[AC -> PMC] 'community' and what that means

[Draykhar]

I figured it was time to move this over to the forums instead of IRC, we're not oft all on at the same times, so the main function isn't there, and it doesn't really allow for a longer discussion medium. I think it’s fair to say that a large portion of the staff has been on different pages for a while, and I’d like for us to start working towards what I view as community issues. Call me raising hell, rabble-rousing, whatever. I’m not really concerned about that. We need to settle down and reach some sort of agreement.

 

By this point, I think it's well known that there are contentions with the way things are organized at most echelons of the server. Players (myself included) want to know who's doing what, what changes are coming up, and, to put it most directly: what each persons roles in the servers are. They understand that there's separating levels of moderation, but they're largely pushing to see what those do, and how they can be involved in them.

 

I cannot speak for everyone with this, so I'll merely extrapolate on my own contentions a bit, I'd greatly appreciate you all considering my concerns and as peers and go forth from there, be it in open discussion or re evaluating what we consider a ‘community’.

 

To begin, I think we need to better understand the difference between the different types/levels of moderation. I understand that I probably step outside my bounds as a server admin plenty - One recent example is the poll I started on the forums regarding the up/downvote system. it wasn’t my intent to have them immediately removed, but rather to properly channel something many players had mixed opinions on. In retrospect: I'm not a tech, that's not my place. While I try to encourage people to speak up for changes they want, I really ought to have left that to jcll or any other tech that works with the forums - that’s their department, and they can hear what people want just as well as I. We, as players and staff, need a better understanding of what each of us is responsible for. It better allows for an understanding of expectations, be it people overstepping them, or not living up to them.  

 

While I understand that we're all players, and we can't /really/ be expected to 'be mods all the time', becoming a member of the staff ought have expectations with it, beyond the typical 'don't abuse your powers'. Becoming part of the moderation crew, even more so for admins, is an expectation that you'll be at least somewhat actively contributing to the betterment of the three servers. Be it something small like moderating the subreddit, or something massive like keeping the servers up to date and running, if we're not doing anything with our abilities, we should re-evaluate why we are part of the staff.

 

I understand that we're not robots, we're not machines, but a lot of the issue that I see with players complaining of either inactivity of moderators or admins stems from the fact that nine out of ten things we do they don’t even see. It’s discussed behind the scenes and then abandoned or implemented accordingly. Players complain that we’re not doing anything, not because they don’t appreciate it, but because they actively have any hand in it. Most of us put a lot of sweat, blood, and tears into these servers, without the fruits of our labors being even noticed.

 

To fix this, we both need to be more open with the community of what we’re doing, be more reciprocal of their suggestions, and moreso, be actively looking for suggestions. We’re only a small majority of the group, albeit a trusted group. We don’t see everything, we don’t have every view on every issue, it’s important to at the very least hear the ideas people bring forth, even if we disagree with, and ultimately dismiss them.

 

In the end, they’re all really just wanting to be more involved in their community.

 

We survival admins have been working towards a middle ground with that, at least for issues regarding survival. We, with massive help by players, have brought forth numerous threads, polls, and are working towards Survival meetings every two weeks.

 

I recognize all of this is causing some grief on some issues, and I’d like to make a point to personally apologize for that. It’s not been my intent, in any channel - Mumble, irc, in-game, forums, etc - to cause grief. I think it’s time that we take the opinions of others more seriously with the changes we've planned. At the very least, this is going to be the way survival is moving with its current administration on board.

 

I was going to post this in modchat public, where I feel it should be. But I feel no one would comment on it, and it’s sort of an overreach on my part. So for now, It’ll be here in Admins.

 

I implore you to reflect on what I’ve said and voice your opinions beyond that.

[WickedCoolSteve]

Warning, long stream of consciousness incoming.

 

First off, thanks for making this post. You bring up a bunch of good points and I'm looking forward to a productive conversation. Although this post comes with the obvious backdrop of tensions in the community (both inside and outside of the staff) I want to emphasize strongly that you're not rabble rousing, you're not stepping outside of the scope of your position, and that your concerns are valid.

 

I don’t feel like your brining up the up/down vote buttons was out of line. Anyone in this community would have been within their rights to raise the issue, including you. For the first time we have access to software that allows us to judge the opinions of the community as a whole in clear concrete terms. The poll feature on these forums is a powerful tool, one that I am excited to make more use of.

 

It's true we have a pretty thick bureaucracy here. Looking back through the history of the servers one can see how it came about and how, when everything is working in sync, it runs the community fairly well. I'll just give a run-down as what I see as the responsibility of the various layers of administration. Note that although they've been placed in a particular order, I don't believe that any one is "better" than the other, it's just a way of organizing. Also consider that in many cases, each group inherits the “responsibilities” of the group that comes before it.

