Kahr Diak
Rising Soul
PL: 24,548; Bio-Metabolise(x3):73644; Items: One-Use SpacePod Zeni: 500
Tag: @demosquid
Posts: 80
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Post by Kahr Diak on May 21, 2015 9:36:29 GMT
There's also no obligation to stick with the system if it turns out to be failing.
Since it does seem like there's strong movement in favour of allowing staff more autonomy, why not work it on a trial basis? Institute the new system to see what effect it has on the site, with a review in six months or a years time in order to see if opinion is still strongly in favour of the result over the way things were before.
No decision need ever be totally binding with this kind of thing, there's always the power to reverse decisions later.
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Post by Hyoza on May 21, 2015 12:22:58 GMT
This is precisely why I did not propose a simple transfer to staff rule over all. members can still revert it to the way it was before if the votes go the right way. The democracy isn't killing us, but it contributes to many issues which cause a slowdown. The amount of times I've seen people come up with great ideas, but never bother to propose them because the current implementation process is so slow and inefficient is frankly ridiculous.
As for the attitude that Bao is the man holding up the world, I don't want to get accusatory or confrontational here Bao, but in many ways you cause that to happen. We love ya, man. But you're almost never here. And when you are, myself and many others in the staff team at least feel you've applied a 'soft veto' to many ideas and methods of doing things on the site (often out of the public eye). Combine that with the actually very-limited powers mods have regarding what they can implement and so on, and we are left in a place where we often feel like we have to get your 'permission'; regardless of your stated intent in constructing this democracy.
It's not some cultural thing where people just can't let go of the idea of a leader - you are actively (though not necessarily intentionally) feeding that idea into peoples' minds. Every time you override a mod in public. Every time you PM somebody to tell them they perhaps ought to be doing things differently. Every time one of your infamous unwritten rules suddenly pops up. These contribute to a mental image of Bao as the leader. And in terms of what abilities we as mods have, we are reliant on our three (mostly inactive) admins to do a lot of the biggest work for us.
It can't go on any longer, and support for this idea is strong. We're not killing democracy. We're simply making it less crippling for our site's progression.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2015 18:21:18 GMT
Ok so I have stayed out of this conversation as I have seen sites ran in both manners be very successful and yet stifling at the same time. For myself the head of the site aka the creator curator whatevertheheckyouwantocallthem finishes with the creation of the site and bring on the mod team that is when said person has acknowledged to his mods that. Yes I am here to quell any sort of stuff, do bans, the heaviest of the heavy of things aka board creations and whatnot. Yet I have left you the moderators to run the day to day life of the site based on the guidelines I created.
I am all for this being where the voice of the god on high is only called down in the most dire of situations for us mortal board members. It is why there should be an odd number of mods/admins for the site for if the mods/admins vote on something there cannot be any tied votes. The member vote should be for things that honestly would affect the entire site not every little change that needs to be completed. As it stands every single small change is needed to be voted on and it takes months for a penny to be called a penny about here. The moderators and other admins need the power to just do things that are needed. You are lucky to have a moderator staff that wishes to do these things Bao as I have never had this type of staff on the site I have run and have had to be hands on for EVERYTHING for the past two years on my own site.
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Post by President Bao on May 22, 2015 19:44:50 GMT
I have a much fuller reply incoming, but since time is a main discussion point I'll post up the next part of what my original post was going to be, rather than addressing the comments that have come up since:
The aspects which have lead to the current situation and need to be addressed are:
- Backbone: When this was a smaller operation I was the backbone, I was one of the main 'doers' around here cause there simply weren't other people dedicated to doing so. Back then the volume of changes was also smaller(more on this later*), and the amount of day-to-day work also smaller. Day-to-day is always higher priority then new content, the present is always before the future, and so most staff are diverted to that. To solve this, we need enough actual day-workers, and then with that covered we need more people to actively take on responsibilities, *and fufill them*. I have created processes, but with no one owning the fulfilment role things always fall back to me again, and prioritisation then leaves them sitting on hiatus.[case in point, the wodsouls list of things to do, no one except me ever updates or works on it... or the threads to discuss process]
- Knowledge: Having been in this position, and often being the main designer of many proposals(partially cause it's my interest area, I've been here longer than anyone else, and I have a background in this stuff), my knowledge of the system has become more imbedded than most, undocumented/misunderstood aspects meaning that others simply don't know what I know and aren't aware of a given issues/concerns until I come and point it out. This is a problem. To solve this, we need people who will chase up knowledge and then document the discoveries. Who will supervise their area(s) of specialisation, so that someone can be like 'oh, you have a question about Transformations? Check with X, they've been looking after that features knowledge base'.
