A Hello from Sufficient Velocity Forums!

[Cetashwayo]

Hello ResetERA!

My name is Cetashwayo, and I'm an administrator over at Sufficientvelocity. Some of you might be familiar with us either through some of the addons which are currently servicing ResetERA and were developed originally for SV (how do you guys like xenforo features, eh?), or through the people who managed to wander up at our gaming forum and used it as a temporary place to call home while there was that bit of chaos over at such and such a place. Cyndane, another current member of ResetERA and I were both keeping a close watch over the incubation of ResetERA mostly out of happy curiosity, because it parallels a lot of how SV got its start.

Three years ago, the Administrators at Spacebattles.com removed a popular super-moderator (basically a moderator who watches moderators) for questionable instances of abuse. In the ensuing outcry at what was the removal of one of the hardest-working members of the staff, Sufficientvelocity was born. Created out of a promise of accountability and moderator fairness and professionalism, it has grown to be a pretty damned large forum, and one I'm proud to be a working part of. We are now one of the biggest places for questing on the web (a form of interactive fiction), and have a burgeoning creative and discussion section.

And so with that history and lesson in mind I'm pretty impressed with the way that things have gone. ResetERA in a short few hours has managed to get thousands of members and an outpouring of excitement in a new community. It's always something that you want to see, and although the euphoria of these early, heady days might wear off, with all hope the structures that are being built now are something that will help carry ResetERA for years to come.

Now if people want to ask me questions, or just say hi back, feel free to do so. In our three years as an independent forum that calved off Spacebattles we've had a lot of time to experiment with models of moderator professionalism and how to run a large internet community. Honestly, big, successful new forums are few and far between these days, and so from one relatively new forum to another it's just nice to chat and share experiences and excitement.

All the best to ya, and I'll probably check this place out periodically and post, even if I'm somewhat absorbed by my time at Sufficientvelocity these days :)

 

[mentallyinept]

Thanks for your contributions to the site!

 

[Juan29.Zapata]

Thanks for all your hard work on the site!

Maybe my only question is what were your growing pains in your experience?

 

[Cetashwayo]

Thanks for your contributions to the site!

Click to shrink...

Thank you! Honestly I'm mostly enjoying people freaking out and salivating over the alerts and notifications. Reminds me of when I brought people over from Alternatehistory.com over to Sufficientvelocity, had a lot of people transferring from the tardy old vbulletin to the new Xenforo in a state of shock.

The power of new forums, my friends!

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Pretty speechless at the quantum leap in features here.

As a question, I'm an advocate for the "likes/agree" system being given a chance, as to pair down the amount of spammy responses that quote a particularly poignant or remarkable post as to agree with them, and I 'd really love to see it given a chance at some point. Do you feel such a feature helps or hurts discussion on forums like these?

 

[mentallyinept]

Thank you! Honestly I'm mostly enjoying people freaking out and salivating over the alerts and notifications. Reminds me of when I brought people over from Alternatehistory.com over to Sufficientvelocity, had a lot of people transferring from the tardy old vbulletin to the new Xenforo in a state of shock.

The power of new forums, my friends!

Click to shrink...

Yeah, the sheer convenience of the site is making me forget about the lack of dark theme for the moment. :-)

 

[liquidmetal14]

Awesome post buddy. I think you nailed a lot of the tones of which of this forum has started off on that note.

I know that the newness or honeymoon will wear but that's just a byproduct of the habit being created and realizing that this place is everybody is real and fresh.

I'm looking forward to another 10 plus years and seeing this place thrive. It's only going to be as good as we wanted to be. I'm definitely happy to be here and see a lot of my old friends and new ones alike.

 

[Sober]

Really cool! Glad to know we're not alone in this venture. Plan to check our your site too as it sounds pretty interesting too!.

 

[Deleted member 2761]

A hearty hello to you! I want to thank you, Cyndane, and everybody at SV for all the kindness and help you've offered us. Before this whole fiasco occurred I had already been occasionally lurking your forums to read fanfiction, but now I'm inclined to visit more often.

 

[Exposure]

Pretty speechless at the quantum leap in features here.

