yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[General Topics] Surge1223:
Anyone that's serious about this topic clearly can see the conflict of interest in deleting posts in a thread that's topic is about how to improve relations. Regardless of whether they are off topic, don't change the history or tone of this thread, you can't force people to stick to a narrative when a question was posted (with proof in the form of pictures) and no response other than "oh you guys are just mod bashing" was given.

As far as I'm concerned the posts should be restored if not for the very least to show us that we can have faith that you would be willing to listen and not just edit the history.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't take this thread seriously when I know it's not genuine.

Restore the thread history if you want this to be a serious discussion, otherwise it's pointless if I can't trust that my opinions will be heard.
[General Topics] Mazda:
Fair enough, that's all I wanted someone to admit. Jerdog is a corrupted ass hat.

So what guarantee do I have that he's not going to hijack my report and make it disappear as is the norm for moderators that don't like a post or hate when someone is bringing bull**** to light?

I don't want to hit the triangle report button because this ass hat as an admin can just delete that, any moderator can really.

Also is become VERY CLEAR that Kenny, Neo, Darth, JJD and every idiot that's hit the thanks button on their propaganda is onboard with the corruption. So what guarantee I have that one of them is not going to delete my report to get one up on me?

I can't trust any of these dudes, they've shown me AGAIN tonight that I can't. No developer can.
[General Topics] sykopompos:
The same time this topic is going on, I'm sitting in chats with more then 30 devs that have either left XDA or about ready to leave and I have spent about 3 weeks of time trying to convince them to give XDA another chance and are now have their tempers flaring up because moderators came in and deleted posts so while it might seem off topic in the context of the thread, it really isn't, it is conductive to avoid the discussion fully breaking down.
[General Topics] pstevep:
Listen man. Again. I get it. You can't trust the moderators.

If you report the moderator to the committee, he can't just "delete" it. He also isn't on the committee.

If you want to see change, help me help you here. This thread is that first step.

Turning this into a name calling match doesn't help anyone. pointing fingers doesn't help anyone. Lets put this conversation (that i honestly think you have some very valid points on) back on track and continue it. SO that maybe just maybe we can move on and actually accomplish something.

I get it dude. I'm just asking not to be counter productive to what I am trying to do here. I am only one person, and I am trying to have a very in depth conversation in this thread to get things righted. trying to undelete some posts and am answering PMs. SO while I understand that there are a lot of frustrated people, my fingers can only move so fast, and you pointing that out doesn't make my life easier. savvy?

also, all posts have been un-deleted. for better or for worse.
[General Topics] mazwoz:
I think this was a good decision. Honest communication is going to be what's best. I really hope XDA changes based on things discussed here today.
[General Topics] Mazda:
AND yes [MENTION=2905121]pstevep[/MENTION], I remember you from the EVO forums. Those days seem like better days because we had that off topic thread where we would bull**** until 2-3 in the morning. XDA was really fun then.

Now is full of people like JJD who's quick to tell someone that 'if you don't like it, get the **** out'. Is a hot mess. Hopefully this thread can restore some of that back.

The problem I have is that you have the bull**** you saw. You have moderators like Neo that instead of trying to solve things, they're like '**** YOU' and just delete your post and if you keep on, they just ban you. They solve nothing. They take their cue from other moderators like JJD who has done the same to many many developers.

I admit it, this was probably not the best place to bring up the Jerdog thing BUT that's my issue with XDA right now. The shady **** that Jerdog does is the issue that many developers have. They may not have an issue with Jerdog but they have a similar issue with say JJD or others like him.

The corruption is something that needs to be addressed.

Now you say to report my issue and don't freak out BUT I've heard that bull**** in the past. In fact, Neo out of all people has told me in the past to 'hey man, just report things to me and I'll look into it' and you saw how much of an ass hat he was tonight.

I can't trust your peoples. Many developers can't.

Is really gone down to the point that I don't trust any of you because one minute you're telling me how this and that and the next you're doing the same exact thing that's pushed many of us away.

I really want thing to change but you guys are going to have to show us that you're for real and not just say 'Oh we want to hear feedback' and when we give it to you, you freak out and delete everything in sight.

NOW how do I report the ass hat that is Jerdog? Who do I talk to direct because that's the only way I can be sure that is not going to be thrown in a trash bin or Jerdog himself is going to laugh at it and delete it.
[General Topics] pstevep:
I know right? I started a few of those off topic threads (i think my one in Evo 3d is still semi active from time to time). We all have to blow off steam.

I understand the distrust. I really do.

That's also why i've stepped in here. Thats why i've returned all the posts. This is a sign of good faith, it's the only thing I can offer in this thread atm.

Admin/Owner have put people in place that care about developers, that want to work with people. That's why you have Syko, that's why efrant is working with him. They care. They are open minded.

