#darkspyro.net

[flabeyblade]

meanwhile on discord

[saffronaura]

The Silent Problem of darkSpyro (I would not recommend joining)

DarkSpyro.net. A big Skylanders/Spyro the Dragon website that is steadily growing by the day. While the forum does have some neat information on Skylanders and old Spyro the Dragon games, what members don’t know is that there is more than just fancy walkthrough pages and galleries. There is the communication and the enjoyment fans gain by talking with others about the Skylanders and Spyro games. Or it can be about topics related to silliness and standard real world discussions.  There is also the forum moderation. It can help make your time on the forum fun, or it can make your time there difficult.

Most of you may know me from the forums, and I have been around since 2008. Back then, the darkSpyro forums was just about Spyro games, solely operated by dark52. Besides posting walkthroughs, managing  and creating news posts on the Spyro games, dark52 was mostly on top of rule-breakers and trolls and would ban them from the forums as soon as they ignore their first few warnings. Sometimes though, trolls would come on when the admin was asleep, and it would take hours later until he would come online to clean up the mess. But other than that, darkSpyro was a pleasant place to talk and chat with other Spyro fans. Until the time came when dark52 decided to follow Skylanders and made the site a part Spyro part Skylanders division. As time went on, more and more members joined due to the audience of Skylanders, and it became too much for the admin. Some of us suggested to dark52 that he should appoint moderators so he wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed. But dark refused to accept help and believed that he could handle the forum on his own like he always had. Big mistake. At one point, a troll posted inappropriate images on the forum that lasted for 6 hours until dark52 finally woke up and deleted them all. I can’t even imagine how many kids late at night or in the morning were possibly scarred by those pictures all because of dark’s stubbornness. Even after all of that, he was STILL convinced that he didn’t need any moderators. Completely ignorant to the fact that he doesn’t do anything when something obviously bad is happening. Can you believe it??

Sometime after the horrible incident, the admin allowed trolls to get away with harassing users. They broke the forum rules on multiple occassions, drove away older members, and the trolls even had the nerve to start speaking on the admin’s behalf just to belittle others. In short, dark52 basically just sat back and watched the rule breaking scenario all happen. And this lasted about a few years and it could’ve lasted a LOT longer. I was one of the main victims of the trolling, and I can tell you, it was the worst experience I’ve ever endured on any forum. Imagine being harassed and trolled on for months or longer, being the target of an upcoming war started by a troll who was in the process of tricking an entire forum section of children to be against you. And the admin knowing fully well what’s going on but refused to do anything about it. All just to update forum news and making posts about Skylanders. Like the concerns of his userbase don’t matter to him at all. It can drive you extremely fustrated, crazy even. Honestly it drove me insane that I wondered WHY I was still on that forum. After some time during all of the chaos, dark52 FINALLY gave in and went on to appoint moderators after 8 long years of solo moderation. At least he admitted that he neglected his duties. Although he never did apologize to the users, including myself, who were harassed constantly by the trolls thanks to him. But even with mods, dark didn’t do much moderation himself sometime afterwards, besides removing the occasional spambot or inappropriate picture troll.

Nowadays, there is a 10% chance you will get a private message response from dark52, regardless of your question, request or in need of intervention. The other 90% is him updating the forum polls on Skylanders, getting news on Skylanders, and making the site look prettier. He rarely communicates with the forum members and his fellow moderators, keeping most rule changes and decisions to himself until he feels like revealing them at the last minute. You will very likely see him talk about Skylanders, than responding forum issues that aren’t worth his time to talk about. In addition, dark52 has shown some severe signs of neglecting his admin duties. Such as:

Causing an harassment war to nearly happen

Allowing a kid to post his private information more than three times (and we’re talking about family names, home address, email that kind of private information that should be kept your self)

Allowing scenarios to escalate out of porportion until he feels like dealing with it. 

He has even shown signs of being incredibly biased towards other users. Such as spoiling one user to the point that that very user became a disruptive egomaniac who is willing to belittle and even dox you just to be superior. This is a direct result of being pampered by the admin.

If you have a logical issue about dark52 and his way of moderation, he will simply disregard your topic subject at hand altogether and will respond to an-off topic comment on popup ads instead. Or he will simply say: “I care about the community and its members” at the hopes that phrase will get users off his back.

As a former longtime member of the forum, I WOULD NOT recommend darkSpyro.net unless you are used to an admin who doesn’t take his job as site owner very seriously. You might become stressed or unwanted, a victim of trolling caused by returning rule-breakers and egomaniacs. All of this happening to you, with dark52 not doing anything about it. And normally, he would leave the moderators to do most of the work for him. An admin should learn from his or her mistakes. But dark52 is one admin who apparently WILL NEVER learn from his. And even if dark52 changes his ways now or after this post is released, chances are he will go right back to being a recluse and sit quietly while watching rule-breakers run amok until he FEELS like stepping in.

