[Dystopia]

So, in regards to the old suggestion thread mentioned that people have necroposted in recently, I'll likely respond there independently of this, though some things I say might have some overlap.

As for this thread, don't worry, nobody takes offense here to my knowledge, and it's perfectly fine to speak up and is encouraged, moreover.

I'm not sure if the other GMs will post or not to accompany mine, but I figured I'd weigh in all the same.


I'll try to respond to as much as I can that's been said here, but definitely let me know if I've missed something/forgotten to comment on something important.

That disclaimer aside, though... I'll start with some of my thoughts at current:

- Truth be told, since Walrus stepped down there has been a lack of GMs that truly represent this community properly. It is especially rare that I see a GM actually play the game or interact much with the wider community as of recent. Now, I don't think that anyone needs to dedicate themselves to doing something they don't want to, but I will request: In addition to the current GM team, I believe we need more people representative of the current community. Of course, they still need to be trustworthy so I'm not sure what I'd suggest here.

- I'm noting that people are expressing that there is what seems to be a lack of transparency from the current team. I don't want to start an argument over whether there is or isn't, but a sense of openness is obviously lacking in the eyes of so many people, and as such, I'm sure people would like to see verdicts be made more openly, in a way that allows people to know what has been done wrong, and have chances to dispute it more easily. This extends to more than just the person being punished - the community itself deserves to be in the loop. It makes it hard to dispute things if they're entirely vague.

- It can sometimes feel like the GM team is slow... and that's not really their fault at all. There are four of them, each with different other callings, and they're doing this all for free, so it's kind of a thankless task. This probably ties in loosely with my first point, in that, not only do I think we don't have enough GMs representitive of the community... but that I just don't think we have enough, period. There are times where there are just none around, which can be a critical issue in certain situations. And so, I think we need some new blood to help get the gears working more. (Again, I can't off the top of my head pose suggestions to you, I've identified a problem, not a solution...)

- I will say, that in my personal case, I'm on and just unseen most of the time. I don't broadcast most of my characters and I don't make myself known too much, but I'm definitely watching more than you'd imagine.

That said, I should probably interact more directly in public places, but my attentions as of late have been focused on something on the backend that I'll touch on later.
While it isn't a requirement for us to engage, it's admittedly something I enjoyed doing more before, and would like to get back to, and goes hand in hand with trying to be approachable.

As for new GMs, I've no problem with more helping hands so long as they're qualified and able to work with the rest of the team without issue.



- I think the applications thread went a long way in regards to general GM team transparency, and helped in that matter.

In terms of bans and unban requests, in most cases, as Ruff mentioned elsewhere, there are clearly given reasons that anyone can see as to why someone was banned when we respond to them. Normally we strive to answer these with clear cut reasons to justify the ban, as anyone can see many examples of there, and strive to be prompt, even though there's a sticky that specifically states that we aren't required to.
 
In many cases, however, throwing every bit of evidence we have up for public perusal would only result in the reporter being lynched or ostracized in some way.
This is especially the case in harassment cases, which are so prevalent here in our relatively small community that it's a wonder anyone comes to us at all.

We've all seen how easy it is for misinformation to worm its' way into people's perceptions and stay there, and unfortunately the truth is that it wouldn't go away even with 100% transparency. If anything, it would persist, and many more people would be targeted just for speaking up.



- I agree, it's often really difficult to get ahold of a specific GM if that's the one you need to talk to because the situation is one that they handled and it wasn't made clear to the rest of us, or the rest of us require their input to move forward with something, to make sure we're all on the same page and in agreement.

I'm sure most players aren't aware because they're not privy to the GM channel, but the four of us discuss everything that comes our way, and in that way we sort of check and balance each other to make sure we're being fair with what we slap down and our conclusions. Dev is also in said channel, and sees everything we say and often joins in on the discussions to keep us in line.

While more GMs might make us more visible to the community, I can't say with certainty that anything would move any faster. Because as mentioned, we have lives and jobs and things that keep us from being active 24/7, and input from even one member might stall some things going forward. Largely, the bigger cases are the ones that suffer from this.
The rest of anything small or minor, we handle individually just fine or with minimal input from the others.

I've been considering writing a post with a list of suggestions to break down what should be done in order to benefit the community as a whole.  At the moment the GM team is simultaneously fine, but also fills me with little confidence that they represent us the community overall, and seem more closed off than anything. I agree that the Staff Team are not bad people or terrible.  However they are ADMITTEDLY detached from the community.

https://neus-projects.net/forums/showthr...p?tid=6251  This thread went through many of the issues in detail.  However to reiterate here with a less aesthetic format.