I stepped in here because I care. I feel like you can trust me. I've done nothing to you. don't get me wrong I've banned my fair share of people in the past, but only if it was truly deserving. I can't speak for the other moderators, because I am not them. Ultimately the group as a whole just wants to keep the peace.

If we can stop pointing fingers at each other, at least for this thread, and get back to a reasonable conversation about how we can make sharing moar better, I think we will be on a better road to continue making relevant changes on this site.

believe me, it's the only reason I am here. I want what is best here.

calling each other names doesn't help that, pointing fingers doesn't help that. but we can all have civility and come to good resolutions.
[General Topics] Mazda:
OK I'll hit you up tomorrow then and hopefully you can listen to what I have to say about this Jerdog thing.

Right now I have 3 issues with XDA.

1. Jerdog's corrupted bull****. The fact that he's got a company that pretty much leeches developer and their work and then he turns around and sells it via Fastboot is shady and should of been addressed A LONG time ago.

Yeah, I know about that. You can speak to a number of developers that have worked for fastboot. Is a shady company that 'reverse engineers' aka kangs open source work and then he turns around and sells it. That in my opinion is a huge conflict of interest as he's an admin on here now.

Then you have the fact that he removed my title and replaced it with some bull**** to shame me and tried to hide it behind the RD code of conduct.

2. Moderators like Neo, JJD, Darth and probably another 30-40 ass hats that continue to hold my user notes against me. I haven't got an infraction or a warning on here since 9th December 2012

Reason: Failure to Cooperate with Moderator Request

That's almost 5 years YET every time I post on here, I'm looked like I'm a terrorist. I can't post in a thread without JJD going and checking up on me. I know because he's like the #1 visitor on my page. He's reached stalker level. Dude won't leave me the hell alone.

3. The damn repo sync warriors posting unfinished work.

Hopefully this thread can handle 2 and 3 but I need the 1 to be addressed because we can sit here and rewrite rules all day and night but with him still doing shady ****, is not going to matter. He'll continue to do whatever the hell he wants.

Anyways, if I can hit you up tomorrow then I will.

Thanks for stepping in and undeleting the posts. It really speaks to your character!
[General Topics] pstevep:
You can hit me up any time. tomorrow better than tonight (as this has really tired me out).

Changing rules will help as not one single moderator regulates the site. It's a team.

If we can make relevant rule changes that make it better for everyone site (especially between devs and how moderators respond to them in regards to sharing), then I think that is a win for everyone.

Thank you for your willingness to come back around so we can continue the conversation at hand. I truly do appreciate it.
[General Topics] Char_G:
I've run out of thanks, but you all deserve them. Cheers :)
[General Topics] Mazda:
I'll hit you up tomorrow. Same here, I'm tired of this crap right now.

Thanks again for stepping in. I was fed up already and told Syko I was had enough of XDA and then you showed up lol
[General Topics] zelendel:
Here is to hope.
[General Topics] Uber_Guber:
Something that is open source should be shared and modified and played with.

But should not be plagiarized, plagiarism is a serious problem.

Someone taking someone elses hard work changing a few things and calling it their own.

Its not nice.

But define someone elses work?

I mean if someone did something absolutely astounding and original with some code, that no one else ever thought of or would never have thought of.

Some idea for something.

Then perhaps. This is intellectual property.

But just re arranging some code and making something with it, the code was already there. It depends on the idea itself the idea of what the resulting thing is.

This maybe goes back to if I drew a picture and put it as my avatar, now everyone who sees it must pay me royalties because its my own work and they have "viewed" it.

Or what if they take my picture, and draw a mustache on it? And people find it more funny than mine? Is this Plagiarism?

Or is it just a drawing?
[General Topics] Myself5:
I feel like that is going to be very hard to determine. What qualifies serious development/a ROM bringup for a device from a repo sync warrior?

Don't get me wrong, I am sharing that opinion here with you but it will be hard to control that. Many ROMs aquire their maintainers from people that work on unofficial builds for their devices and the majority of devices I came across so far only had unofficial builds for certain ROMs.

Even if the qualification would be set to something like "no unofficial builds for officially supported devices", what if users throw in an extra feature or two, like the countless Lineage builds with Substratum support?

The only code sharing related issues I came across so far, and that I see as very important is countless threads with the lack of a kernel source, or developers that link kernel source X, but you can easily see that this is not the kernel source but you know for a fact that this can't be it. (like the kernel publishes has a certain feature that the kernel linked does not have). Came across many threads without any Linked kernel source at all before too. Maybe add like an extra report topic for incidents like that and forward those reports to a developer comitee or something like that?

