First off I want to thank everyone who wrote to me and gave their perspective on the things they love about the forum community here at YoYoExpert and for taking the time to share thoughts on how things could be either improved or better handled, guided, and structured. A LOT of people reached out and honestly it was uplifting to see so many long time users who are both still here and care so much.
Since starting YoYoExpert back in 2008 one of my favorite things has always been the strong sense of community and a lot of that comes from the forum here. People of all ages and from all walks of life come together to enjoy the simple thing we throw in so many ways whether they are a casual thrower, competitor, collector, or a little bit of everything. Many of my own best friendships have come out of the world of yoyoing and having a community where people can feel safe and supported has always been a big part of that. Making connections at its core is one of the best parts about being a yoyo enthusiast.
In addition we often seek yoyo and throwing as a way to detach from the stresses of life and come to a place that you can be immersed in and enjoy what you love. Our goal at YoYoExpert has always been to focus on that. When we first started the forum community too the internet was a very different place. I remember one of my first posts was explaining to people what ‘Twitter’ was! Fast forward 15 years of internet evolution I acknowledge times have changed and with that sometimes it can be a harder balance to strike in both allowing for productive conversation and maintaining a positive and uplifting community for everyone. (But when people ask about set rules we used to have about proper grammar/punctuation or foreign language allowances just keep in mind how different the internet is today!)
In evaluating what came to be over the past few months a few themes emerged. One was that people care A LOT about the community at large here (and elsewhere in yoyo) and that goes for both the moderators and the people being moderated. There is no evil agenda here (promise - we love yoyos and try to grow and support it every way we can) and often our goal in moderating is very much to maintain positive conversation and attitudes - trying to uplift and maintain a sense of joy, safety, and again community. With that said moderating is a very difficult (and often thankless) job that is difficult to strike the right balance in complicated situations and its not always clear cut. It definitely takes a team and different perspectives involved.
We have spoken quite a bit internally about ways we can move forward from here to best support the expectations of the community and after talking with many of you the path is clear and honestly everyone here at YoYoExpert (both my team in house and those online as moderators) see this as a great opportunity to improve things for a stronger community into the future.
Here is how we plan to go about this.
- We will do our best to be more aware and vigilant of anyone actively ‘trolling’ or being negative on the forum (and discord) towards a specific person or individual. Obviously constructive criticism and conversations are going to happen but it needs to stay constructive and we will try to be more mindful of those who attempt to consistently do nothing but try to upset everyone else for their personal gain.
- I will attempt to build a better process for people to reach both my in house YoYoExpert team and the moderation team directly when they are upset something (or feel we need to be better informed) or to react to something being deleted or moderated. Our goals above are clear and sometimes moderation is needed to preserve them and we can always learn as a team. We are all human trying to enjoy ourselves here and conversation should happen in a respectful manner whether that is on the forum or directly about an issue that arises.
- I will soon launch applications for people to join our moderation team (as forum moderators here as well as moderators for the discord). We will evaluate based on some interview style questions, previous experience, and from that work to build a balanced team to help include added perspectives and move forward in a more level headed approach.
- Following the many conversations I had over the past few days some users have been removed from the forum and some brought back following the incidents of last week. I will be in communication with them directly about this.
- I do want to be clear and re-emphasize again - publicly berating or making fun of anyone on the forum (mods very much included in this) is completely unacceptable. We can and will be better than that here.
I very much welcome continued feedback directed to me and look forward to continuing to make this the wonderful community it really is. Thank YOU for being part of that.
