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Guess I should pitch in my hat to this discussion too. 1655 word essay incoming!
To be honest, most (if not all) of the concerns brought up in this thread have been brought up before and thus are on the Sr. Staff and Admin Staff's radars of things to change. Some of them are being worked on as we speak. But I just want to bring up the fact that most of the complaints fall under these categories: we want to do that but can't, we've worked on it but need time, we have no control over it, we would like to do that but we can't for security reasons.
Freedom of information is essential for a community, and thus far this community has a history of not getting as much news as has been demanded. I'm planning on changing that by holding more voice meetings and posting more news, but those things take time to be arranged. It is true that a lot of drama has risen out of a lack of communication, so more community news updates should prevent no-knowledge drama while also showing people just how much we have to do.
However, such information can also come as a security risk, as some crucial information that people are utterly demanding to know can be stuff that should not be known. Names, negative actions, punishments, and motivations are very sensitive pieces of information that put individuals at risk for being targeted and bullied, yet this is the sort of information that people demand. People always demand to know the unabridged story about the ambassador's affair, but they don't consider the consequences when they burn down his house.
Furthermore, the Sr. Staff and Admin Staff deal with issues that are sensitive in their entirety, and involve people, actions, events, and politics which are so sensitive that simply acknowledging such things would cause an uproar because of politics and drama. But such things needed to be done, because they posed a definite threat or had the risk of becoming one. This is the reason why the intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies are held so secretly: in order to fulfill the best of intentions for their country, they are forced to do the questionable things that are deemed necessary. No one likes dealing with it, no one wants to deal with it, and no one should deal with it, but that's what we have to do. We do what we must for the community, even if it means saving you the dirty details of what had to be done. Operational Security is the name of the game here.
Speaking for the Developers, they do do a ton of work, but as they have mentioned, they're under NDA, which means they are legally restricted from telling everyone everything. We can speak in generalities about things that the public already knows about, but they can't divulge anything about the projects they're working on in fear that something may be compromised, stolen, sabotaged, or accused of something. Those fears are very real, as this community has faced them in the past, so it's often easier to say nothing than it is to pick up the pieces of a statement you let slip.
And with ETA's... nothing as big as these guys work on can be made on a definite deadline, so it's easier just to announce it when we release it.
Regarding the Full-bodied Explanations, I agree with you, and that's one of the reasons I type essay-length responses to topics such as this one. However, if we're using Bic's first post regarding the Bans for Investigation as an example, remember that he kept things short and simple with the utmost mindset for security, especially since it was still a developing situation at the time. Furthermore, some explanations are going to have to be short and empty because we can't tell you the full thing (see Operational Security above). We try to do it, but we have to walk the lines between freedom of information, operational security, and our own writing ability.
I did write as much of an explanation as I could say in the Bans for Investigation thread as a semi-official statement. But as many people have mentioned before, a lot of people online just don't like reading. As such, we get a lot of people willingly uninformed because the information they desired was in a format they didn't like. Heck, there's a TL;DR in this thread. A lot of explained regarding that situation often by multiple people, yet many people still submitted questions that were already answered, sometimes multiple times. So we actually walk the lines between freedom of information, operational security, our own writing ability, and the willingness for the audience to actually read it. We experimented with holding a press conference and deliver statements and information via Voice, and I think that worked better, so we may see more of that in the future.
Also, apparently I'm G33ke 2.0, from what people tell me. You think these paragraphs are done? You're wrong, buddy! I wonder who's actually reading this all the way through...
Here's the argument really grinds my gears: Staff Should Be a Part of the Community.
Why does it bug me? Because it assumes that all the work we do, all the hours we put in, all the sleep that we lose, all the people we've met, all the friends we've lost, all the headaches we suffer through, all the drama that we resolve, all the responsibilities we shoulder, all the difficult decisions we make, and all the times we were burned by the community we put so much into helping...doesn't matter.
It simply doesn't matter....because we don't play games like other players can.
There are many ways to be part of a community, and I consider myself incredibly active despite only playing one game and posting 20 times. I volunteer 20+ hours of my time per week to this community because I feel I'm needed here and because I want to see it thrive. Yet people still think I don't belong, simply because I don't do what they consider to be activity in areas and mediums that they frequent.
Yet I (with help) have held a peace summit between two opposing groups, dismantled a conspiracy to harm MCSG, worked out a few outstanding feuds between players, allayed the fears of concerned players 100x over, planned to implement a few features that have been heavily requested (forthcoming), helped create a number of documents for the staff (forthcoming), created a few new systems for management for the staff (forthcoming), and made a number of official statements on high-level topics to the fullest of my extent (such as this one). And I've only been here for a few months.
Notice how I only spoke in generalities? OpSec.
Apparently that makes me inactive.
