Moderation Feedback

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Although it's questionable regarding Yosh's situation, the case Yosh is trying to build is something I also agree with and want to discuss as well. I don't get why Azoo in that case got a free pass for intentionally and jokingly doing something outright discouraged and actively not allowed on the forums. Doesn't seem to prove anything. Again, mods (generally) should be enforcing the rules they regulate. I'm not saying to be a super duper citizen model, but anything but breaking your own rules or encouraging discussion not allowed by yourselves.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I do want to point out that non-mods have gotten away with joke threads like Azoo's as well. Im actually pretty certian the recent pointless thread would have stayed open longer if it wernt for the "jokes" at the end. 

[Failinhearts]

Just now, Mikyeong said:

I do want to point out that non-mods have gotten away with joke threads like Azoo's as well. Im actually pretty certian the recent pointless thread would have stayed open longer if it wernt for the "jokes" at the end. 

It probably wouldn't. The mods were not online when this incident occured, if they did, I'm sure at least one would take it down in a snap.

And plus, just because you get away with it, doesn't particularly make it "right" per se. You know the phrase "if everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you?" You can kinda implement that phrase into this situation. I personally do not agree with these joke threads, as it should be saved for things such as the statuses.

[Klinsy]

Not to mention that plenty of Joke Topics do get locked.

You ever heard of the Cheese Topic? It's in Blacklightning sig, one of the topics with most likes in the history of SSMB, still got locked.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

The only "joke" topic I'm actually aware of that managed to get away with, well being a joke was Indigo Rush's "Monday" topic, which got wiped following the SSMB hard drives crashing earlier last year.

But otherwise no, joke topics made by members always get locked.

[Agie]

No joke topics. As I've seen it said, it's best left to the statuses anyways.

Even if you think they're funny...what purpose do these joke topics serve once the joke wears off?

[Marcello]

On an unrelated note, a few years ago I recall the rule regarding picture only posts being that as long as we don't spam threads full of them and memes, it was OK. Now it seems like we're straight up not allowed. Personally, I think it's too bad, since sometimes I feel adding texts kind of ruins the joke. I mean, I get that it's a slippery slope, but I still think it's kind of too bad :/

Not that you guys are particularly strict about it. People generally just get told not to do it.

6 hours ago, SurrealBrain said:

No joke topics. As I've seen it said, it's best left to the statuses anyways.

Even if you think they're funny...what purpose do these joke topics serve once the joke wears off?

Why can't they just be fun for a while and eventually end? Once the novelty has worn off they'll be buried beneath other threads so what's the big deal?

[Badnik Mechanic]

So I think I should bring this up and some people are probably not going to like this but I think it's time it was said, this probably doesn't affect the current staff team, but it certainly affects the staff team of around some years ago, and for at least point 2 it would be nice to get some clarification.

1: Do or did staff at one point withhold warnings or make up some rules/do some questionable things just to get rid of some users?

I've seen a lot of people use the word 'favouritism' to describe how some members are getting away with stuff.

Well... what about the opposite to that? What about when staff are actively looking for the means and ways to ban/strike other users? 

Now before any staff get on the major defensive, this probably doesn't apply to the current team.

Basically a long time ago, I got told by a then active forum staff member that I along with several other members were sorta on a 'strike list' or a list of members who some staff didn't want to be on the board anymore, conversations of which were happening in the staff's skype chat and in some cases the staffs private forum. 

What was apparently happening is that some staff had decided that they didn't like me, nor a few other members, and they were both looking for ways to strike us and in some cases changing rules or doing things to try and catch myself and some others out. This could be by randomly striking people for something minor, and bringing up something which was in my case over 6 months old as the one and only example of supporting the strike action (this specific thing was, a commentator on the Sega blog left a comment for Kellie about wanting to kill and rape her over something, so I suggested that user be banned from all Sonic fansites, this was then brought up by a mod over 6 months later as evidence of me back-seat moderating, well I'd love to know how that's back-seat moderating considering they were both a user on another site, they didn't appear to have an SSMB account!

Another example given by the staff member. Or it was not giving the user a warning or saying "Hey can you not do this please" for something minor, in this case it was sending a lot of forum reports. Staff were waiting until it got to such a level that they could issue a strike and justify it.

