Teen Forums - Teen Chat, Teen Help, Teen Advice & Support

Greetings,

First let me set up some ground rules for this thread before I explain what it is, this thread is.

All TeenForumz rules still apply to this thread and will be enforced by the moderating team as such. However, we will be lax in that so long as there are no flame wars or direct attacks on any member or group.

This will be the only thread allowed on Teen Forumz in regards to the "state of Teen Forumz" or any further complaints towards user or staff.

Use this thread with the intention of addressing issues and problems you see with Teen Forumz - help us help the community to bring the site forward - not backwards. But do not use this thread as place to attack other members. If you have a problem with someone follow the guidelines in addressing that.

Alright - so this thread is essentially the one location on the forum where we are going to have one massive dialogue about our website and community. It is here that I hope to discuss the problems we see - whether its how our staffing operates, how we as a whole respond to various situations, or why we have seen a sudden spike in thread closures. We will discuss all of that here - but we will also share our ideas on how to move past all of this.

This thread is intended to benefit the site - to benefit the moderating and administrating teams as well as our other staff teams. We need an open discussion - otherwise, we'll only continue in this back and forth nonsense that's getting us nowhere.

Alright, so as a recap, the rules are lax here - but the consequences are higher. Anyone who seeks to turn this discussion into a flame fest or break Teen Forumz rules will find themselves a recipient of an infraction without so much as a blink of an eye.

Now, let us discuss.

David

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love."
- Washington Irving

I shall start this thread on a positive note... with a song that I find fitting, so as not to be off topic:

http://youtu.be/XleOkGsYgO8

Well, this is my fifth day on Teen Forumz and all in all I think things run really well here I'll be back with any suggestions I might have

Dan and Jared raised some excellent points in the previous thread; since when was flaming the equivalent to speaking one's mind? I'm not saying you're not right in closing most of the threads, because you certainly are; but sometimes I just feel as if our right to free speech is being revoked. Yes, things can get a bit heated...but that's not what the definition of flaming is. I just think that staff may need to relax this particular rule - otherwise in these debates we're never going to get anywhere.

Truth be told I'm hesitant to post my thoughts on the matter in any of these threads 'cause I know how infraction-happy the staff are with me...but fuck it - it's worth it if I care.

Yeah as long as we aren't calling people out of their name and telling them to commit suicide (cyberbullying) it's fine. This is (for some of us) the only place for us to let of steam and yeah some people might not agree or try to help and it gets a little hot because well....everyone has they re own opinion.

I'm going to take Kirk's idea and expand abit. I suggested a 18+ section, you wouldn't do that because it's a TEEN site, TEENS will argue, people here just need to "argue" in a productive manner, no call's each other's names, so i don't see why most threads get closed when there is no "flame war" going on, it's just that we do it in a contructive debate to the thread.

This is something that I was going to mention on the other thread before it was closed. It seems a lot of people (and I've heard specifically from others) are hesitant to speak their minds because they are worried about infractions and such. I think that's one thing that we absolutely can not allow as a community. We must allow all of our ideas to flow freely if expressed in an appropriate way. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we should allow flaming or trolling. Everything has an appropriate way of stating it. This isn't an attack on the staff personally, but this forum is going the wrong direction if people are hesitant to say something appropriate because of one reason or another. I think that's an issue that's really gone unaddressed until now.

@David-

I wish to speak to you on MSN tonight if that's possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think the staff need to give the community a clearer definition of what they consider to be flaming/trolling. Right now it just seems that anything remotely hostile, even if it's a healthy albeit heated debated, is considere either and is then locked. Also, just because a member states someone is flaming/trolling, doesn't mean it's true. The MODS need to exercise better judgement in that regard, because in the case of *a certain members* threads it's simply people trying to help and then getting shunned for it.

Thought I'd add something else whilst I've got the opportunity.

Both of these members are intelligent, mature, friendly and helpful. They've been here for a very short period of time, yet they are exhibiting the behaviour that we should be expecting from some of the more older members, both in terms of age and in terms of duration on this forum. It's pretty evident from the above quotes that neither of these members are involved in any petty forum drama, nor are they even aware of it, and that they enjoy their time here. Let's not let childish bickering get in the way of an otherwise wonderful community.

Things are improving, but we've still got a-ways to go.

I haven't seen any problems so far, then again; I haven't been around much in the past couple of days .

For the sake of this discussion - we will define flaming as direct attacks against another member(s) and trolling as posting completely off-topic and irrelevant posts.

I am all for ideas and I am under no illusion that we'll all like each other's ideas or agree with them. However, we are able to be civil about it and since we are able it is required.

I have more to say - but not enough time to write it out. Ugh.

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love."
- Washington Irving