Rejected Big Brother - A New, Community favoured Admin chat

[Aqua]

[JUSTIFY]Well since discord died in the middle of our discussion I've decided to just type up my points here (names have been replaced as someone for privacy reasons):

BIG BROTHER
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• What is it?

[JUSTIFY]An originally Orwellian idea where one group of people have complete insight and control in the lives of another group be this Government controlling it's citizens or the public watching reality TV. Like this, my idea is to have an almost totally transparent Moderator/Admin/CA chat where regular community members can view in real time the discussions taking place by our community's staff about ideas for servers, upcoming events or the general direction of the community. This could come along side a suggestion chat where members can ask questions or post suggestions towards the current topic the staff are discussing.
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• [JUSTIFY]Why do we need this?[/JUSTIFY]

[JUSTIFY]As someone said while we were discussing the idea on discord: "if the community is at it's current state now, then how am I to trust that current Staff know any better on how to improve the community?". Although personally I don't agree with the statement in terms of the staff not knowing what they're doing, the fact that we have no option as community members other than to have blind faith that the staff are being productive and doing stuff in our favour other than a weekly recap where a lot of the time we are met with just bite sized chunks of info about what's been going on without chance for real discussion. As someone else on discord said: "'We know what you want better than you do' - ER staff"; which although is a joke kinda surmises the previous SMP attempts and other projects pushed by recent admins.
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• [JUSTIFY]What are the drawbacks?[/JUSTIFY]

[JUSTIFY]One of the biggest concerns that was raised on discord was what about discussing the more sensitive information such as ban appeals or staff applications that are discussed in admin chat. Well personally I see no problem with making that information public either; when escr was booming it wasn't rare for ban appeals to look like this after all:
https://escaperestart.com/forum/threads/fone_bone-ban-appeal.412/
https://escaperestart.com/forum/threads/unbanned-beastboy-irc-unban-appeal.685/
https://escaperestart.com/forum/threads/pls-unban-me.1373/
and ofc the obligatory let's talk meme:
https://escaperestart.com/forum/threads/lets-talk.19360/

The other solution would be for each server to have a separate chat just for sensitive information that would be off limits; and as long as it was kept to just said information and all public discussion was kept in the view-able chat I see no problem with this.

The other concern was compressing the amount of separate mod channels into a few for public consumption; and to this I say it doesn't have to be? We can still have separate channels for each server just make them all public.
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• [JUSTIFY]Why do you care?[/JUSTIFY]

Eh? I've been in this community for over 3 years now getting close to 4 and it'll be a shame for it to die in a string of under populated SMP's. I believe giving us, the members of the community, a view of what the admins are doing and an ability to critique and take part in said discussions will allow us to move forward with what the community actually wants.

Another idea brought up in discord was to just have a discussion channel in discord and while this would definitely be somewhat helpful, it would not solve the problem. Staff would have no reason to take part in said discussion which from personal experience tends to happen currently anyway, as, whenever these discussions take off in the discord or wherever it tends to be member talking to member rather than staff and member. Organising it my way would compel staff to actively discuss things and think ideas through making sure productivity is always high.

Anyway that's my idea feel free to discuss it below.

EDIT:

I just want to emphasise I do not have a problem with the current staff. From my experience in ESCR most the staff rn are trying harder than ever to save the community.

I just feel there is a real gap between staff and players which needs to be bridged.

We've bridged this gap before in regards to how much we've changed in terms of our maturity of a community. This time 2 years ago Jolterino, a popular member of the community was almost banned for calling someone gay because there was a huge disconnect between the maturity of the player base and the staff/rules in place. We fixed that then, we can fix this now.

 

[Deleted member 4601]

More community updates, maybe. New threads every week just to let the community know how much progress there has been and what the admins and moderators are working on, I suppose.

As I've said on discord, opening staff chat to public probably wouldn't work since staff members would just naturally avoid using said channel and default to another private channel for stuff discussions since it is only reasonable that some things will have to be kept secret.

 

[Aqua]

As I've said on discord, opening staff chat to public probably wouldn't work since staff members would just naturally avoid using said channel and default to another private channel for stuff discussions since it is only reasonable that some things will have to be kept secret.

I will admit this is a somewhat idealist scenario, but it's in our power to be carried out well. The staff just all have to agree to it which I think is possible; especially since this is for the greater good of the community.

 

[Deleted member 4601]

I will admit this is a somewhat idealist scenario, but it's in our power to be carried out well. The staff just all have to agree to it which I think is possible; especially since this is for the greater good of the community.

Maybe I'm not as optimistic as you, but having a public staff channel wouldn't make much of a difference. It definitely wouldn't be as authentic, and it would be way too difficult to maintain properly.

There are better options out there - provide a more accessible platform for members to discuss about the community in general (similar to what we have in the forums), and to have admins provide frequent updates on what's happening behind the scenes (non-scheduled single-paragraph announcements that briefly summarize any sort of progress)

 

[Psycho]

Make your own Staff channel, Aqua.

 

[Rune]

Aqua to be fair, this is probably one of the most idiotic suggestions that have graced this community so far

Good job

 

[Catcocomics]

I fail to see how this would be fair without taking it to the extreme of pointlessly forcing everyone in the community to livestream their every activity, personal, online, or otherwise, to literally the rest of the community.

1. it wouldn't work unless literally everyone who joined non-stop somehow managed to watch all 200+ livestreams simultaneously while also living their no-longer normal lives

2. WHHYYYYYY?!

Paranoid spying on people just because of their status within this community is basically saying we want to beat China to it's si-fi social system nightmare, and really is just absolutely pointless, especially for a community this small that is supposed to strive to treat everyone, staff or otherwise, as equal players (equal but far from identical, mind you).

 

[Oak Milk]

MFW when Aqua tries to find the worst examples of our staff and misses literally all the good ones.

Try looking for Tminerz ban appeal, or better yet, look for a certain Survivor forum game, now THAT was a shit show.

 

[SirComputer]

Nice in theory, won't work in practice. (hey isn't that communism)

Basically due to Mulbery's points at the top, and that it'll basically turn into a 'who can shout the loudest' competition. If we can find other ways to implement transparency a bit more nicely, beginning to build on the ideas Mulbery gave, that'd be cool.

And even Rune's taking the piss

Declined