Power back to the players, nerf staff please.

DO NOT POST ON THIS THREAD IF YOU'RE OFFENDED OR TRYING TO START DRAMA, AGREE OR DISAGREE, GIVE SOME REASONS ON YOUR POINT, AND LEAVE IT BE.

I really hate to make a thread that might start up drama, I really want to see what @Decap, @Bayrock, and @Donkie have to say to this. I believe in my eye of being a regular users, that we the people are looked down upon like we are not equal to the god staff team. I may be treated better than most regular users because I was ex-staff and still people show respect towards me, but I really want to see a change in the staff's attitude towards users and have it so they can't be gods and be complete dicks to regular users, or can't be god and do whatever they want.

I NEED to call out staff to address this or nothing will ever get done. Mapple made a leaving thread because he had a bad time with a situation way too similar to the 4/1 joke. On his leaving thread, it was suppose to be player saying farewell to my dear friend, but instead this happened:
https://gyazo.com/05707a999c52d5e4f55ce4f39e932dda
https://gyazo.com/eeb69b8cc7efc5d45dc689ee2d6fcb24

I would love to put down money, but if Rick was still the bigger trouble maker he was a month or two ago, he would have obtained warning points or even a ban for being such a dick to players. But Alex is god so she will go untouched, keeping her posts that are off-topic from wishing farewells to mapple. I asked a staff before making this thread and he even agreed that "yeah I do admitt that I treat some players like shit". Whether it is happening on purpose or by mistake it needs to be fixed somehow.

Ideas I have for fixing things like this are telling staff they must be mature and actually punishing them for breaking rules/making up own rules/being a dick to regular players.

Maybe give regular users a bigger say in things, I know this really isn't as big of a problem as it was when I first joined but, what regular users have to say on a staff application REALLY DOESN'T MATTER. You might as well make the staff applications private, and add 5 questions to them, and start denying people or are completely off on the questions, because not only will you obtain staff quicker, you don't make regular feel like they have a fake power.

http://devinity.org/threads/tokens-lost-and-level.2677/
The staff didn't at first try to help the player, just make it look like they were doing something on the forums, because they are currently in an inactive point of their staffing career. Which is fine, even though other staff were demoted by inactivity but not the god-tier staff (admin+).

And maybe this could be fixed by giving more power to the regular users around here! Opening staff applications for forum staff for regular users is a good way to see how power can be leveled out.

Regular players should be treated with more respect and honestly staff shouldn't get any respect unless they're doing their duties and also showing equal respect towards players of the community. EVERY PLAYER IS WELCOME UNTIL BANNED. You should make them feel welcome, not try to push them away with quick bans on ban requests or being mean to them until they leave. I just want to see staff treat players like they're also staff, because the staff team is super nice and friendly to each other (was 50/50 with me, some hated me some liked me, which triggered me because we're a team not a group of high school teenage girls). If the staff team is nice and completely respectful to the other members of the staff team, how much harder could it be to show 1/10 of the respect you show fellow staff members?

 

I think this is a reason why we are short on Staff Applications, and I feel that I might do this sometimes, so Silver wehn I do this can you PM me on the forums about it?

 

What do we look like GameStop?

 

The problem is, I would be messaging nearly everyone on the staff team, I don't want to sit around a like baby sit the staff team, I am just a user now giving my points on a subject I believe in. Last time I told a staff they did something wrong, they yelled at me, said I was being an asshole, and it's all fine.

 

https://gyazo.com/d0b42322398d6ae7fd841ff9f6820024

Seeming you just want to stir things up, how come you only target me? I am the only one you ever complain about, however Decap said the "F" word a couple times toward Mapple flipping out over a joke.

Please dont just say "power back to the players!" unless you mean the whole staff team is "abusing."

When you REALLY MEAN "Nerf Alex".

Honestly I am not stupid, I can see right through it.

And honestly, if you want to get personal with me, we can get personal. If I was really "abusing" you dont need people "on your side"
https://gyazo.com/398c21ac102367549893d7d24f2c8103

 

Please don't break my thread rules, thank you.

