My Recent Concerns

[Phoenix_]

I want to preface this by saying I mean no shade to anyone and I don't want to start any drama because of this thread, being the whole point of this thread is to try and stop this recent bullshit drama culture. Recently, I feel there's been at least some sense of disconnect between quite a few regs and staff members and some of the higher up staff, or at least decisions made by them.

 

There's been a nasty cycle of people disliking a decision or two, and either publicly or privately expressing their dislike of the decision made resulting in some sort of drama usually resulting in that person getting in trouble, demoted, whatever. I just don't want this stupid shit to continue because this is meant to be a place where people can chill out from the everyday stresses of real-life and just be able to chill with some homies. I definitely believe there is fault on both sides in these situations most times. On the side of the regulars/staff, their responses when actually contacting the higher-ups could definitely be less aggressive and more clear at times. But, unless if this is exclusive to the friend group I'm in, I feel there is a general feel of dissent to the choices of the higher-ups equating to "passive-aggressiveness" in the eyes of the higher-ups. More importantly than which side is more wrong/right than the other the true issue is a lack of clear communication.

 

From the player side, we should definitely take steps to make our intentions and wishes stated more clearly through making threads or going to the higher-ups directly instead of making half-witted remarks behind backs and not going anywhere with it and just leaving the problem to sit in your mind. On the higher-up end, if the stories I heard from multiple people are the full story, actually going through with being transparent would be a huge step, because it seems many times the responses people get are either perceived as vague or end up with people playing the waiting game and feeling like their situation doesn't matter. I understand you're not our butlers and can't and won't cater to our every want and wish, but at least making it seem like you care more than a robotic support ticket email would be a good first step. People get annoyed when they have to bug numerous times, sometimes over the span of week/weeks just to get a response to an ultimately simple issue or question.

 

Overall, I just hope that this petty drama shit can be put behind us and we can try and have more open communication and reduce the amount of stupid conflict there's been. I hate seeing people get in trouble or demoted over ultimately petty shit.

 

Now, more onto my most personal concern and that is that there aren't any steps to come together as a community to mend this rift on either side. I have no real way of making this sound nice but this is meant as a genuine question... what are the Internal Affairs and Community Advisor teams doing to bring the community together and trying to get the community's feedback and put it through to the higher-ups? Like no offense to any of the people on the teams, because I am friends with multiple people on those teams and I have nothing against them as people, but what are they doing activity-wise? Like I have no visual evidence of any of it since I'm no longer a staff member, but from what I hear the CA section is pretty much dead, and for the CAs, outside of player complaints, what have they been doing? If their section is for the better part "dead", they aren't really trying to reach out for public feedback on the community, and (except the ones on the events team) making any events, what function are they serving? Like I am really not trying to throw shade at any individual or group of people, I'm just concerned at the general activity of staff from high to low and how and how it will affect the community in the long run. From a manager of a server admitting they do literally nothing for the server, to from somewhere around 30-50% of our admins being either completely inactive or minimally active just has me concerned.

 

tl;dr- I'm tired of the stupid bullshit that's been going on. It doesn't matter who creates it, the point is it's time to stop and come together. This shit is fucking stupid, it's an online gaming community and shouldn't devolve into persistent petty drama. If there's a repeated problem with each other, just avoid contact with the other party if at all possible. It's time to let bygones be bygones and understand that while we may not agree with every decision here if we want to question it we should go about it in a civil manner to expect a civil response back. Give respect to get respect. To the other side- while it's upsetting that repeatedly disrespectful remarks get really annoying and you all have your own way of getting rid of it if a more civil approach is taken upon being approached, all I hope is that we are understood as upset, and not passive-aggressive. Otherwise, I just have my own concerns about staff activity (or the lack thereof) and how it may have a negative impact in the long run. Overall, I'm just concerned at the times here and I wanted to voice my concerns even if this is really dumb sounding.

 

If this strikes a nerve with anyone I apologize, and will happily discuss it over PMs to try and mend the situation I've created. I'm not all-knowing and could have made erroneous statements in here.

[Dominic]

Hey,

 

I locked this thread up. Personally, I think it made perfect sense to put this into a public thread as opposed to saying it privately, but I also don't think it's best for everyone to tear each other apart especially if we're talking about coming together and that's what's bound to happen. I'm going to respond to all of your points and probably go a bit more in depth and not stay as vague as you were. Since I feel like this has to be made clear, my following thoughts are mine and mine alone, I'm not speaking on behalf of the rest of the Board and they may post later on.

