Well one thing is that we don't really need a Cormyn now to chase whoever is left out of the Forums. We need a Cormyn type person only when the Forums are bustling and actually need some trimming and garden management. What we do need is someone more avuncular, friendly, enthusiastic in a cheery manner, to get things running again. Someone like Carlie, who will make people want to stay.

Cormyn might not have been a good "Community manager" but he gave it a good shot, looking at his decisions, some weren't that bad and he did do some things that needed to be done.

Yes, but most of us weren't going to get used to his stricter ways so fast, it was a cold splash of reality, and it didn't work out if you suddenly expect everyone to just shape on the spur of the moment. I left at the beginning of his time here, and came back near the end of his time here, so I won't past so much judgement, as much as just repeating hearsay from most of the other users.

Note: I am not a veteran and I am not someone who has been on here for a long period of time. I have lurked a year and the rest is just judged from past posts.

When you see so many of the older users and friends get banned or just leave in a huff, you tend to get prickly.

Wow. One night and already on page 3. And as far as I can tell it is becoming a lets support or hate cormyn thread.

I wasn't around before Cormyn but he seemed fine to me. Never got into any trouble with him and he was helpful. He kept us informed so we actually new what the heck was going on with the admins. I think we really need a new community manager. I don't really care if he is as strict as cormyn was or more loose. We just need some connection with the admins.

I don't really think we need more mods, just clear up the list. There are a few since I have been here that I have only seen once or twice. If they are still active they could at least show it but if they are not they should be demodded.

As for inactivity goes the only thing you can do is stay active. It isn't like we can force people to come on the site. Just stay active and hope the activity comes back.

One, how did I add anything to this when I did not even know about it?

I read some of your conversation with other users. Didn't you recognize your ideas?

Participation is where AG is at fault in my opinion. Of course, threads are a part of this, but I am thinking of literary, artistic, and gaming participation as well.

No doubt. However, as far as gaming participation goes, I think it's gone up. In my opinion, many users joined to utilize the handy online saving feature instead of having to save locally. It's a lot like PS3 and the PS Vita.

ohh thats why you ask to be friends

I don't understand.

If you're seriously considering someone like cormyn, I will e-kick you in the nuts.

Cormyn was strict. Strict as hell. The most strict admin I've ever seen. By being strict, he took out the trash. Am I really the only one who's noticed the spam skyrocket? I have gotten several spam messages on my profile and have only been here for a short period of time. Part of it is the moderators as well. Go look at Raze 2, and I'm sure you'll find 90% of the comments are spam stating stuff like, "awesome," "good game," "so much fun," and etc.

The community is not better or worse than it ever was. Without purposely falling into a golden age fallacy, would I say it was better in older times? Yeah, it was. For me it was. Maybe for others it wasn't.

Old days were great, and new days are boring. That's how it works. That's how it always is.

I don't know if you caught this, but AG should be GROWING, not sinking. We have more games than we ever had. The site is so structures now. The site has a fantastic foundation to build upon, and we have no one do to it with! It doesn't have to go inactive just because it's getting older.

Cormyn was one of the worst things that ever happened to AG. His primary outlook on AG was that being an admin automatically meant that he knew what was good for the forum. He put him self up as some sort of beleaguered person doing the work that was required. But the work he was doing wasn't required. It was bull****.

I'd absolutely love to see evidence of this. When has Cormyn banned someone for not breaking the rules? I'd settle for even a logical example.

he had the power to ban anyone who disagreed with him.

He had the power, but I have NEVER heard of him banning someone for disagreeing with him.

Cormyn was Alduin and people like the OP are the draugr who still wake up every day to give their life force to the dragon priest leaders

I assume you're saying I'm kissing ***. I'm not. If I was, I'd be telling the moderators they're doing the best possible job, and I'd be telling the admins I know exactly what's going on with AG3.

Why would someone have to take time out of their schedule to do something they don't care about and isn't essential?

I'm not demanding it. It's just advice. Besides, this tip was for those who are busy with life but still enjoy AG. I was saying if you're on, visit your friends.

We? How? Dilly of a pickle?

As others have mentioned, part of it has to do with OUR participation. Of course, a lot of us are posting frequently, and there aren't a lot of people posting, so things tend to get a little bland. This was directed to those who come on AG and lurk.

I want Carlie, not Cormyn preferably and hypothetically. Don't want to go through such a strict Forum phase.

I understand that, but we're facing quite a bit of spam as of late.

Justin isn't the head of AG... Dan and John are the head guys as far as I know. (Just to keep the facts straight.)

Justin is the one to contact if you need help within the community. Therefore, he has Cormyn's job.

If you haven't noticed, if you get two or three mods posting in the same thread, that thread is going to blow up with activity. Newish users especially want to get in on the "action" of posting in the presence of mods. They probably see it as some sort of mortals-on-Mount-Olympus thing.

This was beautifully stated. \\

I don't know about you, but sometimes the staff seems to have given up on us.

How could someone miss that ban message when they try to log in?

Little infraction? b&. Disagree with cormyn? b&.

Stalin got **** done. He also killed twenty million people.

Cormyn wasn't as bad as you remember. You're obviously an argumentative type and would probably have a problem with Cormyn here or there. Cormyn did his best to keep trash out, and if you kept straight and didn't break the rules, you were fine. Besides, I'd rather have a clean AG with lots of rules than have an inactive one full of moronic newbies (Not trying to be hypocritical, merely making a point).

You were asking something? I wasn't aware.

Ernie15 was suggesting that we try to make this like 2009- not make an exact replica, just more active.

And Orion Alt and I aren't being negative. Well, we are, but not pointlessly so. We all agree that AG sucks and should be better. We apparently all don't agree on how it should be better.