Honestly, the biggest problem with XDA is not sharing code. It's the users that ruin ever users joy. They refuse to search or even read like 2-3 posts back where their questions have been answered already. Some even refuse to read the full OP of a post. That is what slowly kills (at least) my motiviation to keep on posting things on XDA.

That, and that Moto E2 user that has been asking literally 7 times if my Sony Xperia Z3 custom kernel is working on his E2... [MENTION=2858215]TheMerovingian[/MENTION] knows what I'm talking about, he needed to clean the thread up like 4 times already...
[General Topics] mazwoz:
Not going to try to speak for Mazda here, but my own interruption for what he said.

Repo sync warrior: someone who does nothing but sync and compile or maybe change a few strings.

That is not development, but is simply a repo sync. I know for a fact that Mazda encourages unofficial device bring ups. That is contributing to the community and is what it's all about.

As far as adding features not in the original ROM, that's great. That is encouraged and as long as proper credit is given, then there is nothing wrong.

Again, not speaking for Mazda here, just providing my own interpretation and what I know if him.
[General Topics] Mazda:
How is this hard for you to understand? Is not a complicated math question, is simple. I think maybe you're reading too much into it and so talked yourself out of what most developers see as common sense.

I don't know about you but I got a whole chat filled with about 70 known developers and themers and they understand this easy. Maybe you should connect with some developers and see. Sounds like to me like you're talking to the wrong people if you can't see how simple this is man. It really is.
[General Topics] xanthrax:
As long as it is a public thread, let's refrain from "blowing out" the n00bs, would you Mazda mate [emoji41] ?

Or else, this should be moved or limited access but you know, hundreds of thousands of eyes are on this already and they want something good to come up

May Force be with you guys

Sent from my Darkside of Oneplus 3
[General Topics] pstevep:
I'm ok with it for now. We can speak directly. We want developers to speak up and a lot of them don't speak in soft tones.

As long as we can refrain from name calling, I'm ok with directness.

I want there to be as little actual moderation in this thread as possible.
[General Topics] pstevep:
/pulls out cane and old timer voice

*back in my day

seriously though.

In my early days on this site, before i knew how to compile a kernel, or really anything of value, that wasn't such an uncommon thing. But the flip side to that, was there was also a dialogue from the people wanting to use the other person's work.

Every person i have ever had a conversation with on this site about development has been willing to work with me and let me post my work that was based off of their work, as long as i gave them credit. You can still go back to my old threads, my credit lists were stupid, long and funny. But i always approached the developer in a friendly/humble way. I always lead with, "you'll get credit". I also don't solicit for donations. (this was also before and after I had any titles)

It's because of the conversations that i've had with numerous developers both on this site and off, that I still have faith in our community. We all in the grand scheme of things play for the same team. We all want our phones to be cooler than the normal sheep's phone.
[General Topics] :
I speak here as a normal user. I once had an account with more received thanks than posts. Not because i was someone who was seeking and demanding for thanks, but because i was trying and willing to help other members. Sadly, xda got crowded by ungrateful and ignorant users who weren't able to follow simplest rules. They jump in and demand something, or ask a stupid question in development sections and wait for an answer. They don't even care to search or read some pages back. This behavior killed my enthusiasm for this community. And in my opinion mods have tolerated this behavior. That's why i asked MikeChannon to delete my account some years ago. I only created this existing account to bookmark and follow projects. But i've never helped or read a Q/A section since then.

For example, a recognized developer published a new version of his kernel some hours ago, since a long time. The thread gets cluttered now with questions like "how can i install this without root", "how i get good battery life. settings pls.", and so on... It gets frustrating for users who are interested in development.

Devs should have mod privileges for their own threads. They should be able to hide posts and silence users. Affected users can always contact a mod who take a look at their concerns. If a dev abuses his power for censorship, mod privileges should be revoked. Give devs more power and trust. They are grown people.

I don't have the knowledge regarding to "sharing of code". This can be discussed by people who are familiar with it. This post were only 2 cents by a normal user.

Keep in mind that this community got so big because of the devs who provide their work here.
[General Topics] Myself5:
I wouldn't allow fully silencing users, but maybe something similar to a "this post has been flagged as spam" sounds like a good idea to me. That could potentially be extended for other users allowing to flag spam too, like Senior Members getting a right to vote and when 5 of them flagged it, it's gone too. Other than that, I am fully sharing your opinion.

Put off your tinfoil hat Alex. Grown man talk to each other instead of insisting on a opinion and blocking people when they want to talk about it.

If those 70 people know a way to formulate a universally applicable rule that prohibits repo sync warrior doings, that's cool. All I said is that I don't. This is NOT affiliated to any trouble you have with jerdog.

