Hey guys!

As I'm sure you all have noticed the majority of the sub-forums here have been hidden away excepting the stuff regarding moderation and appeals. Originally, we were planning on keeping it this way as it seemed to be a common complaint that the forums were hard to use and figure out. The majority of the staff members also tended to focus on Discord and only used the forums for their own moderation stuff. In our eyes, it seemed the best move was to phase everything on the forums out and fully integrate into Discord.

After some discussion, it has been decided that the forums actually could provide a definite constructive place for our community if we cleaned them up, refreshed them a bit, and revamped them. While it seemed as though they were going largely unused, they offer a much cleaner way to not only interact with one another, but also interact with staff. In their current state, the forums are a mashup of disorganized and abandoned sub-forums and we believe this can be fixed and improved.

Within the near future, we plan on revamping our forums and picking up activity within them so we can offer our community another way to not only interact constructively with one another, but also with staff members. We hope that the changes we make will help boost their usage and make them more relevant within the UDU.

Hello,

Recently when I've been overlooking the forums I have seen an increasing amount of hostile behavior/personal attacks/etc within threads. This is highly inappropriate and extremely atrocious behavior. I will be cracking down on this and if this behavior continues, I will be raising the warning levels given for these transgressions which can and will affect posting privileges. 

If you think someone is breaking the rules or posting inappropriately, do NOT RESPOND IN A HOSTILE MANNER TO INSTIGATE IT. Instead, report it using the report button so a staff member can handle it or at least be aware of it.

As I said before, any future incidents will be cracked down and handled as needed.

Sincerely,
Tyler
Moderation Supervisor

Well, not quite spring..

But either way! I went through the forums and reorganized several categories, added a few new subforums, deleted a couple old ones, and added a bunch of emotes from our Discord server. Knock yourselves out.

Hello, I am Tyler. I am the moderation supervisor for UD and oversee the appeals.

As you may have noticed, many of you have not received a response to your appeals for quite a while. This is solely because I am a college student and I work on appeals whenever I have the free time and am not busy with other life/school things.

With this being said, I have Spring Break coming up soon. Starting this coming weekend and moving into the beginning of next week, I will begin combing through the appeals and responding to the unanswered ones. Keep your eyes peeled and be patient. As stated by the guidelines, appeals are our absolute last priority within UD.

Also, take this time to review the appeal guidelines and make sure your appeal follows them as closely as possible. You can take this time to edit your appeals to follow the appeal guidelines. If you are not following them or are not following the format for appealing, I will automatically throw out your appeal and make you re-appeal. Do us and yourself a favor and double check them!

Thank you,

Tyler

Hello, Ultimate Driving

I'm a little late, so I hope you'll forgive me. I'm disappointed I have to write this in the first place, but unfortunately some people can't seem to understand why borderline sexual harassment on the Discord server is wrong. I suppose I'll start by giving a real-life example of what I'm talking about: catcalling.

Catcalling is frowned upon (as it should be) and I see no reason why it is any different in the Discord server. It exists solely to make people uncomfortable, and in some cases, feel threatened. Catcalling is almost never received positively, and I find it surprising that people think it should be any different in an online setting. It isn't necessary at all in any fashion. What makes it even worse in the Discord server is that the recipient is never any older than a teenager, in line with the demographics that play Ultimate Driving, which only makes it more intimidating for the person on the other end. It's not just a harmless comment or a "joke".

Finally, when we are trying to deal with someone causing problems, whether it be this issue or any other, please do not interject. We are trying to get an answer out of someone and your bluster isn't helping any. 

Regards,
Jaybird.

We have recently implemented new guidelines aimed st improving our ability to process ban appeals. These guidelines are now effective immediately, and are visible from within the Court of Appeals forum under the announcements section. In addition, you may click below to find the new guidelines:

https://uduniverse.com/forums/announcements.php?aid=9

Below you will find some of the more important changes to appeal guidelines.

1) Required Appeal Format
In order to help us be able to effectively process these appeals, we are now requiring appeals to use a set format, which you can find in the announcement link above. This format will help us be able to look at your request and be able to process it much quicker. If you do not post in the required format, or if you do not include the required information, we will automatically denial your appeal.

