Suggestions for Changes to the Marble Blast Community

This thread is intended for discussion regarding how the community is run, and how the moderators moderate. If you have any suggestions, or complaints for how this community could be better, please list them here.

Can y'all please revive the quote of the day channel on the Discord server?
It hasn't been updated in 2 months.

#qotd gets updated when something funny (decided by people with @qotd role) is said, and this community has said nothing funny lately

Be funnier

As far as reviving Quote of the Day goes. The moderators handled it for a while then we got bored of adding to it or forgot or stopped caring or something (I'm not sure exactly what). Then we decided to let community members add to it so we didn't have to and that worked for a while but then the same thing happened to them. Eventually they stopped too. It seems like it's something that we simply don't care about as a community anymore. Well obviously not, you care about it. We're not sure how to revive it is the issue. DKman00 started the question of the day and thats going quite well.

I would be fine with removing quote of the day entirely since it doesn't get too much use. Hide the channel and stash it away at the bottom of the server or something

I think we should at least keep the channel publicly viewable. It's nice to have it to look through when I'm bored, and it's good for historical purposes as well. And you never know, someone might put up a new quote of the day sometimes. I like having archives of stuff and don't ever think anything should be permanently deleted or hidden.

I didn't even read this before adding to #quote-of-the-day earlier but yeah it still gets updated sometimes. People just haven't said anything funny. If people think something is #quote-of-the-day worthy, they can react to it with :qotd: or post it in #qotd-bank

Quote of the Day is mostly dead at this point. I think it would be nice to have a QOTD archive. Question of the Day, on the other hand, is far more engaging for the community, especially because it encourages interaction between members and gives a place to learn interesting things about each other.

As for moderation, it's simple: Enforce Rule 1 in the Discord server.

"Be kind to one another. Treat others how you would like to be treated yourself. Don't be afraid to ask a moderator for help."

While it is good that this rule rarely needs to be enforced, it is not good that it goes completely unenforced when someone is breaking it. This includes consistently deadnaming people, intentionally using the wrong pronouns, and making baseless accusations of grooming. Instead of punishing the members who enjoy creating drama (using some of the tactics above), every moderator refuses to take action beyond giving advice like "be nice." This is the only server that I'm in where the moderators refuse to enforce the "be nice" rule. People who have spent years being rude to others have not been adequately held accountable for their actions.

Keep in mind that the people I'm talking about are just a few bad apples, but the entire saying goes, "A few bad apples spoil the bunch." Even though this community is almost always very welcoming, it is these moments of people being rude and intentionally creating drama that lead to the idea that the Marble Blast community is very unwelcoming. It does not help that every moderator refuses to do anything about this problem. As long as bad actors remain unpunished, their actions will not change.

Also, eliminate any staff who stand against enforcing rule 1 toward everyone.

The best way to settle any drama is to go over the facts of the matter and come to a consensus based on that. Arguments only devolve once people resort to baseless insults. Of course, some things can be a bit more subjective, but most of the time there's some cold hard objective scaffolding to work from. Also, with some hotter topics (like death or grooming accusations just as some hypothetical examples) it might be better to wait a while for people to cool off, since a lot of people tend to get pretty emotional in the moment before they have time to sort things out.

One major thing that hasn't been pointed out: Better communication.

When communication is too one-way (incompetent communication), no work gets done. People feel left out, people feel disconnected and people feel awkward or confused. As a person who has worked endlessly as a leader in many teams for the last seven years, two-way communication (or competent communication) helps people achieve goals. Work gets done, there's a better chance for realistic answers, and people are heard and included. Communication is meant to be a two-way street - it's not just common sense. Listening and dual interaction is part of the process of communicating effectively.

That isn't being done here as well as I would like to see.

Although there have been a few spoiled apples in the past with community staff members communicating with members (especially targeted against major stage builders and game modifiers, like myself!) with poor word choices, poor decisions, and insults, previous team members communicated with members (especially on this forum) better than when new leadership took place last year. As CylinderKnot once said, rule 1 on the Discord server must be feverently monitored and emphasized. I don't know how it's been in the last two years, but for the time I've been on this forum, I haven't seen it as enforced as I would like it to be.
When new team members onboarded, I've noticed a severe lack of communication and action on this forum. I can't speak for the Discord since it's the "central hub for this web site" and since I choose not to be on there to begin with. In my case, it's jumping through hoops to get the STOP II download page properly updated and the modification finally on the Community Highlight, which was supposed to happen last year, but there was no communication after being told to contact somebody else.
I feel lost, confused, and misinformed. I feel like I don't have the faith I once had with communication in this community, which was already pretty low before. But as I've said - no one has pointed this out, and here I am expressing my affiliations and concerns on the matter, coming from a person who is currently experiencing an issue that's well worth the example.

