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.