ETA: Also, its really important to note that nobody is ever going to get in trouble for voicing their concerns. We actually make it a point to keep posts like this up, and answer them publicly, because member feedback is crucial to the way we operate.
So if anyone else would like to voice concerns, please, please do so, now or otherwise. I have no idea why everyone's so terrified of doing that, but hopefully this serves as some sort of example.
Alright then, seeing as how no one is going to get in trouble for voicing their concerns, let me take the time to voice all of mine.
I was active on this site for over a year before my posting frequency become more sporadic during the summer of last year. Since then, my posting has whittled down, with my last post being over a couple of months ago. As of now, I consider myself to not be a member of FT, and there are quite a few reasons for that, one of them being that high school, friends, and activities has left me pretty busy, but the main reason being that I've realized just how horribly this site has been run in the past, both during and before my time here, and that, despite making countless mistakes, how the staff hasn't learned from any of them. I've been observing how the site has been operated over the past few months, as well as speaking to former members of the site who can attest to everything I'm about to say.
First of all, having just learned about the "leaked chat log" incident recently, I found myself disappointed yet not surprised in the slightest. Frankly, that's just the tip of the iceberg with the complaints I have, but it's still greatly unsettling nonetheless.
Secondly, Krowdon is correct about how the staff has shown itself to be, at best, unapproachable, and at worst, untrustworthy, dishonest, and honestly just not very good people. I could go on about incidents involving specific staff members and their reprehensible activities both on and off the site, but that would result in the post getting deleted quicker than I could say the alphabet. Let's just say that the list of offenses, at its worst, includes favoritism, displays of zoophilia, and use of ethnically insensitive insults. To my knowledge, no staff member has ever been punished for any of these, nor have they likely even been acknowledged in some cases. Not to mention that there are several staff members who have not posted for very long stretches of time, which, while it may seem minor compared to what I'm complaining about, is in itself a direct contradiction to what the site claims to expect from its moderators. Plain and simple, if a moderator can't take the time to at least post once or twice every few days or so, they don't belong moderating the site.
Third, I too have heard about the selection process for selecting new staff members, and I frankly find myself extremely puzzled as to how anyone could think that allowing former staff members to have a say in selecting staff is a good idea. Just as Krowdon mentioned, staff members who are no longer active have almost no possible way of judging the character or qualifications of a current member of the site unless they still frequent the site in some way (which, to my knowledge, is not usually the case). Furthermore, it is extremely questionable that current members of the site are given absolutely no say in who moderates it. While I know that giving people a vote would open up the possibility of people being selected based simply on popularity, this is where seniority and administration making decisions could prove to be helpful. Setting solid guidelines, such as requiring mods to have been on the site for a certain period of time with a certain level of activity or requiring mods to be of a certain age, could give users a solid pool of candidates to choose from, and would ensure that only qualified users could become staff.
Fourth, taking into account everything else I've said, I feel that users should be allowed to publicly complain about staff members if an incident occurs. With the current ways the rules are set up, complaining about specific staff members can result in your post/thread being deleted/locked. Meanwhile, whatever the staff member in question did, their punishment is decided by their fellow staff members. Seeing as how certain staff members are friends with one another, this opens up the possibility for staff members to be let off the hook, with their incidents potentially being swept under the rug. It's an extremely dishonest set-up, and to my knowledge, I've seen it happen before. If users were allowed to, within means, complain about something a staff member did, this would make an appropriate reaction from the staff almost mandatory to ensure everything is kept under control. In my mind, this would allow the site to police itself far more effectively, and would create a system that is far more fair by default.
Last, Krowdon is completely right about furry groups seeing the site as a complete joke, and this is very disappointing considering that this is the only site out there that caters specifically to teenagee furries and gives them a safe place separate from adult-dominated furry sites. This makes it imperative that this site's users hold it to a high standard, as this is, indeed, the
only place made exclusively for teenage furries, and thus, if this site is substandard, there is literally nowhere else that offers the positive services that FT claims to offer.
I know there's a pretty high chance that this post will be edited or deleted, but it's a risk I'm willing to take to see this site potentially become better. It's 2:27 where I am right now, so I tried to get all of my thoughts out as quickly as possible. To anyone reading this, thanks for having read the whole thing, and to FT staff, please know that this is not meant to smear or destroy your reputations; this is meant merely to express my transgressions towards you as a whole, and to suggest ways this site could be operated that would fix the problems many current and former users have with the site. If you truly want to see this site improve, you will see this not as an attack, but as criticism that will allow you to correct yourselves and your system. Good night to you all.
