Recent drama surrounding the staff

[Miner9823]

It is unfortunate seeing how some of the community tends to be far too harsh towards the staff members. This would most likely be because those certain individuals haven't yet developed an understanding towards how difficult, and how much responsibility is necessary towards being a staff member of such a vast community. It is indeed not their fault for reaching a conclusion towards the hate of the staff team, possibly because maybe they haven't had a personal issue being resolved. But the fact is that the staff team is working so hard every day, devoted to making a change for the community, to make it better. And we have to face the bitter reality knowing that it is impossible to actually catch, and ban hackers. Even when it is done, more come around, but we have not realized how much the staff team has done for us throughout the whole existence of MCGamer. The community would've been so much worse without the excellent staff members we have today. Without them, the community would be bad, if the Senior staff have chosen the wrong moderators to hire, the community would be bad, and towards that case scenario is when you do have a right to complain, but the Senior staff have chosen good people as moderators, the moderators we have to this day are exceptional people who do indeed make a good change for the community.

I am quite disappointed knowing this drama is going around, when we have not realized how much the staff has done for us. And yes, GoldEllipse may disagree with MCGamer, and he may not be the only one, however we need to understand how much was done for us by the staff team, they did work hard every day. And people expect perfection from the staff team, which isn't possible. As human beings, we make mistakes, and the staff team sometimes make mistakes, but isn't their fault. Heck, I got experiences from another server I helped monitor, and noticed one of my fellow peers make a mistake by clearing chat twice, accidentally, also banning someone who had made false claims of hacking, even though it was temporary. The thing is, she's been getting tons and tons of hatred, even after the issue was resolved because of the mistakes she's made. Even some people were like "I'd totes bu bettar mud then u." Which was indeed unfair knowing that some people expect perfection, and people will always pursue even the tiniest of flaws within people, so they can use it against them. We need to wake up and know that the staff is doing the best they can, heck, I bet we could hire more people, however it is so difficult to find good people devoted towards helping the server nowadays. We need to start knowing, and appreciate what we have, the staff is working best they can, and they should accept it. And as a community we need to learn to try to help as well, we shouldn't always rely on staff for even the smallest problems.

And I regret today that I have wasted some of the staff's time, asking them to ban me because I have had my session game stolen/Account compromised and told them about it, I should have used common sense then as well. To consider that they could be busy, and the issue that could have easily been dealt with by myself as well. I was in under quite a lot of worry then, and did not know what to do. But overall, we need to learn to take care of personal issues ourselves, and complaining to the staff without valid points doesn't tend to help. All we can do now is keep reporting those who give the community a bad name, and carry on with our lives as usual, they are working a lot. We must accept that.

 

[Res]

Thank you Dyna for saying something along these lines. I'm absolutely sick of people bashing on us for being "bad at our jobs", "corrupt", "butthurt", whatever. It needs to STOP. People form negative opinions on us for some crap rumors that started like a year and a half ago, that weren't even true anyway. I was going to write something like this myself, however I couldn't come up with a civilized way to talk about it without practically losing my head.

+1

You're awesome at your job dude.
I've never noticed anything bad about the staff, it's just when people get banned/muted they dispute it and if staff upholds the ban/mute they should move on with their life. If they feel it should be upheld then just shut up!!! There's an old expression for this.
You commit the crime, You do the time.

 

[Blamph]

for example an ex-mod got demoted and they "state there opinion" this seems to bring up hate and people just look at the criticism without actually looking at facts and all of a sudden the staff team are horrible people.

