Ask the Mods questions about the Forums!

[Ben J. Kerman]

What is TOTM and what does it mean?

[OrdinaryKerman]

Just now, Ben J. Kerman said:

What is TOTM and what does it mean?

Thread of the Month

[Starhelperdude]

was the friday sticker/emoji removed? I can't find it anymore

[Admiral Fluffy]

2 minutes ago, Starhelperdude said:

was the Friday sticker/emoji removed? I can't find it anymore

Maybe its only available on Fridays?

[adsii1970]

On 5/5/2021 at 11:01 PM, Ben J. Kerman said:

What is TOTM and what does it mean?

Thread of the Month is something we do to promote threads recommended by forum members. The threads are ones that can best be described as ones that make a positive impact on the community. The mods can be fan fiction (stories, artwork, etc), mods, forum games, "getting to know you" threads, serious scientific discussion, spaceflight discussion, or anything else you can imagine.

TO NOMINATE  A THREAD FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a thread you feel should be considered for next month's thread of the month, then use the "report comment" feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the comment. Please put in the text field of the report post "Nomination for thread of the month" and we will do the rest! You can always nominate more than one thread, too.

18 minutes ago, Starhelperdude said:

was the friday sticker/emoji removed? I can't find it anymore

Yes, it was removed by the administrator of this forum. It was not an easy decision to make but there were several members, myself included, which were having health-related complications because of that and similar GIFs.

If you want some information about genearl photosensitive health-related issues, you can visit this post:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/profile/89014-adsii1970/&status=10158&type=status

 

[Guest]

Do you find certain moderating duties monotonous at times? I’d find constantly moving threads to the right section because the OP was too lazy to put it in the right one really frustrating personally.

Do you ever regret becoming a moderator? Can you quit or is it like a gang thing where you sign up for life and Snark threatens your family if you try to leave? 

And linked to above, has a moderator ever gone into meltdown and randomly banned people or deleted stuff before being stopped and institutionalised?

All genuine questions.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

4 hours ago, FruitGoose said:

Snark threatens your family

 

4 hours ago, FruitGoose said:

has a moderator ever gone into meltdown

these two things may be related

[CatastrophicFailure]

So, here’s a question, probably not exactly the right sub forum,  but...

Are KSP stickers on Amazon & such officially licensed or at least condoned? I’m guessing not, but I don’t see any on the official merch page either. 

[Dr. Kerbal]

What does it mean when a thread is HOT? Because the MEGATHRAED is labeled that. So. Is this a good sign? Has it happened before?

 

[Vanamonde]

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Do you find certain moderating duties monotonous at times? 

Sometimes but it's not that bad. 

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Do you ever regret becoming a moderator?

No. 

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Can you quit or is it like a gang thing where you sign up for life and Snark threatens your family if you try to leave? 

Since we are volunteers, we can un-volunteer at any time. 
 

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And linked to above, has a moderator ever gone into meltdown and randomly banned people or deleted stuff before being stopped and institutionalised?

No. 

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Are KSP stickers on Amazon & such officially licensed or at least condoned? 

I couldn't say but I'll let the guys know some stuff is there. 

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What does it mean when a thread is HOT? 

This feature was added a few software updates back. It means the thread is very active. 

[HyperDraco]

How does it feel to be a mod and what are your daily responsiblities 

[Snark]

On 5/14/2021 at 8:36 AM, FruitGoose said:

Do you find certain moderating duties monotonous at times? I’d find constantly moving threads to the right section because the OP was too lazy to put it in the right one really frustrating personally.

It's a mixed bag, but for me, at least, the answer is generally no.  For a few reasons:

• There are several of us, so we share the load.  The amount of moderating any one moderator needs to do is... well... moderate.  (Ahem.)
• The only thing that really is quite repetitive (on a frequent, daily basis) is approving posts in the queue (e.g. from new members who haven't made enough posts yet to get unqueued).  But that's literally just a quick glance and a few mouse clicks, so it's not much of a "burden".  Plus, for me, at least, any tedium is easily offset by the little endorphin bump of "oh yay, someone new to the forum!"
• Other routine stuff, like moving threads to the right section, is also generally just a few mouse clicks... and also doesn't come up all that often.  Most users do the right thing most of the time, even new ones.  And people tend to learn pretty quickly.

On 5/14/2021 at 8:36 AM, FruitGoose said:

because the OP was too lazy

That's one possible read on it, sure.    However, one thing you learn pretty quickly on this job is not to leap to conclusions about what's going on inside the headspace of someone you don't know.  When your only "view" of a person is a few typed words on a screen, it's really tempting to read things into it that simply aren't there.  For example, just because they made a mistake doesn't necessarily mean they're lazy-- much more common is that they're simply clueless, which is only to be expected from someone who just arrived in a new place and doesn't know the ropes.  (They're quite often grateful and/or apologetic afterwards, even though they haven't really done anything wrong.)

