This.
I want mods to be paid because they deserve it.
But I also want mods to do better because too many mistakes have been made.
The two aren't exclusive.
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ResetEra Ownership Update
- Thread starter Cerium
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This.
I want mods to be paid because they deserve it.
But I also want mods to do better because too many mistakes have been made.
The two aren't exclusive.
Some people have some points about mods encountering vitriol if they were given a payout. It's unfortunate but true. It's also true that if a mod wants to keep things voluntary, yeah sure that's their choice and I could see how they could get there.
I think the bigger problem is, as times have advanced, mods have become more naturally prevalent and important in today's age, and their value needs to be reassessed. This old "mods just do it cause they do it" mantra is tired and open to massive exploitations and personal issues. This is not just in Era. Reddit, GameFAQs, ect. We should be long past the point of million, multi-million, or even billion dollar sites being effectively run by uncompensated workers, in the end almost taking advantage of their love for a community to a certain extent. It doesn't have to be strictly money, but there needs to be some sort of movement that leads mods into some form of fairly standard compensation.
I think the bigger problem is, as times have advanced, mods have become more naturally prevalent and important in today's age, and their value needs to be reassessed. This old "mods just do it cause they do it" mantra is tired and open to massive exploitations and personal issues. This is not just in Era. Reddit, GameFAQs, ect. We should be long past the point of million, multi-million, or even billion dollar sites being effectively run by uncompensated workers, in the end almost taking advantage of their love for a community to a certain extent. It doesn't have to be strictly money, but there needs to be some sort of movement that leads mods into some form of fairly standard compensation.
Talk about a false equivalence. Way to make a weak joke out of actual slavery and genocide.
Congrats on getting quote tweeted over and over though, I guess.
Media Create Sales: Week 36, 2021 (Sep 06 - Sep 12) [Read STAFF POST] Sales
I don't mean to call you or anyone on the mod team stupid. But if you have a question, why not reach out to us for information on why someone might have been reported and treated with ire? I understand moderating is hard, I am not trying to say "well its easy, we can all see it clear as day"...
www.resetera.com
Also, the post from Nephente closing the thread the first time is amazing:
Post in thread 'Media Create Sales: Week 36, 2021 (Sep 06 - Sep 12) [Read STAFF POST]' https://www.resetera.com/threads/me...6-sep-12-read-staff-post.487222/post-73874461
When things started to bleed out of the sales thread they silenced people, threads were closed and the original thread became a graveyard.
Oh right lol. I remember him and that thread.
Thing is. No one wants to do the work.
Discords are generally free for example. But Discords are fundamentally different than forums.
Holy shitMedia Create Sales: Week 36, 2021 (Sep 06 - Sep 12) [Read STAFF POST] Sales
I don't mean to call you or anyone on the mod team stupid. But if you have a question, why not reach out to us for information on why someone might have been reported and treated with ire? I understand moderating is hard, I am not trying to say "well its easy, we can all see it clear as day"...
Respect to the mods who have a thankless job and bust their asses for this site without pay and under constant abuse. There's still so many great posters and discussions here for me to bounce immediately, and I want to do my part to keep the community a great place to visit.
But there's no reason to trust the new corporate overlords, no matter what they've promised vis a vis maintaining the integrity of this place.
But there's no reason to trust the new corporate overlords, no matter what they've promised vis a vis maintaining the integrity of this place.
Well...erm...hmmm. Okay. Capitalism. Gotta love it.
Is the new owner going to just change things gradually then? Is the look of the forum going to change then? Since M.O.B.A are the owners of Union for Gamers, are they going to start changing the forum around that community then? I know in the OP some of this is addressed but I don't believe the answers. Sorry. Too cynical.
Is the new owner going to just change things gradually then? Is the look of the forum going to change then? Since M.O.B.A are the owners of Union for Gamers, are they going to start changing the forum around that community then? I know in the OP some of this is addressed but I don't believe the answers. Sorry. Too cynical.
That sucked, but it gave us Install Base. An infinitely better forum for sales discussion.Media Create Sales: Week 36, 2021 (Sep 06 - Sep 12) [Read STAFF POST] Sales
I don't mean to call you or anyone on the mod team stupid. But if you have a question, why not reach out to us for information on why someone might have been reported and treated with ire? I understand moderating is hard, I am not trying to say "well its easy, we can all see it clear as day"...
I remember when we all moved over from GAF there was a real sense of it being a community rebuilding a forum to get away from a shitty owner.
But really it just put money into another person's pocket.
After reading the thread here, I know that a lot of the mods are happy with not being paid.
But with 700k a year coming in as income with a 80% profit margin. That makes me uncomfortable that they're not.