So who told me this? Flyboy Fox.

Do I still have evidence of this conversation? Probably, I don't think I've deleted it, odds are there's a chunk of it in my PM inbox telling me how the bulk of the staff team at the time did not like me and suggesting that they wanted me gone from the forum.

So I then said 'if I am somehow breaking the rules or doing something that the staff don't like, why hasn't anyone on the staff team said anything? She didn't know and said she would ask that, low and behold, less than 24 hours later another staff member sends me a message saying "Hey can you not do this?/Can you tone down reports?"

So why am I bringing this up now? Well, honestly, given what Flyboy told me, I was highly worried about remaining on here, given the lengths some staff were going to in order to have me removed from the board, I didn't want to say 'hey this is what this staff member told me about these staff members' and also, Flyboy herself asked me not to bring it up because she was worried about her position, only reason I'm brining it up now is because it's a clearly new staff team who I'd like to think I'm getting along well with and Flyboy is no longer on the staff.

So is this a thing which is still going on? Part of me thinks it isn't, at least not at the level it was previously because I think loads of users would have vanished but yeah... this is a topic about bringing stuff up so here it is.

2: Can forum staff read PM inbox's/private messages

Long and short of it, think it was about 2 years ago a forum mod sends me a message that suggests they have been reading some of my PM's to people. 

I was under the impression only admins could do that, and they could only do it under very serious circumstances, such as possible illegal activity going on, a request from authorities for evidence with relation of a crime, that kind of stuff, not because they just wanted to have a snide dig. 

The question is, can forum mods go through other users private messages and read the content?

[Carbo]

Since these are more direct questions I can probably step in and answer these right now.

1 hour ago, Hogfather said:

1: Do or did staff at one point withhold warnings or make up some rules/do some questionable things just to get rid of some users?

Bans and warnings on account of personal bias has never been a thing that's happened at least in my own history here, and we've never made up additional rules for that sake as making them an obstacle course for members is, obviously, a really slimy thing to do. Only thing that qualifies as "made up" rules are usually board specific based purely on the current circumstance (i.e things getting unnecessarily heated in game subsections) and those are announced ahead of time.

What can happen, and has happened, is a member being more carefully examined in subsequent warnings based on their ongoing posting record but that has never yielded a prolonged subterfuge and unless it's a really notorious matter in mind we're as lenient as we can be on most re-entries.

I'll give some previous records a skimming and talk with Chris about it since the (anti-)favoritism thing seems to be brought up here a few times.

1 hour ago, Hogfather said:

2: Can forum staff read PM inbox's/private messages

Staff can only read PMs if they've been reported. That ability is to deal with people who have been subject to harassment. Otherwise we're not able to fish inside of your inboxes.

[Chris]

On 1/19/2016 at 0:48 AM, Kaze no Klonoa said:

TL;DR - Guidelines should be rewritten to help the mods better enforce the rules, mods need to enforce the rules better, and something has to be done in case mods aren't present and a major problem on the boards is happening.

The current guidelines/rules were written by Roarey in 2005/2006. While I can take a look at them and put more focus into each one, I'd rather keep that cheeky British writing. Very little of this website - originally a British Sonic fansite - actually has anything to do with the origins, so it's nice to have.

We aren't always taking an instant ban/strike policy for trolling. In certain [non-urgent] circumstances, we take it behind closed doors to discuss and come to a decision on what we want to do. 'Popular' members do not simply get away with breaking rules, but we do take into account how long the user has been around and the frequency of issues we've had with them [severity of their actions depending].

I disagree, more moderators is a fine solution. You're never going to get 24/7 coverage of an online forum with volunteer staff without setting up some kind of schedule. Since I'm not about to do that, adding extra moderators increases the change that somebody will be online to take care of the issues when they arise. If it's in the dead of night, our user count is also way down from during the day and it will be dealt with when it can be.

On 1/20/2016 at 1:24 AM, Mikyeong said:

To add to what Gamer has said I have seen moderators post one liners as posts or one worders or image only posts when normal members would get screamed at for these things. I know, moderators can have it more lax but it is a little concerning to see some of the mods, break there own rules. 

I tend to not mind when our moderation do this since they're giving up their time to help around here. Members should be given the courtesy to make one of these every blue moon, but the situations I've seen are members making them constantly.