Decap dropped the F bomb, he never targeted a player/being a dick to a player.

EDIT: For the message I sent Counter, your post should be deleted and he needs to trust me to delete it because you're being a drama queen again and breaking my thread rules. You see because I am not staff apparently I CANNOT MAKE MY OWN THREAD RULES LIKE YOUR THREADS.

Thank you for further proving my point on why staff needs to be nerfed, you're a really good example.

 

So basically you bring up this stuff but if someone has an issue with it, then it's against your personal thread rules? Sorry Silver it doesn't work that way.

Again, you even state that your thread could bring up drama. The people or players aren't looked down upon. However if a player is acting ignorant, rude, breaks the rules often, or has no real care for the community, then why the hell should we be nice to them? I'm not bending over backwards for someone who wouldn't do the same to me.

Mapple was a terrible staff member and terrible player overall. He was always bouncing in and out of the rules and when he was caught, he played the "I'm young and stupid so what do you expect" card. He also takes things WAY out of context and WAY to seriously and that April Fools joke was not the first time it happened. A response from @Alex like that was indeed warranted and not out of line. She told the truth from her perspective and I wouldn't expect her to kiss anyones ass that she didn't like. I wouldn't expect that from any staff period.

Rick still is, he was just banned the other day for constantly spamming the shoutbox with useless shit. Now I won't say Alex is perfect, but no one here is. I've lost my temper, I've gone overboard and made mistakes, same as you have and everyone else that reads this has. However it's how you deal with those mistakes afterwards that should be of consequence. Rick constantly pushed the boundaries of the rules, asks for forgiveness, then does it again, when have you seen alex spam the shoutbox, call someone a ~snipped~, or abuse the rating system just because she doesn't like them?

My problem with statements like this is that you guys do not know what goes on behind the scenes. This isn't the Wild West, we don't chain criminals up in public and throw fruit at them for all to see. We take care of matters behind the scenes. I guess you haven't noticed that the staff ranks has been thinned out tremendously in the past month. That is not because they all resigned, majority were demoted for numerous different reasons. Some where because they broke to many rules and had to many warnings.

This paragraph doesn't really make sense. However I will say this, I'd rather have a few staff that are pretty good rather than a lot of staff that are shit. Quality over Quantity anyday.

Those staff can't do anything about it. If you knew anything about the hierarchy of our staff, you would know that only @Bayrock and @Donkie can take care of issues like that. At least they tried as usually issues like that can be fixed by restarting or something similar. I remember a time when threads like that would sit with zero replies for over a week. Would you rather we go back to that?

Power to regular players? How about no, because that is a recipe for disaster. I don't want just forum staff as any new player that just came along wouldn't know our rules well enough to moderate accordingly. Look how long it took for you to get forum mod, hell it took me nearly a year! It's not something we are going to hand out easily in my view.

So what are the terms for respecting a player? You said that Staff need to be doing their jobs and showing (automatic?) respect towards players who probably didn't earn it. So why should we respect players automatically? I was raised under the notion that respect is not given, it is earned. I don't know how many people respect me, because I don't ask. But I would be willing to bet most staff do respect me somewhat at least. I've put a lot of time and effort into this community as have many others, that is where respect comes from. Yes all players are welcome, we can all be nice and friendly yada yada, but that doesn't mean we have to respect them all right off the bat. You don't realize that the majority of players on our servers are teenagers or sometimes younger than teenagers. Most of them haven't learned the concept of respect, so how are we supposed to project that onto them when they don't even understand what that is?

All and all I find your argument very one sided as are many of the complaints I have looked over before from other players. You guys simply don't get the bigger picture, it's always about from your perspective. I also have to wonder, if you cared so much about this community, then why did you resign so suddenly and delete everyone off of your friends list just to come back a week later and want "change in the community"? It doesn't make sense to me and it seems like you made a quick rash decision in my mind. There have been numerous times where I wanted to say "fuck it" and resign. Even when I read this thread, I facepalmed for about a minute and asked myself "Why do I put up with all of this drama?" But then I took a few minutes and let my rational thoughts come back because that how I have to deal with it. I'm not saying you're a bad person for leaving, it could have been for an issue outside of the community for all I know and it's really none of my business. But just know what you are doing is similar to the guy who quits his job then goes back to his job and tells the employees who are still working there that they are doing thier job wrong.

