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[resolved] [invalid] Skinning Moderation Team

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Total Posts
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This is a feature request. Feature requests can be voted up by supporters.
Current Priority: +0
Topic Starter
h3oCharles
The skinning forum is a wasteland of spam posts that seemingly none of the staff team seem to care about. Despite me, atturbo555, and a handful of other active users constantly reporting these kinds of posts, there is no visible, positive outcome to our labour. Even though a member of the GMT will occasionally come through, their actions aren’t exactly helpful in most cases. Some of them are locking the threads, while others are moving threads to the wastelands, which is, at least from our points of view, a total miscommunication on their side. Sure, they are moderating and doing their best to help out, but in the long run, this will not mend or help any of the issues we are experiencing.

The biggest of these issues that we are facing is mixed or skins taking up the entire front page, pushing all high quality and high effort skins to the second page to never be seen by the average user. Unless your skin is being actively bumped by supporters of it, you are almost certainly doomed to get bumped to the second or third page by mixed skins. Locking does very little to amend this issue aside from discouraging that user from doing the same thing again.

To elaborate even further on these issues, here’s an email I wrote to the support team regarding them:
email
Dear osu! Support Team,
The skinning forum is a mess. There is rampant rule-breaking and a massive lack of organization.
1. Mixed Skins
People post mixed skins, despite the rules (https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/318193) saying otherwise.
If you are unaware of what a "mixed skin" is, it is a skin that is compiled of multiple skins. Some cases also use 3rd party websites to compile skins, mainly http://osuskinner.com/.
Mixed Skins are a large issue in the forums due to how prevalent they are, especially since the distribution of a mixed skin on a forum intended to share original skins is akin to art theft. The majority of mixed skin posts contain no original artwork and do not credit the original creators.

2. Clutter
There are skinning questions posted on the forum, but once solved, they just... sit there. There is no section for these solved questions to be moved towards. This clutters up the skinning forum and takes attention away from skinners sharing their original skins.

3. OP Quote Spam
There is a spamming issue occurring right now. People are reposting OPs without bringing any discussion whatsoever. (See here: t/205453/start=15). Notice how the OP quoters only have that post as their only post.

4. Lack of Moderation
The main skinning moderators would be deadbeat and Stefan. From what I have seen, Stefan has not been on the skinning forum at all. deadbeat did appear, but he quickly disappeared again. He told us to PM him links to threads in need of inspection. I sent him the following:
t/612502
t/612418
t/332072
t/612074
t/612573
t/612579
t/613642
t/612643
t/614226
t/614298
t/614266
t/614482
t/614709
t/614821
t/614966
t/615407
t/613766
t/615465
t/615283
t/614822
t/614673
t/616133
t/615283
Deadbeat's replies included:
"Technically I can now But holiday :D"
"I'll deal with it later"
"Can it wait I really wanna try Shadow of Mordor DLC"
"I'll get to those soonish"
"I'll just leave it then"
To give him credit, he did do SOME moderation, but it was only for couple threads. In comparison to the wall of links, he is only scratching the surface.

5. No Progress in Complete Skins Queue
deadbeat made a Complete Skins Queue thread (https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/136162) where skinners could submit their skins that already appear in the forum to be moved into Completed Skins subforum for them to be noticed there. However, with his inactivity and not telling anyone how to do this sort of stuff, the queue just filled up to the point, where it's just sad.

All of these problems are still there and they are coming back like Hydra heads. Cut one - two more grow. Also, Garin (the Skinner behind the popular skin YUGEN) started a thread (https://osu.ppy.sh/forum/t/611098) about some of these issues. The effects of this thread did not last long.

I am not the only skinner who wants this situation changed.
Please, I only want to help the skinning community grow.

Sincerely,
h3oCharles#5397 (https://osu.ppy.sh/u/8712289)

I did receive a reply, which will be shown here:
reply
Hi,
We've raised this issue with the rest of the GMT and expect them to start picking up the slack on the issue very shortly. Thank you for sending in such a detailed report - we really do appreciate the level of detail you've put into this. You should notice some positive change within the next few days (if not immediately) - please let me know if you don't.
Regards,
osu! support

However, despite this reply, we have seen little to no changes on the matter. We are not shaming the GMT in any way, nor do we wish for this to be some sort of “callout” or “exposed” post. They simply do not want to/do not have the time to focus on the skinning subforum, there are bigger issues for them.

How do we suggest going about fixing this? Well, if the GMT simply does not have the time or want to help fix this issue, we have more than enough willing volunteers. We propose the addition of a “Skinning Moderation Team” of sorts, a team that will only have permissions to remove or lock posts/threads on the skinning subforum. Perhaps there could be a leader/head of said team, such as deadbeat if he is willing to. Obviously more work and thought needs to be put into their exact role and permissions, but a dedicated team of volunteers willing to nurture and moderate the skinning forum could help bring it back to life and weed out spam posts faster.

We would like to nominate the following people to join:
atturbo555
CBullet
EmanuelAlcon
Garin
h3oCharles (myself)
Haskorion
MatthewRobo
MaxM12

My reasoning behind nominating these members is that they are active within the skinning community and/or subforum. They understand the issues happening within the forum and care greatly about the health of the skinning community.

