Forum Discussion V. "Where's the Forum Discussion thread" - General

i'm not defending the state of the forums or anything, but try and have some empathy at least. surely everyone can understand that getting home and seeing people being so aggressive wouldn't be a very good feeling? hezzy is a human. we get defensive when a crowd starts piling up. when people become aggressive and repetitive, we tend to lose our temper again, i'm not going into the merit of whether or not anything else is wrong or not, but garry is still a member of these forums and he *is* trying to help. imo the least we can do is try to be polite just my 5c

I'm not seeing this, looking at his post history he's been pretty fair in a lot of responses. Nowhere near the same amount of hostility when he's getting a bunch of people telling him he's failing at his job. What's he expected to do when forum functionality is entirely up to garry? The anger in this thread is very misdirected

I can see both sides of this one because while I 100% understand Hezzy's state of mind right now, he's also being paid to be community manager, and part of that job is to deal with these things in a level headed manner and I think he could improve on how he's handling things currently.

sure, but we could also do our part and not make his job any harder unnecessarily he's not being paid to deal with rudeness imho

I had to add an exception for forum.facepunch.com to my antivirus (Bitdefender) to get Alerts working. Otherwise, I get the same forever-loading circle.

I discovered this by finding the thread about it late last night. Feel kind of bad for not posting here after. Thanks a bunch for taking the time to tell me, North. But yeah, if anyone else here suddenly has their alerts stop working, add a forum.facepunch.com exception to your web shield in Bitdefender.

Actually his job is pretty much customer service so that literally is his job. Again though I'd like to reiterate taht if he actually did his job like he should then it wouldn't be a huge concern anyways and people wouldn't be complaining about how awful his attitude is.

so, aside from banning people for discussing the forums, and for voicing their concerns with the way the community is being managed, what's the purpose of this thread? to as eloquently as possible ignore elephants in the room? to make people feel as though the voicing of concerns is welcome? why did hezzy just ban people for trivial bullshit reasons? https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132/1f342028-672f-456e-aa49-3d8258eb00c6/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/132/10e16d67-b0c6-4f3d-8b6d-d4c606f01f14/image.png this is completely unacceptable behaviour from a community manager. why is this being tolerated? you're correct, your job isn't to be a punching bag hezzy. your job is to be a community manager for this website and you're not doing it. we're (mostly) adults here, what's the issue?

Some people here aren't acting like adults, therefore it's justifiable to leave everybody in the dark. Apparently.

Remember that rule on the rules page when it existed that said treat others like you would like to be treated LMAO

I agree the forums can do a lot of fixing and improvements and it's a bummer a lot of basic functions are either broken or not even implemented right now but as Inacio and people with similar sentiments have said, I think some empathy and understanding is something that would be more productive, and at the very least a better step forward for better communication and collaboration. Yeah Hezzy's getting paid for this too and there are moments he didn't really act out rationally or professionally on the stuff that's been happening and discussed. However, the guy's just acknowledging what he can and is trying to not make any false promises because right now everything is pretty much at garry's hands. Hezzy is a cop as his day job on top of being community manager here. While he is paid and expected to do his job on both working fronts, it's not like he got a lot of control here on the forums itself, and he has exalted some effort before on doing things the best he can within the restrictions he has to work with. Dude's not a robot, issues pile up and he doesn't claim to be perfect nor does he have the best solutions readily available. Even if Hezzy was to be replaced by someone else, if we take into consideration the current state of how the forums are being ran and developed, it's a bit doubtful there'd be a large difference in what's happening right now. Right now the fact of the matter is this is garry's forums and we can only hope he'll give out the ability for others to handle the forums or start on working with it further himself. I've been in this community for over a decade and I've been on almost every major change and shift on the forums. It's always a cycle of people being divided on changes and the admins and the community being split often. Despite major changes, disagreements and even people just leaving, the forums still maintains a community and never veers into ill fated outcomes for long. One of the major changes back then was the removal of ratings and smartness in the forums. This was a wide debate towards garry and even resulted in unreasonable permabans. Down the line as time passed and out of nowhere ratings slowly came back, first with a postive/negative happy sad smiley system, then a singular star system and then back again with a vengeance, the full blown rating systems once more. The forums will get fixed eventually, assuming garry just doesn't pull out the plug instead (though I have feeling he really doesn't want to, but he really just can't work on the forums right now). I think we can still continue to provide critique, suggestions and what not but I think we really don't have to rag onto each other to reach that goal. It's not like yelling at things will make any changes happen faster, so why not at least try out some courtesy and calm throughout? I'm not defending any missteps or mistakes made by Hezzy or others, but I just think people may be going in too harsh on a man that is kind of at wits end with the issues and complaints piling up and having really limited control on what he can do. I think Hezzy genuinely does care about the forums too, which I found evident during his Q&A streams, but it really does show it can be draining to provide a voice for the community without making false promises due to the lack of means to directly make a change.