What else have I seen that has lead me to draw this concern?

1. It takes days for a community member to answer a support question on this forum. I haven't seen a single new moderator answer one in the times I've crawled through here. Proving me wrong is not the point - the point is to step up your game and communicate effectively with everybody - to learn how to be team players - to understand and inform effectively and competently.
2. There's no balance between this forum and the Discord. I don't care whether people currently say that the Discord is used more now than the forum is in this current time period or not. That can change too. Many users on here are not on Discord, including myself, some for reasons that are personal to them as to why they don't want to risk joining again.
3. The current staff roster is both confusing and small. I don't know who has what "powers" or who is actually still on the team anymore. It also doesn't sound like effective communicators are put on the staff roster. There needs to be more volunteers who can take on those roles or a step-up in leadership.
4. I am appalled by the amount of people who have replied that rule one is not enforced enough. This doesn't convince me to join the Discord server again, let alone continue to use this web site again. Just because this is the Internet doesn't mean people's feelings won't be hurt - when it comes to satirical jokes, insults, non-constructive criticism and communication, etcetera. People's feelings will get hurt in real life. Why do you think cyberbullying has become a serious problem in the last two decades? I'm not intentionally trying to point fingers here/accuse someone of cyberbullying, but on-line harassment, lying and minimizing, non-constructive communication, and stereotyping can be a serious problem, and I've seen enough of it here that it has become a big problem, and might still be today. Judging from what CylinderKnot wrote down here, I am concerned.
5. Personally for me, and this has happened throughout the years: Creators don't feel they're appreciated enough. This has been a major problem for years between other creators as well. The Marble Blast Super Team went through it. Connie went through it. I went through it. While I do appreciate suggestions myself, it also makes me feel happy whenever someone tells me I've created something they like. I get that 95% of the time anywhere else than on this web site.

As I've said, if there's one thing that needs to be addressed, it's communication. I know this team can do better at that. This applies to all the other suggestions here - people are communicating their concerns, like myself. If it's hiring effective communicators or stepping up as current team players, something can be done. It's all about whether current staff members actually want to embrace the suggestions.

Thanks for agreeing with me on a lot of these points. I know I'm not wrong, and theoretically there can be a change in balance. Maybe the forum is not the way to do it, but that's why you made your suggestion and that's why I had that on the back of my mind with the points I originally left here. Let me be clear on this (I think you haven't fully understood, which is totally okay) - I already know folks prefer Discord over this forum. I just know there can be better balance, whether it's using this forum or revamping the web site. Just some way to balance it out. As with many things (being an eclectic quirky individual who prefers old realities from new realities in most cases), I'm the opposite. My head still feels like it's in the mid 2000's sometimes. I know I've said this before.

A web site revamp is exactly the kind of suggestion I was looking for in my point. I think I'll go back and edit that in before I really do leave this community behind indefinitely.

Know nothing of this drama, as I've stated, not on the Discord. Lol. Hope things get better for the community related to whatever the video issues are though.

I left the server because it was full of dirty jokes and swearing.

From discussion about the server, and my experience in it, relatively passive behavior may be taken as toxic when it isn't. This can happen in cases when the only well-meaning alternative is not saying anything, and that might be annoying (for others) or difficult (for the speaker in question) in the middle of a conversation. The easiest way to do nothing is to leave the server.

I would like to reference back to the very very start of 2021, with the creation of the "MB Underground" culminating in the switch of the mod team (and the unbanning of Nockess, noby, and, for speedrunning, PJ) in the first place. Most of this was due to big decisions being made solely on subjective factors of people simply disliking things, but there was also the issue of the mods and only the mods having far too much power, which has definitely been made a lot better since, even with small things such as the making public of #qotd-bank and the Event Planner role, but also with, well, this forum thread. However, I would hate for this to then turn into mods making decisions based on what they gather from this thread, now armed with the reasoning of doing it "on the behalf of the community."

While that would make sense, as Jiquor just said, people don't use the forums anymore. This isn't the best place to host something like this. Making a thread or, in the future, using the possibly-upcoming forum channels in Discord to host these kinds of discussions seems like a much better option. Even with the existence of #forum-posts, I don't think people actually really look at the forums, much less actually give their 2 cents on the topics. Case in point, a total of 5 people have been a part of the Rule 1 discussion, including CK's original post on the matter.