- The Staff team needs more PUBLIC transparency. Accused and banned players often cite that they've not been spoken to by a GM or received follow up contact over lengthy periods of time. Evidence should be made available to the accused as a mandatory part of the process.
- A public ban report/request sub-forum should be created. With explicit rules and mandatory examples of evidence, from harassment, to breaking of rules, and logs.  This would make the job of the Staff Team easier, and ensure that ban requests and reports carry with them more than word of mouth.
- Logging new chat.  Right click and log should be implemented pronto.  At the moment the greatest enemy of people wishing to log abuse, harassment or rule breaks is a players inability to log things with the pretty new chat in any way other than screenshots.  This would essentially allow a player to do 80% of the work for a GM.
- Ban Appeals need to be handled more promptly.  Ruffknights recent post summed up my feelings on the matter, and in combination with the fact that an official response was finally offered only two days away from the end of the ban. Is a failure of due process. Whether it was accepted or denied, a clear neglect was shown, and the official rules allowed for it.
- A Newsletter should be made monthly. Allowing us to know who will be active, where the GM teams attentions are, and what they want for the community. I don't need GM's on daily or hourly to handle things. However it would be nice to know how they feel about SL2 in general from time to time. To let us know they still actually care to interact with the public as people.


I do not think that the Staff Team needs to be replaced, however I feel the system they work under needs to be reworked. As I can attest with Walrus' departure it very much feels like the only GM who got us as a Community has left, and our relationship with the staff team suffers for it, and the infrastructure put in place. Allows for it all to suffer. Many systems that are put in place at other RP communities not just on Byond but in the RP Sphere in general are not put into place here. 

Leaving the player with a general air of uncertainty when it comes to the people above them.

Again I do not want to call out the character of the GM's and to call for heads.  However I want to point out how the system itself needs to be improved, and how even in Jupiters post has been called to be improved for almost a year now. A restructure would allow for the GM team to do less work, and garner more trust from the community. But right now we have nothing to truly bridge the gap between us.

I'll work on addressing that thread in entirety once I'm done with this one, but I'll go ahead and address your points made here as well.

- As stated above, in most cases handing over evidence to the accused would be 100% correct. In most cases, people are shown or told where they went wrong and evidence used against them is given freely.
Except when it would incriminate another player that's reporting them. Largely, that's harassment cases, but also in other cases where there were only so many witnesses and it's very easy to rule out who reported whom.

- I know most people aren't aware of this fact, but it rings true nonetheless. About 80% of things that go on that shouldn't, aren't reported. Most of the time, things fall through the cracks and we hear about them sometimes in casually talking with players, about how something happened and it wasn't reported because they were afraid of backlash from one party or others around them. Making a public ban report/request sub forum would either not see much use, or the use it would see would be very short-lived because nobody wants to be the whistleblower if they have to walk through their own public trial while they do it.

There's already a rampant issue with people coming to us being discouraged to over and over again due to the responses of the community to whoever was brave enough to speak up. I hear about it all the time and it's very disheartening. Many players have expressed that they don't feel safe reporting problems to us and would rather keep quiet and hope it stops eventually, whatever that problem may be.

- I think logging the new chat system would be very nice. That I wholeheartedly agree with, both for the sake of logs gathered and the aesthetic of it. I tend to keep to all tab and I'm severely missing out on pretty colors all the time, just for the sake of being able to log with ease. It's very unfortunate and I hope it's made possible soon.

That said, even with that ability, I think global/server side logs will also help greatly, which I'm told Dev is working on in the backend so we can easier do our job.
(Still report things, though! It helps us know where to look in said logs when implemented, and gives us a solid date/time stamp to know what to look for)

- In this incident it's largely because we default to allowing the GM that banned said person to respond before the rest of us, and it's my understanding that Chaos had a lot on his plate and couldn't get to it until then. Which is understandable, really. Usually these things are handled by whomever dished out the ban as stated in the sticky, even if we all discuss things in relation to them, which also takes a little time with the bigger cases.

- I think this is actually a really great idea. A newsletter might help, and I think we might implement something to that effect soon. As I mentioned above, I've personally had most of my focus and attention being put to a special project that I've been working on, after getting clearance from Dev. I initially didn't want to announce it or spill the beans on what it was, because I thought a surprise might be fun- but in light of this idea, I would be very willing to share some parts of it, teasers or something just to let people know what I'm working on.

