Do we need improving here at nerd?

[DrTim58]

I, as of very recently, have begun to think "Does nerd and its servers need improvement?" I think that we need improvement, but I want to see if other people think the same thing. As of recently, we have had a disagreement on some things like voting for staff. I just want to hear what other people think about all of these and from their points of view. So just post what you think if there need to be improvements here at nerd, or if you are fine with how things are.

[EeHee2000]

We've generally been trying to improve ourselves for a long time, actively since Creative started getting some new staff/features and now the general vibe I'm getting is that Survival is now in that same sort of stage. This entire forum (spare the Off-Topic section) was made to help improve nerd, I can guarantee you nerd is in full swing to improve itself. 

[PvtSnowball]

I have a thought that I have been thinking of for a while now. A lounge type of server were you have 20x20 plots that players can build on. You can switch from creative to survival and back and it just a chill type vibe.

[GetaFever]

No server is perfect. Improvements can always be made.

 

I guess you can say I'm fine with how we approach our improvements. I like the polls, threads and general collaborating that goes on in our community. As long we stay on this track, nerd will continue to be the great server it's always been.

[Natdog]

No server is perfect. Improvements can always be made.

 

I guess you can say I'm fine with how we approach our improvements. I like the polls, threads and general collaborating that goes on in our community. As long we stay on this track, nerd will continue to be the great server it's always been.

I love the positive attitude you have here Geta. Thank you for sharing you thoughts, very well said.

[Magnyus]

Why should there ever not be improvement?

 

I like these servers, I like the people I've met on these servers, and even though I don't see eye to eye with a good deal of them, I still think that it would be in our best interests (and those who have yet to log on) to work together to improve the servers. The problem is, there are a large number of players that are perfectly content with the way things are will most likely continue being, and I don't approve of that. No one, should ever settle, there is always room for improvement and there and dozens of players with plenty of great ideas that could help improve the quality of the servers.

 

The problem is, no matter how many times an idea is presented, nothing ever comes out of it, even small things that are absolutely do-able. Most of the time, the excuse is usually that the tech admins and other plugin writers don't have the time to do all the things presented and that's absolutely reasonable, it's unfair to pin so many tasks onto a small number of people. The problem with that excuse is, why don't we just get more people to help then? There are plenty of players with sufficient resources to assist our servers in it's efforts to improve but their help is usually rejected because said person isn't a member of staff or because they aren't trusted enough to deal with the inner workings of the servers.

 

The next big issue is the situation with transparency, whether we like it or not, we keep a lot of things away from the regular players, things that don't really need to be talked about in private (and I'm not just talking about the mod chat *cough*adminchat*cough*) even mods like us are in the dark when it comes to decisions that have been made and ideas that have been shut down. That's not cool, cause if we keep coming up with the same idea and it's already not do-able, we don't know why or even how anyone came to that decision, no one tells us.

 

As much as we would like to say that there isn't a divide between mods and regular players, there absolutely is one. Many players feel that the mods look down on the normal players, and even though we play and build and pvp alongside you, we still have to perform our duties and keep the servers free of grief and issues. That means that we talk to more people, we help more people, and in turn, we have a bit more of an influence when it comes to our opinions vs. everyone else's. That much is unavoidable, the problem arises when we pool together only the opinions of those with the most influence, or ignore the others. That is where things get blocked off: newer players come, newer players want changes, older players like the way things are, older players have been around longer, everything works the way things are, (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) nothing changes, newer players leave, rinse and repeat.

 

The worst part of all this is that everyone who starts taking things seriously is immediately painted a nice big red target with the word "Drama Llama" and everything they say stops being taken into consideration. Everyone tries to push each other's buttons (even I'm guilty of doing this) with the intent to heat up an argument and paint whoever gets angrier in a negative light, then every begins to disagree with the guy talking about how much of an idiot you are for having your opinion and the other person wins the argument. Rather than talk things out in a civilised manner we start wars on the forums and dig into people's histories and call them out on that one stupid thing they said or did. In my opinion the worst of these people are the ones who for some godforsaken reason are entirely oblivious of the problems, where all they do it just back up the one person who is saying everything without fully reading and thinking about what everyone is saying and providing proper input. That's why simple posts end up getting filled with tons of comments where everyone is disagreeing with each other and making snide remarks.

