Optional Realities & Project Redshift
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@Gingerlily said:
Anyway, carry on with your thing here.
You saw that, people. @Gingerlily is telling me to keep posting about booze!
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The pics behind spoiler tags might be nice. Graphics seem to screw up the 'go to last unread post' thing.
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I was once briefly paid to ts people on a pay-to-play sex MU, but it didn't last.
I think the 'customer service' model is just a common way of looking at it. I've certainly heard it talked about, plenty of times, and recommended. I think it's rubbish and that we've mostly left it behind here, but I dunno, there still might be some games with staff and players here where on game new staff get the customer-service paradigm lecture.
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Re: the 'customer service model' article, I... have to admit I'm in agreement with a lot of folks here.
While I don't agree with the principle 100% myself, I have zero compunction swearing in news files and vastly prefer plain and direct language especially in policy files, so I am not likely the best example. (There are concrete reasons for that, some which stem from the idea of 'too much polite and delicate wording often dances around the point and sets up a false expectation that you can treat staff like customer service personnel -- which means 'abuse at will to a lot of people -- and it's all right to do that'. Well, it's not.)
People reasonably disagree on that, however, and different things work for different folks.
There is, however, one bit of advice in there that is a recipe for unmitigated disaster. It's this bit:
Business: I am very sorry to hear that you were treated like that by Jim, and I absolutely understand why you would be frustrated. Here is how weâre going to handle the situation: I am going to comp your meal, give you a coupon for the next time you eat with us, and weâll be discussing the issue with Jim to make sure this doesnât happen again in the future. Does that work for you?
The example of the 'explanation' behavior is fine. What's being explained? Oh, such a bad idea.
I want everyone to imagine what would happen if a staff member let an XP/spend go a day or so too long, and when a player complained about this, they were given the advance for free and a discount on their next one -- or similar.
You would have a nightmare on your hands. The chill that just crawled down your spine was dead on.
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It's been said before, and so far agreed upon by those not part of the Optional Realities administration, that of the three OR representatives posting here, there are three different ideologies about what their board is about. I will admit that Crayon and Jaunt's ideas are closest, but Jeshin is in charge of OR. Miscommunication is not just happening here, but it looks like it's also happening within the OR boards.
I've lived through this exact situation through too many games. I become bitter and old when I see people unaware to the point of creating a monster. A lot of you will see this as "almost every game ever created". Video games manage to get made, yet we--supposed adults--can't even manage to see drawbacks without taking it personally?
I work in an industry where real theft of property exists, and the people who are responsible for the losses manage to both take it personally and not let it affect them too much. It stresses them out, sure, but they have a job to do. They agreed upon it when they took the job.
I may not agree with @Jeshin's approach, but he's shown himself to be this kind of person. Jesh, you may be frustrated by the posts here, but even those who disagree with you have said they respect you that much. We, they, are willing to give you as much time as you want or need to do what you think is right, but for chrissakes, listen to @Ninjakitten, listen to @il-volpe. Ignore the rest of the anticonformist bullshit, even from your own people (unless you're looking for reviews about wine, I guess). These two are trying to explain what the rest of this thread has been about. That they are willing is a godsend. You are willing, too. Have the willing minds meet.
Ignore the rest.
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Be fair, @Thenomain. I started by trying to explain why their approach wasn't working too. I just got bored of them waiting their turn to talk so they could repeat their stance interminably without even once showing signs of having taken in what was said.
And when I get bored, I prod hornets' nests.
These ones:
The kind that melt holes like this into your flesh when they sting:
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It's interesting that you would use that particular hornet, since when they invade a nest of bees the bees swarm around them and all bat their wings furiously until the temperature around the invader rises so high it basically cooks it to death.
Kind of like how some of us here did.
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Remember Big Bad.
âIf you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.â
â Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@Thenomain said:
Remember Big Bad.
He's back, I think. At least his permabern identity appears to have resurfaced. Didn't seem to make much of a splash, either way.
Pretty refreshing, really.
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@Thenomain said:
Remember Big Bad.
Doesn't quite have the ring of "Remember the Alamo", but it'll do.
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Hey,
I have been following this thread. I did let both @Jaunt and @Crayon off the promotional lingo line. I did refrain from censoring anything they said (I have a thing about censorship) and I did it because of two reasons.