 

I don't want to get yelled at for starting drama, it's ridiculous how much you don't realize you look down on regular users like they're some shitty scum.

You should be nice to players because antagonizing them and constantly being a dick to them not only makes you look like a massive asshole, but it makes them want to troll harder just to piss you off.

I will not disagree Mapple was NOT staff material, and he shouldn't have been on the staff team as long as he was. He constantly shit posted and didn't really give two shits to the wind. That doesn't mean go on his leaving thread and act like a huge immature asshole and really show off to regular users how they should act because the admin acts like an asshole too! The staff team should be role models, not a bunch of immature kiddies.

I was not aware of Rick being banned a few days ago due to the fact there is no banned rank on these forums. You lose your temper, yes, but Alex CONSTANTLY flames off everything and anything. Like look at this garbage: https://gyazo.com/c6b774bf439e7b86d3c07344940f8b5d . Alex constantly gets fired up about anything, even things that don't involve her. For example: http://devinity.org/threads/ban-request-against-alex.1799/ . You lose your temper, but Alex has YET TO TRY AND CONTROL HERS. Because she's an admin, she's a god, since she's a god, the regular users have to deal with her bull shit. She has literally made players leave (Apollo if anyone remembers) because they got so sick of her and her ways. I am not saying she is Rick, but she does her fair share of wrong doings and fair share of doing nothing but being dramatic about everything.

I know what goes on behind the lines, and you do thin your MODs- PRETTY WELL. Can you even remember the last time an admin was fully demoted successfully? I tried it once but because I was a regular user, it got brushed under the rug. And how come they get demoted for too many warnings when Alex literally does nothing more than a jr mod does to help the community and she is always breaking rules/never getting warnings? I still bet you if Rick posted what Alex posted on Mapple's leaving thread, he would have been banned for it because he's not the infinate health admin who can't be touched because she's basically a god at this point.

If you want quality over quantity, then I don't get why you don't accept applications quicker/demote more people. If you let their application sit there for a month, they will get bored of the server and eventually just resign super quickly after becoming jr mod, potentially dropping the staff team of future admins or future A-tier staff.

I don't understand why instead of trying to suggest ideas to the user (restart gmod, rejoin the server, verify cache, download the files for server at the link: http://safasgdhaghwbbsbs). After one hour though the only forum work I see the staff doing is asking after an hour with no replies if the topic was fixed. Like 0 replies and an hour passed? Might be fixed, better ask instead of waiting for him to say everything is fine! Like that's the thing I see forum staff doing, instead of keeping things in the right section, locking/unlocking REQUESTED THREAD TO BE LOCKED/UNLOCKED, staff are posting on rule breaking threads and then deleting it after a report was finally made.

 

Okay let me just start on staff applications since you brought that up. You and I were tasked with creating a system, mid way through our collaboration...you decided to fucking quit dumping all that shit on me. Obviously that privilege was taken away from me and others started working on it and I guess it was passed a long in the badmin chat and then buried. If you had STAYED maybe we could have fixed that.


This works for most of what you said, why didn't you do something while staff? You could have gotten respectful players and staff to back you up on your campaign, instead you quit decided to make a thread. Told Counter about it, and blindsided everyone else.

 

You know how strict staff are with ALL applications, someone brand spanking new would be denied if they tried to apply, it's just certain people over time will swing around and want to be a forum staff and not just a flood staff who doesn't play ever/guy who minorly helped with TTT.

All staff should be as mature as possible, which should be not exploding on a weekly basis, not being a public asshole to users on the forums, doing things like moving threads that need to obviously be moved, actually play on the server every once in a blue moon, contribute to something more than being a drama king/queen, post constructive material to threads that matter not just constantly post in the off-topic section. Staff in private and public should constantly be nicer to users on the forums, not just explode at a simple push or pull. It doesn't look good when your role model is doing nothing more than 9/10 russian users in CS:GO. Staff just need to be nice to a user, if they're being a dick to you, tell them to stop or punishment could be implemented to their account. You shouldn't be a dick to a user because they're being a dick to you. If they're breaking rules by not respecting you, deal punishment where it's needed and move on, think of the example you guys are setting as staff.

