Suggestion: Please Remove the Suggestions Part of this Forum

I made a suggestion the other day which would have honestly bettered the forum. It was about adding an infractions appeals process. The post was instantly locked and I actually received an infraction myself for even suggesting such a thing. If suggestions are not really taken seriously here, I would therefore suggest that the suggestions title of this forum be removed and it simply be changed to Feedback and Support.

The purpose of a penalty is to deter people from taking a certain action. Being warned about posting a suggestion, the only lesson I could hope to take away from it is to never post any more suggestions. Why would DP want this to be so? Is this the reason that nobody makes suggestions here?

 

You've been registered here a month
Maybe you should just chill out a bit, read round the place, join in and get the feel of the place before you get so worked up about telling the mods how to run the joint?

 

I think one of the major flaws here is that it is so understaffed. Problems shouldn't be ignored or punished for being found, they should be fixed and the person praised for bringing it to attention. In another thread, one of the mods claimed there was 20 moderators/admins. Basing on law enforcement figures, there is 1 police officer needed for about every 150 residents of a population. With about 66,000 members here, that would equal out to be 440 staff members needed to keep things under control. This is the reason why things are so difficult to keep under control for the current staff. They believe that if they are as strict and impersonal as possible that it's going to help but it's not. It will not stop people from breaking the rules and all it will do is piss off legitimate posters who want to conduct business here and will be here for a long time.

My join date or post count should have nothing to do with whether or not my suggestions are taken seriously. I honestly believe that these changes would be for the better of DP and I am shocked that these forums are this successful and popular with the current administrative techniques. The very description of this forum states "something you do or don't like...let us know" so receiving a demerit for actually posting according to what the forum wants is absolutely ludicrous!

 

Moderators do not see everything, they rely on members to help out in reportings things. You do not need 440 staff to keep this forum under control. Also, it is hard to find moderators who would actually be good at the job, not many people of a forum are suited to do the job. I'm a moderator at a forum which has 200,000 members, nearly 2000 active each day. We go through 1000s of moderation actions each week, we generally keep the forum well rounded as people REPORT, thats what is needed here moreso.

DP is large and requires strict moderation which is given, they do not see every post, that is impossible to do, it requires members to to help out and report posts which they see.

 

Clearly the current system is not working, samcroft11. Things are indeed out of control as evidenced by stickies in speaking about how thousands upon thousands of infractions are given in the B/S/T forums alone PER MONTH and it still isn't helping so they are now going to ramp things up to an automatic 7 day ban. They don't understand that this isn't going to make a difference because doling out increased punishments isn't the solution. The solution is to get more staff and based on what is needed to properly enforce rules of this population it would have to be a number in the hundreds.

What makes successful administrating isn't handing out punishments based on reports or taking a thousand moderation actions per week yourself, it's being personal and friendly. In Law Enforcement, we rely on people calling things in as well. This doesn't mean we can hire less officers, though. When you penalize someone, you need to be able to take the time out of your day to personally speak with the individual and settle any confusion he or she might have about it. Otherwise, they just get pissed off and and don't learn their lesson which doesn't help anybody so there would be no point in it.

 

The current system is working just fine.

Your ticked off you got another infraction! Just read the rules to prevent it in the future.