- Achronos
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- Bungie.net Overlord
Tom Achronos
Bungie.net Overlord
twitter: http://twitter.com/Achronos
"I have no words that would do justice to the atrocities you commit to the English language, as well as your continued assaults on the concepts of basic literacy and logical reasoning."
Posted by: snowmanaxt7
Fast forward half a year, and now there are four of them free to do as they please, with powers they intend not for the bettering of the community but for their own egotistical purposes. Job well done? Well, they must be good, if Bungie picked them. But Bungie didn’t, since nobody from Bungie, save Frankie and KPaul whose main interests lie in HBO and not the site they’re contracted to work for, really frequents the community. Achronos does his bit in the Septagon and occasionally travels further afield to answer in-depth or plain arrogant queries, but that’s not involving in the community on the whole. Again, the lack of a community guy is salient.
KPaul's contract is over, he doesn't work for Bungie anymore. And he originally was active a lot in that community. And I don't really care if you don't like that they post in HBO - there are other communities around Bungie games other than the one here, and they are just as deserving as you guys.
And, by the way, I read and watch way more of this site than you give me credit for - just because I don't respond doesn't mean that I'm not listening. There is simply too much to respond to. It is easy to say nothing is happening when you don't have an inside track on everything. We give a lot of inside track compared to most developers, and I think you'll find that I am going to be somewhat dismissive of this particular claim (that we aren't participating here). Even Brian does his best to watch the goings on around here, despite the high amount of noise around here. I think the rest of the community team does a pretty good job in picking up the slack.
Nosferatu_Soldie is another name of which I can make an example, though not that I really wish to since I, at least when he used to visit Bungie.net, liked him a great deal. Here was a promising new member who apparently had quite the social objectives, which isn’t a bad thing considering he didn’t act like an arse-kissing jerk publicly nor, from what I’d seen, privately. Yet in very little time at all he was promoted to the status of ninja, and here certain TFM members, ironically in that their members became moderators in practically the same manner, were outraged. The explanation for his upgrading was, apparently, that he’d played World of Warcraft with Bungie and had got to know them quite well.
That's not the whole story. He's been around a lot longer than that. Give us a little credit, here. And besides... what exactly is your complaint about him other than your ill-informed story of how he became a moderator?
He, like Jim after his acquisition of powers, faded away from Bungie.net and ceased to be quite the superb members they once were. Granted, both had plenty of personal excuse, but even when they returned more permanently the activity levels didn’t increase. Recently, too, Nosferatu became a master moderator, though his contributions to Bungie.net during the period before that were negligible. Proof of the social structure of moderator selection, and also the hypocrisy when the claim is made that moderators are picked based on contributions. That said, it’d still be excellent if he were on more often, as with so many good members of the community jumping ship, every remaining one really counts.
Now, you're just out in left field. Moderators are picked on community involvement. However, that isn't the only criteria, and we're not only talking about THIS community. Furthermore, as I'm sure dmbfan and impurity will tell you - moderating requires that you watch a little bit what you say, because you are viewed as an "official" mouthpiece, even when you're not. I'm sure the other mods can expand on this a bit. The only one who probably didn't really alter much of what he said or did was Shishka - but he didn't make any friends because he didn't take any crap from you. Of course, that prevented a lot of you from incurrring my far worse wrath...
The VII Toast affair springs to mind. He seemed a nice enough fellow – until he was elected a moderator, at which point reality surfaced and he was revealed for the savage power freak he truly is. The problem is, the community and its pleas for action against his transgressions were ignored, and it took until the senior ninjas started to take notice for him to be brought to justice. This process took well over a year, and he had already wrought considerably havoc upon the site, deleting posts, thoroughly deceiving users and banning others for no reason. During his reign, he was undoubtedly responsible for the selection of yet another poor ninja choice, and perhaps more than one. More damage done to the community. If the worst, most blatant abuser takes about a year and a half to be dealt with, it is distressing to consider that he was not the only one to have taken his privileges lightly.
Yeah, that's not how it happened. Toast started out as a good moderator, got a few warnings, and then I asked him to make a choice, and he chose not to be a moderator anymore. And don't you DARE try to infer quality of subsequent moderators on his activities - that is not a logical progression. Furthemore - it should be known that every single moderator gets pretty much constant claims of biased or unfair treatment. Well, except for Jeremiah and myself. We just get death threats. But anyway, all I will say about that is you are missing a huge part of the story about that, and assuming that it was ignored or overlooked is not accurate.
I think it is fair testament to the issues with moderating now that impurity quit his post as ninja after a short while indeed. Here was a guy who had countless discussions about the betterment of the community in olden times, who always sees the best in people and who at the same time opposes snobbery. It was a good day for all those concerned with the community’s progression and improvement when he was selected, but I think he began to realise that it was no longer possible to use his powers to any true end, and that modship had become nothing but a surface appearance. Most were content to carry on, knowing this, but he figured that he could help out more as a regular member than as an arse-kissed puppet. Dmbfan was the same, with good intentions, and quit knowing that ultimately his powers would go to waste and his better judgment wouldn’t have any effect. Moderating is a volunteer job at its core, which is fair enough, but it’s supposed to be an opening for the very best of members to serve the community in more than one way.
Okay, this section is complete and utter bull-blam!-. I'm sorry, but they quit because moderating is hard, and you have to be careful what you say and how you say it. It is hard to enjoy the forums in the same way, and those two just decided that they preferred to just have fun as part of the regular community. Don't make stupid assertions - you're becoming almost as bad as those idiot forum cops who hold moderation up on a pedestal like it is some power trip. It is hard work, and no matter what you do, someone always has something bad to say about you. This relates to the Toast thing too - one thing I always promise the mods is that I have their back to deal with those kinds of things. And quite frankly, most of the things alleged about Toast were very minor our just made up. Only toward the end when he lowered himself to the level of those making crap up about him did things get out of hand. And again I say this kind of made up stuff about "what moderating is" is part of the problem.
With living proof of how more or less anybody who follows the formulae can become a moderator... their personality masks are liable to change on a whim, since it is not really their own character posting, but rather a stereotype with a specific purpose.
Oh my god, I hope your next is post is better than this one. This is because people can and do make hundreds of spam and troll accounts because they can - there is very little to stop this kind of thing. People routinely trade passports around and let others use their accounts, and such. The moderators know about lots of this, but they can't do much because they don't have the tools to deal with it. It is also out of their job responsibility.
Seriously, you went off the deep end with this part. You make lots of incorrect assumptions about moderators and how things work, and use them to support conclusions that aren't even entirely correct based on the assumptions... I'm not trying to pretend everything is all rosy, but you guys are STILL focusing on the wrong thing.
Hint: the moderators have very little to do with it... it has to do with the fact that bungie.net does very little to truely encourage positive participation... we have lots of negative reinforcement, but no postive reinforcement.