/qa/ - Questions and Answers

>>4141
Can you be more specific as to what you believe is not being enforced?

>>4141
Ten bucks says you're going to suggest doxing anyone you personally find racist, sexist, or homophobic, shill.

>>4142

- General impression of a lack of care sitewide
- the enforcement of site rules happens at large subjectively, not by the book
- a too lenient attitude towards obvious rule violation
- detractor content posted by aliens to instigate turmoil or fake news is often either ignored or left unpunished
- the amount of fake bans, at times, outnumber the amount of actual bans. Furthermore it stays visisble for prolonged times reinforcing an impression of incompetence
- Moderators often show a nonconfrontational attitude instead of a protectionist one
- Moderators goad offenders into a fake sense of security, causing them to cause more damage
- Larger conflicts on MLPOL's ideological and cultural identity are often ignored or judged in a manner that does not preserve established formats
- The overall conduct of diplomacy with external entities or ambassadors leaves much to be desired or is handled in a submissive manner rather than authoritarian one

The overall organisation structure and active leadership of site staff and its behavior towards both critics and the rest of the site suggest that there is collusion at work that leads to the site staff appearing isolatinistic, more often than not serving itself rather than the public interest of the community.

Thats just about the worst offenses I can think of on top of my head. Hopefully it will result in more than being handwaved away. I would suggest implementing a public mod logbook with additional detail.

We need moar porn.
I slacked off when my laptop was broken..

>>4144
>General impression of a lack of care sitewide
Generality and subjective opinion
>the enforcement of site rules happens at large subjectively, not by the book
Generality. Any specific examples?
>a too lenient attitude towards obvious rule violation
Generality. Any specific examples?
>detractor content posted by aliens to instigate turmoil or fake news is often either ignored or left unpunished
Examples?
>the amount of fake bans, at times, outnumber the amount of actual bans. Furthermore it stays visisble for prolonged times reinforcing an impression of incompetence
Possible concern of unprofessionalism. Not incompetence.
>Moderators often show a nonconfrontational attitude instead of a protectionist one
Example? Also, is this a bad thing exactly?
>Moderators goad offenders into a fake sense of security, causing them to cause more damage
Subjective assertion.
>Larger conflicts on MLPOL's ideological and cultural identity are often ignored or judged in a manner that does not preserve established formats
Example, and is this a mod's responsibility?
>The overall conduct of diplomacy with external entities or ambassadors leaves much to be desired or is handled in a submissive manner rather than authoritarian one
The fuck are you talking about faggot. When the hell has this ever been a thing? That sounds like some retarded LARP.
>The overall organisation structure and active leadership of site staff and its behavior towards both critics and the rest of the site suggest that there is collusion at work that leads to the site staff appearing isolatinistic, more often than not serving itself rather than the public interest of the community.
Most of this is a subjective opinion with no real examples. I am not a mod, but I do have interest in this website. If you want the mods to change stuff, give examples of what is actually wrong. The mods are doing a decent job for now.

>>4146

I will reply to your Post at a later time, Anon. For now I want to wait IF and what kind of response I will get for this post from the Officials. Thank You for your patience.

>>4147
I am a moderator but mobile posting so no trips. Can you please answer the questions above. since they sum up all of the questions I had for you about your complaints.

>>4147
Can you please provide some examples as to where you think site staff is excessively lenient? I imagine you are thinking mostly of the Italian poster in the Aryanne thread and THE RADDNESS?

>>4148
>>4149

Very well. I will try to make a short summary to give a better perspectival framework within the next hours. Although I will admit that I find this unusual and that I did not plan ahead for this.

>>4150
Ok,(mod at work without trips again) Take your time I am trapped at work for the next 8 hours and it is slow as hell and I have all night. Your feedback will be reviewed and taken seriously.

>>4149
I think the board is excessively lenient with thread placement. Threads which belong on /ub/, /vx/, and /sp/ are in the main board.

>>4152
Trapped at work mod here and yeah I can see exactly what you are talking about! I will admit I have personally been very lenient with moving threads to the other boards and will start moving stuff more thank you for the feedback and!

>>4152
>>4153
Which threads? The only recent one that could be moved is the Sukb thread.

>>4152
I am a different mod also trapped at work. We used to move shitposty or off topic threads to /sp/ but people were complaining that /sp/ is not /trash/, which I tend to agree with. Also we created /ub/ to be its own board because people said they wanted it but now that it exists nobody uses it, seems like if we moved threads there they would just die.

