Keeping The Sonic Community Safe - Some Changes to SSMB Forum Activity

[Dreadknux]

The Sonic Stadium has always been, from day one, a space where Sonic the Hedgehog fans from all walks of life can interact with each other and make friends without prejudice, judgement or harassment. However, recently our moderation team has had to deal with some extreme incidents which severely risked disrupting the safe, progressive and inclusive environment that we work so hard to maintain.

While these incidents have highlighted the incredible work, epically quick response times and dedicated vigilance of our moderation team (which is mostly a thankless task, so I'd like the rest of our community to give thanks to the team for keeping us all safe), it has also forced us to rethink how we manage our membership in order to avoid bad actors from ruining the experience for everyone else.

Luckily, I had already been thinking about how communities and forums can fit into a world where social media exists and competes for peoples' time. A lot of the ideas I have on this will hopefully be introduced in future updates to the site... but on the back of said recent events, some things have been brought forward and applied now in order to prioritise the safety of the Sonic Community.

• Effective immediately, all existing regular members of the Sonic Stadium forums will be designated with the user group 'Sonic Community'. Your posting and access rights will remain exactly the same as before, it is only your usergroup name that has changed. It is to illustrate that you are an active and positively-contributing member of the online Sonic Community.
  
  NB: This does not mean that your account is invincible from moderator action, or even a ban, should you choose to break our community rules in the future. So it's important you continue to uphold the rules and standards we set for ourselves here.
   
• All new registered users on the Sonic Stadium will be designated with the 'Newbie' usergroup (this is what existing regular members used to be called). A number of posting and access restrictions will be applied, including but not limited to: read-only access in certain specialised forums, no display name changes, no status updates, no signatures, no uploads, no anonymous login, no topic creation ability and edit time limitations.
   
• Users within the 'Newbie' usergroup will also require moderator approval on their first posts/content items before they are seen by the rest of the community.
   
• 'Newbie' users will be considered for promotion to 'Sonic Community' usergroup status once they have proven to be a positive and worthwhile contributor to the online Sonic Community. This will be based on their profile's Reputation Score; other 'Sonic Community' users that find a 'Newbie's content useful or interesting can leave a positive Reaction, which will award +1 Reputation Points.
   
• However, not all Reactions will award +1 Reputation. We have tweaked a couple of the Reactions so that some award points, others do not award anything (they are considered 'Neutral' reactions) and the 'Downvote' Reaction works to remove -1 Reputation Points from another user's score.
   
• This means that newly-registered members must take in the community environment and post according to our guidelines. Similarly, it is the existing/senior community members' responsibility to use Reactions wisely in order to reward good posts and discourage content that runs counter to a safe and progressive environment.
   
• We are aware that, currently, the Reputation system is being used as a de-facto 'User Ranking / Achievements' system (i.e. the more Reputation you earn, the higher your rank, awarding your account with a cool character icon ranging from Chaos to Super Sonic). We will soon be sunsetting this particular use case of the Rep system, and replacing it with a new Achievements system very soon. When this happens, the Reputation system will also undergo a complete overhaul to better represent its new purpose - to positively highlight users that are trustworthy members of the online Sonic Community.

We're tweaking the specifics of this on a daily basis, but broadly speaking we think this will help foster a more collectively responsible community that will respect the guidelines. The more senior, experienced members of the forum will be able to help get great new members into the community, and allow time for more inexperienced forum users to understand the rules and how to engage with the community.

By the way: there will be a special message applied to all accounts which every member must read and accept before 'Completing Their Profile'. This is an introductory message from the Sonic Stadium team outlining the above Newbie > Sonic Community process. If you're not a newly-registered user, please feel free to ignore and click 'Next' on the message in order to dismiss it forever.

Here's to maintaining a safe space for Sonic fans, together! 

[Indigo Rush]

All good and necessary changes. Looking forward to seeing what these upcoming achievements are!

I just hope it doesn't involve avoiding the walls in SA2's kart levels. Too hard.

[Rabbitearsblog]

Good call. I can't wait to see what kind of new achievements we will get with this new set up!

[Eggman Fan]

Seems pretty cool. I'm not exactly the guy to bring this stuff up often, but I'm glad the community here is this great.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Oh, so now we’re taking a page from Retro, huh? Didn’t think I’d ever see the day, but it makes sense.

This is definitely gonna limit the trolling that’s been done by those who have nothing better to do than pissing Sonic fans off.

[lucasdanielpeterrygal]

So are you gonna change forum interface from Invision Community into XenForo? It makes sounds like Validation Section known controversially,infamously for instance,as an example from Sonic Retro Forum these days,nowadays I guess so no more trolling,spamming,shitposting,annoying other digitally even in cyberworld known as Metaverse VR stuff in nutshell.

