Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

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Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby Sebbe » Sat Mar 21, 2020 12:42 pm

Hello, I am Sebbe, also known as Fuyu or Thurma on station with a whole manifest of old characters behind me.

This is a difficult topic to properly type out as I'm not the best with words, nor do I understand everyone's feelings on the matter, so I will just write what I myself have seen people comment on and what we in general agreed on this thread being about during the discussion in Discord.
There are many ways to look at it with plenty of opinions and feelings on it, I ask that people who participate in the thread follow the rules and don't do jabs here, as that's why were are here in the first place.

So to start us off; It is hard to hold a productive discussion on Discord with all the text whizzing by, new people joining and old parties dissapearing to do their own thing all the time, the subject of the discussion changing and new people joining in again to put their opinions, questions and whatever else they wonder about in there.
I understand it's not easy to pay attention to all the text whizzing by, to read all the opinions and to filter out memes and genuine stuff.
But a problem appears when stuff gets escalated.

The discussion that sparked the discussion of where we should discuss things was of Staff Events, about them being announced or not, the differences, past mistakes etc.
I'm sure it must be very grating to see the same suggestions, the same ones you have tried as staff to implement and fail, get thrown out with the question "why have staff not done this?" Or remarks on staff policies and the general misguided consensus a lot of our players might have with information being filtered through person after person, changing it's meaning over time.
But a problem does appear when staff responds with a blanket insult to the community, escalating the discussion in one way or the other.

To both give the information needed about already having tried said thing and insulting the player-base in the very same message.
Even during the discussion on using the forums vs just using the discord, the concern on what I could describe as either a shutdown or just censorship got attempted mirrored to Discord in that it is just as easy, but the mirroring message about how same it was, was gain another escalation exhibiting the clear gap or wedge between players and staff we have gotten or always had over the years.

I'm sure there is a better way to put this issue as my train of thought relies on a lot of information I already have swirling around in my head, but the core issues I see are the following;
>Lack of information between the staff an playerbase.
I feel like almost, if not all of the biggest issues with staff from the playerside lies with "who tf are these people and why is all their responses to suggestions; 'Lol we tried that, stop discussing it' do they even play on the server?" Which I will admit is a thought I've personally been having for a while now, but I think from my own perspective it's mostly an issue since the staff roster is comprised of mostly Americans or people not awake when I am awake.

But nonetheless this is something I'd like see rectified in the future by opening some communication channels, maybe be less abrasive when you do chime in and not only appear on the discord to punish someone or shut something down.
Talk about suggested changes, talk about what's going on in the staff team, maybe share a general "what happened during staff meeting of march 24'th" or something.

>Escalating discussions.
And the main topic which spurred this thread creation.
Discord moves fast and discussion moves faster with emotions running high, talk of what happened in a round, server politics, world politics, whatever it may be.
It is important, especially as staff, to not join the conversation right off the bat with something negative, or even jabs at people, or give examples of staff actions that might seem quite extreme.
It is funny but we are actually having the same discussions on this on the server "Desert Rose" which is a 18+ Fallout server based off Bad deathclaw. Some of the staff there are also quite straight forward with their wording and come off as quite... scary. So we are having a discussion on stopping that in it's tracks.

I'm not quite sure how well put together this is, I'm sure Tempest could write a good summary with hir own fixes on stuff, but this is what I have now.
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby Scree » Sat Mar 21, 2020 12:50 pm

The thing about forums is that people have time to post, while on discord they frequently don't. Which means that the only posts available to people to make when the place is scrolling frequently are turning on slowmode (which pisses everyone off) or iring off quick responses that get rabidly buried, then get frustrated when they get pushed off the screen and ignored, so thank you for making this thread. Seriously, I've lost count of how many of these arguments have taken the form of
"guys could you not"
(fifteen posts of continuing)
"Guys, really, don't"
(another three screens of people posting without reading)
"FUCKING CUT IT OUT."

So yes, thank you for making this thread. Seriously, I'd much rather have an actual productive discussion here.

Edit: I'll chew through the actual detail of the post later, work just kicked off.
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby DeviliciousTreat » Sat Mar 21, 2020 7:01 pm

I'd like to second the message of the OP that although Discord is a contributing factor in miscommunication between regular members and staff, it's hardly the only issue.

