Townhall meeting this weekend!

[popecrunch]

Hello guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, it's time for a town-hall meeting!  The meeting is  tentatively scheduled for this coming sunday, the 29th, at noon EST.  If you would like to suggest a different time, that's cool and good!  You can use this thread for that, or @ me on discord or whatever.

Please also use this thread to give us a heads-up on any questions that you want to make sure you get a comprehensive, well-researched answer to!  I'm of course going to be as honest and forthright as I can, but i mean, some stuff I just plain don't know off the top of my head.  If you can't make the townhall, feel free to also ask whatever in here and we'll answer them as we can.

NEW THREAD RULE: THIS THREAD IS ONLY TO BE USED FOR ASKING QUESTIONS YOU WANT TO BE ABSOLUTELY SURE GET A RESEARCHED ANSWER, OR FOR QUESTIONS YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE ARE ASKED IF YOU ARE NOT SURE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE IT TO THE TOWN HALL. POSTS THAT ARE LITERALLY ANYTHING OTHER THAN QUESTIONS FOR THE TOWN HALL WILL BE DELETED. DISCUSSION IS MORE THAN WELCOME IN ANY OTHER THREAD, JUST NOT THIS ONE.

[Camryn]

Can we expect complete honesty?

Separately, what level of transparency can we expect?

Will there be a short-cooldown slowmode in effect?

[Sov]

We’ve heard talk of changes, possibly significant changes, in how things at the administrative level are handled

As players we’ve never really had a lot of insight on how such things were being handled in the first place

Will there be details shared with us on how things were handled in the past, how they will handled going forward, and why such changes were deemed appropriate?

There’s also been talk of increased transparency. Is this transparency between the wizards and admin teams, transparency between administrative roles and players, or some combination of these? If the answer involves greater transparency with players what sort of topics should we be expecting to have a greater degree of transparency on?

[Adhara In Space]

im dumb so heres mine

what exactly is a wizard? what is their role? 

do they have more power than an admin in decisions about the server?

does their voice count for more in bans and complaints and appeals?

[UrsulaMejor]

How will the town hall be structured, and who will be moderating it to make sure people receive fair time to speak? From my experience with the community organized RP town hall, it got a little out of hand before we managed to self moderate taking turns, and that felt like it only worked because there were like 12 of us.

We have a week to plan out how we're going to do this, and I feel that town halls are an important, and valuable, enough exercise to justify taking some time laying down ground rules and expectations.

[Flourish]

I'm not sure which questions people are asking and want answered before the town hall, and which questions they're asking and want to see answered during the town hall. I'm gonna assume the latter unless it's really obvious, so please make it clear if it's former.

Can we expect complete honesty?

Separately, what level of transparency can we expect?

Will there be a short-cooldown slowmode in effect?

I can speak to your first two questions on a personal level, in which my answers are yes, to the best of my ability, and very high transparency. And I think we were thinking about a slowmode, yeah.

Will there be details shared with us on how things were handled in the past, how they will handled going forward, and why such changes were deemed appropriate?

Yes.

How will the town hall be structured, and who will be moderating it to make sure people receive fair time to speak? From my experience with the community organized RP town hall, it got a little out of hand before we managed to self moderate taking turns, and that felt like it only worked because there were like 12 of us.

I think we'll probably have a special channel with a specific Discord role that allows people to talk in there. Questions will probably be asked one at a time (maybe one per person? follow-ups might be okay though), maybe we'll have a queue or something. Specifics aren't totally ironed out yet, though, so things might change. In terms of moderation, there will be certain ground rules that will be enforced. I'll be there, Pope will be there, a bunch of other admins will also be there.

[Sov]

I have another question actually

Is the town hall planned to be a one-off or is this something we should be expecting to see more of going forward, such as a once a quarter style of update. Naturally people will come up with additional questions as they gather more information, and as time goes on other topics may arise that players and administrators may wish to discuss in a more formalized setting.

That said running a town hall requires time, effort, and organization. I don’t want to burden the staff or on the flip side host so many town halls that people start to write them off.

[Podrick Equus]

Will any of the guidelines that wizards/coders/admins have to follow be made public?

Also, I personally wouldn't be able to make the town hall if it's on Sunday, but don't change it just because of me.

[popecrunch]

The intent is to be as transparent as possible (the only exceptions are for like, secret game stuff we might not wanna talk about like game features or puzzles, and anything touching personal information) and answer as completely as we're able. If we can't answer something, we'll at least tell you WHY we can't.

I'd like to EITHER have town halls every so often, OR some way for players to submit questions and have a reasonable expectation of getting an answer that's coherent, fairly complete, and represents Goonstation As A Unit instead of 'the opinion of whatever admin you happened to be talking to'. Maybe both, who knows.

Slowmode is a definite maybe, like. on the one hand I have no interest in stifling discussion, but I also want to make sure it's actually possible to keep up with questions so that nobody gets ignored. there are a couple different ways to approach it, we ain't 100% settled on how to do it yet.

My intent is for all the guidelines / etc that apply to staff to be public unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise, and I ain't heard one yet.

[MarkNstein]

My questions are "for the townhall". Like a pre-answered F.A.Q. if you will (as I mentioned to Flourish on Discord).

• What the heck are all these roles? Wizard / Rancid / Coder Classic / Coder / Admin / Cute / food / just a great human wow / shelterfrog's best friend / etc / 
  
• Are there "secret" wizards? I vaguely remember that wizards have the option of revealing their wizardhood. (That may have been a long time ago)
  
• What are the levels of "being the public face of Goon" with respect to the hierarchy? Players obviously the least accountable, but are HoS meant to keep their out of game social interactions in mind? Mentors, secondary/primary admins, wizards, etc.
  