On 1/19/2016 at 1:59 AM, TCB said:

While I do have a little something to comment on I think I may hold off on that bit, least until I can get what I can say out without being an idiot.

There was another thing I did want to ask (but I may not be in the position to do so) but have staff thought about using Discord/Mumble over Skype for those 'important' group calls or whatever you guys do in those situations? 

I use Discord and Mumble every day. They're not suitable for our needs.

On 1/19/2016 at 4:36 AM, SurrealBrain said:

I've seen mods ignore what seemed like problems that need dealing with. Now, sometimes, I don't report because I can't tell if I'd just be doing it out of emotions, but in some instances, there's a situation, and it gets left alone for some reason.

I second Ryan on the whole "pointless thread" thing. Why is it that we members can't get away with it yet a mod can and get a like? I think mods should be punished for breaking the rules, too; perhaps more than the members, since they're supposed to enforce the rules in the first place.

Actually, I wonder if some mods are even taking their positions seriously. And at least some of them don't seem to do much in general, much less moderate, to where if not for the orange stickers, you wouldn't even realize they were mods to begin with.

Some have also just...vanished. Like, where are they? If they don't wanna moderate, they shoukd give up the title, I say.

Are you speaking of moderation online and ignoring the issues or actively posting in the problematic topic and not doing anything about it? You're going to need to elaborate on that first criticism.

If I were around when the original 'pointless thread' was posted, it would have been locked regardless of the topic author. I'd rather not have a precedent set by one of our moderators that carries over like this one has.

As of a few years ago, I set a note to keep an eye on the number of moderation actions per month via our logs. I'm not about to demote any of our moderation for a low effective action count as long as they're around; as has been stated, they are cleaning up the forums, but it might not be by locking topics.

On 1/20/2016 at 0:28 PM, Ryannumber1gamer said:

That wasn't Surreal's point. Of course we can't expect mods to be around 24/7, but there's cases where in terms of stopping disruptive members and threads (the things that us members actively see), there's mods who almost never seem to take any action, or anything. SuperLink has all but disappeared from the board altogether, and I honestly couldn't even tell you when I've ever seen Pattius handle a situation, or even really post outside of the politics thread. Surreal's point is really if you have the orange moderator sticker, you should be doing something with it. You got it for a reason, and yet some mods never seem to actually do anything despite having those stickers, usually resulting in a select group of mods doing all the work around here.

On top of that, I can't help but feel some of my reports either go unnoticed, or they're flat out ignored sometimes, because there was a recent example where three members were all in the wrong doing things that was against the board's rules, and two of them got called out by the mods, while the third member got away with it completely scott free.

Patticus has one of the highest moderator action counts on the forum (second to Sean). SuperLink was demoted due to inactivity [nearly a year offline] before this topic was posted, so that's a non-issue.

Every report is discussed or examined. Could have been an oversight but I trust their judgment on the situation. Also, if it's recent then where are the examples?

9 hours ago, Vertekins said:

I generally agree with the favoritism accusation in light of a certain member getting away with questionable behavior lately. What doesn't help that impression is that I certainly recall a moderator (Forgot exactly who it was) admit to a certain member they were chastising that they do have a tenuous reputation amongst the mdoerators and have gotten away with quite a bit of bad behavior that would merit a strike for most other members if they acted that way. I know the member that post was directed at and yes, I do believe they're gotten away with a hell of a lot of shit but I'm not going to name names here. If you wish to know who that member is and where this happened (If it hasn't been deleted due to the quasi-wipe not long back - I can search for this specific post if it hasn't been wiped), please PM me to enquire further IF you're a moderator.

And also if my memory is correct (And it usually always is because this incident stood as one of the very, very few occasions when I thought the following decision was complete and utter bull which was a surprise to me and hence stuck in my memory as a result since I overwhelmingly hold the staff in high regard and their decisions I generally agree with and understand), around Sonic Lost World's release, a rule was introduced in the thread post-release that dictated that less than positive opinions about the game weren't permitted because they were causing too much drama amongst the game's supporters immeditately post-release. This was just over two years ago yes. But I've been concerned ever since that limiting of valid opinions for the sake of the crowd who simply couldn't tolerate even moderate criticism of the game in that example may or may not create an environment wherein true freedom of speech can be limited by moderator approval for the sake of the appeasement of the real problem (The intolerant crowd) and I personally don't agree with that.