I don't want to name names, especially not in a public thread, especially without assurances that it's okay for me to do so, but some of the behavior I've seen from some staff members during the discussion that spawned this thread has been... questionable, at best. For sure, I think that some of the regular members have made statements which are provocative towards staff during that discussion, and I completely understand why they might have been upset, but I also think that some staff members handled the situation rather poorly, aggravating tensions rather than attempting to defuse them, thereby turning a lot of the regular members involved, including those that were being perfectly civil towards them, against the staff.

Now, I understand that running such a large community can be stressful. I ran a smaller one and I was pretty stressed out, and I'm imagining that what I was doing is probably child's play compared to what the good folks over here are doing, but having this be a regular occurrence drives wedges between regular members and staff, something which I have seen some evidence of having had already taken root, if statements by both parties are to be held as being honest opinions. This isn't a healthy thing to be happening to a community, as while regular members make up the bulk of the community, staff have the power to affect it, and if either side feels like they're not really connecting with the other, then that's a pretty bad sign already. Heck, I've left communities over this kind of thing in the past despite having broadly have enjoyed my time as part of it because once this kind of thing sets in, you stop feeling part of the community long before you actually choose to leave it.

The thing is, thankfully, this kind of issue is entirely fixable, though doing so can sometimes feel like fumbling around in the dark with no flashlight until you come across a solution. Members of staff raised salient points about improving the quality of discussion during that discussion too. For instance: getting people to use this forum too would be a very good thing indeed, but there are also reasons why people don't use it, and just telling people to use it isn't really going to get people start using it. This thread was only opened reluctantly after a long discussion on Discord, after all. The discussion should not have consisted of complaining that people don't use this forum, but rather an attempt to understand why people don't use it, and looking for ideas as to how that can be changed. Not all ideas will be good ones, but even bad ideas can sometimes point in the right direction when there's a grain of sense in them. While not all the reasons people don't use this forum can be fixed, searching for perfect solution will end with people refusing to change anything at all and thus being stuck with the same system they always used, even though an improved, if still imperfect system is just in reach.

TL;DR: an attitude of seeking improvement, both in discussions and in general, over one of maligning issues, could go a long way in helping things, but I personally feel like it's not really evident that that's the prevailing attitude amongst staff at all.
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby Wickedtemp » Sat Mar 21, 2020 7:33 pm

The two replies to this actually hit pretty much every nail on the head here, but I think another "Yeah, me too" would be nothing but positive.

Prefacing that, yes, I recognize that it can be stressful, I know you might have to say/do the same things over and over again because new people are entering the conversation late with the same questions that were asked and answered just minutes before, old conversations are brought up because the people having them now haven't had them yet and you're like "great, this again". I get it, and as someone who works primarily in customer service, dealing with the same, often irritated and angry people with the same irritated and angry attitudes with which they ask the same questions and sometimes just refuse the answer they're given... I know how irritating that can get.

But I don't let that stress and irritation influence my attitude, and I especially don't take that stress and irritation out on other people. That's the key thing here. Yes, it's only human to get stressed. But taking it out on people here is just a lack of self-control and simple manners, and what I personally consider to be a basic courtesy. Sometimes we mess up in that, but we certainly don't make it a habit. You can get irritated and stressed without freaking out and escalating situations.

"Oh, don't ever say anything in contradiction to this person or that person, because it risks a conversation in which you're chill but they get more and more irritated and then you could potentially risk a knee-jerk kick or ban" is an actual thing here, and you can't say that knee-jerk bans don't happen, because I've literally seen it go down, and then usually there are people in the chat saying "Dude did you seriously do that" but its left as a hesitant and anxious question rather than a call-out, cause if it was a call-out, they'd risk a kick or ban as well. This shouldn't be seen as healthy behavior. There are people here who are hesitant to bring stuff up to Admins just as a general thing. If they were to ask me about the Staff Team here, I can't honestly tell them that there's nothing to worry about, that they won't net a kick or ban due to pointless escalation. I'd have to tell them to tread carefully depending on who they speak to, and that sucks. I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't alone in this.

I feel like I don't even need to provide examples of this when, in the discussion about escalation, it was done again. It'd be funny due to the irony if I didn't see it as a serious problem right now. Some of it was direct and borderline insulting, and some of it was in the form of passive comments intentionally put in. Why? There's no point or purpose, it just fans the flames, and I'd bet money that if I said some of the stuff that a few Staff members had said to the players in discord, back to the Staff, I'd get kicked, banned, or at least a note on my profile.

