A better forum via better moderation

[pingpongpaddy]

I just started to catch up with the drama and I am baffled. The moderation on the forum is pretty good, especially if you know how it goes on most forums. I think people should accept that mods have authority and have to make decisions. If you don't agree or understand, ask! In dm. A single thread to discuss modding decisions is also good (which what this is I guess).
I still don't think any mod decision that has been made was significant enough to warrant personal grudges.

Day to day stuff is ok. Any inexperienced mod can do that. The problem is that when flexibility humility and imagination is needed for the time that the likes of Zeio and Tony sacrifice to do what they do, we find that we have a moderator who is more concerned with winning arguments than solving problems

 

[NextLevel]

JackJohnson said:
Fair enough. I’m not sure what you said in the email to him at the time but if there was no sincere apology in the email that might be why he did not reply.



Jack Nextlevel is just stringing you along. He obviously is not interested in building bridges. He apologised to a new member on a trivial matter, Hoping, the absence of apology for Tony might be overlooked.
The fact is that Tony is still a member here. The problem is that he won't comeback until Nextlevel expresses some regret and gives some hope that, in the future his posts won't be messed with without prior warning. For a prolific poster like Tony, it's very frustrating for him to have items which he has spent substantial time on to create for our members.

Nextlevel is a prolific poster and a dedicated dealer with the spam problem and other simple tasks that moderators do:

Is he an ideal moderator?
No, because he has shown himself to be someone without the integrity to deal with issues of communication and representation fairly, and has given some very slippery responses to the questions about his actions and often omits to give the full facts.
An ideal moderator would have avoided the extreme steps taken if possible and would have retained backups so that problematic deletions could be recovered

@pingpongpaddy,

Please refrain from discussing my character without hard evidence. Thank you. You are following the zeio trope of "moral bankruptcy" and you can see what evidence had for his claim.

Can you post where you got your ideas of what Tony wants from? If you can guarantee that it comes from Tony, then we can start an agreement. If not, please stick to what you know for sure. While my actions precipitated Tony's absence, I suspect they are not what keeps him away from the forum. But I am open to hard evidence, not speculation.

Thanks,
NL

 

[NextLevel]

Day to day stuff is ok. Any inexperienced mod can do that. The problem is that when flexibility humility and imagination is needed for the time that the likes of Zeio and Tony sacrifice to do what they do, we find that we have a moderator who is more concerned with winning arguments than solving problems

If my resignation is sufficient to bring Tony back, I will resign. Does that suffice as a solution to you? Or is that to win an argument?

 

[Tyce]

It would take maybe a tenth of the critics to help with the moderation process. All it takes is to volunteer. @NextLevel did, and it has put him in positions he's absolutely not happy about.
This open hostility is sure to scare off future volunteers and what happens when we run out of those?
We've seen before how spam gets out of hand quickly, how argument escalate to levels well beyond this thread.
If that's not what you want to happen, either volunteer or find a way to come to terms with the current moderation situation. This repeated dragging up of old crap sure isn't helping, regardless of who was right or wrong back then.

 

[pingpongpaddy]

@pingpongpaddy,

Please refrain from discussing my character without hard evidence. Thank you. You are following the zeio trope of "moral bankruptcy" and you can see what evidence had for his claim.

Can you post where you got your ideas of what Tony wants from? If you can guarantee that it comes from Tony, then we can start an agreement. If not, please stick to what you know for sure. While my actions precipitated Tony's absence, I suspect they are not what keeps him away from the forum. But I am open to hard evidence, not speculation.

Thanks,
NL

NL
Glad to know you are open to hard evidence, and we all know you have in person knowledge of the relevant events, also you are the mod in charge with a duty to put the needs of the Forum before your own personal preferences.
In spite of everything I respect the work you have done and I don't envy your situation. I had a similar decision to make when I retired from modding DTTW which was a wrench, but luckily I found happiness as a regular member again and the Forum continued back to normal.
thanks
ppp

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

FWIW, I seem to recall just before Tony left he mentioned that he was potentially becoming a coach for a pro player. His continued absence might simply be taking on this new challenge.

 

[JackJohnson]

FWIW, I seem to recall just before Tony left he mentioned that he was potentially becoming a coach for a pro player. His continued absence might simply be taking on this new challenge.

I remember at the time him talking about maybe becoming a coach again if he was asked to by a pro player but I don’t think he was 100% all in on it and I believe that was mentioned a few months before the incident last year.

I think at the time he mentioned that he has a young family and he only went to India to help with Fan Siqi with the translations last year since he was her manager. From the way that he talked he didn’t seem like he wanted to go to the coaching route again but of course the last 8-9 months he has been away he may have changed his mind. If he did decide to go and coach a pro player we would have seen him at one of the WTT events so far and that doesn’t appear to be a case unless he is coaching a junior player who has not played in any WTT events.

