Hello,
I am going to come right out and say that I agree with you, even as part of the moderator team. I've never seen the forum get so out of control. By the time I try to deal with something a flame war's started, and there are too many people involved to try to name and shame. Of course, if I try to close a topic another one starts, which leads me to believe I might just have to figure out how the banning system in this forum works once and for all, something I Really did not want to do. Only thing is I don't want to end up banning someone from the wrong length of time.

You don't know how to use the banning feature?
That should be like, day one of moderator school.
If your scared that they will be banned for too long, then just set up some sort of calendar event the day you ban them, to remind you to double check that their able to come back how ever many months from then it is, or at least keep a textual log of banns and expiration dates and share it with the other mods.

It's not like Dark is around, being understandably busy with his new fiance and all, and your pretty much the only active moderator, which means you really need to step up to the plate, weather it seems fare or not, since there isn't anyone else to do so, unfortunately.
I'd apply to help out, and I think I could be pretty objective actually, even though I can get pretty fired up, as long as I'm trying to be understanding, I know I could do it.
But to be honest, even though I would give out warnings first, there would be so many people gone so fast it would make people's heads spin, and I would probably get removed out of fear of abuse, even though these are people that, lets be truthful here, should already have been long gone by now and just keep causing problems, again, and again, and again... With virtually 0 consequence for their actions.
They wouldn't be able to help them selves, warning or no, it's in their nature it seems, and it's not like warnings ever stopped them before... right?

Sorry you have to be the bad guy now Aaron, but you did sign up for this, knowing that this duty might fall to you, so I think it's time to start taking out the trash.
You should probably put up some sticky topic or something first, just to warn everyone that the hammer is about to fall and let them have a chance to be on their best behavior.
And just to be clear, I'm only talking about maybe 5 or 6 people who can't help them selves and just constantly break the rules, along with the idiots that join just to be idiots on some topic that's already been lit aflame, who, lets be honest here, are probably just alternate accounts of someone already causing problems on it anyway.
I know you don't want this to turn into the kind of place where everyone has to watch their back for the tiniest infraction, lest the mighty moderator flies down from the sky to strike them down where they stand, and neither do I, but I don't think that asking for this level of control is an unreasonable request, and it's not the first one of it's kind lately either.

@4 agreed. We had a great balance of, not too "over-moderated" and not too "out of control". I think such a balance could be restored if further recruitment occured, or perhaps especially if Dark came back. No, Aaron you are not a bad moderator, quite reasonable and just in your judgement most of the time, --but you are human so sometimes things could be overlooked by mistake and hints misjudged. I haven't seen any other mods recently besides you and Dark doing active duty though, and with one of you experiencing large-scale life changes, the few mistakes you do end up make are at least a little bit justified. One person moderating hundreds of others and tens of topics at once has got to be hard no doubt.

I'm also with you Steve, this place is changing, and sadly those are not good changes. We need our good old comunity back.
Being a moderator is not an easy task, but I'm up to the challenge if it will make it better.
Best regards, Haramir.

Hey guys. I'm still around, don't worry. Looks like old arq needs to start cleaning house, lol just kidding. But, i have observed the ultrapower topics getting rediculous, but not sure how to approach it myself. I have been going through a good deal in my personal life, mainly the death of my girlfriend, so real life tends to trump gaming a lot of the time. I'll try to be a bit more active around here, as i'm in more or less of a mentally balanced state at this point in time. At roll, i think i personally blew away your topic, mostly because it was the same crap, more ultrapower drama, and you were being flamed for steeling code from what i recall, feel free to correct me if this is incorrect. Can those of you who still cling to this game let it die? Would it be so hard? As you can tell, i'm a bit more heavy-handed then say for example Dark, but i tend to think the way to deal with dramatic issues like this, is to cut the snake's head off per say, and either ban the offenders, or delete the topics in question. Just thought i'd share my point of view.

Hi

Well well well. This was really intresting to read, and I do feel sorry for the loss of a dear person. On the other hand, and that's just my opinion, I think the system of topics being deleted should go a bit more like this:
- Write a moderation warning that the topic is breaking certain rules, and kindly ask the one who opened to either change the topic or to delete it.
- If there's no reaction in a certain amount of time, the topic automatically goes down the drain.

