Okay I think Staff needs to let the community in on how decisions are made regarding bans or policy changes because it seems like anytime a change is made whether it be deltard from a week ago or tech webs or to a lesser extent the bone gel PR. Staff have shown to be highly resistant to the community feedback. looking back on the past week with penpusher and again the deltard the best way to avoid all the crap drama is to just to lay it all out ahead of time. Staff does a good job of telling the community things but not showing them a why. and I think alexguineaâs idea of community meetings would help bridge the gap between the community and management.
Second thing from some of the responses of staff towards the aforementioned topics definitely enforces the idea of an us verses them dynamic. If certain members of staff are either burnt out or simply donât have them time to dedicate to the server it would better for the community if they stepped down and let someone else take the reins passions change and people get tired of certain things
Just wanted to add good job you all on keeping it civil in here and thank you frozen, biolock and steelpoint and the other staff members for speaking in this thread itâs nice to know that you all hear our opinions
Its just unfortunate this topic wont be viewed by managers (im baiting) but lets be real. Staff shouldnt be some shadow government with top secret secrets.
All I want to know is the direction the game is going cause it feels like everything is on a back burner with a poorly lit fire to keep things running barely surviving cause new players keep showing interest or veteran players tolerating everything because the game is genuinely fun at times.
Last tidbit, I find it dumb as hell to tell people to go start their own CM13 server. Management, you guys pay for the server why the hell would you drive away your playerbase by saying that wth
Now I ainât here to get accused of being âcombativeâ as I was banned from the forums over a tongue-in-cheek post about them locking all the last threads but I will point out that a lot of people said a lot of very relevant and constructive things. The drama that unfolded wasnât all spiteful with zero direction.
I donât know what happens in the Discord cuz Iâm not there anymore but from what I can see on the forums and through friends there were no genuine attempts from those being criticised to engage with the criticism and work alongside the community to best represent it. The threads were left to devolve into chaos and then locked without further comment.
One thing I personally found sickening was the response that we should get lost and start our own CM server. SS13 itself is a very niche game, and our server is a niche within that niche and it feels like those in charge are happy to push out almost anyone which only harms us in the long run, weâve lost a lot of very passionate people over very silly things.
Itâd be nice to see some things maybe get acknowledged and perhaps get a statement from relevant parties.
even with the last one, the announcement wasnât even the ban, it was announcing there was a 2 week grace period towards the word prior to the ban. this still lead to frozen getting doxxed because of people baby raging over âmuh slurs freedomâs peach!!!â screaming in the discord about CM going woke and how all management is pedophiles and a lot of vaguing about management being creeps. The doxxing subsequently led to a lot less community interaction about anything because managers were way more worried about the doxxing versus anything else which management was very vocal about.
Im not saying that management couldnât be doing a much better job about communication, I have been a large proponent of it, but I do not think using this example is a good one at all because it really showed how awful and toxic the CM community can get and really makes me question âwhy would a manager want to interact with this community when this is the communityâ
also final bit, while its not the best response, starting your own CM server is not hard at all. hosting is the hardest bit but the codebase is public and there are a bunch of guides on many wikiâs about hosting.
I go to be as nice as I can be to you. You are clearly not a long term member of this community and it shows.
Maybe I am not either, hell I only joined in August 2021. Man how time kicking alien ass flies.
People were rightfully pissed off when without notice the term Deltard was going to be banned. Unlike saying Simple Jack, no notice was given. That is a failure of communication. Myself and others took a stand and firmly but respectfully voiced our opposition to that change. Thankfully, reason was respected and the change rescinded.
Unfortunately, Frozen was doxxed. My opinions on that are well documented. Thankfully the douche canoe was placed in a cannon and ejected from our community Wiley E. Coyote style.
All people are asking to explain reasoning. That is not an unreasonable ask.
Let me ask you an honest question, how would you feel if you were told âHey, this change you do not like, well, too bad, go leaveâ?
Take a second a place yourself in the other parties shoes.
Itâs kindof funny how mad people still are at staff as a whole about deltard when (to my knowledge) it literally wasnât ever actually banned and was entirely just grim saying that he thought it would fall under the r-word ban.
I understand a lot of the frustration behind changes that are seemingly instiuted wholly from the top-down, but management is not the illuminati, weâre one layer of the staff team, and we regularly disagree with each other about many things. Weâre not a monolithic conglomerate of like-minded individuals and much of the discussion that goes on in management chatter is bottom-up. The example of the r-slur is a decent case: the topic first arose because players brought it to the attention of staff, then is became a point of discussion for months within staff chat, dating back to I think October of last year. That topic, in-particular, has been brought up to management twice since Iâve been on the staff team (about six months), and was rejected the first time but accepted the second. Some of the managers disagreed with the banning of the word, while others argued that it should continue to be an acceptable word; the reasons for its ban seemingly out-weighed the reasons for its inclusion.
The point Iâm trying to make is two-fold: there is a process by which decisions get made, even if itâs not clearly articulated, and not each and every manager is in favor of every change made, with some things being hotly-contested issues.
Thats completely fair but the player base doesnât know what staff is thinking, with Grim just posting randomly saying that deltard and the R word was banned was very poor communication and lead to a bunch of avoidable drama had Staff communicated to the player base that they were looking into banning those terms 6 months prior more constructive conversations could have been had and the drama avoided. A great example of this is what happened with penpusher showing the community why a high-profile member got Perma banned is a lot better than just saying trust me bro Iâm in the right posting the messages with censored names would have been more beneficial then being secret about it.
