Reacting to all the recent events and criticism

Disclaimer!
If unnecessary drama, spam or inappropriate content appears in the thread, the user will be warned. In the case of multiple similar posts, the thread will be closed.

Hello everyone!
The first time I've started to write this text, it was meant to be a comment on a blog post. After that I realised the fact, that I don't wish to share this only with a small cyrcle of people, but if I've already started, I wanted everyone to see it.
The original goal of the post was to react to all criticism which we've been getting lately, yet before the moderation meeting we will hopefully have this week.
The following lines were meant to be exactly the said comment, I copied everything as it was written down.
I understand everything. All the criticism, bad words, the distrust in the moderation team. I also fully understand the constant disbelief in us. But you must know a few things.
Let's be honest, until Elten doesn't create a kind of defense or a restriction, a lot, and I mean, a LOT of theglobal rules don't make any sense. You aren't allowed to create alts, yet blindflatearther is online for days with 2 accounts at the same time. And noone notices it. Noone fucking does anything. Don't register under 13. And who prohibits that? From where will you get real personal details of users? Are you looking at what they write on their visiting card? And do you really believe they aren't going to lie? If even Facebook couldn't enforce this rule, we aren't going to do so either.

I, personally, am getting a lot of private messages regarding the question of underages. There's even a specific user, name redacted, who usually asks about our stance of him and similar underages being banned. And to be honest I'm always a bit comfused about what to answer. Because if I say everyone is going to be banned who's under 13, that's not true due to us not being able to look at personal details. But if I say I don't know, what a picture is that about us, as a team? I consider this to be very unfair, that in terms of some underages we are more strict than regarding other individuals. Why did we ban only certain underages, while others are actively browsing, contributing to the community? And what's with the underaged individuals, who have even bought a sponsorship package? An underage person is believed to be underage until he doesn't support the program monetically?
Don't spam and don't flood, yet a year ago we had serious problems with specific users because they flooded conferences until your entire computer froze. And Elten doesn't do anything against this either. We have no flood protection, we have no spam filter, we have no proper identification system... Shall I continue? While I want to help and support the project, I sometimes feel it's a lost case because a large amount of things are not in our hands as administrators and moderators, but they should be hardcoded into the program itself. And until they aren't, believe me, we are also having a freaking difficult job.
A few months ago the developer told me to ban users from conferences by adding them to the community group, and ban from there. What a professional way, seriously. Also, the kick feature has no effect, as when it was developed, someone forgot to put a timer of at least 5 minutes, so the kicked user can't come back for a while at least. So how shall we, as the moderation team, deal with drama in the conferences? What shall we do? We have no weapons in hands, guys.
It's possible to criticize, say constructive things, but listen. We can't change anything until the polish part of the program doesn't collaborate. We can promise to bring down the stars for you, but we are unable to do so, until we can't reach them ourselves.
It's also possible to criticize the program itself, for it being slow, buggy, and so on. But we aren't able to do anything with that either. It's simply not in our hands.
I'm not a programmer myself, but I see basic errors and the facts that a lot of things weren't well thought out and polished before releasing, yes, in the moderation system as well. I'm not trying to hurt Pajper here, I'm just telling you what possibilities we have, and what not. The way that he maintains this project as a one-man army is praiseworthy and absolutely great, despite all the bugs which users experience.
Anyone can say in the polish community everything works well, but with such a system it's hard to believe so.
I just want nothing in this whole situation, but to help the users, and to help Pajper grow the project. But I'm afraid to invite more people, as we don't have the proper ways to moderate a community bigger than this one.
All in all, what to say? With this I just would like to let you understand our strugles, that we are also people, and maybe we sometimes want to act, but we simply cannot. Of course, problems aren't only in Elten itself, but everyone can make mistakes, that's why we are humans afterall.
Thank you a lot, if you've read until the end.

What criticism is this reacting to, exactly? This seems more like a critique of Elten rather than addressing any issue that people might have with the Administration.

I agree that options which moderators get is ridiculous. We don't have needed tools. I can say more. We asked for add it a lot of times in Polish community and development group but hm... Nothing changed.

Hm, and you wonder about this? I have posted so many times in sponsor and development groups that we need better ban systems, that we need this, or that, and is something happening? No! We had the discussion about the elten development already, you remember? Its a lost cais. Give it up. Give the thought or wish or whatever up that there is anything going to change, cuz it simply won't.

That doesn't explain the unprofessional behavior, though. iPhone 15 question, all imma say.

Send me report, will look.

That is enough of a report, you can go into the forum and check yourself, you don't have to get a report blown into your ass!
I am so sick of send me this send me that, do this do that, we'll see, we'll we'll blah blah bluh. Can we finally take actions and not just talk like the last 5 years?

