The PR feedback form that we are given is really not that great. First off it is lacking all the tools for formatting that we can make use of in the rest of the form. Next off one don’t wish for it to simply be freeform then give us more criteria to fill if needed.
To highlight my issue you can take a look at the just how long winded i was in the thread i made that got moved.
Issues is many times there is people have a issue with any given PR on a very fundamental level and if we can’t not openly discuses the matter and have to go through the PR feedback system its clunkiness only serves to impede the flow of but doesn’t get rid of the criticism. In the end breeding resentment.
So what i am asking for is
First allow for more formatting tools.
Second Ask more then just two given questions.
The the wonkyness really isn’t going to be made worst with more questions, what’s more if you are making a PR feed back YOU should be answering these questions.
identifying the issue, identifying what could be fixed, proposing a solution, identifying if the PR is just flatly bad for the game, then laying out the how and why.
As for the last two questions if don’t believe its bad for the game you just say NO.
Also the other issue as to why i want to have these questions is to validate that being you are allowed to out right say the PR is just bad. you of course need to GIVE a reason. But i have so many issues on this form about being censored for ultimately rather mundane reasons.
I didn’t make PRs at first because from my POV unless i fulfil the given questions it will just be disregarded out of hand. Say i am jaded but i lack trust in the staff unless its something outright stated, there is clearly numerous unspoken rules.
also the form is just plainly bad, that’s the most important thing. Still perhaps the questions i gave could be better.
i wish we can just discuss it again and mods/staff enforcing when someone goes out of line.
How would we be even able to discuss it with other people nowadays.
Problem is, people tend to argue with each other in any thread, which derails the topic into adjacent-but-not-really-useful stuff. Someone going on a flame tirade (which warrants moderator action) is just as useless as someone talking about how much they like cats in a thread about dogs, so moderators are useless for this situation unless you want to force Hellware to really sweat.
Such debates tend to spawn long chains of discussions in a domino effect, so you end up with dozens of replies in a thread where only 5% is actually valid feedback. In addition, people make shitloads of these threads at once- there’s already multiple topics open for these, and organising and analysing feedback from all that is way more effort- It’s a waste of time to digest hundreds of replies and identify the primary concerns when you can simply get every frustrated person to say everything cleanly, concisely and to-the-point in one comment.
Arguing that these public discussion threads are useful for the PR author doesn’t work when the author explicitly states that these things are useless for them and they’re only using the feedback form, regardless of your opinion on the matter.
Some authors like discussion threads, some don’t. Can’t really force them to like either.
Literally any forum in existance has to deal with that. Why blow it out of proportion in this case?
That is a problem of forum structure only, really. Taking example from dreaded reddit just for technical side, you can answer to a comment and this spawns chain under it which doesn’t take away from the main topic, but allows to go into details if you want and lets people flame war in peace.
Forum’s technical side is to blame as said previously. If you really want you can just chatGPT posts of biblical proportions, or make a staff position of a guy fishing out stuff from such threads.
They don’t have to be usefull for PR author. Let people do what forums are about, discuss shit, even if it is more, or less pointless. Someone might convince you that this is good, or this is bad, give you different perspective on a matter, point to the ways you can use it for your benefit etc.
I personally think feedback form is bad at its core. There is no discussion, you just give vague pointers with zero feedback from literally anyone. Yeah, PR authors might read them, but might as well not read them at all, you don’t know.
Atleast one proudly admits to only take feedback from his metabuddies on discord and nobody has a problem with that.
Feedback form in my opinion is just giant “FUCK OFF form”, or cope. Look, I’m putting constructive criticism on a paper in a glass bottle which then I close and throw into the sea.
The maintainers and myself are quite happy with the feedback form system as is. The questions prompted elicit the form of feedback we want, and it has been proven to be vastly more useful than any other method prescribed in the past. It serves as a great filter for the folks that just want an avenue to complain and dump vitriolic comments out into the community and we have a means to shield the contributors who put in genuine time and effort into developing the game. As for me, personally, I read and reply to every single feedback thread (related to my works) personally and in great detail. You are all very quick to stand on the rooftop and proudly proclaim the system you’ve never interacted with doesn’t work, because you’re exactly the type of people being filtered out by it asking for a modicum of effort without the opportunity to publicly tear down people who just want to do good things.
There might not be a person in the community to interacts with and requests more feedback on development topics and projects than I do, so it’s really quite disappointing to read on the forums time and time again that I am neglectful, stubborn, and incapable of taking input from others. I do all my work in public, and never do anything without collaboration. If you were on the discord, you would know this.
I do think the form avoids a lot of the vitriol and stupidity from people who don’t care about giving actual feedback toward a PR, but I can say the lack of ability to format, add pictures, or go into a deep-dive about some design ideal makes it super obtuse to use and has 100% made me go “nah I’m not going to bother”.
