moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)03:36
No.302993

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)03:36 No.302993

Replies: >>303016

>>302982 (OP)
I've thought a lot about this, which is part of the reason we've taken so long to accumulate boards. ~55 over 9 years ain't bad. All of the early alternative imageboards (5chan being the first) did this and languished immediately because they didn't have nearly enough users to fill up the number of boards they had.

I'm sure 4chan will continue to expand over time, but I'm always hesitant to add new ones because not only does it further shard the userbase, but it also requires more server/bandwidth, and more importantly, human resources (janitors and mods don't grow on trees, and are easily our most valued and in-demand resource).

>janitors and mods don't grow on trees, and are easily our most valued and in-demand resource

Good one! I haven't laughed so hard in a while, thanks!

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)03:42
No.303002

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)03:42 No.303002

Replies: >>303008 >>303009 >>303010 >>303013 >>303199 >>303250

>>302998
>Good one! I haven't laughed so hard in a while, thanks!
Shitposting up a storm in /q/, are we?

I think it's time I made ID's not be thread specific.

>>303002
Shit, go ahead with it. I'm sure it would be a fun prank.

File: 1354006220602.jpg-(32 KB, 500x332, do_not_want_bathtime.jpg)

>>303002
>I think it's time I made ID's not be thread specific.

Ugh, don't ruin it for the rest of us just because of a few jackasses.

>>303002
~10,000 applications certainly isn't indicative of a short supply of willing people.

>>303002
Fucking this.

I'm getting so sick of seeing some dipshit go on and on about some bullshit in one thread then immediately go and make ANOTHER thread about it when he realizes no one agrees with him(IE he's wrong but won't admit or acknowledge it), playing all coy pretending just to be another freedom fighter against the tyranny of moot and the 4chan staff.

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)03:52
No.303014

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)03:52 No.303014

Replies: >>303021 >>303024 >>303034

>>303010
>~10,000 applications certainly isn't indicative of a short supply of willing people.
Right, but do you realize the amount of time (human resources) it takes to sift through 10,000 apps, reach out to them, schedule orientation, do the orientation, monitor them, etc?

Again, human capital always comes at the highest price, and is in the shortest supply.

>>302993
>but I'm always hesitant to add new ones because not only does it further shard the userbase, but it also requires more human resources

Ignoring what is an issue with money, you're right, these are the two biggest issues. The biggest negative from splitting boards is often that is seriously takes away content from another board (/vp/ and /tg/ being the first examples that come to mind. Both alone took out discussion that was previously on /b/), but isolation can often develop stagnant, negative characteristics within communities (several generals on /vg/ and /jp/ come to mind).

I think the success to creating a board is to not center it around a single inclusive topic, but more of a genre or medium. The JRPG general, for example, is rather successful without having a post rate of 3 per day without stagnating due to the amount of JRPGs they can discuss. This tends to alleviate the second issue, but not so much the first.

Due to the problems you just mentioned (manpower, server cost, splitting the userbase), I've wondered what the positives and negatives of cycling through trial boards would be like. Another poster on /q/ mentioned the idea of creating a single board to serve some trial period, deleting it, gathering input on it, and then putting in another. Something like that to collect data would be the best way to monitor just how beneficial or harmful a new board would be without terribly stressing out already limited resources.

>>303010
10,000 applications does not equate to even one-tenth that number of truly trustworthy, hard-working, level-headed, potential janitors.

>>303014
Beat me to it, darn you moot.

>>303014
Hm. Perhaps some delegation is in order? I'm probably lacking some information (like whether you already do this), but you could give your mods a limited ability to recruit new janitors. If the janitors are faggots, axe them, and if a mod is constantly hiring shitty janitors, take away their recruit privileges and/or axe them.

Of course, this only works if you trust your mods.

>>303021
>one-tenth

Maybe I should've said one one-hundredth.

>>303024
Additional thought: Don't close down applications. Whenever you or mods have some time on their hands, they can take a look at the current application queue, and see if there are any janitor-worthy submissions. Of course, this might be susceptible to IP-resetting and false emails, but wasn't that the case for the most recent janitor drive? At least this way you won't be overwhelmed by several thousand submissions at once.