As a question, I'm an advocate for the "likes/agree" system being given a chance, as to pair down the amount of spammy responses that quote a particularly poignant or remarkable post as to agree with them, and I 'd really love to see it given a chance at some point. Do you feel such a feature helps or hurts discussion on forums like these?

Click to shrink...

As a moderator from Sufficient Velocity (and someone who liked lurking ResetERA's predecessor): the like function is indeed pretty fantastic for cutting down on +1 posts: we have some threads that have gone on for thousands of pages (particularly in the Quests section), and they would probably have hit the tens of thousands mark by now if everybody had to show approval of a good post via a post instead of just liking the post itself.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Thanks for all your hard work on the site!

Maybe my only question is what were your growing pains in your experience?

Click to shrink...

When Sufficientvelocity started up a lot was still up in the air. We wanted accountability and professionalism but we weren't sure what that meant. A lot of people had a lot of ideas, and unlike ResetERA the site had to start before it was ready, so some features were unfinished. Over the next year (from 2014-2015), there was a great deal of debate about what we wanted and how. Two of our directors (the owners of the site, it's a tripartite structure that helps increase accountability between owners) were lawyers, and so we took to a legal track to try and think of ways to ensure that the site was kept welcoming and secure from toxicity. What we ended up crafting were a detailed set of rules, and delineating staff roles along with introducing community councillors.

The basic way the SV system goes is that there are multiple levels of staff. You have Moderators (who handle frontline reports and levy punishments), Arbitrators (who are a dedicated cohort of staff who ensure user appeals get formally heard) and Operators (who handle technical issues and develop new features). You also have Community Councillors (who are community representatives elected once a year to represent the Sufficient Velocity community and its issues) and Advocates (who can help users with their appeals if they need help).

There are two levels of appeal; users can appeal an infraction (basically the standard form of punishment/ban) to Arbitrators, and then if they're still not satisfied they can appeal it to the community councillors, who are again elected users. The Directors can act on their recommendation or not, but they generally do; councillors act as a "final court of appeal" as it were.

Some have called it complicated or lawyer roleplay but I have overruled those objections as the presiding judge of the court. Wait, I mean of course it's not lawyer roleplay.

We figured it was the best way to ensure accountability, and despite some setbacks and struggles it's worked pretty damned well so far. We have about fifty staff in total for a site of 18,000 users, and although there are flare-ups we usually keep things handled.

A lot of the struggle is going to be figuring out community norms and trying to work out how to run the staff and moderation. In the early days of Sufficient Velocity we made a commitment to move away from the more confrontational and hostile style of a lot of Spacebattles discussion, and I like to think we partially succeeded in that, but it's been a work of years as the culture slowly changes.

We're helped in this by Xon, who is frankly a technical wizard. ResetERA is only enjoying a small part of the ridiculous number of features he's developed for us and offered publicly as free or paid addons for other forums.

As a moderator from Sufficient Velocity (and someone who liked lurking ResetERA's predecessor): the like function is indeed pretty fantastic for cutting down on +1 posts: we have some threads that have gone on for thousands of pages (particularly in the Quests section), and they would probably have hit the tens of thousands mark by now if everybody had to show approval of a good post via a post instead of just liking the post itself.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, as Exposure said, nothing but good can come from post ratings. We have insightful, funny, informative, hugs, and a general like, along with the meow! rating for paid subscribers.

Just be careful about two things

1) Users can and will abuse some ratings, like "funny" in a debate. You'll want to be careful to clamp down on that or to let users sort it out among themselves.
2) You don't want negative ratings. We tried it and it sucked. Lots of negativity, lots of grandstanding, lots of drive-by-rating.

 

[Juan29.Zapata]

That honestly sounds amazing. Thanks for the write-up! I had no idea forums could have such systems in place. I wonder if we'll ever get to that to ensure fairness in moderation.

 

[Cetashwayo]

That honestly sounds amazing. Thanks for the write-up! I had no idea forums could have such systems in place. I wonder if we'll ever get to that to ensure fairness in moderation.

Click to shrink...

