A critcism of GBATemp

>If you were send here from the GBATemp blogpost

sent*

also inevitably

@dimmidice adjusted.

Gbatemp is awesome!

Cool thanks, I skimmed as i don't have the time (nor the motivation) atm to read it fully but you have some points. It often takes hours before bad stuff is deleted by moderators. And i feel like a large part of the user base is teenagers. Which is part of the problem IMO.

Edit: Oh and the worldnews section is just an awful awful idea.

Very well-put post personally I prefer a bigger amount of sections rather than having fewer to avoid the "Facebook effect".

I read your post, and you have some points, but the staff mod every single report, every single day. In fact, often at times, the report center is empty, leaving the mods nothing to do but browse the forums.

(yes if you are on there, you are a part of the problem I’m describing. Though luck.)

Click to expand...

Though - tough?

For what it's worth, all Mag Staff have the same powers on the forum to edit and move posts, but we have them to do things useful in our role (formatting a post for front page etc). While we have the power to moderate, it simply isn't our place.

On the note of moderation, I see where you're coming from. Our mod staff is small, and only a few really show an active public face. It's easy to say get more staff, but simply finding suitable candidates isn't easy. For a Contributor, it's fairly simple to assess. Do they have a keen sense for finding news? Do they write good reviews? Are they a nice person? Simple questions. And with limited power to abuse should somebody be wrongly promoted, there isn't much that can go wrong.

Moderation I feel is an entirely different story. The criteria is much more vague, and a bad promotion can lead to a lot going wrong. From my viewpoint, if suitable mod material was spotted, they'd be given a chance. Just look at Issac; he was the latest choice (albeit a while back now) and he's already a Super. He's a great mod.

We just need more Issacs lol. Sorry if it's a little flurried a reply, just wanted to get a few points across o/

@T-hug - If that is the case, then I'm not 100 percent sure what the problem is. I've occasionally reported various posts, and it often took 30 minutes+ for staff to take action on them, while I was able to see that staff were being active.

That said, while I am sure that you do mod every report you get, (in fact I would be a ton more concerned if you didn't), the delays before staff is able to weed out ensuing drama (commonly on blogposts, but it happens in a lot of posts) is often so long, that damage already has been done before staff steps in, making most mod decisions seem like an afterthought, rather than an attempt to keep the community healthy. Note that this is just how it appears to be from my end. If it's any different on yours, I'm curious to hear the perspective.

Also adjusted that typo.

I have a proposal. Me as a staff member, why?
Because I'm awesome

First of all, ALL points made are completely idiotic, so getting that out of the way, let's move on... Second thing is what @Scarlet said which is 100% accurate. Now, as for your so called "points":

Point 1) There are plenty of people who aren't even listed on the staff page with privileges to edit stuff like former staff (eg: Veho) and as for those people listed on there but not "moderating", it's because, as Scarlet said above, it's not their place to do such stuff, so they leave it for those who are more relevant.

Point 2) The forum structure is EXTREMELY simplified and your example in that post is completely flawed, as you literally said there's a CFW section, yet that people won't know where to go about CFW! Even a monkey could possibly find it's way to the right section... Homebrew Development & Emulators= Homebrews and Emulators, Flashcarts & CFW=flashcarts and CFW-related posts, ROM hacking & Translations is about modding games, how much of a brain does it take to get what each section is about?:/

Point 3) Just because there are SOME retards/trolls/idiots/illogical people on here, doesn't mean the entire userbase is bad. Sure, most are boring af, but they are good peeps and can sometimes even be entertaining! All in all, the main good thing about the temp is the userbase

30 minutes before a report is handled? Depending on what is reported, it isn't that bad.

Sometimes, I allow some heated discussions before stepping in, how else would people learn? If a bigot is silenced right away and doesn't get any counter arguments, the chances of him changing for the better are nonexistent.
Just like an ice hockey ref allows the players to punch each other a few times in a fight before sending them out, to let their steam out.

And the 3 overlapping subforums? I would argue they aren't overlapping at all.

With one thing you're right: the number of alt-right assholes on this board is too damn high. Unfortunately this is a problem in the gaming community in general and not limited to GBATemp. If you ignore that crap and try to be a bit more laid back when it comes to redundant posts/questions this board isn't half bad. I've been coming back here regularly for 15 years now (I bet some of you reading this weren't even born then), if you want to keep tabs on the Nintendo handheld hacking community (without being involved much yourself) this board is the best source out there, especially since Pocketheaven died.

I just wish news concentrated more on the piracy side again. There's a whole new Switch scene to explore...