Great post! Quoting this specific part because it sums up this entire issue. People simply don't look at the whole picture, and they certainly don't usually look at it from the opposite perspective. I honestly don't know GoldEllipse, nor have I seen his videos. But knowing that he is a growing, medium-sized SG YTer, I think it's a bit silly that he reacted in the way that he did. I don't think YouTubers and their fans look at it in this perspective often, but if you're a YTer, think of it like this:

The huge majority of us have called MCG our home for a long time. We as YouTubers probably got our start here, within this community. ChadTheDJ who I've seen get treated pretty terribly on Twitter after this whole ordeal, created this server, and essentially gave us a basis for our YouTube to actually form the way that we know it did. Not only this, but the entire community was formed under Chad, and the upper staff team, and enforced by the lower staff. Without ANY of these people, I don't even know where I'd be, or what direction I'd have gone in life. I just don't think we show enough appreciation to the staff, and especially not the uppers who I've seen first hand, day in, night out, working their asses off (volunteers, they volunteer to work their butts off for US).

It seems to me that a lot of YouTubers and well known community members want special treatment (though I do argue against the instant perma ban deleting evidence rule). This is all fine and dandy to receive just a small amount of it when it comes to bans, as I believe almost every VIP out there has dedicated a boat load of their time to acquiring that VIP rank. What I don't think is fine about all of this, is the fact that after they receive the PRIVILEGE of having a rank like VIP, they think it's okay to suddenly do things that would otherwise get a regular member punished. Yes, it is a privilege to receive VIP on a server, not a right. MCG would be just fine without me, Gold, or the majority of the other community formed YouTubers. They gave us the opportunity to get our names out there with a shiny name (trust me, a lot of people look at that name, and immediately search it up on YT if they don't know of you already), the least we can do is make it our absolute prime goal not to publicly bash the server after a very tiny punishment, or better yet, not actually fool around by breaking rules.

That argument even goes for the massive YTers out there. MCG has never shown any sympathy for rule breakers, including Bajan_Canadian, so why should they suddenly stop? What no one ever seems to bring up when ranting against the staff and MCG is the fact that in almost every single case, the upper staff/Chad try to personally talk to the VIP about the situation. But in almost every single case, the VIP never really thinks about the whole situation from all perspectives (though understandable if they're angry, it usually takes a few days to cool off). Anyways, that was my whole rant on the topic. Every ban situation is different, and in no way do I agree with all of the high profile bans of the past, which have included friends of mine, but I just want to hopefully open some of the biased eyes out there.

 

[Ceroria]

Great post! Quoting this specific part because it sums up this entire issue. People simply don't look at the whole picture, and they certainly don't usually look at it from the opposite perspective. I honestly don't know GoldEllipse, nor have I seen his videos. But knowing that he is a growing, medium-sized SG YTer, I think it's a bit silly that he reacted in the way that he did. I don't think YouTubers and their fans look at it in this perspective often, but if you're a YTer, think of it like this:

The huge majority of us have called MCG our home for a long time. We as YouTubers probably got our start here, within this community. ChadTheDJ who I've seen get treated pretty terribly on Twitter after this whole ordeal, created this server, and essentially gave us a basis for our YouTube to actually form the way that we know it did. Not only this, but the entire community was formed under Chad, and the upper staff team, and enforced by the lower staff. Without ANY of these people, I don't even know where I'd be, or what direction I'd have gone in life. I just don't think we show enough appreciation to the staff, and especially not the uppers who I've seen first hand, day in, night out, working their asses off (volunteers, they volunteer to work their butts off for US).

It seems to me that a lot of YouTubers and well known community members want special treatment (though I do argue against the instant perma ban deleting evidence rule). This is all fine and dandy to receive just a small amount of it when it comes to bans, as I believe almost every VIP out there has dedicated a boat load of their time to acquiring that VIP rank. What I don't think is fine about all of this, is the fact that after they receive the PRIVILEGE of having a rank like VIP, they think it's okay to suddenly do things that would otherwise get a regular member punished. Yes, it is a privilege to receive VIP on a server, not a right. MCG would be just fine without me, Gold, or the majority of the other community formed YouTubers. They gave us the opportunity to get our names out there with a shiny name (trust me, a lot of people look at that name, and immediately search it up on YT if they don't know of you already), the least we can do is make it our absolute prime goal not to publicly bash the server after a very tiny punishment, or better yet, not actually fool around by breaking rules.

