Caffeinated Dreams

…what my take on modding an anime community is.

Moderating a community that the average age is in the mid to low teens can be difficult sometimes. Not because the people are difficult, but because as an adult (as most other moderators are, too) I am presented with choices on how to handle situations, and it’s difficult sometimes to choose the best way to go about resolving a problem that kids don’t want solved. This usually results with clique A being pissed off because Person X was banned, and me telling them to get over it, or clique B going one step farther and throw “sly” and “witty” comments at the moderators (subtly, I may add, which is quite annoying). I don’t care what people say, but these reactions are what I consider. Ultimately, it’s to up the quality of the forums to the public eye of lurkers and would-be members.

This specific community has quite the past. It branched off the BidForPower forums in 2001, and thus in its early days was a laid back place to talk about anime with a small group of people all coming from another forum. As the site grew, so did the community, it began gaining recognition online and at cons; it is in the top 25 of AnimeFringe, and regularly has booths at Otakon and AnimeExpo. New people who don’t know what BFP is/was joined, people who are brand new to anime joined up hoping to learn more about this subculture.

These were in the 2002 - 2003, early 2004 days. Newbies were welcomed and embraced, it was time for some freshblood. The community became very close and eveyone was (generally) friendly to everyone. This, in my eyes, is what led up to how things are today. The site was obviously growing fast, and suddenly a surge of new members joined in 2005. Without trying to offend the good ‘05 members we saw, a lot of these people were… well, dumb. The typical anime fan had found its way to AA. Luckily, these people never posted much. We had members who hazed them, and they were promptly warned/banned for trolling newbies, but I don’t believe that’s what made them not post often. The ones who did stay learned that AA was more than “Who would win: Goku or Neo!?” and their posting quality improved.

Now, I’m only a mod in specific forums so I can’t really change rules, but recently I’ve been wanting to up the restrictions on new members, and make the rules more tight and/or clear for the community as a whole. The forums lately have been in a downward spiral. Because of new members and IRCers, and because as a site gains popularity you begin getting the scum of the internet.

I made a move of my own and put down some temp bans on people who trolled, made frequent annoying posts, or generally didn’t help anything in situations. This was generally well recieved, and problem posters haven’t been much of an issue since then. There have been a lot of new members lately who are downright annoying and crap posters, no matter what other members tell them to stop doing, or if a mod tells them to clean up their act. I really want to ban them just for being idiots, but the only thing stopping me is because some other mods (who have been mods longer than I) probably won’t like it. I’m not sure.

Generally, this is how I like to handle things: I would either tempban or ban idiot posts if they don’t improve (more likely a tempban). I would do the same for people who trolled new members just because they are new or their grammar isn’t perfect (heaven forbid I forgot to add an apostrophe to a word!). Or trolling in general, rather. I would make certain things like hotlinking images need 10 or 20 posts at least to allow img tags (stops table-breakage from newbies, the most common offender, and prevents drive-by image spamming, this is actually a new feature that I like right now). Thread-revival, if the revivee post isn’t “I agree” and the thread isn’t pointless now (Thread title: “I heard Trigun is gonna be on adult swim, confirm/deny?), will be allowed.

And so on.

There was a thread a few weeks back that let mods speak out what their current feelings are for the AA Lounge. This is what I feel. What contributes most to this feeling is because when I joined (Jan. 2002) it was one of the best anime forums at the time, everyone had intelligent posts, or at least funny. Now, while there are still intelligent posts (sadly, a good chunk of these people are elitist snobs about it), the wit and charm is dying. I miss the old days (”Back in the day…” ?). But I recognize the need for change, and it seems that the mods are split or undecided about what should be changed or if anything should be changed.

Finally, INTERNET IS SERIOUS BUSINESS, RITE GUYS. AM I RITE? AM I???

I don’t think anyone knows what I really mean when I say that. ;o Hint: “Time and Place”, kinda my motto on a lot of things actually.