 

Just talk, and listen; read, and think. Stop making your own concrete opinions and sitting idly by waiting for everyone to go at each others throats before you begin to say or do something. Take into consideration what everyone thinks, even if they aren't a member of staff, or if they don't play on your server, and if they behave like a fool every now and again, whether they've been banned multiple times, if they moderate their own servers, and especially, if they have an opinion different from yours.

[DrTim58]

Please share all the ideas you can

[barneygale]

We tried that

[CROCKODUCK]

We tried that

Counterproductive.  If you tried that, why not copy paste what you "tried" here?  I am also curious and think we need small improvements here and there.  Mostly in Head Admin interaction policy and or hopefully just changes

[barneygale]

My plan is to list every occurrence of a reasonable suggestion being ignored. If I do this, I will do it for the entirety of 2014 and it will take me at least an entire day. I haven't had the time to do it yet. If you need evidence of suggestions being ignored, pick basically any thread at random. The evidence is staring you in the face.

Edited August 20, 2014 by barneygale

[CROCKODUCK]

My plan is to list every occurrence of a reasonable suggestion being ignored. If I do this, I will do it for the entirety of 2014 and it will take me at least an entire day. I haven't had the time to do it yet. If you need evidence of suggestions being ignored, pick basically any thread at random. The evidence is staring you in the face.

Seems like a cop out, how about just an example of something ignored so we can discuss?

[marting11]

Honestly I don't understand the point of this thread. We never claimed that the servers are perfect and we are always working on improving them.

[dizney07]

The servers should always be looking to be improved in every way possible. There will never be a perfect server, but we're going to try and get as close as we can.

[barneygale]

Seems like a cop out, how about just an example of something ignored so we can discuss?

 

Alright then. The community-run survival mumble meetings is one of the more obvious.

[Mrloud15]

Alright then. The community-run survival mumble meetings is one of the more obvious.

 

Survival Mumble Meeting Follow Up Post

We have the following requests to the admin staff:

1. Run a bukkit plugin to fix the fast hunger depletion
2. Replace the packed ice and clay on roads with ice
3. Draw up rules under which public-service buildings can be grief-protected
4. Build or paste in a player-built public arena
5. Engage with the community more, and bring in more survival admins, especially PVP-oriented admins
6. Make sure survival is well-represented in future moderator nominations
7. Inform the players of important changes via a blog, twitter, subreddit, or forum thread.
8. Run more events!

1. We looked for several plugins to do this, but could not find any until this current rev. 
2. People thought packed ice did not have the same properties as ice, so we tested it and found out they do.
3. We have discussed this extensively, but have not come up with a policy yet.
4. A public arena was built by players and another one was pasted it.
5. We are always looking for new admins, and trying to engage the community more.
6. We did.
7. We have.
8. This one is still an issue that we needs addressed. 

[barneygale]

From my perspective:

 

1. Behind-the-scenes discussions that amounted to nothing, and we were not informed.

2. Sure, but this was a very simple suggestion

3. Behind-the-scenes discussions that amounted to nothing, and we were not informed.

4. Sure

5. You did not appear to make any additional effort here. Our request was not to continue as you had been.

6. Sure, but all survival admins are expected to do this anyway. It was also months later.

7. You did not appear to make any additional effort here. Our request was not to continue as you had been.

8. Agreed

 

So yeah, I take back that nothing was done. I'd say instead that very little was done. The reaction from the admins didn't encourage any more community meetings.

Edited August 22, 2014 by barneygale

[TornadoHorse]

 

Survival Mumble Meeting Follow Up Post

1. We looked for several plugins to do this, but could not find any until this current rev. 
2. People thought packed ice did not have the same properties as ice, so we tested it and found out they do.
3. We have discussed this extensively, but have not come up with a policy yet.
4. A public arena was built by players and another one was pasted it.
5. We are always looking for new admins, and trying to engage the community more.
6. We did.
7. We have.
8. This one is still an issue that we needs addressed. 