As for the mentioned topic here, by Roel, seriously, this at least had updates, and some other stuff going on. It's adult compaired to the two things in the releases room right now. And even though the code might have been aquired in a atypical way, at least it gives those messing with it either a headake or a learning school on how to or not to procede. Just my thoughts as usual. Anyone have a penny, I just ran out...

Hi,
@2, I can teach you right now how to ban people. Here are instructions on how to ban someone from the forum. These instructions come from my own experience of being an administrator of my own self-hosted PunBB forum.
(Note: The following instructions only work for moderators and administrators. Forum members will not be able to access these functions.)

1. Click on administration on the top menu.

2. Go to users.

3. Select the bans section.

4. Follow the instructions on that screen.

Alternatively:

1. Click on the users username to open the users profile.

2. Click 'ban user' or a variant of that option.

3. Follow the instructions on that screen.

Warning: Banning a user prevents them from accessing any section of the site (and any sites that are connected to this forum via single sign-on (SSO)). If you do not know a good time to ban a user, ban them indefinitely when in doubt. Alternatively, if you feel that this is not a good option, ban them for 1 month or more. Banning someone for 1 hour/day/week will not teach anyone anything. Again, if you don't know a good time, banning people indefinitely is a good option since it allows you to choose exactly when you think they should be unbanned, rather than PunBB automatically doing it for you.

@ severestormsteve1 and others,
It makes me realize just what kind of impact the decision to leave the moderation panel might have had on you all.  Don't get me wrong; I don't sit here and speculate as to whether or not it might have been a knee jerk reaction on my part.  It  wasn't.  I wondered if perhaps the fact that not gaming as often fit audiogaming moderator criteria, but I was already feeling a lot of what post 1 pointed out at the time as well.  Since no one had come forward to discuss these points I figured it was just me, and not wanting to seem like some ultra conservative psycho banning machine I just, didn't act on my feelings, didn't really approach anyone regarding my thoughts or anything of the sort.  I see now that I was wrong and should have done so.  Moderators, this isn't a jab, and please don't take it as such, but speaking from the perspective of one who has been one of you not too long ago I feel qualified in saying you have a job to do.  Your judgment is generally trusted among us including Dark who made you all mods to begin with.  I made a mistake in not trusting my own when others trusted in me.  Bans can be undone if they must be.  Punishments upon this forum and its people don't have to be permanent and, for the most part, decisions are reversable.  Obviously this doesn't mean you all should act with no logic or reason, but I think you already know that.
The obligations and responsibilities I have been given as of late have kept me from really thinking about any of this, and it's been almost two years since I made my decision.  I'm officially homeless at the moment for those of you who don't know.  Such things keep me from actively seeking out a place among you all as a mod once again, and I won't.  What I will do, is say that if the need presented itself for another mod who has previously managed the site and one who has learned a bit about patience since becoming a dad, I would be willing to take that position once again.  I may not game as often as I once did, but I still love this site and its members.

I agree with all of these posts, this forum does need some more moderatin. Now I completely understand personal life, *rest in peace to Arq's girlfriend, but who knows, that may involve adding more moderators. I'm not directly requesting an invite here, because I know if ever I or anyone else gets invited, it's all up to the mods to do that, but if ever I was I'd be up for the challenge. @Arron: If time is an issue, you can have pun-bb automatically unban the person after, oh let's say, 3 months, however long you give it. However Ethin is right, if they need a longer ban, you can always manually unban them whenever you feel they should be. That would be good if, say, in 3 months there's a flame war and then a banned person is unbanned right in the middle of that, anything could happen. While the flamewar could be killed off and then you could unban them.

I'd be willing to be a moderator if asked.

Thing is, @21, that used to happen quite a lot. I understand that mods cannot check each and every single little topic, but if something gets reported then it's causing the community unrest and therefore should be looked into. And I can't speak for everyone here, but I try to report posts/users which I find to be spamming, flaming, etc.

Yeah, that's precisely why I took the time to write post 16, honestly.  Don't ask me where I got the time, either.  lol