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Hello, all!
It has come to our attention that there has been a great deal of secondhand information being passed around regarding recent admin decisions. As you are all aware, we strive to maintain complete transparency with you, our community. Anyone may send me a PM with any questions and I am happy to address your concerns regarding any specific recent issues. However, we would also like to offer the community the opportunity to ask the admin team any questions regarding any aspect of the site, any rumor you may have heard, etc. We will answer to the best of our ability with as much information as possible without jeopardizing anyone else's right to privacy. Please post your questions below, or if you would like to remain anonymous, you may PM your questions to me. Please utilize this opportunity to ask us questions and clear the air! We want to be truthful and transparent with you, so please help us help you to understand any issues you may have.
Please remember that this is not an opportunity to be mean or snarky, but rather an attempt to clear the air of recent OOC drama issues. Any rude or disrespectful comments will not be tolerated. Remember - if you wouldn't want it said to you, don't say it to someone else!
Also, feel free to ask for clarification on any rules or policies that are confusing.
Thank you!
You may begin.
Question: Why was (insert player name here) suspended/banned? I never saw them do anything wrong!
While we try not to expose specific details about disciplinary situations on the site, I can assure you that there is a lengthy process that the senior admin go through when we are faced with a complaint or a rule violation. Junior admin are not generally involved in discipline. When we receive a complaint, we do our best to procure proof of any rule violation. With the exception of extreme cases, if we do not have proof, then we do not suspend or ban a player, though we may send a warning. If we do have documented proof of a rule violation, then the senior admin discuss an appropriate punishment. In the case of suspensions and bans, we discuss the length of suspension, requirements for returning, and other specifics, and then we send a PM detailing these things to the player. We always tell players why they are being suspended or banned to ensure that there is no confusion. If, for some reason, an admin is too closely involved (was directly disrespected or otherwise involved) then that admin will be removed from discussion, and the other admin will be left to make a final decision about punishment. I hope this helps to clarify our process and assure the community that we are not displaying any bias or favoritism. If anyone has further questions about any specific incidents, or would like to clarify any rumors that they have heard, please contact me via PM and I will help as much as I can. Please remember - we do not like to discipline anyone. It isn't fun, and we don't enjoy it, so if we don't feel that it is the best thing for the site, we won't do it!
Question: The battle system is really confusing. Why did we change the old system?
I understand that the battle system can be confusing. We have tried to make it so that members don't have to worry about complicated math or formulas, while at the same time providing all get information so that it is transparent. I can say that Sevin has posted a few updates to make the system more fair and to ultimately make the dice rolls matter less, and there is a battle system guide in the works currently to break down each and every piece of the system in a way that hopefully everyone can understand. I stand by this system because it is a lot more efficient and, at the end of the day, much more fair for the players. We are able to judge things quickly and in a more normalized fashion, so there is less difference in scores based on who is judging. I know this isn't a true explanation - and I'm sorry for that - but I promise that there is a guide in the works, to be completed very soon, and I hope that will help. In the meantime, if you have any specific questions, I would honestly direct them to Sevin. She is a fantastic judge with an excellent grasp of the system, and she should be able to explain most of it in a much more concise manner than I would.
Question: I've seen dice rolls determine the outcome of a battle, and I don't think that should happen. Why isn't our system more focused on writing?
I do agree that no one should win solely because of the dice - and, in fact, we have safeguards in place to ensure that it doesn't happen. For example, if someone scores entirely in the negatives on their rubric, they cannot win, no matter what their HP is. Further, we have recently doubled the value of the rubric so that writing weighs more for the final verdict. We are constantly analyzing the system to see if it can be improved and to ensure that it does provide focus on the writing. I am happy to hear any suggestions at any time via PM! :)
Question: I heard a rumor that the admin are biased when it comes to judging battles, stealths, and drops. Is this true?