@jonatan, sending a report isn't so hard.
@Daszek but I sent this report as well, if I didn't know that Arctic is a mod, I would guess she is like a normal user and sometimes she wants to make some drama.

Regarding the iPhone 15 topic. I agree I went too far at that point, but to be honest I'm so pissed off when people can't back up their arguments and they just shout into nothingness because they can. I could have worded my arguments better and whatnot, but people still wouldn't really get the point.
I must agree it wasn't the most professional way a moderator can act. However, we are also users, just like you. As far as I remember, noone has attacked anyone personally, noone has broken any rules. I wouldn't call it a civilized discussion, but let's be honest, when did we see a normal debate about iPhones and androids? Never.
As for the first post being rather a critique of Elten, you have a point there. What I was trying to tell is the fact that the root of the problems is mainly not in the team, unfortunately.

Again trying to blame us for something you consider we have done which more or less is what one see's yourself doing. Sorry for the offtopic at this point. And literally, the entire darn thread is a report, or do yall want me Jonathan or others to report every single post of hers in that thread? Then congratulations.

It's not healthy to take everything personally. I'm saying to you as a normal user, just anyone else here. What I've done was to sit down and get my thoughts together. I didn't blame anyone, moreover, some critique is valid. We all must learn to deal with it in a constructive manner. It doesn't help anyone if we decide to silence all the concerns about our work. Yet I think we must draw a line somewhere and explain what is happening.

I mean you did call me stupid in that thread after I asked you to clarify a point you brought up out of nowhere that wasn't at all relevant to the discussion. And it's not just that thread. IT's literally every thread you involve yourself in. The Golden Crayon thread, the mobile devices thread, etc. Also, this thread is rather pointless, because there are 2? 3? Perhaps even 4 threads on this very forum with dozens if not hundreds of posts written by you and others about this very topic. That is to say the deficiencies of Elten. It's been brought up many times before and a lot has been written on it. I'm not sure how you hope this thread to quell any concerns anyone will have.
But let's be blunt for a second. Post 1 was a waste of your time writing for all of the reasons I listed above plus the fact nobody really cares. I haven't heard anyone complain about the things you mentioned, and the issues that people do complain about aren't the issue of the elten software. It's purely human error, I'm afraid. It should also be said that this is a classic hallmark of your style of administrating. Divert criticisms to either others or the software, or just accuse any of your criticism of being power hungry. So yes. Will we get a post actually addressing the issues? Or will we get another nothing burger that'll sap several minutes of our lives we'll never get back?

The fact you haven't heard anyone complaining, doesn't mean people actually didn't do so. It's the usual pics or it didn't happen mentality. You aren't the only person getting information here, and I'm afraid you are one of the people who pay attention even less than others.
Regarding your sentence about calling you stupid. There are a lot of things which are possible to interpret in different ways. If you understood it that way, I'm not sure if I could do anything to convince you about the opposite, because you've already made up your mind.
It wasn't obligatory to read the first post, but you've decided to do so. However, instead of coming here and telling it was a vaste of time, you could have actually contributed by giving us suggestions, or constructive criticism. All we are hearing from you is bitter complaining because users didn't trust you enough. However, I think, smart people would collaborate instead of making our work even more difficult.

Yup. You proved me exactly right. I'm not sure how my messages elsewhere could be taken to be bitter complaining but you managed to perfectly full the criteria I laid out in post 12. So hats off to you.
P.S, not sure how this could be taken to mean anything else but go off, I suppose.
"The frustration of not understanding simple examples can't be healed, I guess. There are some brain-training exercises though, which could help you."

@arctic one of the better posts you've written so far. I like it a lot.

About IOS thread: Mod don't have opportunity to react as a normal user so think before you do something like that again. Publicly I admonish you to stop this type of practice. Leave your frustrations and private nerves behind the forum.
About this thread: Nothing will be changed i think, because dev isn't interested as always.

With this I must disagree. A moderator is also a user and is able to engage in discussions, just as a normal person. The second part is fine though, I acknowledged my mistakes and I'm on my way to correct them.


-- (daszekmdn):
About IOS thread: Mod don't have opportunity to react as a normal user so think before you do something like that again. Publicly I admonish you to stop this type of practice. Leave your frustrations and private nerves behind the forum.
About this thread: Nothing will be changed i think, because dev isn't interested as always.

--

Yes, they can debate like normal users. But you have to contain these types of emotions, both for good and for bad. and this is what is not done well here

I still believe that a moderator should not react like a user. At least in difficult topics where they may let their nerves go. Sometimes not respond is better than write post which will be unbecoming of a moderator.

Fully agree with you, dude. There's a difference in that. But maybe she doesn't wanna understand. But unlike her, I'm not blaming her brain for that. AKA, of course that doesn't mean mods can't post normal posts, but again, if she prefers unprofessional behavior then so be it. Stand to that if so.