- Mistakes: mistakes have been made, and debt has been acquired because of them. A recent smaller example is Vi-poi attempting to help implement the banners, but not being aware of the prerequisite that the images needed to have their format changed, and ideally be hosted internally[causing wasted time and a site which in the mean time is loading very slowly for me, as no one has taken that job for me]. An older example was when the species apps were updated, and misinformation was included - a debt we're still struggling to pay down. The way to solve this is to solve the above two issues, and ensure a proper roadmap and focus. We need to take a leaf from professional development studios in this respect, and plan out our focuses and implementation strategies in advance, officially assign priorities, and track our development cycle.
- Consistency: pretty simple, I've come to be the main man partially because I have always been here, recently my free time is low but I'm always at it, every single lunch break and all weekend. While others quit, went on holidays, or generally did not meet the requirements of their assigned tasks [not insulting any staff past or present, just noting various 'anti-consistencies']. A building needs pillars to hold it up. We need people in staff who are properly going to stick to it, and who can be assigned a task and acctually do it fully and competently. It may sound like a no brainer but training up people takes a lot of time and effort, which gets wasted if they aren't dependable long term. Once we have this, more lower priority aspects can get attention faster.
All these are possible, and would allow me to finally start taking on less of a legman and more of a management role (also freeing more time for developments which do require me specifically to address) we just need an actionable plan to achieve these goals. We also need to take a good hard look at what is currently in place [for example if it's still vi-poi doing 80% of the grading... ], cause it's not going to be as simple as 'well, we just get hyoza and vi-poi to do implementation stuff more'.
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Post by Hyoza on May 22, 2015 21:57:04 GMT
- Backbone: When this was a smaller operation I was the backbone, I was one of the main 'doers' around here cause there simply weren't other people dedicated to doing so. Back then the volume of changes was also smaller(more on this later*), and the amount of day-to-day work also smaller. Day-to-day is always higher priority then new content, the present is always before the future, and so most staff are diverted to that. To solve this, we need enough actual day-workers, and then with that covered we need more people to actively take on responsibilities, *and fufill them*. I have created processes, but with no one owning the fulfilment role things always fall back to me again, and prioritisation then leaves them sitting on hiatus.[case in point, the wodsouls list of things to do, no one except me ever updates or works on it... or the threads to discuss process] If you want to talk day-to-day work, we're keeping on top of it. we've expanded the staff team to include several new members over the past month and have been training them to grade and so on to help us prevent backlogs building up for more than 2 days. I feel fairly confident in saying right now grading and tech/character approval response times are some of the best they've ever been here. So I'd say we do have day-workers, plenty, in fact. But I also think it's understandable that no mod wants to just sit around doing grading all day. We apply for modship to help the site expand and develop, and it seems like we're oftentimes stymied from making much impact anywhere but with the basic grind of bureaucracy that this site - with all of its procedures and processes - is becoming. The processes are simply layers upon layers of extra stuff that we have to keep track of. And really, they weren't followed even when we had dedicated staff overseeing them. Why bother? They just complicate something more than it needs to be in many places. Like all the sub-boards in the Suggestions area, which I have affectionately termed "Where suggestions go to die". Wanna know why these 'things to do' lists and so on sit there unfinished? Because we're here, on the front lines; dealing with questions, apps, grading, quelling arguments, policing potential metagaming, and trying to find a way to make this easier for us. And that's just this week.
