Beta Testing Feedback and Feature Suggestions

[Meier Link]

Club Leader Permsissions - This is something I was originally planning on, but Loco convinced me otherwise. So currently Club Leaders are leaders by name, but have no ability to delete or manage their own forums like they do in social groups. Part of this will be figuring out what permissions I'd want to give out, but it would be a separate group and would not classify you as a mod or staff member. It'd be a unique title as Club Leader, similar to how we had Clan Leaders. Depending on things we may even see about making a little title for it like we do for mods. But this is the most uncertain element right now. What I'm thinking is deleting threads and posts. You'll never have warning abilities, just forum maintenance permissions. Warnings will still be handled by the club staff.

Just a fast thought on this issue. Don't we have a report button for a reason? If a club leader feels a post should be deleted all they have to do is report it and it will go directly to the mods of this forum. In turn I think the Club leaders opinions should matter and their wishes be delt with in a timely manner.

[Andromeda]

Oh definitely, the Club Leader's opinion will hold weight. If they want it deleted or an action taken more than likely we'll do it, I can't say always because there's probably cases where we won't. But that is how things will be working currently. The Club Staff will manage all of the maintenance that the Club Leaders request.

The reason I was planning on doing it was because they are the leader so they should have some personal control over the things in their club. Club threads they didn't really have control because it was just a thread, but in the social groups they had some amount of control. I think all they could do was delete things, I don't think they had editing permissions.

So as I said it's something that's in consideration. This is an open discussion so I'll listen to all points. Personally, I'd like to give them a little control, because I want to think we can trust people to be responsible. In the end all they would be granted are limited maintenance permissions like soft deleting, which if it is abused or something is only soft deleted and I can easily undelete something that was soft deleted. Anything else would we would certainly have to weigh the risks, like editing and what not. There's not a lot of maintenance permissions to give out so I think the risk is pretty limited.

But I won't make a decision right now.

[Merlin]

For those of you interested in why Private Forums are not allowed, I will provide you with the list of reasons. Collectively, the staff has been at this for over 10 years. I believe we've compiled quite a list of reasons:

• Having open clubs allows people to view them before deciding if they wish to join or not. If it is hidden, a person honestly has no way of knowing what he or she is signing up for. You cannot see the topics going on or even how active it is.
• Private forums are not displayed in the list to people who cannot access them, they will not know the club even exists. Yes, there will be a list, but the visual queue of seeing it in the forums is far more noticeable than a list in a topic.
• Having a group/club private reduces it's overall visibility on the site to basically nothing, which lowers activity on subjects that would otherwise be discussed by people who could see the forum and join.
• Duplication of clubs would be a high possibility, as there could be a private Naruto club and an open Naruto club, for example. This adds more confusion than is necessary.
• Private forums are harder to manage by the staff, as they would be invisible to the majority of them.
• There is a large subset of people who believe the staff should not be allowed to access a private forum unless they are in that group/club. As it is the staff's job to keep tabs on things, regardless of if they run the forum or not, they can report the issue to the person who is in charge of it. More eyes, more coverage.
• There is a large subset of people who believe that private forums fall outside the reach of the rules. This is emphasized by the last belief that mods should not be allowed in a private forum. An open forum cannot get away with such behavior, as everyone can see your dirty laundry. Open forums discourage miscreant behavior.
• There is a subset of people who become elitist because of the above two beliefs and the overall privacy such a forum provides. They believe that they are somehow better because they have their own private clique that the rest of the forum members can't see.

That covers most if not all of the points on why non-staff forums are no longer allowed to be private. Overall, the goal is to boost activity on TFF and snuff out the idea of hiding in the shadows of secrecy. TFF history has shown that nothing good has came out of having private non-staff forums.