Atelier 801
Transformice 
 EN/E2 Staff Feedback |
 Etoile  « Citoyen » 1580176200000
| 61 | ||
| First of all! I would like to state despite some statements that I will make about the team here, it doesn't apply to each and every individual in the team. This should be a given. And it should not be a guide for any voyeurs to begin indiscriminately harassing the team. Naturally, I am not going to be as relenting as other users, and I expect to be given enough respect to be heard out. I didn't spend so much time making this post to bash the team. I still have a sense of duty and integrity for this community and this team. However, there just isn't enough staff or ex-staff who have the courage to openly make these criticisms. Or perhaps it just shouldn't always be behind closed doors. Maybe things being worked on can be documented clearly in a thread like this! But I digress. 0. Opening Notes To start off, this goes for both users and the moderation team: = Omission of faults and shortcomings isn't professionalism. Being able to provide reasons for certain processes doesn't directly correlate to fair processes/judgement. In defending your practices, there must be enough room to evaluate them. = Though, I can't say all the suggestions in this thread are reasonable. I won't beat around the bush: concluding a system is 'rigged' against you because of your past actions is also unfair. Criticism regarding that is only self-serving. When I talk about community concerns, I rightfully don't consider you a part of the conversation. = I will be color coding, italicising, and bolding portions of my post. I'm hoping it will make it easier to follow what you're reading without having your eyes glaze over (I have that problem lol), sort of like highlighting a lengthy textbook. It's easier to refer back to portions of the text if you remember what section and what color it was. I don't intend any of this to be rude or to highlight gotchas. It's just a long read. 1. Role of a Moderator A. Long During my time as a mod, I was extremely put off by how the team makes fun of individuals behind closed doors. There are instances, like silliness or misbehaving users, etc. where it's, well, what anyone would do. But there were instances when this was unprompted, when someone was just *existing* in public. When insults got personal. It was always either bad blood with an individual from years ago or general disdain for the community. And all this versus the lack of positivity or enthusiasm for the community? It honestly dragged me down. I started to think there's no *wonder* users feel like moderators don't care about them, it's like these behaviors radiate whenever they interact with the playerbase. Any concern from them can be waved off because they don't know what happens behind closed doors, but I've had a lasting impression and I am a first-hand witness. Not everyone in the team loves the community *despite* volunteering. Sweeping statements that say otherwise shouldn't be made. { It really isn't unlike someone becoming a teacher so they can teach, but they hate kids. Or my sister that went into social work, but hardly has empathy for the people that come to her for help. It doesn't make sense, and it's not sustainable to personal mental health or fair to the people they interact with. And that's not even getting into these types of positions to feel good or have a sense of power over people, rather than a personal sense of altruism and compassion. These experiences exist in a realm that isn't theoretical. } If it's so impossible to stop breeding a toxic community/ingroup by complaining about its users, please find tasks to do that are positive and constructive for the community. Talk to its users, share what you found on the forums, take suggestions on how to expand the moderator role to something more than sanctioning players... just *interact*. If this is all too difficult for the team and they can't find the motivation to do so, reconsider that the team is more than community police. Reconsider that everyone in the team is cut out to be a mod just because they make sanctions. Find it in you to stop making sweeping statements to cover for lack of integrity and lack of compassion. B. In short Moderators shouldn't be mods if they're there to sit around and hang out with other mods because it's fun, don't like or try to participate in the TFM community, or are just too reluctant to give up that sense of power. I firmly believe those types of mods are out of touch with the community they moderate. I stress that this problem isn't about a limited space for moderators, this is not a number problem. This job has responsibilities and the community does look up to to this position. It's assumed that every staff member knows exactly what they sign up for, so those who can't meet a certain standard should have no place in the team. All of this considered, "we're volunteers" does not properly acknowledge any resentment the community has about being/feeling uninvested in. The team cannot insist "of course we care!" For every individual on the team, especially without any action to back up the claim. 