 

From my perspective:

 

1. Behind-the-scenes discussions that amounted to nothing, and we were not informed.

2. Sure, but this was a very simple suggestion

3. Behind-the-scenes discussions that amounted to nothing, and we were not informed.

4. Sure

5. You did not appear to make any additional effort here. Our request was not to continue as you had been.

6. Sure, but all survival admins are expected to do this anyway

7. You did not appear to make any additional effort here. Our request was not to continue as you had been.

8. Agreed

 

So yeah, I take back that nothing was done. I'd say instead that very little was done.

 

I feel like the issue was that we put a lot of effort into those meetings, a lot of players turned up and spent a huge amount of time discussing things but no big, successful changes really came from it. At the time a lot of players wanted a more equal representation of Survival among the admins, more PvP based admins. This, along with announcements and transparency, were our main requests because if they were completed then all of the other problems would be able to be sorted out as well. I don't think the meetings were a total waste of time, I'd like to think that they made some difference and maybe even influenced the survival meetings that follow (but probably not). If anything, it was nice having the whole community together and actually speaking about what we wanted from Survival... even if it did take over 3 hours...

 

To answer the original question of this thread, as many have already said - of course! We should always be trying to improve ourselves. For survival in particular, I'm eager to see what the admins will do next. This revision was great to try out something new and started off looking like a great improvement but as big groups of players left we seem to be back to how we used to be with a low player count. I really enjoyed the citadel plugin as a change and novelty from what we've been so used to, but it doesn't look like it's going to be any permanent solution. 

[Mrloud15]

From my perspective:

 

1. Behind-the-scenes discussions that amounted to nothing, and we were not informed.

2. Sure, but this was a very simple suggestion

3. Behind-the-scenes discussions that amounted to nothing, and we were not informed.

4. Sure

5. You did not appear to make any additional effort here. Our request was not to continue as you had been.

6. Sure, but all survival admins are expected to do this anyway. It was also months later.

7. You did not appear to make any additional effort here. Our request was not to continue as you had been.

8. Agreed

 

So yeah, I take back that nothing was done. I'd say instead that very little was done. The reaction from the admins didn't encourage any more community meetings.

Thank you for telling me how these things looked from your perspective. This just shows that we need to do a betting job of communicating with you guys. I have a few ideas on ways to to do this but I'm still working out the details. If anyone has any ideas please feel free to let me know.

[barneygale]

It's also worth pointing out that, for all the shit some survival players get for complaining too much on the forums, we see once again that it's only by positing something that would hurt your pride that I get a decent, direct response. Polite requests and suggestions get ignored or brushed off, but when I suggest that you're unwilling or unable to do x or y, some admins are always keen to prove me wrong. I refer you to bash.org:

<dm> I discovered that you'd never get an answer to a problem from Linux Gurus by asking. You have to troll in order for someone to help you with a Linux problem.

<dm> For example, I didn't know how to find files by contents and the man pages were way too confusing. What did I do? I knew from experience that if I just asked, I'd be told to read the man pages even though it was too hard for me.

<dm> Instead, I did what works. Trolling. By stating that Linux sucked because it was so hard to find a file compared to Windows, I got every self-described Linux Guru around the world coming to my aid. They gave me examples after examples of different ways to do it. All this in order to prove to everyone that Linux was better.

* ion has quit IRC (Ping timeout)

<dm> brings a tear to my eye... :') so true..

<dm> So if you're starting out Linux, I advise you to use the same method as I did to get help. Start the sentence with "Linux is gay because it can't do XXX like Windows can". You will have PhDs running to tell you how to solve your problems.

<dm> this person must be a kindred spirit of mine

As far as I'm aware this has been the first time any admin has gone through the suggestions and given a response to each, in any form. The meeting took place in January.

[barneygale]

I'm being a little mean because it seems too little too late, but thanks anyway for your response Mrloud. It's good to hear what happened in the end.