I don't want to gloss over Jiquor and Weather's point of people not being in the server for some reasons, but, as Nockess said, the number of people active in Discord but not the forums far outweighs the opposite. Also, I don't really like this reasoning, but changing the way the whole server operates and communicates with each other just because a small handful of people don't like some things people say, aside from just being silly in my opinion, (although that's kind of unimportant especially with how much I've been emphasizing being objective) also just shifts the problem to other people. Disallowing things to make things more comfortable for some people makes the people who do want to discuss these things uncomfortable. Trying to make things more welcoming by being unwelcome towards other things is counterproductive. Plus, as things stand now, Jiquor or Weather have the choice to join the server and talk with people about whatever they want to talk about. To ban some things enforces some people to stay out of the server by law rather than by choice. To twist what Weather said with this new situation, the only choice would be to not say anything, which can be annoying or difficult. Except instead of being the only well-meaning choice, it would be the only choice that doesn't get people punished.

Also, I'd like to point out that Rule 1 isn't just to "be nice", but to "treat others how you'd like to be treated".

EDIT: Today is April 1st, but this post is not a joke. I just want to clarify that before anyone accidentally takes this the wrong way.

I know that this might be a bit late, but one of the Discord servers that I'm in had a recent discussion about community building, which inspired me to post again here in more detail and from a slightly different angle. Last year, someone who persistently held anti-vaccine views was temporarily banned from that server after he said, "As long as I am not banished, I consider that my opinion is tolerated even if you won't openly say it." The topic of community building was brought up a few days ago after a few people mentioned the banned person.

Like PlatinumQuest, that server in question is for a somewhat obscure game. It is slightly more active than PQ's server. Its community is smallish but very active. One of the main differences, however, is that the server almost never has instances of drama or bigotry.

From that discussion about building communities, I found a few key points:

Opinions should be tolerated within reason. Making a place where every opinion is welcome is impossible because some opinions become inherently unwelcome. People who disagree with a bigoted opinion will feel unwelcome when moderators give a platform for bigotry.

Not everyone will publicly declare their discomfort. If someone joins a server, and the first thing they see is bigotry toward people like them, they will probably silently leave, especially if the rest of the community does not hold the bigots accountable in a timely manner.

When moderators decide which groups are welcome, they also decide (implicitly or explicitly) which groups are unwelcome. If moderators want to make a server that is welcoming toward people who often get treated like second-class citizens (such as LGBTQ+ people), those moderators have to explicitly make the server unwelcoming toward bigots. A server that tries to be welcoming toward everyone works until people start espousing bigoted ideas, and then the server becomes implicitly unwelcoming toward the victims of said bigotry.

That server excels when dealing with bigotry because the bigots get dealt with swiftly. The first rule has a section that is very explicit about this:

Respect others.
> Absolutely no racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. of any sort.
> > Any sort of bigotry is going to get you instantly banned.
> > That means respect people's pronouns.
> > We know what you're doing when you try to be cute about dogwhistles ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) ), and we will make fun of you or ban you for trying it.

Regarding drama, the second rule has a bit:

Respect the space.
> Respect the mood.
> > Try to stay chill. The game's hard, but try to keep it positive. We're all here to have fun, not to bring anyone down.

At the end of the rules, it says, "So long as you're not intentionally being a jerk, chances are you're okay."

How does this relate to the Marble Blast community? First, bigotry is inconsistently handled. The PQ Discord server is meant to be welcoming as indicated by its first rule ("Be kind to one another. Treat others how you would like to be treated yourself. Don't be afraid to ask a moderator for help."), but the fact that bigotry is often tolerated by the moderators means that the server is implicitly unwelcoming toward people who are on the receiving end of bigotry. We have community members who intentionally deadname and use the wrong pronouns for people, and those bigoted community members are still welcome in the server. Such a situation screams "this place does not actually welcome LGBTQ+ community members."

Second, this community historically has had a strong culture of drama. Fortunately, that culture is dissipating (I can only think of one person in recent months whose primary interaction with the community is to create and participate in drama), but it still persists. Excessive friction between community members is never good for the wellbeing of the community. By welcoming drama, the moderators create a server that is implicitly unwelcoming toward people who just want to have fun.

This contains a decent amount of information in my first post on here, but this goes into more detail on the community building aspect and how one similar type of server does an excellent job at managing bigotry and drama.

General comment this is
If we are going to fully start enforcing respect, let's not pick and choose which fits in what feels right according to our feelings.