2. Communication and Inconsistencies Between Moderators There needs to be more communication not only between the playerbase and the team, but also between each other. For example, briefly, whispers were able to be moderated because the argument was that if forum DMs could, why couldn't whispers? And it's a valid argument, enough for one of our community admins to say that people can record their whisper logs with a program. However, not everyone is on the same page. Not moderators, not users. Everyone's saying different things. When something like *that* is capable of being moderated, it needs to be properly communicated with the team and announced to the public to stave off misinformation. Or when discord servers weren't allowed to be advertised in the cafe, discord servers were allowed to be advertised in the cafe, so long as there was no NSFW talk/channel. Then finally, discord servers are allowed to be advertised in the cafe ?? There should probably be a doc for updates to procedures for moderators and a thread for any updates that can be relayed to the rest of the community. The responsibility of telling everyone a proposed rule shouldn't be on the shoulders of the punished, who probably thought what they were doing was fine. 3. Endangerment of the community ( cw: pedophilia discussion ) What contributed to my resignation was the handling of an individual who received solicited cp of a minor of this community. I didn't get many details about it, and I wasn't able to add my own input, and I can consider that my own fault. I was rising from a hiatus in the middle of (what I can assume) private discussion about it, and only heard about the incident secondhand from a team member and the cafe. However, my involvement in this [or lack thereof] doesn't really make the incident any different. Any respectable community that involves minors wouldn't let that kind of person go out with a slap on the wrist. No respectable community would silence discussion about it, especially considering a *minor* was involved and other minors in the community were rightfully concerned about it. In the wake of all of this they didn't know whether or not they could trust the moderation team, and this plight was unacknowledged. It *disgusts* me that the team gave more concern to a pedophile than the minors of this community. I did not want to stand by that. I don't really want to hear "but you could've worked on this with us" because the damage was already done, and I have fair boundaries. Kicking someone out and lying about their leave is not enough empathy for the playerbase. It's also worth noting that if there's *any* claim that a member solicited from a minor, the individual gets punished for 'slander,' and that's where it ends. Being a volunteer is hardly an excuse for poor judgement, we're all adults that were trusted with the safety of this community despite this. There should be procedures put in place for these kinds of situations and in the instance that the team must evaluate its peers for the same reason. It's already wacky that the staff takes a hands off approach, consciously refraining from even *reporting* pedophile incidents to [the correct] officials. I ask that mods who joined/are joining after this incident to keep incidents like this in mind moving forward. It's one of the biggest impacts that could be made to this community. Don't let go of your sense of duty/altruism you have for the community. It's the reason why most of you join and continue as a part of the team. Having been in direct association with a pedophile in the early stages of my time in TFM, I really wish he had been dealt with, especially publicly back then. My friends weren't so lucky. 4. Other: I really don't buy all this "being a moderator is difficult" bunk. No amount of mod criticism, mod pestering, mod slandering, or private harassment is even *exclusive* to being a moderator on this game. Nor should it be conducive to long-term stress or jaded feelings towards the community at large. There isn't a boss withholding a paycheck, the playerbase can't guillotine mods from their dissatisfaction. I can only imagine we screened against people who listed their anxiety and depression in their application for that reason. This can only imply – if not cruelly that the team must be void of mental illnesses altogether – that everyone from within can at least cope with wear and tear. The only difficulty I really had was sometimes meeting the demand in whispers, having time to enjoy the game outside of being a mod (the community never really minded), and finding time to come in despite my schedule after I began going back to college. But these just aren't... major stressors like people have been implying. None of us lose sleep over any of our responsibilities or endeavors on TFM. Mods have tools to cope. They use /silence to (hopefully) alert users that they are catching up on reports. We take well-needed breaks to cool off from any problematic individuals or to focus on other aspects of our lives. The whole idea of having peers is that they will fill in the gaps when you can't be