The reason nobody else ever designed a lot of the mechanical stuff is everyone was told you had a plan. We trusted in you to do it right. For the most part, we still do. But when there's mistakes, when things are unclear, when information is not made visible to those who need it - those who usually get left with the role of implementing it (us), it's somehow never your fault. The misinformation in the species profiles after the overhaul was as much to do with unclear wording of your original notes as it was the mods who implemented it. A lot of the undocumented and misunderstood aspects of the site are that way because the information exists only in your head. There have been many times you've stated something as a rule and a few of us in the discussion has been chatting on Skype like "Wait, where did that come from?". A perfect example is claiming we don't understand the overall design of the game in terms of transformations (such as had been implied in discussions surrounding fixing Majin imbalance). Why is that? Probably because when the vote on secret transformations was tied, you decided to keep some of them a secret, meaning nobody else has access to info on what those hidden transformations are. This site is supposed to be a true democracy and honestly, you have elevated yourself above equality in some ways. Regarding many of the mistakes - the direct source of them can be traced back to lack of information being disseminated among the staff and poor organisation - something which is directly caused in many cases by the overly-layered processes we have here, and the lack of clarity it often causes regarding where things should be discussed. Vi implemented them because it hadn't happened for an age - despite passing the site's voting processes as per your wishes long ago. It was a genuine attempt to make some headway towards clearing our implementation backlog, and it could be argued that you didn't exactly support Vi at all until he went ahead and did it. As for the species profiles, refer to my previous comments - that is as much on your head as anyone else's. You wrote the mechanics up - in some cases without fully describing their functions (such as android calibrations and arcosian PL gains modifiers IIRC). I seem to recall you then allowed other staff to write the final profiles and post them, apparently without checking them for errors first, since they ended up coming out the way they did, and in some cases still are. We want to have a proper design roadmap and more focus on our efforts - but a huge part of not being able to have that right now is the literal disarray of the site. We're constantly being flooded with new suggestions, previous ones take too long to implement and are often not followed-up on. Streamlining the core design process to an internal staff matter allows us to more quickly deliberate and decide upon what actions we will take, leaving us more time for handling suggestions in the long run, as well as actually RPing. And if you want to go about this like a professional studio, the first thing we need to do away with is the democracy. Professionals don't sit around the table and let everyone just spew ideas non-stop without breaking to sort through older ideas. You have always been here, Bao. And no, we don't hold your lack of free time against you (though I do doubt somewhat that you spend as much of your free time here as you imply). Others have quit, me and rev included. We've gone on holidays, we've failed to fully live up to our responsibilities. This I cannot deny. But I can explain: We're here, above all else, to have fun, and to help the rest of our members to do the same. At times we've been critically understaffed and not had appropriate recruits available, leaving huge amounts of work on the shoulders of a mere handful of staff. the result? They get burned out. It stops being fun, and they leave. Now we're at a much more comfortable staffing level, but almost half our number are on hiatus or working reduced duties. Why? Because they're burned out and fed up. Some of the others didn't want to make this an emotional argument, but your wording makes it clear you're trying to appeal to people on an emotional level, and given the nature of this site, I feel emotion has every right to take a role in this discussion. The stifling process and the almost complete lack of your support leave the staff feeling like crap, to be blunt. Most everything I've seen you post regarding other staff in the past few months (though not all) has been polite reprimands for not following process, undermining their authority to enact their duties and putting a soft veto on their ideas. Case in point: You stalling my creation of Mojo and then just not replying to me when I didn't accept your preferred version of the Zoon-seijin. Or the new species profiles. It was being discussed for ages, but it wasn't until we started actually writing up fully-modified profiles that you decided to tell us there was a new format coming out, and we had to re-do everything in the new format. This post is coming off real accusatory, and that honestly upsets me because I don't blame you for many of the site's failings, Bao. In fact, we have a lot to thank you for, given how successful this site is becoming off the back of mechanics and layout you and rev are primarily responsible for. But you're setting yourself up as this supreme authority (perhaps unintentionally), while reprimanding us for doing anything in secret or behind closed doors. We're getting the heat for not getting everything done and done by the book when you (who have on several occasions violated your own processes) are often nowhere to be seen. If you want to take a good hard look at what is currently going on, read the thoughts put forward in this thread, and communicate more with your staff. We all came into this with great respect and fondness for you, and it saddens me to say that has been muddied for many of the staff of late. We want to get past this full-democracy and instead move onto a new system (one which still grants members power of veto and the ability to propose changes), a system which allows us to more quickly and effectively implement changes and coordinate on what we're doing. Do we have to do it behind closed doors? Yes. Is everyone going to get their say? No, at least not straight away. But does it need to happen? Most everyone else seems to think so, based on this thread. I think that's very telling.
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Post by Benetto Giri (Fluentinnerd) on May 23, 2015 2:49:35 GMT
I have been keeping an eye on this thread, as despite being a new member, I am beginning to become invested in this RP site. I have been looking around, doing research, and I noticed a few things that are being brought up. This thread is in somewhat disarray, and yes, some of it has to do with you, Bao, although in no way intentionally.
By taking a hard, critical look at both arguments, Hyoza right now has the far stronger argument, as you contradict yourself to a certain degree. You mention how things aren't getting done because people aren't stepping up, then describing how nobody else is able to fit the role. Your time on the site is limited, and while this is a matter which I completely understand, if you aren't able to live up to your expectations, you should accept the help of others who wish to help in the matter. I like this community a lot, it is probably the fastest I've warmed up to an online community, but things need to be done to fix it, and I don't think you can do it by yourself, Bao. When you counteract the workings of other mods because it does not work entirely to your liking, when you have this quiet authority that your word is law, you undermine your entire point of democracy into an somewhat inefficient hierarchial system, where you are the king that isn't even present that often, which leaves the mods unable to perform their functions without the approval that you so rarely grant.
