Marble Blast Discord Server Feedback

Thanks for taking the time to respond, especially as a staff member.

1–3. Your proposed solution of having a more serious and more informal category for the general channels reminds me a lot of nobody's old server. He had #all-the-spam, #less-spam, and eventually when people like me complained too much, he added #no-spam. In my mind, the ideal way of implementing this would be to have a channel category for "serious" talk and a channel category for "not-so-serious" talk (putting these in quotes because it obviously wouldn't be completely strictly adhered to, which is fine). That way, people could collapse whichever category they don't want to interact with at any particular time, and special cases like SummerArmy could be in the less serious category like you suggested.

I love the idea of having the community just have fun discussions about anything they want in a general channel, but my issue lately has been with our specific #general channel and how filled with random GIFs and nonsense it is. I prefer to have casual conversations with people while still feeling like there's a flow to the conversation and it's not being interrupted by baffling and irrelevant images. I guess a "less spam" category would be good for this. In fact, it might be cute to name the categories "less spam" and "no spam" as an homage to nobody's server, which really was the beginning of a new era for this community.

4. Maybe this could be tested to see what people think? It could work as long as it doesn't fall victim to the "single point of failure" argument that you've given before (although maybe that was just about the website and Discord). And of course whoever it is would have to be fair and make decisions based on what everyone in the community thinks, not just what they think (which was a huge issue I had with the previous moderation team).

5. I'm very happy to agree with you on this one. Discord certainly is much more convenient than using these forums, and I have said for a long time that I feel like #bug-report, #suggestions, #announcements, and any other important Discord threads should be on the forums instead. That would be a level of forum activity that would be nicely balanced with the Discord activity.

re: point 4. Avoiding a single point of failure is of course something we have to avoid, and my suggestion basically just points out one person and the final decision maker so that there is more executive power is the mod team. If that person would disappear, it would not cripple the community like it would back in the day if Higuy disappeared.

I will continue to think about this and read what you all have to say as well as continue the discussion with the mod team to reach the best solution. My final goal is always to just make the community a great place to be.

I'll add a little bit of my input on the matter, mainly on the server moderation, as that is a very heated topic right now.
I think what has happened over the last few weeks show that this community desperately needs an authority figure that makes the final decisions. Less crucially, this community is lacking staff. The main example I can use is Dom hastily timing out Connie thinking it is not Connie.

Moreover, in search of trying to find a middle ground of what people want, it is resulting in no one being happy, for the reason I mentioned above. The public complaints (which I have also done myself) is further worsening the environment. Kalle touched on a lot of these things and I completely agree with him. What I find interesting is how the moderation team size has stayed relatively the same despite the growth over these last few years, which further shows why I believe the community needs more moderators. I also mentioned it in the discord, that I believe we need to draw a line of what is acceptable and what is not. This is making every person in the community forming their own idea of what should be allowed, which is pretty much half of our issues.

On the topic of people not liking one another, the block button exists, use it, and I'm sure many people already know how to use it. When we pushed to make the community more public, this was always going to be a drawback. So on that note, I sense some egotism, where one feels like he/she can't get themselves to get along with someone they dislike. So on my and the other members' part, we should be more mindful. A lot of us complain about how stuff could be better but many of us don't look in the mirror and think what **I** could do better as a community member.

A little thing about how the discord should be designed, currently, I think what we have got right now is good enough. But we should also be careful in making sure we don't try to fix too many things at once.
As I didn't really make a plan for this I might not be the clearest, so happy to discuss things. All in all, I just want everyone to get along, especially now that more people are joining, and hence more personalities, different cultures and whatnot.

Jean wrote:

Moreover, in search of trying to find a middle ground of what people want, it is resulting in no one being happy, for the reason I mentioned above.

Which is obviously the opposite of what we want.

Jean wrote:

On the topic of people not liking one another, the block button exists, use it, and I'm sure many people already know how to use it.

Use it, but I would add that (in my opinion) people are drawing too much attention to the fact that they are either blocked or have other people blocked. I was guilty of this in 2016, but I think it's ultimately a negative behavior and worsens grudges and bad feelings. The way I see it, it's better to simply block people you can't stand and move on, although I do agree with the (admittedly cliché) sentiment of "why can't we all just get along?" In an ideal world, no one would have anyone blocked and we'd all be able to accept each other's differences and talk kindly anyway. But that's not going to happen, so we have to aim for the next best thing.

Jean wrote:

A lot of us complain about how stuff could be better but many of us don't look in the mirror and think what **I** could do better as a community member.

