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 Post subject: A Cry For Arweb
PostPosted: November 8th, 2010, 5:25 pm 
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We want A-U not only to survive hanging by the nails, we want A-U to live and bloom and be the Last Homely House on the world wide web, a safe and cosy nest, a creative heaven and, a place for Many Meetings in the Green Dragon.
We're already brainstorming ideas to revive the forum and posting new threads, running a campaign and raising the spirit.

But we, the members, cannot do it alone.

In order to carry this out successfully we need our Creator to guide us and the Valar to push shiny buttons.
I understand that Arweb is busy and that only does the most necessary maintenance (like paying the bills) and thank you for that.
The mods have faded into real life too except for Kitoky who sticks around like a shadow and has to endure how we throw ourselves on her whenever she sets foot here.

That is the current reality. But it needs to change.

The community is still strong and we have many talents among the members. And we can help A-U fly on wings of love.
We desperately need a new layout - let's make a layout contest and vote on it so everything Arweb has to do is to approve of it.

We need our old mods back or new ones with acces to maintaining the board. Currently there are almost 27000 registered users - spam ads - and the number is increasing by hundreds every day. It's spam for one thing that ought to be weeded out regularly and eventually it may slow down the forum.
The board needs maintaining.. and could do with a proper holiday cleaning too.

I know Arweb has been reluctant to appoint new mods but she ought to reconsider now. We need people with hammers and brooms (and I'm thinking neither communists nor witches!!) We haven't had the need for actual moderating in the discussions, as there has been none for a long time, but there is ongoing maintaining to take care of.

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PostPosted: November 8th, 2010, 9:44 pm 
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Well said Ea. Exactly what I was thinking.

I definitely agree that we need some new Mods. If most of the currents Mods are not able to carry out their duties, due to no fault of their own, the only way to keep this place from overflowing with threads we don't need and members we don't want is so appoint new mods from people who are either regular(ish) on AU and who are willing to do the job.

In the current circumstances, due to everyone being busy, perhaps there should even be some kind of rota, with people on stand by as it were as back ups in case someone on their appointed day, cannot be around to do the job.

Morale, I think regarding Arwen, is rather low, and even if we managed to get AU bustling again, in that area, until we have some kind of indication that we are being listened to and our concerns are valid, that won't go away.

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PostPosted: November 9th, 2010, 8:22 pm 
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All of this has never occured to me...but now that I've read it, it's exactly what AU needs. A new layout would be wonderful, and new mods would definitely keep all of the weight off Kit and would make it easier to keep things in order. I'd be willing to be a mod if it's an option. :-D

I would really love to see Arweb around, but I don't know how much of a possibility that is. I'd love to get to interact with her, since I've only seen her on AU once or twice. :)

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 10th, 2010, 10:51 am 
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I know there is always an issue about appointing new mods and I know Arwen has ben reluctant in the past. Which I do understand, along the lines of "With great power comes great responsibility". On the other hand I'm sure A-U would benefit from someone taking that responsibility upon themselves.

Like I said, we need a major clean-up and ongoing maintenance to keep this a nice and inviting place.
JF, your rota idea is one way to handle it. Another is to simply time limit the mod duty because we know peple come and go. Arwen may appoint mods to help us kickstart the activity on A-U for say three months or so. I don't really care about the technicality of it... it's up to Arwen.
But there are many ways to carry it out. :teehee:

Thank you for posting, SilverRose. :-)

I posted this thread mainly to see how people would respond and what ideas we could gather before we take this to Arwen. And we will. :P

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 10th, 2010, 6:29 pm 
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To go what with JF was saying, if any chance that we may be in the need of new Mods, I certainly do not mind lending in a hand.

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Last edited by Gersemi on November 10th, 2010, 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 10th, 2010, 8:21 pm 
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Johnny's Fan wrote:


In the current circumstances, due to everyone being busy, perhaps there should even be some kind of rota, with people on stand by as it were as back ups in case someone on their appointed day, cannot be around to do the job.


I like this idea. I wouldn't mind helping out every now and again with modding duties, and I check in here pretty often, but a full time mod would be a lot.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 10th, 2010, 9:07 pm 
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I would absolutely not want to be a mod, but it would be great to be of assistance (as with all the members I'm sure) in the decision-making process.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 10th, 2010, 9:46 pm 
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Glad people like the idea of a rota. It seems to me to be the way to combat the lack of time that most of us are facing nowadays.

I for one, would like to be a Mod so I could tackle all the spam accounts and the genuines ones. We must be losing new members due to their requests being ignored. AND it looks bad that we supposedly have 27,000 members and yet so few posts per day.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 11th, 2010, 3:27 pm 
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As others have said I'm definitely willing to help out! I don't know if I could be a full Mod, as I don't think I've really been a member for long enough, but if it came to a vote or nominations then I think you'd be top of my list JF-sie :)

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 11th, 2010, 5:11 pm 
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Thank you for your replies and for your willingness to serve the greatness that is A-U. :-)

The decision whether to appoint mods (or not) and how to handle it is entirely up to Arwen. She created the board and is still paying the bills (I assume).

So instead of planning how to run the board I was thinking we could start putting a message together for Arwen with our main points and invite her to the dialogue. She's the final authority and the one who needs to approve of the 'technical' or possible management changes anyway, so we might as well invite her to the table and let her know our ideas.

