camera and speak to your community. Your job in communication is equal to moving posts, enforcement of the rules, etc. It's all one package. A mod's life is not easy by any means. But I continue to do MY job because of the community I serve. I grew into this 48G famdom as a member then a mod because of the great conversations I had with the community members. Tho, I am a mod... I hangout in my forum as a member. I only throw down the hammer if someone comes out of pocket (aka breaks the rules) and give a PM warning to them. So, I would like to thank you and Smilodon for responding. That small request in communication helps alot. I hope you guys can continue communicating with us more and answer a few questions here and there. It would be very appreciated to us. Thanks again.
I'll try to reply to this post since I haggle for matters similar to this in the past. I have long asked for the members thread first post to be updated and have at times presented myself to work on the text that would be edited. After a few exchanges we decided that the work will start after we agreed on the format that would be use by those interested. The format never came. Its been years and I have seen how wiki48 rise up in terms of relevance in google search. And, with all sorts of problems beseeching attention on this forum it has become a minor source of annoyance compared to more relevant complications. The work of updating the first post should be a matter relegated to the poster and a lot of those members are inactive. The mere thought of the number of threads and details that needed verification is a nightmare for the two active moderators. I am actually responsible for half of the first generation Nogizaka46 members thread yet I have not update them since 2012. Its been a busy three years and I have lost track of those members. I'll try to do the updating some time after I settle some personal matters, before the year ends, but that's still open for negotiation. In regards to an NGT forum, only administrators can create them, if I am not wrong, since we beg Mr Waffle for three months or so to make a Nogizaka46 forum wayback in 2011. We make do with a single Nogizaka thread for 7 months back then and with NGT debut still in October I believe you still have to wait for a bit more time for that to happen.
@ithebigc I hope you understand that most of us are acutely aware of the fact that 99% of the issues on this forum are as a result of the absent Administration and not the Moderation. We are dumbfounded and completely frustrated by lack of needed actions, and we know that comes directly from the top. We are even more confounded that an Admin did visit the forum, but seemingly did very little to address the problems at hand. Unfortunately none of us have an avenue for dialogue with the admins, so our concerns fall into the lap of the only two representatives of the forum who we feel will even listen. And yes we feel your pain. Having 2.5 moderators to handle a forum of this size is not nearly enough, especially when the early days of this forum saw 3x the moderators with a fraction of the traffic. But at the end of the day we don't know what kind of dialogue is going on between the admins and the mods. We have no idea what efforts are being made to get an Admin to come to the forum. All we know is that there are issues to be addressed, an admin needs to handle those issues, the admins aren't handling it, nor are they giving anyone else the power to handle it. It just doesn't make any sense.
Sounds like when HoneyRoastedPeanuts left, a lot of plans left with him, so it's reasonable why things got this way, he was in a position of power and got to be the one that figured everything out. When he leaves, you have to start over and that's where we're at right now. Nothing's probably been done because there isn't enough motivation or reward going into caring more than you need to, especially when you're left to question your own efforts and expectations. Maybe thinking small is a best first step right now, not 'the entire site needs to be finished to completion, get to work'. If Mr.Waffle appears here only periodically, it may mean a lot of things, but he does come back which shows he's still observing the site. The decisions he has to make are big...promoting administrators is like promoting who you want to give the site to, so that may be the biggest issue right there: finding new partners.
Or we could, you know, just make a new forum and start fresh, with admins who won't disappear. If it was done right, I'm sure most of the posters here would move over. It's a drastic action and I'm sure the admins would QQ about it...if they were ever here. But honestly I don't feel bad for suggesting it because it's obvious they don't care about it enough to be here.
I find it very unpleasant that we don't have a captain in duty. Living in an open country makes it even more frustration that our admins is out of sight and no reason is told us. For example I want an explanation for HRP's vanish and also why Mr Waffle is mostly absent. He helped me as late as in february when my account failed. I really want him back.
@ithebigc Thank you. It might surprise you but knowing that you guys are as annoyed/frustrated as we are, is actually helping. Now the cards are on the table, so to speak, and we can work with each other.
I do agree that the problem is not "the forum goes wild", but rather members placed in section of their old team. Sent from my SH-01G using Tapatalk