around. Closing: In my time as a moderator, there was a decrease in player complaints about not being heard by players who don't [usually] misbehave. They simply want to be addressed properly, they don't want to be brushed off, they want to know what's going on, they want to believe that the moderation team isn't some form of prestige that deserves respect by virtue. I know the team is able to meet this demand because it isn't unreasonable, the community is not asking for too much. I know within this team there are very capable individuals that do care about the community, just don't know how to really go about it, aside from what we were trained to do (sanction). But I refuse to go around and defend *every* aspect of being a moderator, because that is not the sympathy that they deserve. The idea is to give off the image that the team has it all together and is entirely capable. But the situation has far surpassed this being an appropriate course of action. People who complain/criticize know that the team is only human, are only volunteers. But they want accountability for even volunteers with power in their community. They want honesty, not the pristine caricature of what the team portrays itself as. And they don't quite know how to communicate this without pointing fingers at the team and prattling about what they *think* is wrong without getting to the root (see: inactive mods), or advocating for their own promotion. It's time to figure out what needs to be done. It's time to start asking "why," time to start criticizing your peers despite being good friends. The energy you put forth into this could very well help revitalize the community. Thank you! ♥ Dernière modification le 1580269860000 |
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Tribu| Elseweril 1580422440000
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| [Modéré par Calysis, raison : Please like the post you agree with if you have no further input of your own!] |
Elseweril| Elseweril 1580448480000
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| [Modéré par Link, raison : Please only post feedback in this thread. If you would like to show that you support someone else’s feedback, use the like button.] |
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| The staff as a whole, is just a big mass of confusion. Some of them are people who log in from time to time to help, while others barely give any attention. I'm not going to mention names, since its understandable, but when a person volunteers, then they are telling straight up, "yes I want to help make the community better. yes I will be active". For all those years, there were barely seen staff members until some others joined(and also took part in the EN/E2 moderation), but then these people have left long ago for reasons. I understand if its a life reason, but does that occur the whole year? Has it been a "life reason" since the very beginning of the game? I've seen smaller community mods being active far more than EN/E2's and they are just about the same age. Most of Etoile's words are correct too. It's quite rare to see a staff member tell the truth, that's been around for years and had to be accepted by them as well. Yes I know that their work is hard due to people who spam. But they aren't required to be 24/7 there. Just 1 or 2 hours at max given for a day, brings lots of help to the community. The irony in this is, the mapcrew were more active than the mods. They got a different task, but they are trying to pick the best map for each category. Or at least have the smaller communities help too.. ↑Not continuing this, since they should know the decision taken year or 2 ago. The only thing i'm happy about the EN/E2 staff(outside game moderation), are the sentinels doing their work. But in-game mods, need to look over new ways to help the community and gain their trust back, since the reliability has been lost in the deep dark corner. Dernière modification le 1580540280000 |
| Lefly 1580546040000
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| [Modéré par Charlen, raison : Spam/unnecessary.] |
Lefly| King 1580552340000
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| [Modéré par Batt_mellamy, raison : As stated in the rules of this thread, please do not call out specific staff members.] |
Roflzor  « Censeur » 1580570220000
| 13 | ||
Alexa172001 a dit : Alexa, hi. What you said is incorrect. The community does not know a single thing about anything and, surprisely, new mods do not know a single thing about anything, either. :( Please, before I begin, Either you people read my replies the way I wrote it for you to read it, either you read it the way you WANNA read it. I have never said I became a mod to get paid. People complain every other day about the same things as if it's mods entire fault. This is a reason why new mods work their b000tts off and end up desmotivated, while old mods don't give a D&!M anymore. The old mods are well aware nothing is gonna change without an admin at the scene working really hard. As you may see... 100 years after I have left and TFM has changed absolutly nothing. A thread like