Opinions should be tolerated within reason.

bruh you can't make this shit up

Thank you all so much for your comments! Here is the response of the moderators:


Here is our response to Cylinderknot:

We need to make it clear that this is not an LGBT+ community, and the concerns of the LGBT community are not the primary concerns of this community. The main focus here is Marble Blast. It is obvious to everyone that there are plenty of different people with different values and views here, and we need to keep everyone in mind. We do however want to address some of your concerns regarding rule 1. Intentionally offending other people, whether that be via deadnames or misuse of pronouns, is to be treated as a violation of rule 1. We will make use of Discord's timeout function to deal with minor rule infractions in the future to dole out appropriate punishments since we feel like it is a good step between warning and ban that mods can easily utilise (as opposed to how we used to do it on the forums)

And for Jiquor (using the same numbers you used):

1. We as moderators are not able to answer every question, we will start to direct people towards the Discord server when they need help since more people are active there and problems are solved faster. We will however post all of the questions and their solutions to the forums where they can be more easily viewed.

3. Kalle, Doomblah, Go'way, and DKman are the current moderators. We all have administrator powers technically but our main duty is to moderate the community and to do some minor backend stuff, like add times to the leaderboards, or activate accounts that could not be activated in the normal way. Aayrl is also technically in this role, but he is not an active moderator, he helps us when we need his backend knowledge. On top of us, we have the developers, who help update the game, as well as other things that require certain expertise (like coding or web design). To become a developer you simply need to ask, you can see in the Discord server who has the Developer role.

5. We have started to take some strides towards this, including the separation of the new-releases channel in the Discord server from the new-videos one. As well as using the announcement channel to bring attention to new content. We do admit that this has been lacking on the website, but we have plans to make new content more visible on here as well.

And I also want to add a personal comment regarding your mods, Jiquor. I genuinely feel like Stop II is one of the best mods ever in this community, I've actually stated that multiple times in the Discord server and I think it's very appropriate to also put it here where you can see. My only gripe is that I think there are too many Time Travels in the mod (because of speedrunning lol), but overall I think it's great. Great and fun levels, good difficulty, nothing too gimmicky, just a lot of fun to play. So yeah, really well done on that.

Kalle29 wrote: Thank all so much for your comments! Here is the response of the moderators:


Here is our response to Cylinderknot:

We need to make it clear that this is not an LGBT+ community, and the concerns of the LGBT community are not the primary concerns of this community. The main focus here is Marble Blast. It is obvious to everyone that there are plenty of different people with different values and views here, and we need to keep everyone in mind. We do however want to address some of your concerns regarding rule 1. Intentionally offending other people, whether that be via deadnames or misuse of pronouns, is to be treated as a violation of rule 1. We will make use of Discord's timeout function to deal with minor rule infractions in the future to dole out appropriate punishments since we feel like it is a good step between warning and ban that mods can easily utilise (as opposed to how we used to do it on the forums)

And for Jiquor (using the same numbers you used):

1. We as moderators are not able to answer every question, we will start to direct people towards the Discord server when they need help since more people are active there and problems are solved faster. We will however post all of the questions and their solutions to the forums where they can be more easily viewed.

3. Kalle, Doomblah, Go'way, and DKman are the current moderators. We all have administrator powers technically but our main duty is to moderate the community and to do some minor backend stuff, like add times to the leaderboards, or activate accounts that could not be activated in the normal way. Aayrl is also technically in this role, but he is not an active moderator, he helps us when we need his backend knowledge. On top of us, we have the developers, who help update the game, as well as other things that require certain expertise (like coding or web design). To become a developer you simply need to ask, you can see in the Discord server who has the Developer role.

5. We have started to take some strides towards this, including the separation of the new-releases channel in the Discord server from the new-videos one. As well as using the announcement channel to bring attention to new content. We do admit that this has been lacking on the website, but we have plans to make new content more visible on here as well.

Thanks for the response. For the record, I wasn't trying to say or imply that the MB community is or should be focused on LGBTQ+ members and issues. It's just that the unaddressed rudeness and bigotry (such as intentional misgendering and deadnaming) that I've seen has appeared to be directed more toward such members, giving a basis for the claim that this community is unwelcoming.

I'm glad that I had a place to share some of my in-depth thoughts on this matter, and I appreciate that the moderation team plans to be more proactive on rule 1 going forward. I care a lot about this place, so I enjoy seeing the progress.

(I have a tendency to write way too much on topics that I feel greatly invested in!)

I should probably say that stuff like using undesired pronouns isn't always meant to be insulting, and who knows, maybe it usually isn't. This is among the things I was referring to in my other post. I can elaborate, but that should probably be in private, at least at first. Either way, I don't want to be jumped on.