I entered this site and within the span of a day realized that you have set yourself up as the ruler of the site, whether you intended to or not. I do not mean to imply that any of this was done with any intention of malice or ill-will, you are well liked and reasonable. However, these flaws are a severe issue that needs address, albeit with a veto system to avoid any potential abuse of power. Any change carries with it some risks, but at the moment we face stagnation, and that can kill a site just as quickly as any misconduct can. Please allow some streamlining, and let this site grow to the heights it really deserves. You've done us a great service creating this framework, but you need to let the viewers actually participate.
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Post by Vennel on May 23, 2015 2:56:02 GMT
I think theres a great deal of misconception about what Bao is doing in this thread. He is playing the devil's advocate role. For the sake of preventing an echo chamber environment where people all agree with one another and then are blind to the pitfalls, he is attempting to bring up literally any argument that can be used to purely spin things in a more negative light, or at least one that doesn't require an overhaul. It's important in any debate to have two sides, not just one that everyone is all in agreement on. Bao has stepped up to fill this role, so his arguments should not be taken so critically as if he were the one making them. Instead, imagine it was someone else, literally anyone else. Even me, if you were so inclined. His points are meant to stand on their own, away from the one presenting them.
Granted, he has made several points referencing himself, but one could argue that is because he's using it as a framing device. I hope this prevents things from getting too personal, or from further confusion over what exactly Bao is doing here.
(Then again, I could be wrong and he used the term devil's advocate for that one post he made at first, and the rest are personal opinion. Shoot. I don't know him. I ain't his dad.)
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Post by Pah'mazhan on May 25, 2015 2:55:22 GMT
Preventing stagnation from occurring, this is an important thread.
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Post by President Bao on May 25, 2015 15:10:46 GMT
Guys, this isn't a witch hunt, playing blame isn't productive and not the purpose of this discussion, I won't throw people under the bus just to make/counter a point. So if it puts an end to this ignoratio elenchi then sure thing, lets just say everything is entirely my fault, and move back to the discussion of how we're actually going to resolve the issues noted in this threads opening premise, and the proposals raised so far. I know you guys are more than professional enough to leave such conflations and keep on topic of the discussion at hand, you're clever people.... We'll address these other assertions/defamations some other time if you so desire. As a quick reminded; The purpose of a discussion thread in the suggestion process is to look at the stated 'issue' or 'goal' critically and analyse/offer alternate suggestions or viewpoints beyond that of just the original poster, on how to best achieve this or highlight aspects that may not have been considered.The expressed design problem is that currently implementation is too slow. Hyoza is saying we can speed things up by cutting down on the discussion part[which he attributes as the source] and making admin into the deciders of both what and how things are implemented (this is called an Oligarchy, or perhaps Totalitarian democracy), and also by giving staff more access to do things without rules. I'm presenting an alternative, that we can speed things up by resolving the issues present in the implementation and supervision pipeline, to actually have this place working as it is intended to be in the first place by addressing the key aspects which brought about this circumstance[which I attribute as the real source], which would allow staff more access and bandwidth. (so not even devils advocate, just a proposal which differs from the idea you have suggested) Unfortunately, no one else has presented a third or fourth option, though I hope they will. I have the rest of the reply to hyoza's post saved in a pm to myself, I've been working on it yesterday and tonight but it's simply too late(early now I guess) so I need to sleep, will finish it off tommorow(er, today) and post. In the mean time, I would request people look at the proposals them self, and consider the design issue proposed here; this is a very important thread.
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Post by Zuni on May 25, 2015 15:18:49 GMT
I'd prefer to characterize the proposed system as a representative democracy. As players have the overall veto - and could (I think?) in extreme circumstances make a proposal to strip mod powers from a mod, it is more like we players choose to trust the mods that are in place to represent our best interests with the implicit understanding that we can recall them in the case of a crisis.
(An oligarchy would be rule by money - which'd be whoever pays the bills to keep the site going, or less seriously whoever amasses the most zeni. A totalitarian democracy wouldn't allow us to demand a veto on rulings from our Glorious Overlords).
This isn't strictly relevant to anything other than the fact that a representative democracy has fewer unfortunate implications than the other terms.