this happens at least twince a year and I can tell you this thread is nothing but the mods begging for the community help once again, while at the same time they try to please you by letting you participate with your opinions about them, and they also try to explain you the real situation between the lines. You don't see an old tired mod here, do you? They are inactive and you should NOT blame them for that. They have gone thru A LOT before they figured real things out. But, active or inactive mods, I tell you: Every help counts. Either its once a year or every week. BUT... IF the point here is to have a 100% active staff, then its time to fire all of them and not feel bad about it. Cause if you want activity and they are inactive, so its logical that they must leave. There will always be a new mod to be fooled. And someday game dies. So maybe the strategy should change! Admins could work on bringing old players BACK! And old mods back! But how? Well... bring them back by offering them something to comeback. Community's love? Team work? I'm sure its kinda late at this point. And THAT'S WHY I said TFM may work better if people get paid somehow, 'cause doing the job FOR LOVE is something temporary. PAYMENT CAN BE a solution for the moment. Of course we know they cant get paid with money. But they can get: cheese, or free strawberries, maybe free fur, or free access to the shop while they are mods, or even early release of new items. Who knows? Cmon admins, be CREATIVE! Compensate your team! Motivate your team! There are tons of things to be done!!! So about the part you say people join moderation team to get paid, this is the part where you've read things the way you wanted and not the way I wrote it. Or maybe I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. Moderation is a volunteer job and we know it does not offer payment. What I'm trying to prove here (again and again) is that once you are a mod everything seems sooooo exciting for a while, but its too hard to keep things going this way, 'cause people and staff itself are too negative. Time shows mods there is no way they can make things better. There will always be ZERO recognization, ZERO time to enjoy the game, ZERO compensation and ZERO solutions for a better place and a better platform. A mod bans a hack and the hack logs in with a new account and a new hack within 2 minutes. There will be days a hacker will give up. But most of the time, its the mods who give up that boring and annoying work. Volunteer jobs around the world mostly give you some type of compensation, even if its your 'own compensation' that makes you feel you have been doing that to make yourself feel better, know what I mean? Humans can take pressure for many things! Humans take pressure at work cause you pay rent and need to eat. Humans take pressure at home cause they love their family above all. But pressure in here??? There is a classic time when a mod thinks: "CMONNNN ITS A MICE GAME! WHY DO I CARE SO MUCH?" :D Think with me, Alexai: COMMUNITY PRESSURE everyday. YOUR OWN MOD TEAM pressure and the tons of hypocrisy that comes with them!!! In TFM we moderate the game from Monday to Saturday. On a lovely Sunday we wake up and we feel like PLAYING THE GAME eith an old buddy, but once we go for it, there is your own team crying for an admin and the rest of the teams that YOU ARE ONLINE, BUT YOU ARE NOT DOING YOUR JOB!!!!!!!!!! I mean cmon?! And the saddest part is that most of the time admins and teams pay attention to that and forget about the HUGE FACT that the person that is complaining about your lack of work hasn't even been online the entired week!!! And them you all start argueing and there comes the stress! I mean s e r i o u s l y, you have no idea :) Better hide in another account or just quit it. So, I believe the SOLUTION for TFM is to hire REAL STAFF with real salaries, or offer volunteers some other kind of payment for the time they work! Cause this volunteer kind of work isn't working anymore the way it is. Hope you get it now. Alexa172001 a dit : Yeaaah :) I used to like it for a while, too :) It is fun at the beggining! It really is! So let's not be hypocrits here, ok? Lets talk about the moderation in a REALIST FORM. In advance, I don't feel like reading after-quotes of people telling me I used to like being a mod for the power of entertainment. It is the power of entertainment that keeps us going and we LIKE IT! Or what ELSE do people wanna be a mod for? ;) Banning hackers 24/7...? WE KNOW THEY DON'T. Writing special "bye bye pink messages" to the hackers we used to ban gives us some laugh. :) Playing music at crowded rooms, ooohhh thats sooo good... :) oh no wait... this function got removed for another silly reason - admins to blame. or maybe people were having too much fun and the community was full of flying mice... who knows why? "MODS FAULT-MODS FAULT-MODS FAULT!" Playing the room's favorite maps were awesome, too! There was a new map going on and mice were spamming the code for you to play it cause they wanna play that map and everybody's happy!!! Oh no, wait... that's mod abusive behavior!!! Let's