My arguments are very one sided because this is the side I believe in. I just overall want to see staff to be AT LEAST a nice public figure, and not thrash back when someone minorly flames them. I care about this community, I may have resigned due to things that are going to be happening in my personal life extremely soon. I didn't resign based on an event that triggered me (if you noticed the date I resigned, there was no problems, no drama, nothing just knew what my future held). I am not quitting my job and telling my ex-crkers how to do their jobs, I have things to do that will keep me away from my PC for weeks at a time (in which case I would probably get demoted at some point because I didn't have enough love backing me to keep me) I just want to see staff be good role models, it's a huge issue in the community and there needs to be a serious change, because you're no better than a dick if you're being a dick to him back.

(Sorry for double post, my post reached more than 10000 characters)

Sorry, let me just fucking hang myself IRL so I just don't have to deal with the real world anymore. I'll come back and help instead of trying to get into colleges and trying to fix personal affairs and trying to fucking learn how to be a real man instead some dumb ass boy who plays video games all day.

I also only told Counter because I consider him to be my friend. Because in the end of the shit we always went/go through, at some point we come to a resolution instead of being permanently pissy with each other.

 

If you're focusing on college and don't want to be a gamer anymore...why make the thread at all?

I don't blame you, so don't take offense to what I said.

I just believe it's hypocritical to have the chance to fix something, then leave and complain it hasn't been fixed.

 

@Decap are havin a laf? You're counting the ban that I got on April fools because I was "spamming/trolling" the fucking April fools thread. If that's your idea of "causing trouble" I'd like to see a description of trouble given the amount of hassle and distribution the April fools "joke" caused by comparison.

I'm by no means still the troublemaker I was a few months ago and you're deluded if you truly still think I am. Sure I like partake in jokes but I make it clear when I am and at this stage you're just upset or something over the fact that I have a cynical sense of humour compared to you and a lot of the other people on the community.

Silver's big red text at the top of the thread just said to stay away from drama, he's not trying to assert a confirmation bias as you seem to have interpreted it, he encourages you to talk about your agreement or disagreement but to not flame. Sure a thread like this is encouraging drama to a certain extent, but at least he made an effort to discourage it before it happens. Alex's post would likely be met with open arms if it had been less aggressive, that sort of behavior would've gotten me a spanking or a telling off from somebody in the days when I was an administrator.

Previously if somebody had an issue with the staff in any way then I would see that it was met properly, too many times I was criticized and each time (Up until a point as many of us know) I met that issue with respect and actually tried to improve either myself or the rest of the team, but it appears that the current state of the team is to immediately assume that you are correct. I understand it's human nature to have a confirmation bias but it does nobody any good to immediately go on the defensive, if people consistently complain maybe people have to take an objective approach and look at themselves.

Previously, when I was a good Administrator, it was because I was able to look at situations from a distance and appreciate that absolutely nobody is perfect, I've defended Ethan, I've defended Rollie, I've defended Alex, I might not like certain people as people but that doesn't mean I shouldn't listen to them. I hate the way that I have stood at everybody's side at some stage but now many of the staff ignore people like myself completely. Every criticism should be seen as genuine.

I have no issue with you @Decap and @Alex, I'm sure you both have good people skills, but at some points when you're handling people's complaints you have to look from their perspective, people make mistakes, people mess up, but people can change. And that can be hard when you're in a position that affirms that you have done well to be there.

@Decap in particular, It's good that you realise that you're by no means perfect at handling the community, but you have to remember that you are essentially the law around here, if you treat everybody equally regardless of their previous circumstances then everybody won't feel discriminated or picked on, it's hard to lose your biases but every once in a while you need to try and see from other people's perspectives.

As to people posting on genuine threads like the "lost tokens and level" or whatever, if you have to tell silver that Bayrock and Donkie are the only ones that can handle it, why don't you just tell the person that made the thread that and keep it professional.