To note the first bolded point, this isn't the purpose of this topic. As I stated in the opening post, provide evidence or PM me of the sort - I'm not going looking for it or following up with you about it.

That said, I'm fairly certain I know the situation you're talking of and I agreed with every action taken at the time. Furthermore, it was noted as a possible failure of judgment as a whole following and will not be happening again. It had to do with trying to be more lenient following complaints that we weren't.

Er, what? Does this have to do with the overly sensitive crowd that liked to hate on Lost World but didn't want to buy a Wii to actually play it?

[Kaze no Klonoa]

4 minutes ago, Chris said:

The current guidelines/rules were written by Roarey in 2005/2006. While I can take a look at them and put more focus into each one, I'd rather keep that cheeky British writing. Very little of this website - originally a British Sonic fansite - actually has anything to do with the origins, so it's nice to have.

We aren't always taking an instant ban/strike policy for trolling. In certain [non-urgent] circumstances, we take it behind closed doors to discuss and come to a decision on what we want to do. 'Popular' members do not simply get away with breaking rules, but we do take into account how long the user has been around and the frequency of issues we've had with them [severity of their actions depending].

I disagree, more moderators is a fine solution. You're never going to get 24/7 coverage of an online forum with volunteer staff without setting up some kind of schedule. Since I'm not about to do that, adding extra moderators increases the change that somebody will be online to take care of the issues when they arise. If it's in the dead of night, our user count is also way down from during the day and it will be dealt with when it can be.

I understand why everybody wants to keep the guidelines the way it is, but I think there's a better way to keep the cheeky British writing everybody wants without having so much condescending and unnecessary snarks attached onto it. But if that's what people want, power to them. Just seems kinda counter-intuitive.

I'm aware that more well-known and long-lasting members stay under consideration, which is totally fine. I just don't see how the zero-tolerance policy on trolling gets enforced as much, when some trolls stayed rampant enough despite being under heavy investigation.

And more mods is totally a better solution. The volunteer thing was just a complex idea I came up with, it'd be pretty costly and difficult to manage. I still worry on what if a serious matter happened while zero mods are offline, however. What if there were no mods for another hour on the situation days ago?

[Ryannumber1gamer]

23 minutes ago, Chris said:

The current guidelines/rules were written by Roarey in 2005/2006. While I can take a look at them and put more focus into each one, I'd rather keep that cheeky British writing. Very little of this website - originally a British Sonic fansite - actually has anything to do with the origins, so it's nice to have.

We aren't always taking an instant ban/strike policy for trolling. In certain [non-urgent] circumstances, we take it behind closed doors to discuss and come to a decision on what we want to do. 'Popular' members do not simply get away with breaking rules, but we do take into account how long the user has been around and the frequency of issues we've had with them [severity of their actions depending].

I disagree, more moderators is a fine solution. You're never going to get 24/7 coverage of an online forum with volunteer staff without setting up some kind of schedule. Since I'm not about to do that, adding extra moderators increases the change that somebody will be online to take care of the issues when they arise. If it's in the dead of night, our user count is also way down from during the day and it will be dealt with when it can be.

I tend to not mind when our moderation do this since they're giving up their time to help around here. Members should be given the courtesy to make one of these every blue moon, but the situations I've seen are members making them constantly.

I use Discord and Mumble every day. They're not suitable for our needs.

Are you speaking of moderation online and ignoring the issues or actively posting in the problematic topic and not doing anything about it? You're going to need to elaborate on that first criticism.

If I were around when the original 'pointless thread' was posted, it would have been locked regardless of the topic author. I'd rather not have a precedent set by one of our moderators that carries over like this one has.

As of a few years ago, I set a note to keep an eye on the number of moderation actions per month via our logs. I'm not about to demote any of our moderation for a low effective action count as long as they're around; as has been stated, they are cleaning up the forums, but it might not be by locking topics.

Patticus has one of the highest moderator action counts on the forum (second to Sean). SuperLink was demoted due to inactivity [nearly a year offline] before this topic was posted, so that's a non-issue.