It took a while for everything to fall into place. The full list of rules in all its comprehensive glory is here:

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/the-rules-and-procedures-of-sufficient-velocity.40100/

Of course, there are earlier versions but we sat down this summer and really codified all our policies and rules, and even added fineprint to help be more transparent in what each rule meant.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

A hearty hello to you! I want to thank you, Cyndane, and everybody at SV for all the kindness and help you've offered us. Before this whole fiasco occurred I had already been occasionally lurking your forums to read fanfiction, but now I'm inclined to visit more often.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, as Exposure said, nothing but good can come from post ratings. We have insightful, funny, informative, hugs, and a general like, along with the meow! rating for paid subscribers.

Just be careful about two things

1) Users can and will abuse some ratings, like "funny" in a debate. You'll want to be careful to clamp down on that or to let users sort it out among themselves.
2) You don't want negative ratings. We tried it and it sucked. Lots of negativity, lots of grandstanding, lots of drive-by-rating.

Click to shrink...

Very good to hear, and agreed on the not including "dislikes". I think in ERA's case, the most elegant solution would be to only have a Like/Agree button. I hope the higher-ups running Era really consider trying it out since it's seemingly already built into the system (going by the account settings)

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Very good to hear, and agreed on the not including "dislikes". I think in ERA's case, the most elegant solution would be to only have a Like/Agree button. I hope the higher-ups running Era really consider trying it out since it's seemingly already built into the system (going by the account settings)

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, we originally had only likes; we diversified to avoid situations like someone "liking" a post where the poster's grandfather had died. It's really up to you guys though, such fine granularity in ratings is less important than having them at all.

 

[NihonTiger]

Sounds very cool; thanks for all you guys have done to help make this place come to life! And agreed on the negative ratings; keeping them out's probably a good idea, because as the site grows and adds people perhaps who weren't part of this initial move, you're going to get some conflicts or people who think drive-bys might be OK. But having the ability to diversify it beyond just "like" is a very good idea.

 

[Hecht]

Cetashwayo - Just wanna say thanks for your perspective. This team put a ton of work in, and I think it's great to have a different perspective!

 

[Cetashwayo]

Cetashwayo - Just wanna say thanks for your perspective. This team put a ton of work in, and I think it's great to have a different perspective!

Click to shrink...

Yeah, figured we'd share our own experience as you guys lay out a roadmap for what you do next.

 

[GraphicViolets]

How have you moderated likes? do you give infractions/bans to someone who likes a particularly egregious post?
I'm not a fan of the feature since it allows people to passive aggressively agree with someone allowing a bit of a pile on. That might prove frustrating for people who might still be a minority on the site such as women, minorities or lgbt people. Ofc the issue primarily exists in the grey zone where the initial comment isn't necessarily banable but still makes the atmosphere oppressive to those people. And of course I've only seen likes so far in very non moderated settings so maybe its easier to handle them than I thought



edit thanks for the work btw :)

 

[Cetashwayo]

How have you moderated likes? do you give infractions/bans to someone who likes a particularly egregious post?
I'm not a fan of the feature since it allows people to passive aggressively agree with someone allowing a bit of a pile on. That might prove frustrating for people who might still be a minority on the site such as women, minorities or lgbt people. Ofc the issue primarily exists in the grey zone where the nitial comment isn't necessarily bankable but still makes the atmosphere oppressive to those people. And of course I've only seen likes so far in very non moderated settings so maybe its easier to handle them than I thought

Click to shrink...

We punished people for liking a particularly egregious post once, but in general we haven't run into that issue much.

What we have run into is the passive-aggression you're talking about. In those cases, we've found that removing some ratings can help. Ideally, our plan is that in Xenforo 2 users can disable what ratings can be applied to their posts/remove ratings from their own posts, but until then the best thing is to clamp down on people abusing the feature. When it comes to just straight likes- I honestly can't find a situation where it could be clearly seen as abuse, because it's hard to determine intent. If you could determine that, the person would obviously be hit. It's easier with rating someone's post "funny" sarcastically, but thankfully due to our strict moderation standards this is not a gigantic issue outside of political threads (where we ended up removing funnies, probably until the Xenforo 2.0 rollout).