• Wizards were said to "set the direction, tone" of the game / community. What *IS* that direction currently? 
  
• Mentors have (lenient? meaningless?) quotas, does the rest of the hierarchy? If not quotas, expectations?
  

Also, on a more meta level, I'm a big fan of Wikis. Shall I or someone codify this and anything similar in a "Goon Social Structure" page? Name T.B.D.

[DyssalC]

Are we going to get an explanation as to what lead up to the recent occurrences? In Maid's news post on the discord they described the lead-up to what happened as "a lot of small, cascading failures of ourselves and our systems." It might be uncomfortable to touch on but ultimately these cascading failures need to be addressed, and I think, in the name of all this speak of transparency, the community should be able to know what happened. It certainly hasn't helped that the response from the admin team, ex and current members, has been incredibly mixed in regards to who did what and why, and I think it has created a lot of confusion around the matter. I think that to quell this confusion the admin team needs to give a clear and reasonably detailed statement of the events and their stance on them.

[Flourish]

Are we going to get an explanation as to what lead up to the recent occurrences? In Maid's news post on the discord they described the lead-up to what happened as "a lot of small, cascading failures of ourselves and our systems." It might be uncomfortable to touch on but ultimately these cascading failures need to be addressed, and I think, in the name of all this speak of transparency, the community should be able to know what happened. It certainly hasn't helped that the response from the admin team, ex and current members, has been incredibly mixed in regards to who did what and why, and I think it has created a lot of confusion around the matter. I think that to quell this confusion the admin team needs to give a clear and reasonably detailed statement of the events and their stance on them.

Yep, we will give everyone a clear and reasonably detailed explanation of what led up to recent events. I agree that our response so far has been very mixed and tentative, and you all definitely deserve something more substantial. I know there's been a lot of speculation as well, so we'd definitely like to address everyone's concerns.

[FishDance]

There seems to be a relatively large divide about the direction which the game is trying to head towards, and there has been for a very long time. Coders have always been empowered to work on passion projects, which in my eyes is definitely a good thing, but leads to a lot of disagreements not just within the community, but even among the wizard/coder/admin groups alone. Often times things will require "the permission of the wizards," but from personal experience all that really means is messaging one coder/wizard that you know and asking them if you can put a thing in the game, and chances are if you've clout with them they'll make it happen for you. The admin team is so decentralized that the decisions of one wizard can have large overbearing impacts on the game, even if not a single other person on the team has heard of the thing being added.

Furthermore, features and additions to the game itself frequently have disputes and backlash by different parts of the community, and it feels as though literally no-one at all is ever on the same page. New people come in, old people leave, old people re-enter and the tone and direction of the game is constantly up int he air in this turbulent state. Sometimes the focus is on mostly RP and player interaction, sometimes the focus is on admin gimmick rounds every other shift. Sometimes the focus is on weird PvP power balance. While it's perfectly alright, and honestly encouraged to work on all parts of this multifaceted game, it genuinely needs an agreed upon direction that is not just decided by the wizard team, or what the coders feel like making today, or what the players want to play, but a mix of all three. This should be something explicit that isn't too limiting, which details what kind of experience a player is supposed to have playing this game, and how they can expect it to evolce going forward.

As an aside, there's been a much higher instance of "Goon-Drama" in recent time. "Oh jeez somebody leaked the code again, better counter leak that right away" should not be something that comes up this frequently. The feuding of many subgroups within goon management has been more vocal than usual in the recent years, and although censoring of these quarrels means that you only get to hear about it if you're in the loop, that doesn't mean that it's good for the game.

Finally, kinda harping on what DyssalC said earlier, Maid's post in the News section of the goon discord talks about three things, Cirr leaving, Zamujasa being removed, (both of which are given plenty of time and verbiage, with little to no detail about what actually happened), and then glosses over the fact that 10, TEN of the pillars of the goon community have left. These are not small names either, Haine, Spyguy, fukken Wonk himself? We're gonna talk about what a bummer it is that someone like Cirr leaked and left, and then we're just gonna send off these people who literally shaped and molded this game for years by just saying "Oh they're off the team for now."

Goon needs a lot of things. It needs a mission statement that the wizards/coders/admins/players can use to know what direction the game is going to be built in. It probably needs an administrative structural overhaul that makes it easier for people to be on the same page. What it needs more than any of that is a LOT more transparency about admin drama, updates, and general goings-on, because unless you know where to look, the community only ever hears the fallout of these events, and doesn't have any impact at all on them. Without trying to be rude, I don't think goon is going to do most, if any of that, and now with almost all of the old guard gone, old-goon is no longer on life support, and is just genuinely dead. Good luck with new-goon, don't ruin it too much, I loved this game once.

[bubs]

Fishdance we didnt tell you why they left cause it's their business. If they chose not to tell you and you're curious, maybe you should PM them and ask. (Quick edit: we might change this and end up telling you all about it, personally I'm in favor of the honesty)

You're also saying that you dont think were gonna take steps to improve or be transparent in the thread where were talking about the steps we're taking towards exactly that, but I am interested to hear your opinion about what has changed so much between "old goon" and now, and why its worse

[FishDance]

Fishdance we didnt tell you why they left cause it's their business. If they chose not to tell you and you're curious, maybe you should PM them and ask. (Quick edit: we might change this and end up telling you all about it, personally I'm in favor of the honesty)

I mean, that's a perfectly valid way to put it right here. I personally know why at least some of these people left because I am in contact with 'em. If they don't want to publicize why they left then that's more than fair, but that should be noted, rather than just saying "X is gone now" with no further information, as in the announcement.