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This board appears to have a culture where gloves off discussion has to take place between an understanding can be made. I was telling another staffer from another game that flash in the pan OOC bitching about IC events is generally healthy. It vents steam and most people get over it pretty quick. In the same vein I decided that allowing my staff to speak openly and freely on a personal level would lead to (hopefully) a progression of the discussion to a new place we could continue on from.
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We have been discussing OR and how it works as a community a lot and since Musoapbox (out of all other communities) has been the greatest contributor to message clarification and introspection. I figured if we had to have a messy muddy possibly brand damaging thread this would be the most productive place to do it.
Bonus 3 - I was dealing with real life stuff and trust both my staff which I think paid off? I feel like the general vibe is improving.
PS - Hopefully by this weekend I'll have something substantial to share from an OR changes or clarification standpoint.
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@surreality said:
Re: the 'customer service model' article, I... have to admit I'm in agreement with a lot of folks here.
While I don't agree with the principle 100% myself, I have zero compunction swearing in news files and vastly prefer plain and direct language especially in policy files, so I am not likely the best example. (There are concrete reasons for that, some which stem from the idea of 'too much polite and delicate wording often dances around the point and sets up a false expectation that you can treat staff like customer service personnel -- which means 'abuse at will to a lot of people -- and it's all right to do that'. Well, it's not.)
People reasonably disagree on that, however, and different things work for different folks.
There is, however, one bit of advice in there that is a recipe for unmitigated disaster. It's this bit:
Business: I am very sorry to hear that you were treated like that by Jim, and I absolutely understand why you would be frustrated. Here is how weâre going to handle the situation: I am going to comp your meal, give you a coupon for the next time you eat with us, and weâll be discussing the issue with Jim to make sure this doesnât happen again in the future. Does that work for you?
The example of the 'explanation' behavior is fine. What's being explained? Oh, such a bad idea.
I want everyone to imagine what would happen if a staff member let an XP/spend go a day or so too long, and when a player complained about this, they were given the advance for free and a discount on their next one -- or similar.
You would have a nightmare on your hands. The chill that just crawled down your spine was dead on.
Taking a customer service approach as an administrator does not mean giving complainers free things. It means listening to their complaints, considering their intentions and motivations, letting them know that you've heard them and understand what they are saying, and then telling them what will be done in response; sometimes, what will be done in response is going to be, "Nothing, and here's why." It doesn't mean having to compromise your policies or design decisions.
That said, the article and conversations referred to in regards to customer service on OR are most definitely not a prerequisite or official stance. There is no official stance. We'd be just as happy to publish an article or engage in a conversation promoting the "players are guests in my web-space" approach that @il-volpe indicated is their approach.
Articles and conversations on OR promote specific administrators' or players' ideas for the purpose of discussion, but aren't held as universal gospel. Some articles are more editorialized than others.
@il-volpe said:
So do it. The amount of time it takes to replace...
As @Thenomain suggested, there needs to be a consensus about our language re-branding before we implement an improved mission statement. It shouldn't be an arbitrary change, or a knee jerk reaction, or a change that satisfies one administrator's ideas and not others. Once we reach consensus, it'll be changed. Since OR's been doing well for itself for the few months that it's been around, I think it'll be okay to last a few more days until that consensus is reached.
@il-volpe said:
Writing articles for OR does none of these for me. The earlier response about how we could submit articles, but nobody'd asked, seemed to me to imply that you folks think we ought to be honoured to.
I think that you're being over-sensitive in continually assuming that we're out to look down on you. We're not.
You suggested that it wasn't fair-minded that only members of games that are part of our "connections" can submit articles. I told you that anyone can submit an article if they want to, including folks from this site. Nothing more. We created OR out of the same sense of volunteer passion that we create our games with. We let folks who are passionate about specific design ideas submit articles to us if they'd like to.
This idea that their submission is slave-work, but that your volunteerism towards your game isn't because you're passionate about your work is inconsistent ideology, and that's what I'm getting at. I hope that makes sense to you.
We've listened. We've discussed. We've responded. We've even implemented changes, and are planning to implement more changes, in response to some of the feedback we've received from this site. Your continual repeating of the words, "They've not shown any signs of trying to understand what's being said" doesn't make it more true.
@Derp said:
It's interesting that you would use that particular hornet, since when they invade a nest of bees the bees swarm around them and all bat their wings furiously until the temperature around the invader rises so high it basically cooks it to death.
