Some time back on IRC at #kde-forum channel, I heard some guy talking about some mentor-hq or something. I also noticed that somebody (I dont remember the name) replied about moderator-hq.

What are these HQs? As far as I understood, they are definitely forums here. I followed one of the links they posted but I got an error that I dont have permission to view the thread.
I am aware that forums have dedicated forums for the teams. But isnt this way too much? I mean, why should you even hide your team forums? What is so secret inside that we common people cannot watch? I personally feel insulted as a user. Why cant the "HQ" contents be visible to users? Ok, I agree that it could be designed that normal users cannot post at those places, but whats wrong in viewing?

I also see on Ubuntu forums that they have a staff area that is always empty. But that staff area is accessible by users.

Is there one single reason why you dont consider us normal users worthy or capable enough to view those places? Should I say that it is lack of faith in your users?

By the way I had another account "Jacky" here but I lost the password.. Nevermind.

Funny, i never heard this sort of feedback...

Whatever, they are there for testing/planning. It is no matter of trust, it is a matter of trying things out or planning stuff in a quit area without too much crowd. It is as easy as that. Also some discussions about team structure etc.
And that's all about it.

When i buy a bus timetable i don't want to be bothered with how it is done. I just want to see the result. And that's what you have here.

pinno wrote:I also see on Ubuntu forums that they have a staff area that is always empty. But that staff area is accessible by users.

The staff area on Ubuntu forums is not empty. It never was empty and never will be. They hacked (patched) their board software to stop showing "no permission" messages for specific forums.
Plus, I agree with neverendingo. There is nothing "exclusive" going on at the team forums. We at KDE forums believe to proceed with something (any change, any proposal, anything) not before the whole forum team agrees on it. And that's what our team forums are for - to get everybody's opinion.
If you want to stay updated about forum happenings, please feel free to join us anytime at #kde-forum. You may also keep an eye on Planet KDE where forum updates are published by forum staff now and then.

I don't know of these secrets forums. whatever, It's bad that normals users only see the content ?

Edit: LinuxIsInnovation, thanks, I understand all now.

Why would you want to be bothered with it? The results will be seen nevertheless. Only the preparation is hidden.

@neverendingo
I still don't get the point. If it's just opinions and experimentation and planning, why not let the world see? What's the point in hiding them? You know how rude it is when you see the no permission box? How would you, you have access to everything.

@LinuxIsInnovation
Showing an empty thread is *much* less insulting. And what "proposal"? Who is authorized to give proposals?

pinno wrote:And what "proposal"? Who is authorized to give proposals?

Our members (users) are And so are you!
A forum is lifeless without it's users. Within reasonable constraints, we try to look into every single suggestion that we have at the Feedback area.

@neverendingo
I don't get it. How do you choose people to recruit them as staff. I mean, staff get paid for doing nothing? I take a look at the memberlist and see those who joined the forum at early stages all are staff. But since then, they have no participation (I dont want to take names, you know who all I am talking about).
At Ubuntu forums, every single staff has atleast 3000+ posts. I am not comparing as this is a new forum, but such low participation is inexcusable.

I propose that the forum team should be reconsidered. Old members need to be removed and you should send out for new recruitments.

The point is having a quiet place to do it, without being interrupted or getting feedback that needs to be handled. Some do the work in the back and they should get the room to do so.
But as already said, the results are visible, we have our blogs on the planet, we have the repository where our plugins went in, we have bugreports over at the community forums of mybb.

If ANY of the results of this go public and are not in your or other users mind, then feedback still is welcome. But to this point we need the silence to work it out. That is how it works everywhere. Show me one forum/place where it doesn't work this way.

Example: Tokamak, the last meeting of the plasma guys. Do you feel insulted because you were not there and were only shown some blog posts and some new code? No.

Btw., "lying" the user about an "empty" forum is much more insulting to me than only showing him "this is not intended for you".

Work done by the staff is not only having a big post number, sorry, that's not how it works. It is a nice plus to have people in the staff who post much.
But Moderation itself is about keeping threads/forums clean and not answering posts.

