Hey everyone, this announcement is going to be a bit of a doozy, so strap yourselves in.
So a few months back we decided to implement first, the den of the banned (a forum where user bans were announced) and then later, the ability to let the community vote to overturn bans on members. In short, this has been a complete shit show for several reasons.
First, users rarely have useful input on the den of the banned threads. Responses are usually agreements or disagreements, or complaining about the staff being unfair. The 'unfair' complaints usually come from the same five or so people, so while these complaints were less than 1% of the community, they were the loudest, and made it easy for folks to latch onto ideas such as the staff being too eager to ban users, the staff being power hungry, etc. Providing a space for these complaints just perpetuated the idea that anyone in a position of perceived power on StP is a bad person.
In reality, if you look at the den of the banned forum, user bans have gone down significantly since we started documenting them for transparency (look at the dates between each thread/ban), yet complaints about us being unfair have pretty much skyrocketed. So despite the staff bending over backwards to make a very small percentage of people in the community happy (we honestly tried really hard not to ban people and gave users waaay more chances than they deserved), those same users have been given a space to point and say, "Look! Look! Everyone come see the violence inherent in the system! We're being repressed!" as if the bans themselves are proof of the personal bias of the staff.
Second, the voting system gives everyone the same amount of power whether they've been a user for 10 years or 10 seconds. The majority of these users have not even bothered to read what the ban was about, or examine the evidence. Unfortunately, the majority of votes are rarely based on whether the user broke the website rules (that we all agreed to on registering an account) but rather on how well that person was liked. This system has devolved our policing process into a popularity contest, where someone can theoretically post some fairly offensive stuff or spend all their time trolling/harassing the staff, and have their ban overturned because a small percentage of people were entertained by their posts.
So for these reasons, there will no longer be any polls on whether a ban is fair or not. In addition, I'm removing the ability to comment on threads in the den of the banned. Complaints and unproductive comments on bans will be removed.
The mods and myself are just normal people volunteering their time to keep StP from devolving into another 4chan or another one of the dozens of 'dirty kid traveler' facebook group shit shows. I've been doing this for nearly 20 years now. Some of our mods have been around for 10 years or more. They've done it for free and for a love of the community that make this website unique. Providing a space to complain and perpetuate the myth that the StP staff is 'power hungry' or out of control (despite hard evidence to the contrary) is an extreme disservice to them and the work they do every day to make sure YOU don't have to sort through 43 posts of nonsense to find something useful here. In addition, letting ANYONE overturn bans on users essentially rewards trolls and combative users as long as they are entertaining enough to win the popular vote. This is basically spitting in the face of the staff and myself and all the work we've done to provide this space, for free, to you.
That said, the staff is not in 100% agreement on these decisions. The above decisions are mine alone. I'll leave it to the staff to post their opinions in detail as replies to this thread.
As the creator of the Squat the Planet site, I feel like it's my duty to take back control and steer this ship back on course. I know everyone (myself included) would like everything here to be 'anarchism always' and more egalitarian, but unfortunately this is clearly an example of a situation in which that just won't work. The hurdles of our forum software along with other logistics just won't allow us to maintain the quality of information you've come to expect from this community when this kind of chaos can be ensued by anyone with bone to pick (whether it's deserved or not).
I'm asking you to believe that we have the best interests of the community at heart. To defend those interests, we need to be able to defend both ourselves (as the staff) and the community from trolls and other people who are more interested in fighting the staff than they are contributing to the community. Personally, I refuse to slave away an extra 40+ hours a week (on top of my IRL job) to be spat at online and called names when none of the people doing those things are willing to put in the same amount of work to make this community happen. If personal abuse becomes the norm, then I will simply walk away from StP and it will be no more. Not because something better will come along for the traveler underground, but because no one else is willing to step up to the task.