But I personally don’t believe he left the forum due to taking on this challenge of becoming a coach because before he left he personally message me on here and let me know that Nextlevel moved his posts and mine to a different thread and he seem furious about it and that was the reason why he left TTD.

He also mentioned 10 other users wanted to remove Nextlevel as a mod but did not name who those users are.

 

[zeio]

He also mentioned 10 other users wanted to remove Nextlevel as a mod but did not name who those users are.

Definitely not me, not until the current event.

I could've sabotaged it when they were looking for new mods to join. That's why I didn't even take part in that thread.
https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/fo...moderators-who-are-active-on-the-forum.38312/

 

[P1ngP0ng3r]

It would take maybe a tenth of the critics to help with the moderation process. All it takes is to volunteer. @NextLevel did, and it has put him in positions he's absolutely not happy about.
This open hostility is sure to scare off future volunteers and what happens when we run out of those?
We've seen before how spam gets out of hand quickly, how argument escalate to levels well beyond this thread.
If that's not what you want to happen, either volunteer or find a way to come to terms with the current moderation situation. This repeated dragging up of old crap sure isn't helping, regardless of who was right or wrong back then.

Completely agree.
You don't like how the mods are acting? Reach out to Dan and volunteer for moderator. But only if you are fully committed to the task.
If your request is denied, move on as a member on the forum. Is your personal vendetta against another member or mod standing in your way to enjoy your time on this forum, leave.

In my past, I was moderator on a public forum and 2 discord servers. The amount of time and energy you put in this as a moderator is huge. I'm glad that mods are acting the way they do at the moment on this forum. And just as in real life, you can't satisfy everyone. But just stop this childish whining and b*tching about it in multiple posts. Just leave if you don't like it here FFS.

 

[NetProphet]

Have any of the mods especially Nextlevel reached out to Tony recently and apologized for how the situation was handled before he decided to leave TTD permanently?

Apologise why?
It's clear you don't remember what actually happened.
The apology should come the other direction

 

[NetProphet]

I don't know. If your Nationals MP could be this ignorant, imagine the Australians who have voted her in that I may run into here.

Even a Chinese Australian from Hong Kong felt embarrassed for her. And by the way, he called her [self-censored] in the video...

Nationals MP corrected after claiming Chinese flags flying above Parliament House
https://www.news.com.au/national/po...e/news-story/bb1e6143bd7e43b4cb869fe76d6354f3

無知得可怕！澳洲國會議員問了一個涉及中國之問題，卻讓全球震驚了！ (Terrifying ignorance! An Australian member of parliament asked a question involving China that shocked the world!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjUZ13TFot8

Just because an idiot is leading a country doesn't mean that everyone in the country is an idiot, or that everyone voted for her.
How many people voted for Xi Jinping?
Oh wait.....

 

[NetProphet]

No, I have not, and after reading the posts here, I am far less likely to do so than I would have been before this thread. I emailed and reach out to Tony back then and got no responses. And no one has given me any indication that he has any interest in listening to anything I have to say even though I have communicated to people who have reached out to me directly especially on PMs that I have no problem doing just about anything. I am fairly surprised that with all the fans he has on TTD that want him back, there is no idea from anyone of whether he could come back and under what conditions. And if his fans cannot figure out what it would take and at least backchannel to me what my role in that could be, then I doubt I am the man to do it.

Fans, back channel, people making moves to bring someone back 😂
The fact that everyone seems to see it like this now is proof of that mans overinflated ego and outright narcissistism, the two things that got out of control leading to the mess in the first place.
A normal well adjusted person who doesn't require his entire life to mirror his day job (being an unchallenged God who lectures kids) would have said fair enough and sorry the very next day and moved on.

 

[pingpongpaddy]

I just contacted Tony, and he has confirmed to me that he will not be returning to TTD.
It seems that there is no hint of compromise on either side, so we have lost one of our core posters permanently.
From my side big appreciation to Tony for his contributions.

@Dan I just hope time can be found from his other interests to fix the mod situation before a decline sets in

 

[Tyce]

I just contacted Tony, and he has confirmed to me that he will not be returning to TTD.
It seems that there is no hint of compromise on either side, so we have lost one of our core posters permanently.
From my side big appreciation to Tony for his contributions.

@Dan I just hope time can be found from his other interests to fix the mod situation before a decline sets in

The fix is pretty easy, stop railing the mods.

There's no reason to keep bringing this stuff up, the situation isn't going to change as you have established. The only thing that would be accomplished by continuing to drag it on is bringing the forums atmosphere further down.