remove this command, too. Like I said everything is soooooo negative in the moderation that you lose the feeling after a while!!! Banning hackers and keeping the comunity clean 24/7 IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT. You are not a machine!!! You wanna have fun, too. You wanna be with the comunity and feel love. You wanna give love. WE KNOW IT. This speech of "I wanna help banning the bad guys!!!" does not get you into the moderation these days; you better be honest and say you wanna help, YES, but you also wanna be active and entertain the community on the weekends cause thats what keeps a game going! Even Tigrounette only logs in to troll and fill the game with fun enigmas. Everybody loves an entertainment! Actors don't act just for the job of acting. They all wanna be famous in Hollywood and get good things out of it! ;) Some of them get depression, dont they? The difference between Hollywood and TFM os that if you feel sad or depressed at TFM you CAN quit! The job could be very enjoyable if people could respect mods' space and rights to wanna be a player from time to time. Mods would be way more active if they could work for an hour knowing that people would be expecting a good part at room 1-3 at night! ;D I mean, it's a game. I used to looooooove being able to play music for the mice in a crowded room and dance with them while chatting with them and answering to their questions. Alexa172001 a dit : Thank you very much for saying that. You are very kind. |
Error_404  « Consul » 1580571420000
| 11 | ||
| Omg, @Roflzor you don't have to be that sarcastic towards other opinions. Regardless, I haven't said anything about the staff team because as much as I want to believe that they are willing to change or capable to do so. They can't. True they removed inactive mods who obviously went on their main accounts and complained about the people who encouraged the idea of kicking moderators who are inactive in this topic. Call me judgemental but that was childish. But in an actual work place whether it is voluntary work or paid work. You get warned about being absent for a certain amount of time. Well anyhow, basically players who reported others nowadays are mostly cafe users who usually get ignored or brushed off and counted as a "useless" report to deal with which encourages the players to hate the staff. The staff would either help and delete a post or a topic OR they would just give the speech: "Cafe topics can be remade easily, that is why it is useless to deal with such issues" and on the other hand we have hackers and bug abusers who get reported and banned but they come back again because the admins are incapable of making a secure banning system. If you ask me this whole thing happened because the mods are doing the same thing over and over as said above. They clear one problem but multiple problems comes up after that one problem. It is like coding when you code a script and run it you get a bug. You will fix that bug, but 5 other bugs appears on your next run. To put it in one simple point, The admins are the ones who should work on their game and making it secure and safe for the staff to be able to do their work correctly. The current banning system is a joke never been updated for ages now, and the report system. It is been the same old thing for ages now. The only way to fix these problems starts from the core of it all. But certainly the admins are super busy making new shop items and furs in order to secure that dollar. But hey, it is quite a paradox they are stuck in. They need to provide time to help the game but it is a hopeless case at this point if they are only milking the game for the money. Instead of quality game. Both the staff and the admins are on fault here, they need to start working from the bottom - up. |
| Roflzor « Censeur » 1580573100000
| 6 | ||
Error_404 a dit : I am not being sarcastic. I am being realistic! People can't say that everybody knows what they are doing, cause they really don't. Only an old mod knows what the moderation is. And you can't really believe people wanna moderate only to keep the bad guys out. Everybody knows mods also enjoy being able to entertain the community. Speaking about that! Did you know that taking the music command out was one of the main reasons why half of the brazilian moderation team became inactive? Being able to play music for the mice was smth REALLY FUN and everybody loved it!!! Staff and players. It was a priviledge mods had. And everybody wanted to be a mod to be able to play music, c'mon, it was fun after a whole hack day! :P I bet some of the old mods would comeback if they could play music again. Is that an idea I'm giving ya? :D Error_404 a dit : Very well said. I agree. Dernière modification le 1580573460000 |
| Alexa172001 1580576100000
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| [Modéré par Link, raison : Please only post in this thread if you are sharing constructive feedback.] Dernière modification le 1580576520000 |
| Anythin 1580579520000
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| [Modéré par Link, raison : Please only post in this thread if you are sharing constructive feedback.] |