I think we're all guilty of this to some extent. It's so much easier to just keep arguing rather than taking a step back and actually thinking about what you're saying and whether it actually matters.

Kalle29 wrote:

I will continue to think about this and read what you all have to say as well as continue the discussion with the mod team to reach the best solution. My final goal is always to just make the community a great place to be.

Given that one of people's problems is that the mod team is slow to get things done, I hope you don't let that pressure you guys into getting a response out quickly rather than taking enough time to talk it over first. I admire your final goal, and I fully believe you staff members have the capability to make things better.

I understand there's some tension regarding the lack of activity from the moderation team which I might address another time in another discussion.
- Doomblah

Well I went and all but disappeared for nearly two weeks so I'm certainly not contributing to the solutions in that regard. I have little ground to stand on as far as being a good moderator as of late. That being said I meant it when I said it ought to be another discussion, but it's become abundantly clear that this cannot be avoided/sidelined any longer. I'll attempt to address much of (though probably not all of) this issue and the recent responses about this in this post. 

I'm continually impressed with everyone's thoughtful responses and commitment to improve our little community. This community would die without people like you working to fix the very real problems we face like this. Thank you. I'm honored to be a part of a community so driven as this. 

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Response to ShadowVisions:
Well that was really humbling. Seeing in undeniable detail all the ways I as a moderator fail to uphold what I set out to do which was develop and uphold a good-natured community. There is indeed this long-term built up frustration about the moderation of this server and I've done absolutely nothing to address it in any practical sense. I talk grand ideas here in the forums, that's something I'm more adept at, but never really follow through on them. That's entirely my failing. Seeing that I've fallen far short of this ideal I start to wonder if I ought to step down. But since no one else is calling for that, I'll just mention it as much as that. I do however want to address these quite serious problems that are only getting worse as I continue to fail in my duty as a moderator, and actually follow up on them, instead of just talking about it. 

I suppose the most pressing and immediate issue is of response time to particular incidents. One of the things I've tried to do as a moderator is be transparent about our moderation decisions and policies, and given the weight of this discussion it's no longer tenable to keep this privately discussed idea among the staff secret, helpers. We once discussed the idea of granting to trusted, mature, and *active* members of the community a role we called helper which gives them chat moderation tools such as timeouts and deleting messages. I think it's long overdue to revisit that idea and discuss who might get it. Centralizing the power of moderators in just a few people does indeed seem to be too much for too few people to handle so it only makes sense to let more people moderate the discord and forums (thought I suspect the latter doesn't actually need it all that much). 

Behavioural standards. Sounds like a good idea that could be discussed with whatever team of helpers we assemble. I think that'll have to happen after they are appointed the role. 

Controversial figures. Perhaps you're right and something more drastic needs to be done more often. Maybe it's not always worth it to give people more chances to improve, especially if they're not taking them and not improving. But the standard by which such decisions are made is critical to that process, and I think again needs fleshing out with whatever team of helpers is eventually assembled. 

I think you're 100% correct in your assessment that the problem lies primarily with moderation in this server and not so much with channel structuring (though some change there would still be nice), or with the community attitudes/behaviours as much as those can be improved as well. Moderation is going to be the most effective and powerful driving force in implementing any of these changes and if I continue to be away from the community for weeks at a time it'll never happen. It's time for more people to join the staff in a helper role and moderate the chat on a moment to moment basis. That is something I can no longer do myself. And as much as I might like to think I could still do a good job without it I now see that I cannot. 

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Response to Kalle:
1. Restructuring will still be nice even if it doesn't actually fix much of anything. A secondary or tertiary issue really. 

2. My thoughts about what's best for the server has changed drastically through the course of this discussion. I've largely come to this same conclusion. The community comes first. That being said I still want to see the Marble Blast specific channels moderated more strictly even if they're not prioritized like I originally wanted. Which I suppose leads into your next point...

3. As far as more/less strict moderation goes I'm not opposed to a strict/free general channel being created in line with this thinking. For strict chat I'd leave bug-reports, suggestions, and the likes still in their very strict current state, I'd like to see Marbleblast general discussion, speedrunning, level-building and such be more strictly moderated than they are (though not as much as bug-reports/suggestions), and then general can have a strict/free variation, and then we can leave something like memes to be the least strict chat. Also agree with giving a strict general ban on troublemaking individuals as you suggest. That being said I'm not comfortable with an absolutely no rules channel a la all-the-spam.