That argument even goes for the massive YTers out there. MCG has never shown any sympathy for rule breakers, including Bajan_Canadian, so why should they suddenly stop? What no one ever seems to bring up when ranting against the staff and MCG is the fact that in almost every single case, the upper staff/Chad try to personally talk to the VIP about the situation. But in almost every single case, the VIP never really thinks about the whole situation from all perspectives (though understandable if they're angry, it usually takes a few days to cool off). Anyways, that was my whole rant on the topic. Every ban situation is different, and in no way do I agree with all of the high profile bans of the past, which have included friends of mine, but I just want to hopefully open some of the biased eyes out there.

This is spot on. A lot of people may complain that sometimes we give YouTubers special treatment when they break rules, and then when we prove to them that we, in fact, do not give exceptions or treat anybody special, they complain and badger us about ruining their favorite YouTubers! I mean, make up your mind, folks! I understand that these guys are entertaining and when things don't go their way it might effect the productivity of their channel (i.e bans, rank removals, etc); however if they committed the crime, they do the time (as YoshiTime717 said).

This leads me to the point in which I believe I can accurately state that a lot of these new YouTubers do not know how to handle their fame correctly, and handle it very immaturely, expecting everybody to love them and treat them like kings, like many of their fans do. However when you break a rule on such a large network and get punished, don't go getting angry and making a whole fanbase of MCSG-haters... Accept that what you did was wrong, and if you need to let off steam do it in private.

/endrant 3

 

[Ephiza]

;_;

Depends on if I was mod or not. I'm guessing every mod was the person that called him immature, and probably flagged the video.

 

[Creepah]

Thanks Dyna for making this point. Sometimes I sit in the hub and people who have seen hackers in just finished games come out and start shouting at any red name they can find, blaming us for not banning the hackers we knew nothing about. We're here to help, and hopefully all the community can see that eventually.

 

[Col_StaR]

AnomalousDyna , RC_4777, Mooclan , Sean , Blamph , Ceroria | XyZebrAbC have all made excellent points in their posts. Everyone here has done well to give their input, and the staff team appreciates your support. These times aren't easy, and the GoldEllipse situation has just the icing on the cake, but it's good to know that whilst the loudest cries may tear us down, the strongest people are those who hold us up.

Every one of the points they make is a good one, and I suggest everyone reads them.

People love and support MCSG until things don't go the way they want them to. Kinda childish.

I want this framed and put on my wall. It's too true.
If we do anything that anyone remotely dislikes, the rule of political polarization turns a simple disagreement to, "Chad and the Staff are basically Hitlers" (an actual comparison someone made to our Twitter account).

For the record, the argument that, "the staff is corrupt" mantra has existed even before I arrived here back in April of 2013. It has always existed as a sort of umbrella deflection for offenders, allowing them to shift blame, make themselves out to be martyrs against an oppressive authority. Maybe there are some fair disagreements and perspectives to be had, but the level of hate and aggression that gets pooled by the, "staff is corrupt" group it is nothing short of insanely disproportional. I don't think you can claim to be the innocent victim when your actions intentionally lead to twitter hate, in-game aggression, teamspeak offensiveness, forum raging, personal attacks, advertisement of other communities, attacks on uninvolved parties, and absolute vitriol that comes out of some people. Calm discussions can be had and decisions can be changed. But when the acts of hate come before the acts of peace, everyone should know which side of the moral line you stand on.