Every report is discussed or examined. Could have been an oversight but I trust their judgment on the situation. Also, if it's recent then where are the examples?

To note the first bolded point, this isn't the purpose of this topic. As I stated in the opening post, provide evidence or PM me of the sort - I'm not going looking for it or following up with you about it.

That said, I'm fairly certain I know the situation you're talking of and I agreed with every action taken at the time. Furthermore, it was noted as a possible failure of judgment as a whole following and will not be happening again. It had to do with trying to be more lenient following complaints that we weren't.

Er, what? Does this have to do with the overly sensitive crowd that liked to hate on Lost World but didn't want to buy a Wii to actually play it?

The reason I didn't post examples is I don't feel comfortable publicly calling out another member. That's the entire point of reports being secret to only mods. 

[Carbo]

9 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

The reason I didn't post examples is I don't feel comfortable publicly calling out another member. That's the entire point of reports being secret to only mods. 

That's perfectly fair. If you don't feel comfortable in bringing up specific issues in this topic, you can always PM me or Chris.

[Chris]

25 minutes ago, Kaze no Klonoa said:

And more mods is totally a better solution. The volunteer thing was just a complex idea I came up with, it'd be pretty costly and difficult to manage. I still worry on what if a serious matter happened while zero mods are offline, however. What if there were no mods for another hour on the situation days ago?

If a serious matter happened while all of our staff are offline, it'll be dealt with when they're around. In reference to the situation a few days ago, I wouldn't consider that to be a big concern if it were left alone for another hour due to a lack of staff around.

Situations will happen while our staff are offline. It's not worth worrying about because it will be solved within a decent time frame, it just might not be within ten minutes.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Are suggestions allowed? I know mine will sound stupid but here it goes:

Ive seen forums where staff sometimes moderates certain boards. Maybe to help ease the stress from the staff themselves, maybe some staff members can moderate certain boards and others to other boards. Like a few can do Sonic Discussion and some can do Chit-Chat and some can go Gaming and so on and so fourth. That way there are moderators for each board and also it gives the individual staff member a choice to focus on the board they more often participate in. Its less work for the staff and more flexiable.

But then again. just my stupid suggestion. lol

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Just now, Mikyeong said:

Are suggestions allowed? I know mine will sound stupid but here it goes:

Ive seen forums where staff sometimes moderates certain boards. Maybe to help ease the stress from the staff themselves, maybe some staff members can moderate certain boards and others to other boards. Like a few can do Sonic Discussion and some can do Chit-Chat and some can go Gaming and so on and so fourth. That way there are moderators for each board and also it gives the individual staff member a choice to focus on the board they more often participate in. Its less work for the staff and more flexiable.

But then again. just my stupid suggestion. lol

I don't know how much of an impact it makes anyway. It isn't a bad idea, but I don't think it'll do any wonders at this point. Mods generally do a better job when they are handling issues as a group, if there was only one mod handling the Gaming forum, one wrong decision could be problematic.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

3 minutes ago, Kaze no Klonoa said:

I don't know how much of an impact it makes anyway. It isn't a bad idea, but I don't think it'll do any wonders at this point. Mods generally do a better job when they are handling issues as a group, if there was only one mod handling the Gaming forum, one wrong decision could be problematic.

I know. I forgot to add to my suggestion about multiple mods on one board like maybe 4 or 5 per board? 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

10 minutes ago, Mikyeong said:

Are suggestions allowed? I know mine will sound stupid but here it goes:

Ive seen forums where staff sometimes moderates certain boards. Maybe to help ease the stress from the staff themselves, maybe some staff members can moderate certain boards and others to other boards. Like a few can do Sonic Discussion and some can do Chit-Chat and some can go Gaming and so on and so fourth. That way there are moderators for each board and also it gives the individual staff member a choice to focus on the board they more often participate in. Its less work for the staff and more flexiable.

But then again. just my stupid suggestion. lol

And what if something big and bad happens in the Green Hill Board for example, and the mod who's in charge of it is not around, and despite the fact there are mods around who can take care if it, they decide not to because it isn't their board to take care of?

It really wouldn't make any less work for the staff, and just make things more toxic around here than what it already is.

