Staff Discussion Updates & Member Input

[truce.]

[align=center][div style="width: 430px; text-align: justify; font-family: verdana; font-size: 6pt; letter-spacing: 1.5px; word-spacing: 0px; line-height: 12px; color: #000"]As Bryne mentioned yesterday, other staff were going to chime into different parts of the discussion. I'm going to quickly chat about the idea of members taking more of a lead in the site, and also about better communication between staff and members.

Firstly, we completely agree with the notion of members taking more of the lead on the site. After all, the site isn't here for staff, but it is here for everyone to enjoy! Since the 27th August, I believe that it has been proven that members are very much committed to keeping the site alive and vibrant, which I think is very exciting! I am incredibly proud of our member base in their effort to bring the OOC community back to life once more.

This has only gone to show that - yes - members should take more of a lead on the site. After all, the site is nothing without its member base! Whilst it is the role of the staff team to set an example and supervise, this does not mean that it is our role to do one hundred percent of the work, purely because that means that members cannot efficiently have their voices heard, which is the very last thing we would like.

We ought to definitely encourage more member-led plotting threads, I agree. There should be more threads in which staff can act as individuals rather than a collective team to add to conversations and ideas.

So, from the staff team: please don't hesitate to share your creative ideas with the community. Whether it be a new discussion thread or a quick reply to someone else's thread, everyone deserves to be heard. What do you think staff can do to ensure members feel content in posting their creative ideas and take more of a lead in the site? Should staff create threads which outright encourage members to share their ideas for what they believe will benefit the main game and/or the site as a whole? I'd be interested in working alongside members for all of us to figure out what works best for us all!

Secondly, we also agree that it is very important that there be more communication between staff and members. Communication is vital in fostering good relations between two parties, and also it ensures that things which need to get done will be done! So - yes - we entirely agree and we are actively working on becoming more transparent as a staff team. Please note, though, that change does take time - this is not something that will happen overnight, nor is it something which we will be able to perfect instantly. With that being said, changes are being put in place in order to ensure that the staff team comes across as more open and transparent.

I hope that you have noticed that a handful of staff members have tried to bring the community closer together by replying more frequently to OOC posts and creating OOC threads, so there has been progress! And, this will only become more prominent in the future. Additionally, I hosted a survey recently which asked about what members would like to see in order to make the OOC community more inclusive and welcoming; I will be discussing results in another thread later today, so hopefully this will also help with the communication between staff and members. As for the speed in which staff reply to threads such as this one, we are actively working on different methods in order to speed up replies, but please understand that it will take time to find what works best for the team in order to most efficiently communicate with members. We are listening to your concerns and taking each and every one into account.

Lastly, although we appreciate your concern and understand entirely, for now we are not planning on reconsidering the admin tryouts. I can see where you're coming from, and we are making sure that measures will be put in place to ensure that, one, the tryouts will have a prompt outcome and, two, bias will be removed from the tryouts to the best of our ability. As well as this, the tryouts will help with encouraging members to take the lead, as we have just been talking about on this discussion thread, so it isn't solely staff's decision on who will become the next admin(s). I hope you can understand where we are coming from, and measures will be put in place to ensure the tryouts run as smoothly as possible.