2) Removal of Guaranteed Response Time
With the change above, we are hoping to be able to process more appeals on a daily basis. However, due to increasingly busy schedules, we are removing the 14 day maximum response time, as there are several instances this timeframe was not being met in the first place. With this change, we politely ask you to NOT needlessly bump your thread UNLESS a significant amount of time has passed with no response. Significant amounts of time are equal to or greater than a period of 30 days. If you bump your topic frequently, we will automatically deny the appeal.

3) Clarification of Various Things
Many, many times in the past people have posted appeals claiming they were not on their account when they were banned, and either a sibling or friend was using it. We have clarified that if you claim such, you MUST have proof showing that you physically were not on your account at that time. If you are unable to provide this, we will not overturn your ban. More often than not, people are lying when they make up stories like these. If your account was compromised and you can show appropriate proof of exchanges between yourself or an authorized party as well as Roblox in assisting you recover your account, we will overturn the ban. If you cannot provide this, we will not.

Finally, as a reminder, the handling of these appeals is the lowest of all priorities for us. If you were banned, you most likely deserved it. We are giving you the chance to either lose your punishment or have it removed entirely. What we do depends on your appeal. Showing sincerity and remorse for your actions will assist you greatly in reducing your ban. Showing attitude or failing to understand why you were banned will assist you in lengthening your ban or making the ban non-negotiable. If your ban is non-negotiable, we will not consider an appeal from you, no exceptions.

We do thank your cooperation in following these new guidelines so that we are able to process your appeals at an improved rate so that those who have learned from their actions can get back to playing our games sooner

Ultimate Driving Staff

So unfortunately, it seems Trumpublican has resigned from his moderation duties. Instead of airing his grievances with us directly, he decided to write a gigantic manifesto of sorts detailing his entire reason for leaving, which unfortunately for him was either entirely misguided or intentionally libelous. Let's take a look, shall we? Here's his original post, sent to several community members (but shockingly no UDU team members) for no reason other than to be spiteful. I do not have the entire letter quoted in this post, so use the link provided.

Red blocks are quotes from Trumpublican's resignation letter.
Black blocks are my rebuttal to his ridiculous accusations.



     "Upon his admission into the moderator program, I wanted to specify what his gender was, yielding an innocuous transgender joke from myself. I was quickly rebuked by the admins, told that my behavior was not okay and would lead to further action taken against me. Thus, I learned that whatever I say must be compliant with the executive staff members’ beliefs and stringent ideology"

Let's stop here for a moment.

     Trumpublican knows nothing about our individual political beliefs.  He made an inappropriate joke at the expense of another staff member (that at the time we all, quite frankly, knew little about), and as such we gave him a simple warning, telling him to knock it off.  We were not enforcing a political agenda, we were enforcing a policy of "don't be a jerk to your coworkers."


     "When I returned, I was astonished to learn that Cole and Dallas had been fired. I asked for the reasoning behind this decision and the circumstances regarding it, yet I received no answer. My curiosity lead me to questioning Cole himself regarding the details of his firing. Evidently, Cole had posted a 9/11 meme in the staff chat, and Dallas joined in on the memery. Immediately thereafter, I was told, the two were discharged and banned for a month."

     He decided to omit quite a few key details here, I'll fill everyone else in on what he conveniently left out.  Cole took to posting inappropriate memes in one of our staff channels back when we were still using Skype.  He was gently warned to stop a couple times but proceeded to ignore our warnings.  When we began to sternly warn him that what he was posting was not appropriate, Dallas joined Cole in the fray and the two began to back talk us.  This was the final straw for the two of them as they had also been previously causing issues.  We did not immediately fire and ban them with no warning, as he's leading everyone to believe.  We expect our staff members to behave rationally and not to talk back when we ask them to stop posting potentially offensive content, Cole and Dallas did neither in this situation and were subsequently removed.


     "This type of autocratic behavior, I noted, was akin to that of Stalin’s regime: if you disagreed with the thought-processes of the administration, you would be removed, and all remaining members would not be informed of the reasoning behind the discharge, maximizing the amount of fear instilled in them."

     Most of the staff who were around at the time were present for this, and those who are still left here have reminisced about these events several times in front of the entire team.  To allege that we hid this information from him when it occurred in front of everyone and freely talked about it afterwards is preposterous.  To top that off, no one who watched what happened ever condoned their behavior, so how this translates into us being dictators is beyond me.