I know this is going to upset some people, and all I can say is I'm sorry; but this is the way it has to be. If you don't like it or think im a terrible person, then I encourage you to delete your account and find a space on the internet where you're more comfortable. I'm not saying that last line out of spite or bitterness. I genuinely want you to go somewhere you'll be happy and I want people here that believe in the vision I have for this community.
In some minds, the scales were tipped too far in favor of the staff, and in others, the scales were going too far in the direction of anarchy (not anarch-ism). Fortunately, I have some ideas I'd like to try in order to balance those scales. What I would like to propose is a participation-based model of how much say a person has in how things are run on StP. Believe it or not, my ultimate goal is to be able to walk away from StP for good (I have other things I'd like to do), but only when it's in capable hands. Exact details will be forthcoming, but the short version is that the more you put into the community, the more say you get in how it's run. This means a tiered system of user groups. Newly registered accounts will start at the bottom, and work their way up through participation. Exactly how 10 posts are required to view the train hopping forum, you'll earn more 'powers' the more you participate. This participation will not just be based on number of posts. It will be based on dozens of factors, from having a completed profile to how many of your threads get promoted to the 'best of' section, how many wikithread edits you make, how many positive/negative votes you get from other users, and more. All users will be able to see where they are on the ladder on their profile (achievement badges will likely be given out automatically based on your level and will also appear on your profile).
Eventually, being a benefit to the community and it's members gives you more and more moderator powers and eventually you can be the one making the decisions around here (along with the rest of the staff). As long as you don't break the rules (which will be placed somewhere easier to find) or completely piss off the current staff, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to make it to moderator status. This filters out people that aren't interested in contributing, and hopefully means that the community itself will be rewarded with both good content and invested individuals who care and are willing to put in the time to make StP what it is. Then I can finally move on and worry about other projects. Unless there's something I'm forgetting, it's my hope that everyone wins this way.
This will probably be my last major revision for StP. I'm too old, have too many places I haven't seen yet, and too many other projects I want to pursue. Once people step up, and I walk away, you're free to run this thing into the ground if you want. All I can do for now is give you what I hope is the framework for success and pray this community is responsible enough to handle it.
So a few months back we decided to implement first, the den of the banned (a forum where user bans were announced) and then later, the ability to let the community vote to overturn bans on members. In short, this has been a complete shit show for several reasons.
First, users rarely have useful input on the den of the banned threads. Responses are usually agreements or disagreements, or complaining about the staff being unfair. The 'unfair' complaints usually come from the same five or so people, so while these complaints were less than 1% of the community, they were the loudest, and made it easy for folks to latch onto ideas such as the staff being too eager to ban users, the staff being power hungry, etc. Providing a space for these complaints just perpetuated the idea that anyone in a position of perceived power on StP is a bad person.
In reality, if you look at the den of the banned forum, user bans have gone down significantly since we started documenting them for transparency (look at the dates between each thread/ban), yet complaints about us being unfair have pretty much skyrocketed. So despite the staff bending over backwards to make a very small percentage of people in the community happy (we honestly tried really hard not to ban people and gave users waaay more chances than they deserved), those same users have been given a space to point and say, "Look! Look! Everyone come see the violence inherent in the system! We're being repressed!" as if the bans themselves are proof of the personal bias of the staff.
Second, the voting system gives everyone the same amount of power whether they've been a user for 10 years or 10 seconds. The majority of these users have not even bothered to read what the ban was about, or examine the evidence. Unfortunately, the majority of votes are rarely based on whether the user broke the website rules (that we all agreed to on registering an account) but rather on how well that person was liked. This system has devolved our policing process into a popularity contest, where someone can theoretically post some fairly offensive stuff or spend all their time trolling/harassing the staff, and have their ban overturned because a small percentage of people were entertained by their posts.
So for these reasons, there will no longer be any polls on whether a ban is fair or not. In addition, I'm removing the ability to comment on threads in the den of the banned. Complaints and unproductive comments on bans will be removed.