The other way to resolve this is a complete crackdown on anything that looks like criticism or insult. I don't think that would be good for the community.

 

[NextLevel]

FWIW, I seem to recall just before Tony left he mentioned that he was potentially becoming a coach for a pro player. His continued absence might simply be taking on this new challenge.

I am 95% sure that Tony is doing something more productive with his time. Even as webforums are no longer what they used to be in the era of social media, this one has decent traffic and participation. I tried to get some of my connected friends to join but when I look at how Matt gets treated and the fact that posters like @pingpongpaddy think it is more important to massage the ego of valuable contributors than to find valuable contributors who are willing to find value in the forum and the community, I have given up that as well. I am not going to be a moderator forever but when I am done, I hope some members will think over how important it is certain things to function properly. I can't place it all pn membership, unless we use AI more actively for moderation, the site is likely understaffed from a moderator perspective. But that all comes down to vision and resources.

 

[jonol]

Just because an idiot is leading a country doesn't mean that everyone in the country is an idiot, or that everyone voted for her.
How many people voted for Xi Jinping?
Oh wait.....

She's also not leading the country by a long shot. The party of the person in question hold about 5% of the total seats in our government.

Most likely any Australian you run into would also think she's an idiot.

 

[NetProphet]

I just contacted Tony, and he has confirmed to me that he will not be returning to TTD.
It seems that there is no hint of compromise on either side, so we have lost one of our core posters permanently.
From my side big appreciation to Tony for his contributions.

@Dan I just hope time can be found from his other interests to fix the mod situation before a decline sets in

Oh welcome back Paddy.
Nice of you to drop by a year later to tell us all how terrible the place is.
Can you manage an explanation for us as to how you manage to view Tony and a victimised party in what happened?
You do know that he was blatantly breaking forum rules on postings (fact) and flipped out when the moderator stepped in right?
And then he allowed his person grievances with that person to take over.
My meaning is that if Karl or NDH had done exactly what NL did I'm quite sure he'd have been fine with things.
You've all let your personal thoughts on NLs prolific posting blind you to his job as a mod in here.

 

[NetProphet]

She's also not leading the country by a long shot. The party of the person in question hold about 5% of the total seats in our government.

Most likely any Australian you run into would also think she's an idiot.

Good point and agreed 👍
Still interesting how Zeio chooses a voting angle to slate the West when it 'conveniently' cannot be thrown back at him.
The irony is dripping here, cracks me up.
Democracy is clearly the problem right?
So dictatorship is the answer.
But his main criticism of NL is that NL is (according to Zeio) being some kind of a dictator 😂

There are just so many circles I get dizzy in trying to follow some peoples thinking 😵‍💫

 

[zeio]

Just because an idiot is leading a country doesn't mean that everyone in the country is an idiot, or that everyone voted for her.
How many people voted for Xi Jinping?
Oh wait.....

New report reveals school refusals are on the rise | ABC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0wyT6mwm4o

School retention, attendance rates continue to trend downwards
https://www.afr.com/policy/health-a...s-continue-to-trend-downwards-20250210-p5lawo
School leavers shun uni, enrolments hit near-decade low
https://www.afr.com/work-and-career...nrolments-hit-near-decade-low-20240101-p5euhl

20% of Australian students don’t finish high school: non-mainstream schools have a lot to teach us about helping kids stay
https://researchnow.flinders.edu.au...ents-dont-finish-high-school-non-mainstream-/

4 School education - Report on Government Services 2026 | Productivity Commission
https://www.pc.gov.au/ongoing/repor...tion-and-training/school-education/#retention

---

What is the ranking of the drop-out rate at Australian universities?
https://www.zhihu.com/en/answer/972760551

---

2015/10/26
Alarming drop-out rates at Australian schools
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a48AGqEds5I

 

[JustANoob]

Good point and agreed 👍
Still interesting how Zeio chooses a voting angle to slate the West when it 'conveniently' cannot be thrown back at him.
The irony is dripping here, cracks me up.
Democracy is clearly the problem right?
So dictatorship is the answer.
But his main criticism of NL is that NL is (according to Zeio) being some kind of a dictator 😂

There are just so many circles I get dizzy in trying to follow some peoples thinking 😵‍💫

The guy is a self-righteous hypocrite and a propagandist, and thats the actual reason this topic exists at all, if anyone believes even for a second he cares about Tony or anybody else I have a bridge to sell them. The dude is here to spam anti-west propaganda wherever he can and gets mad when his posts get moved and get less visibility. There is no place with perfect moderation, if someone say otherwise just means they happen align with the moderation there. Zeio should be happy the moderation here is so tolerant, cause it if it was me Id be removing political posts without even an explanation.