Nitpicks about the system aside, having the ability to discuss stuff about a PR - especially big ones - is a boon in my opinion. If people want to abuse that, hammer them and move on. If you can’t be an adult in an open source project you shouldn’t have the privilege of being able to speak imo - but that’s also with my own chunk of years doing miserable balance discussions and personally following the “if you can’t behave you can be shown the door” philosophy - devs in SS13 are the lifeblood of a server, their sanity is infinitely more important than NeverCoder McGee saying their PR should have a dev sent to the firing line.
Mate, if every time people talk about your PRs its just gets ether locked or deleted of course we are going to think that you are incapable of taking input. The General form public doesn’t know that stuff. All we see if that if we dare open our mouths publicly even when we have not broken any rule as stated and are trying to be nice about it trying to be constructive. IT still gets Deleted or locked.
Here is the thing you can say you read this stuff but the crack down on discourse only severs to make people think you are lying. Not to say that’s what i think, but i am just calling it out as it is. That just how many are going to view it.
Have you ever heard of toxic positivity? i get lads can be toxic and vitriolic i really do. But how things are set up now only severs to feed a culture of toxic positivity which combined with the censorship severs to breed resentment. Many lads can respect a bloke who can take criticism on the chin even if they fundamentally disagree.
There is a reason i respect Cabal, BasilHerb, N.H.C, birb and many others. We may disagree on many things and will argue but they try to be Ernest and forthright. So even if things get heated at times i still respect them.
But to get to my point IF we are not allow to talk openly about these things we should be about to at least be able to be open and honest, about our view points and not have to play pretend.
You and others clearly put a great deal of work into your PRs this much is true. But just because you give it your all doesn’t mean people are going to like it. If lads think the PR is a turd on fundamental level it doesn’t matter how much you polish it to a shine. ( side note polish dirt balls is in fact real thing neat fact for the day its called Dorodango.)
I mean you did at least skim through my PR post did you not? ( just saw that you did, thanks for that by the way, even if do still not agree with the points you made.) i do not like your PR on a fundamental reason.
Here is the thing We can have our cake and eat it too. Ether by having the PR feedback forms be open for all to see but only locked to the relevant parties. Or by allowing public discussion and just making it known that contributors are under no obligation to respond to non PR feedback forms.
ether way it allows for lads to see things are being talked about and criticism and complains are not just being toss into the trash.
All of this censorship just allows for a illusion to the PR makers that its not as hated as it really is while ticking off the lads who don’t like the PR.
If you don’t like hearing all the viriol just set the threads to not notify you and ignore it. Thats exactly what i did for my thread about warrior decaps after i had made my point clear. There was tons of lads dunking on me and not being constructive but i can just ignore it. I didn’t need them to be censored or to get the thread locked or deleted.
Edit: i got more to add.
I had just gone back and looked at The PR form… and frankly it only serves to show that the PR forms should be open to see.
You responded to point by point i had made, perhaps not to extreme depth but sufficiently so. You took the criticism on the chin and didn’t have a freak out. YOU showed yourself to be of good character.
If lads wish to discuss something many times before they make a thread themselves they look to see if there was one already there. Same is going to be likely for the PR forms if they are allowed to be publicly viewed, they are going to see that you have already addressed the point they were going to make there for carry on.
Making the PR feedback forms public but still locked to only the relevant parties would be kinda interesting to see and I think it’d go a long way to addressing the perceived disconnect.
It seems like it’d be easy and requires no extra effort on anyone’s part.
I’d be up for this, but I have my doubts about whether management will allow it
Letting people watch someone else discuss something and not input their own ideas is a bad idea. It’ll just lead to people making their own feedback posts and referencing other peoples’ across multiple posts.
I think a section on feedback form for images would be all i want out of the system further.
Actually there’s a PR up i wanted to contribute sprites to but i dont have a private shithub, being able to submit the PR form with them attached would be
For fob rework at hand specifically…i think people want to talk and should. I also think nothing fruitful will come of it from a forum thread, and so it’s probably fine to have back and forth discussion on it in like acid goop or something so long as everyone knows the contribs have no obligation to review any of it. I also recognize though that ss13 dev discussion rarely stays nontoxic. We are talking about ss13 players here.
Ive done open source dev both for various ss13 servers and other non-game projects. I dont love every change here but i’m very aware and very grateful for the fact that thwomp and most everyone have been incredibly clear and PLANNED in what they’re putting out and where it fits into Their Vision:tm:. Do i always agree with The Vision:tm:? No, i have my own set of eyes that see in their own unique way that nobody else sees either. But i’m working on a project for release in august and we only just made a roadmap and don’t even have a centralized design doc/user feature requests and goals thing that everyone involved has access to. people on ss13 have unparalleled access to a ton of dev decisions and discussions that even Professional Teams working on open source dev dont offer out to all stakeholders or end users
Perhaps, but the current system breeds resentment due to perceived disregard for the general CM public opinion. Thing is many times the Devs are taking in Feedback and the General public just are not seeing it.
