@st4tic said in As someone who's PR department, how might we improve and keep users from leaving?:
As for staff, some of them should be way more patient with certain users. I don't even mean to be rude but seriously.
For example, I've recently seen a user here (shrub, who is now banned,) having to appeal a warning that was only given to her because she said "newsletter ahh post" jokingly. Sure, it was eventually revoked, but it shouldn't even have been issued in the first place since it wasn't rule-breaking at all. If you need another example, some posts talking about another forum site (mppc) were being mass-deleted in a topic, and for seemingly no reason at all. They were not mass-advertising, they weren't doing anything inherently inappropriate, and everyone in the comments was confused by it.
and another thing that I hope was changed(? I'm still kinda confused by it) was a strange dislike for shitposting. I mean, this is a silly forum site after all and shitposting is a great part of the internet. That's just how it is. You could argue "but this is originally for talking about tech and homebrew" but do you really think people use this site for just that? The answer is no. Most people use this just to post silly topics like irl updates or talk about their favorite show, which is why different categories even exist. so like. How would shitposting even affect anything here so negatively?
and yeah, i dont mean all of the mods- but if this behavior could be changed i would greatly appreciate it. I'm sorry if nothing here makes sense im writing this at 1 am and my brain isn't even functioning very well atp <//3
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Nice reply and post regarding this matter. Let us begin,
I want to start off by saying that I have been doing this long enough to know what and how we need to improve a community. Even though some changes are major and take away a lot from this site, they will almost always benefit us in some way. Therefore, I ask that everyone start waiting rather than immediately pointing the finger and complaining. That's an issue as well and I am not referring to you at all. Just keep this in mind.
As stated before, the only reason Shrub and the other User were warned was that newsletters are meant to have clear, constructive, and meaningful replies as this is usually content that is going to be published via Social Media. Additionally, I still hold the expectation that if something isn't necessarily needed or isn't constructive, don't post it.
The Moderation Team noticed a spike in thread-derailing and unnecessary, unconstructive posts made by the community. This forum for the longest has banned any form of Shitposting long before much was said regarding it. However, Shitposting wasn't really a problem until the last few months, when we had a problem with unconstructive, foolish posts, which could in our eyes, be deemed as shitposting.
Despite numerous announcements to keep posts constructive, this problem continued to become worst throughout the months ahead. Additionally, the Forum started dying until we started pushing the unconstructive posts off the site.
This wasn't just an issue, it was a problem that needed to be fixed.
Therefore, shitposting was banned in the forums section, but deemed okay for our public chatrooms.
As a result of us starting to remove shitposting and encouraging more on-topic discussions (this was exactly why the engagement category was made), the number of posts increased by over 10,000 and the number of Topics increased significantly.
On-Topic discussions give you something to post to, rather than a foolish, unconstructive post that is ruining engagement and the amount of interesting content around the forum.
Others, for weeks have been privately begging us to take action regarding this. It was even to the point where the administrators had to step in and help out with this issue!
I believe that our actions to limit the amount of shitposting in the forums, which are meant to have engaging content has boosted the desire to post more and ultimately increased the amount of conversation around the forum area.
To add on to this, we get about 400,000 unique views monthly. Unique views are views from different people, devices, etc. It is just a fancy way of saying that we have 400,000 people either looking through our forum or using the forum to browse the internet. Our goal is to increase the number of users we have coming in by improving engagement and the number of interesting topics. To be genuine, we should've banned shitposting a long time ago.
Regarding your statement about the MPPC forum and other forum communities, we have temporarily removed the mentions and advertisements that users have been creating. This was not done to be petty or show hate towards this forum. Our administration team and higher-ups frequently talk with the forum administrators as we work together to fix issues around our forum. Additionally, I have removed it as we work to establish connections with other forums in hopes of creating an affiliate page that would improve relationships outside of our forum, which is something we are aiming for in the long run.
Hopefully, this somewhat clears up the confusion and I will be awaiting your reply.
