Feedback An open meeting between staff and players

Now after have a conversation with a specific admin we both agreed it would be a good idea to have an open meeting between staff and players. This would be a good way for players to voice there opinions on things, ask questions to staff or even give ideas on things.

Now, i know whats going to be said straight away:
"suggestion threads"
"asking staff"
"talking to people"

Now these answers are all well and good, but i believe having a meeting like this can mostly be a beneficial experience, players can vioce there opinions on things that could be good for the network, things that they believe could be an issue or need improving or just there opinion on things. Thus it would improve response on these issues. Also it would allow users to get an idea of whats going on and get there voices heard in a community sense.

Now Lordicon suggested having dignified spokes people for this which ive suggested before and have been told that it would just be "another needless rank" which i see. But having people to voice the community views without hesitation or just having a meeting would mean that having a meeting means answers are given then instead of waiting till staff are free which can often take days to months to come to fruition.

Now i understand the facts such as, some people may have baised views, but they would get opinions from the staff on how this would work and why it wouldn't.

Now i know your going to say it could be said in forum posts and suggestion threads such as these, but that takes the human interaction out of it, there is a wait time, things may of been taken out of context, views may not be shown enough or even in some cases players dont want to make a fuss.

This is why i believe it would be beneficial but if you deem otherwise then thats fair enough, aslong as it is a decent reason why.

 

The only downside I see to this, whether it be teamspeak, forums, or in-game, is a large amount of people talking over one another to get their ideas heard. The spokes-person would eliminate the potential problem, but there is also a chance of not having everyone's voices heard. That's where the suggestion threads come in handy, everything is well organized and everyone has a chance at being heard, although I do agree that it takes some of the human interaction out of it. If we could come up with something that avoids all of the problems above, but keeps the general idea of it, I think it could turn out to be a good idea.

 

Normally, TS most of time doesnt have that issue, BUT that can arise if something important arises so normally how these go, everyone who wants to enter comes in before a specific time and everyone will take turns thus giving time for staff to answer and for people to vioce there opinions

 

That would take a long time, I believe. Higher staff really don't have a lot of spare time. Admins, Managers, and Directors spend a lot of time working and fixing things to improve these servers, which is why I think that it's nice to be able to let them answer when they get a moment to breathe, lol.

Maybe some sort of Reddit style Q&A could work out better? a semi-live thing, perhaps? I'm just not sure a live chat would be very feasible. Especially when you take timezones and work into account.

 

Whatever works, making it as stressfree for everyone is paramount.
The issue is that im not the only one who says "the door is shut for players and staff unless theres an issue"

 

im open to try a few things if something works fine we can do it

 

Just waiting for the usual head honcho to appear now

 

Need two chickens and a cookie to summon him.

 

Why not you?

 

cus

 

I have already brought this up to lucid a few months ago, idea got denied.

 

Why?

 

I have but one question i'd like to address and will do so here- Where are the staff?

Yes, I do appreciate you do have lives externally to the MyM community, i'm not stating that everyone should always be at a desk 24.7 but looking solely at the tickets awaiting staff and players (38 awaiting staff/9 awaiting players at time of writing) that has only increased from about 30 staff tickets early this morning, I'm starting to become concerned.

In my opinion, i'd like to throw out the idea of pack specific staff, if such a system doesn't already exist. A lot of the time with modpacks like these, the community drive the pack- Mods can be learnt and people on specific packs know how to sort certain problems out themselves.
(For example, there's a bug on Crundee where sometimes Compressed cobblestone didn't create 9 cobblestone unless you wiped and redownloaded the pack, Ferret had issues with HQM's catalogue until quite recently and that's something some of us on the ferret server informed the staff about and i'm glad they worked with us to rectify it)

Otherwise i'd perhaps have dedicated ticket handling staff volunteering to forward requests to admins/mods/etc. as this weeds out the commonplace questions too (i.e. How do I claim land?)