You know better than me that there is not much moderation to do here anyway. I don't remember a single spam/abuse attack. Now if I look at this profile of a super mod: - he/she has 1 post in total. And I don't remember seeing him/her online much (17 hours in 5 and a half months).
It's not a personal point, it's about what makes them deserve to have a pink name, what have they done that they are entitled to view all forums, to edit everyone's posts and view all our personal info? Why should they govern that a user account should be deleted? (I know what staff can do).
I don't see why they should be given so much rights unless they are better than all other contributors at the forum.
You want to know how other forums work? Well, not like this. In Ubuntu forums, they fire staff and they call them "staff emeritus". But they are in no way bad staff, I saw people with 21000 posts (yes, twenty one thousand) as staff emeritus. It is because they keep those staff only who are active in moderation.
Looking at this forum's activity, does this forum even need moderators? It's the guy bcooksley who is now admin (although last time I saw him as mod) does all the hard work and other mods dont do anything at all. Please dont take this personally, but you know this is true. Name a single work that other staff have done. Any other moderator than bcooksley.

The point is, hire only that much what is needed.

Now about those hidden forums, I never claim to be able to interfere with staff decisions. So make it read only by users? That should give them the "quiet" place that they need. I feel that users have their full right to know what is going on.
Anyway, I know you just say things. Can you implement what I requested? Is it too much to ask for read access to so called "opinion and testing" forums?

Sadly, I find your forums:
1. Unfair to users. You have recruited staff not on performance basis. The best deal would be to add users who are regular at the forums as staff, not those who are good friends with you or are forum staff at some other big forum (I have done my homework)

2. Maintaining unnecessary secrecy by hiding stuff from users. That is so very bad. We have the right to knowledge. I mean, if you expect users to come here and contribute, you have to be more transparent.

pinno wrote:You know better than me that there is not much moderation to do here anyway. I don't remember a single spam/abuse attack.

Well, then please thank the mods who were fast enough to remove it in seconds. Seriously, there were some. I should know.

Now if I look at this profile of a super mod: - he/she has 1 post in total. And I don't remember seeing him/her online much (17 hours in 5 and a half months).
It's not a personal point, it's about what makes them deserve to have a pink name, what have they done that they are entitled to view all forums, to edit everyone's posts and view all our personal info? Why should they govern that a user account should be deleted? (I know what staff can do).

Actually they can't. Only admins are allowed to do that. Banning is the only option Mods are able to.

I don't see why they should be given so much rights unless they are better than all other contributors at the forum.

What we have here is a pretty new forum, only some months old. Whoever stepped up as a Mod did it in the initial planning phase, even before we went really live, and most of them are REAL KDE contributors, means, they write the actual code of it. So whenever someone doesn't write much here, i am okay with it for now.
And remember, this forum is young. Such decisions surely should be made. But not yet. We have other stuff to do right now.

Oh, and we also have a new Mod who volunteered later after the start, and he is pretty good. You must have overlooked him...

You want to know how other forums work? Well, not like this. In Ubuntu forums, they fire staff and they call them "staff emeritus". But they are in no way bad staff, I saw people with 21000 posts (yes, twenty one thousand) as staff emeritus.

Fine. See above. Time tells. About posting numbers.... well, i already said something about that. If you really want to compare, then please also compare the number of users, the number of new posts/threads per day etc. Not comparable, right now.

It is because they keep those staff only who are active in moderation.
Looking at this forum's activity, does this forum even need moderators? It's the guy bcooksley who is now admin (although last time I saw him as mod) does all the hard work and other mods dont do anything at all. Please dont take this personally, but you know this is true. Name a single work that other staff have done. Any other moderator than bcooksley.

There are others who do work. Though bcooksley is really fast and makes it hard for everyone Kudos to him btw.

The point is, hire only that much what is needed.

We don't hire anyone, this is not commercial, it is community driven. And what we need or not or how much, is just a different story, up to the team who does the work.

Now about those hidden forums, I never claim to be able to interfere with staff decisions. So make it read only by users? That should give them the "quiet" place that they need. I feel that users have their full right to know what is going on.
Anyway, I know you just say things. Can you implement what I requested? Is it too much to ask for read access to so called "opinion and testing" forums?

Well, the team got what you said and surely it will be discussed. Personally i don't think it will be quiet after that at all. After all, do me a favour, request the same at ubuntuforums and let me know about the results.
We already have places where users can participate, either here or in the irc channel.