People don’t like feeing like they are being silenced, People don’t like feeling like they are censored and are not allow to speak there mind. Especially when they are nether breaking the rules as stated nor are acting in malice.
Still that is a fair point, but at the same time although being messy referencing other peoples point in tandem with there own is not inherently bad. That being said if they are just repeating the same point its not going to be great. THAT BEING SAID… many times people repeat the same point because they came to the same conclusion independently and may be using other lads posts to highlight its not just them who think this.
General public opinion is not a great metric a lot of the time, because public perception of how things function is very imperfect, biased, and varied.
But individual arguments/details do exist, which are important to consider. I think there’s only a fault if the thought was not discerned critically, and there’s no way to tell if that’s the case. So it’s easy to see it as “oh your valid criticism was not valid because I don’t care and you shouldn’t care about what I do to the game you enjoy”. And I mean, no one wants to be wrong, especially when you know you’re making an effort to do something good. But acknowledging errors, mistakes, and opposing viewpoints is also important, after all there is a great price you pay for not doing so which builds up in the worst kinds of ways (at least if it gets into the game).
But yeah, idk at this point. The system exists in a way that saps the motivation to care, and I think that’s intentional but a bit sad to see. Critical (and supportive) viewpoints are important even if they are worded poorly a lot of the time. I think it’s easy for people to overlook or underestimate the importance of things, and devs, maintainers, etc. shouldn’t see themselves as exempt. Further, the practice of writing about things furthers understanding of the game greatly and is something people want to see and think about.
But it’s also easy to realize, noone is exempt, noone is perfect, and noone is gonna be fully correct about what they’re talking about or what they attribute importance to, because this game isn’t solved and honestly, I’d like to think a full interpretation of the game is possible but doesn’t currently exist because its got a lot of mismatched parts. Anyone who claims they do, may have a system of looking at the game which can easily be anecdotal, biased, unsound, and unreliable. And/or, heavily limited in scope.
But yeah i think theres joy to be had in writing about this game anyway. It’s ultimately meaningless and that’s fine, because it’s fun to figure things out.
The way the administration shuts down criticism both of code and of administration itself just does not gel well with me as a TGstation gal born and raised. There, allowing people to speak freely both on PR’s and about the administration so long as they don’t cross lines like death threats and stuff were priorities.
Even if it produces a lot of arguments and salt, at least people can let it out; it does not feel very nice to see the rules here against such things, and never has.
True it really isn’t many of a times but you got to keep in mind the issue lay in not if the public is being pampered to or not. After all too many cooks in the kitchen ruins the pot.
But is the fact that the general public feel insulted. This is why i am not out right asking for the devs just to kowtow the whims of the public sentiment, but instead be more open and transparent. Because good and reasonable people can look past many things if at least feel that they are being heard.
This is a game that is reliant on mass player engagement, if not enough players join a round things tend to start to break down. Of course this can be fun challenge to deal with at times but all the time its just going to be a annoyance.
Yes such slights are only going to affect the deeply engaged players who even bother to join the forms. But at the same time its these players that act like the oil keeping the gameplay running smoothly if in game issue arise.
i know i am not some great player that is beloved or anything, hell if anything i am held ether in contempt or just not memorable. But i am still one of those players that will take up aCO, empty req or doctor during Low pop and no one is willing to fill those rolls.
…and if where not for the few staff that i hold in high regard and the many lovely players i would have long since washed my hands of CM, all due to feeling insulted. i am not asking for my vision to be enforced or even endorsed only for it to be allow to exist.
yes this may seem petty and to degree it is, but why bother engaging with this game at all if i am just going to get mad for doing so? This is same reason i understand why the devs want things on lock down to mitigate the vitriol but its two way street.
Its not just the devs that need to be respected but the players as well.
TL;DR
The general public feeling disregard can harm the games health long term if goes on for too long.
In my opinion in the capacity as someone who has developed PRs that require feedback, and not a staff member, I’ve found that posting feedback threads for the HvH gamemode, and my two custom maps, Navalis and Tyrargo, helped encourage people to leave their thoughts and general feedback in a way I could quickly find and respond to.
I have no idea if anyone has ever made a feedback post via official channels for any of these concepts I’ve made.
I also enjoy responding to feedback posts in my public feedback threads, since the act of having to respond to the post helps encourage me to better onboard the feedback, which may then result in me making actual changes to my PRs.
From the perspective of a non-developer, I find public feedback threads feel like they have a far lower barrier of entry for posting. The barrier is already high when you need to register an account and then wait for the account to be approved.
An open-style thread where many other people are commenting, I feel, is easier to break in to and leave your own feedback, instead of a closed off section where you are railroaded into giving feedback in 2 specific ways.
