Originally Posted by GH0

Why where the questions being addrssed more of a repetitive/reduntdant/non-addressing questions instead of something that is constructive and relevant to the recent on goings or new events that have happened? (Yes that is an opinion, but several people asked it)

The questions that were asked were chosen based on a number of criteria. First and foremost the question had to be more constructive than inflamatory. Many of the questions that were rejected would have done very little for improving anything, but simply promote more unruly behavior. Also, some questions had to do with private matters that will be addressed privately. Other questions were really not questions at all, or questions that had no answer.

Why was the change of the mods (orange/yellow) to become admins (red) never publically mentioned? Because it was a public change that everyone can see, yet it confused everyone because no one knew anything about it (as a user that is).

This change was made because the behavior in the chat room became unbearable. The mod staff required more ability to control the problem members. This change did not affect the rules nor how they were carried out. The only change was the all chat mods could ban a member if the need came about. No annoucement was required since the chat mods in charge of deciding which members should be banned hadn't changed. This change was basically a housecleaning task. The amount of authority is still the same. If a member misbehaves in front of a "Gold" mod (called operator) that operator can determine that the member requires to be banned. That task had to be carried out by a "Red" mod (called administrator). This change merely facilitated the exact same outcome that would have happened anyway. The same amount of agreement still needs to be in place before any member is banned.

While the forum seems to be well maintained in the role of moderators and managers know what is going on, and yes I have seen a few hiccups when they are not informed and I am not referring to the Spam Squad membership extension. However in chat, this does not seem to be the case. It seems (form a user perspective) that current moderator(s)/admin(s) that they either don't clearly communicate effectively together or they do not post all the information required when something is done. Now, the new rules are supposed to help or resolve some of the recent situations. However these new rules are on the majority side either very similar or almost exactly the same. How are these new rules going to reflect or help change any situations? It feels like something is lacking on behind the scenes.While I do realize that the going ons behind the OCN Users eyes are supposed to be kept secret, I feel that this is the biggest flaw in the whole infrastructure that OCN has. How is a user supposed to feel like he can know rely on a staff member if there is no communication going on between them? How is the OCN staff working on this to help relieve the tension of its members. Is there any sort of system put in place that if a staff member doesn't do something, say post a log to a kick or ban, that a resulting consequence is put in place? I the basic of what I am trying to ask is that what is being implemented in rules for moderators and administrators of chat. Because if a new rule system is put in place, a corresponding one on how the rules are going to be dealt with the same? (I also would like to note that I am not against any of the mods actions as I do see in a majority of the ways where they are coming from, but from multiple user perspectives, this seems to be an issue.)

The major difference between the "new" rules and the "old" rules is something that happens behind the scenes. The forward facing portion of the rules are indentical to what they have always been. In our previous iteration we didn't record warnings, kicks or freezes. We deemed those events to be minor and therefore didn't see any reason to write them down. Our hope was that the members would realize that we frowned upon whatever action they were doing and simply stop. In practice that method proved to be lacking. Some members repeatedly broke small rules despite being warned, frozen or in some cases- kicked. After a while we began to keep a list of members that habitually violated rules, but it wasn't anything specific. Even this proved to cause more problems because no mod really had a great handle on what each member had done. Since so many different mods come in and out depending on the time of day, it was impossible to keep tabs on what was going on. Prudence dictated that we treat habitual violators differently than a new member that didn't know any better. Now we do keep track of individual events that take place. It will server two major purposes: first it will let each moderator know when and why a certain member has been punished. Secondly, it will create a system by which we can effectively keep track of what sorts of punishements get handed out. The staff is aware that some punishments vary from situationto situation. Having a better idea of how other mods handled the same type of action should help to get all the mods on the same page. Please keep in mind that each situation is a little different. It wouldn't be accurate to simply say "whenever x member does y, the moderator will z". It will still be up to the individual moderator to do whatever they feel necessary at the time.

In addition, the management is working on creating more continuity up the hierarchy. Accountability and consistency are among the top things to be accomplished in this move.

Originally Posted by FieryCoD

Just want to add a follow-up to GH0's second question. Why the transition and necessity of the yellow/orange to red?

And also, I wanted to repeatedly mention the compatibility of chat with browsers such as Chrome. I constantly get alot of HTML code followed along with a link that I post in chat whenever I use it. It really gets to my nerves. Will the chat ever be updated to work with Chrome?

None of the staff at OCN has any control over how the chat server works internally. If we had anything that was in our power to change to improve compatibility we would do so, but there just isn't anything we can change. If the chat server is running (as evidenced by members chatting on the ocn homepage) then the problem cannot be addressed by our technical staff. If you cannot get in and neither can anyone else, please alert the staff and we will take a look.

Originally Posted by theCanadian

Should a "verbal warning" where teh moderators ask a member to stop something be equated to an "official warning".

ex: catmmm warned theCanadian

is the same thing as

catmmm says, "theCanadian: please refrain from doing that"

I believe it should.

Yes, those warnings are identical.

Also, ASCII art was talked about, and permitted. Why the change? It has always been treated as spam up until this point.

If you post a peice of ASCII art that looks like art it will be fine. There have been many instances where ascii text just looks like spam. If you post something that looks like spam you will likely be removed for spamming. In reality ASCII art in the chat room just doesn't work. Nobody can predict when another comment will be posted, and the chat server itself will repeat your information every few lines. If you post something small there will be no issues. However, we will now be implementing a 5 line limit to ascii art in the interest of preserving the intention of the chat room: to promote discussion and general chat. If you desire to post ascii art that is larger or want to share it with the whole forum, please post it in the art section in Off Topic.

Originally Posted by CyberDruid

Burn + Electricty + Water =
But the man has the patience of a saint...