Rumors regarding admin bias are simply not true. I am sure that this is what you expect to hear, but I assure you that we take great lengths to keep everything fair and unbiased. If one of us is directly involved in a stealth or a battle outcome, we are not allowed to judge. For example, when Seele was challenged (both times) I was not allowed to judge because I am very close with abba, and although I strive to be fair, I didn't want to accidentally be biased. Further, no one wanted it to look like favoritism. If there is a drop, the admin running the drop is not allowed to participate. All of this is very, very strictly regulated amongst ourselves. I have never seen bias affect the outcome of a stealth, drop, or battle verdict. I am currently brainstorming ways to show more transparency with things like drops (taking screenshots of dice rolls, etc) to try and prove this. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to PM me!
Question: There are a lot of foals, and many of them are never played or fall inactive. Why aren't regulations more strict?
We definitely have a foal problem, but this has honestly been a problem on every site I have ever RPed on. I would love to find a way to remedy it, but as of right now, I'm not sure what the best way to do that is. I am of the opinion that adding more rules isn't necessarily the way to do it (like, raising the post count will only postpone the inevitable, that kind of thing), but yes - SOMETHING needs to be done. I'm happy to hear suggestions on the subject, and rest assured that it will be discussed by the admin team in the near future!
Question: Why was the comments board removed?
The comments board was removed because it was being abused. People typically posted ideas that, while they may have been good in theory, weren't necessarily practical in terms of use on this site. In these cases, when admin offered polite declines, it turned into really nasty arguments from people who jumped on the bandwagon, and it wasn't at all productive in a way that the comments board was meant to be. Everyone, admin included, found themselves drawn into arguments and many of us said things that we later came to regret. Other times, people used the comments board to just bitch about things they didn't like (excuse my language), without actually offering any suggestions or wanting any change, and we found that it was really detrimental to most people's experience. We love comments and thoughts and suggestions, but we don't like people banding together to attack the site, the admin, or the members. It was a privelege that we felt was abused, so we took it away. People are still encouraged to give feedback, but through PM instead. I wish that we could bring it back, but unfortunately there has been so much OOC drama going on that I don't feel it would be beneficial at this time.
I hope that this answers some of the questions of our member base. I have received some very thoughtful questions and commentary, and I would love to see more people take advantage of the opportunity to ask these questions! If you would like any clarification on any of these answers, please let me know. Also, feel free to give suggestions! I love those. :)
I would like to point out on the rumors of admin bias basically how we do a drop or a roll. Everything is on a very tight schedule, and that schedule is purposefully not released to prevent people from only being active when the drop that they want is about to be released! This is a policy from way back, and I think that it is very fair. Admin do get to see the drop schedule, but we make up for our knowledge with the fact that we cannot participate in our own drops. So, most of the time, we get less chances for magic and companions than anyone else.
I would like to break down this most recent drop that I did. Normally, admin to not tell people who is doing a drop because of a few reasons: 1) we have had problems with people pestering the admin running the drop for the answers if they know who it is, 2) we have had people hold grudges against the admin hosting the drop if they did not win (and that hurt quite a bit of admin feelings), 3) the admin can be their most unbiased of they believe they are anonymous. These are the same reasons why our battle judges are not given out. If an admin was to be known as a judge, it would affect their decision making so as not to offend any player. We copy this policy from the same one as a recommendation letter system. Recommendation letters which you are not allowed to see hold more weight because the letter writer can be honest and anonymous.
This is the drop: http://helovia.net/showthread.php?tid=14089
The decision to break into rounds is either decided ahead of time or decided if many characters show up. For example, in this drop: http://helovia.net/showthread.php?tid=13265 , I had decided ahead of time to split into 3 different "task groups". In this way, I had an easier time acknowledging each character individually as the RE. With the Time God one, it made more sense that he would speak to everyone at one time because he does not like people very much. Prolonged exposure with rounds would not be in character. Quite a bit of thinking is involved with this sort of thing!
What I did with this drop (and what is done with many drops), is that I made a list of characters who entered the drop into a list. Then, anyone who had linked previous denials got their name added again (one name per each denial). So this is why you see Satanic Silk included twice as well as Hotaru. If you did not link your previous denial, then your name was not put in twice! Since we want these drops to happen quickly and on time, the admin cannot go search your individual character's ever drop - you know your character more than we do, so it is your responsibility to provide.