The biggest misconception in the business world is that low-level employees do all the grunt work while mid-level managers do slightly less work and high-level executives do no work at all. As someone who's been doing this job for seven years across many different communities for several years, I call BS on this myth. A mail-room clerk shouldn't call a CEO lazy because he doesn't shuffle mail all day, and a CEO shouldn't call a mail-room clerk lazy because he doesn't make high-level policy decisions.
The truth is that management and labor are two different sets of occupation that require different skills, different approaches, and different tolerances to stress. Labor may deal with repetition of many smaller tasks, but management deals with the larger, more difficult tasks that many people can't or won't deal with. The truth is that moderators have a pretty easy job; they get to play games while they work, their responsibilities are pretty small, they have procedures they don't need to deviate from, and how much they help the community is directly correlated with how much effort they put in.
Meanwhile, Community Managers (I'm speaking purely from my own experiences) don't have the luxury of having a job that can be set down or fumbled; we deal with problems that take hours or days or even weeks to solve, we face hard decisions that are not certain nor perfect, we deal with drama on a daily basis, we deal with people whom we may not like nor may not like us on a daily basis, we are harshly criticized when we make a mistake, we are often criticized even when we don't make a mistake for alternate reasons (e.g. politics or misinformation), we are responsible for policy and direction within MCSG, and we don't have time to play with the community whom we serve (10-15 minutes of free time would be a luxury). We are responsible for the 100,000+ players of MCSG, and every mistake we make might harm any number of them; that task is not one we take lightly, nor is it one we can simply leave our computers and walk away from.
So yes, I think I am a member of this community. And I do believe that Sr. Staff and Admin Staff should play games and be involved with the community in that way as well; I will mingle with moderators and players on TS from time to time (I call it "doing the rounds"). But that is one of those, "we should, but we can't" situations: you guys keep us too busy for such fun and games.
But this is the role I volunteered for, and I accept these responsibilities because I can do them to the fullest.
There is so much more I would like to say on this matter, but writing this whole thing took 1 hour 30 minutes, and I must be running off to my actual job now. I hope this clears up some things, particularly in regarding to Sr. Staff and Admin Staff activities, my position, and what I believe qualifies as being involved in this community. I think things are fine as they are, but I also believe in change and am working towards accomplishing it. But you must understand that such changes are ultimately limited by circumstances and perception, and we can't do everything that's asked of us.
Further reading: Post about my peeve of inactivity claims.
I would like to take a sentence to extend my thanks to a number of people who took the time to clarify my position and efforts, though. I couldn't get you all, but you have my thanks nonetheless.
To be honest, most (if not all) of the concerns brought up in this thread have been brought up before and thus are on the Sr. Staff and Admin Staff's radars of things to change. Some of them are being worked on as we speak. But I just want to bring up the fact that most of the complaints fall under these categories: we want to do that but can't, we've worked on it but need time, we have no control over it, we would like to do that but we can't for security reasons.
Freedom of information is essential for a community, and thus far this community has a history of not getting as much news as has been demanded. I'm planning on changing that by holding more voice meetings and posting more news, but those things take time to be arranged. It is true that a lot of drama has risen out of a lack of communication, so more community news updates should prevent no-knowledge drama while also showing people just how much we have to do.
However, such information can also come as a security risk, as some crucial information that people are utterly demanding to know can be stuff that should not be known. Names, negative actions, punishments, and motivations are very sensitive pieces of information that put individuals at risk for being targeted and bullied, yet this is the sort of information that people demand. People always demand to know the unabridged story about the ambassador's affair, but they don't consider the consequences when they burn down his house.
Furthermore, the Sr. Staff and Admin Staff deal with issues that are sensitive in their entirety, and involve people, actions, events, and politics which are so sensitive that simply acknowledging such things would cause an uproar because of politics and drama. But such things needed to be done, because they posed a definite threat or had the risk of becoming one. This is the reason why the intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies are held so secretly: in order to fulfill the best of intentions for their country, they are forced to do the questionable things that are deemed necessary. No one likes dealing with it, no one wants to deal with it, and no one should deal with it, but that's what we have to do. We do what we must for the community, even if it means saving you the dirty details of what had to be done. Operational Security is the name of the game here.
Speaking for the Developers, they do do a ton of work, but as they have mentioned, they're under NDA, which means they are legally restricted from telling everyone everything. We can speak in generalities about things that the public already knows about, but they can't divulge anything about the projects they're working on in fear that something may be compromised, stolen, sabotaged, or accused of something. Those fears are very real, as this community has faced them in the past, so it's often easier to say nothing than it is to pick up the pieces of a statement you let slip.
And with ETA's... nothing as big as these guys work on can be made on a definite deadline, so it's easier just to announce it when we release it.
Regarding the Full-bodied Explanations, I agree with you, and that's one of the reasons I type essay-length responses to topics such as this one. However, if we're using Bic's first post regarding the Bans for Investigation as an example, remember that he kept things short and simple with the utmost mindset for security, especially since it was still a developing situation at the time. Furthermore, some explanations are going to have to be short and empty because we can't tell you the full thing (see Operational Security above). We try to do it, but we have to walk the lines between freedom of information, operational security, and our own writing ability.
