Hi All!
Following the survey, I feel this is a great opportunity to address the results. Our goal is to make sure you have been heard, and I believe letting your answers go out into the void where you never hear about it again is kind of against the point of what it was meant for. I will not post the text responses to keep everyone anonymous, but I will be answering some common questions and points which were brought up as well. In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I feel like this is a perfect time to open a dialogue between my team and the community regarding the survey you all were so kind to complete for us.
Starting with our opening questions:
One of the most interesting points I want to talk about is activity in discord overall compared to activity in the general server. A whopping 89.9% of users indicated being at least moderately active on discord (a 3 or higher on the survey), compared to only 18.8% being at least moderately active in general. This is an expected result - the problem we've identified is that the general server has grown a bit stagnant despite many users being active elsewhere.
When asked for reasons why people aren't in general, here were the most common answers (paraphrased):
- Too much spammers/memers/drama
- In too many other servers
- Its toxic/a cesspool
- There is nothing worthwhile there
To address these points from my point of view - in recent times, I haven't seen very much toxicity or spamming. Along with that, that is what the community mod team is here for now! We have been watching over general closely and taking action when needed. A lot of times it goes unnoticed because it's meant to - we haven't needed to act with a lot of severity yet and most of our action includes deleting the occasional inappropriate message and short timeouts/warnings to the perpetrator.
As for there being nothing worthwhile and being in too many other servers, which I feel go hand in hand, that is a fair point. Which is why we will be attempting some of our new ideas starting as early as next offseason, which I will get to later on. Hopefully these ideas and events will make it a server worth joining or adding to the roster of servers you are active in, but if not, that is totally understandable.
Next, we'll get into the meat of our ideas that we've been discussing internally and requested your feedback on. The first was an idea of a reporting function:
This was the least popular of all the ideas. The thought behind a reporting function was - A) it would anonymous, B) you don't have to know who is HO or a community mod, you'd simply type a report command and it'd go to the right place, and C) as much as we try, every now and then we can't always have eyes on what's happening at all times, so a report function that pings us could get one of us there right away to take care of it if one of us isn't there already
However, there are a lot of concerns about how it could be abused and people aren't convinced it would help anything. So, this idea will not be implemented at this time.
A suggestion box, on the other hand, was very popular:
There are still skeptics but this is one of the most popular ideas. We do have an #ideas-and-feedback channel however we could rebrand it to be #suggestion-box to be more user friendly. We will also investigate bot commands that may have this capability in case people would rather make suggestions anonymously and directly to our team.
Now, RISE UP GAMERS:
The amount of interest on this one is too much to ignore. Our idea here is to try and connect people that enjoy video games across the league. I feel like more people in this league game than we realize, and sometimes its hard to connect with people in our team servers with the differences in time zones and just less people to coordinate with. We will be working on an implementation of this in a way that is optional by assigning the channels to a gaming role, to prevent the server from being too cluttered. That leads into our next one...
Once again, ISFL game night is a highly popular idea, however it isn't without some reservations. Some people have indicated that this has been done in the past, and the turn out is very hit or miss. It is true that the timing of game night would be a contested topic and it would be difficult to run it at a time everyone could participate. The popularity of the idea makes it impossible to dismiss though, and my goal is to run a game night next offseason. To solve some of the timing issues, we may even run two different 'game nights' the same day but at different times to accommodate for time zones and those that maybe work unconventional hours. We will continue this discussion internally.
Our most popular event idea yet!
This idea is fresh and I think there are a lot of really fun opportunities that could come out of this. Points could be awarded for mee6 rank, participation in community events, etc. We don't have that all ironed out yet, but the good news is there would be a reward for the winning team! The exact details are being discussed internally. We currently are testing out the bot that would allow us to do this and are excited about the positive impact it can have on our community. Watch out for another announcement on this in the future. No timeline is set in stone yet.
Podcasts made easier:
This one is a bit more on the 'controversial' side, but not really. Many people may not use it, but I feel there is enough of an interest that it could be beneficial. Being able to have a singular place you can go to record a podcast with someone else in the league regardless of what team they are on or if you don't share a server with them I think would be very nice. The way we would implement this would be to create a separate podcasting role and section, so that we can lock it down to that role in particular to reduce clutter and to try and prevent people from randomly joining the pod and ruining it for people. That is a valid concern, and if we do this, we will come up with punishments for those case and have faith that our community would have more class than to do that.
QOTD?
This one is a pretty basic and common idea, but one that could help spur some activity. We loosely tried to do this in the past but the response was hit or miss and it was hard to keep up with. We will discuss possibly assigning a different community mod to come up with and participate in a question each day, and I'd personally like to encourage my team to participate in conversations more often.
