I really should be going to bed or practicing my lines for my Romeo and Juliet presentation tomorrow, but I can't help but reply to this topic. I've only been skimming the last few pages, but I have to applaud you, frostweaver, on your great sense of... well, common sense.
Since the first few points in your don't apply to me directly (I'm not trying to maintain any sort of ego, but I do try my best to keep an unbiased opinion toward topics and toward other members), I'm just going to skip right up to the other things addressed.
The only reason Pokemon Trivia & Games adds to your postcount where as Fun Time in Poke Land (although from now on in this post I will refer to it as Fun Time) does not is because at the time we began contemplating a forum for games played on the message board that were the miscellaneous equivalent to Pokemon T&G, we were also considering removing the postcount from Pokemon T&G. When Fun Time was added to the community, it went up without the postcount. However, we soon decided it was best not to fiddle with the posting attributes in Pokemon T&G because of the retribution we might have recieved from the many users with dramatically decreased postcounts as a result of turning off the postcount in such a big section. The only other solution, if I remember correctly, was the rather tedious job of moving all the topics out of the forum to the new one... or something along those lines. Although, to my understanding, one with the power to do so can mass move topics. The postcount should be removed, though, in my opinion.
The initial reasoning behind removing postcounts from either forum was because the posts there all seemed to be something to the extent of "P................(grr... 25 characters)" if one was playing Hangman, or something. The debate could go on about whether or not that is worthy of being called a post. Oddly enough, whilst typing this post, I was going through both Pokemon G&T and Fun Time searching for specific examples of the type of post I just gave, but I couldn't find any glaringly obvious ones in the biggest (and most popular?) topics. I searched very quickly, so possibly later I'll have the time to do it properly, but right then my opinion was wavered as people are making very decent posts from what I can tell. So I may have to come back and edit this part. So far, I can see that there will have to be changes made. The stereotypical posts I had imagined don't seem to be present in every thread. You have a very good point, frostweaver. There isn't really any reason why the posts in Fun Time shouldn't count whereas every other post in the forum should. I will try to dig a little deeper into this, though.
As for the next paragraph of your post, thank you for quoting me there, as I don't think enough people realise exactly what being a moderator is. It's not fun and games. It's a job without pay. Not only are you expected to be on a lot, but you also have to do - gasp - work. You have to be able to juggle your social life with your online life. I won't go into too much detail because I will find myself ranting, but I know I have gone through a feeling of inadequacy many times nearly to the point of resignation because of the stress this job can drop upon you. It's not just something you decide to do randomly... you have to be able to stick to it. And yes, I agree with frostweaver in saying that some mods don't necessarily deserve their position whereas many members should be made mods as they could definitely do the job well.
And quickly to say, as for the MOTM thing... I condensed all the staff member categories into one this month as I didn't see the need for seperate ones for moderators, super mods, and praetor/admins (or Praetor/Super Mods; whichever). I actually considered taking it out all together as I don't see why we could get our own status marker like that, but I figured there might be slight retaliation for doing such a thing, so I left it in. Besides, it's sort of a fun category regardless and it sort of shows who's active and who's doing a good job.
As for the veteran topics, I couldn't agree more. This may seem harsh, but quite frankly, I nor many other members really give a flip if you have been a member since June 2003, January 2002, November 2002, or even the Ikonboard before PC "graduated" to a vBulliten. We're all the same, it doesn't make you special. Little celebrations of "my 1 year anniversary!" are sort of okay if you sort of make a little timeline and say why you're happy you've been with the forums for a year, any changes you've noticed, etc. But there is no such thing as a "veteran" member, as many people who have been around since the beginning may not even have as many posts or even "quality posts" as someone who joined a month ago. So why should they get some sort of special status instead of others? I don't want to go too far into this, though. My thoughts on it should probably be apparent now already.
Let's just say, on the issue of role-playing... I completely agree. Not only does it annoy me to no end, this is not the place for it. I see no reason to it and it just seems cluttered and unthoughtful. I'm trying not to be rude or anything, but that's just my plain opinion on it. It's fine to do a little roleplaying in your posts... I do it too. But just don't go overboard because it's completely pointless and irritating.
I apologized if that reply may seem rushed, since it was. My "curfew" is 9:30 PM on weeknights and I began typing approximately 10 minutes after that. Ack... I switch between talking directly to frostweaver to addressing the entirety of PC with my opinions. ._. My apologies about that.