I'm not adverse to this, it's my name at the facepunchstudios.com domain. Although I get a lot of spammy shitty emails from companies trying to shill stuff. Yikes. Have you tried doing a cache refresh? If this issue doesn't go away, it may be worth making a thread about it so other users can contribute if they have the same problem and I can flag it to garry. It's gotten to the point where I'm sick of it. Certain people in this thread think I should just take all the shit they're flinging my way but that's not going to be the case. I've coddled the userbase far too much over the past 6 months and been far too tolerant. As a result certain users are taking liberties. This will end. That's a load of nonsense. Just look at the past 7 or 8 iterations of this thread (including the ones on the old forums). No matter what approach I take, people act like pricks. It won't be tolerated. what rules page When did I ever say this? For what it's worth I've been banging the "we need a dedicated webdev" drum for a long time. I'm going to bang it some more, we'd see massive progress if we got one. I'm writing up some business cases & design documents over the next few days to share with garry and hopefully the benefits of a dedicated webdev will outweigh the costs.

@Xarxes The Great this is a chrome issue, not a fp issue iirc

I feel like if Garry simply took one day a month to sit down and fix some of the problems of the forums instead of jut going "This is too much work", every problem, if not almost all of them, would have been solved by now.

You get significantly less hostility when you're not fanning the flames though is my point. People were going to be worked up over the communication either way but when you banned two people for what many feel are extremely bullshit reasons it caused more people to act hostilely towards you rather than less. As I mentioned above, your job as community manager is more or less a customer service job. So it's your responsibility to handle situations in a diplomatic way rather than a combative way. If things are going to be handled combatively then honestly your job is kinda superfluous because Garry can do that just fine himself. (And while he hasn't outright stated it, it seemed like you being appointed as community manager was to help address the issues stemming from him being combative.)

That's what I figured since it wasn't happening in any other browser I've tried. I guess I may swap browser again.

The hard part of this is that the forums aren't profitable. But having a second input on a lot of the website could very much help. Matt and I make a lot of jokes about poor practices done by garry regarding the website as a whole. Like for some reason, you get the entire forum code when browsing the main company page. It's not great. To be fair, I complain to my friends regarding their companies bad websites too. Some actually do fix it, others leave 4K images as their webpage backgrounds 😒

Except it's not a customer service job, its recognition for over a decade of service to an online forum that by no means has a right to exist. Frankly put, if Garry were to wonder in on the forum and come across this thread you can bet your ass there would be a lot of "bullshit bans", with the only difference being you would literally have no grounds for any kind of recourse. Hezzy is here to communicate issues on the forum to Garry, he is not here to pander to anyone's needs or act like "the customer is always right". This isn't a democracy, there is no right to the use of this forum or to a response from administration. Many of you are holding way to high of an expectation for a position in a forum that on multiple occasions was on the chopping block due to the toxicity and bullshit of members of this forum. This forum is here because Garry said fuck it why not and decided to keep paying the bill to keep this place going, and he's rewarded Hezzy with a small compensation for dealing with all the bs of running a forum including pedophiles, stalkers, attempted murders, and general form drama for over a decade. This is Garrys ship, and Hezzy is first mate. What either of them says goes, what ever they decide to do is well within their right, and what they decide to do for this forum is entirely up to them. They are by no means obligated to do anything for anyone here, they are by no means obligated to act a certain way or cater to anyone, and just because Hezzy gets a small kickback for a token of his service to this community does not mean he has to tolerate incessant bullshit or handle everything the moment it comes to light. Garry is plenty aware of Hezzys current schedule and occupation, and he is plenty aware of what he does and how he does it. Hezzy wouldn't be where he is if Garry did not agree with his method of doing things. Just because you feel they have an obligation to do anything does not mean they have one, and quite frankly making those kinds of assumptions is a great way to get on Garrys bad side. We're all here because of the community, many of us have put in many years to this community to help it grow and flourish. All of us have done all of this on our own time with no compensation. This forum has functioned almost entirely volunteer service, and we are under no obligation to do anything more than what has been asked of us by the owner of this forum. We are doing what we can with what we got, with the free time we wish to allocate, within the boundaries of what we have been given. We are working to make things better for this forum, but as things are these things take time. To assume that any of us up to and including Hezzy have any sort of obligation to this forum beyond what has been asked of us by Garry is not within the scope of this forum. This isn't Reddit, this isn't facebook, this isn't choose your own corporate conglomerate. This is a forum that is run entirely by people who decided to donate their time to run it, that happens to be paid for by a man who owns a company.