Weather wrote: I should probably say that stuff like using undesired pronouns isn't always meant to be insulting, and who knows, maybe it usually isn't. This is among the things I was referring to in my other post. I can elaborate, but that should probably be in private, at least at first. Either way, I don't want to be jumped on.

I'm glad someone said this. People who do not like adhering to someone's desired pronouns because of their beliefs, and only their beliefs, should not be shamed for doing so (being called a bigot, etc).

I'll admit that there is a thin line between doing it because of your beliefs, and doing it because you hate trans people as a whole (if that makes sense), and the best way to see if someone is doing it more to be a troll or if they genuinely mean no harm is to look at how they interact with you and others. If all they do is misgender someone and don't go out of their way to cause more trouble for trans people, then in my opinion they should not be met with harsh words or punishment. If they do it to troll/hurt trans people it will be fairly evident in their speech patterns and actions outside of misgendering someone, in which case, rule 1 would be enforced.

I've had this thought in the back of my head for a while now, and I'm glad I finally got the chance to say my stance on the matter, as its a pretty controversial topic that I personally don't like getting involved in too much due to the potential of it stirring up unnecessary drama.

Weather wrote: I should probably say that stuff like using undesired pronouns isn't always meant to be insulting, and who knows, maybe it usually isn't. This is among the things I was referring to in my other post. I can elaborate, but that should probably be in private, at least at first. Either way, I don't want to be jumped on.

As Mazik said, I’m glad this is said. I’m quite disappointed that to make one group happy, we need to make another group give up their beliefs, instead of letting us decide for our own, and then seeing if X person is being transphobic overall. It is almost like we forget there are groups that don’t agree with the lifestyle of others with how mainstream this issue has become. I don’t think it is any way transphobic if one doesn’t feel comfortable with using pronouns that don’t match someone’s biology, it is usually clear what the intentions of someone are. That said it’s common knowledge that minority groups absolutely deserve decency.
Also regarding recent dramas, I think it is more important if anything to step back before head butting each other and name calling at the sight of a disagreement, as we have seen it does not get us anywhere.

Jean wrote: As Mazik said, I’m glad this is said. I’m quite disappointed that to make one group happy, we need to make another group give up their beliefs, instead of letting us decide for our own, and then seeing if X person is being transphobic overall. It is almost like we forget there are groups that don’t agree with the lifestyle of others with how mainstream this issue has become. I don’t think it is any way transphobic if one doesn’t feel comfortable with using pronouns that don’t match someone’s biology, it is usually clear what the intentions of someone are. That said it’s common knowledge that minority groups absolutely deserve decency.
Also regarding recent dramas, I think it is more important if anything to step back before head butting each other and name calling at the sight of a disagreement, as we have seen it does not get us anywhere.

No one is being forced to give up their beliefs. This is a matter of treating everyone with basic human decency.

Mazik wrote: I'm glad someone said this. People who do not like adhering to someone's desired pronouns because of their beliefs, and only their beliefs, should not be shamed for doing so (being called a bigot, etc).

I'll admit that there is a thin line between doing it because of your beliefs, and doing it because you hate trans people as a whole (if that makes sense), and the best way to see if someone is doing it more to be a troll or if they genuinely mean no harm is to look at how they interact with you and others. If all they do is misgender someone and don't go out of their way to cause more trouble for trans people, then in my opinion they should not be met with harsh words or punishment. If they do it to troll/hurt trans people it will be fairly evident in their speech patterns and actions outside of misgendering someone, in which case, rule 1 would be enforced.

I've had this thought in the back of my head for a while now, and I'm glad I finally got the chance to say my stance on the matter, as its a pretty controversial topic that I personally don't like getting involved in too much due to the potential of it stirring up unnecessary drama.

Intentionally misgendering someone because of your beliefs is by definition a transphobic position, and people who do so should be called out for being unwelcoming toward others.

Example: Suppose I claim to have a sincere belief that all men are terrible people. When I join the server, I am not being forced to stop believing that. I am simply being forced to treat everyone nicely in spite of my bigoted beliefs. The reason for this is to create a server that feels less hostile and therefore more welcoming, so people feel more inclined to participate and stay.

I'm not sure when the right time to say this is, but I think it's best kept in mind that we try to stick to the original point of the thread rather than turn this into a political debate. Remember what the focus is here.

For those that aren't in the Discord server or just haven't seen it, there's a thread in #forum-posts Nockess made now about this, so feel free to talk about that there if you're interested, not just cutting it off.

Anyway bringing back #trivia (or at least some kind of monthly non-MB game night) would be nice, alongside the more common multiplayer events which were discussed in the second MP discussion recently