I tried talking to you on a normal level, but you seem to be insisting that I am affiliated to jerdog, so just go on throwing conspiracy theories in a "developer share your opinion" post, and run away from people trying to talk to you.
[General Topics] MSF Jarvis:
As a user, and as a developer having faced the "I won't read ****" thing [MENTION=3816568]Myself5[/MENTION] talked about earlier, I feel moderator privileges for threads should be a thing, better so if it's opt in AND backed up by past history of good behavior in the forums to avoid situations involving abuse of power. I don't want to bug a moderator about some random dude who refused to read the first line of the OP as well as the thread title, because he is definitely not worth that time and effort it takes for a report to pass through the whole life cycle it does. That post should simply deleted/hidden because the other users who actually care enough for the project to read everything don't want the entitled asshats to ruin it for the developer. Just my two cents.
[General Topics] js1999:
The purpose of this thread was to open the conversation about rules on XDA. I can't stress enough how much we appreciate the feedback from everyone. I want nothing but to construct a site that respects developers.

The moderators work very, very hard for nothing. If nothing more, they deserve respect for that. But I think they also do an amazing job. This isn't about devs vs. mods. I communicate with every single senior mod-- and every single one of them just wants XDA to be the type of place where developers and users and everyone can work in harmony.

Often mods have very different opinions on how that should be accomplished-- that should be pretty evident even in how this thread has been moderated (some deleting posts, some replying and progressing the conversation). Mods are unique individuals-- and because this site is so damn complex, we need dozens of them. They will react differently in different situations because they are human. Even [MENTION=487859]jerdog[/MENTION], who's been accused of all sorts of things...He's an amazing human being that I personally try to live up. He takes in orphans and abused kids! He's done stupid stuff (the custom [MENTION=1289361]Mazda[/MENTION] title being one of them). But he's also being accused here of other things that just aren't true. He might have different opinions, but he loves the community and is among the most moral people that I know. All of that can be lost in a text-only forum, but it shouldn't be.

We brough on [MENTION=1050103]sykopompos[/MENTION] because, like you, we respect him as a developer and as a person. I had lunch with him on Saturday, and we're talking through everything. I hope he can vouch--at the very least-- that we're trying to do what's right.

In the past I've had a very strict policy about keeping out of moderation decisions. I don't ever want to be accused of business interests impacting the community. It's why I don't post very much, and I think the mods will agree that I generally stay out of mod stuff. I'm trying to be more involved now because this issue is clearly complicated enough--with all sort of personal animosities and disparate opinions-- that there has no be some central, organizing body to make sure stuff gets done. I'm trying to fill that role, but I don't understand the issues as well as all of you, and I'm working hard to get there. The suggestions here are great.

One thing I do understand better than most of you is the complexities of moderation on a site this large. I think (some of you) underestimate the challenges posed by some of your suggestions-- both in implementation and enforcement. You think of XDA as a single thing-- or a single person. But it's not. This is a big boat. It takes a while to turn, but I have hope and confidence we can all respect each other and get to the right destination. I know that's cheesy, but whatever.
[General Topics] xanthrax:
I have seen both, the dark side and the other side of the developer's moderation skills, hard to draw a conclusion but based on my observations, a professional tone can put down the users, the barking dogs can't stop a horse, the donkey only runs away (ouch! blame my ancestors for this saying)

They have enough power to control the users and to control themselves, I can see the dev's fan boys doing the same, similar to a Sex Pistols concert

Reporting should be the way to go and also, the RCs, who basically should be the good example of "how to behave" on xda must participate and actively spread the words of Book of Good Manners {I feel there's a need for a certain thread on this matter as well}

Things are far to be simple and needs to be well digested thus Mike opened this thread publicly, I don't see this like a one click toolkit solution

Sent from my Darkside of Oneplus 3
[General Topics] mazwoz:
That all sounds great, but there needs to be consistency. In a PM with [MENTION=3125148]KennyG123[/MENTION], I suggested a matrix for how mods handle situations. This takes opinion it if it and makes it more easily managed.

I understand not only moderation of a huge site, but the amount of work that goes into maintaining something like this. I'm a system admin for the Air Force and manage enterprise servers and help desks. I've had to deal with my fair share of upset users, policy writing and admins abusing power.

My biggest concern is that if there are no proper checks and balances and no constancy to the way things are handled, rewriting rules won't matter and we are wasting time.

This is what I've tried to convey to each moderator and admin that has posted here and in PMs. It seems no one wants to hear that and no one wants to actually address those issues. They are the underlying cause of upset developers and if that doesn't get resolved, nothing will change. Just chasing rules without addressing the issues brought up by myself and others is putting a band aid on a much larger problem.

There is little mutual respect and a lot of developers don't trust moderators. It's that simple.
[General Topics] js1999:
Send me what you sent Kenny.