I'm not hearing any suggestions...

Well one thing is that we don't really need a Cormyn now to chase whoever is left out of the Forums. We need a Cormyn type person only when the Forums are bustling and actually need some trimming and garden management. What we do need is someone more avuncular, friendly, enthusiastic in a cheery manner, to get things running again. Someone like Carlie, who will make people want to stay.

After reading this, I see your point. Frankly, I still think we should have a bit more strictness to larger degree, but having more active/seen moderators would help with that, instead of making think you're alone with all of these people who are just like you: lost.

We just need some connection with the admins.

Which was my biggest point with the new head idea. We need another public face that we can all get in touch with.

As for inactivity goes the only thing you can do is stay active. It isn't like we can force people to come on the site. Just stay active and hope the activity comes back.

Of course we can't force people to come, but we can get new users to stay, and there's a lot of potential there.

Am I really the only one who's noticed the spam skyrocket?

In March, there was MASSIVE ad spam. In fact, it was so much that the admins added a CAPTCHA, but that failed. The failure of CAPTCHA led some to believe that the adbots were the 2012 April Fools Joke. However, there was no April Fools joke this year.

Cormyn was strict. Strict as hell.

I would agree. In fact, cormyn gave me a warning for bypassing the filter once by replacing some of the letters in a swear word with asterisks. It was given on March 14th of last year and has the following text (I did not delete the warning):

Need to give you a warning about posting profanity with ***'s in them to bypass our filters. Either let our filters do the job, or don't post swearing on the site. (It was a game comment where you said the game had 'lousy' sound.) This kind of stuff is not tolerated on the site. Thanks for your cooperation

I understand that, but we're facing quite a bit of spam as of late.

The spam seems to be confined to comments since I don't think there is much spam on the forums now. However, there was much more spam in March and April as I described earlier in my post.

Justin is the one to contact if you need help within the community. Therefore, he has Cormyn's job.

But he doesn't have cormyn's visibility/activity.

Cormyn wasn't as bad as you remember. You're obviously an argumentative type and would probably have a problem with Cormyn here or there. Cormyn did his best to keep trash out, and if you kept straight and didn't break the rules, you were fine. Besides, I'd rather have a clean AG with lots of rules than have an inactive one full of moronic newbies (Not trying to be hypocritical, merely making a point).

I didn't have much trouble with cormyn other than the warning I mentioned earlier in my post. However, I did have some trouble with the mods when cormyn was around. By trouble, I mean that the mods temp-banned me twice for backseat modding (something I don't do anymore).

Which was my biggest point with the new head idea. We need another public face that we can all get in touch with.

Correct, and the easiest way to achieve this would be for Justin to be more visible/active.

But he doesn't have cormyn's visibility/activity.

Correct, and the easiest way to achieve this would be for Justin to be more visible/active.

Indeed. This is part of the reason why we need more/active moderators, or at least moderators that participate. Along with regular user's participation going down, staff participation is going down.

Others have pointed out that with a dead forum, we don't need more/active staff, but we really do for this place to become a family community again. Others have also said that back when the community was small, it was a family. Guess what? The community's small, but it doesn't feel like a family. This is, in my opinion, because we aren't seeing friendly staff helping people. The whole point of having staff  is to be there for people.

Ironically, I had a problem posting this entire thread yesterday. When I did it, I received a message stating that I have a temporary IP ban. I emailed AG and received a message from larry (username unknown; not necessary to find out) saying that it was a filter for spam. My IP ban vanished. The help hasn't gone away- it's gone off-site, which takes away from that community feeling.

larry (username unknown; not necessary to find out)

Larry is lroot FYI.

Ironically, I had a problem posting this entire thread yesterday. When I did it, I received a message stating that I have a temporary IP ban. I emailed AG and received a message from larry (username unknown; not necessary to find out) saying that it was a filter for spam. My IP ban vanished. The help hasn't gone away- it's gone off-site, which takes away from that community feeling.

Why would such an IP ban cause you to divide the OP into 2 posts?

Which was my biggest point with the new head idea. We need another public face that we can all get in touch with.

Just gonna highlight this again (I can already hear the sighs at this), because, goddarnit to heck, the current staff is apparently really hates communicating.
And it's horrible, and it ruins their business completely too, but I guess they haven't noticed yet.

The help hasn't gone away- it's gone off-site,

Best part? From my observations, you will only get a reply if they sense you are going to leave, if they don't fix it. That is, if you have people complaining about a server that has gone down (nevermind the mods trying to clean the S&S section for repeat threads on the issue), they are going to appologize and get it back up ASAP (but only post this information on twitter). If something offends some poor little whoever, then it is taken down ASAP. If a mod needs help, they can wait. If a mod demands action, they can wait. If a mod wants to resign, they can wait, and will get no reply on their request of a recommendation. Because, well, who cares about mods anyway.

So, from my point of view, it's not even that the help has gone off site, it has become selective and inefficient, and that, paired with the complete lack of communication or interest from the staff... It just doesn't work that way, guys...
My professors would laugh at this way of handling a website, then they would shake their heads and go "programmers", the same way people say "kids" or "idiots" or something to the like.
Meh.

So, from my point of view, it's not even that the help has gone off site, it has become selective and inefficient, and that, paired with the complete lack of communication or interest from the staff... It just doesn't work that way, guys...

Then we must somehow get the admins to become non-selective and inefficient. Alternatively, we could at least find out why the admins are selective and inefficient.

Then we must somehow get the admins to become non-selective and inefficient. Alternatively, we could at least find out why the admins are selective and inefficient.

The bolded word should be efficient. This is why we need edit post.