Once the list was made and names put in twice, the list was randomized using an online randomizer. Personally, I like to use this one: https://www.random.org/lists/ because it gives a timestamp of the date and time in was rolled. This way, you can see exactly when I randomized the list.
Below that, you see this "1d12 rolled for a total of: 12 (12)". Since there were twelve names total on the list, each of them numbered, I rolled a twelve sided dice. We do this in the thread itself to roll! (Just like with battle rolls).
Any of you can do this function "/dice 1dx" where x = any number of dice sides, and it will give you a random number output between 1 and the x number that you put. I like doing it this way instead of on a website like randomdiceroller.org or something, because it's instantaneous and you can see if I went back and edited. Whereas, I would have to crop with photoshop otherwise and then upload the image. Honestly, I thought/think that rolling on the thread itself is more transparent, but I could just sit there and click over and over again until I got the number I wanted and then save the image and upload it! (This is why I like the list randomizer because it has a time stamp - you can check the time stamp against the time/date that I posted!)
When anyone goes back and edits a post, this shows up: "05-26-2014, 11:38 PM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2014 10:31 AM by Satanic Silk." So, you can see anytime an admin goes back and modifies a post and the time and date which it was done. As you can see in my post as the RE, I did not go back and edit this! There is no admin way to keep MyBB from not logging this information. You can see the same thing on the battle boards! If someone re-rerolled or edited a roll, it would show up as (This post was last modified:) with a date, time, AND the person who edited it.
Not only that, but it IP logs every edit and creation of a thread, so we can see not only whose account edited the thread, but which IP. I can tell if Sevin edited something from her phone or her computer! I can also tell if someone hacks an account this way. (Also, this is a way for admin to know who is controlling the RE/God/Official accounts! All we have to do is check the IP and we can know exactly who posts what).
Since the dice rolled a "12" , that matches number "12" on my list, and tada! Satanic Silk won.
This is how you can know if an admin is being biased or not! I personally like to think that we are not biased at all, but honestly, that was one of my main concerns with the old battle system and why it eventually changed. We are all biased, even if it's an education bias, personal history bias, ethnic bias, etc. For example, I would naturally be biased toward someone who was more analytical in their battle writing because I am more analytical! Since I understand analytical writing more than artistic, my previous battle judging under the old system were skewed toward those who wrote analytically and not artistically. Since we all have some inherent bias, we put in place checks and balance to keep ourselves from being put in these situations.
Note :: (In the event that dice rolls are not posted, for example the race drop, they were done in an admin board for all the admin to see. It would be massively cluttered to have done something like that on the board itself, but you are always welcome, as the thread said, to ask to see the dice rolls. We just like things to look clean!)
These are:
1) Admin cannot enter their own drops!
2) The admin's identity for judging and drops are considered secret!
3) We use on-the-site dice rolling with the /dice 1dx function so that you can see when we roll
4) The site logs all post edits and creation times!
5) We have to show screenshots of our lists/randomizers/etc and post them to the thread
6) Each admin has a god that is their "favorite" to play, but we cannot write a god to ourselves
7) We take turns with VOTG passes and VOTG things
And there are probably more, but I am tired.
Hopefully with this information, you are prepared to see for yourself any discrepancies. And if you do, PLEASE report them TO AN ADMIN! Either we can explain what happened to you and why it was edited, OR we can investigate who did the editing and why it was done and take appropriate action.
(Note that too, every time an admin marks a battle from "needs judging" to "judged", it logs that we edited that post!)
If you have any questions about the system itself, the coding, or the dice rolling plugin (which I think was made by yaldaram, a big-time MyBB coder), please PM me to let me know. I'd love to explain as best as I can. When you need a drop explained, also please come to me or Rayo. Unless the drop HAD to be done then, we discuss how we are going to do it to try to be creative.