You say this but the many times I've complained about things on devinity people pull the exact opposite card and say "well if you're complaining so much just leave"...

Just because people have to go etc doesn't mean that they don't care about devinity and they can still try to fix the way things are just before they leave, he's trying to help.

 

Appl I was out of time to try and fix it. I had so much I really wanted to do as staff, and trying to say I didn't love being a forum moderator and helping out in that way is just wrong. I literally got to delay my long leave of absence by a week unexpectedly. I was suppose to be forced offline for around two-three weeks a week ago for the first time, due to delays I am still around making a final post. Honestly, maybe a majority of people are probably super happy I am leaving because I was always super annoying about how opinionated I am. At least I got nice comments though for my leaving thread to make me feel like I was important for a while instead getting shitty comments like "I won't miss you" even though everyone is thinking it.

Believe me, if I could still be staff I would be, and I wouldn't have this last stretch that really just caused probably a big tumble of hate for me.

 

There was recently a suggestion by Applecore to delete every post in this thread and replace it with "Unnecessary drama", joking or not that sort of attitude is fucking dumb.

 

I love the hypocrisy in this thread.

YOU of all people is going to judge someone on whether or not their joke was too far out? I'm dying laughing rn.

 

Have you noticed that I don't have a staff tag next to my name? It's not even about the fact that you joked about it it's about the fact that it crossed your mind and you went back to that PM. There's a difference between shitposting in shitty threads and joking about shutting down a good constructive thread. im literaly dying of laughter ringht now XD omfg lmao

 

It was a joke in slack.

I could see why you wouldn't understand.

 

Silver and Rick, and anybody else who feel targeted, you need to fucking stop this armchair lawyer approach shit you have to this community. It's a community and we're all regular people who devote our spare hours to have fun with each other, never forget that. It will not work perfectly because we're not a corporate firm so it doesn't have to work perfectly, we're biased, we're over sitters, yes, but that's how it's gonna be, we choose our staff based on our friends.

Alex is a long friend to us and our community, she has helped out a LOT in terms of moderation and suggestions, she might have a short fuse, I've fought with her a lot aswell, but it's not grounds for demotion, simply because of her past.

Quite frankly you lost all of my respect and ability to voice a point when you decided to go all Rick and leave the management in a day just so you could voice your actual opinions. Half of your arguments are way overblown lol:

Staff apps where regular users don't have any say: why the fuck would we listen more to a less known guy in the community rather than, for example, decaps opinion on someone?

That payment thread: Jesus come on, they did exactly what I would've done, we can't do more. The guy didn't even answer so there you see how many shits he gave.

The community is run by us and too fucking bad if you don't like it. You had a really good chance of becoming part of the administration.

Quite frankly, it's ALWAYS you, Rick or mapple who've been salty in this community over dumb shit, you need to stop it or you're all gonna get banned for ruining the point of this community, having fun. If that's not allowed, I might as well leave myself.

 

You pull the "community is for fun stop ruining it" card. But is us complaining ruining the fun of the community? I can understand if you don't like change but saying "we're ruining the community" because we say that it's less of a community and more of staffunity (You get what I mean)?

The fact that even you come to the immediate defence of genuine criticism that transparency, professionalism and friendliness have gone from the community worries me.

There was no call for demotion but the fact that Alex's behavior and attitude is abrasive is comparable to my Abrasive behavior that let to a stern talk. This sort of "it's just her personality" leniency never occurred once when I was being rude, but when alex is outwardly agressive and rude it is tucked away and ignored? Nobody is taking a lawyer approach we're just saying, as the community, that we don't like something. If a genuine, calm, complaint is met with a fucking ban threat from the founder then I've lost hope that the Devinity I spent 2 years enjoying is still here.

 

Yes, you two constantly complaining about dumb shit like grey zones and ALL kinds of staff related things really ruin the fun. I'm not sure about you but I sure as hell hate the drama which you always stir.

>genuine, calm complaint
Lmao

Please leave then if devinity isn't what you want it to be. You both had a chance to make it what you wanted.