Forums → The Tavern → And the Oscar for "Best Portrayal of a Disgruntled Employee goes to ..." (also: We love our users)

(side note: this topic thread was created and written by Cormyn and the moderator team late on Thursday, well in advance of what was cookin' on the site)

Well, after a nice day long hiatus of banning myself, it's good to be back at Armor Games. Of course, the entirety of the antics between myself and the moderators, my "resignation", subsequent "firing" as posted by John, and my "hacks" as reported by James, were all part of our 2011 April Fool's Day event in the forums. The only truth in any of it was me shooting an airsoft pellet at one of John's monitors and damaging it slightly. John still uses the monitor. And no, I don't hoard Dr Pepper at my desk.

Some background:

Any user accounts with Moderator-or-better level permissions have access to a private forum where we stage these sorts of things, and discuss who's going to say what, how others will retaliate, etc. Several moderators had concerns over the past week about whether we were taking this "fire a moderator" too far, but overall, I think every one of the moderators had a part to play, or at least some say in the direction this went.

As a thank you for playing along, every user who "voted" in the "fire a mod" thread will be given a "merit" -- those who voted more than once, or voted for me (ahem) or any other non-moderator will not be given a merit. Not because I'm mean, but because those were the rules of the game. Pay attention next time. )

To those who raised concern, alarms, staged protest votes, I'll track you down and give you each one merit as well, 'cause hey, seeing the passion in your eyes brought tears to ours.

Several of us, moderators and admins alike, read every single comment left in the "moderator filleting discussion" thread in the Tavern and MY GOODNESS, knowing that you all felt so strongly on the subject was awesome. We truly DO have the best user community among the gaming sites.

Of course, GhostOfMatrix was the first to call us on the bluff and suspect it was an April Fool's Day prank, so kudos to him for having enough insight into the tightly-knit group of Moderators we have. GoM, post something on my profile and I'll throw an extra merit your way too.

On behalf of the entire staff at Armor Games, I want to publicly say a MASSIVE thank you to all of our Moderators. They truly are some of the most unsung heroes on the site. Several of them work full time, some of them work enough hours to effectively be TWO full time jobs, some of them are in school, and they ALL have one thing in common: they LOVE helping make the Armor Games community a shining example of respect. I've lost count of how many times I've seen forum posts from users like "these forums are WAY better than [insert some other game site here]" and we ALL need to give our Moderators a huge thank-you for the part they play all year long, not just at April Fool's Day when they all bring their A-game.

Honestly, though, to back up a moment ... there were several concerns among the moderators and myself about users having hard feelings about how "far" we were taking the prank this year. To those who felt offended, you have my personal apologies. We worked as a team to decide on the course of action, and had good laughs staging everything in the Moderator's forum area. To those that thought I really did get fired and cheered, well, sorry, but I'm here for the long haul.

I've mentioned this elsewhere in the forums, and to other users personally, but wanted to repeat it here. My role with the company is that of "senior web developer". It's not in my job description to be any sort of community manager or to lead the moderator team. Carlie did an AMAZING job of that before real life needed to take priority. Justin's role is to fill that void, helping users where possible, and cleaning out spam and flagged comments, etc. I only got involved because I'm able to help the moderators in a few ways that Justin doesn't yet have the tools to do the same, but in essence, I volunteer my time outside of the office the same way that the Moderators do. However, I do need to cut back on my involvement because we're very busy working on software and my evening time is limited now that I have two kids.

As far as our assertions that the new Armor Games web site in development (aka "AG3&quot will give "moderator powers" to the average user, there IS an element of truth in there. We do have plans for things like the Reputation system and like/dislike buttons, but they are ideas for future projects and will not replace the need for moderation on the site. Our Moderator team will be just as necessary in AG3 as they are on this version of the web site. However, when AG3 launches, users WILL have the ability to block other users from communicating with them, and establish other communication channels. Check out the AG3 forum if you want to learn more about the new web site or how to sign up for the beta.

Thanks again to everyone who played a part, whether you knew it or not, in our Armor Games 2011 April Fool's Day pranks. I hope everyone has fully recovered from Bieber Fever. A HUGE kudos to James, aka caffeine101, for coming up with the idea.

Much love,
Ian Douglas, aka Cormyn