Or, for example, the person may just be a kid-- this is not an adults-only forum.  But you can't see how old they are when you're reading the post, so if you're looking at something that a 10-year-old wrote and picturing someone in their 20s or 30s writing that, it would be easy to get annoyed; but that would be missing the mark.

So, the key to all of this is to be unflappable, to force oneself not to leap to conclusions about people's motivations and attitudes, and just view it as "there's something out of place, nudge it back where it goes, no biggie."

On 5/14/2021 at 8:36 AM, FruitGoose said:

Can you quit or is it like a gang thing where you sign up for life and Snark threatens your family if you try to leave?

I find that it's more efficient just to keep talking at them until they agree to stay just to shut me up. 

Seriously, though... people do have lives, and sometimes they move on with them (we're all just part-time volunteers, after all, it's not like we're on a contract).  Moderators do come and go, over time.  So from time to time a moderator will leave, and from time to time we add new ones to make up for that.  We try to maintain the team at a reasonable size to share the load.

On 5/14/2021 at 8:36 AM, FruitGoose said:

And linked to above, has a moderator ever gone into meltdown and randomly banned people or deleted stuff before being stopped and institutionalised?

Something like that would obviously be a concern, which is why we're extremely conservative and careful about who we let onto the team.  We generally only ever add someone as a moderator when they have a very lengthy, consistent track record that shows that they're not the kind of person who would ever do such a thing.

So, no, that hasn't happened.

3 hours ago, HyperDraco said:

How does it feel to be a mod

Speaking for myself, I like it a lot, which is why I'm still here at this unpaid "job" after more than five years.   

What I like about it:

• I enjoy helping people.  I did my best to do that when I was just a regular forum user, and now that I'm a moderator, it's like helping people but with superpowers.
• I'm a meticulous, OCD person who doesn't mind repetitive tasks (and can even find them oddly soothing).
• I really like the civil, sane, constructive community here in the KSP forums.  It's far and away the nicest community I've run into anywhere on the internet, and therefore the only one that I care to spend time in.  I think that's a big part of why so many other people like it, too.  Being a moderator means I can help to keep it that way, and that feels good.
• There's a lot of camaraderie among the mods.  We have our own chat channel where we hang out, and it's a fun group. 

3 hours ago, HyperDraco said:

what are your daily responsiblities 

It's a volunteer job, so it's not as though we're punching a clock or anything; we just pop in as and when we have time to do so.  But it mostly boils down to this:

• Approve posts from the queue
• Respond to user reports
• Flag spammers

Every once in a while some problem will pop up (either because one of us happened to spot it, or more often because some vigilant user issued a report), in which case we deal with it as may be needed.  Examples of common scenarios are a user cluelessly posting something in the wrong place, or putting a giant log file into the forum, or posting a mod but forgetting to provide a license, that sort of thing.

Occasionally there will be a dust-up when someone is "coloring outside the lines" (such as when an argument becomes heated and people start making personal remarks), in which case we step in as needed to clean things up and cool things down.  That's easily the least fun part of moderating, but fortunately it doesn't come up all that often, since most people here are pretty well-behaved as a rule.

[HyperDraco]

3 hours ago, Snark said:

Speaking for myself, I like it a lot, which is why I'm still here at this unpaid "job" after more than five years.   

What I like about it:

• I enjoy helping people.  I did my best to do that when I was just a regular forum user, and now that I'm a moderator, it's like helping people but with superpowers.
• I'm a meticulous, OCD person who doesn't mind repetitive tasks (and can even find them oddly soothing).
• I really like the civil, sane, constructive community here in the KSP forums.  It's far and away the nicest community I've run into anywhere on the internet, and therefore the only one that I care to spend time in.  I think that's a big part of why so many other people like it, too.  Being a moderator means I can help to keep it that way, and that feels good.
• There's a lot of camaraderie among the mods.  We have our own chat channel where we hang out, and it's a fun group. 

That's really great, thanks for the help and thanks for the great work you guys do around here.

[CollectingSP]

On 5/4/2021 at 7:45 AM, Snark said:

Astonishingly enough-- and I realize that this is, apparently, complicated enough to be difficult to grasp, so stay with me-- the reason turns out to be that it is, in fact, a malicious site that we no longer use. 

There was once a website which was a predecessor to SpaceDock, which was running essentially the same software and worked the same way, which was (like SpaceDock) a major go-to site for hosting KSP mods.  The site was decommissioned and abandoned several years ago, which is why SpaceDock popped up to replace it.

Unfortunately, the abandoned website's DNS then came up for grabs, and it was taken over by malicious actors who now use it as a site for hosting malware, i.e. the kind of dangerous place that tries to put viruses and things onto unwitting visitors' machines.  It's a bad place and people shouldn't go there.