     “Soon came the Trston scandal, and although I passionately abhorred Trston and his behavior, it was a fun investigation with the staff, full of laughter and spirit.”

     Awfully funny he mention BubbaTrston’s behavior, as his first act as an ex-staff member was to unban this pyschopath of a child without telling anyone. What an upstanding team member!



     "Weeks later I learn that Zaqre had been fired, and again, I was not informed of the rationale behind the decision. Two months later, though, I learn that Zaqre had changed the Discord bot to “Nazi Germany,” which I in all ways condemn, but again, there were undoubtedly more details of which staff neglected to elaborate on."

     He again left out the part where we all freely discussed the events that transpired leading up to Zaqre's termination.  Here's what actually went down; After the Discord server was set up he began using the @everyone command very, very frequently.  After receiving a complaint from a friend about this behavior, I gently suggested that he tone it down.  It wasn't a warning, it wasn't a threat, it was a simple "hey, could you tone that down a little, people are saying that it's starting to get spammy."  He took personal offense to this and began to make everyone's lives difficult by arguing every single obviously justified ban we made for no rhyme or reason, then began changing the bot to display inappropriate content and arguing about that when we called him out on it.  He was terminated and, as you'd expect, the majority of the staff team began venting their frustrations with his behavior after the dust settled.



    "Kate became a moderator. I was startled to hear of this new appointment after her recent disregard for the rules in this forum thread: https://uduniverse.com/forums/showthread...ght=%23ban, her decision to not only defend BLM as an organization, . . ."

     We do not base our hirings on the candidate's political views, nor do we hold minor warnings against users who display great potential as a candidate.  How silly would that be?  Kate ended up being a fantastic addition to our team.


". . .but also to partake in and escalate political discussion."

His Roblox username is literally "Trumpublican."


     "xiBlu was hired: Unprofessional, immature, incompetent, and unqualified for the job, after seeing her discussions and behavior, again I was confused why she was hired. A month later she leaves the server, citing bullying from another staff member as the reasoning. And again, the pattern of unleashing a barrage of insults and hatred followed."

     Since Trumpublican apparently forgot, this is exactly what the Trainee Program is for.  Once her behavior started to decline, we demoted her to Trainee to work out the problems we were having.  She then left entirely, throwing around accusations of bullying that were later determined to be entirely blown out of proportion.  This "barrage of insults and hatred" never occurred.


     "A short time later, I learn that ThunderAurora has been fired.  Again, I’m not informed of the reasoning behind this decision, as I’m told to continue to do my job and pretend nothing has happened."

     This is probably the only incident in which minute details pertaining to someone's firing was withheld, and that was solely due to the complexities of the underlying issues we were dealing with behind the scenes.  He was not told to "continue to do his job and pretend nothing happened."  We gave the appropriate parties as many details as we could, but ultimately did not feel comfortable with sharing the entire story with everyone.


     "Later, Chicken_Boom was hired, who openly admitted to allegedly being a 52-year-old lawyer. This is a man over the age of 50 hired to play and moderate a children’s game. Again, I still can’t wrap around my mind how and why this guy got hired. I did not like him, but again, when he was fired, the barrage of insults and vitriol among the lower-ranking staff was not surprising at all."

     Yes, this was a massive mistake on my part that I will freely admit to. No one believed his “alibi” but his application was good, he seemed levelheaded, he knew a couple staff members already, and we really needed more moderators. He was removed from the Trainee Program when we discovered a pattern of abuse of power and when he started making questionable comments to other staff members. After his removal, the disgust at his behavior, especially towards the female staff members, came to light from the rest of the team. For Trumpublican to be surprised at the reaction his removal garnered from the rest of the team is pretty shocking. The whole ordeal was a massive blunder on my part that I've taken full responsibility for, and it's something that will not happen again.


     "Jomsviking is hired onto the team. A few weeks prior to his hiring, I had banned him for illegally towing my car; he sent me an immature message expressing his animosity towards me."

     The punishment that Trumpublican dished out for Jomsviking was illogically severe, and the "immature message" that he received was a silly joke. The entire situation unfolded because Jomsviking, myself, and several other people were goofing around in a largely empty Noyan server with the admin speed functions. Jomsviking's punishment was rescinded almost immediately.