I'm so happy to see the actitivity we've seen for the past few days, it's a clear sign that we're many members who really want A-U to thrive again - and that we can make it happen. I think now is a perfect time to invite Arwen back to A-U and work on the challenges with us and to talk about what is realistic, how much we can do, what kind of time she is able to spend (if any) etc. etc.

First of all, like many of you agree, we need to know where she stands on the maintenance of the board. And I think we should update her on our activity.

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Last edited by on November 11th, 2010, 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 11th, 2010, 5:29 pm 
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I think we need new mods, but like Ea just said it's up to Arweb and the current moderating staff. I can remember reading something before about how Arweb once made a mistake by appointing people mods whom she didn't know all that well, and they ran rampant and abused their power. After all, it is an enormous responsibility; you're basically Almighty within the realm of the forum. You can delete other people's posts, edit them to say something else, ban members altogether... it requires a high level of maturity and clear, unbiased judgment. I'm not saying the average A-Uer doesn't these things-- I think we do have an enormously mature and intelligent community-- but, well, part of me thinks you never know what people might do when they get a little power. :confused:

And if I'm going to go all-out playing devil's advocate here, I would point out that we don't have a huge amount of active members, and I'm afraid of ending up with a weird situation of two-thirds of the members moderating one-third of the members, especially if we start some kind of rota.

It's not necessarily a bad idea. Maybe this is an A-U revolution from benevolent dictatorship to democracy. But it's a big step all the same, and there's a lot to be considered and thought out before we take it.

Regarding Arweb, I would love to see her around and have her involved in the website again, but I sympathize with her situation, and I don't think she should feel pressure to maintain the site if she doesn't want to, or literally can't anymore. The way I see it, she shouldn't be a slave to a little website she started high school. :)

Maybe for now we could ask for a little note on the main page explaining that though the site hasn't been updated for over two years, the forum is still active and welcoming to all new members, and encouraging people to visit. After that perhaps we can start brainstorming on revamping the site, with the help of volunteers. Potentially I think it could really go places, maybe by breaking the pattern of the traditional fansite and instead reflecting the kind of community we've developed here in the forum. A sort of "staff" wouldn't be a bad idea. After all, most sites as big as A-U are run by multiple people, and Arweb deserves credit for maintaining it all by herself for as long as she did.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 11th, 2010, 6:33 pm 
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Johnny's Fan wrote:
GI for one, would like to be a Mod so I could tackle all the spam accounts and the genuines ones. We must be losing new members due to their requests being ignored. AND it looks bad that we supposedly have 27,000 members and yet so few posts per day.


Those said 27,000 members and mostly just spam accounts, surely XP Pretty sad it is.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 11th, 2010, 9:25 pm 
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@ Taur - I know what you mean, and I understand your concerns and for the part, share them.

But I believe these are the reasons we need some active mods and/or members who can do something about an update now and then -

1) To clear out the spam accounts and enable new members
2) To have the authority to edit Mod posts when needed (for example; to be able to access Kit's club thread list and get that back up and running again, PLUS any information threads started by Mods and ones that should be updated)

We're all older now, we don't get into wars with one another. Some of us may hiss and spit and then cough violently becuase we are so much older. I don't see any need for a new Mod(s) to be patrolling the forum checking up on people, editing posts etc (if that is what is required of a Mod then I ain't doing it :P).

There are just topics, posts, events even, that with the help of someone who can fiddle with things a little and tweak them, would make things so much better.

And I like your idea of mentioning the forum on the layout. Personally, I think there needs to be a BIG banner on the main page advertising the forum, not just the little forum button.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 14th, 2010, 2:16 pm 
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Even though I wholeheartedly want to write "I agree" in response to this thread, two word posts are against the rules. :P Everything said here pretty much sums up my feelings (and probably 98% of the other members as well).

AU is in desperate need of some renovation - the layout specifically. I always used to get so excited when I saw that Arweb had put up a new layout and updated the site overall - and let's be honest, this blue was nice for a while but now it's just getting old and depressing. :confused:

I agree with the new mods idea though, and I think dedicated people like JF and Ea would be perfect (no offense to anyone else who wants the job) but they have really taken the responsibility to spearhead this Revival thing. And even just two new moderators could make a great difference here. Reduced spam, more new users, cleaned up threads - I can't find any downsides to it. With the right people leading, I don't think there would be any misuse of power. :no:

And I believe that a while ago, the moderators emailed all of the AUer's asking them to return to the forum or something like that; I think if we could do that, a lot more people would come back, see all of the improvements, and change their mind about leaving. :yes:

I think we should definitely bring these changes up to Arweb and the Mods, on Facebook or wherever they are most active. Just so they can at least know we haven't given up on this wonderful site <3


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 16th, 2010, 9:12 am 
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I'm thinking we could message Arwen (email or facebook) with the things we want her say on. I don't know if she has followed our discussions here or on facebook. But we need to get hold on her.

So the things most of you mention is
- layout change and
- management
- the possibility of an update on the main site

Is there any other things we should take to Arwen in the first place, keeping in mind that she is most likely to be busy and doesn't have time to change/work a whole lot on the site.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: November 16th, 2010, 10:43 am 
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Well, we can let her know that there's a sort of committee working on these things. We can basically put a ton of stuff together and she'd just have to put it up, so it'd be easy on her.

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