Regarding the MH staff

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

Kai and Champs do a lot of backend under the hood stuff a lot of us don't see. Champ also hosts a lot of Turntable shindigs which wouldn't count towards activity.

Basically I don't think looking at their total hours of activity could properly Guage how active a mod is.

 

Kai's contributions are well known. How about the remaining blue mods or Ito? What I'd like to see is the remaining staff members to post here. None of the staff members whom have very blatantly been accused here have responded, despite hovering over the topic from time to time. I seriously hope we're not waiting here for an official response from the PR team after it has covered all the angles, while the inactive's keep on living in their own sphere. 

[Mr Bacon 106]

I'm pretty much a lurker nowadays, so I'm really not one to speak haha, but I still agree with this topic.
 

If you're a staff member and you're thinking this topic could be hinting at you being one of the inactive mods/admins, please consider how much you still have to offer for this forum. Feelings of nostalgia or responsibility are not enough reason to keep being a staff member.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Ito partially own the forum, run the facebook page, and is responsible for the front-end design?

[Original Saku 1593]

^ You are correct. not only does he do all of that but he takes time out of his busy life every year to run a panel at Acen all by himself to inform and recruit new and potential members to the forum. If there is anyone who I think should not be questioned about their contributions to the forum it is Ito. Although people might not see what he does trust me he contributes a lot behind the scenes.

 

edit:

 

I agree with most of what is being said here. we the staff are aware of the problems and are discussing what can be done about it right now, not much more to say on my part besides that.

[Zeus 7997]

Yes to all three of those points Peace.

I am not sure how effective detailing each of the mod members contributions are in the long run. There is a definite lack of "front end" work being done on our part. This we have acknowledged and are aiming to fix immediately as to give ourselves more of a presence on the forum. This we can promise you.

However, let's keep this topic more in line with constructive criticism and less with a vague witch hunt for inactive moderators. We can make changes if we get suggestions. Simply demanding someone be fired does nothing for anyone.

[RoseOfHizaki 131]

<snip>

Simply demanding someone be fired does nothing for anyone.

 

It does if youre Sir Alan Sugar.....

 

I'll see myself out....

[WhirlingBlack 1043]

That's what we're doing - presenting suggestions for change. A part of that change is a restructuring of management. 

[stylelover 1086]

There is a definite lack of "front end" work being done on our part. This we have acknowledged and are aiming to fix immediately as to give ourselves more of a presence on the forum. This we can promise you.

 

i am sorry, but thats just sugarcoating it. i guess you can promise that for youself but something like that just doesnt work for everyone. not in the internet and not in reallife. someone whos more or less inactive for months cant just say "ok lets be more active now " and suddenly be more active. it MIGHT work for one person , its not totally out of question, but a more than one person at once? no no.

would be the same if i dont sell any phones for months in my shop, because i have no interest at all to sell anything and then just be like "ok yea lets sell many phones everyday now yaaaay". everyone would agree that that wont work.

 

 

EDIT: and i guess many people here already wrote some suggestions so theres a start. we all understand that its something that cant be changed in a day and needs discussion.

[Flash-Fab-Supernova 88]

Most people on this forum are too mean and hungry for downloads to make the apathy level go down~. MH is just a pirating site with the bulk of community activity "THANKS FOR SHARING WHAT YOU BOUGHT," and "OMG I NEED THIS IN 320K PLZ SOME1 POAST." 

[greeeeen 49]

I seem to share my sentiments with some the users here. Well, I'm not a particularly active member myself, since I barely post anything/contribute to the discussions and all I do is check the Download section, go to the chatbox or read topics without actually replying to it to voice my own opinion. I too noticed that there's been a decrease in the forum in terms of activity--which is partly my (and other users with similar mentality) fault--and that there are some of staff members (I've been paying attention to this since the day they were appointed as mods, mind you) who don't appear to carry out their functions as intended needless to say one of them suddenly just disappeared from the surface of the earth and is now probably looking down on us from heaven. Was he still blue by the time he departed? Idk. Oh, I know they have lives and stuff and they can't attend to the forum the whole time, but allocating a couple of hours a week is mandatory, I reckon.

 

I also agree that restructuring is indispensable, but putting users' candidacy aside (I'll leave the job to the admins and mods), to second Mr Bacon's statement, staff members (who feel like this topic's hinting to you being one of the inactive mods/admins) need to speak up for themselves to explain to us how much they still have to offer for this forum.

[CAT5 9075]

I don't think changing the staff will change the state of the forum in itself, but I think it could be a step in the right direction and it's a visible change that will improve the forum's morale.

 

Speaking of visible changes, perhaps changing or improving the current forum theme and the forum banner would help to refresh MH and revive moral. (Personally, I've always been a fan of rotating banners).

 

 

However, we can sit here and talk about cosmetics all day, but visible changes aren't truly substantial changes. I think what this forum needs most of all is a solitary purpose. I feel as if everyone wants mh to change, but every seems to have different ideas (or no ideas at all) on what they want MH to be. If we establish a clear identity and singular goal, then we can proceed from there.