     "Per the moderator hiring guidelines, one cannot become a moderator if he/she has been previously banned; under the moderator supervisors, this rule was blatantly ignored,"

     As with Kate, denying a superb candidate on the grounds of something silly is ridiculous, especially given that I rescinded the punishment.


"and I soon learned that his allegiance to Vortex Security was undoubtedly to blame."

Jomsviking wasn't even active in Vortex Security, so no, it was not to blame.


     "A majority of subsequent moderator hires - Lilly, Chris, and Falcon - despite seldom playing the game and moderating, were, I’ve deduced, hired based on predominantly nepotistic factors."

     These people were hired based on their applications and outside recommendations, quite similar to the way that literally everybody else has been hired.

     Lilly wrote an excellent novel of an application and had a reputation that preceded her for being helpful, intelligent, and friendly. She's been integral in helping our team get innumerable inappropriate accounts permanently removed from Roblox and is a blast to hang out with.  I've never regretted hiring her.
     Chris also had a great application, had several recommendations going for him, and knew most of the staff members and policies already.  He's been an extremely active member of the team and I've not regretted hiring him either.
     Falcon wrote a great application, but was interviewed TWICE just to be certain that he'd be a good fit (pay attention, those of you who've been complaining about "VS favoritism"). He's also been incredibly helpful and active, and I've not regretted hiring him either.

     These three have been infinitely more active than Trumpublican since their tenure began, which is pretty ironic since he complains about their activity levels. Come to think of it, I haven't seen Trumpublican doing much of anything for the past couple months while the rest of the hirees picked up the slack. Hmmm....


     "Hence these ill-advised decisions, I believe the moderator program is at its worst condition, and will only continue to worsen after my resignation."

     My only ill-advised decision was not hiring them sooner. The moderator program is at its prime, we have a working process and plenty of first hand experience that helps in rooting out bad candidates. Considering Trumpublican's activity levels have been almost moot and that his opinions on the recent hirees are based on his own biases, his conclusion about the moderator program as a whole is incredibly silly.


     "As I analyze the moderator program as a whole, I feel that a major flaw was the failure to include the current moderators’ opinions on potential hires, which only generated aloofness among the moderators. Hopefully the UDU staff will take this into consideration into their future decisions, but I would not be surprised if this suggestion was ignored."

     Most of our hirees were recommended by other staff members and/or known to most of the team, and a decent portion of the terminations we've done have occurred after private conversations with various staff members, so this point is moot. We can't give every single moderator full access to hiring process, but we do take their opinions both before and after someone is hired.


     "I should also mention that I do not consider myself to be the perfect moderator, for my inactivity was a large factor to my decision in resigning."

     So... he complains about the "inactivity" of staff members he doesn't like while he himself isn't around? Huh..?


     "This is an adult who publicly farts, an adult that makes small-talk in a highly unprofessional way, who has created specific discord channels titled #assblasts and worse among staff."

     This is the really funny part, Trumpublican complains about being reprimanded for making potentially offensive jokes to other staff members that they didn't know, almost as if to complain that we needed to lighten up. Then he complains about us lightening up within the confines of our equivalent to an employee lounge.  Hm...


     "I think Alex also scorns his behavior, but cannot fire him because he’s the only guy who understands the stats and networking behind the UDU."

     Uh, no, actually I'm proficient enough at the backend side of things that I've programmed a large part of the optimizations to the database system on my own. Not to mention, he's my friend.  Friends don't always agree, sometimes friends argue, but we're all friends here. We're a team.  Well, most of us were at least, it's pretty obvious now that he had it out for us this entire time because of a bunch of a series of fabricated grievances.


     "This resignation I believe is long overdue, and I hope that with it more people will come to the same realization that I did."

     I agree, his resignation was long overdue. He rarely contributed and his ties to hardcore police roleplaying groups caused us more headaches than I can count. I sincerely hope no one comes to this manipulated realization.


     The screenshots he posted (without context, mind you) as "evidence" to backup his claims mostly point to the light hearted atmosphere of the staff chat. The screenshot involving Neko and Maddy occurred after Maddy left the team, turned on us, blamed us for her problems (that had nothing to do with us in the slightest), accused us of not helping (several team members that were better equipped tried very hard to help her), then proceeded to begin spreading ridiculous lies about us. Eventually we realized that a lot of what she was doing to the team as a whole was a stunt for attention, and the tensions boiled over into what ended up getting screenshotted.