That being said, I think that our community has very high expectations of our staff.
In my eyes, that's a sign of success, seeing as our staff has delivered a successful positive experiences for so long that people have come to expect it from us.
On the flip side, I think that inflated expectations is becoming an issue as well. We're all only human. We have lives. We make mistakes. And we can't bend to everyone's whim at their beck and call simply because they expect us to. We're a staff of 130+ members, but even we can feel small in a community as large as ours. We're growing faster than we previously expected, and we struggle with the growing pains. I remember reading a forum post that suggested/demanded that we have 2 moderators for every game going on, as if having 500+ moderators was a viable solution that we can achieve with a snap of our fingers. People always complain about hackers and claim that the mods aren't doing enough, yet they aren't willing to accept that the mod team doing all they can (and of course, they won't apply or do Report Abuses because, "I'm not going to do a mod's job for them" <- actual quote). And people complain about their bans and how unfair we are, but will never admit that what they did was wrong, no matter how many times the picture evidence shows they were blatantly breaking our rules.
As someone who is of high-level management, I have to be realistic with what can be done. We cannot go around chasing dreams or bending to the expectations. We have to do what we can, with what we have. And for many people, that will never be good enough.

That being said, I think that we have one of the most fair, level-headed, and forgiving staff teams to date right now. Sure, they're a little more on the quiet side, and there's always room for improvement, but these guys do their jobs and do it with a minimal amount of screw-ups or fall-out.

If possible, I'd like to keep this thread on the topic of the staff and staff drama. Now that GoldEllipse's drama flare-up has died down and he's trying to move on with a "clean slate", I don't see a reason to delve back into its details.

 

[Captain Dak]

Keep up the good work guys. You da best!

 

[ImaDinosawRAWR]

Just creeping into this post... I think the mods do an amazing job and make the community a better place, anyone who thinks otherwise has had bad experience with one mod, not the whole lot, or just haven't been around long enough to see the truth
Keep it up guys!

 

[SonicSplit]

It seems as though the majority of the dislike for the staff comes from a bandwagon effect. This wagon has several drivers, be it the few large YouTubers who have had issues with the staff, or some older staff-related drama. Many people involved are larger, respected members in the community, and this causes a lot of people to simply assume that what they are saying is true. The only thing I'll say on the bandwagon effect is that the ability to have your own thoughts, and opinions, and to use them for good things is very valuable. Never let someone else force their opinions into your own. Take into consideration the thoughts and feelings of others, but never take them as your own.

The staff team does their absolute best, and everything they do is with the community in mind. A lot of things might not seem like the best idea from the get-go, but often times, actions taken have been given plenty of thought, and look far into the future.

MCGamer is a community of hundreds upon thousands of people with different thoughts, defilement feelings, and different styles. It would be nearly impossible to please everyone, and though I know the staff team does their absolute best to do so, sometimes what the community wants isn't what the community needs, or ends up not as great as it originally seemed.

It seems as though often times minor mistakes, or simple decisions and actions are placed under a microscope, and every negative detail is zoomed in on to make a crystal clear picture, but all the extra, positive details are minimized, and often forgotten. There are pros and cons to almost everything,mane unfortunately, as is human nature, people tend to look upon the cons, over the pros.

You can't judge an entire group of people based on one persons opinion about one person's actions. You also can't judge a decision based on what your favorite YouTuber has to say, or what the "word on the street" is. Many people are super quick to jump to conclusions instead of gathering facts, and viewing both perspectives, which is understandable- most people don't log onto the forums or other social media and dig deep for all the facts, and form an official opinion- they simply work with what they've got. I've done it, heck, we probably all have, but when it comes to big situations, a little bit of fact-searching can go far.

Each staff member often has a strong suit, or as I like to call it- a habitat I've seen countless posts regarding people with "two forum posts and got mod". The forums are a great way to be in-the-know with the MCG community, but many people who apply for staff with low-forum posts and in-game activity may be just as involved, and capable, if not more, as someone with 500 posts on the forums. Personally, I'm a sucker for the forums, but I could definitely use some improvement with my teamspeak activity, and I think it's the same situation for many people. Though being well-rounded is awesome, if someone is able to excel in one area, it'd be better (in my opinion) than to do a mediocre job at two simply because they feel like they have to.

In the end, there are two key things to remember when it comes to any kind of MCG drama- your opinion is just as valid as anyone else's- understand, and consider the thoughts of others, but never adapt them as your own to fit in with the crowd. MCG is a huge community made up of all kinds of people who all think differently, and when something goes awry, there will be all sorts of opinions flying around, but before you give yours, make sure you know what you're talking about, and what effect it may have on others.