>>4155
You should, even if /sp/ is not /trash/, it works like it and also "everything is football". I suggest actually making a /trash/ board if not, otherwise /sp/ is pretty useless.
>>4154
/ub/-
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/138264.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/128666.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/138485.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/138275.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/137812.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/136160.html

/sp/-
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/132405.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/135891.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/138713.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/134902.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/134424.html
https://mlpol.net/mlpol/res/128051.html

Also, I think I might have seen a few video game threads on the main board, but maybe they were moved. Basically I think /adv/ threads, life advice threads, survivalist threads, book threads*, and nature should belong on /ub/. Whereas unrelated stuff like music threads or shitposts should be on /sp/.

>>4146
>>4142
>>4148
>>4149
>>4151
>>4153
>>4155

My apologies for the prolonged waiting time. Consider this my comprehensive response. Thank You for the Patience.

http://archive.is/IfBh4

>>4157
You should never feel bad for stating your mind. Getting feedback is the only way we can improve and become better. Without it we are only fumbling in the dark hoping we do the right things.
You raise many points that are prudent and needs to be looked at. We want to do the best we can for the community and the site.
Me myself I tend not to look at any posting history (unless it is dubious content and I need to figure out context and if it is legit or not), so at time of writing I don't know who you are. I just hope you don't feel that we don't appreciate you (whoever you might be).
In order to give you a comprehensive response and address all your points it might take a little time because we should try to get input from all mods on what they think.
When it comes to number of mods, the number of us that are online at any given time fluctuates, once in a blue moon all the planets align and all staff is online. but more often we are far fewer and at times we are down to one mod online. The way we moderate is that we don't try to kill anything without consulting another mod or staff, except if it is obvious spam or cp. This might result in less than expedient moding some times.
We will look at all you have written and get back to you as soon as possible. If you ever need to get in contact with staff just make a post on /qa/ - we check this board every day.

>>4157
I share some of your concerns as someone who has thrown artistically large amounts of time into this community I've seen this trend as well. But I disagree that the mods should enforce their politics just out of principle. I think its more of a problem with the user base becoming too reliant on the mods to solve the problems at hand rather then to just fix things themselves.

That was the goal of /mlpol/ originally, the idea that we were all mods to a degree. The mods of 4/pol/ and /mlp/ hand abandoned us and it was up to us to create an environment where eyeveryone would and could keep newfags and shills from ruining what we loved. I know it'll sound confrontational, however I do not mean it in anyway besides in upmost honesty.

You are part of the problem.

We all have been getting too lax on what content we tolerate, due to how slow this board has become. Those threads you said the mods should have killed, weren't killed likely because the mods saw they were creating discussion. We as users should have not replied to many of them, and if we did our response should have been rule 10. Its not a failure on part of the mods, but on the user base becoming reliant on the mods to do our work for us and an unwillingness to fight for what we all want to keep.

>>4157
Dude, calm down this is just an imageboard.
Everyone is taking the internet too seriously these years, if you really are worried about the site dying, instead of blaming the moderation, crying or jumping out of the boat, just think for a time on why is the site dying.
It is the userbase that makes the site grow, if we die, we failed as users and maybe the site wasn't such a good idea after all, or maybe we just didn't put enough effort into having new faces share our values.
The size of our community is that of a begginer forum, the fact that it doesn't grow its just because most people don't associate ponies with nazis, we are against 90% of both cultures when we associate these two, making our site growth really slow.

Due to my mental structure, I'm basically building a real time reaction post. I am a staff member, I am not a mod or janitor. This is a personal reply, an I am not a known staff member by name. On top of that, this post has received no approval from the staff hive mind. I might even get some disciplinary action, we'll see.

>It should be a surprise to no one that I am not on good terms with the administration. I never was, anywhere. Not on 4chan, not on 8chan, not here. And to be honest, I am proud of that.

That's a good outlook, but why would a mod team attempt to please such an individual?

*Watches video*

I assume you think this site is going to become left wing because it's not expressly stated as right wing. The staff is expressly right wing, or libertarian (harshly opposed to liberals) as far as I know.

Any project that hosts a community attempts to please said community. This is a fatal flaw where common sense misleads. The flawed belief is pleasing the fans will make a great site. This is cuck bullshit. As a staff member I've attacked community-suggested suggestions the hardest before we made any decisions on the direction to take forward.

