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Subject: I was just wondering abot a couple of things.
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No first off I would like to say that this is in no way meant to be offensive to the Moderators or Staff of Bungie.net, I merely want to have some type of insight on you views and mind set regarding some of the issues in this fine community.

Ok then,

Question the first:

What is behind the decision to keep the moderation team down to the number it is. Was it to do with building a 'close nit', "I know who to go to" community or was it something other than that?

Question the second:

What are your feelings on the state of the forums in general?

Question the Third:

Currently there are five out of the seven forums with Halo as a topic definition. What are your feelings regarding this.

Question the fourth:

What process does an idea go through before it is implemented into the site?

Question the fifth:

Would you say that the implementation of the stats section of bungie.net was a good thing or a bad thing, or maybe a mix of the both?

Question the sixth:

What are your feelings on freedom given to users on bungie.net?

Question the seventh:

What do you say to the negative feed back the B.Net team receives about them not doing enough to stop spam and create a balanced forum environment?

Question the eighth:
Can we expect changes around the corner, such as the implementation of the 7th column council and a possible new Greatness, all of which have been mentioned before, but have failed to show any sign of appearing soon.


That is all I have to ask you guys right now. Like I said before this was not suppose to be some type of underhanded flame, merely an insight into how the B.Net team thinks.

Thanks a lot,
Toji Karume [Forum Guy]


[Edited on 7/23/2005]

  • 07.22.2005 7:35 AM PDT
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I have a feeling you will get your reply in a PM. It may have been better to PM one of them in the first place.

I find it odd that my computer decided to switch to a standard German keyboard setting just now.

Edit- Haha! I was proved wrong, the answer came to everyone, hooray!

[Edited on 7/23/2005]

  • 07.22.2005 8:19 AM PDT
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That was hardly a flame. That was well put, and you would get multiple answers from mods, I bet, because this is the most popular forum for those types. And it's in the right forum.

1. A ratio of 1:100,000 is pretty good... or not.
4. The WebMaster sniffs the piece of paper, takes it away, and when it comes back... well, either it comes back all scrappy and covered in poo, or it doesn't come back at all.
6. Taken from the Code of Conduct page:

Bungie controls everything. You have no rights. Play nice.
7. Even though NONE of this has ANYTHING to do with me, I reckon people should be nicer to Bungie and the mods in general.

Sorry for answering when I shouldn't have. :P
-TGP-

  • 07.22.2005 8:32 AM PDT

Posted by: Great_Pretender
Sorry for answering when I shouldn't have.

You have every right to answer them.

  • 07.22.2005 9:56 AM PDT

I hate everything, but it's not my fault.

Excellent questions! None of those are close to being a flame, they are very polite and reasonable questions. I would like to see those answered by Achronos, but until he does stop by (and I think that he will, he usually responds to these type of things) I will say what I believe to be the answer to number one (which I get from a brief conversation with Achronos, so I may be wrong here). I think that Achronos does not trust people with the responsibilty of being a moderator, because a mod that went rampant could do an amazing amount of damage until he was caught and banned. So he only appoints people that he knows will be good moderators and not go crazy, and knowing that much about a person from an internet forum is hard, so there are few mods.
I also agree with GP on number 7.

[Edited on 7/22/2005]

  • 07.22.2005 10:44 AM PDT

Posted by: Ghandi 2
...because a mod that went rampant could do an amazing amount of damage until he was caught and banned.

*shudders*

I can't even imagine.

  • 07.22.2005 10:51 AM PDT
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That is true. I didn't really think about that until you used the word 'Rampant'. Heh, shows where my mind is.

But anyway, I know a few people who are extremely trustworthy, and only half of the mods are around anymore. So now it's around 1:200,000. That's TOO much.

-TGP-

  • 07.22.2005 11:23 AM PDT
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I would like the answer to those questions too. Just hope we get them...

  • 07.22.2005 11:32 AM PDT

Posted by: Great_Pretender
But anyway, I know a few people who are extremely trustworthy, and only half of the mods are around anymore. So now it's around 1:200,000. That's TOO much.

I wouldn't say half aren't around anymore. I think it's only Sigma we don't see around, but he doesn't have to be seen to be effective.

  • 07.22.2005 12:00 PM PDT

I hate everything, but it's not my fault.

But he does have to log in! I would also say more than half are around, although I haven't seen stosh in a while, and I don't see a couple others very often, but that may be because of time zone differences. Or because they have important things to do in real life, I don't know.