Alas, the KSP forum was strewn with many links to this site (from the "before times" when it was legit), which put the KSP community at risk.  So we did our best to scrub the references and links, and as an added safety precaution, we added the name of the site to the "naughty words" list so that it will get auto-replaced with "malicious site we no longer use".  This serves a dual purpose.  First, it lets people know (who might otherwise not have gotten the memo) what's going on with that site; and, second, it helps prevent further spread of references to the site in the forum.  It's not a perfect solution by any means, but it's easy for us to do, and it's reasonable because there's really no legitimate reason for anyone to be going there anymore.

On a more serious note... in general, please don't try to get "clever" and bypass the filter, as you just did.  There's a forum rule about this (2.2.g, "any technique that bypasses the language filter").  If you find that the forum is blocking you from typing something... well, that's there for a reason, even if it may not be immediately obvious what the reason is. It means that the forum is telling you "don't type that", and is not an invitation to find a way to work around it.  So please don't do that, okay? 

I remember trying to go onto *malicious site* a year ago, but my antivirus blocked it, and recognized it was trying to download malware. today, it just appears to be an empty domain.

someone probably reported it or had it taken down.

[Snark]

40 minutes ago, CollectingSP said:

I remember trying to go onto *malicious site* a year ago, but my antivirus blocked it, and recognized it was trying to download malware. today, it just appears to be an empty domain.

someone probably reported it or had it taken down.

Or it might just be biding its time, or who knows what.

Be that as it may... given the fraught history, and given that there does not appear to be any way of knowing that what happened once mightn't happen again, the current policy remains until/unless there's a reason to change it.

[Starhelperdude]

are the suggestions in the suggestion tabs beeing read by the devs (regulary or unregulary) ?

[Deddly]

1 hour ago, Starhelperdude said:

are the suggestions in the suggestion tabs beeing read by the devs (regulary or unregulary) ?

Yes, they do read them regularly. I don't know if they see them all though. 

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, Starhelperdude said:

are the suggestions in the suggestion tabs beeing read by the devs (regulary or unregulary) ?

 

8 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Yes, they do read them regularly. I don't know if they see them all though. 

The best way to get the devs to see your suggestion is to enter it into the official bug tracker for KSP.  At the top of the report, there is an item title that says, "Tracker." It is a drop-down menu that gives you two options - bug and feedback. Select "feedback" and then fill out the rest of the items on the page, being as specific as you can. 

This is the best way to make sure your ideas get seen by developers.

[kerbiloid]

On 5/14/2021 at 3:36 PM, FruitGoose said:

Do you find certain moderating duties monotonous at times? I’d find constantly moving threads to the right section because the OP was too lazy to put it in the right one really frustrating personally.

Do you ever regret becoming a moderator? Can you quit or is it like a gang thing where you sign up for life and Snark threatens your family if you try to leave? 

And linked to above, has a moderator ever gone into meltdown and randomly banned people or deleted stuff before being stopped and institutionalised?

Just don't ask them, what they have done in the previous life, that in this one they are reborn as moderators.

On 5/15/2021 at 12:47 AM, Dr. Kerbal said:

What does it mean when a thread is HOT? Because the MEGATHRAED is labeled that. So. Is this a good sign? Has it happened before?

It means that something is right now hitting the fan. Or fans. _{See the color.}

On 5/15/2021 at 5:01 AM, Vanamonde said:

Since we are volunteers, we can un-volunteer at any time. 

"Don't worry, I can quit any time."

2 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

are the suggestions in the suggestion tabs beeing read by the devs (regulary or unregulary) ?

Yes.  They need a laugh, too.

1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

The best way to get the devs to see your suggestion is to enter it into the official bug tracker for KSP.

It has an auto-dump function on timer, so your suggestions won't overload the base.

[Dr. Kerbal]

What are the dots that are on a user's profile under user rank? 

Because I have 4 dots under my rank line and I dont know what it is. Is it like a level? 

Has anyone every got 100,000 community rep before? 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Dr. Kerbal

[Dr. Kerbal]

What is community rep? 

[Vanamonde]

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Because I have 4 dots under my rank line and I dont know what it is. Is it like a level? 

Yes, you get a dot every few increments I can never remember of forum reputation. 

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Has anyone every got 100,000 community rep before?  

No. 

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What is community rep?  

It's your total of times people have hit the "like" button on your posts. (The name of the button changed from "reputation" to "like" a few forum software versions ago.) 

[Starhelperdude]

is there a official balsa forum?

[Vanamonde]

4 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

is there a official balsa forum?

A what? 

[Starhelperdude]

Just now, Vanamonde said:

A what? 

official forum for the model aircraft  game balsa, made by (I think) harvester