4. The entire server has taken a more democratic approach in the last 4 years and I think that's done a load of good. But sometimes decisions need to be made quickly and decisively and perhaps this would be a good idea. Someone ought to become a sort of final decision-maker/leader of the community. In your response to NF mentions not having a single point of failure, I wholeheartedly agree. Helper roles show a distribution of the power of the staff and much could be done similarly here perhaps. There's more to unpack there but that's a good point to end that for now. I do have cause for concern regarding how would we pick who becomes the leader though. Do we have a community (or staff only?) election? Do we just choose someone? I like the idea, don't get me wrong, I just have reason for caution about how they're chosen. 

5. Becoming forums only again does seem like it will not happen. I think embracing Discord despite it's flaws is the best option. That being said we're discussing how to improve it so maybe many of the big problems can be improved from this discussion. 

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Response to Jean:

Moreover, in search of trying to find a middle ground of what people want, it is resulting in no one being happy

All the more reason to elect(?) someone as a leader, which I fully support. 

What to call this leader. Mayor? Chief? President? I dunno, this is of no importance but your response brought to mind this question so here I am asking it. 

A "Head-Of-Staff" could work.
We would have a similar staff structure, but there's someone on top making the hard decisions. On top of that, a "Helper" role as mentioned could do the community a whole lot of good. How I would like to see it implemented is have a few people that have moderation powers that are "short-term", as in muting and deleting. Additionally, I would also add a channel for helpers to report to mods of any incidents that ought to be looked at. I am unsure if these helpers should get involved in the decision-making process of any impactful decision. However, the community needs a more active moderation team.

I expect that I'm speaking for most people when I say it would be a shame if you (Doomblah) steps down from the team, despite your lack of activity, and this goes for the rest of the team, including Dom who is a secret "helper". I think the community already has the best possible staff team numbers aside. One of the strengths of this community is the diversity of thoughts, but we can't let it spiral like it has, which is why it's so important to have a leader.

I won't really comment on much else as I don't believe restructuring of how the server is designed is an issue at the moment.

Doomblah wrote:

I'm continually impressed with everyone's thoughtful responses and commitment to improve our little community. This community would die without people like you working to fix the very real problems we face like this. Thank you. I'm honored to be a part of a community so driven as this.

Thanks for saying this. Everyone here cares a lot, and I'm sure we all love this community too.

Doomblah wrote:

That's entirely my failing. Seeing that I've fallen far short of this ideal I start to wonder if I ought to step down. But since no one else is calling for that, I'll just mention it as much as that. I do however want to address these quite serious problems that are only getting worse as I continue to fail in my duty as a moderator, and actually follow up on them, instead of just talking about it.

I think that's being a little hard on yourself. There's no shame in having a life outside of Marble Blast. As far as I'm aware, no one is "calling for your resignation" like you said, so really it's up to you what to do.

Having helpers sounds like a nice idea. It also sounds like Dom and RandomityGuy currently are in that "helper" role the way you described it, in that they both have permissions to delete messages and time people out but aren't considered full-time moderators. It makes me think of back on the forums how there were two moderator ranks: "Moderator" and "Global Moderator". I was never really clear on the difference, but maybe this would be a use case for that (and maybe Aayrl's old  staff listing  topic could get updated accordingly).

Doomblah wrote:

Centralizing the power of moderators in just a few people does indeed seem to be too much for too few people to handle so it only makes sense to let more people moderate the discord and forums (though I suspect the latter doesn't actually need it all that much).

I can't help thinking about that time that Kalle went to approve some forum posts and found some that were two years old that hadn't been approved yet. I don't know if this is something people are checking regularly now, but I hope so.

I largely agree with the rest of your response to ShadowVisions—in particular, I think this is all good stuff to talk about with whatever helpers you end up choosing.

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Doomblah wrote:

That being said I'm not comfortable with an absolutely no rules channel a la all-the-spam.

Me either. But "less spam" and "no spam" off-topic channels could be good. I agree too with your stance on making those channels pertaining to specific topics more strict—maybe just having a helper say something like "#general" (or whichever channel is appropriate) when they notice people starting to get off-topic would be a simple and (hopefully) effective way to moderate.

Maybe we could have a community poll about who to select as the leader. I think you've been doing well with listening to what the whole community has to say, and I don't think that precedent should be changed for this. And regarding what to call the community leader, I think "Community Leader" would suffice. Or "Community Manager", though that sounds a bit corporate. We've used "Community Leader" in the past, so I think that would be best.  [Screenshot from Internet Archive, 2015-06-18]

As for the forums, a "forum only" community will definitely not happen, but I still support the idea of moving #suggestions, #bug-reports, and #announcements over to the forums, as I've said before.