Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-26172435-20190318125819

A few facts:
 * The suggestions forum hasn't been properly moderated, in agreement with the rules, since quite some time. Just like 4 years ago, moderator dedication and admin involvement are quite below standard.
 * The chances that a new suggestion is original and potentially valuable has gradually decreased over time and reached a minimum in my opinion. This was already the case some time ago. I proposed to Mevans in October 2017 to narrow down the scope of the suggestions forum to only improvement of existing features and to only allow suggestions for new features in dedicated threads with a specific feature scope to be posted by and upon initiative of the mod team. He apparently preferred and still prefers to continue with the present forum and its scope (as defined via rules, WntS, FAQ and Planned Features page).
 * The endorsed suggestion overview board hasn't been updated with any endorsed suggestion posted since 1/1/2017. The people for which this board was created don't seem to care.
 * The effort put in updating the wiki pages in order to ensure the wiki provides all info needed for players to know what is in the mod have gradually decreased in time. This happens while we do keep supporting a suggestions forum and numerous other time consuming, partially off-topic, channels in our Discord server. We haven't even succeeded in adding all required new pages for update 34 within a few months after its release. I personally feel ashamed about this and wish to release myself of a burden I carried since May 2016 that has gradually been demanding nearly all of the motivation and energy I have available to voluntarily support this wiki.
 * Both wiki staff and mod team apparently still value to provide a public platform for users to post their suggestions for improvements of the mod, but there is no initiative whatsoever from anyone involved to alter the present system nor to make it live up to the expectations connected to it. Assuming the perspective of all those new and veteran users who wish their ideas to be heard and judged for their value, this is unacceptable to me and I refuse to continue supporting this inconsistent system. I wish to ensure that anyone posting on a suggestion forum is informed about what to expect on what the chances are their proposals will be taken seriously.

As de-facto 'guardian' of the suggestions forum in its current form, since May 2016 up to today, and as there does not seem to be any other showing 'ownership' or some other kind of 'shared responsibility' to continue moderating the suggestions forum with the rules of May 2016, I claim the mandate to make a decision on how to move forward. I pondered about this for quite some time and these are my decisions:
 * As far as I am concerned, the suggestions forum will no longer be considered moderated in agreement with the rules effective per May 2016, as per 1/1/2019. Only the generally applicable rules for all forums are still valid. This means that any suggestion thread posted after 31/12/2019 will not be processed in the system we had: no endorsement, no moderator check on originality, specificness and concreteness and no selection for endorsement, and nor expiry of suggestions either. We have proven to not be able to live up to this for quite some time, the mod team doesn't care, so we better discontinue this in its present form. So, de-facto as of 1/1/2019, the suggestions forum will continue to exist as an unmoderated notice board as of 1/1/2019.
 * The endorsed thread forum and the suggestions archive will not be updated with any suggestion posted after 1/1/2019 and only become accessible for content moderators and admins. Descriptive texts have been adjusted to reflect the new situation.
 * If any wiki staff member desires to resume suggestions forum moderation in any other way than the generally applicable way, they can do so as they please.

This is what I will do:
 * Ensure that endorsed suggestions forum and archive are only accessible for content moderators and amdins.
 * Process all suggestions posted before 1/1/2019 and ensure that they are either moved to endorsed suggestions board or the archive.
 * Ensure that all suggestions posted after 1/1/2019 will be treated equally.
 * Adjust the rules to ensure they are in agreement with the aforementioned decision making.
 * I may eventually complete the endorsed suggestion overview board for the period 1/1/2017 to 1/1/2019 and wrap it up to finalise the work I started in 2016.
 * I will no longer moderate any public forum and refocus my efforts on those parts of the wiki that got me involved and appointed content moderator in the first place: wiki content, especially biome and other pages on environmental features, and the Servers page and server pages.

Cheerio, Alte


 * 1) managingexpecations
 * 2) consistency
 * 3) focus 