 

People disagreeing with our decisions is bound to happen. The Board is just five people with a set of opinions, same as everyone else here. It is damn near impossible to make every person happy with any decision we make and chances are there will always be some sort of backlash. This is usually perfectly fine, it really all depends on how people go about expressing their disagreement. There's a lot of times where people actually do it perfectly, by approaching the people who made the decision and discussing it with them in a civil manner. Usually one of the Board / Internal Affairs members is reachable through PMs to discuss any decisions made by their respective ranks. I've always encouraged people to hit me up to discuss anything they want, as that's how I've been treated by previous Board members.

 

This community is a place to unwind, but we also have to keep a certain level of professionalism. Having fun is one thing, but having it at the expense of others or our community image is another. We do still engage in partnerships and cross-community collaborations and keeping a good image of ourselves is important. This is why we punish people for misbehavior and especially pay attention to how people in our staff ranks handle themselves. When you become staff and as you move up in the ranks, you're held to a higher standard and we expect you to meet it. This doesn't mean it's all work and no fun but it does mean we're much less tolerant when it comes to you acting out.

 

Transparency is something I think we always try to strive for. We continue to make changes that offer more transparency within reason, such as the "Who Got Banned and Why" thread and publicizing admin complaints. Something else I think we as a Board pride ourselves in is the fact that we're willing to talk to anyone who has concerns. You can approach us in TS about any situation you have a concern about and 9 times out of 10 we'll explain it to you, within reason. A lot of people tend to make assumptions and only listen to one side of the story when we're perfectly fine telling you ours. This will play into my next piece, but transparency is something we always want to try to improve upon, but as of right now I think we're in a pretty good spot with what information we give out.

 

Now I'll address some recent drama in a bit more detail, without naming names. A few people have received demotions recently, mostly due to their behavior. Somehow, which remains a mystery to me, a lot of people have come to the conclusion that I am the sole reason this happened. I legitimately have zero idea how my name came up as opposed to randomly blaming someone like roux or Rain, but I genuinely don't care. In 99% of cases, a punishment isn't given out by one person. The only situation where it may happen is if someone is acting out in an extreme manner and it needs to be dealt with immediately, but even that will be reevaluated by other members of the respective rank. Official demotions are not done without a majority vote. I do not go around making decisions on my own and there is always a majority on punishments / demotions at an IA+ level. In these situations in particular, there was a majority Board vote for the decisions made and in a couple of them, it was completely unanimous. These discussions also spanned 2-3 days and were not "quick" in any way.

 

The way some of you acted following the drama was completely absurd. A few of you went poking around to other higher ups as opposed to contacting me or another Board member directly. A lot of the stuff being said in those pokes was super ironic considering how those same people acted when they were pulled into a channel with me. I went and addressed a channel of people on TS and mentioned that I was free to talk and was pleased that a lot of you came in and had civil conversations with me. I suppose the freedom to speak to us about anything isn't automatically assumed by most people, but I would've hoped it would be.

 

This staff portion of the thread is a whole other ballpark, but I'll address it briefly. As far as admins being inactive - we don't see any reason to demote admins for minimal activity. It doesn't really benefit us in any way, whereas them logging on whenever they can would. Lots of them are dealing with personal stuff and we're pretty understanding because they don't really have responsibilities that need constant tending to. I think 30-50% of our admins being inactive / minimally active is a bit of an exaggeration by just taking a peak at all of their activity stats, but that's also dependent on what you deem is inactive or minimally active.

 

The Community Advisor rank has been a topic of discussion for as long as I can remember when it comes to the efficiency of the role. Recently I've been making an attempt to loop them in on more topics, so I could've sworn they've been super active in terms of community wide discussion. On the server front I think they're doing pretty good as well. For all I know I'm completely wrong and out of the loop, but I thought the CA rank was in a pretty good spot. The big thing that needs to be taken into account there is that the rank is purposely vague, so it really boils down to the people in the rank. You can really take the role and run with it and do a whole lot or you could do the bare minimum.

 

I appreciate the thread, as I know you have the best intentions in mind with it. I hope I managed to clear some things up with my response. The situation going on really isn't uncommon in the slightest but I think the most important thing for people to recognize is that talking about your issues behind closed doors won't help in any way. Your approach here is fine, or any other route that directly reaches us so we can take it into consideration.

 

Feel free to reach out about anything.