Sadly, I find your forums:
1. Unfair to users. You have recruited staff not on performance basis. The best deal would be to add users who are regular at the forums as staff, not those who are good friends with you or are forum staff at some other big forum (I have done my homework)

Which homework? I am not really active on any other forum, though subscribed, i didn't know any of the guys around here before this forum started. Nor do i know any of the team personally.
Telling me this forum is unfair to users is unfair from you to me and the team. Some are really doing a good work that most sadly will never see. Yes, i am again talking about moderator actions that don't have anything to do with posting.
Everyone who is willing to step up as a moderator is free and welcome to do so, everytime. And if he/she has proven to be reliable they will be added. No problem with that.
And sure, some day we will decide to restructure the team. But it is not yet on the todo. At this time i am happy about everyone who decided to help out. If time is getting short on them, well, okay, that's life in FOSS. Will be decided at some time.

2. Maintaining unnecessary secrecy by hiding stuff from users. That is so very bad. We have the right to knowledge. I mean, if you expect users to come here and contribute, you have to be more transparent.

Apart from that we now have said enough, that every result will be taken to the users. But what do you expect? Some secret world domination plans? We are talking about mybb fixes, plugins, new forums, removing forums, younameit. That's all no big deal and has in some parts not even to do with KDE. So why should this forum be flooded even more with mybb stuff e.g.? What's the deal with it?
If we plan to remove/add a forum we talk about it and then take it to public and request feedback. What's the deal here?
If we plan to do something like Klassrooms we discuss it, plan it, take it to the public as surprise and again, request feedback. What's the problem here?
I am really curious what you want. Besides that it works this way on every forum i know. At least that's why forum software implement this possibility.

As already said, please ask this on other FOSS forums, too. We'll see how they react.

pinno wrote:I don't see why they should be given so much rights unless they are better than all other contributors at the forum.

So, being a moderator is a sign that one user is better than the average forum contributor?

First of all, as far as I know, no one gets paid for moderating this forum. They do it on their own free time, like most free software-related stuff.
Secondly, the moderators etc. might do things you don't directly see as a forum member. You say that the early members are in the staff? Maybe they beta-tested the forum before opening it up to the public.

You want to know how other forums work? Well, not like this. In Ubuntu forums, they fire staff and they call them "staff emeritus". But they are in no way bad staff, I saw people with 21000 posts (yes, twenty one thousand) as staff emeritus. It is because they keep those staff only who are active in moderation.

Seriously, having 21 000 posts doesn't mean that you're a good moderator. And do you even know why he/she quit moderating? Maybe it was his/her own decision; moderating a forum is time consuming. Some persons don't want the additional responsibility and prefer to stay as a regular member.

Looking at this forum's activity, does this forum even need moderators? It's the guy bcooksley who is now admin (although last time I saw him as mod) does all the hard work and other mods dont do anything at all. Please dont take this personally, but you know this is true. Name a single work that other staff have done. Any other moderator than bcooksley.

bcooksley does a fantastic job job, no doubt about it. But saying that the other staff members don't do anything (and claiming that "you know this is true") is just straight rude.

You want examples? LinuxIsInnovation worked on oxygenating the forum. Some people (I don't remember exactly who, but yes, bcooksley was probably involved) implanted the "Mark thread as solved" feature. The staff is also planning a "surprise forum section". And this is only a few examples, because I don't know exactly who worked on what. But I know one thing: forum.kde.org didn't just magically appear out of nowhere appear one night.

Now about those hidden forums, I never claim to be able to interfere with staff decisions. So make it read only by users? That should give them the "quiet" place that they need. I feel that users have their full right to know what is going on.

I don't understand why you have to get access to it so badly. You know, the staff could also discuss things via e-mail or IM. Do you have to see those mails and IM logs too?
The staff have their right to keep things private. Being 'free' doesn't mean that you have to share everything.

You can see the hidden forum sections as another form of private conversation between the forum staff. It's convenient, so why not use it?

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Before, you asked if the staff didn't trust the users.

1. I have a friend I trust, but I wouldn't give him/her access to my e-mail. Even if it was readonly, even if I knew that he/she wasn't going to read any mails, I wouldn't. Why should I?

2. Speaking for myself, no, I don't trust all users. If I were webmaster, I wouldn't ge random members administrator privileges. Not even to someone who has 21 000 posts. I would consider other aspects before making that decision, and also talk to that user.

I do have my own forum, and a while ago I made a friend admin without much thinking. Why? Because I know him in real life, I trust him. And we're going to work on the site together, both online and offline.

Moderators that have moderated other forums are a good thing in my opinion. They have previous experience and know what they're expected to do. How is that "unfair"?

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Note that everything above are my own personal opinions. As a member.