No Thanks Suggestion: It should be against the rules for staff to be invisible.

I do not have a solid opinion on this subject, but I will point out dodged questions or contradictions as I see them.

You ignored the VM bit, and it has been about a week now? Not that it is a pressing matter, but you have had a week to think about it and answer. Even after it was mentioned in this thread, you have not answered.

The fact that you didn't mention the VM conversation in your post or yet in the thread kind of proves the point.

You are stating a fact, but that fact does not discount the reasons for the suggestion. Your fact creates an excuse for you, whether it is one or not. If a member contacts you, you will never be held accountable for pushing it onto someone else or simply not responding because you have this fact to reference.

He said you were making an excuse because the problem of not knowing when a member can contact you is still an issue. Take the opposite side.

If you were set to always be online, members could contact you, would feel that the forum was more open and active, and then if they got upset because you weren't responding, you could explain that fact just as you have here. What is the difference between people getting upset at you for not responding on invisible and people getting upset at you for not responding while online if you have to give the same reason?

The forum would appear more welcoming or certainly better managed with you online.

The fact you stated can potentially justify either you being online all of the time or invisible all of the time. The community profits more if you choose to be online.

The rest of your argument is that most people don't care about having a good presentation. That does not discount the notion that it would make the forum have a better presentation.

I strongly suggest you stop trolling your members. You were equally as rude and took the suggestion as a personal attack rather than assessing the profits and costs of the suggestion. Every post you have made so far (that I can tell) had to do with you giving personal reasons for your being invisible. You have attempted to make this personal of your own volition. Everything else has followed from your initial defense of yourself.

 

FORGOT TO PUT THIS IN MY POST but agreed with Ashwin's compromise.

Can't speak for everyone else, but I'll try to be visibly active more. If I do go invisible I'll put a reason in my signature or something. In turn though, I'm hoping everyone will put more effort into talking to each other -- both staff talking to members and members talking to staff. I'm always on MSN if you need me, and usually get SUPER ECSTATIC about VMs, so yeah, feel free to hit me up and I will reply (albeit, probably awkwardly if I don't know you <': )

 

Except it isn't an issue imo. I already stated the ways I can be contacted, regardless if I'm visible or not. Your definition of an excuse is my definition of a reason, that is not something we'll ever agree on so I'm not even going to debate that.

From the time I was visible til now, I have not noticed any difference between the amount of people who come to me for help. That only proves that being invisible/visible has nothing to do with the ability to approach someone. People choose not to approach me, there's nothing I can do about that. There aren't even many situations where I should need to be directly contacted ONLY if I'm online. Chances are, if someone needs an admin for something, they'll send a pm to both Misty and myself about it and we reply as soon as we can. For all other problems, the report function is there for you to use.

Also the community "profiting" from me being online? What does that even mean? I really doubt me being visible makes a noticeable difference in profit.

I'm not trolling, please learn what that word means before using it. I didn't take the suggestion as a personal attack. All I did was, as you mentioned, briefly state why I was invisible because it sounded like people wanted to know. As to how that somehow diverts the topic, I fail to see. Last I checked, we are still allowing members to post their thoughts on this (otherwise I would have locked the thread by now if we weren't interested). I haven't attempted to do anything here other than state my reasoning and debate the opposing side (which just happens to only be SJ and maybe you at this point). As to why you think I am ruining this suggestion is pretty silly. There are still good ideas floating around, starting with The Fuk?'s post. Let's not ruin it now shall we.

 

When you check out a site to join, do you check how often the staff are online? Do you feel that a site has better management if you can see that the ones doing the managing are around?

The community profits from having a good presentation. You have yet to counter the notion that it helps the presentation of the site.

Since you are the coder and maintenance guy here, I think it's kind of important that people notice that you are around (more so than when) more than they do right now. Notice the more.

I got the impression you were taunting.

See, again, you try to single out opposition. If you read the thread as you should, there are several people who are generally in support of at the least a slight policy or attitude change. I'm not opposed to you not instating this rule. I am opposed to you dodging points and (what appears to me to be) intentionally provoking members by singling them out and using something that you once called me out as using. What was it? "lol y u mad tho"?

 

It should be noted that Misty also does maintenance work, such as creating backups, which is why the site sometimes randomly go down.

 

Personally when I join a site, it's because I saw something that required me to register. I could care less about the staff. That's just me though, perhaps. I might look at the staff list or something, but I don't go "Well I better see how active each and every staff member is here before I decide to post".

I think we have good presentation despite a handful of staff being invisible. We're still active, after all.

Again, I am around, and I can be contacted. Despite being invisible.