Overall, I do enjoy the MyM community but some little minor issues still exist here and there.
Kind Regards.
B00M

 

I know what your saying, we used to have the system, but staff are needed everywhere.
Like id love to be staff and do as many tickets, but i wouldnt get it because of past events, thats why i try to help as much as i can as a player

 

At the moment a few countries have holidays, that means tickets are coming in more then during other times, we are working hard on them and solve them as quick as possible.

I dont think Pack specific staff would be a huge advantage, i think its more a disadvantage, alot of modpacks are similiar to each other and and most of the tickets we are getting are about issues which can happen on every modpack

The most tickets who are open requires higher staff tiers to solve which most time means it requires more work or tracking why this issue occured and fixing it to not happen again.

For the suggestion about a meeting. we can try to pick a time or make it spontaneous and announce it and invite ppl to the teamspeak to ask questions, organized and with 1 member of each staff tier so you can get an answer from everyone. i dont think its possible to time those dates since we have alot of different time zones or work or other duties in our live. also you need to take into account we will never be able to answer each question quickly since some of them requires analyzing or a meeting of admins to discuss those topics.
But perhaps you will get a more detailed view of our work

 

I'll come back to the main point presented, but I might as well start here. When I'm trying to get something fixed, or suggest an idea, I have no interest in the "human interaction" that comes with voice chatting, teamspeak or that vein. I'll concede to the point that it can be useful, I feel suggesting items over the forums exist for a reason, it's inclusive, and ANYONE wanting to access that data/information, can do so. The issue with teamspeak or "meetings" is that not everyone gets a voice like the forums, and you can only be in the loop if your part of the meeting, or get filled in.

Another reason I love the forums for suggesting ideas is because it's mostly permanent, I can claim I suggested or said something, and back it up my quoting a post or linking a thread, but teamspeak adds a level of flexibility, get rids of the organization that the suggestion forum gives us.

Another concern of mine is that even if we have "community leaders" or whatever, I can't trust that individual to deliver my idea in the same way I would, and that's slightly concerning for me. When I suggest an idea or have a question, I word it in a certain way, but the "community leader/speaker" can't be expected to ask in the same way I would, or suggest my idea in the same way.

An alternative to what your suggesting, and maybe an interesting concept would be a weekly or monthly podcast, where forumers send in questions, and the people running the podcast interview a different staff member each week.

If your after a look into what a Staff member does @SirStudMuffin I'm sure some some member of staff would be willing to make a documentary on what they do on a daily basis? Censoring the needed information, of course?

 

Hello, I think it would be a cool idea to have a documentary by staff or a podcast by forumers. I think that would be a sweet idea if it was executed properly. I know they did this in the past not sure about the present but they would have someone record the audio from teamspeak meeting and post it on a forum so user's can be "in the loop" as you mentioned and can make comments on that forum.

 

Arcauno i swear your the only guy here who has thought that this has come across as confrontational.
Thats good, id rather see both sides of the spectrum.

 

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I just feel the forums accomplish this better than anything else can, mainly because what you post is mostly permanent.

The issue with recording a team speak channel is the issue that some people might have major issues with that. I wouldn't, but I can wager some as in a large percentage of forumers/players would.

 

I'm working as fast as I can![DOUBLEPOST=1478462903,1478462065][/DOUBLEPOST]

As Wolfi said splitting our team into specific modpacks would result in even longer wait times for a resolution on tickets, more so when they reach the level of needing senior staff to work on them. Imagine if I was the Admin assigned to B-Team, that's great if B-Team has an issue, but it also means our other servers are without an admin to assist.

It has also been stated time and time again, we volunteer here during our free time to help keep the lights on and the servers running. I can only speak for myself when I say I have other responsibilities, I have two children, and a wife at home. I also am studying full time to finish a masters degree while working. What little free time I have I try and spend here resolving the issues I can. We are not a staff of thousands we're a few dedicated players trying to make sure you guys can all play in a relatively bug free entertaining way. The best way to communicate with the staff is either in game, or there is the forum, messages on the forum, teamspeak etc. I'd love to hear from our players in times other than in crisis .