It's them that make the community not the owner.
To me they were a rent seeking landlord that I wasn't aware of.
I feel the same way about Reddit not paying moderators.
To my personal values, it's exploitative.
But I don't know where else I'd go.
Communities are splitting off to be topic specific like a Nintendo forum, Xbox Forum, PC forum and a game sales forum feels like it misses the advantage of ERA.
That it's a mixed group of people that all like video games coming together to chat.
But really it just put money into another person's pocket.
After reading the thread here, I know that a lot of the mods are happy with not being paid.
But with 700k a year coming in as income with a 80% profit margin. That makes me uncomfortable that they're not.
It's them that make the community not the owner.
To me they were a rent seeking landlord that I wasn't aware of.
I feel the same way about Reddit not paying moderators.
To my personal values, it's exploitative.
But I don't know where else I'd go.
Communities are splitting off to be topic specific like a Nintendo forum, Xbox Forum, PC forum and a game sales forum feels like it misses the advantage of ERA.
That it's a mixed group of people that all like video games coming together to chat.
I mean if it were me I'd send some money to mods as thanks for their efforts throughout the years. Could easily attribute $500,000 minimum to their efforts.
Check their join date and post count; they know what they're doing here.
The slavery comparison is dumb and offensive, but it's also a bit grim that the owner of this site has just collected millions of dollars while moderators 'work' for free and admins have been left to make their own arrangements. For a community that leans as left at this one does, that sticks in my craw.
I was being facetious you cretin. Guys... your forum is dead...
Chris the sales guy got banned for a day by CVXfreak, CVXfreak talked shit on discord, that got leaked on ERA, people lost their shit for days, then the sales regulars and Nintendo fans made their own forums because they felt like they were being persecuted here
Yeah, I'm not reading all 42 pages, stopped at 15.
Grats to Cerium on the payout.
Hopefully the shift cuts through some of ossification in the culture.
Also random thoughts from my skimming of the first 15 pages:
1) I see that the mods here, despite my run-ins with them, are visibly mistreated by the userbase and heckled and jeered for their missteps against the userbase. The relationship between mods-users being basically antagonistic has been an issue going back to GAF, hopefully this changes.
1a) The sudden "think of the mods!" outpouring reeks of crocodile tears. You're unhappy and you want to vent, fine, but have the guts to not hide behind a "moral" cause you don't actually support at all times; this is one of the most persistent issues with this community, the leveraging of morality when it is rhetorically convenient, then the abandoning of them when it is inconvenient.
1b) Era moderation is on a volunteer basis. This is not like some non-profits where the humanitarian mission extracts uncompensated labor from volunteers with moral pressure. Each moderator can, and often did, step down at any time if it got too hot for them, and even reintegrate into the community as an unprivileged user. That they didn't choose to presumably implies they thought it was worth it.
2) The financial value of the site has been an open secret since the GAF days. If you followed Evilore's escapades, or talked to some of the old guard, you'd know multi-million dollar offers (for GAF) have been turned down for years, much to the staffs' chagrin who constantly told Evil to "get that bag". I imagine a similar dynamic played out here. The perception of 'aw shucks we're just a fan run community who do things at cost' is a fantasy users told themselves to sleep better at night. It has never been true (except maybe circa 2004); it just doesn't make sense financially.
3) The worries about 'data selling' are overblown for one simple reason: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It's been 2 years since the EU disrupted every site in the world with its GDPR requirements and Sweden is a GDPR nation. Arguably your data is safer now under Swedish ownership than under GoDaddy.
TL;DR:
Grats to Cerium on the payout.
Hopefully the shift cuts through some of ossification in the culture.
Also random thoughts from my skimming of the first 15 pages:
1) I see that the mods here, despite my run-ins with them, are visibly mistreated by the userbase and heckled and jeered for their missteps against the userbase. The relationship between mods-users being basically antagonistic has been an issue going back to GAF, hopefully this changes.
1a) The sudden "think of the mods!" outpouring reeks of crocodile tears. You're unhappy and you want to vent, fine, but have the guts to not hide behind a "moral" cause you don't actually support at all times; this is one of the most persistent issues with this community, the leveraging of morality when it is rhetorically convenient, then the abandoning of them when it is inconvenient.
1b) Era moderation is on a volunteer basis. This is not like some non-profits where the humanitarian mission extracts uncompensated labor from volunteers with moral pressure. Each moderator can, and often did, step down at any time if it got too hot for them, and even reintegrate into the community as an unprivileged user. That they didn't choose to presumably implies they thought it was worth it.