(I feel like I need to add a smiley face because this post has smiley face withdrawal )

As one of the people that has argued both for and against the staff, here's a few points that I'd like to make.
Keep in mind that I'm not a staff member, never have been, and do not intend to apply in the near future.

- While we may make claims of "Staff Corruption", keep in mind that the vast majority of staff members are not "corrupt", and our very usage of the term is quite extreme.

- Staff members aren't always mean and intimidating. I used to think that they were, and for at least half of my time at MCSG I had very little contact with any staff members, but now I've started to meet a few more of them. Originally, my only contact with seniors staff was when one of them pulled me up to a staff channel at 1:30 AM and lectured me for about half of an hour. That made my initial outlook on the staff rather negative, but over time I've come to learn and accept that the staff members are really quite decent people. Heck, almost all of them joke around just like regular people, just that in public they have to maintain a mature attitude.

(I started writing this post like two hours ago >_> I had to go AFK, and so I forgot where I was going with this post.)
But basically, don't hate on them.
I know I've done it a bit before, and I'm not proud of it.


Also, as duckluv321 pointed out, the bandwagon thing can have a surprisingly large effect.
Especially on the forums and YouTube, people often adopt the opinion of someone else based upon who they are and how logical they make it sound, and not their own personal feelings.
Back before I was a forumer, I used to listen with rapt attention to anything that RC_4777, HalfSquirrel, The_Arena_Master, and Duckluv321 said, whether or not I agreed with it. At the time, those four people were my forum "idols" who I held in very high regards. I foolishly considered anything that they said to be true, often forgetting things that I had personally heard of experienced, just so that I could "jump on the bandwagon" and earn the "approval" of those forumers. (Luckily, those four were almost always relatively spot-on, so even though I was a bit foolish in my actions, I wasn't led too far astray.)

Now that I'm in a similar position as them, I'm forced to realize how much of an impact things that I say can be. I might not be as powerful of a writer or as convincing with words as them, but I still hold a level of responsibility, whether involuntarily or not, as a forumer that a few people look up to. (its so awkward saying that)

Please realize that while other people might say one thing, they are just as prone to make mistakes as anyone else. Just because your favorite YouTuber said one thing, doesn't mean it's true. The same goes for forumers - Just because I might say "Oh, so-and-so is mean. >:c" doesn't mean that it's true, only that it's my personal opinion. Please, don't make it yours as well without having your own experiences and rational conclusions.


On the topic of GoldEllipse, as was previously discussed on another thread - Really, I think he's blown the entire thing out of proportion.
Up until his mute, he was completely fine with MCSG. He expressed no hate towards it or the staff, and he was completely willing to support it by bringing in players through his videos.
He broke a plainly stated rule, and received a punishment many times less severe than what any regular player was. And yet, he still was upset to a degree that was rather absurd.


**gosh dangit my internet is about to be unplugged. >:C**

The usual extremely long duckluv and mooclan comments.But in all seriousness I think it isn't that the staff are bad.It is just that the community is growing,more hackers,trolls,and ragers are coming.So it makes it harder for staff to do there job(I am just going by what people say, I have rarely encountered hackers on mcsg so I can not exactly be the best person to ask.That and I will barely play on mcsg anymore ;-

 

[Ephiza]

The usual extremely long duckluv and mooclan comments.But in all seriousness I think it isn't that the staff are bad.It is just that the community is growing,more hackers,trolls,and ragers are coming.So it makes it harder for staff to do there job(I am just going by what people say, I have rarely encountered hackers on mcsg so I can not exactly be the best person to ask.That and I will barely play on mcsg anymore ;-

I encounter togglers every game...how tf can u never see hackers

 

[SonicSplit]

I encounter togglers every game...how tf can u never see hackers

Like I said I barely play mcsg these days.Like maybe I will go on once or twice a week or once or twice a day at most