[Starry Skydancer]

I hope this doesn't discourage new users, but I take it that something happened that I am unaware of.

Moderator-approved posts for new users and inability to make new topics sounds a bit much, but it's understood that if new users make more posts, then moderators have more work to get through.

 

Quote

 

reply-only posting in certain forums

 

So, no topic-creations in certain forums?

Quote

 

no topic creation ability

 

Or all of them?

[MetalSkulkBane]

Not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous with those changes. Not even sure what exactly I fear, just general "big changes can have a outcomes no one expects" vibe.

But I guess in the end this is fairly small community, not IDK facebook. I don't need to worry about mega corporations silencing opinions they don't like or something like htat.

[RealmDragoSA]

I just had a quick question. What happened to the Amy theme choice? That one kind of disappeared since my theme reverted back to the default theme. Will that one be coming back?

Edited April 6, 2022 by RealmDragoSA
Added a line

[Dreadknux]

So for the time being, we won't be changing our forum software to Xenforo, although validation processes are not exclusive to that particular platform. And what works for other sites may not work for us, so there's little point comparing between sites here. We put these new processes in place in order to ensure that new members can have the time to understand what makes a good post/topic, and to get to know the community before they have full posting access.

@Original Character - sorry that's a bit confusing. The first quote is meant to say "read-only access in certain forums". So, no topic creation ability on any forum in 'Newbie' state, but also in certain forums no reply ability either. But that will just be on certain very specialised forums that require extra care (a merch marketplace forum and a personal discussion forum). I'll tweak the wording on that and make it clearer.

As I said, a lot of these specific restrictions (and the parameters we're setting for promotion to full account) can and will be adapted over time as we find the sweet spot between protecting the community from bad actors and providing an inviting space for new users. The ultimate message we want to convey is, if you want to make friends, can communicate pretty well and can follow our rules and values (we'll be updating these so we can be super clear on all of that in the future), you'll be more than welcome here.

It also should go without saying, but I'm trusting the senior/experienced users here to not abuse the Downvote system in order to just shout down content they don't like. It should only be used for content that doesn't make sense, breaks our rules or is suspected to be malicious in intent (in terms of morality, 'politically'-motivated [i.e. far right/___ist/___phobic/'anti-woke' material], abusive, etc).  I'll be keeping a close eye on how the system plays out and will tweak as needed.

@RealmDragoSA - That was a weird system setting error that I've corrected; let me know if it's still happening but all themes should be available again now!

[RealmDragoSA]

@Dreadknux Okay, thanks for the explanation. I think the error might still be happening. I tried checking the list of themes again, and the theme is still not there. 

[Zaysho]

1 hour ago, RealmDragoSA said:

@Dreadknux Okay, thanks for the explanation. I think the error might still be happening. I tried checking the list of themes again, and the theme is still not there. 

Can you check now? It appears to load for me when I checked.

[Darkvizardberrytan]

Been here for over a decade and these changes always catch me off guard lol.

[RealmDragoSA]

25 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

Can you check now? It appears to load for me when I checked.

I checked again and the theme is back on the list. Thank you, @Dreadknuxand @Zaysho.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

14 hours ago, Dreadknux said:

 

It also should go without saying, but I'm trusting the senior/experienced users here to not abuse the Downvote system in order to just shout down content they don't like. It should only be used for content that doesn't make sense, breaks our rules or is suspected to be malicious in intent (in terms of morality, 'politically'-motivated [i.e. far right/___ist/___phobic/'anti-woke' material], abusive, etc).  I'll be keeping a close eye on how the system plays out and will tweak as needed.

I would recommend a very, very small number of downvotes per member on a certain basis.

Might sound a bit much, but I’d honestly think that would be a decent start to prevent abuse—maybe like 3 per week or month. I’d go with the month. And it never rises beyond that or rolls over into the next month (so if you never used any downvotes in one month, you don’t get another 3, it just resets the next month so you still have 3 max).

People abused it the last time we had it, I don’t see that changing after reintroducing it without a way to really make people more conscious of where to use it instead of members downvoting out of spite.

[Osmium]

Not a fan of implementing a downvote system at all. In fact, even thumbs up is something I don’t like very much in a forum environment, but that’s been here so long everyone is used to it. 

Downvoting (and upvoting to a lesser extent) in my opinion tend to contribute to a conversation space becoming less about comparing arguments and opinions and instead more about cliques and brigades where unpopular opinions are suppressed even more than they already are. People become less honest and more incendiary when voting becomes relevant in my experience.

In my opinion it makes relatively tight-knit communities like this and other old forums more into places like Reddit and Twitter where anything will be brigaded to not lose reputation. 

[lucasdanielpeterrygal]

Likewise in Sonic Retro Forum lots of Sonic fans gonna wait in digital lobby like forever.