WHY PEOPLE ARE QUITTING CS- A Discussion

[manhunt]

unsure if it will aid in this conversation any, but i asked about warnings a few months ago n if they get taken off your account since i heard that they prevent you from applying for staff positions, n this is what i got back:

[Infailia]

The oekaki example you mention is just a statement. Its nothing like "how dare you do this? It is for drawing, not writing! Get out of here!"
They have to step in often, they cant sugarcoat everything. Its a simple statement, nothing more :)

I have also had many issues with staff seeming hostile. They aren't means, but blunt and passive aggressive in their warnings.
I personally believe it's a copy and paste warning they use rather than typing it from scratch as they're usually the same so I don't personally blame them but it's always upsetting to see it and gives me the same feeling I get when someone should at me irl. I hate it, I hate doing things wrong and most of the time it's an accident.

For example, you put your age in a forum (I personally mentioned a rough age in the words of "I'm in my hundreds" but my actual age, just using hundreds as an example of how I worded It so it doesn't get deleted lol) I thought the rule was you don't say specific age so thought it was okay. It was deleted which is absolutely fair enough but because its an accident, first time doing it, just a message saying " just so you're aware, you're not allowed to mention anything about age, you're only allowed to say that you're an adult etc, this is just to let you know, if you do happen to do it continuously you could be banned, thank you for considering this message and have a lovely day!"

It's basically the same words as saying " you did this. Do not do it again or you will be banned." But nicer.

If people have continuously broke the same rule on purpose then you have to be stern but 9 tomes out of 10 it's an accident and the majority of people react better to kindness than sterness !!



Saying that, the latest warning I had was when I was defending the staff over the security system and my warning was worded nicer than usual and had a smiley face. Just that alone made me not feel like I was being attacked and informed me of a rule I broke <3

I've seen a lot of people commenting on how they're unable to tell the tone of staff posts/percieve them as more negative than they're intended, and I just wanted to suggest that perhaps staff should look into using tone tags when posting.

For example (pulling a quote from romeo & cinderella) "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing" could instead be written as "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing /nm /neu". This would help players, especially neuro divergent ones, better understand the intent behind the message and isn't hard to implement.

As it's been stated that a lot of these seem to be copy-pasted and likely from a list given to staff, perhaps the messages themselves should could through an overhaul.

One again, I'll be using the message "the oekaki board is for drawing, not writing". While it's simple and too the point, something along the lines of "hey, just a reminder that the oekaki board is for drawing, not writing" reads a whole lot gentler and still gets the point across quickly.

Adding to that some tone indicators and/or an emoticon like :) or <3, and you've got a message that players would have a really hard time perceiving as cold/mean/hostile/passive aggressive while still maintaining professionalism.

Professionalism and being cold/blunt don't have to be synonymous <3 /pos /gen

[TheMythosCollection]

I 100% agree to the fact that staff can come off as hostile. There are some staff members who in the past, I've had an amazing experience with ( still crying over the time Vampiric commissioned me ) ! And there are some staff members who I have had an awful experience with. It depends on the staff member. It may even depend on the day.

But staff do tend to come off as blunt and unfriendly. While this may not bother everyone, clearly it affects many users and I don't think their experiences should be erased just because 'oh it doesn't effect ME personally'. Honestly I know I myself can come off as blunt and unfriendly, so when I am messaging people I try to use things like ;w; and other little tone indicators to try and be approachable. And even more so, if someone tells me I came off as aggressive I apologize! And I have not known staff on this website to have a good track record of apologizing for much at all.

Like, there's professionalism and then there's coldness. The amount of people, myself included, on this website that are neurodivergent don't help the way staff is perceived I'm sure. But as someone pointed out, applying to staff was always a choice people made, and if moderating a silly little pet website becomes too stressful due to real life obligations, like they don't need to be staff...? I dunno, man.

I feel like this is my time to butt in again; hii!!
Everything in this spesifc side of the topic has hit home. A little context we're a neurodivergent d.i.d system and use tone tags pretty heavily. So needless to say its came across as nothing but strange to us that people have been straight up passing off the fact that it feels like staff members are hostile. I think that even the copy and pasted messages should have a bit more of kindness added to them. I understand if it's an intentional rule break and has been done before but the first strike should be a warning and it should at least kinda sounds nice? At least I think?