The mods and myself are just normal people volunteering their time to keep StP from devolving into another 4chan or another one of the dozens of 'dirty kid traveler' facebook group shit shows. I've been doing this for nearly 20 years now. Some of our mods have been around for 10 years or more. They've done it for free and for a love of the community that make this website unique. Providing a space to complain and perpetuate the myth that the StP staff is 'power hungry' or out of control (despite hard evidence to the contrary) is an extreme disservice to them and the work they do every day to make sure YOU don't have to sort through 43 posts of nonsense to find something useful here. In addition, letting ANYONE overturn bans on users essentially rewards trolls and combative users as long as they are entertaining enough to win the popular vote. This is basically spitting in the face of the staff and myself and all the work we've done to provide this space, for free, to you.
That said, the staff is not in 100% agreement on these decisions. The above decisions are mine alone. I'll leave it to the staff to post their opinions in detail as replies to this thread.
As the creator of the Squat the Planet site, I feel like it's my duty to take back control and steer this ship back on course. I know everyone (myself included) would like everything here to be 'anarchism always' and more egalitarian, but unfortunately this is clearly an example of a situation in which that just won't work. The hurdles of our forum software along with other logistics just won't allow us to maintain the quality of information you've come to expect from this community when this kind of chaos can be ensued by anyone with bone to pick (whether it's deserved or not).
I'm asking you to believe that we have the best interests of the community at heart. To defend those interests, we need to be able to defend both ourselves (as the staff) and the community from trolls and other people who are more interested in fighting the staff than they are contributing to the community. Personally, I refuse to slave away an extra 40+ hours a week (on top of my IRL job) to be spat at online and called names when none of the people doing those things are willing to put in the same amount of work to make this community happen. If personal abuse becomes the norm, then I will simply walk away from StP and it will be no more. Not because something better will come along for the traveler underground, but because no one else is willing to step up to the task.
I know this is going to upset some people, and all I can say is I'm sorry; but this is the way it has to be. If you don't like it or think im a terrible person, then I encourage you to delete your account and find a space on the internet where you're more comfortable. I'm not saying that last line out of spite or bitterness. I genuinely want you to go somewhere you'll be happy and I want people here that believe in the vision I have for this community.
In some minds, the scales were tipped too far in favor of the staff, and in others, the scales were going too far in the direction of anarchy (not anarch-ism). Fortunately, I have some ideas I'd like to try in order to balance those scales. What I would like to propose is a participation-based model of how much say a person has in how things are run on StP. Believe it or not, my ultimate goal is to be able to walk away from StP for good (I have other things I'd like to do), but only when it's in capable hands. Exact details will be forthcoming, but the short version is that the more you put into the community, the more say you get in how it's run. This means a tiered system of user groups. Newly registered accounts will start at the bottom, and work their way up through participation. Exactly how 10 posts are required to view the train hopping forum, you'll earn more 'powers' the more you participate. This participation will not just be based on number of posts. It will be based on dozens of factors, from having a completed profile to how many of your threads get promoted to the 'best of' section, how many wikithread edits you make, how many positive/negative votes you get from other users, and more. All users will be able to see where they are on the ladder on their profile (achievement badges will likely be given out automatically based on your level and will also appear on your profile).
Eventually, being a benefit to the community and it's members gives you more and more moderator powers and eventually you can be the one making the decisions around here (along with the rest of the staff). As long as you don't break the rules (which will be placed somewhere easier to find) or completely piss off the current staff, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to make it to moderator status. This filters out people that aren't interested in contributing, and hopefully means that the community itself will be rewarded with both good content and invested individuals who care and are willing to put in the time to make StP what it is. Then I can finally move on and worry about other projects. Unless there's something I'm forgetting, it's my hope that everyone wins this way.
This will probably be my last major revision for StP. I'm too old, have too many places I haven't seen yet, and too many other projects I want to pursue. Once people step up, and I walk away, you're free to run this thing into the ground if you want. All I can do for now is give you what I hope is the framework for success and pray this community is responsible enough to handle it.
) but I'm all-ears for more input.
