The regressive nature of the sites community

Lol there is not a "do not promote" list.


There are people that will obviously never get promoted, but there is not some sort of mythical written list.

 

What? The stupidest thing to do would be to destroy the site and start new. We have a market and the correct demographic for our target audience, I'm not sure you're quite knowledgeable enough about the subject to be making such strange claims.

 

Are you being sarcastic? Both of you seem to be on the same page of understanding.

 

1. While it's true that Sythe and Runescape are tightly intertwined with each other, I don't think it's impossible to shift the site's focus. In fact, I think it's going to have to happen at some point in time lest the site crumble and fall with the Runescape market still clutched tightly in it's dying grasp. We already have established communities for markets that are flourishing right now -- like League of Legends. I think it would do a lot for the site's community and activity to start promoting different markets.

2. As someone who used to administrate the forums for an old RSPS that eventually went down, I can tell you with confidence switching sites is a guaranteed way to lose a considerable portion of your user base. Bad idea all around imo. It would take a ton of work and serious dedication to get a new site up and running to the degree Sythe is currently operating.

 

Agreed with CKid above.

@Ghast, read the post you quoted from him. Probably worded wrong, but he says that would be the least effective thing (turning the site around.)

 

Y'all should unban Darren.

 

While I do think you have some valid points, number 2 & 3 are not. If anything, you should post your (radical) suggestions to fill the apparent void of #2 otherwise this thread doesn't have any solutions... Finn wasn't a good leader of anything, and the staff have always promoted based on need. It's true that the site doesn't seem to be growing hence new staff are generally appointed when people leave.

Bahaha.

 

Question is, what would you like to change?

 

The entire op is a written answer to your post, what even is this.

 

He hardly did anything wrong.

 

I couldn't really agree less with this if I'm being honest. Activity is being limited, or declining rather, because Runescape is dying. The majority that are still interested in Runescape are generally just hanging out in the market and utilizing that portion of the site. The bulk of spam reports pertain to early bumping, flaming, and obvious spam. This is hardly eliminating discussion, and is also doing quite the opposite of "decreasing activity". Its actual function (handling these reports) aims to keep discussion relevant and on-topic. The only non-spam content posts that may be removed are redundant ones. I'd like to see evidence of this though, if you have any. Evidence of a legitimate post being reported & deleted & thus truncating discussion. Unless you're talking about drama or posts deleted within the Spam Forum. I cannot speak to that as I don't have the perms to delete such items, but I will say most of that stuff deleted is just drivel. While I don't really care about people "wanting" drama or not, that's the only real place where I could see a discussion being derailed by moderators. Then again, that's not the proper medium to have a dialogue in anyway.

 

Sythe can keep promoting the three non-RS market subforums it has. As long as those three games combined take less than half the front-page space of the RS market, nobody's going to associate Sythe with LoL. That means that there is an upper bound on Sythe's ability to generate market transactions, and that upper bound is tied directly to RS's popularity. If you had to tell someone about Sythe in a sentence, you'd say it's a "Runescape Black Market" and not a "Gaming Black Market", and I don't think that Sythe will ever be capable of changing into the latter.

The point isn't to switch sites so much as to run several sites in parallel. It's true that forcing everyone to switch is a great way to decrease activity, but that's not what I'm proposing.

Consider instead, something more like Kinja. There is one account, but many different sites. Each site has its own brand and visual theme, and is a self-contained unit. Even if Gadgets stopped being cool overnight, Engadget would be hurt, but Kinja wouldn't. If RS stopped being cool, Sythe would have to close, but LoLSythe wouldn't.

In this case - Sythe would have an advantage. First of all Sythe's large existing userbase will kickstart any adjacent sites, and secondly Sythe has a large database of scammers and unwanted persons that can be banned globally right off the bat.

From a purely technical perspective this is actually the same as a really big forum with many subforums, but the idea is rooted in user psychology and not in technical matters.

What I'm really trying to say is that Sythe needs to shake off the Sythe brand if it wants to expand out of the RS market.

 

A lot of the members who were banned due to disrespecting staff in the past year or so were some of the most active members on this forum and trying to create a structure of respect for staff hurt the forum more than it did help. I personally feel the only way to begin discussion among the community is by removing restrictions such as the zero shit taking policy in the spam forum and if a staff member is being flamed then it probably should be closed but according to those stickies even mild trolling is going too far. Staff needs to be active in discussions but these type of rules only promote ass kissing not actual discussion.

I still believe the spam forum creates a community since it allows people to be themselves over the forum without being infracted but trying to create a staff superiority complex among the community is causing more harm than good, the staff should be community members who promote discussion and actively get involved not be seen as the police of the forums. I've personally stopped actively visiting the forum after what happened and I know many others who have since the discussion in the spam forum at the moment only promotes ass kissing and it can be seen throughout.

Also I don't think there is a do not promote list but if you've been a total dipshit during your time on Sythe there's no reason you would be promoted based on the time you've been here. There's a lot of sensitive information and discussion in the staff lounge including names and phone numbers in some cases which is why not everyone who wants to be staff can be promoted.

None of this will change though until Sythe decides to change his perception of the community, he sees his community as a herd and his staff as herders who can cut off the sheep at their discretion and is trying to create a way where this can happen with little backlash from the community.

I agree with almost everything you said apart from the portion about Finn we already seen it happen in the past few months and how much damage it caused to the community I don't think the forum needs a repeat of that. Also some of the current staff are equally if not better than most of the previous staff teams but they've just been placed in a situation which they don't have the ability to fix on their own since re organizing the forum is out of their control. I agree with some who said the forum needs to take a new approach by embedding itself into different gaming communities but as long as the rs market is at the top it won't change just like ownedcore is known for wow, nextgen for xbox, powerbot for rs it's because the focus of these forums have always been on these communities and we shouldn't try to focus on everything but instead try to find a more popular niche than runescape.

Also why is discussion with http://www.sythe.org/spam-forum/1778076-arcus-gets-scam-3000-a.html being allowed whereas the same situation with leanbean was quickly closed and hidden, like I said above staff superiority complex is ruining this forum you allow a situation affecting staff to be hidden but once it affects a regular member the discussion is allowed, and half the people posting there don't now what they're talking about.

 

Why couldn't we go back to pre-2011 where the Spam Forum was fine, Finn had only just resigned (but not banned), everyone was nice to each other in the Spam Forum and there were 0 "op is a faggot" posts. Why can't we go back to that?

 

I like you.

 

We need a new rule reform.

 

Why? What's wrong with them?

 

Some rules need touching up, and others need to be removed.

 

Be specific please.

 

Now this, I'm against. The rules have been in a state of constant change since the site's creation, and I'm pretty confident that they are at a good place. Pretty much everything is covered, one way or the other, and there aren't really any that the community commonly disagrees with.