The issue isn't with Discord. Maybe 20% of the issue is, solely due to limited screen space and more rapid discussion, but not the issue as a whole. The format being on Discord is effectively irrelevant. The discussion happening on Discord has nothing to do with how some folks in Staff respond and pointlessly escalate. The ball is honestly in Staff's court here, it won't take much to change this into something much more positive. It won't require any change in policy or rules, just "keep in mind not to take the stress out on others" and that's the end of it. I'd like to think that'd go for really everyone anyway, since we're all (hopefully) legally adults. Nobody's perfect, and some people in Staff are pretty much as close to being ideal Admins as possible as far as I can tell and they aren't guilty of this, but that doesn't excuse the frequency of these incidents as done by others in the Team.
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby PontifexMinimus » Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:21 pm

I have to admit I am not entirely sure what the thread is about or what caused it in the first place, since the assertions about "the incident" are nebulous to me at best. I wasn't there and there are no notes for it, so it basically tells me nothing without specific examples.

Ongoing it's nice you want to protect users or admins here, but without specific names, there is little that can be done about any course correction or new admin rules or otherwise, so vagueposting how some admins are good beans and some admins apparently take their stress out on others is not entirely helpful and more detrimental in the long run. If it's me, say so. I got hammered several times already when I goofed up, so why would this be any different?

Furthermore, I'm slightly confused about miscommunication and in-transparency, considering I myself try to be as close as possible to the community and pretty much wear my opinion and rulings close to sleeve as possible and encourage the other admins to do as well. I've come from Bay and Polaris, where there's much more closed-wall meetings than you think. I was there. There's a lot of them, sometimes not relaying judgements at all, while here on Virgo pretty much every larger decision gets at least announced and often discussed at length in the space lobby.

However, of course, this can be just my own perception.

I distinctly even remember when the entire space lobby mobbed up on me over clarifying that non-resleevable whitelist mobs like dionae, xenomorphs and vox have to maybe wait until round-end to return and I got absolutely assblasted by several people for hating vore or people or something, which made me furious since people screamposted so much I couldn't get my point across. One of the main reasons why we tell people to please get on the forum. People think it's censorship. It's not. It's so all the peanut gallery
And
Folks
Like
This
who
Post
their
points
like
This

don't clog up the chat and make people lose the point halfway in.

Zero people got banned or kicked that day btw.

But nonetheless this is something I'd like see rectified in the future by opening some communication channels, maybe be less abrasive when you do chime in and not only appear on the discord to punish someone or shut something down.
Talk about suggested changes, talk about what's going on in the staff team, maybe share a general "what happened during staff meeting of march 24'th" or something.


Isn't that already happening? In the dev chat at least there's always something being discussed, relevant server changes are announced beforehand or even voted upon (god, I dunno how often I put my survey up in both discord and on the server in announcements) and specific, dated staff meetings aren't there in the first place.

And about abrasiveness - Iunno. I had several times already where people wouldn't just stop a topic, so I needed to take out the big guns or show frustration. There is not a single admin who is active on Discord who only appears to shut people down or threaten a ban either. Unless you can tell me a name and I can look it up, it's practically just hearsay.
Communication channels are abundant too. Either a personal DM to a specific admin (which is sancrosanct and doesn't get you banned unless you literally tell them to kill themselves [yes, this happened To Ace once] ), modmail, pinging @admin or @headmin, admin PMs, subtle, just plain pinging them on discord... Which confuses me, since all these methods have been used before by you, Sebbe.
And if you really wanna know what is happening with staff, well... Ask them? Me, currently, I am going nuts from self-isolation.
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby Aces » Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:24 pm

PontifexMinimus wrote:And
Folks
Like
This
who
Post
their
points
like
This


I
take
offense
to
that
>:C

(kidding)
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby PontifexMinimus » Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:30 pm

Aces wrote:
PontifexMinimus wrote:And
Folks
Like
This
who
Post
their
points
like
This


I
take
offense
to
that
>:C

(kidding)


Well
tough
Shit
buddy
it
is
how
it
be
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby Scree » Sun Mar 22, 2020 12:55 pm

Also if you want to talk transparency, well, the forums are way better for that because a thread has a topic, so you can see what's being discussed. You can come along and read the thread to see what the discussion was.

When I'm on discord - remember, I work shifts so I get to talk to people from every timezone we serve - I've noticed that the same topic can have wildly different receptions depending on who's on at the time, and if someone's late to the party then whoops, sorry pal, the topic has passed, guess you don't have a say because we received overwhelmingly positive feedback. Sometimes people make PRs based on what whoever was online at the time said to them, then get confused when the response on github is overwhelmingly negative. Because they'd asked the discord if they should do it and got told yes by some other player.