 

-Players not on staff: Have fun, play the game. Contribute to the community with ideas, opinions, ect.

 

-Moderators: Continue to have fun, but also manage many of the small day-to-day actions needed to keep a server running. Complete modreqs, moderate chat, moderate the subreddit, ect. Contribute to brainstorming and voting on new mods, work on events such as CTF, and generally contribute to discussion on server policy and how things are managed.

 

-Admins: I feel like the various admin positions are significantly different from the moderator position. In the most general terms mods have a small scale focus and admins have a much broader focus. This is partially due to the fact that there is sensitive information that is generally best kept on a need to know basis, and also that when it comes to making decisions about potentially contentious issues it is often best to be able to move forward quickly rather than to be bogged down by discussion. I loathe to drag real world politics into this, but look at the US Congress for example. Endless unproductive discussion with very few results to show for it. We’re providing a service (multiplayer minecraft gameplay) and it’s often best if decisive action can be taken without much delay. These people have access to avenues of communication (forums, irc, in game) that allow that targeted discussion to take place.

 

-Server admins: Groups of three that have general control over the direction and “feel” of individual servers. Ideally server specific decisions will move forward with a consensus of the server admins, at worst a ⅔ vote. Organize and run server-specific events. Propose rule changes to individual servers that can be specifically enforced. Handle admin reqs and other issues that require specific intimate knowledge of the server. Prepare the maps and spawns for their servers. Determine and communicate times for map resets and new revisions. Contribute to planning and discussion of issues that affect both the servers they focus on and the community as a whole.

 

-Tech admins: Keep the servers operational. This includes keeping plugins up to date, keeping the servers online, bringing on new features via creating and modifying various plugins. Maintain security of the servers including denying access to mcpublic services by individuals that would cause damage to server infrastructure. In the end have final say on server security issues. Generally use technical expertise to provide advice and guidance on software, server hardware, ect.

 

-Head admins: Facilitate communication between the various admins and mods when necessary, including coordination of map resets. special events, and Minecraft updates. Sign off on rule changes on the servers including server specific rules and general mcpublic rules. Moderate and resolve disputes between various staff members and groups of players. Remove staff members when necessary. In very rare cases remove players from the community when they are especially dangerous or disruptive. Provide final approval on new moderators and admins.Sign off on expenditure of funds. Perform server admin tasks on any of the servers when comfortable in order to reduce the workload of server admins.   

 

The tldr would be: players have fun and speak up when you want, mods manage small day to day issues, server admins manage the direction and vibe of their servers, tech admins keep the lights on and the house secure, and head admins coordinate the various groups and generally maintain the health of the intraserver community as a whole.

 

Of course, the workloads I mentioned are not always exclusive to any particular group, and there are doubtlessly many functions that I did not mention. This is just my basic off the cuff rundown. When all the groups are working optimally and working well with each other I think things run very well. I can speak for the head admin group in saying that we’re still finding our footing with our current setup. It’s fair to say that we all relied on Lude for a lot of management and also as liaison with much of the community. I can say for myself that I’m trying to change my behavior by being on mumble every night and am trying to spend more time on C and S.

 

I think there is an important balance to be struck between expediency and transparency. Like I said before, I believe we’re not here to play government, we’re here to provide a service. If we get bogged down in endless discussion, or need to present everything we do to public review before following through we won’t get much done at all. That being said, it is important that we involve the general community in the running of the servers as ultimately everything we do is for them. I suppose the question is, what would that look like and how would it differ from what we do now?

 

Like you say Dray, in the absence of information people generally assume the worst. Perhaps we should consider some sort of regular “report” on the actions and plans of the various admin groups. Maybe some kind of regular, smaller mumble meetings would be a good idea. Perhaps on a rotating schedule as to accommodate different time zones. A regular town hall style conversation with a generally open floor with the administration would go a long way I think. The drawback, of course, is that it represents an increased workload for an already busy staff. I’ve thought of something along the lines of a google doc with a continuously updated list of issues being worked on. It’s one more thing to maintain but it could be useful.

 

One of the best tools I think we have available to us at the moment is the new forums. We can accurately poll many users and gauge their preferences on particular issues. Although it’s nice to ask on reddit, I feel like feedback there is strongly biased towards people who are more extroverted and comfortable speaking out and defending/explaining their position. Yes, we’re the reddit servers but we all know how reddit comment threads can be counter productive when it comes to honest/open discussion. Often anonymously voting on a list of options will give a better feel of the desires of the community. I feel like we’ve already seen productive use of the forum voting mechanism with things like auto locking pve chests, pve terrain, forum up/downvotes, ect. It would definitely be good if we could easily add links to forum voting threads to the rotating server messages without having to bother techs.