[Edited on 7/22/2005]

  • 07.22.2005 12:07 PM PDT

Posted by: Ghandi 2
But he does have to log in!

Technicalities...

It hasn't been that long since he logged in. Until the past few days, Recon wasn't around since about then. That sentence made sense in my head.

  • 07.22.2005 12:13 PM PDT
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Posted by: Toji
Question the first:

What is behind the decision to keep the moderation team down to the number it is. Was it to do with building a 'close nit', "I know who to go to" community or was it something other than that?


Well, I know that Achronos is worried about abuse of powers, but I think it would be far easier to just make a Ninja in Training member role, and limit any possible abuse by say, setting a ceiling on the number of bans/locks a Ninja can make in a day. With the potential for abuse greatly reduced, it would be easier to find more moderators.

These forums need ninjas en masse. Okay, maybe not too many, but getting 10 more mods would see the spam problem through to resolution.

  • 07.22.2005 12:19 PM PDT

Double the mods? Personally, I don't find that necessary. I think it might be more useful if the members of the community just inform the mods of problematic threads/members.

[Edited on 7/22/2005]

  • 07.22.2005 12:23 PM PDT

I hate everything, but it's not my fault.

I agree with Vella. Although 10 more mods might be a little much, it certainly would end the problem we are having with spam and off-topic posts (especially in the poor Underground). I suggested a similar idea to Achronos via PM, but (unsuprisingly) he did not think it was a very good idea. Although Vella's idea is better than mine was, so you never know....Although I'm not sure if Achronos has the ability to limit the amount of times a Ninja in Training could ban and Move/Lock/Delete. I doubt there's any existing code to that effect, and although he could write some new code, I have no idea how hard it would be to implement it. I think it would work very well though.

Posted by: dmbfan09
It hasn't been that long since he logged in. Until the past few days, Recon wasn't around since about then. That sentence made sense in my head.

That's good, I guess...I think it is a long time, since he's a mod.

  • 07.22.2005 12:31 PM PDT

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: Toji
No first off I would like to say that this is in no way meant to be offensive to the Moderators or Staff of Bungie.net, I merely want to have some type of insight on you views and mind set regarding some of the issues in this fine community.


No problem, that's what this forum is for. On to the answers ... I'll just number them rather than quote them to save space:

1. There is not a specific number of mods that we target. The problem is that we have to implictly trust each of them, and that trust is hard to come by. We always are looking, but again, trust much be earned.

2. Excluding the specialized News, Gallery, and Voting booth, since they're special, I think a few of them are very good, and others need work. Septagon and the Flood, and to a lesser degree The Library and The Maw are probably good examples of forums doing exactly what we want. The 3 Halo 2 forums are troublesome since they see so much traffic, flaming, and other general subject confusion. But they are all better than The Underground, because each Halo 2 has its good moments, but the Underground is mostly just people who seem to post without thinking.

3. By design. Eventually, we announce our next project, I'd imagine the mix might change, depending on that project's needs. But for now, we're happy with the public forum breakdown. If anything, The Underground should probably be better focused.

4. When we are scheduling feature updates (major or minor), we usually collect the ideas (from here, from our ideas, and other places), rank as to priority (how much we want them, how useful they are), as well as how difficult one is to implement. For example, Search is a hard problem that takes a lot of work to do. But it also has a high priority to get done, second only to performance and stability work. This is in contrast to something that would be hard and time consuming, yet provide minimal return - an example here would be localizing time zones according to your user profile's settings. After we build that list, we build the schedule, and we use the list to cut things appropriately.

5. It was a good first effort. The goal was to create something innovative and cool, yet not impact the game negatively. I think we did that - the gameviewer especially is very innovative for a console game, but you don't need it to get the Halo 2 experience. Adding stats has also forced us to become much more disciplined about maintaining large (gigantic) databases - we've learned a lot, and that's always good. That being said - we had to build bungie.net's infrastructure first, which limited development time for Halo 2 stats. I wish we could have done more, but I always wish that after a software project - there is always more you want to do.

6. I generally think we're pretty good about that, considering that we let you say a lot of things in our forums that a lot of companies wouldn't let slide. The only area where I think we need improvement is that the 7th Column group system is not as flexible as it one was, and needs some serious work to spruce it up.

7. I'd say that most people don't understand that the bungie.net development team consists of me. I am the only person that works full time on bungie.net, and while other people help for testing and during major updates (like the stat system), I'm it most of the time. So, I have to focus my priorities. First on the list, performance and stability. We've gotten much better in the last few months. As I close out on that, we'll move toward a bunch of very ambitious community features to try and stem the tide. We'll we have a fairly effective banning tool, we need to give the community better tools to positively encourage quality contributions to the community.