@ThoD -
1) If someone is on the "Staff" member list, I expect that they are well... staff. A staff members duty is to ensure that a community remains valid and healthy, by using their moderation capabilities to weed out bad posts, remove bad members and tell people to knock it off. If they are not preforming those duties, then they aren't staff and shouldn't be on that list. A contributor has a Valid role in a communinty and deserves it's own rank, but I wouldn't list it on the staff pages.

2) Reminder: The example was for someone who was new to this entire thing and just heard "Hey I can hack my 3DS". If you aren't aware of the amount of support thread leakage that is going on in the 3DS section, then I seriously wonder how much you browse GBATemp. This criticism isn't for you who knows everything and where it is all supposed to go. It's there for someone who is new to this entire shabang.

3) "Just some" <-- Refer to point 1. Staff members are supposed to tell those folks to either knock it off and after a while if they show no sign of change, just remove them altogether.

It's not the majority that is the problem. It is a minority, and unfortunatley, wether you like it or not, has the louder voice of the two, meaning that minority paints how I and many others view the community.

The terrible folks are the ones that I see most frequently wherever I go on GBATemp. I can click on a post in the Blog section, and without fail I can point out roughly who shows up if the blogpost comment section is several pages long. That isn't a good sign. If someone shows up that repeatedly in specific types of drama, there should just be a point where staff tells you to knock it off or face the consequences.

I agree with you except in some points.
Let us make GBAtemp Great Again.

Just without any censorship.

I don't find much here that holds water.

The 3DS sections complaint is a little laughable. If they all were merged, actually, it'd have everything clumped together, making it 100x more confusing. They're clearly labeled, and none of them really overlap at all.

The mods manage to regularly sort through reports and as far as I'm aware, and clean up issues within an hour of being reported usually. This would be a larger concern imo if this blog was written before Issac and Porkiepywne were added to the moderator group.

The "userbase" here, is also quite tame, compared to bigger sites e.g. Neogaf, Reddit, GameFAQs, etc, where there's far more rampant collections of far worse people. The fact that salty banned fools still congregate on "GBAfail" is by far the most interesting part of the blog, and I got a great laugh out of it.

Also what? A contributor is most certainly staff, lol, as they provide content for the site exclusively, and are a testing grounds for reporters-to-be. Staff =/= moderation only. If the reporters are all asleep, and someone needs some news posted, or help with a review, then they should be equally on the staff page for when people need to contact em, just like mods.

Also, who is to say the person you single out on your blog hasn't already been warned or reprimanded? Also, why are you linking to your blog...within a blog?

The only issue I have with the site is one that has already been raised and that is the amount of time it takes posts to be deleted. I have lost count the amount of times i have reported posts then not seen them deleted for several hours while mods have been active the whole time. The delay in deleting said posts has then caused the issue to escalate with even more posts that need deleted and a whole lot of unnecessary nastiness to occur where if it had just been dealt with in a timely manner it would not have happened.

@Ev1l0rd
1) Staff is people with elevated privileges that serve a certain purpose in a section. If you expect everyone to be doing everyone rather than each person having a part of a load, then you are actually promoting something that will create a mess of a forum (many people moderating the same thing for possibly different reasons).

2) Threads that are out-of-topic get moved or die before they even start to matter. Also, it doesn't take ANY experience to understand basic stuff. The topics are very well split on almost every section and all important things like guides are most often stickied at the top, so you can just look and see if they are any relevant to what you are looking for, unless you are you (meaning too lazy to bother reading 3 lines of text).

3) As Isaac said, not letting the conversation go on for a while and instead immediately shutting them down is counter-productive, both because you aren't giving them a chance to consider things once more and because you are actually promoting anti-free speech behavior (shut down everyone who disagrees before there's a chance to examine both side's arguements).

@Chary "The "userbase" here, is also quite tame, compared to bigger sites e.g. Neogaf, Reddit, GameFAQs, etc, where there's far more rampant collections of far worse people"

Just because some bigger sites have a worse userbase doesn't justify some users the way they act. Especially when awful things are written.

Edit: NVM it's less unclear than i remember

No, it doesn't excuse it @330 but I do find that many people tend to cry out that GBAtemp has one of the worst userbases they've seen, and acting like this issue is one unique to GBAtemp. The fact is, nearly every site out there has disgusting users that say horrible things. It's more of a complaint with the internet in general than anything else.

@dimmidice I can't say I find it too difficult to find what goes where, as a entire newb to 3DS hacking, but at the same time, if there's a way to make it clearer, then I'd agree.