The admin will also repeatedly claim that he still “cares” about his community, something his white knights want to hear and prove others of how “wrong” they are about the admin. 

But in the end, ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS. 

And dark52′s actions have shown that he does NOT care: if you are harassed or not, what his moderators think about certain scenarios AND their inputs, unless it’s regarding the very thing that is keeping his forum going: Skylanders.

I’ve been on darkSpyro for ages, and it’s hard to leave a place where I grew up going to after a day’s work. But with the way things are on the forum, and the admin STILL showing no signs of improvement on his moderation AND being biased, I’ve had no choice but to move on. So I ask you, users. Would you want to join a nice looking forum like darkSpyro.net, but with a reclusive, extrememly biased and ignorant admin like dark52? 

I wouldn’t. 

But in the end it’s your choice. You may like the forum just because of how fancy it looks or it’s the only popular place to see new Spyro or Skylanders info. But remember that in the end, it is run by a user - a user whose actions can either make your time on darkSpyro fun or outright miserable and unenjoyable.

The egotistical white knights of dark52 have already posted about this on the forum somewhere, in which dark52 responded with his repeated phrase that he “cares about the community” and all that. But don’t fall for his false claims and lies. As I said before, actions speak louder than words. And dark52 rarely communicates with users anyways.

[jasonyote]

[jasonyote]

[saffronaura]

My experience with a lazy, negligent admin

In all of my time on darkSpyro.net, I have never met such a lazy, reclusive, low-down, administrator in all of my life, like dark52, the founder of the Spyro/Skylanders message boards.

Within the first few years, he was fairly good, removing trolls and unwanted content. However his one flaw was that he didn't add moderators, even after he created the forums. 

When Skylanders: Giants came along in 2012, a troll named Kappapopm joined and caused a bit of ruckus. When he started targeting me and telling false rumors about me to new young users back then, I sent a PM to dark52 about Kappa's trolling. All dark52 said was that Kappa 'was doing this to annoy me' and instructed me to ignore him, but the admin did absolutely nothing when the troll continued on his rampage by misleading numerous users about me and having them troll me. Even after I sent dark a few more PMs regarding this issue, he still did nothing! 

When I became sick of dark52 not doing anything about all the trolling lurking about, I outright posted a topic in the Site Help section and called him out on his lazy nature on allowing this trolling to happen. Suprisingly, other users agreed with my statement on dark52's lack of immediate action on dealing with trolls. As expected, dark commented that he was aware of the trolling, but was falling behind on the reports. He then revealed that he was planning on appointing mods soon, which eased my fustration but still didn't answer my question to why he didn't deal with Kappapopm sooner. Some user believe he only spoke out just to get users off his back about him being lazy. 

He didn't even apologize and admit that he was wrong that he allowed a troll like Kappapopm to harass me nonstop on the forums! Such a dick! Months and months later, and still no apology for his actions that stole months of my enjoyment on the forums! I'm still PO'ed to this very day.

Another example of his extreme laziness in handling troublesome users happened in early 2014, when a young user repeatedly kept posting his private information (email address, facebook account..) and dark never banned the kid for his own safety until the very last minute AFTER the young kid posted his account password publicly on the forum.

Nowadays, this lazy admin called dark52 only posts news related to Skylanders, but seemingly disregards the feelings of his userbase who are the reason darkSpyro.net still runs today. If you send him a PM, there's a 90% chance he won't respond to you. If you report a returning ban evader, there's a 99% chance he won't ban them right away and waits until the last minute to deal with them.

Veteran users are aware how negligent and lazy of an admin dark52 is when handling trolls, whether or not he knows about our opinions or doesn't care, is currenty unknown to us. Eventually he will have to confess how bad of an admin he is, but has made no improvement in managing the forums and handling reports.

[saffronaura]

I see the rowdy Skylander children at darkSpyro.net haven't changed one bit. Always thinking my words are "rude" and "mean", breaking the forum rules whenever they please, and then don't think straight about their actions.

[the-fluffin-werehug]

Well I'm certainly pissed off at some amount of people. I mean you don't go on a forum site, head to the fanart, and post other people's work. Nor do you tell them to post such there with a 'rule' saying "If it's made by a fan post it there". It's not what the section is meant for. When you head to forum site at the fanart section of that site, you post your specifically your art, the only reason you would post another person's work is if you're referencing a character that no one really knows, even if you're referring you'd most likely link it instead showing the whole picture. Even if the moron credited the artists, he probably did not have permission from the artist for their okay, because some tend to say "no" and mean it. That topic was fucking bullshit with a fresh coat no less.

[saffronaura]

Irresponsible Admin #2

Would you want a Lead Admin who rarely communicates with his userbase despite being online multiple times a day and seemingly leaves his clueless members (excluding moderators) to defend and speak for him?

You can try and defend the silent and slow admin, clueless bums, but you can't justify his lack of forum moderation~