 

Ask yourselves this, what do you consider MH to be? A VK forum? A J-rock forum? A Japanese music forum? A forum for kpop and VK? What are we exactly?

 

 

Personally, I've always viewed MH as a Japanese rock forum. Sure, we've always had an abundance of visual kei fans here. So with that in mind, I've tried to do my part to share, discuss, and promote non-visual bands with the hopes of cultivating appreciation for Japanese rock as a whole and not just one scene in particular. That's what I've been trying to do personally, but to be completely honest, I have no idea if the rest of the staff shares my sentiments.

 

That's why I ask you all, before you jump and try to change the staff, I urge you all to come up with a goal, a singular purpose that you all can devote yourselves to as part of the staff. If you guys have no goal, then you're not going to get very far. I think that's the problem with the current staff. Everyone means well, but we've kind of lost sight of what our goal(s) should be.

 

When you guys come up with a purpose, a goal, or some kind of mission, then I will gladly abdicate my position to anyone you deem worthy. But as of now, with no goal in mind, we don't really have much of a standard to judge the current staff by other than their activity level - to which you guys have stated will take much more to be a mod.

 

So, once again. I'll charge you all with this task. Decide where you want to go with MH. Decide what you'd like MH to be. And from there, develop a criteria that you think the staff should be able to meet. If I don't meet the criteria, I will gladly step down.

 

I'm all for reconstruction. But before you guys start detaching pieces and putting them back together, have a clear vision of what you want to build first. Let's see a blueprint and then go from there.

 

At the end of the day, I'll do whatever is best for MH.

[Champ213 1858]

Somewhat unrelated, but if Trombe has mod powers, why doesn't she have a special colored name? I mean, she's practically 50% of the reason why this forum is still alive.

 

 

We offered to make Trombe a full mod before, which they declined. We ended up giving them mod powers over the News forum though, because in the end it was the easiest way. That's why the name shows up in the staff list. They didn't want to be an "official mod" though, so to speak. (Unless that has changed by now, in which case we are happy to oblige.)

 

They do have a special rank of "News Broadcast" though.

 

 

I will add something about the other points later, I'm just home from nightshift, off to bed now.

[orangetarts 249]

From what Ive read in this thread, I feel like mostly everyone wants the same thing. As well as everyone having very valid points of whats happening.

I help run a fansite blog and I can say it's not really a glamorous thing, its very tedious and sometimes your life just gets in the way of doing it.

 

I really hope the staff will take some of the criticisms here and use it to make the forum better.

There is my 2 cents as a member.

[WhirlingBlack 1043]

Repurposing the forum wasn't really the point of this though, I think most of us applicants generally agree on that the nature and general direction of MH as a Japanese Rock Forum is a good and solid one. What needs to be done is trimming, fixing and perfecting the forum for that purpose, which large parts of the current administration have not attempted to do.

 

 

EDITED: fixed parts that might've seemed a bit generalizing.

[Ito 2438]

To say that I am frustrated by this thread is a bit of an understatement.
 
The attitude of some of the members make me feel like you paid something to get this service and ended up not getting exactly what you want. This this is something that exists and you enjoy purely because the love and money of other people. The negativity is stifling. I kind of get the impression that a lot of people think the "staff" is kind of a faceless corporation, that we are in our positions for the power and the glory or some shit. The people on the staff are here because they love this site and the community. They volunteered their time to try and make this a better place, no matter the amount. 
 
We are in agreement that the staff isn't as active that we all once were in our prime. But neither is the community. Pointing fingers will get us no where fast. Throwing people out and reshuffling is purposeless if it is done to just appease a few people. Lets say that the staff posts a lot more...does that give us the active community that we want? Maybe yes, maybe no. And it will not happen at the flip of a switch, it will be a slow burn. The success of this forum rests on everyone here, and absolutely none of you are obligated to do anything. If the love isn't there, then MH will die.
 
Will the staff be redoubling our efforts to try and make this community better? For sure. Will we try to mix things up by adding another mod or two from the community? Most likely. But I am not so sure that this is something that can be forced. We will do the best we can to get things flow...there are still people that love this place over 6 years since Jake and I first started it, and while things may be massively different from now then, I plan on continuing to keep this place running for as long as possible. The only thing I ask is that you treat the staff like the hard working people they are. Pretty much everyone on the staff here is an incredible person outside of the forum as well and life can get in the way of this fun little place.
 
 
Side notes:
If we were judging you all on how much you care by the amount you donate to the site to keep it running, we would have closed down already
 

the donate should be announced the cost real to keep the site, show the value on site how much was donated to encourage members to donate (any amount) in each month.

 
It costs $60 a month to keep the servers running. Every dollar you give goes DIRECTLY in to paying the server (as you will have noticed when you use paypal and notice who you are paying - dreamhost).

 

Most people on this forum are too mean and hungry for downloads to make the apathy level go down~. MH is just a pirating site with the bulk of community activity "THANKS FOR SHARING WHAT YOU BOUGHT," and "OMG I NEED THIS IN 320K PLZ SOME1 POAST."