After I made the announcement about the change to job-stealing rules (which was barely a change) for instance, I had people thanking me until a few people woke up way after I'd gone to bed, and they started posting about how the rules now allowed something they didn't like, despite that not actually being the case and a different section of the rule change clarified it (which they'd have seen if they clicked on the wiki diff) - which is another very frustrating tendency I've noticed among some players. Something comes up in policy - or anything else for that matter - and they'll go on a crusade in space lobby, people take them at their word, and by the time someone on staff sees what's going on we've got a mob talking back and forth to each other and getting mad about something that isn't even happening.

If you'd like a policy clarified, ask.
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby Aces » Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:37 pm

Back to being serious now.

So one thing I am actually able to do with forums is actually reply point by point. I can't do that on Discord. The reasons people don't use the forum is sheer laziness and nothing more. Take that as an insult if you want. The difference between an uncalled for insult and a legitimate criticism is that one of these attempts to offer a solution and the other does not. I will not withhold criticism because of hurt feelings, and I suggest the people who are not okay with that either suck it up or move on to another community where everyone gets hugs and headpats and nothing bad ever happens because drama is banned. When that community burns to the ground, as such communities always do, we'll still be here. It may not be perfect, but there is progress. Drama is inevitable. Arguments will escalate. What matters is the merit of the argument. If you're all name calling merely for the sake of name calling that's when I step in and tell you to knock it the fuck off or ding dong bannu. When you're criticizing something and trying to offer a solution, that's something I will not only allow, I will encourage, even if it means you all have to get a little sharp with each other. I try to lead by example. I'm calling people lazy by insisting that they use Discord, because I stand by my point. They are lazy. I will not redact that statement just because it hurts feelings. It needs to be said. The arguments against using the forum boil down to "I don't wanna" and nothing more, and people wonder why things don't get fixed.

But reading and replying a forum post is a lot more time consuming up front than a lot of people care enough to get into. To them I say, tough shit. It's the reason why none of our applications are on the Discord. People keep asking, and I keep saying no, because it's an awful idea for the very reasons why this thread was forced to exist. To the people who still insist otherwise, I frankly don't give a shit. You can't be bothered to take the time and effort, I won't take the time and effort to listen to you.

I make no promise that arguments will not escalate, and I feel that now you are complaining merely for the sake of complaining. That said, I am also happy you are complaining across a medium through which I can actually formulate a reply to, and in doing so, perhaps we will come to an understanding. However, if you leave this thinking that the staff are saying things to insult the community, you're sorely missing the point. It's equally insulting to us that we can't rebuke someone else's opinion without them considering it an insult. There is a certain point where people are too sensitive, and the only thing left to do is to tell them to grow up. There is no other way for me to say that in any more of a respectable way that I can think of. If there were, I would prefer to use it, because the less I insult people, deliberately or not, the more keen they are to listen. Insulting people is unavoidable at times. Calling someone a dumbass? That's probably needlessly insulting. Telling somebody "you're wrong" and then pointing to evidence that it's wrong, which they then summarily ignore or miss? Well honestly what are we even supposed to do at this point? The slow rise in aggressiveness of tone is a result of this. The goal is never to be insulting, but sometimes insult is taken because other avenues have failed or do not exist.

So onward to the rest of this. I just had to rant about that all first, because the notion that we should use Discord and shouldn't use the forum are absurd and without merit, parroted only by people who cannot be bothered to take the time for in depth and difficult discussions. I know that is not entirely the topic of this thread, but it's part of why this thread exists, so I have to address it.

Sebbe wrote:Hello, I am Sebbe, also known as Fuyu or Thurma on station with a whole manifest of old characters behind me.

This is a difficult topic to properly type out as I'm not the best with words, nor do I understand everyone's feelings on the matter, so I will just write what I myself have seen people comment on and what we in general agreed on this thread being about during the discussion in Discord.
There are many ways to look at it with plenty of opinions and feelings on it, I ask that people who participate in the thread follow the rules and don't do jabs here, as that's why were are here in the first place.


We will try our best but I'm willing to bet I've already pissed people off with my first post. You've certainly pissed me off by what seems to be implying that the staff are insulting people on purpose or at least carelessness. The thing is, I recognize that my annoyance is the result of a misunderstanding somewhere, and thus I try to use that frustration and focus it toward something productive. Whether I like it or not, whether I feel vindicated or insulted, this thread is necessary, and I wish more people understood that feeling insulted is an inevitable part of the process toward improvement. I know your intentions aren't to piss me off. That doesn't stop me being pissed off, but it does dictate how I respond to you. If I know you're trying to piss me off, I think you can imagine how I'd respond.