I did read the thread, many times now. What am I dodging exactly? I'm pretty sure I've replied to any questions towards me and I have noted everyone's opinion on the matter. I'm not singling anyone out either, it's just that as I already mentioned, SJ was really the only one still debating that that point. What's the issue now? If you're going to make an input or suggestion please feel free. Otherwise jaunting this back and forth like this isn't getting anything accomplished.

 

I'm not for this. I've never had an issue contacting a staff member when needed.

I feel I have to address this;

Quite an unnecessary point to make. It's a very passive-aggressive statement, implying you and "your group" (which I find to be quite humorous to say) don't like the rest of the staff.


It seemed like this thread became somewhat of a back and forth singling out the staff members who happens to be invisible. (Which is the vast minority)

I understand why being invisible is a necessity. Like RvR, I leave my computer on 24/7 and I believe I show as online for 18+ hours a day, even if I only spend a fraction of it actually checking the site.

Isn't it more annoying awaiting a reply from an admin who isn't there, rather than clicking the report button, or to approach another staff member?
Also, from what I can tell, the majority of staff have linked their MSN and/or Skype, so it's really not harder than to add them there, where you actually get an instant reply, if they are indeed online.

It seems as the general idea behind this suggestion, is so that you don't have to make an effort, but would rather prefer staff made it for you.


And in the end, I'd like to say; I do agree with The Fuk?'s post. A mass-pm would be quite handy to have.

 

My suggestion is that you consider showing online at least some of the time because you honestly have nothing to lose from doing so and it would be good for the site, and not bad for the site.

The reason I am posting is because you seem to be giving the impression that if you don't think it is enough of a problem for a rule, then it isn't a problem at all. I would like to see you acknowledge the problem rather than disregard it entirely. If you don't want to make it a rule, then fine. But don't give an ultimatum like, "Either suggest a change to the site (for me to accept or turn down) or be quiet." I want you to acknowledge the reason for this thread. That's all I care about right now.

 

To make a slight correction, you don't show as online 18+ hours a day if you're gone, but leave your PC on.

vBulletin has a thing called the Session Timeout option, which is set to 15 minutes by vBulletin default, and that's what KHV has it set to as well. So, if 15 minutes go by and you haven't done anything, such as gone to another part of the forum or reloaded the current page you're on (e.g., if it's the index), then you'll be timed out because of inactivity, which is essentially being logged off. However, if you checked "Remember Me" when you first logged in, then a cookie will be saved somewhere so that if you are timed out, when you come back and visit another area or whatever, the cookie logs you right back in.

 

You know, this is an extremely valid point.

RvR's reasoning just went out the window.

 

It ain't really a problem, brah. If you were an old member of the site, you would realise that the amount of staff members currently appearing as offline is far lower than it has been most of the time in the past. Hell, I remember a time when at least half of the staff were appearing as offline. If it's such a big problem now, let alone earlier, then why hasn't the community made an outcry earlier? Clearly if it's a problem for our community as a whole, people would have surely mentioned this earlier.

 

Did you read my post? Please read it again and reconsider who I was speaking to and for what reason.

It doesn't matter how many care if the reasoning is sound. Most members do not care about whether or not KHV uses correct HTML and JavaScript syntax, but if I point out an error, it should get fixed. Do you disagree?

 

I did.

It does matter when both sides of the coin are just as shiny.

 

HTML/JavaScript syntax is not subjective. Opinions are.

 

Taking into account The Fuk?'s interesting idea, what would you prefer the differences between that and the report function to be? Would it simply be the fact that it would be an on-site notification instead of an off-site one, like the report function?

 

I think it is only an on-site notification, so that if a staff member is online, they can get to it, rather than constantly checking their email to see if someone has an issue.

 

Sounds grand, it would be effective and solve both problems without sacrificing a liberty of the staff but also getting rid of the problem in regards to approaching, perhaps?
The admins may give the thread notice on whether or not it can be instituted?

 

What would be ideal, in my opinion, is something like PM-notification pop-up, but links to a thread in a staff section. When a member reports something, his/her message becomes a thread in that section (instead of simply posting a thread. If only staff could see it, members wouldn't have to worry about being seen as "tattle-tells"). All staff get the notification and when one of them resolves it, they can lock the thread/dismiss the notification. But I'm pretty sure there's nothing like that.

 

I've been searching around a found a mod that might work: here

I'm not sure if all members have to be put in manually or not, but Prems/Normies could be allowed to mass PM the staff (and the specific subdivisions there) if they need to.

Granted, that is for the 3.5x version and not 4x, so I'm gonna try and dig deeper. Dunno if it's possible to use the older versions' mods on 4x, that's a question for the Admins to (please) answer.

Also gonna do some searching to see if there's a feature like this.