 

I think one problem with all this is that there are some things that we don’t necessarily want to talk about before we’re ready. For example, announcements of map resets are often tricky. People obviously appreciate notice but as soon as the announcement is made server activity falls off a cliff and there is often “end of rev grief.” Therefore it is often best to develop the map and plans for reset “in secret” until the optimal time for announcement arrives. Though I suppose part of the dialogue we need to have is where the line should be drawn.

 

Anyways, I could keep going for pages and pages. I suppose I should stop here in order to allow for some discussion. I’m sure I didn’t cover everything in the initial post and I’ll gladly expand on anything that I either covered or didn’t.

 

 

 

[Draykhar]

While I wholly appreciate the response of WickedCoolSteve, I feel as if this isn't getting the attention it deserves. There's been plenty of discourse about what mcpublic was, is, and can be. If the Heads permit, may I move this over to ModChatPrivate to open it up to a wider audience?

[Guest Former Staff]

I'll ping WickedCoolSteve to review his post before moving over but otherwise I think it would be best to move this over.

 

I should have responded to this post sooner but it seems to have become buried. I'm sceptical of the topic itself but not at all with the content in the posts. I completely agree that it would be good to show people more of what we're doing, even if only in a report or being more public however my scepticism lies within actions and not words which are much harder to fulfil.

 

On a similar note, I was recently asked for an opinion of my performance, on the forums. I'm going to take a selective quote from my response as it is very relative to this subject of discussion:

 

 

Overall if I were to be objective of myself I would say that unless someone had a direct interaction with me, they may not know my actions so from this assessment of myself I'm mindful of approaching ideas, concerns and events transparently so people who may not have or need that direct interaction with me can still be involved in changes or discussions.

[totemo]

I don't know if the individual staff roles are explained anywhere on our public sites, but it strikes me that WickedCoolSteve's explanation of them was pretty good and that that information deserves to be explained publicly somewhere if it is not already.

[Guest Former Staff]

After speaking with WickedCoolSteve for his approval, I'm moving into Mod Chat Private.

 

/modreq Please add your thoughts to Draykhar's discussion!

[schererererer]

I don't know if the individual staff roles are explained anywhere on our public sites, but it strikes me that WickedCoolSteve's explanation of them was pretty good and that that information deserves to be explained publicly somewhere if it is not already.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, and think the concept can be expanded to include a number of other issues. From the beginning of the nerd.nu servers, our operations have been pretty hastily constructed, running on common assumptions and unspoken conclusions. I've been a part of many organizations, some much smaller and dealing with less money than we do, that have a much more rigorous and established foundation. The role of each server; roles of various staff positions and their number; priorities for resets, plugins, and expenditures - all these have been at the root of ambiguity leading to conflict, but could easily be encapsulated into a 'constitution' that enumerates the form, operation, and direction of the servers.

 

People always talk about how this is "just a game" and how we are all "just volunteers", but I think we can do better than to fall into such fallacies. We can and should be professional in the operation of a service that supports thousands of people - it will smooth operations, set much better precedent, and help reduce drama in the long run.

[redwall_hp]

People always talk about how this is "just a game" and how we are all "just volunteers..."

Wow. Spoken by somebody who has never volunteered for any sizable organization. Every year for the past eleven years my state has hosted a big music festival on the waterfront, involving tons of international musicians. Running something like that is a huge undertaking, even if the public doesn't realize it. Hundreds of volunteers are involved to fill shifts in various roles over the whole weekend, as are plenty of overworked coordinators. I've been a part of it twice, but this year I got my first serious behind-the-scenes look, since I spent hours ferrying musicians and volunteers around the (large) area in a golf cart, as part of the on-site transportation team. Volunteering is serious business. You can't have a good organization, be it a music festival, bowling league or game server, without committed members putting in a lot of work.

Nerd wouldn't exist without people like that, and neither would the aforementioned festival.

[schererererer]

I think we've had a bit of miscommunication. I've been on the volunteer staff of a concert band music festival for several years now, in addition to miscellaneous bits of volunteering, and I completely agree with everything you've said about volunteers. My gripe is with the people who use the phrase "we're just volunteers" to deflect attempts to discuss improvements to policy and procedure.

[redwall_hp]

Er...I meant whoever said "we're just volunteers." Not you, personally. Maybe I was miscommunicating.

[Draykhar]

Fuck it, I'm bumping it.

 

With all the drama and discussion that has come up recently, I feel this thread is far more relevant than when I posted it.  However, there's still no discussion going on. Let's get the ball rolling and start talking this all out in a centralized thread. 

 

What are we doing here, guys? Do we have any direction after the fallout of the last month or so?  

 

Shererererer suggested something similar to a Constitution, and I've heard a few other moderators say things along the same vein. Should that be what we're looking towards?