[JezMM]

Regarding the rules.  I like the personality they have, but "haha good old roarz" isn't a reason that means anything to a new member, and informal, conversational styles like this could easily turn off some would-be members who percieve the board as a bit of a club that they're not in on yet.  Not dealbreakers, but things to consider if the staff want to keep the tone as is - there could be small consequences for it.

At the very least, the bolded points need to be consistently formal.  Things like "Don't make our eyes bleed" and "will put you on the staff shit list" should be saved for the clarification text that follows, not the concrete, infallible headline.  Unless you guys literally have a formal document behind the scenes called "the shit list" which you place members onto when they spam, and being on that list means something in how you handle future infractions.

Regarding rules as well, I think a little amalgamating needs to happen.  The "no SA3 or Sonic 2006 topics" rule is currently sitting in an easy to miss pinned topic that does nothing to stand out from all the other pinned topics above it.  The fact that we still get a topic every month or two suggests that It's not doing it's job.  If not on the main guidelines page, at the very least the guidelines page, at the bottom, could have links to some organised and formally written topics on each board for rules specific to that particular section.

[Tornado]

On 1/23/2016 at 6:55 PM, Mikyeong said:

Are suggestions allowed? I know mine will sound stupid but here it goes:

Ive seen forums where staff sometimes moderates certain boards. Maybe to help ease the stress from the staff themselves, maybe some staff members can moderate certain boards and others to other boards. Like a few can do Sonic Discussion and some can do Chit-Chat and some can go Gaming and so on and so fourth. That way there are moderators for each board and also it gives the individual staff member a choice to focus on the board they more often participate in. Its less work for the staff and more flexiable.

But then again. just my stupid suggestion. lol

I've been out of the loop for about a month, but I will note that this board isn't really big enough for that to be necessary. It might help if we had mods that frequented certain forums (for example, I never go in the Community or the Showcase forums), so if you feel there are any gaps in terms of board presence in that respect feel free to say so; but generally most of the staff is in enough communication off SSMB and has enough shared interests that divvying up the workload like that wouldn't really do much.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

2 minutes ago, Tornado said:

I've been out of the loop for about a month, but I will note that this board isn't really big enough for that to be necessary. It might help if we had mods that frequented certain forums (for example, I never go in the Community or the Showcase forums), so if you feel there are any gaps in terms of board presence in that respect feel free to say so; but generally most of the staff is in enough communication off SSMB and has enough shared interests that divvying up the workload like that wouldn't really do much.

Yeah, I do agree. It isnt like Serebii's board where there are multiple sections and there are 5 mods per section.  But yeah, I understand where your coming from. 

[Diz]

I can add that in the past, moderators actually used to be assigned to each subsection of the boards for a while. As this was a very long time ago and mostly before my reign, I cannot express much about how it actually worked out, but I believe that most of the moderators had access to staff tools universally on the boards and not just in their sort-of-designated subsection. This, along with the fact that there have been fewer subsections over time, I think is part of why that structure eventually was abolished. After that, individual moderators were (and possibly still are) known to frequent and moderate certain areas and have their main focus on certain sections, but the formalities regarding this were removed, and any moderator is free to step in wherever needed on the boards at any time.

[Chris]

I'll be closing the doors on this topic at the end of January. If you have any further comments, please bring them up before then or PM me directly at any point.

[goku262002]

Heres a thought: why not have Roarey come back for a minute and revise the rules a bit? that way the cheeky brit humor is kept in tact and people gets their rewritten rules, everyone wins basically. besides it should only be the rulewriter that rewrites the rules in my opinion.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Honestly, while I like the cheeky British humor and all, we need to look through it from the eyes of a new member, and if they see the rules like that, it gives them the totally wrong impression of the board. Those rules are likely the first thing they are going to look at, and therefore their first impression to the board. If it's filled with snarky, cheeky humor that makes every mod sound like extremely strict, what kind of impression is that going to give? Humor is good, but being informative, and helping give them a nice welcome is far more important, and in the long run, so much more constructive than just a bunch of snarky remarks.

For example, we recently opened a Discord chat for SSMB Game Night, and on it, we have an entire channel dedicated to explaining our guidelines (I.E, no giving other people shit, no over 18+ topics etc), and we've written them in a way that's not trying to be cheeky or snarky. It simply states what the rules are, and what happens if it happens, or if they go too far.