I wanted to give an example of a time where we felt singled out and felt like a staff member was being a little too harsh for the situation given.
One of the first interactions we've had with a staff member was a vauge warning telling us not to have our age in our signature... the thing is we didn't have our age anywhere. They approched us about the fact that we had "System of 30+" in our signature (Meaning that our system members reach up to about 30+ in ammount of headmates/alters) and they thought it meant age. the way it was approched felt like we we're being yelled at. It felt really angry and hostile for a mistake we didn't make. We responed explaining the situation and more less they backed off by saying that they've never seen it formated like that. As someone in that commmunity it's formated like that a lot on places like tumblr and discord so we just kinda thought it was normal and everyone knew that it was common but instead we had a near anxiety attack because we we're new and had no idea if we we're gonna get banned for stating our system count or not. To be fair the idea of our account getting banned was off handedly mentioned in the pm sent to us about the situation. We had been on for maybe not even a week but had been giften pets that we didn't want to loose over a silly miscommunication taken in the wrong light.

I feel like kindess, at the very least in small ammounts, should be practiced a bit more heavily when it comes to first time rule breakers or new members. The last thing I want is for newbies to feel singled out or even worse feel like theyre being yelled at for something they didn't know was wrong.

(I'm so sorry if this sounds jumbled, I haven't slept yet but this interaction has been eating us up since it happened and seeing this thread get popular made me want to speak on the topic. This isn't inteneded to be a vent or anything mean against the mods but our experince still stands and I feel as if people should hear it. Thank you for reading if you made it this far, it means the world /gen)

[imaqtpie]

i think something people may not want to hear, including myself is that a lot of issues boil down to the simple fact "forum culture" is dead. when i made this account i was actively using maybe 20+ forums, guess how many of these forums i still actively use? like 3.

i can't speak to the average age of the site but when i started in 2009 i can say with ease that the average age of the site was orders of magnitude lower, a lot of people here now are your young adults and adults who grew up with this site, or people who found the site via word of mouth from those exact people (obviously this recruitment was still happening in 09, my cousin had been trying to get me to sign up since 2008). we're all a little older now and the issues of forums, their security protocol, their staff culture and other bits that you don't think about while younger have been way easier to notice.

for clarity, i've never played fr. i didn't know fr existed until recently, cs has always been my adoptable page (not that ive used pets or interacted with them since like 2011, i trade bits away when i feel like it) but yeah, the site is stagnant and hasn't moved on, which is fine if that's what Nick and Tess want. i actually kinda appreciate that i can come back to this site every so often and know what i'm expecting when i open the site, but i can understand that the typical phpBB 2000s/2010s forum isn't for everyone, ESPECIALLY long term, the site could probably use a migration/major update if they want to keep the userbase active.


on the topic of warnings, i can't say much. i've been warned once and that was literally in the year i joined i believe, because i was a dumb child (who wasn't?) but if memory served i was actually denied a mod role way back when because of this warning that was i believe 5y+ old at the time. i have no idea how long warnings are stored but i do feel that if i was turned down for this you've lost probably countless potentially great moderators because you're black marking people over old interactions they probably regret. though my memory of this interaction is fuzzy (my last mod application was forever ago, and i don't think it was even that one i got rejected on, maybe 2015 or so?)


ultimately my suggestion would be the following:

do a census of the current userbase.

i feel the staff have lost track of where the userbase's age currently stands, this isn't the age of having thousands of COPPA accounts anymore, i'd wager the large majority on this site is young adults and actual adults. seriously how many kids do you think are interested in the 2000s/10s phpBB forum aesthetic in the zoomer age of tiktok and instant gratification, this site is a relic of a bygone era and the rules should probably lax to reflect that. seriously for a site that is based entirely around making friends and adopting stuff, i can't even post my actual age on here. hell i got in trouble before (no actual warning iirc) for saying im over 18. seriously guys my account was made in 2009 i think people can figure that out on their own. i'm not saying REMOVE ALL RULES LET ANARCHY REIGN. just lax them in line with being slightly more tolerant to stuff that comes with an older userbase.

anyway rant over sorry for incoherent wall of text just my 2 cents as the only person i know who still visits here (my cousin who got me onto the site hasn't logged on in 5 years now, and she loved this place)

[Lanayru]

The oekaki example you mention is just a statement. Its nothing like "how dare you do this? It is for drawing, not writing! Get out of here!"
They have to step in often, they cant sugarcoat everything. Its a simple statement, nothing more :)

I have also had many issues with staff seeming hostile. They aren't means, but blunt and passive aggressive in their warnings.
I personally believe it's a copy and paste warning they use rather than typing it from scratch as they're usually the same so I don't personally blame them but it's always upsetting to see it and gives me the same feeling I get when someone should at me irl. I hate it, I hate doing things wrong and most of the time it's an accident.