There's a really good poem about this somewhere. I can't find it, but in a nutshell, it's a city where they outlawed insults. This was great at first, until a bunch of people died because of incompetent builders whose houses collapsed, and even in the process of complaining about how the buildings weren't up to code, the people in charge were like "oh no no no you can't say that, you might insult them" to which the protagonist replies, "Okay well people are literally dead, and this clearly isn't working," and then the person in charge basically tells him off for insulting the government now. The protagonist is like, "okay well aren't you insulting me now?" to prove the point of how it's impossible to avoid. So they banish him. And as the protagonist leaves, he turns one last time in the distance to watch the city burn.

Sebbe wrote:So to start us off; It is hard to hold a productive discussion on Discord with all the text whizzing by, new people joining and old parties dissapearing to do their own thing all the time, the subject of the discussion changing and new people joining in again to put their opinions, questions and whatever else they wonder about in there.
I understand it's not easy to pay attention to all the text whizzing by, to read all the opinions and to filter out memes and genuine stuff.
But a problem appears when stuff gets escalated.


I feel that you imply the problem is the escalation and not the inherit issue of how having a lengthy and heavy discussion over Discord is not possible to do smoothly.

For the problem you believe that is the escalation of the argument, see what I wrote so far.

Sebbe wrote:The discussion that sparked the discussion of where we should discuss things was of Staff Events, about them being announced or not, the differences, past mistakes etc.
I'm sure it must be very grating to see the same suggestions, the same ones you have tried as staff to implement and fail, get thrown out with the question "why have staff not done this?" Or remarks on staff policies and the general misguided consensus a lot of our players might have with information being filtered through person after person, changing it's meaning over time.
But a problem does appear when staff responds with a blanket insult to the community, escalating the discussion in one way or the other.


It's not a blanket insult to the community when I specify "the same people" who always get involved. It's a blanket insult that covers several particular individuals who, as it turns out, don't even play in the server! These individuals know who they are. If you feel you aren't one of them, or I have not told you so directly, then you probably aren't one of them.

The hot topics that always involve "that group" are exploration, events, and medical for some inane reason. I could specify who if you like, but then it feels like rather than calling them out and letting them receive the message independently, I am targeting people, possibly wrongly, for public humiliation. I have tried that before and it certainly did not go well, so I tend to avoid naming names in public.

I would still like to do my call-outs privately, but my staff is trying to discourage that as well. One of the individuals from yesterday I was mighty tempted to tell off in DMs because they don't even fucking play here and have no right to an opinion about our server. Again, I won't tell you who it is, but know that I could, because I do have a specific name. Scree at least knows who I am referring to, and possibly Dragor as well, since Dragor was among those who told me to just let it go. I still feel like there's unfinished business that needs attending to, but whatever. Dragor wasn't the only one telling me to chill in regard to this person.

The problem with Discord is that we also get the peanut gallery of people who aren't involved, and again, it's the same god damn people who like to do this. Humans have this funny quirk where they like drama even if they say they don't--especially when they say they don't. Hell, you guys have seen me whenever politics gets brought up in off-topic. I love controversy! It's spicy! And everyone wants to jump in and be like "ME TOO" without having any context of the broader discussion. This usually derails the discussion, and unlike on the forum, it's not feasible to scroll back up and see what the fuck the original topic was.

To both give the information needed about already having tried said thing and insulting the player-base in the very same message.
Even during the discussion on using the forums vs just using the discord, the concern on what I could describe as either a shutdown or just censorship got attempted mirrored to Discord in that it is just as easy, but the mirroring message about how same it was, was gain another escalation exhibiting the clear gap or wedge between players and staff we have gotten or always had over the years.

Sebbe wrote:I'm sure there is a better way to put this issue as my train of thought relies on a lot of information I already have swirling around in my head, but the core issues I see are the following;
>Lack of information between the staff an playerbase.
I feel like almost, if not all of the biggest issues with staff from the playerside lies with "who tf are these people and why is all their responses to suggestions; 'Lol we tried that, stop discussing it' do they even play on the server?" Which I will admit is a thought I've personally been having for a while now, but I think from my own perspective it's mostly an issue since the staff roster is comprised of mostly Americans or people not awake when I am awake.

But nonetheless this is something I'd like see rectified in the future by opening some communication channels, maybe be less abrasive when you do chime in and not only appear on the discord to punish someone or shut something down.
Talk about suggested changes, talk about what's going on in the staff team, maybe share a general "what happened during staff meeting of march 24'th" or something.