I find that after a period people just normalize and socialize to be decent to each other, but it takes an active and committed moderation, and usually a pretty big one. There's a lot of management involved, which is why our moderators have a group leader and assistant group leader who coordinates report-handling.

I find likes can be an enormously positive contribution- when posters have reached out to the forum about their problems, ratings have allowed users to express sympathy and support in a mass way (imagine how nice it is to see 60 "hugs" ratings in your alertbox from the community after making a post about a relative who has died!), and also because we're a creative community to indicate approval for works in a big way. It really does help buoy people's confidence in their own work and encourage them.

 

[GraphicViolets]

We punished people for liking a particularly egregious post once, but in general we haven't run into that issue much.

What we have run into is the passive-aggression you're talking about. In those cases, we've found that removing some ratings can help. Ideally, our plan is that in Xenforo 2 users can disable what ratings can be applied to their posts/remove ratings from their own posts, but until then the best thing is to clamp down on people abusing the feature. When it comes to just straight likes- I honestly can't find a situation where it could be clearly seen as abuse, because it's hard to determine intent. If you could determine that, the person would obviously be hit. It's easier with rating someone's post "funny" sarcastically, but thankfully due to our strict moderation standards this is not a gigantic issue outside of political threads (where we ended up removing funnies, probably until the Xenforo 2.0 rollout).

I find that after a period people just normalize and socialize to be decent to each other, but it takes an active and committed moderation, and usually a pretty big one. There's a lot of management involved, which is why our moderators have a group leader and assistant group leader who coordinates report-handling.

I find likes can be an enormously positive contribution- when posters have reached out to the forum about their problems, ratings have allowed users to express sympathy and support in a mass way (imagine how nice it is to see 60 "hugs" ratings in your alertbox from the community after making a post about a relative who has died!), and also because we're a creative community to indicate approval for works in a big way. It really does help buoy people's confidence in their own work and encourage them.

Click to shrink...

Thanks!
I briefly jumped over your forum to see how its handled on your politics board and it looks pretty good on a quick look. I'd still be concerned about more controversial topics (such as one I've posted in before was an article of whether transgender prisoners should receive gender confirmation surgery) and of course the people such as gamergaters who try to just keep barely on the line and do some shit disturbing ('Just asking questions" and such)
Definitely feeling less completely against it but I'm still skeptical how it would hold up

 

[Hypemaster]

sup bro

 

[Cetashwayo]

Thanks!
I briefly jumped over your forum to see how its handled on your politics board and it looks pretty good on a quick look. I'd still be concerned about more controversial topics (such as one I've posted in before was an article of whether transgender prisoners should receive gender confirmation surgery) and of course the people such as gamergaters who try to just keep barely on the line and do some shit disturbing ('Just asking questions" and such)
Definitely feeling less completely against it but I'm still skeptical how it would hold up

Click to shrink...

Well we ended up banning gamergate discussion on our forum because it was such a toxic subject and the discussions often bordered on libelous. I don't think we ever regretted that policy, and it kicked off a lot of the unfortunate traffic we might have attracted from pro-gamergate people.

I think if it's just a "like" it'd be fine. Obviously it becomes more complex with multiple ratings, though, and that's a decision that'd have to be made by the team. I know there's a lot more maliciousness hanging over the foundation of this board- we were blessed not to have a cohort of people hellbent on making sure we didn't succeed when we started.

 

[Bishop89]

Hi man.
The more good ppl on board the better

 

[Mr. X]

Love xenforo forums. Wish SRK didn't break it and abandon it for the awful system there now.

 

[Ballpoint Ren]

 

[Cetashwayo]

Love xenforo forums. Wish SRK didn't break it and abandon it for the awful system there now.

Click to shrink...

It's a very solid base to work from, even if we ended up...extensively modifying it with addons. Like 60 addons. All the addons.

 

[Cetashwayo]

Congratulations on officially passing 10,000 users. You actually passed it quite a while ago (check the member numbers of the newest members) but it's taking a while for the site to update. A truly meteoric rise.