This post is in response to Seraph. I see I've been Ninja'd in the meantime.
Seraph said:
Doesn't matter if it's constant or not. An FAQ is there to do a job so who
the hell care how often someone asks. It's irrelevant. New members should have this information on hand when they need it. If the FAQ is empty, populate it. It's not rocket science.
This has been gone over in
this post. The consensus in this thread is that an up to date FAQ would be good. As of yet nobody has come forth to offer to compile the information but such a change has already been decided on.
By focusing on a single disagreeing post when the consensus is that this is good change is an example of 'shit-flinging' on your part.
These things are not always clear to newbies, particularly those who do not speak english well. Staff might not mind, but that's still no reason to have people using the wrong methods constantly
As above, see Yop's post two up from yours.
This is a fairly important thing to set in place. Staff do have a tendency to elitism, so there does need to be a system in place whereby staff members are held accountable for their actions. As far as I can tell there's nobody to keep them in check even if they do get reported
I can tell you now that staff here
do not have a tendency towards elitism. If you think so then that's your opinion, but I'd like some kind of evidence to back up your argument since you presented like a fact.
Additionally, staff are not a hivemind and have no desire to be. We all have our own opinions on things and disagreements come up all of the time. The reason we have multiple moderators is so that one person's perspective is not the basis of forum change or any change to members themselves.
If a staff member is acting out of line then other staff members are in a good position to do something about it. Just last year a member of staff was removed by the rest of staff due to power abuse and user complaints. Were staff to receive complaints on another member, you can be sure that it will be dealt with.
Not the point really dude. Collate the information into one page. create a newb guide if you will. But if you can avoid wasting the time of users, why not?
'Shit-flinging'. Please read Yop's post as this matter already has a solution you are ignoring. I happen to agree that helpful information for new members is a good idea. So do many in this thread.
Your point has little meaning. Staff are obviously subject to the same rules as the rest of us. But reporting them to the staff may have little impact seeing as there will always be bias in the upper echelons of any hierarchy. There really is nobody to enforce any reports besides the higher ups (Who I don't know and claim nothing about them)
I feel I've already addressed this but let me assure you there is no 'bias in the upper echelons'. Staff are literally members here with a few extra permissions. They spend 95% of their time banning spam bots and deleting junk threads. There is no time for round table meetings whereupon they conspire against the forum or declare themselves higher up.
As an aside I am relatively new to staff and was
voted here by members of the forum, the majority of which aren't staff. If staff are colluding on anything then I assure you I've yet to be invited to any of their meetings.
Agreed. Send whatever the hell you want and deal with the fallout yourself. You made the choice now live with it. PMs are not subject to the general
forum rules as they are not public domain. The only exception to this would be harrassment. Obviously you should report that. Staff, however, should not have access to users Personal Messages. That is a gross invasion of privacy. That should be limited to the owners ONLY.
What a member decides to do with their private messages, sent or received, is 100% their decision. If I send you a private message now telling you I'm secretly Batman, you are free to share that with whomever you please. The same applies to any message staff receive. If they receive a message asking for action to be taken against another member or expressing their frustration at forum elements, there's a good chance they may share that with the rest of staff so it can be looked into. No single member of staff is going to ban a member or change a thread without consulting other members of staff first, so as to ascertain some kind of consensus and allow for an investigation of what's going on.
I don't know where the idea of staff being able to read member pms came from. None of the mods here have the permission to do that. It is restricted entirely to the administrators, as it should be.
This thread is a prime example of why that is a terrible idea
Why? For what reason is that a bad idea?
If you feel like you have a problem with staff
and you don't trust them to handle it themselves, arguing it publicly is the next option available to you. The entire community can weigh in on the decision then. If there is a consensus on the issue then the matter will be dealt with. Were the staff corrupt (spoiler: they aren't) then this would be brought to the attention of the community at large.
To respond to your closing points:
1 - The Thanks 'argument' is a dead horse. The community has no large issue with it. Starling is free to believe there's more to it but the fact of the matter is the large majority of users here are happy with Thanks as they stand. We'd have already been reviewing the new sub-forum's trial run as a community if we didn't already have our hands full right now.
2 - Staff DO conduct full investigations of member issues. This is not an exception. What you're seeing is the result of months of communication on a number of issues, whereby the suggestions, advice and criticisms have been largely ignored. Now it's in a public setting.
Personal grudges aren't a reason to ignore anything, correct. Every member here agrees with that sentiment I assure you. What's your point? If you're inferring that's been the case then please give examples. If you're not then you're just shit-stirring.
3 - Only the highest level (Administrator) has the ability to read member pms. You've incorrectly assumed that staff can do this, when they cannot.
). If you are so confident you have support, what better way to settle it? Maybe you are not after support though, maybe you are the dictators that you accuse staff of being? Your way or the highway. If there are things that are so critically important to you, but you can't get public support from, perhaps this is not the forum for you. Go make a competitor forum 
. Starling, BetaRayBill, and Telcontar, to be clear.