| Alexa172001 1580582040000
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| [Modéré par Link, raison : Please only post in this thread if you are sharing constructive feedback.] Dernière modification le 1580582100000 |
| Anythin 1580585220000
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| [Modéré par Link, raison : Please only post in this thread if you are sharing constructive feedback.] |
| Roflzor 1580588940000
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| [Modéré par Link, raison : Please only post in this thread if you are sharing constructive feedback.] Dernière modification le 1580589180000 |
| Etoile « Citoyen » 1580606820000
| 13 | ||
But all the same, you can voluntarily leave the team once you've gotten your feet wet (or *any time* for that matter) if it's not what you're into. It goes both ways. And you've never held a hobby if you believe passion or compassion eventually dies out. It just means your initial convictions were never strong in the first place, or you refuse to supplement them. I'm not some saint for saying I have leftover energy and passion for TFM despite all that I've been through, I just don't commit to causes for the hell of it. a dit : People are here to make constructive criticisms and suggestions for the moderators to hopefully better them and their community, not coddle you. And speaking of, I can agree on something: 5. Fun[corp]! There's not much new about the call for moderators to be "more fun," so I'd like to formally take these observations a step further in this thread. I've no idea the origins of Funcorp, I hadn't been a moderator in that era. But they seem to be a return to the "fun" nature of TFM when mods were able to play music and chill out (which I disagree is the sole solution to making TFM more fun, as people play music while they play TFM already). Now there's an implication in how Funcorp powers must be opted into, rather than an automatic privilege. It further represents the optional nature of interacting with the community. Something like this is definitely worth looking into. Dernière modification le 1580618100000 |
| Elseweril « Citoyen » 1580618400000
| 6 | ||
| Roflzar, your rant seemed a bit over the top or I shall say, overly exaggerated. I can guarantee that there is no one who applies and “does not know a thing about anything“. You may not know what you don’t know, but I’m sure you must have a pretty good idea of what it is and what to expect to know if the position is compatible for you or not. Regardless, everything ties back to what Etoile said: there needs to be more communication and interaction from staffs to the community. Otherwise, don’t just expect the community to empathize and know everything if 90% of the things the team does is behind the scene. Don’t whine or throw in pity parties when the community questions back. After all, this isn’t some communist daycare center, it’s just a mouse game with barely 300 players daily on En/En2 combined. If reading reports from a community as small as this still gets you depressed, god please, help yourself first before trying to help a whole community. Also with the unlimited space for mods, I don’t think it would look as good for the team to have 50+ yellows names and still fail to deliver the help needed for a community of just around 300 players. Something to think about.. Dernière modification le 1580666280000 |
Retrouvaille  « Citoyen » 1580644560000
| 4 | ||
| Honestly, can't wait to see an Admin feedback, that will definetly be fun. About moderation I agree with Roftlzor. Mods have seen so many things that were both innocent and unharmful just because mods have to simply moderate. Honestly, if long time ago I wanted to be a part of the staff, I cannot care less now, I'd rather play from time to time having fun with friends rather than being a ban machine. As Funcorp has been mentioned, I'll trow my say, filler position for friends that did not make the cut into Moderation to give them a coloured name, I've barely seen 1 funcorp room open every other day. IF ANY! |
| Roflzor 1580695560000
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| [Modéré par Link, raison : Please only post in this thread if you are sharing constructive feedback.] |
Bobbyxsoxer  « Consul » 1580699880000
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Elseweril a dit : I did not see your original comment, but if it was to just to agree with another person then there is no need to add another comment. Personally I think the senti's/mod-senti's do an excellent job at moderating the forums - especially this thread there's a lot of "drama" and non-staff feedback conversation happening which is a shame because as entertaining it is to read it really floods up the thread (this also applies to any other threads). It just may be me who shares this opinion, but for threads such as these where it's feedback specifically for staff I only want to see just that - the feedback - not any drama or players arguing with each other. (Good job senti's/modo-senti's keep up the good work!) |