-Mithan- posted:

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Here is some of the deal, in brief and leaving out a lot of detail:
(I modded TD from June 2001 to 2003, then I became Admin in summer of 2003, I had AC2HQ for a few years there as well)


Back in the early days, the VN Boards were all run as separate communities. Moderators had very loose rules on what to do on their boards but ran things as they saw fit. This was not consistent across boards obviously and caused issues, but things could be "tuned" to the Community itself. There were pro's and con's to this approach.

In 2002, people in charge decided to start responding to calls of inconsistency, by trying to make all the rules AND how Moderators did things the same across all boards. This was good and bad. Making Moderators consistant is a good thing, forcing all the boards on a forum as varied as Vault Network, was stupid. That being said, the people in charge at that time had nothing to go on so it isn't like they knew any better.

This is also just after IGN purchased us and started changing rules. I still remember the day Tal from IGN dropped into the Global Mod Forum and told us "no profanity is allowed anymore". I remember it because it was a stupid decision done in response to Chylama and others sending in complaints about "profanity" directly to IGN and it should have been done via Profanity Filter. There were other decisions dropped like that, some good and some bad. Again, Tal didn't know the repurcusions of his actions at the time or how many thousands of people would be banned as a result.

When I took over in 2003, the push to "normalize" all the Forums was in place and my directives were pretty clear, so I continued with it and didn't mind it. What I did not like though was the "Sunday Schoolification" of the VN Boards that was happening as a direct response to a minority of people complaining and a specific Manager who prefered this style of Board. I was an "old school" Mod who swore like a sailor until that was removed, so I didn't care for the baby everybody approach but I did it and followed my orders.

Were the people complaining about the boards and this Manager wrong? In my view, yes. The community is full of teenagers and young adults so expecting them to act like they are in a Sunday School (no swearing, be nice to each other, etc, etc) was wrong. Changing the boards to cater to these "complainers" who expected a Sunday School atmosphere was a f***ing travesty.

Anyways, I was initially instructed to continue with the "Sunday Schoolification of the VN Boards", though not in those words but coming in after a Mod Riot and a time when a lot of "Sunday School" mods were hired and directly butted heads with us older school mods, I strove for peace initially, which meant Status Quo, which meant board purges and strict rules and other things. For a while.


The above "strictness" is why you guys got the book slammed at you so often. ACF was considered a s*** hole at the time by most of us, people frequently complained about how ACF was out of control, etc, etc. This happened to other boards too and we stupidly, fell in line and tried to purge it. I used to post on ACF back in the early 200's but stayed off after I was the Admin. We had a lot of pressure and directives to "do something about it" but I had the power to say no, and didn't. That was a failing on my part but I didnt know better at the time.


We did a number of "losening" changes to the rules from 2004 to 2007 and slowly over time the Sunday Schoolers mostly quit but the culture was still there. We also made a LOT of changes to how we moderated, some good and some bad.


In 2007 though, some things became obvious to me:
The boards were in decline, VN was no longer relevant as a network and had a limited lifespan of 2-4 years before it was done (I was off by a year it seems), we were strangling the posters we had left with overly tight rules, no new people were coming because the sites were not good, etc, etc.

Basically, we are too corporate. We can not compete with a start up site like MMO Champion or WoWHead or whatever new site will develop that has all the latest awesome developments in Web Tech going for it for upcoming games like Guild Wars 2 and other games. Why come to our boards when you can go to a Developer Board and have your opinion read?


We tried opening new boards, they failed.


In 2008, I decided to shift focus and focus on what was left to us to focus, which was the "strangling of the posters via the rules". I reasoned that most of you were only here because of habit and "friends" and didn't care about games anymore and just wanted to shoot the s*** about whatever. Tight Rules don't allow that.


I "discussed" changing rules with our entire team and I got too much push back and argument from various corners because what I wanted to do was directly in conflict with the Mod Culutre we had built over the last 8 years. The mod culture of "Sunday School" was strong even though we had an amazing team of Managers and Mods at this point but I think people were just scared.

What did I WANT to do?
I wanted to tear everything down and start over but that wasn't going to happen.


So what DID I do?
I told Teddy I was going to launch a campaign to loosen up the board rules. He was on board. I made some changes to the board rules and instructed the Moderators to "loosen up" all over the boards. This is probably where you got the idea that I was saying ARCH could specifically troll all he wanted. He couldn't, at least no more or less than the rest of you guys trolling.

Then I did what no sane administrator should do and in the summer of 2008, I jumped into the boards and started tearing out the walls we had created. It was my own Shock and Awe.

I think MForce and Foxy freaked out and probably hated me for a bit, but they eventually got over it. At least I hope, because I did a bad thing to them and am sorry for that.
The rest of the Moderators probably figured I was crazy.

Either way, the walls came down on ALL the boards and Moderators had no choice but to loosen up because that is what their crazy administrator who was mysteriously not being fired, had just done to them, whether they liked it or not.


What was the purpose of this? As I said, the writting was on the wall. The VN Sites could not compete with the other sites out there and the VN Boards had no relevance in an age of Developer Boards. I figured I might as well give you guys your freedom back and wait until we closed the doors and merged with IGN, which I actually expected to happen in 2010 or 2011. I reasoned it would stem the bleeding, and it did.


Since 2008, you have pretty much had the same freedoms you had in 2001.
You guys are no longer banned for profanity, can spam threads a lot more, you do your stupid "for fun" copy cast threads, you can troll and argue amongst yourselves, etc.


I don't care if it was right or wrong because at the end of the day, if I had to do the VN Boards over again knowing what I know now, I would have never have taken the job and would have started my own system and retired by now

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