Common responses to the long-form questions:
Least Favorite Part of the General Server:
- The people
- Toxicity/drama
- Too many channels
- Not enough to do
Addressing these one by one:
It saddened me to see so many users disliking the other users that are in general chat. I'm hoping they meant how the people act and not the people personally, but even then it was disheartening to see. I'm not here to invalidate those opinions, because they are honest. At this point in time, I have had a lot of very positive interactions with nearly all of the people currently active in general. I know in the past it has been hard at times, especially with a couple of very problematic users we've had in the past, but I feel we have a handle on that, and I feel if some of the other great people that I know aren't active would come back, it would make it an even better place to be!
I mentioned the toxicity/drama portion earlier, but I do want to reiterate that I have not experienced hardly any toxicity or drama in the general server in quite some time. Maybe with more people it is more prone to it, but I can promise our community moderator team is there to make it a better place and to prevent it from ever becoming the toxic place some have unfortunately come to know it as again.
I'm going to address both the 'too many channels' and 'not enough to do' points at the same time, because I believe there is a solution that satisfies both sides of the coin. Our idea currently is to compartmentalize the general server by way of role selection. For example, selecting a 'sports' role to see the channels talking about sports. This along with adding other roles will allow all users to see exactly what they want to see when they are in the general server. Maybe you're just there for announcements - then you will only see the default channels. In the long term, this also allows my team to add more features or channels without making the server too big for the rest of the community that just isn't interested in certain things, while giving those that don't have enough to do more options. This is still a work in progress, but we believe it would make the server a lot more accessible for everyone.
How to improve the general server:
- No idea
- Add (or take away) channels
- More activities and events
- Implement ideas mentioned above
It comes as no surprise that most people don't have ideas on how to improve the general server, that's our job not yours! We mostly asked this question to see if maybe there are ideas out there that we may have missed or wouldn't have thought of. I believe I address most of these in previous answers, but just want to let you all know that we are going to do our best to implement the improvements we've talked about before!
What you want to see out of the community mod team:
After looking over the answers most of them are a rehash of previous answers, but that is my fault for asking questions that are a bit too repetitive. What did stand out though were a few people saying they'd like to see more engagement from us, including possibly a newsletter to let the community know what we're working on, which is a fair request. I will be more vigilant with my team in encouraging us all to participate in conversations in general, and will make a post each offseason regarding what we've been doing and the progress of our ideas.
In closing, thank you all once again for your feedback. This was a very helpful exercise for us and has given us the confirmation we needed for certain ideas to get off the ground and puts our minds more at ease that we are doing things that the majority of the community wants. I know I didn't go over every answer, but I promise that I have read each and every one and have taken every idea, request, and criticism to heart. We will be working hard to make this community even better than it already is to reward you all for being amazing members of this league!
- TeyonSchavari, Community Moderator Head
Following the survey, I feel this is a great opportunity to address the results. Our goal is to make sure you have been heard, and I believe letting your answers go out into the void where you never hear about it again is kind of against the point of what it was meant for. I will not post the text responses to keep everyone anonymous, but I will be answering some common questions and points which were brought up as well. In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I feel like this is a perfect time to open a dialogue between my team and the community regarding the survey you all were so kind to complete for us.
Starting with our opening questions:
One of the most interesting points I want to talk about is activity in discord overall compared to activity in the general server. A whopping 89.9% of users indicated being at least moderately active on discord (a 3 or higher on the survey), compared to only 18.8% being at least moderately active in general. This is an expected result - the problem we've identified is that the general server has grown a bit stagnant despite many users being active elsewhere.
When asked for reasons why people aren't in general, here were the most common answers (paraphrased):
- Too much spammers/memers/drama
- In too many other servers
- Its toxic/a cesspool
- There is nothing worthwhile there
To address these points from my point of view - in recent times, I haven't seen very much toxicity or spamming. Along with that, that is what the community mod team is here for now! We have been watching over general closely and taking action when needed. A lot of times it goes unnoticed because it's meant to - we haven't needed to act with a lot of severity yet and most of our action includes deleting the occasional inappropriate message and short timeouts/warnings to the perpetrator.
As for there being nothing worthwhile and being in too many other servers, which I feel go hand in hand, that is a fair point. Which is why we will be attempting some of our new ideas starting as early as next offseason, which I will get to later on. Hopefully these ideas and events will make it a server worth joining or adding to the roster of servers you are active in, but if not, that is totally understandable.
Next, we'll get into the meat of our ideas that we've been discussing internally and requested your feedback on. The first was an idea of a reporting function:
This was the least popular of all the ideas. The thought behind a reporting function was - A) it would anonymous, B) you don't have to know who is HO or a community mod, you'd simply type a report command and it'd go to the right place, and C) as much as we try, every now and then we can't always have eyes on what's happening at all times, so a report function that pings us could get one of us there right away to take care of it if one of us isn't there already
However, there are a lot of concerns about how it could be abused and people aren't convinced it would help anything. So, this idea will not be implemented at this time.
A suggestion box, on the other hand, was very popular:
There are still skeptics but this is one of the most popular ideas. We do have an #ideas-and-feedback channel however we could rebrand it to be #suggestion-box to be more user friendly. We will also investigate bot commands that may have this capability in case people would rather make suggestions anonymously and directly to our team.