For example, you put your age in a forum (I personally mentioned a rough age in the words of "I'm in my hundreds" but my actual age, just using hundreds as an example of how I worded It so it doesn't get deleted lol) I thought the rule was you don't say specific age so thought it was okay. It was deleted which is absolutely fair enough but because its an accident, first time doing it, just a message saying " just so you're aware, you're not allowed to mention anything about age, you're only allowed to say that you're an adult etc, this is just to let you know, if you do happen to do it continuously you could be banned, thank you for considering this message and have a lovely day!"

It's basically the same words as saying " you did this. Do not do it again or you will be banned." But nicer.

If people have continuously broke the same rule on purpose then you have to be stern but 9 tomes out of 10 it's an accident and the majority of people react better to kindness than sterness !!



Saying that, the latest warning I had was when I was defending the staff over the security system and my warning was worded nicer than usual and had a smiley face. Just that alone made me not feel like I was being attacked and informed me of a rule I broke <3

I've seen a lot of people commenting on how they're unable to tell the tone of staff posts/percieve them as more negative than they're intended, and I just wanted to suggest that perhaps staff should look into using tone tags when posting.

For example (pulling a quote from romeo & cinderella) "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing" could instead be written as "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing /nm /neu". This would help players, especially neuro divergent ones, better understand the intent behind the message and isn't hard to implement.

As it's been stated that a lot of these seem to be copy-pasted and likely from a list given to staff, perhaps the messages themselves should could through an overhaul.

One again, I'll be using the message "the oekaki board is for drawing, not writing". While it's simple and too the point, something along the lines of "hey, just a reminder that the oekaki board is for drawing, not writing" reads a whole lot gentler and still gets the point across quickly.

Adding to that some tone indicators and/or an emoticon like :) or <3, and you've got a message that players would have a really hard time perceiving as cold/mean/hostile/passive aggressive while still maintaining professionalism.

Professionalism and being cold/blunt don't have to be synonymous <3 /pos /gen

While I agree with the overall point that staff should put more consideration into how they communicate and come across, I wanted to gently nudge up the point that tone tags are unfortunately not an universal fix and do not help everyone. While I appreciate a good /gen, /j or /lh when needed I personally find excessive tone tag usage quite condescending and belittling as a ND individual. I'm also ESL and find it hard to memorize essentially a whole sub-language of tags for every tone, mood and intent - and I've seen multiple other non-native eng speakers echo this sentiment on the internet. ;v;

[forest.]

Staff can sometimes sound like robots/monotone & that can come off as unwelcoming for nuerodivergent users or even users with anxiety & other things like that. It costs absolutely nothing to be a bit more gentle when someone breaks the rules & it costs nothing to give verbal warnings rather than suddenly giving someone a strike or whatever - I understand that they've likely seen some of the stuff that breaks the rules many times before but that's no excuse to be rude.

okay so… i don’t want to invalidate this at all, because it’s absolutely valid to feel that way. as someone who’s neurodivergent myself (ADHD with pretty intense Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria), i understand how bad it can feel to be told you did something wrong and i empathize with other people’s discomfort here. i see why people would want the extra reassurance of a more “gentle” message. however, if we’re going to be talking about the needs of neurodivergent users/users with anxiety, i think it’s important to remember that there are many types of neurodivergence and sometimes the needs of some neurodivergent people clash with those of others. i’d like to reiterate something lacuna said earlier, which got kind of buried in the thread (hope it’s okay to bring this back up!):

I am autistic and I have had that in my signature for a long time. It is incredibly common for people to bash my communication style because I do not use emojis and I'm not very emotionally demonstrative, and it sucks. I just read through a lot of posts that talked about it. I just want to say I always do my best to be fair and understanding, but I know people see the way I speak as rude and I don't know what to do about it, and it's very possible something I say here will come off that way because I want to say something so people don't insist that they're being ignored.

while the negative feelings associated with rejection can suck, i don’t think it’s ever okay for us to criticize the way that other people communicate online or demand they change that for our own comfort. at the end of the day, the staff are just doing their job, and their hard work and dedication to the wellbeing of this community is more than enough proof that they have good intentions and don’t want to hurt anyone. ultimately, our feelings are our own responsibility. we can express them, and we can do what we need to cope with them, but we shouldn’t demand that the world caters to them. i say this as someone who gets overly emotional from receiving warnings myself. and, as neurodivergent people, we should never make other neurodivergent people feel like they’re doing something wrong for being the way they are and communicating the way that feels natural to them. so no, i don’t think policing the tone that staff use when they give warnings is a fair or practical request, i’m sorry.