Kind of like how some of us here did.
Your analogy uses 'us vs them' terminology that I think is pretty unfortunate. We're not invaders. We're advertisers. You've not cooked us to death. You've, collectively, just presented us with a number of arguments and thoughts, some intelligent and helpful, and some obnoxious and overly aggressive. We've responded in kind.
Don't take my lack of responses over the next couple of days as a sign that I'm unwilling to continue to engage in dialogue, whether it's amiable or trolling. I'm just busy. I'll get back to you.
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@Jaunt said:
We're not invaders. We're advertisers.
I don't understand. "We're not invaders. We're invaders." What are you trying to say here?
Don't take my lack of responses over the next couple of days as a sign that I'm unwilling to continue to engage in dialogue, whether it's amiable or trolling. I'm just busy. I'll get back to you.
Well, at least it'll give me time to restock on my booze after your whole "I'm only here for my amusement" round emptied my cabinet. Talking of whichâŚ
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I've talked about cassia wine before, but I thought I'd share the other brand of it I've got. As with grape wines, each cassia wine has its own distinctive flavour. It may not be quite as diverse a field as grape wines, but it's still enough that I'm going to have to slowly work my way through several wineries' outputs.
It has a lovely (to my eyes, at any rate) colour:
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It is officially a chore to open this thread due to the images.
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@Jaunt said:
@surreality said:
Re: the 'customer service model' article, I... have to admit I'm in agreement with a lot of folks here.
While I don't agree with the principle 100% myself, I have zero compunction swearing in news files and vastly prefer plain and direct language especially in policy files, so I am not likely the best example. (There are concrete reasons for that, some which stem from the idea of 'too much polite and delicate wording often dances around the point and sets up a false expectation that you can treat staff like customer service personnel -- which means 'abuse at will to a lot of people -- and it's all right to do that'. Well, it's not.)
People reasonably disagree on that, however, and different things work for different folks.
There is, however, one bit of advice in there that is a recipe for unmitigated disaster. It's this bit:
Business: I am very sorry to hear that you were treated like that by Jim, and I absolutely understand why you would be frustrated. Here is how weâre going to handle the situation: I am going to comp your meal, give you a coupon for the next time you eat with us, and weâll be discussing the issue with Jim to make sure this doesnât happen again in the future. Does that work for you?
The example of the 'explanation' behavior is fine. What's being explained? Oh, such a bad idea.
I want everyone to imagine what would happen if a staff member let an XP/spend go a day or so too long, and when a player complained about this, they were given the advance for free and a discount on their next one -- or similar.
You would have a nightmare on your hands. The chill that just crawled down your spine was dead on.
Taking a customer service approach as an administrator does not mean giving complainers free things. It means listening to their complaints, considering their intentions and motivations, letting them know that you've heard them and understand what they are saying, and then telling them what will be done in response; sometimes, what will be done in response is going to be, "Nothing, and here's why." It doesn't mean having to compromise your policies or design decisions.
It's essentially a case of 'this was a bad example to use', since extrapolating it directly does go there. It's something a newbie admin may not realize can cause a problem if they're following the guidance there more explicitly.
People do ask for things like this, too! "Bob offended me, so I want <tangible game-related thing> as an apology!" -- which can set up a supremely bad precedent if someone doesn't think it through, which isn't always the first impulse (especially of a less experienced admin) in the midst of being screamed at.
If a game is working on a pay-for-play model, "I'm sorry that happened, we can comp you a week," may be more reasonable, but that's an important distinction and doesn't factor into game play in the same fashion.
(In part, you can also chalk my noticing this example at all up to just having written files about it being unacceptable for anyone to sling abusive crap at anyone -- including staff -- under the misconception that their job is to take abuse. That isn't actually the job of a customer service rep, either, but it's what the culture has evolved to think is acceptable behavior. It's really not, not even a little.)
That said, the article and conversations referred to in regards to customer service on OR are most definitely not a prerequisite or official stance. There is no official stance. We'd be just as happy to publish an article or engage in a conversation promoting the "players are guests in my web-space" approach that @il-volpe indicated is their approach.
The 'these are independent views not representative of the site' factor is clear enough; you don't need to stress out on that point. It's pretty much the same way here.
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@Jeshin said:
I did refrain from censoring anything they said (I have a thing about censorship) and I did it because of two reasons.