Now, RISE UP GAMERS:
The amount of interest on this one is too much to ignore. Our idea here is to try and connect people that enjoy video games across the league. I feel like more people in this league game than we realize, and sometimes its hard to connect with people in our team servers with the differences in time zones and just less people to coordinate with. We will be working on an implementation of this in a way that is optional by assigning the channels to a gaming role, to prevent the server from being too cluttered. That leads into our next one...
Once again, ISFL game night is a highly popular idea, however it isn't without some reservations. Some people have indicated that this has been done in the past, and the turn out is very hit or miss. It is true that the timing of game night would be a contested topic and it would be difficult to run it at a time everyone could participate. The popularity of the idea makes it impossible to dismiss though, and my goal is to run a game night next offseason. To solve some of the timing issues, we may even run two different 'game nights' the same day but at different times to accommodate for time zones and those that maybe work unconventional hours. We will continue this discussion internally.
Our most popular event idea yet!
This idea is fresh and I think there are a lot of really fun opportunities that could come out of this. Points could be awarded for mee6 rank, participation in community events, etc. We don't have that all ironed out yet, but the good news is there would be a reward for the winning team! The exact details are being discussed internally. We currently are testing out the bot that would allow us to do this and are excited about the positive impact it can have on our community. Watch out for another announcement on this in the future. No timeline is set in stone yet.
Podcasts made easier:
This one is a bit more on the 'controversial' side, but not really. Many people may not use it, but I feel there is enough of an interest that it could be beneficial. Being able to have a singular place you can go to record a podcast with someone else in the league regardless of what team they are on or if you don't share a server with them I think would be very nice. The way we would implement this would be to create a separate podcasting role and section, so that we can lock it down to that role in particular to reduce clutter and to try and prevent people from randomly joining the pod and ruining it for people. That is a valid concern, and if we do this, we will come up with punishments for those case and have faith that our community would have more class than to do that.
QOTD?
This one is a pretty basic and common idea, but one that could help spur some activity. We loosely tried to do this in the past but the response was hit or miss and it was hard to keep up with. We will discuss possibly assigning a different community mod to come up with and participate in a question each day, and I'd personally like to encourage my team to participate in conversations more often.
Common responses to the long-form questions:
Least Favorite Part of the General Server:
- The people
- Toxicity/drama
- Too many channels
- Not enough to do
Addressing these one by one:
It saddened me to see so many users disliking the other users that are in general chat. I'm hoping they meant how the people act and not the people personally, but even then it was disheartening to see. I'm not here to invalidate those opinions, because they are honest. At this point in time, I have had a lot of very positive interactions with nearly all of the people currently active in general. I know in the past it has been hard at times, especially with a couple of very problematic users we've had in the past, but I feel we have a handle on that, and I feel if some of the other great people that I know aren't active would come back, it would make it an even better place to be!
I mentioned the toxicity/drama portion earlier, but I do want to reiterate that I have not experienced hardly any toxicity or drama in the general server in quite some time. Maybe with more people it is more prone to it, but I can promise our community moderator team is there to make it a better place and to prevent it from ever becoming the toxic place some have unfortunately come to know it as again.
I'm going to address both the 'too many channels' and 'not enough to do' points at the same time, because I believe there is a solution that satisfies both sides of the coin. Our idea currently is to compartmentalize the general server by way of role selection. For example, selecting a 'sports' role to see the channels talking about sports. This along with adding other roles will allow all users to see exactly what they want to see when they are in the general server. Maybe you're just there for announcements - then you will only see the default channels. In the long term, this also allows my team to add more features or channels without making the server too big for the rest of the community that just isn't interested in certain things, while giving those that don't have enough to do more options. This is still a work in progress, but we believe it would make the server a lot more accessible for everyone.
How to improve the general server:
- No idea
- Add (or take away) channels
- More activities and events
- Implement ideas mentioned above
It comes as no surprise that most people don't have ideas on how to improve the general server, that's our job not yours! We mostly asked this question to see if maybe there are ideas out there that we may have missed or wouldn't have thought of. I believe I address most of these in previous answers, but just want to let you all know that we are going to do our best to implement the improvements we've talked about before!
What you want to see out of the community mod team:
After looking over the answers most of them are a rehash of previous answers, but that is my fault for asking questions that are a bit too repetitive. What did stand out though were a few people saying they'd like to see more engagement from us, including possibly a newsletter to let the community know what we're working on, which is a fair request. I will be more vigilant with my team in encouraging us all to participate in conversations in general, and will make a post each offseason regarding what we've been doing and the progress of our ideas.
In closing, thank you all once again for your feedback. This was a very helpful exercise for us and has given us the confirmation we needed for certain ideas to get off the ground and puts our minds more at ease that we are doing things that the majority of the community wants. I know I didn't go over every answer, but I promise that I have read each and every one and have taken every idea, request, and criticism to heart. We will be working hard to make this community even better than it already is to reward you all for being amazing members of this league!
- TeyonSchavari, Community Moderator Head