>>303014
That is a good point, and it begs the question for why you seem so reluctant to accept any new blood when manpower for the site is stretched so thin.

Also, you seem a lot more active on /q/ lately. That's good.

>>303024
I like this idea. It might make adding janitors quicker/easier.

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)04:00
No.303036

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)04:00 No.303036

Replies: >>303067

>>303016
>I've wondered what the positives and negatives of cycling through trial boards would be like
Well, technically all new boards are trial boards, except we haven't removed a trial board in years and they all tend to graduate into being full boards.

The wilardcard/trial board thing that most other sites employ is similar to what we did back in the day with /z/, which was a rotating theme board, the theme being chosen by a user who became the temporary mod of the board. It was fun, but didn't end well.

I don't think a rotating board is the best way to decide what new boards should be added. It can take weeks/months for a new board to stand on its own, and not every board that would be successful as a fad-y wildcard board would be successful as a full-fledged board.

Also at the end of the day, while I look to the community for feedback and emergent trends on boards to help decide what to add, 4chan has never been and will never be a democracy. I don't like the idea of putting new boards to a vote, and it's unlikely we'll ever do it. There are plenty of other imageboard sites that cater to all sorts of niche interests, and as I've said in the past, "4chan will never be all things to all people."

I'm tired, so please forgive any wonkiness with my grammar.

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)04:01
No.303037

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)04:01 No.303037

Replies: >>303048

>>303013
>I'm getting so sick of seeing some dipshit go on and on about some bullshit in one thread then immediately go and make ANOTHER thread about it when he realizes no one agrees with him(IE he's wrong but won't admit or acknowledge it), playing all coy pretending just to be another freedom fighter against the tyranny of moot and the 4chan staff.
You and I both!

>>303037
You can cheat, I have to use intuition.

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)04:07
No.303051

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)04:07 No.303051

Replies: >>303057 >>303117

>>303024
>Hm. Perhaps some delegation is in order? I'm probably lacking some information (like whether you already do this), but you could give your mods a limited ability to recruit new janitors.
I have in the past, with mixed results.

I do agree delegating more would be a good thing, but 4chan has always more-or-less been a one man show. With the exception of dev work and moderation, everything else has always fallen on my plate. And believe me, there is a ton of shit that has fallen on my plate over the past 9 years, which is why it is mind boggling that so many people whine and scream about how 4chan and its success were essentially handed to us on a golden platter -- dismissing the fact that I've personally invested thousands upon thousands of hours into building and maintaining the site, other devs/mods/jans have also contributed just as many, and not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars, etc that have been poured into the site since its inception.

4chan is easily one of the largest sites on the web run by the smallest active team. I can't think of any other sites with ~22M+ UVs, 500M+ PVs a month with zero full-time employees. Maybe I'm missing some though.

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)04:10
No.303056

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)04:10 No.303056

Replies: >>303059 >>303064

>>303034
>That is a good point, and it begs the question for why you seem so reluctant to accept any new blood when manpower for the site is stretched so thin.
This is 4chan we're talking about. There are plenty of amazing people who use this site, no question, but finding the right people to be janitors is a needle in a haystack proposition. It takes time.

>>303051
>mixed results
Well, that sounds less than pleasant. Say, why don't you put it to the userbase? Ask: "How should I implement more janitors?" or something along those lines. Sure there will be a number of assclowns, as always, but you might find some new ideas to consider as to how to be slightly less horribly understaffed.

>>303056
For what it's worth: Take all the time you guys need, the boards will wait. I hope the next batch of janitors are as effective as can be at taking some of the workload of you and the mods/existing janitors. Hoping for good luck!

>>303056
This.
When you have people so dedicated to shitposting and fucking up boards that they live on IRC and continuously find new ways to circumvent rules etc what's to stop them applying to become janitors to fuck things up even more.

>>303036
>It was fun, but didn't end well.

I can probably guess.

>I don't think a rotating board is the best way to decide what new boards should be added. It can take weeks/months for a new board to stand on its own

True. On the other hand, in this case, it would depend a lot on what you're trying to achieve. While any board created is meant to be useful and have quality to it, alleviating established traffic from a board and creating a new board almost from scratch would result in two different amounts of post rates. Extreme examples of both cases would be, say, /diy/ and /vg/, where the former was (and remains) a very isolated topic that is still developing while /vg/ has many communities that already existed long before the split and transitioned like it was nothing.