- This board appears to have a culture where gloves off discussion has to take place between an understanding can be made.
I think we have gone beyond "gloves-off discussion". I think we have been past this for a few hundred posts. I believe we have been past the "nuh-uh/yuh-huh" stalemate for a while as well. This is barely more than bullshit for the sake of bullshit. One of your cohorts came here specifically to stir things up under the guise of helping. That's not "gloves-off". That's trolling.
In the same vein I decided that allowing my staff to speak openly and freely on a personal level would lead to (hopefully) a progression of the discussion to a new place we could continue on from.
You'll have to ask @crayon specifically, but I think it made it worse, or changed it not one iota. It didn't seem to affect what he said here, which I don't think is a bad thing but I dunno.
Imagine if someone here went to OR and started bitching about your policy as though it was Soapbox. I don't want that person to be me, but at those times where I said I wouldn't post there, this is half of why. I would be the loud dissenter, the nay-sayer, creating antagonism and claim it's free-speech. It's something I can do pretty well. I imagine one of your administrators would think I am a "problem" that would need to be "dealt with", and if I was just being overly cautious before I think now have proof what OR would do with viewpoints they think need "handled".
- We have been discussing OR and how it works as a community a lot and since Musoapbox (out of all other communities) has been the greatest contributor to message clarification and introspection.
Awesome. Can your cohorts please stop calling us stupid, then? Kthx.
Bonus 3 - I was dealing with real life stuff and trust both my staff which I think paid off? I feel like the general vibe is improving.
Can you please give us a citation for that? I trust @crayon more because he was willing to talk instead of play forum-games. Well, I'll admit that he's always been willing to talk, but he was willing to say, "Look, posting here is a pain in the ass." There is telling people things and there is explaining your position, and this is an example of going from the former to the latter.
(Sorry to use you as the example, Crayon. I figure Jeshin needs examples that are close to home. Likewise, thank you for willing to be candid.)
Yeah, it kind of is a pain in the ass to post here. It doesn't have to be. A lot of Soapbox is what you expect it to be, the rest of it is what others want it to be. That's a pain in the ass but it's not difficult to change. I just don't see that it has.
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@Thenomain said:
I imagine one of your administrators would think I am a "problem" that would need to be "dealt with", and if I was just being overly cautious before I think now have proof what OR would do with viewpoints they think need "handled".
You imagine that, but it's not actually the case. This sort of conversation does exist on OR, and we're pretty light on censorship and shutting people down. It's really impossible to gather consensus in an online community, so disagreements about policy are inevitable.
Awesome. Can your cohorts please stop calling us stupid, then? Kthx.
You have to see the purposeful irony in this. I know that you do. I hope that you can also see that folks that have engaged me reasonably have been responded to reasonably. If people want to dish it out, they should be willing to take it, too.
I'd also say that the tone of this conversation has slowly been moving away from trolling towards more valuable dialogue -- on both sides. For what it's worth, I hope that continues. Rolling around with trolls here was fun for a day or two, but I'm largely past it now.
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@Jeshin said:
- We have been discussing OR and how it works as a community a lot and since Musoapbox (out of all other communities) has been the greatest contributor to message clarification and introspection. I figured if we had to have a messy muddy possibly brand damaging thread this would be the most productive place to do it.
We're weirdly... good for that.
While the tone can (and often is) pretty harsh around here, it's rarely ever for the simple sake of being harsh. Sometimes it is, but that really is pretty rare. On previous incarnations of the board it was a lot more common, but it's not typically the thrust of even the most heated arguments.
Arguments of varying degrees of civility usually happen because, in a nutshell, people give a crap and don't agree about something. I mean that's common sense, but it's pretty easy to lose sight of in the heat of things.
While it isn't necessarily fun, it's worth keeping the cause in mind. (The 'give a crap' part.) It isn't always easy to find people who do.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality said:
Arguments of varying degrees of civility usually happen because, in a nutshell, people give a crap and don't agree about something. I mean that's common sense, but it's pretty easy to lose sight of in the heat of things.
My experience in this community wrapped up in two simple sentences.
I miss Brus for things like this. Don't you miss Brus?
One of the phrases I've been hearing more and more, on forums and in the real world, has been "violently agreeing". This is a risk of giving too much of a crap. The other risk of giving too much of a crap is going too far.
Not that I know about any of this.