2) The financial value of the site has been an open secret since the GAF days. If you followed Evilore's escapades, or talked to some of the old guard, you'd know multi-million dollar offers (for GAF) have been turned down for years, much to the staffs' chagrin who constantly told Evil to "get that bag". I imagine a similar dynamic played out here. The perception of 'aw shucks we're just a fan run community who do things at cost' is a fantasy users told themselves to sleep better at night. It has never been true (except maybe circa 2004); it just doesn't make sense financially.
3) The worries about 'data selling' are overblown for one simple reason: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It's been 2 years since the EU disrupted every site in the world with its GDPR requirements and Sweden is a GDPR nation. Arguably your data is safer now under Swedish ownership than under GoDaddy.
TL;DR:
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give DIRETIDE
Just as a tip: making jokes about slavery and genocide isn't going to win you a lot of laughs.
It feels like it's the same folks making ridiculous hyperbolic statements and comparisons and then turning around and wondering why the community is so toxic and dramatic.
Is it that hard to keep things in perspective? I should start a forum where people have to affirm before every post they write that they understand we're on a niche, dying type of website on an obscure corner of the internet.
There is an opportunity here for someone to promise a new safe place and exploit everyone and sell the website for 4.5 million
Who is gonna step up and start the cycle again
collect data
sell data
I don't blame Cerium for getting a payout. He bankrolled the site and co-owned it until he bought the other co-owners out. He took a financial risk and reaped a financial reward. That's how these things work. He wasn't a dictator or some such figure. I have my thoughts on mod payments, but it's not really my place to say? Like many have posted here, they weren't in it for the money.
Overall very skeptical of the change in ownership in general. I'm familiar with the MOBA network from their league sites, but not super in tune to how they run things. As with all buyouts, things will change, to say anything else is corporate fluff. But the degree and direction of change are unknown and I don't see a reason to pass judgment before I see it. It's like not I bought 3yrs of ERA Clear or anything.
Overall very skeptical of the change in ownership in general. I'm familiar with the MOBA network from their league sites, but not super in tune to how they run things. As with all buyouts, things will change, to say anything else is corporate fluff. But the degree and direction of change are unknown and I don't see a reason to pass judgment before I see it. It's like not I bought 3yrs of ERA Clear or anything.
I mean he introduced the forum to everyone in 2017 with "Everything we do begins and ends with the community" and then sold it to the highest bidding corporation 4 years later. The mods all continue to speak highly of him despite what's happening so I have to presume he's not some kind of villainous manipulator seeking to make bank off the effort and good intentions of others, despite what it looks like.
But it'd be nice to hear the explanation of why with the communities interests in mind he gradually took more and more ownership for himself before seeking a corporate sale.
Most communities have their own discords, if you want access to any particular ones and are stuck feel free to DM me I might have some of them saved myself!
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
I can't be the only one amused by the irony of people being so disgusted with the idea of Cerium profiting off of the ResetEra community, suggesting we move to Discord, a for-profit company doing essentially the same thing as Cerium at 1000x the scale.
Reddit is a bit more complicated because anyone can make a subreddit and make themselves a mod. And even if that subreddit gets big that still wasn't like.. a 'hiring' of a mod at any point, it was just this person using reddit to create a community and then that subreddit getting popular.
If reddit started paying mods it would probably have a pretty adverse effect on community creation and the current freedom subreddit communities have to ban whoever they want for whatever rules that subreddit chooses to have.
I get it, but this is definitely disappointing and seems like it goes against the spirit the place was built on.
To be honest, it's the moderation that's created the environment that I come for, and though I understand it's been imperfect, it's the best and most progressive place for this medium right now. As long as the mods and their policies stay the same - and keep trying to work towards building inclusivity - and there isn't a mass exodus of the people who contribute - I'll stick around, but I'm not super enthusiastic about some random company suddenly holding the reigns. Cerium's statements about them being in the background seem completely at odds with the comany's stated goals in those news pieces, and given he has 1 post in this thread I don't imagine we're going to get any more clarity than that.
To be honest, it's the moderation that's created the environment that I come for, and though I understand it's been imperfect, it's the best and most progressive place for this medium right now. As long as the mods and their policies stay the same - and keep trying to work towards building inclusivity - and there isn't a mass exodus of the people who contribute - I'll stick around, but I'm not super enthusiastic about some random company suddenly holding the reigns. Cerium's statements about them being in the background seem completely at odds with the comany's stated goals in those news pieces, and given he has 1 post in this thread I don't imagine we're going to get any more clarity than that.
It's gonna be actual comedy if you catch a ban for that attempt at humour.
Never mind. You're clearly trying to kill your account. Not worth the childishness.
Funny you say that considering both GAF and Era have been in continuous decline for years in terms of traffic.
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