The point of all that is "if you're just trying to alleviate already popular traffic, the board can spring up quite naturally and quickly" versus "making a Traditional Games board out of no-where."

Board-cycling as I proposed earlier would be bad if you were trying to make a slower board such as /tg/ or /diy/ - they need to take time to develop their topics and identities. However, cycling through popular boards (ex. make /popular topic/ for a month) would allow you to see a snapshot of its community - and more importantly, give you a chance to examine concrete, quantifiable post rate data between the former and new board. The flip-side of course would then be if the board is popular, moderation would be needed on it, while a still-developing board would need little (theoretically). Would such a method be too much effort for the data?

One other question if you don't mind - Does the 4chan staff ever run "mock board simulations" when developing new boards?

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)04:21
No.303070

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)04:21 No.303070

Replies: >>303089 >>303099

>>303057
Because it's not a question I need to ask.

>>303064
Sad, but true.

>>303067
>Does the 4chan staff ever run "mock board simulations" when developing new boards?
No. The team has very little input into what new boards I add, or really anything else for that matter. Again, we live in a "mootocracy" -- for better or worse.

>>303070
I see.

2 final questions then if you still don't mind:

1. While moderators are global, moderators do seem to have preferential taste for which board they look over. Though this is a "mootocracy," do you feel the more popular boards could benefit from "Regional" administrators who's duty would be more or less to oversee the activity of a board and its janitors/moderators (with you still at the top, like a proper fiefdom)?

Though that would probably cause 2 main issues - drama and acting as a time constraint for who is probably already a busy man in real life, having a recognizable and concerned figure in a board can be positive, like modcat for /a/. More importantly, they could act as someone to do weekly or monthly Q&As on each board. /v/ improved significantly after a length mod-user discussion shortly after /q/ was made, it might benefit from regular meetings.

2. This is out of the blue but how would you feel about something like YTMND being integrated into a board, such as /b/?

>>303089
Moot, can you ban me for 30~ days from /b/? I don't like that board but can't seem to get myself off of it. I don't mean to offend you in any way, it's just become troublesome.
Also, sorry for posting unrelated in this thread, I just thought this may have been the best bet to get your attention. Again, sorry.

>>303070
>Because it's not a question I need to ask.
Fair enough. Best of luck on those applications; I'm sure everyone will appreciate your efforts after the new janitors are sent out to clean up shitty posts.

And get some sleep, moot.

>>303064
>When you have people so dedicated to shitposting and fucking up boards

Ladies and gentlemen, behold >>303094, the perfect example. A tard with no self control that has to spam up multiple threads to ask for a ban of all things. I say give him what he deserves, a permaban.

>>303101
You're being really overly harsh...

>>303109
I have no sympathy for shitposters like that.

>>303113
You implied that he's " dedicated to shitting up 4chan". He's obviously not, he was just politely asking Moot to ban him from /b/ so he wouldn't have the incentive to post there anymore. It's not like he was spamming /v/ with unfunny forced memes or something.

>>303051

Well, for every moron that thinks it's been easy handling 4chan there's at least 10 people that know that's a load of shit.

>>303116
I'll grant that it's a minor offense compared to others, but how fucking lazy is that to ask to be banned just so you'll stop posting on a board? It's not like it's going to stop him from even going there and reading the threads either. He posted this message in a different thread too, which is annoying. If someone like that wants a ban, give it to them, with a heaping helping of "be careful what you wish for" on the side.

>>303033

This is pointless, anybody that would even be worth considering should notice the big announcement for janitor apps and send one in during the limited period.

>>303125
tfw you were wrongly banned for CP (appeal denied) when it was janitor applications time

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)05:31
No.303154

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)05:31 No.303154

Replies: >>303166

>>303089
>Though this is a "mootocracy," do you feel the more popular boards could benefit from "Regional" administrators who's duty would be more or less to oversee the activity of a board and its janitors/moderators (with you still at the top, like a proper fiefdom)?
We do actually have the concept of "managers," who are basically super moderators. These are the only people besides myself who can add janitors, and are around to help weigh in on rule clarification and what not in my absence. I'm not really interested in introducing any more hierarchy, especially to such a small team.

