[quote=@Kangaroo]
Okay, I'll start off my saying I closed the last thread early because it was trending away from the right topic and after the spam event, I felt it was better off to restart the conversation.

Now to give my personal opinion of the situation.

There are deficiencies with mod availability, I will freely admit that. We're all busy people and how we effectively moderate is through mod reports - whether by PM or DM on discord. As to needing extra mods, from our discussions every one of us is in agreement that we either need more mods or people more available, however a bad previous experience with a mod makes mod selection very important. As to the claim that we perhaps don't care about the site; I can see how that would come across but again it's a factor of time. I've personally offered a few times to resign my modship for a more active user if Mahz didn't want to increase the number of mods then he could use the spot I occupied. 

I think subforum mods are a bad idea; we don't want staff actively combing through threads to hunt down every infraction - our moderator model was always built on responding to requests rather than active hunting. This is the way I personally believe it should be done and that is the way we five original mods decided we were going to do it. 

There are problems with the server infrastructure, however at the end of the day Mahz does pay the bills and self-funded this site despite not using it for a number of years. I can understand the desire to see other people to work on it to progress it but as I understand the hesitation is over what happens if one of the coders leaves/goes rogue and then there;s a really big mess to clean up. I understand that it is frustrating to see a community start to wither, I've been on here since 2009 so I do feel an attachment to this place.[/quote]

Alright, first off, thanks for taking the time to reply. Given the attitudes in the previous thread, I feel like [i]not[/i] replying as a moderator would've been a bad step forwards and, admittedly, I wanted to force at least some reaction. 

[quote]a bad previous experience with a mod makes mod selection very important[/quote]

I have heard this a few times and I'm aware of this situation that arose. Furthermore, I'd like to add that mod selection is [i]always[/i] important, even if this scenario hadn't occurred. Me personally, I don't feel too confident in the current moderators to pick a new moderator that would be good. Partially because as it is there is already a gigantic disconnect between the roleplayers and the moderators. How are you going to be aware of who is best suited to be a mod? 

But I also don't feel confident in 'us' to elect new moderators, nor do I feel confident in Mahz to pick new ones because he's been away for too long to comfortably pick someone. So what are we left with? Nothing. So I'm curious as to how you/the moderators see this process taking place. 

[quote]I can see how that would come across but again it's a factor of time[/quote]

Perhaps true, but perceptions are more important than your real intentions here if your intentions are not communicated. Which as you said yourself in discord, you cannot freely discuss everything. This forces our (the roleplayers) hands in assuming and when there's not a whole lot of activity on-site coming from you and the others, there is a distort, because we are lead to believe that you guys aren't doing anything, and because we can't see that you guys are in fact doing something, this slowly turns into 'how it is' for us.

Which is why I spoke about community engagement because frankly speaking I only know you by name, I only know Hank from my interactions with him about whatever infractions I have incurred and I know Mag because he's the only moderator that was frequently active in RPG chat and that I occasionally spoke with outside of moderator business. And I think that it might be wise to have a bigger level of engagement with people.

[quote]I think subforum mods are a bad idea[/quote]

They are. But they still exist. I had no idea who Rilla was until yesterday when I had to ask someone who the hell Rilla was because I sure as hell never heard of him. And I found out then he was 'moderator' in name only as he was essentially a subforum mod for arena (a dead forum, really). I'm sure he does more than just that. But, de facto, that is kinda how it is from my understanding.

But yes I'll agree that subforum mods are a bad idea.

[quote]This is the way I personally believe it should be done and that is the way we five original mods decided we were going to do it. [/quote]

Then I would advise to regain some trust from the community. I'll use an example here:

Some time ago I [i]know[/i] there were complaints about my activity in the status bar. I might be shooting myself in the foot here but I was never warned individually nor was I ever warned officially. Perhaps acting in cases like that might've made your case stronger but to be fair, all I can say to your above point is 'okay, who cares' because at the end of the day, there's not really that much to show for this approach as far as I am aware (and again, perception is very important when it comes to that). 

I will not touch upon server infrastructure because I don't really believe we need a 2nd co-owner or a coder. I'm fine if the guild stagnates function wise as long as current features are fixed and no longer broken as fuck. I can even deal with the server shitting itself every 2 minutes. All we can really do is wait for Mahz to return from his job in Mexico and I'm fine with that, as long as other issues are addressed in the mean time. How is communication with Mahz now that he's working? He only shows up when the server dies. Is that intentional?

I might contact you about a community project in the future once I figure out how I want to tackle it.