Regards,
h3oCharles and many other active members of the skinning community.
MaximumTilt
if this posted existed while i had supporter i would have voted for this
xi9w
throwing all my votes in here once this thread's 24 hours old
DeletedUser_8541283
timer has been set for 24 hours. star spam inc
Nitrous
I recall peppy planning on changing skinning entirely in lazer, making them available for download through osu!direct making the Skinning Forum less of what it is today. Though this may be a good compromise to the current system (if it had one and if so, its abandoned). I'll support this idea. People with skinning experience should overtake this forum to lessen the GMT's burdens as seen already in some posts. While the skinning forum is not that active, good and legitimate skins get drowned down with mixed and, well... crap skins.
MasamuneSenpai
I would like to join the nominated group as well, not because i like skinning privately but also TRY out SKINS that are in WIP (a beta tester per say) give advise and provide help to the community and not see an entire team just slacking and not doing anything i would also add a bar to show that a player is working on it through a percentage (keeping in mind the SKINNERS have control of this) and also add some other mechanic for example an image or like a type of search bar that includes for example a skin with numbers, dots, stars, nothing, etc... this isn't just some bs that people make on their spare time just because they want a better feel, but this is also how you could enjoy the game. The first skin that I've tried was YUGEN but I tried searching it up here and i couldn't even see it until i found that really small spec in his info bar. It genuinely annoys skinners and a lot of people who want to do this and show off their skin but it just gets bombarded by other posts that just pushes it down and takes away any probable credits towards that creator

pls fix osu tem (WE NEED SKIN PEEPEE)
MatthewRobo
This issue has been plaguing the skinning community for a long time. I hope this suggestion will be the solution that we need.

As soon as I get supporter, I will throw all of my stars onto this suggestion. This fix has been in need for years now.
Lyawi
Not even written my name there tho! :(
But well, I don't think the whole thing has a big chance :p
The skinning forum is a little chaos, yeah, but not the biggest one we really need to fix at once. Show that you're willing to help by reporting (what you already do) or comment something in full detail so that a newbie can understand everything you're trying to explain.
The current listed moderators could show a bit more presence and need a bit more skinning expierience in my view. All in one, it's okay at the moment.

Don't forget they're reacting to your reports, especially when they also don't know that much about skinning things, so they really trust in you when you're reporting about a mixed skin. Nothing more they can do in this case, right?
Pachiru
That would be a good idea to be honest, that would give a serious side to the skin domain. Because I think skinning is pretty important, and it should be consider seriously.
As maps, skins are a side of osu!'s gameplay.

So I totally support that idea!
Nathanael
Sadly the usergroup will never happen. Don't worry and no need to waste your stars anymore. Me and deadbeat brought this topic to the council, proposed stuff then seriously discussed among the members of the moderation team and got some results.

I'll mark this as invalid (declined usergroup) and resolved (forum case). Leaving the results to your imaginations for now ;).
DeletedUser_8541283
fuk
Gatter
shoot
Nitrous
Hey cheer up at the very least some action will take place right?
deadbeat
before the end of the year, we promise
Topic Starter
h3oCharles

deadbeat wrote:

before the end of the year, we promise
The problem is RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! If you guys are still going to delay this, We're going to turn insane.

Let
the
games
begin.

And thanks for the support, guys!

Also, this meme explains it well
deadbeat

h3oCharles wrote:

deadbeat wrote:

before the end of the year, we promise


The problem is RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! If you guys are still going to delay this, We're going to turn insane.
fwiw, we'd already sorted 99% of everything by the time i posted this :p
O2MasterFX
didn't the whole forum get archived once lazer come out?
Nathanael
The whole forum won't get archived. We'll remind you again that the Skinning forum will get replaced by a new system so this request is definitely redundant.
GitHub: Skin System #61

Don't make things more complicated because we've already sorted things out while the devs are making their plans for the said system.
Being impatient won't make the forum better. It'll just get worse.

If you have other ideas to improve the forum, kindly go to the provided thread: The state of the skinning subforum.
MasamuneSenpai

Nathanael wrote:

The whole forum won't get archived. We'll remind you again that the Skinning forum will get replaced by a new system so this request is definitely redundant.
GitHub: Skin System #61

Don't make things more complicated because we've already sorted things out while the devs are making their plans for the said system.
Being impatient won't make the forum better. It'll just get worse.

If you have other ideas to improve the forum, kindly go to the provided thread: The state of the skinning subforum.
Hold up so you're telling us to give more ideas on a subpost you're removing soon to be on another tab for new.ppy.sh site in place of giving us the date of us getting any information on what you should give us. Coffee hour sounds more shady than this and still gives out more info, but at least tell us when its gonna happen in place of saying "*its said to be released soon*" Give us some hope in place of delaying and this been going for years, not months, not weeks and not days We want something to hold our backs up and not hold us back down
Nathanael
It depends on the time of the developers and their current work. During the conversation, one of the developers said...
as I said if I had time to get my hands on it it should be really matter of weeks. it's not that complicated.
And this conversation should be moved to the thread I linked. The request is already closed.
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