[macintalk]

-snip- seriously how many kids do you think are interested in the 2000s/10s phpBB forum aesthetic in the zoomer age of tiktok and instant gratification, this site is a relic of a bygone era and the rules should probably lax to reflect that. -snip-

this! there are barely any kids even on CS anymore and the games kids ARE playing are horribly moderated compared to CS. i don't want CS to suddenly be like, inappropriate or weird or stuff like that, but most kids are on their phones playing games like roblox, scrolling through tiktok, etc. they are NOT playing games like CS and that's just a fact. the only kid i know who plays CS is my little cousin, because i introduced him to it. he really enjoyed it for a little bit, but i only allowed him to trade with my friends who i trusted because while this site is moderated very well in regards to coppa rules and stuff like that, there are a lot of really rude people on this site and i didn't want him to get ninja'd or send unfair trades to people who would be rude to him about it. he's since kinda stopped playing CS, but he did really enjoy it for a few months, so i'll admit i can still see the site being enjoyed by kids, but it seems like a very rare occurrence and most kids that do play CS were introduced by someone older in their lives who plays it themselves.

[Malleus]

While I agree with the overall point that staff should put more consideration into how they communicate and come across, I wanted to gently nudge up the point that tone tags are unfortunately not an universal fix and do not help everyone. While I appreciate a good /gen, /j or /lh when needed I personally find excessive tone tag usage quite condescending and belittling as a ND individual. I'm also ESL and find it hard to memorize essentially a whole sub-language of tags for every tone, mood and intent - and I've seen multiple other non-native eng speakers echo this sentiment on the internet. ;v;

Oh 100% agree on this. I've never been good with excessive tone tags and most of them I don't even know what they mean when I see them. For me it created this weird language barrier that even as an English speaker just confused me.

That's why I use stuff like ;w; ono owo <3 and other little emoticons because they are kinda more language universal.

I'm not knocking that tone tags work for a lot of people nor do I think they are bad! But man they're hard for me to read and I don't have a dictionary knowledge of them. The only one I ever use regularly is /j but when I say dumb things to my friends who obviously know without the tag what I said was a joke.

[Infailia]

-snip-
I've seen a lot of people commenting on how they're unable to tell the tone of staff posts/percieve them as more negative than they're intended, and I just wanted to suggest that perhaps staff should look into using tone tags when posting.

For example (pulling a quote from romeo & cinderella) "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing" could instead be written as "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing /nm /neu". This would help players, especially neuro divergent ones, better understand the intent behind the message and isn't hard to implement.

As it's been stated that a lot of these seem to be copy-pasted and likely from a list given to staff, perhaps the messages themselves should could through an overhaul.

One again, I'll be using the message "the oekaki board is for drawing, not writing". While it's simple and too the point, something along the lines of "hey, just a reminder that the oekaki board is for drawing, not writing" reads a whole lot gentler and still gets the point across quickly.

Adding to that some tone indicators and/or an emoticon like :) or <3, and you've got a message that players would have a really hard time perceiving as cold/mean/hostile/passive aggressive while still maintaining professionalism.

Professionalism and being cold/blunt don't have to be synonymous <3 /pos /gen

While I agree with the overall point staff should put more consideration into how they communicate and come across, I wanted to gently nudge up the point that tone tags are unfortunately not an universal fix and do not help everyone. While I appreciate a good /gen, /j or /lh when needed I personally find excessive tone tag usage quite condescending and belittling as a ND individual. I'm also ESL and find it hard to memorize essentially a whole sub-language of tags for every tone, mood and intent - and I've seen multiple other non-native eng speakers echo this sentiment on the internet. ;v;

I'm glad you brought this up! It's something that I hadn't really thought about, but what you've said makes a lot of sense and I'm glad to know this now <3

[manhunt]

as someone who relies on tone tags and so knows a lot of lesser known ones, im gonna have to agree w lanayru here, tone tags are not going to be a universal fix.

i do agree with making the text sound a bit less blunt as iwannabefriendswithya suggested. saying something like "just a heads up that text without art is not allowed on the oekaki!" instead of "the oekaki is for drawing, not writing." makes a complete difference ! its not sugar coating either since it gets the point across in a nicer and frendlier tone.

anyways @ forest's post, while lacuna in specific may sound blunt due to their autism, the issue is most, if not all the active mods right now sound extremely blunt and rude. we're not policing anyone, we're just asking for the mods to sound a bit kinder, especially when a lot of them have shown themselves to show some emotion on other threads, even if it's just by using an exclamation point. one mod cannot speak for all mods of the site.