I did write as much of an explanation as I could say in the Bans for Investigation thread as a semi-official statement. But as many people have mentioned before, a lot of people online just don't like reading. As such, we get a lot of people willingly uninformed because the information they desired was in a format they didn't like. Heck, there's a TL;DR in this thread. A lot of explained regarding that situation often by multiple people, yet many people still submitted questions that were already answered, sometimes multiple times. So we actually walk the lines between freedom of information, operational security, our own writing ability, and the willingness for the audience to actually read it. We experimented with holding a press conference and deliver statements and information via Voice, and I think that worked better, so we may see more of that in the future.
Also, apparently I'm G33ke 2.0, from what people tell me. You think these paragraphs are done? You're wrong, buddy! I wonder who's actually reading this all the way through...
Here's the argument really grinds my gears: Staff Should Be a Part of the Community.
Why does it bug me? Because it assumes that all the work we do, all the hours we put in, all the sleep that we lose, all the people we've met, all the friends we've lost, all the headaches we suffer through, all the drama that we resolve, all the responsibilities we shoulder, all the difficult decisions we make, and all the times we were burned by the community we put so much into helping...doesn't matter.
It simply doesn't matter....because we don't play games like other players can.
There are many ways to be part of a community, and I consider myself incredibly active despite only playing one game and posting 20 times. I volunteer 20+ hours of my time per week to this community because I feel I'm needed here and because I want to see it thrive. Yet people still think I don't belong, simply because I don't do what they consider to be activity in areas and mediums that they frequent.
Yet I (with help) have held a peace summit between two opposing groups, dismantled a conspiracy to harm MCSG, worked out a few outstanding feuds between players, allayed the fears of concerned players 100x over, planned to implement a few features that have been heavily requested (forthcoming), helped create a number of documents for the staff (forthcoming), created a few new systems for management for the staff (forthcoming), and made a number of official statements on high-level topics to the fullest of my extent (such as this one). And I've only been here for a few months.
Notice how I only spoke in generalities? OpSec.
Apparently that makes me inactive.
The biggest misconception in the business world is that low-level employees do all the grunt work while mid-level managers do slightly less work and high-level executives do no work at all. As someone who's been doing this job for seven years across many different communities for several years, I call BS on this myth. A mail-room clerk shouldn't call a CEO lazy because he doesn't shuffle mail all day, and a CEO shouldn't call a mail-room clerk lazy because he doesn't make high-level policy decisions.
The truth is that management and labor are two different sets of occupation that require different skills, different approaches, and different tolerances to stress. Labor may deal with repetition of many smaller tasks, but management deals with the larger, more difficult tasks that many people can't or won't deal with. The truth is that moderators have a pretty easy job; they get to play games while they work, their responsibilities are pretty small, they have procedures they don't need to deviate from, and how much they help the community is directly correlated with how much effort they put in.
Meanwhile, Community Managers (I'm speaking purely from my own experiences) don't have the luxury of having a job that can be set down or fumbled; we deal with problems that take hours or days or even weeks to solve, we face hard decisions that are not certain nor perfect, we deal with drama on a daily basis, we deal with people whom we may not like nor may not like us on a daily basis, we are harshly criticized when we make a mistake, we are often criticized even when we don't make a mistake for alternate reasons (e.g. politics or misinformation), we are responsible for policy and direction within MCSG, and we don't have time to play with the community whom we serve (10-15 minutes of free time would be a luxury). We are responsible for the 100,000+ players of MCSG, and every mistake we make might harm any number of them; that task is not one we take lightly, nor is it one we can simply leave our computers and walk away from.
So yes, I think I am a member of this community. And I do believe that Sr. Staff and Admin Staff should play games and be involved with the community in that way as well; I will mingle with moderators and players on TS from time to time (I call it "doing the rounds"). But that is one of those, "we should, but we can't" situations: you guys keep us too busy for such fun and games.
But this is the role I volunteered for, and I accept these responsibilities because I can do them to the fullest.
There is so much more I would like to say on this matter, but writing this whole thing took 1 hour 30 minutes, and I must be running off to my actual job now. I hope this clears up some things, particularly in regarding to Sr. Staff and Admin Staff activities, my position, and what I believe qualifies as being involved in this community. I think things are fine as they are, but I also believe in change and am working towards accomplishing it. But you must understand that such changes are ultimately limited by circumstances and perception, and we can't do everything that's asked of us.
Further reading: Post about my peeve of inactivity claims.
I would like to take a sentence to extend my thanks to a number of people who took the time to clarify my position and efforts, though. I couldn't get you all, but you have my thanks nonetheless.
I don't mind that, which I think I said if I didn't say it, I should have said it. The more important part was the not being a member of the community.