>>303089
>Though that would probably cause 2 main issues - drama and acting as a time constraint for who is probably already a busy man in real life
I am indeed very busy with a full-time job that isn't 4chan, but the drama thing really hasn't been a big issue for us. Moderators and janitors are anonymous for a reason. We've dealt with issues in the past, stemming from a time when people could single out and name/complain about individual moderators (which is absurd because moderators have been global for 8+ years, and users have absolutely no way of knowing when a post is deleted by a mod/jan vs. a user or has been pruned, much less the *specific* mod/jan). If said anonymous moderators/janitors spout off publically about being a mod or janitor, or abuse it, they get shitcanned pretty unceremoniously.

>>303089
>2. This is out of the blue but how would you feel about something like YTMND being integrated into a board, such as /b/?
Nah -- I like YTMND, but it's not for 4chan.

>>303154
Hey moot, I'm still reading the thread so I dunno if this has been said/replied to but I wanted to post it quick while you are still posting and I catch up:

I'm glad that you are hesitant to make new boards on a whim to keep userbases strong in the existing boards, but I do feel that you dropped the ball on the timing of some board splits that have occurred. Had /vg/ been made in 2010 or so, I think /v/ would have completely avoided it's transformation as being the perceived shitposting board. By 2011 there were too many users and everything was moving so fast that people felt the only thing they could do to be heard was to act like massive faggots instead of discussing video games and making OC.

moot ## Admin
11/27/12(Tue)05:45
No.303171

moot ## Admin 11/27/12(Tue)05:45 No.303171

Replies: >>303187

>>303166
I don't disagree on the less-than-perfect timing, but I didn't have the "/vg/ as a solution" epiphany until we actually did it. It's not like I had considered it as a solution and sat on it for two years.

>>303166

/v/ just needs more moderation, only delusional morons from /vg/ think otherwise.

>>303178
But /vg/ needs more moderation, too.

>>303171
>I didn't have the "/vg/ as a solution" epiphany until we actually did it. It's not like I had considered it as a solution and sat on it for two years.
Fair enough. I remember people suggesting it or something like it in late 2011, so I'm assuming that's where the idea came from.

Also on the topic of the 10k+ janitor applications, I was wondering if there is anything in particular that catches the eye of you and anyone else who is sifting through them all. The first time I tried to keep it short and sweet. Got right to the point to make it easier to decide. When the applications rolled around again this year I remember you saying that the more we write the better, so I ended up writing as much as I could think to say.

The thought later crept into my mind that I probably blathered on too long and shot myself in the foot as the person reading the applications would just get bored and skip to the next one. I've thought about making a video where I would go through all the information requested in the application, but having a human face and a voice behind the message would help the person deciding if it was something to pursue.

I know you have stated recently that no new janitors have been added from the recent applications. Does that mean you are currently interviewing your potential picks right now? Are there any emails left to be sent? Should I just stop waiting for it to come and hope my odds are better next time around?

Also wow that post was longer than I thought it would be, sorry. Captcha: voiceless riabldi

>>303187
>I remember you saying that the more we write the better, so I ended up writing as much as I could think to say.
One of the mods said to keep 'em short. So you might have different results depending on which member of the staff reviews your application.

File: 1354015578115.png-(14 KB, 1032x134, shorter applications.png)

>>303192
In fact, here's the post.

Pray that you got Mootles.

>>303002

Do it! Please! I'm sure there are a few posters playing both sides in different threads....

Moot, please go to bed.
And thanks for talking with /cgl/ :3

>>303002
>I think it's time I made ID's not be thread specific.


And people wonder why this website is going to shit.

>>303192
>>303196
The guy in question wrote some kind of essay. moot specifically asked for long, well thought-out applications (meaning a few paragraphs to several), and that's what they were looking for.

moooooot. Answer me whether janitors are being notified of acceptance all once or in batches!

>>303272
>Answer me whether janitors are being notified of acceptance all once or in batches!

I think it's in batches, but don't quote me on this. I'm waiting to find out too.