For example I was vehemently against /ub/. I felt that board was an extension of the whims of the user base, and knew it would have no traffic nor point. I knew pleasing the people who wanted this new board would lead to a decline of quality on the site.

Any time the people in charge listen to every whim of every user the site will invariable move towards becoming a shithole. This is an extension to your Sullivan's law because often times community input is some permutation of "This site makes me sad because x" and these claims always attempt to censor or create special cases for their specific ideology. IE pulling fucking SJW crap.

Personally I have a huge issue with authoritarian control to guide people's thoughts to an ideology. (right or left-wing). I'm even going to recall a quote of yours:
>I am not on good terms with the administration. I never was, anywhere. .... And to be honest, I am proud of that.

It sounds like you'd have problems with ideological control on what you could post. But it's fine with you as long as it's your specific ideology right?

=

Should the right wing staff ban and delete Left wing threads because it ruffles our jimmies? Personally, my opinion is no, not unless it's breaking site rules. This isn't fucking discord with authoritarian control

>One of my biggest problems with MLPOL is the lack of transparacy of the Mod Staff
Hi we are staff on a nazi pony cartoon website, would you like to call our employers? There are 13 staff members including Atlas, 10 deal with board maintenance. As for online times, there is always someone up and capable of maintaining the board. Saying no more.

>I like to think a political officer that ensures that the site users operate within the ideological borders the community has set up themselves.
is a perfect mod as long as it's in accordance with your ideology perfectly.

>I value a board under authoritarian rule that goes out of its way to employ political censorship, intimidation or assassination of character against it's(its) adversaries if the circumstances make this necessary.
This would make it a shithole for anyone except the staff, this would not make the board a paradise for you. This is what reddit and 4ch pol staff do and why everyone fucking hates them.

Also sounds like you like doxxing, good thing I didn't give any staff transparency earlier.

=

All said, I've come back with a suggestion, you'd much more enjoy the MLPOL discords.

>>4161
>>4161
I am rewording my suggestion. MLPOL's discord is actually very authoritarian and maintained and regulated. Everyone is hand vetted and checked before they can enter. All 260+ members I have personally processed and vetted to ensure they are not raiders, spies, or attackers.
I never capcode, so if this fails I'm an-heroing

I don't believe /mlpol/ is right wing neither left wing. Just a pony political board. Now the entire base may be explicitly right wing or at least socially traditionalist, but that does not capture the full picture. On this site, I have seen centrists, transhumanists, and others. Why, in the beginning there was a decent left wing on the site that gave us the pleasure of seeing the likes of a libertarian socialist for example. There's been shit like arguments about gynocentrism and one thoughtful discussion on whether if traps are gay. The fluidity of ideologies is what makes a site like this interesting. To see that solidify would be a firm shame. Which is why I actually disdain the amount of libertarians and fundamentalist Christians, especially when the latter would say something like 'mlpol is a Catholic board" when actually it seems /mlpol/ is a everything board. Honestly, seeing the standard liberal bashing is boring to me. It is always "the left does this", and the collective unanimously agrees that is bad routinely.

So, no. I reject pigeonholing people, even as a social complex. Let the lefties be lefties even. I know that if we start pigeonholing, I might be pigeonholed eventually.

>>4157
It's late at night, but the hell with it, I'll try to formulate a short response to this.

>Which made me question if this site regards itself as anything but a big shitposting circlejerk. If i really wanted to have just that, there is plenty of other sites who offer the same opportunity in better quality. I thought we were having Nazi ponies.
I'm sorry, what? Were you even around for the initial merger?
Well, allow me to jog your memory: https://archive.4plebs.org/mlpol/
The original /mlpol/ was almost nothing but shitposting. It had way, way more degenerate threads than we do now. And yet, throughout all of that, the initial community still thrived, despite all the odds, and survived despite it's eventual deletion.
Sure, it's different now than it was then, but that fun-loving, shitpost-appreciating core portion of it's DNA hasn't gone anywhere. If you think it's some recent phenomenon that's somehow killing the site, you clearly haven't been paying attention.

>MLPOL.NET as a site never had the traffic its predecessor had.
And? I'd prefer a small but high quality userbase, over a large and poor quality one, any day of the week.
The tone here has always been relaxed, going at a slow cruise, and - at least for me, personally - I quite like it like that.
Pushing for more aggressive growth is precisely what caused the shitshow that is nu-4/pol/ to begin with. Slow and steady wins the race.