I mean thats kinda the nature of management decisions. I donât like how a lot of things are done, I donât have full control or say over everything and its just how it is. I personally dislike the r-word and wouldâve rathered it gone much sooner but again it was a âif you dont like it, then dont be hereâ type situation. I was vocal about it and flamed accordingly as âoverly sensitiveâ/âwhy do you careâ/âjust go somewhere elseâ. its just how it is.
it wasnât without notice, delt was put on the timer in the same message the main word was, you can go back and look, and it was put up entirely through miscommunication. there wasnât a fight that was won unlike how people in the forums celebrated thinking they had a huge impact, it was really just an âoh it wasnt banned but I thought it was, sorry my bâ, it really wasnt that big of a deal that was announced ~16 hours later
The explanation was given in the discord like a few hundred times practically to the point of copy paste both by the management themselves and the folk who were for the change. It wasnât a sudden mystery and if im being honest, it was pretty visible for a long time coming.
The point Iâm trying to make is two-fold: there is a process by which decisions get made, even if itâs not clearly articulated, and not each and every manager is in favor of every change made, with some things being hotly-contested issues.
I really think it would be a good if we could see/hear about some of the things that are being discussed, even if its stuff with no decisive conclusion and entirely anonymized. just hearing that things are being discussed and the potential changes that could arise are pretty interesting.
We hear all the time that âmanagement will discuss thisâ or that âmanagement has discussed thisâ but we rarely get any info past this which contributes to the mystery Illuminati feeling people get
It might not be the most satisfying answer, and some things could probably be done differently, but itâs difficult to find the balance between privacy, transparency, and effectiveness.
From my perspective as a lower ranked staff member, the situation with the r-word stuck me as a case of continual discussions over a very long period of time about whether to allow its usage or not.
I am not privy to management level discussions but at the lower level there was plenty of on and off again discussions about it from all ranks of the staff team.
This holds true for most concepts that affect the game that you can think off.
There is no uniform opinion about these changes from a staff perspective, personally I am not a fan of the change to the rule myself, however it is evidently a case that more information was given that tilted the upper echelons of management to finally change their stance on this issue from one answer to another.
You can check the drama thread, both hosts (frozen and forest) were defending the ban of âdeltardâ stubbornly enough (Newest change - Deltard - #17 by FrozentsbggNewest change - Deltard - #13 by forest2001), so itâs very safe too assume it wasnât a Grim decision behind their backs. Why did Grim took all the responsibility for this after the backlash? Honestly, I donât know, some weird damage control? But anyway itâs very misrepresentating to blame Grimâs mistake for this, while itâs very safe to assume that management wouldnât have backed off without the backlash regardless of whether it was a mistake or not. And, actually, if it was just a Grimâs mistake it doesnât make it better, it actually makes the issue being discussed a lot worse, because in this case that means even management have no idea what is going on (and this is kinda possible, because we know that the change took staff members by surprise).
...
Just a mere tiny mistake they quickly realized only short 16 hours later, of course, nothing to see here
If people in staff think the process was a long time coming, and saw all the signs and discussions surrounding it- But the vast majority of the regular playerbase was surprised when it happened, then I think thereâs a disconnect, and thereâs work to be done with regards to transparency.
I donât think people should have to slough through CTRL + F to log dive for the rationale behind changes to policy if they lack access to staff & management channels.
Forest on the other hand doesnât really seem to have posted his personal opinion there. he kind of just says stuff we already knew and makes no real statement about whether or not itâll come back besides âweâre thinking about itâ (paraphrasing)
It wasnât really an organized, linear progression. It had been a persistent concern amongst certain community members, and was eventually brought up by staff members in the discord. Eventually it was picked up as a topic in management and disputed there.
I donât know how to do all the fancy things that youâre all doing linking and quoting each otherâs stuff directly so Iâll make this as organised as I can.
Biolock, itâs nice to see a manager here but I donât think anyone would even think about criticising your conduct specifically. From what I and everyone else seeâs youâre as transparent as you can be and you being here and actually engaging meaningfully just proves that. Itâs sad to see youâre the only one here as to my knowledge no one has an issue with your conduct, only the conduct of Grim, Forest and Frozen.
Lichen your arguments in favour of their zero transparency policy are poor. The doxxing was terrible and there is no defending that. However, the problems presented have been long-standing issues for a lot of people and they will likely continue to be. The dox is awful but that doesnât mean we should not have had a change in staff transparency a long time ago and it is not an argument to discourage not aiming for that transparency going forward.
For example:
My uncle died, and I watched. I had a drinking problem long before, I cannot justify my drinking issue on his death and the aftermath there of. We are all adults and we are supposed to deal with issues when they present themselves and tragedies are not a good enough reason to not fix our problems. (I havenât drunk since his death last year for the record)
Weâre all apart of this community and we all deserve to be involved to a degree.
Additionally, there was no notice (even lower level staff seemed to be inunvolved) like you said and Grim did claim himself that âr*tardâ and other variations were the target of the ruling and Grim just decided to, without input or permission decided to tack âdeltardâ onto that ruling. It is concerning that anyone can make any decision that effects us all no matter how small without input from the community and the community should be involved. After all, the words we find acceptable in this community should be decided by the community as a whole, in my opinion.
To the rest of management, itâd be nice to see a bit more dialogue from you all. I donât think youâre all evil lol but as you can see a lot of people have some issues and even if you donât see them as issues itâd be good-faith to engage with them meaningfully even if we donât come to an agreement collectively it still shows youâre listening to everyone.
