Post #72709 by hanford_lemoore on Mon, Jan 26, 2004 6:27 PM

Tiki Central’s been going through a lot of changes recently. I’ve heard a lot of praise for these changes, and some complaints, too. A lot of users have told me that Tiki Central is not what it used to be.

Well, I could sit around and brainstorm about different ways to fix it, and I have, but brainstorming alone is not going to fix anything. We need to try the ideas we come up with to see if they work. And that’s what I’m doing these days. We’ve tried it with virtually no moderation and censoring. We’ve tried it with “user-supported” moderation, where I would not moderate anything unless I got a PM or email from a user about.

Well these days, we’re trying a little more pro-active approach to moderating. That does mean a lot more topics will be moved or locked. It’s different than the techniques I’ve used before, and it’s easy to dismiss it as “offensive” of “ineffective”, but the fact is we don’t really know if it will work better or worse than previous techniques until we try.

If this method bothers you, please let me know. But please remember that nothing here at Tiki Central is permanent. We change rules, methods, and policies all the time. If this does not work, we may try something else.

Now some advice:

• Don’t be offended if someone posts a reply that says “we’ve discussed this before” or, “you posted in the wrong forum” or “try searching”. There is nothing inherently offensive in someone informing you of his. I really wish we could coddle all new users, but it’s not possible.

• Don’t be offended if a topic you started or participated in is locked. Really, it’s no big deal. It’s not an attack on you, and it’s not a slap to your face. If you’ve done anything wrong, you’ll be told, either in the topic itself or in a PM or email. But don’t worry about it … have a Mai-Tai. If you disagree with a topic being locked, please PM me about it and we can discuss it. There's nothing to prevent us from un-locking a topic.

• If you don’t want to read and memorize rules, then Tiki Central is not the place for you. It’s grown too big to not have rules in place. If abiding by some rules is not your thing, then please visit some other website. If you don’t like a rule, PM me about it; I’ll be happy to hear what you have to say.

• If you’re not aware, the Search tool has been greatly improved. While it is still slow when searching big forums (and esp. ALL forums), it now gives more accurate results that target the exact posts where your search terms appear. And a message suggesting a search automatically appears when new users go to post.

Thanks for reading,

~Hanford

[ Edited by: hanford_lemoore on 2004-01-26 18:50 ]