I just skimmed through this thread and I have a few things to post form and outside perspective, and if people know me well then be prepared for an essay long post!!
First of all, this has been said, but most of the time mods are on invisible anyway, which is why you never really see them online - most of them don't seem to post unless they are posting something like "hey just a reminder this is against the rules", and usually stick to the mod boards. I'm not too sure which do/don't use invisible, but I'm pretty sure Jason is the only one who doesn't - then the rest turn it on and off at will. Tina explained this in her post, but obviously each staff member has reasoning for using invisible, and they probably have good reasoning (and I'd assume mostly comes down to availability as Tina said). Just from looking around the forum, as soon as there is an issue, most users seem to go straight to PM'ing the mod that's online, rather than using the report button, or make a thread in the HQ. Obviously this only means the mod that got sent the PM can see the issue, instead of all staff members, if the thread was reported. Then when this happens, I see a lot of petty and pointless reasons to PM a mod (I also remember reading something somewhere that users are still PM'ing mods when they stuff up sending collectibles/bells, instead of using the shop corrections), meaning said mod gets spammed with countless PM's, and having to sort through them is an issue when a lot of them are petty, making it harder to actually see threads that are in serious need of attention because they're flat out dealing with many minor issues racked up in their inbox. Mods also have a life outside of TBT blah blah blah, obviously they're not going to sit around trying to sort out forum issues, they have lives and tbh you shouldn't expect them to (obviously this would be helped if there were more staff members). But I honestly think a lot of the issues would be helped by user participation, rather than mod participation. If users properly knew when and where to report threads, then I think this would solve up a lot of issues. I know this because I have received plenty of PM's by users who seem to think I'm a mod for some reason. Not sure why they think I'm a mod, but this shows how little the forum members actually know about the report feature - they just PM the first available mod because they think that'll fix the issue quickly - when in reality the report button probably has a better outcome - and almost every single PM I've received has been something minor and petty that shouldn't really require that much attention, and should have been reported in the first place. And like just look at the TBT HQ, there are literally 3 threads on the first page about users getting locked out of their accounts due to the VTP twitter bot thing, they could have easily quickly browsed the first page to see the other threads of people with the same issue, and posted there asking for help, but instead they didn't bother browsing, and just made another thread of something that is only a few threads down and has been looked into. It's just a matter of users really lacking common sense in a way. They also make threads that could easily be answered by reading the stickied threads in certain boards, granted, these are usually made by newer members who probably don't know how to navigate the forums, but that still comes down to users not knowing how to forum (lol what is english). Whenever I join a new forum I make sure to look around a bit before asking any questions.
Idk I can explain more but then this post will get longer than it's going to be already and I cbf typing all that. Basically I'm trying to say I guess staff use invisible because the majority of the users I see here just PM the first online moderator whenever there's an issue instead of using the report button, regardless of how big the issue is - and this issue could effectively be somewhat resolved if users actually knew how to use forums and the report button. Obviously I could be totally wrong with this post, but that's just from what I see as an outside perspective.
Secondly, there really do need to be more staff members. Looking back on the past year, TBT lost 5 moderators - ZR, Kaiaa, Gallows, Thunder and Gandalf - and only replaced them with three, math equals the forums has 2 less staff members than this time last year. TBT has a really large user interface, and literally 7 staff members is not enough (even last year when there were 9 still wasn't enough). Lots of the staff have jobs or go to uni and it's physically impossible to have at least one moderator online at any given time given their personal lives, and the large activity of the forum with only 7 mods - but I'm guessing there's probably a reasoning as to why there isn't a lot of staff. Most of the forums users stick to the AC boards, and don't really ever leave them. This is obviously an issue because the staff have said they are most likely not going to promote a user to moderator if they do not know them well. Since a good 70% of the forums users post solely in the AC boards, that essentially means there are less users who are mod worthy. Then of the remaining 30% who don't post outside the AC boards, they're either too young, immature, trolls, or not serious, etc... making it difficult to actually find someone who is moderator material.
That said though, I've always thought TBT should join the ranks of other forums and have specific mods to moderate specific boards, and have "AC moderators" who specifically moderate the AC boards. Out of the current mods, the only one I think who still plays AC is LaBelle, and even then, I don't think she's that much of a hardcore player? Idk from my perspective it just seems a tad difficult (not sure if difficult is the correct word) to moderate the AC boards when you don't really play the game or even care that much for it. If they had specific AC mods who actually played and cared for the game, it'd make things a lot easier - the current mods could focus more on the non-AC boards which I guess they "understand" more, whilst the AC mods could moderate the AC boards and help them out - because from what I see in the AC boards, there are a lot of rule breaks, that most likely go unreported, because as I said before, lots of users don't really know how to use the report button properly. Mods don't go and seek out 24/7 posts that break rules, they rely upon the report button, but obviously having AC mods would have users checking these boards and hopefully cut down on the spam and what not on those boards. But that'll most likely never happen because I suggested it to Jeff a few years ago and he wasn't too keen on the idea so whatever, it's obviously not detrimental to the forum, but it's really something I can see being used effectively is put in place.
And with that said, most of what I want to say has already been said here - when there's a spam thread, report it and move on, don't post there, you're just adding to the problem - and whatever else people have posted here (such as the mods not being strict enough. Granted, I get why they're not super strict, but they do seem really softcore when it comes to rule breaks and stuff compared to a lot of other forums. Maybe that's because I've spent a lot of time on GPX forums where you'll literally get a 10% warn increase, minimum, no matter how big of an offence you make - make a two words post? INSTANT 10% WARN INCREASE. Here if you do that, they just send you a warning as a reminder for post quality, it's not until you actually regularly commit the offence that you get an infraction and risk being banned. On GPX you literally just have to make 5 posts that have like 4 words or less and you're banned for 2 weeks. It's called something like the 4/25 rule, where each post should be 4 words and 25 letters long, or else it's not worth posting - this is actually a good rule I like to use when on most forums anyway, if your pots is any shorter than that then it's probably not worth posting in the first place (but this whole tangent was totally irrelevant oops). Obviously this is really strict ruling and I don't think TBT should have the same rules, but it should be a lot stricter than what it is. Of course it's nice to come on TBT and not be bombarded by a lot of strict rules, but I still think TBT could be at least somewhat striver than what they already are. I really do think a lot of the issues could be resolves, or at least minimized if users actually knew how to deal with trolls/spam threads etc - but even still, TBT needs more staff members because it's severely understaffed for a forum of it's size.