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Post by Hyoza on May 25, 2015 15:28:50 GMT
That's my point - we don't have absolute power as mods, we just have the ability to make decisions more speedily. And you cannot deny that among the staff, who collectively have the greatest knowledge of canon and site mechanics on this forum, debate/voting on issues will pass quicker. I don't propose doing away with the rights of members to question/oppose what the staff do, but it's clear that a lot of members don't even pay attention to suggestions, given how low actual participation is compared to the number of members we have.
The mods care - and for those members who do, too, there will still be a way to have their say, just like they do now. My proposition simply allows us to speed up the process of design and implementation on ideas, which I think most players will be (based on all the feedback so far) perfectly happy with. This isn't a country, this is a forum-based RPG, and people are much more willing to give somebody else free reign over designing such things, within reason.
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Vi-Poi
Administrator
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Post by Vi-Poi on May 25, 2015 16:52:38 GMT
No one is trying to attack you Bao, we all like you here, but when a person holds an inordinate sway over site processes they're going to be the focal point when things aren't going smoothly.
The main problems I have with the implementation of our democracy as it stands is the soft veto admins can wield, along with their ability to implement things without a vote. To use an example, there have been a few times where you've implemented items that haven't been voted on, or say 'I've already been working on that'. Or 'that won't fly'.
Now, I'm fine with this if we -aren't- a full democracy, but on paper we're supposed to be. Everything is supposed to go up to a vote, and every vote that is passed properly is supposed to be implemented. I think this is a dangerous system, quite honestly, and I'd agree to give veto powers to certain staff, but I think it all needs to be up front and on paper rather than having stealth powers or controls on the site.
People are not rational actors. There has been votes on mechanics that could cause very bad issues for the site should they have passed. There are votes that have passed that might not be ideal with the current framework. A vote does not weigh the entire site balance, it's very isolated by nature. When most people vote, the process they go through is 'yeah, I like that idea.' They're not thinking of every mechanical metric that might be impacted by the outcomes. Further, there are votes that are decent ideas but need to be elaborated upon or edited and tightened up, sometimes downed (Android Shop's Calibration for example) to have a successful or clean implementation. That should be staff's job.
I think one of the issues is, there are no other mechanics or engineers of the site besides yourself, Bao. You know a lot about game balance, it's true. Others could benefit from that knowledge and you should endeavor to teach what you know. But there are others still that have competency with data management, and people in the staff that take things like the site balance very seriously. You brought up how things work in a professional setting. In any engineering team there is a balance of duties in design, and there is collaboration of design. No one person has an unassailable view of how things will go. Even the project managers are beholden to the raw facts on the ground. You have to put some trust in a development team to help design this balance, because you can't do it all by yourself.
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tariph
Archived
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Posts: 85
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Post by tariph on May 25, 2015 19:55:41 GMT
Seeing as Bao's watching this thread, I'll put my system idea here.
What I think would work is a Republic system;
That way people can still throw out ideas and discuss them; if it's an idea that people are in favor of, a staff member or member who oppose it can debate the pros and cons given to them by members who cared enough PM to the debaters about why they think it's a good idea or not.
When everyone's had their say it moves to a vote with the pros and cons summarized and listed below the idea's description. There would be a limited voting time, I think the max should be 30 days, and if no one's voted within that timeframe it's either soft-vetoed out or put back up and re-advertised.
Anyone who votes has to at least say which they voted for and why (at least give a line from the pro/con list and say I agree with that) and if there's a vote without a statement it's not acknowledged, because we can't guaranty that person read beyond two lines and just pressed a yes/no. If it's a tie, the moderators break it, but would need at least 2 mods over half to veto the idea (So moderator ties don't matter, the majority opinion has to be No for something to not pass)
Might not be a perfect system but I think it would work out.
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Mayze
Moderator
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Post by Mayze on May 26, 2015 22:58:26 GMT
Thoughts are neutral. I want to see the rest of Bao's thoughts before I come to a decision.
But, I have to ask, are you sure it's the discussions/democratic bits that are slowing down the site? To me, it seems as if the staff is just under-manned, and doesn't have enough people to implement things.
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Post by Benetto Giri (Fluentinnerd) on May 27, 2015 19:36:03 GMT
In all honestly, the true answer lies somewhere between the two things being blamed here. If anything, I feel that the democracy doesn't have that massive a role in slowing the system down, it's the lack of people implementing changes, and the slow process of doing so. Some of this does have to do with Bao's ghost vetoes and the lack of power of the other admins, but having a small admin pool also has much to do with it. I think the important point to take from this is that the current way things are being done isn't working, regardless of why it is. Things that need to happen right now aren't, and that's an issue. We need to expedite the process, and some of it has to do with allowing more mods to make changes to the site, while trying to get more mods to improve the system.
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