8. We are currently in a feature freeze for performance and stability work, after that, I imagine getting search online will be something to do, as it is mostly done, aside from lots of testing and other miscellaneous loose end. After that, it is too early to tell. We have lots and lots of plans, and I think you'll like the result. So, I guess the answer is - major updates not around the corner, but hopefully sooner rather than later.

  • 07.22.2005 3:46 PM PDT

Get Marathon Here
Get Marathon 2 and Infinity Here

Is it just me or does Achornos always give awsome answers? Speaking of which, thanks for those answers, cleared up a lot of stuff I had been pondering on and off, I am completely satified now with B.net, not many other companies actually re-make their forums every few years, or if they do, usually not into something that can be classified as "The New Hotness."

Thanks for all your work Mr. Achronos! B.net may not be as flexable as other forums, but on the whole the site feels a lot better than anyone elses homesite/forum I have come across.

And concerning forum Mods, no kidding trustworthy people are hard to come by, I'm glad somone as trustworthy as you are the one who chooses them!

And supprisingly that was not ass kissing, I really am thankfull its Achronos in charge of this site and forum, to think somone else might one day take over for him... ::shudders:: I have seen enough badly made forums and sites for my liking, B.net is a nice place to come to and relax.

Ok, I'm going to stop talking now, I doubt many people have the patience to get down this far to read this as I am a nobody around here, lol.

  • 07.22.2005 4:40 PM PDT
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[cool yellow color]I'd say that most people don't understand that the bungie.net development team consists of me. I am the only person that works full time on bungie.net, and while other people help for testing and during major updates (like the stat system), I'm it most of the time.[/cool yellow color]

Wow, how do you do it?

  • 07.22.2005 4:59 PM PDT

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."

If you're referring to the gold text, the system always does that in the public forums for any full control user of group 1 (the main site). As for me being the only full time dev, the flip answer is "I'm just that good." The real answer is that I get help occassionally, and it is a lot of hard work... fun work, but still hard.

Posted by: Mr Scientist
[cool yellow color]I'd say that most people don't understand that the bungie.net development team consists of me. I am the only person that works full time on bungie.net, and while other people help for testing and during major updates (like the stat system), I'm it most of the time.[/cool yellow color]

Wow, how do you do it?

  • 07.22.2005 5:11 PM PDT
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Yeah, I meant how do you manage the whole site.

  • 07.22.2005 5:49 PM PDT
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Posted by: Achronos
6. I generally think we're pretty good about that, considering that we let you say a lot of things in our forums that a lot of companies wouldn't let slide. The only area where I think we need improvement is that the 7th Column group system is not as flexible as it one was, and needs some serious work to spruce it up.


Amen.

The 7th Column used to be the heart of Bungie.net. It has lost value over the months because of the lack of databases and such.

Good questions by the way Toji.

  • 07.22.2005 6:02 PM PDT
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Hey there all good questions but i've got one more.

How does it make you feel when you see a forum user indiscriminantly bad mouth's this site or bungie in general and uses as a basis for this half-truth's and facts that he's obviously made up to support there story.

I dont mind hearing a point of view thats well thought out and the person in question has obviously considered both sides but when i see some people's post it makes me angry that they can think like that. Especially considering bungie.net doesn't charge a fee and is there to support the community not to be used as a whipping boy.

[Edited on 7/22/2005]

  • 07.22.2005 6:24 PM PDT
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The best you can do is probably hold out your hand in front of the screen, blocking out all the filth.

But... is your hand big enough? :)

Nice answers Achronos.
-TGP-

  • 07.22.2005 11:32 PM PDT
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Yes thank you very much Archronos. I am greatly aperciative of you taking some time to answer these questions for other members and myself.

-Toji Karume

[Edited on 7/23/2005]

  • 07.22.2005 11:59 PM PDT
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Posted by: Josher 35

Good questions by the way Toji.



Yes, they really were. I learned more about the workings of the site in the thread just now than my first six months of watching this place, before I got my gamertag ID (SSgt Sniper).


Achronos, if you happen to look in here again, thanks for taking the time, it was informative, I hope you have good luck with the rest of the setup for the search function, Zanzibar desperately needs it, and never ever ever EVER quit your day job. Please. I don't want to see Frankie get stuck doing it. ;)

  • 07.23.2005 3:23 AM PDT

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