 

I hate to break it to you, but that is the way the forum has ALWAYS been. a majority of the people that visit will never post and just take the downloads. Hell, I don't even know if this forum's community would even exist if it wasn't for the download section.

 

 

[madygrain 515]

The attitude of some of the members make me feel like you paid something to get this service and ended up not getting exactly what you want. This this is something that exists and you enjoy purely because the love and money of other people.

 

I understand that you feel like people is overdemanding, and there is no way your point is invalid in an abdsolute way. But as you said this site exists thanks to the passion for japanese music, passion that even drove you to invest money on the site's continuity. But please, consider that if there's people talking about this in this thread it's because they also care quite a bit about MH  and want it to be a better place. This is not about making you feel bad about how "bad" MH is now, it's about the people that likes it a lot wanting it to be a better place tomorrow. I undesrtand it's frustrating but I could bet nobody in this thread wrote to piss you off. But it's the risk you go into when running a service for everyone for free. You run into the expectations that offering any service and the problems of it not being a business, but I gess that's a tale for another night.

 

 

We are in agreement that the staff isn't as active that we all once were in our prime. But neither is the community. Pointing fingers will get us no where fast. Throwing people out and reshuffling is purposeless if it is done to just appease a few people. Lets say that the staff posts a lot more...does that give us the active community that we want? Maybe yes, maybe no. And it will not happen at the flip of a switch, it will be a slow burn. The success of this forum rests on everyone here, and absolutely none of you are obligated to do anything. If the love isn't there, then MH will die.

 

This it's true. It allways amazed me how many moderators/admins/people with exotic colors on their names were and how small/none impact this had on the forum level of manteinance. But there are 7000 people here. Fucking 7000!. About 30 are active and invested in the site at most (not counting fancy colored names, just usual yellows) and one of those holds about 70% of the actitity of the forum probably more if we talk about debate activity. 

 

This is ridiculous. Moderation looking at their bellys is an issue, but the shame is on almost everybody that is not Trombe or a frequent uploader, with a couple of exceptions I gess.

 

And we can not blame it on the download leeches. They would never make this commuty interesting. If they annoy us, there are ways we can clean them out of this place. But that would not make any difference if we, "invested veterans" don't do something to make this an active, interesting community.

 

I tried to do my part when proposing the CD purchase coordination threads and the collection threads wich I abandoned due to the lack of interest in the first case and the overleeching and ridiculous amount requests form people with 0 messages and such on the second one. I left those ideas that may have helped, so blame on me. I will try to come back to them and think about more things that I can do to boost actitivty. But no one can do that if the rest of the MH that wants it to be interesting don't support it. Let's do this together. There is no other way.

 

As people has shown their will to fix the mod issue in this thread, i see it hypocrytical of us not to open a new thread or discuss elsewhere ways we regular users could make MH better.

 

On the staff side of things, it's all about motivation. Few motivated people can do more than an army of e-personalities that don't care at all. Motivation runs off quickly, so rotation is key. Get involved, set a tone of debate that is good. Care.

 

About what MH is or what we want it to be, I don't think that's an issue at all. Forum are user driven. The topic is asian music. The active commutity will drive the frum to a more specfic field. But before we need an active community willing to drive MH somewhere.

[Champ213 1858]

First of all, let me say this:
 
If the staff members didn't care for this place/were not motivated, as some people in here accuse of us, this place wouldn't exist anymore. It would have vanished a long time ago.
 
Secondly, as Ito said, we are not a cooperation. We are a bunch of friends that donate some of their free time to work on this site. For me it's a hobby, a hobby that I have been doing for, I dunno, 5 years now? Since we are not a cooperation, we are not in the business of "hiring & firing" people, ie. hiring new people when they are active, and kick them again as soon as their "perfomance" drops. I am an admin, but I don't want to be the "boss" of a bunch of ever-rotating mods that get "laid off" if their performance has dropped for a month or two. If that's what people expect me to do, then frankly, I don't want this position anymore. I want to work in a team with people I like and trust and have a good time. That is somewhat inefficient, but there is more at issue here than "efficency" and "perfomance".
And for better or worse, in the end we have always removed inactive mods, usually quietly, and usually after giving them a good benefit of doubt.
 
 
Now, let's put some things into perspective. There seems to be a general consensus that activity on the forum is in an overall decline. Some even say that the forum is "dead" or "dying".
Objectively, this isn't true. For reference, here are some statistics for monthly new posts and new topics of the last 1.5 years.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, there have always been fluctuations, but there is no general trend towards less activity. I know statistics aren't everything, besides quantity there is also quality, but it's an interesting fact anyway.

 

In these 18 months a lot of stuff has happened. Naturally, in some periods the staff was more active than in other periods. Contests were held, staff members have been added or replaced, the staff invested some good amount of money into a whole new forum software to freshen things up, the forum structure was reorganized and so forth. There doesn't seem to be any direct correlation between staff activity and overall forum activity, neither positive or negative. That's not to say that staff activity is completely irrelevant or that staff members shouldn't be active. But you cannot expect any miracles here from any new staff we may add, or increased activity of existing staff.

 

There are some other issues I want to adress at some later point.