Let me start off by saying that I'm in no means trying to keep the negativity going, I just have a few honest questions about all of this. Firstly, what exactly are the guidelines for being an admin and, more specifically, how do they compare to the rules (as in Oldpunch's) for its users? I can't imagine they would be too different, if anything the rules for the admins would be more strict. Secondly, what exactly is the point of this thread at this point? Most posts have been from users unhappy with the forum's current state, which to me includes the way users - including moderators - can or cannot behave. But if anyone brings up any criticism that gets mistaken as a personal attack, they get banned. Are we supposed to email garry? Because I imagine that would be pointless since he's too busy, or not interested in responding. Lastly, why are we not allowed to question a mod's decision to ban users randomly? Hezzy would say to message him on discord, but wouldn't that just annoy him more? Is hezzy the only one who has control over how and what users are allowed to talk about? If so, then why have other mods at all? Thank you!

I'm going to sound like a stan here but honestly, there's only so much complaining we can do since this is a free website. We aren't entitled to shit, and they have no reason to pander to our wishes. This is literally a money sink for FP Studios. This is garry's project alone because he wants it to be that way. Nobody is making you all stay here. While I also agree that some communication would be nice, we have to remember real life ALWAYS COMES FIRST for things like this. Yes, Hezzy gets paid to be the eyes and ears, but I'm sure it's a paltry sum compared to his main 9-5 job. On top of that, the things that were the biggest concern during that time aren't even things that are core functions of the site. Sure, if posting was disabled for two weeks and nobody realized, some outrage would be warranted. But it's fucking custom CSS, something we had to use add-ons for on Oldpunch. Garry was just nice enough to include it as an option this time around. Look at it this way guys, it's a beta test if anything. On top of that, as the codebase improves, I'm sure Garry could license this model out like vBulletin was and bring forums back to the modern age. We just need to be patient and remember we aren't entitled to shit from garry or hezzy.

The guidelines are "do what Garry says" . As far as rules for an admin goes there are none, Garry trusts Hezzys methods and judgments and has given him autonomy to do things as he sees fit. The point is to bring up issues with the forum in regards to problems with it. Historically it also included discussing rules, to which currently there is no hard standard and we as moderators are given the authority to enforce historic rules in the midterm until Hezzy has completed the new rule set. There was a time where people tried to discuss issues with particular members, which is entirely not what this thread is for. As for people getting banned by Hezzy for whatever reason, I'm sure you'd kick a guy out of your house for acting like a jackass too. No one said you can't question it, but there's a difference between highlighting what you feel as a misjudgment on an individuals part and personally attacking and antagonizing a person based on assumptions due to the assumed obligations of a position. This holds especially true when peoples criticisms are worded in such a way where it is easy to assume it is a personal attack, which in part has to deal with the lack of tact people have when writing online posts without taking into account the lack of visual and tonal cues that would otherwise give away that it is indeed not a personal attack. There have been multiple occasions where such things have been brought to attention in this thread series, and in some of those situations it lead to people getting unbanned and mods being demodded. As for who to take up the chain of command as far as complaints go towards the moderation team, Hezzy is the top of the food chain. It does not go higher. Moderators generally will operate with more restraint, as we are expendable and are only here because of our long time commitment to the community and the trust we earned to use sound judgement to the extent that a regular person would have. Any issues you or anyone else has with one of us are more then welcome to message Hezzy on the issue. As far as Users being "banned randomly", by which I assume you mean Hezzys bans in this thread, like I said he's the top of the food chain. He has already stated he is willing to discuss whatever through discord (and by extension his email). As for other moderators he has had an open message policy since new punch went online. With that, any time there is a controversial ban from a regular moderator I can pretty much guarantee you that it has been discussed either between moderators or on our moderator chat.

I could be mistaken, but I don't think the custom css was what people were really pushing back about, but rather the numerous other issues that effect everyone. We shouldn't need dozens of users to create features for a website that should have been implemented at launch when, somehow, a meta currency system was top priority instead.

Can I get a check on the peak active posters in the last 2 weeks compared to a year ago? There's no real good way to check that with what we have at our disposal.

I feel like this whole mess could easily have been avoided if you just bought a proprietary solution and implemented that. (like Doomworld did) Might not have all the fancy features but at least the forum wouldn't break every 2 weeks.

Actually encourage most of y'all to read this exact post by this user. It's well and truly heard and I've had several conversations and discussions(even today) and the frustration, pain, bitching, whining, complaints, criticism it's all heard. Y'all need to take a step back and take a break from it if you can't be constructively provide criticism. Truth here. Nobody would ban criticism that was constructive and true. The bans here are jabs(including mine) which don't help but poke the bear. If you can't be reasonable. Don't post. Simple. You'd avoid drama, getting nowhere and avoid being banned. I've said this before I'm sure but it seems to be falling on death ears and many other people have said this too. It's been heard. Stop shooting the messenger.

I'm not sure we all agree with your interpretation on this. You've kind of always been taking a hardline against people being rude to you. It's kind of one of the things we've been complaining about.

Liar -- you're in the FP Polidicks discord.

So what happened to Pascall? Haven't seen them in months now.

Is there a way for to me to auth another service instead having to use Facebook to login into my FP? i would like to change it to something else.

You have over 230 posts in there.