I will take a moment to clear the air for anyone who might think otherwise or some such, despite the timing this is not a post specifically created as a critique towards the treatment of one particular member. I should admit that it may look shady / like such, but I have no relation to that particular incident, tie to the particular player, or other such. I have even defended that judgement.

This is not about that. This is about things that have been said long before that ban. Long before the ban before it. I am aware that the community is not usually forward with the GM team, but it sometimes makes itself feel so distant that it is overall just harder to approach. Outside of some groups you're probably not going to talk to them.

I only have been able to express enough confidence to talk to them through being part of those groups at some point, and without that I don't think I'd have been given any reason to feel comfortable doing so. I don't think that's entirely either the community or the GM team's fault. I think both sides can take steps to remedy this.

But to find a way to make things better, I think this post was needed.

On this note, I and I'm sure the rest of us would like to be as approachable as possible for us to help everyone. I'm not in many groups myself, and don't tend to throw my characters at IC groups, but if people would like my involvement in a discord server/group of some kind, I'm open to joining them.

I'm not sure how to be more approachable in that regard, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'll definitely listen.

That said, I'd like to express again that anyone can come to me with a problem, or ask a question, or just to chat if need be. My DMs are always open, as are my PMs on the forums if you'd prefer to use that.

I was rather close to remaining silent in regards to the topic, but I am compelled to contribute, since it is touching on a rather important part of the game: Game Administrators. I will be touching a few matters in my post, in hopes that it will serve as some form of feedback for the GM team and contribute to the discussion itself.

I will agree that, currently, GMs have a... lack of presence/representation, mostly caused by inactivity. But you also have to understand two points, especially given they have been mentioned in the original post:

• One, GMs are people with lives that Dev trusts, and demanding that they set aside important things for the sake of the game is not so feasible, which leads us to the second point.
  
• The GM team is voluntary, NOT something they are paid for.
  

I feel these are two very important points to keep in mind at all times during this thread.
Another thing I would like to touch on is not overloading the GMs with responsibilities. Sure, more from them would be nice, but given these two points... yeah.
However, if Dev wants to recruit more GMs, then by all means, go ahead. But as a player, the one and only thing I request is that you be very careful of your picks and communicate with your current GM team about that matter.

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Now, in regards to transparency. I understand the demand for transparency, especially given I have already talked to Dev about this before through other mediums; but there is yet another important point here -- GMs need some space to work with. There are some administrative actions we simply should not know of, but it probably can be addressed in an individual basis with the corresponding GM.
Knowing what a GM is doing at all times is counterproductive; not being certain if they are looking over your shoulder is important as a motivator to not break the rules or do something they should not.

Additionally, I believe it is been mentioned before that Dev created a GM log (not accessible to the public, mind you) which allows him to know what a GM is doing. In the past, Dev did not have a clear idea of what all they were doing, but this log alone allows him to keep tabs on that stuff.

I do think that, if we knew just a little bit more, perhaps it would not hurt anyone; but I believe steps have already been taken in that direction before (read: Applications subforum).

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In regards to bans, and other administrative measures, it is important to note that the GMs work mostly off of what a player provides to them. If you do not report stuff, then it simply will not get noticed. It is a compromise with the players, who should reach out to them, tell them what's up, and provide them with evidence to work with so you do not end up sending them to war without a weapon.
As for evidence, I do not feel a GM has to (or should) provide evidence for their actions to the public. Dev trusts them for a reason. They should reserve the right to respond, as it is not an obligation. To add to this, players should also have the right to anonymity, and depending on how evidence is handled, it can end up being counter intuitive.

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As an addendum section; I agree with most of what MaksimumFire/Kit said. I have had little issues with the GM team and the system they work with, but I definitely agree it could stand to be reworked in a few areas, and touched up here and there.

- Unfortunately, yes. If it's not reported, it's unlikely that we'll see it. However, that might not always be the case, and once global/server side logs are added in for us, I'm sure we'll have a far easier time handling things even if people don't report them.


Additionally since I've been writing this, there's been a little bit of hostility thrown about and I'd appreciate it if the proceeding posts don't drift into that kind of tone.
This topic is worthy of debate but it stops being so when we stop being civil to each other, and I ask that everyone please be mindful of that.