You say that like we're not already trying to do that. We can only do so much. It's absolutely infuriating when you or other people demand this sort of thing, because it makes me go, "WHAT THE FUCK MORE DO YOU WANT?!" whereas other communities have staff who have made it standard procedure to just straight up ignore everyone.

The whole reason I suspended myself from host powers is because I myself was doing things without input from anyone else. Trust me, the other staff are well versed in when our fellow staff are not paying enough attention.

We don't do staff meetings also because,
1. They don't accomplish anything that can't be done immediately when the issue arises.
2. "We'll talk about it in the staff meeting" becomes a cheap excuse to use when staff don't want to do anything.
3. It's none of your business 90% of the stuff staff discuss, of which that 90% pertains purely to moderation. You have no right to hear what annoyances we might have with players who aren't you. We have enough comments from the peanut gallery as it is, and gawking at our moderation is not productive.
4. Where scheduled staff meetings are a thing, they are also a chore. Nobody wants to do them, and everyone zones out when they are forced to be in them.
5. We keep the other staff up to date on issues with an admin notes channel. This has worked for the six years we've done it better than the decade of experience doing it with other communities wherein they use scheduled staff meetings.
6. We still do meetings as necessary. You usually don't hear about them because of point 3. Dynamic staff meetings rather than scheduled staff meetings allows for us to focus exclusively on one topic for the duration of that meeting rather than getting muddled with other, unrelated topics. In every staff meeting I've been a part of, the only things most people remember are what's at the start and what's at the end if it doesn't directly pertain to them. If it's more than one topic, every other topic gets lost.

In summary, we are not doing regular scheduled staff meetings, and we currently don't have a reason to do staff meetings. If we do, they will never be in voice, so we can actually go back and read what was written.

The thing you want to accomplish with staff meetings is already being done through better avenues with superior record keeping.

Sebbe wrote:>Escalating discussions.
And the main topic which spurred this thread creation.
Discord moves fast and discussion moves faster with emotions running high, talk of what happened in a round, server politics, world politics, whatever it may be.
It is important, especially as staff, to not join the conversation right off the bat with something negative, or even jabs at people, or give examples of staff actions that might seem quite extreme.
It is funny but we are actually having the same discussions on this on the server "Desert Rose" which is a 18+ Fallout server based off Bad deathclaw. Some of the staff there are also quite straight forward with their wording and come off as quite... scary. So we are having a discussion on stopping that in it's tracks.

I'm not quite sure how well put together this is, I'm sure Tempest could write a good summary with hir own fixes on stuff, but this is what I have now.
-Sebbe


I already covered this in my opening rant.

Desert Rose has the same problem we do because it's not possible to avoid it. You'll find that every community whose staff give an iota of a fuck will come off in this manner. If you don't like it, too bad. I mean that in the least nasty way possible. I say "too bad" not because I mean to spite you. I say "too bad" because there's literally no way I can possibly make this better or more gentle except maybe swearing less, but like, come on! Swearing and guns is my thing, man! It's what makes me special! :U

I can probably cut down on the swearing and I have been trying to do so but it's still going to happen.
Last edited by Aces on Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: More ponderings
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Re: Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

Postby Aces » Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:50 pm

tl;dr attempt

- Discord is bad for heavy topics because reasons. If you didn't bother to read the long version, I don't give a shit about your opinion anyway.
- People take insult way too easily even to sincere criticism, and they need to stop being crybabies. If you didn't read the long version and this upsets you, again, too bad. Yes this is insulting. I can't tl;dr something without it coming off as insulting. You're dismissive of the long version, so I'm dismissive of you. Why am I such a dick about it? Because to extrapolate the niceties and thus detail the reasoning of my actions so that you would not be angry with them requires more letter space.
- Some topics will continue being tense. This is not avoidable. OP provides evidence by pointing to another community where they have exactly the same problem of staff looking like dicks sometimes. Doing it on the forums however is so much preferable to Discord because I can actually REAAAAADDDDD.
- Regular scheduled staff meetings are a chore that don't accomplish anything productive and I have a decade of experience moderating large communities to feel this way. The staff still has meetings, we just don't call them that, and they happen as necessary rather than a predetermined time.

My use of "you" also is directed at the reader of the tl;dr version and not directed at the OP of this thread.
Last edited by Aces on Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: typos and missing stuff
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Posts: 1700
Joined: Thu Aug 06, 2015 4:13 pm

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