>One of my biggest problems with MLPOL is the lack of transparacy of the Mod Staff.
Something we can agree on, although I'm not sure what constitutes 'transparency' to you.

>As a moderator (You) are here to WORK, not to have fun. That is secondary to the quality of the service you have chosen to provide on your own volition. Good Lord, what is happening in there?
What's happening here, is them liking what they do.
The mods at 4chan, and the ones on multiple 8chan boards? They hate what they do. And their hatred bleeds into their work, and is taken out on their userbases.
Look, I'll admit that I've sucked up to the staff a few times, thanks in no small part to them being far and away the better of the three sites, but chastising them for liking what they do, and actively participating with the people they work for, is one of the most asinine and counter-productive things I've read in a while.

>My ideal incarnation of MLPOL was always something in the likes of 8pol
The very last thing /mlpol/ should resemble is anything borrowing from 8chan's culture.
I don't know if it's because of a culture of vengefulness against 4chan, or just the cut of their userbase's jib, but I have noticed that, with very few exceptions, 8channers always take themselves far too goddamn seriously. Don't think I haven't noticed that tenor, suffused throughout your entire post, and that of the rest of your posts across this site.
I've been on the Internet for a long time, long enough to know that the instant you take yourself seriously, the instant you get it into your head that you can somehow change shit, outside of pure, pseudorandom memetic chance, is the instant you enter a kind of online and spiritual death spiral. Every single time, without exception.
For someone who follows good old Jimbo, I'm surprised you haven't already figured that out.

But most of all, the main fulcrum upon which your post hinges, seems to be that of a strong desire for control:
>With that said, what actually makes a "good" MLPOL Moderator? I like to think a political officer that ensures that the site users operate within the ideological borders the community has set up themselves.
>I value a board under authoritarian rule that goes out of its way to employ political censorship, intimidation or assassination of character against it's adversaries if the circumstances make this necessary.
And really, I only have this to say in response:
"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." --Matthew 7:12
"Those who play with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword." --Buckminster Fuller

>>4163
>I don't believe /mlpol/ is right wing neither left wing
We are right wing. That is why we let the left speak. Either to try and win them over or because we believe in freedom of speech. Some of us were once left till we went to /pol/ to argue otherwise.
>>4170
>The original /mlpol/ was almost nothing but shitposting
I stand by that /mlpol/ was like [s4s] but with a /pol/ and /mlp/ theme and the /pol/ and /mlp/ threads that both boards wanted in between. I don't think I'd call that shitposting but guess that is dependent on definitions which is a bit subjective.

I don't really care for the politics of board management, but I'm going to have to disagree with you, OP.
The only doom posting that should be going on imo is the show being shit and getting replaced.
In my opinion, we need a new show, or to branch out to just cartoons/anime in general.
Honestly I don't care if the site is left, right or central. As long as users actually listen to what people have to say without plugging their ears and screaming. Freedom of speech is important.
Both sides of the coin are required otherwise you become a circlejerk, which you're apparently opposed to.
I think the moderation team is doing a fine job.
We've allowed filly threads in, which are imo pretty fucking degenerate, but they're human too (even if they wish they were the filly) and they deserve to have their voice heard.
I don't think we're right, left or central. We're just a safehaven where horsefuckers and polacks can speak their mind without being shot down by the mods.

This was originally going to be a much longer reply addressing more concerns, but I have cut it down

>>4157
>One of my biggest problems with MLPOL is the lack of transparency of the Mod Staff
Well, I will say that I agree with this. The staff is not as transparent as I would like it to be.

>The site has become largely stagnant
I believe that the news of mlpol.net's death has been greatly exaggerated. Many forget that from the middle of May until the middle of August mlpol.net managed consistently 300 posts per day, not often going above or below that. Since the month of January, mlpol.net has consistently managed several days per week in which it receives 400 or more posts, and is above 350 on most days. This is besides activity on boards that did not even exist over the summer which may increase activity by hundreds more posts. If you had said this in November, when the site was sometimes receiving only 180 posts a day on the main board, then I could agree. But mlpol.net's activity is higher than at most points in its history. In fact, the day of the most posts in the history of the website came in January of this year on the day of the 4chan cup, with 1500 or more posts.

No, this website is not as well known or advertised as I would like. I would like Youtube advertisements, derpibooru advertisements, 8chan advertisements, and so forth. But activity is not terminal.