Wow, a critique thread in the clan section that gives the staff a fair representation without resorting to rumors or shallow accusations. I can live with this.
As basically everyone has stated, myself and the Clan Staff have worked quite hard to bring the staff and the clans closer together. We've run quite a few meetings among the top clans thus far, and a lot of great insight has been shared as a result of those discussions. I think we are making great headway, but there is still much work to be done.
Staff and clans have grown so far apart that it will take a lot of rebuilding and cooperation with each other to fix what has already been broken. But the staff are taking a huge step towards this and both sides are working together so we can join and be one, not two separate groups.
I'm going to be honest with everyone here: part of the reason a project like this took so long was because many people on both sides simply did not think what we're doing now was possible. It was practically law that staff and clans could never get along. When I was brought onto the staff in April of 2013, the staff and the clans were basically totally segregated, with the few interactions between them that occurred were almost always hostile. Attacks against staff members had led good mods to resign, and targeting by staff had perpetuated the idea that mods are power-hungry enemies. There were bad people and bad actions on both sides, and both caused a rift between the staff and the clan communities.
But time heals all wounds, and gradually new blood replaced old biases. I had always wanted to heal that rift between clans and staff, but it wasn't until recently- with the right support from staffers, clanners, and Chad- that we were all able to start the healing process. But everyone here can attest that the future looks bright for both parties.
....every staff member I talk to complains on how bad it is that they need Sr. Staff to watch them while they clan battle....To have to watch these people participate in part of the great community we have just to make sure they don't abuse there powers is kind of obscured.
Just a point that due to the busyness of the MCG Staff it holds them back from helping a very big part of the community from excelling and getting better.
I'm currently working on revising that rule regarding Sr. Staff watching clan battles, but that will require Sr. Staff discussion and agreement on. However, based on how well the current clan meetings are going, in addition to the dramatic improvements on how they perceive the clan community, I hope to get that rule changed to something more flexible soon.
That being said, I think it goes without saying that people can surprise you, both good and bad. The staff will never hire anyone who would potentially abuse their powers or act out of line, but people can do the darndest things. Particularly in high-stakes, emotionally-charged situations (such as a clan battle), people can have lapses of both character and judgement, and thus a well-behaved mod could potentially do something bad in retaliation. It's exactly that sort of incident that caused us to implement the Sr. Staff oversight rule to begin with, and that resulted in a long investigation and a few unbans. It's better to prevent mod abuse with oversight rather than deal with the drama and clean-up afterwards.
I'm going to be real with everyone here: I think that the greatest threat to the Clan Staff Cooperation project is time and personnel commitments. I was saddened to disappoint the crew of the Clan Wars: Season Zero team because I couldn't deliver what I hoped to, but also because it confirmed that we may not be able to do everything we want to with the clan community. MCGamer is a huge community, and despite having as many staff members as we have, we still have trouble keeping up with the community at large. Adding on commitments to the clan community may stretch us too thin, and I fear we will not be able to attend to both the general public and the clans at the same time.
But the potential for failure should not discourage us from attempting success. I know I'm already trying my best to stay on top of everything plus clan matters, and I know the members of the Clan Staff are doing so as well. Hopefully in the future, we will have more people to share the workload, allowing us to focus dedicate on clan stuff in the future. Heck, having a dedicated Clan Admin would be nice. But regardless of the workload, we'll all be doing our best to make this work.
The future (hopefully) would be having intense cooperation between the Staff and the clan community, to the point of (maybe) even battle servers (ultimate goal IMO).
However that dream was lost for a while, and I am happy it is back in our sights. I'd really like to thank most of all
Col_StaR for helping to try and connect the staff and clans. Col and I have talked a lot over the past few months, and many times we have talked about possible futures, and I am glad that clans aren't the only one hoping for interaction between the two. For now friends, wait it out. I believe it can only get better from here, and I hope I am right. For now, everyone sit tight.
My end goal is that we'll be able to have clans and staff work together on issues, where the people who play the most would be able to easily converse with the people who can do the most. Rather than seeing each other as the enemy and working separately, having the playerbase support of the clans and the staff abilities of the mods would allow us to be much more effective in addressing things like technical faults, gameplay balancing, and maybe even catching/deterring hackers. And we would be encouraging the natural competition inherent in clans as well by fostering a more official competitive environment.
My long-term goal would be to emulate eSports with MCSG games, complete with professional-level streaming and sports casters. And the staff can't do that alone.
I would also like to take this moment to remind everyone that this is a massive undertaking by a team of great people. None of this would have been possible without the mutual cooperation of Admins, Sr. Moderators, Moderators, Clan Leaders, Clan Members, and even helpful unaffiliated players. So I would just like to say Thank You to everyone involved. We're all in this together, so let's do something amazing!