     I find it very hard to believe that anyone would pay any mind to the nonsense being spewed forth from such a laughably inactive ex-moderator as Trumpublican. His personal attacks against team members he rarely, if ever, interacted with speaks volumes about his credibility, not to mention the fact that he blatantly abused his moderation privileges to unban miscreants after he left. This resignation letter is a pitiful, half-baked attempt to throw punches at the shadowy manifestations of his own insecurities he has projected onto the other moderators and the management team, all of whom he either hadn’t even met, interacted with, or gotten to know as a result of his unwillingness to socialize in a team environment with his peers. It’s a pity that his tenure was unable to end amicably like most others before him, but he made his decision.

There has been a recent uptick in people doing stupid things, saying stupid shit, and other actions that normally would get you in trouble with us on Discord servers that are not the official UD Discord server.

This is an official notice that the staff in the UDU reserve the right to ban anyone for anything at any time they wish. Obviously there is a fine line between a justified and non justified action taken, but it is apparent that people think just because they are not on an official UD Discord server or game that they have free reign to do anything they want or say anything they want, including derogatory comments about staff members. That is false. We will utilize punishment for players who are caught doing these things in a manner that includes insults made to staff members or other UD players, even if they were said on other servers.

If anyone reports what you say to us and submits proof of such and we deem it as something we will not tolerate, you will be punished as if you did it on our servers. We also reserve the right to join popular servers on accounts that appear different from normal staff accounts in order to make sure that a server is not slinging insults at us or other players. That is a fair warning to watch what you say.

A large amount of people are recently have been trying to enforce the forum rules despite them not being officially appointed to do so. There is a large difference between suggesting to follow the rules, and telling someone to follow the rules. When the latter is done, you are minimodding.

A good example is the bumping of old threads. Whenever someone does it, it seems like the same people HAVE ago chime in and tell them to not bump old threads. The problem is that the people who are chiming in are NOT moderators or administrators and therefore have no right to tell other members what to do. Furthermore, in this example, the specific rule calls not to "...bump old threads UNLESS meaningflul content is being added". If the discussion is continuing as related to the original topic, the content is meaningful and the bump is justified.

I'm tired of seeing people think they know the rules better then I or the staff here. You are not a moderator, so do. It act like one. If someone is breaking the rules, to the best of your knowledge, then kindly use the report post feature to send it to us so we can review.But saying "DONT BUMP OLD THREADS OMG!!!!1!1!1!!" is minimodding and I really have an immense dislike for those who minimod.

Consider this a formal warning. Most of the posts complaining about someone are also crap posts too, so you should also rethink that as well. Those who continue to minimod will find warnings being dealt to them.

We are the staff, and we have the final say on what is and isn't breaking the rules. If you aren't staff, then you don't have the authority to act upon our behalf.

Thanks,
UDU Staff

So, a number of you have and continue to bypass the 30-character minimum post limit when posting. I'm here to tell you that doing this is in fact a violation of forum rules and you will be assessed warnings for EACH violation. Each warning is 10%, and you may want to read up on what happens when your warning level increases to a certain percent.

That limit exists to keep the shitty posts out of the forum. Furthermore, the way people are bypassing it is absolutely ridiculous. I have already handed out several warnings for this and will continue to do so until people get the message. And if people really want to keep doing it, I'll up the minimum to 45 characters and start assessing 20% warnings for each violation.

This limit is there because in my opinion, if you can't say something that is more than 30 characters your post is most likely not a quality one and therefore we do not want it on the forum. If your post isn't a good one, you shouldn't post it.

If you can't make your post long enough to meet the minimum requirement without resorting to adding in total filler shit like "303030303030" or anything along those lines, I invite you to read up on what elaboration is and use the knowledge gained to make your posts better. For those who can't be bothered to look it up, it means to explain in further detail. So instead of just responding "No", you would respond with "No, here is why that is a bad idea..." or something along those lines. It promotes conversation. Simply posting one or two words does not.

Consider this a formal warning. I've seen several people do it and I will relentlessly hand out warnings each time I see it.