Goonhub
05-27-2023, 11:20 AM
Just as a preface, I did not spend a lot of time writing this, I have not proofread it, there are most definitely some mistakes in here but I just want to get this out before I get burnt out completely, I know this isn’t in the usual format of admin feedback however this is the easiest way for me to express feedback I have for the Admin & Dev team.
Here are my ragtag band of sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lux0aYa0vV8i33MrA8Drdf9JRH2cl1OxP2aZ9f76Rh8/
From my short time on Goonstation I have come to see that there is an outlook that rears its head out from time to time and it pushes the community in bad directions. It feels like some admins take a strong standpoint on their views and how it should affect the servers, and this leads to ostracization of community members and pushes a further divide between players and admins to the point where people are scared to talk against admins for fear of being banned[ap.2](the names of people in conversations outside the Goonstation discord server will be censored to avoid any unnecessary drama). There was a discussion on the discord recently involving multiple community members and admins in which both sides aired their issues and during this, Curie posted ”it feels unnecessarily hostile and makes other players uncomfortable to speak up. it's not what was said but how it was said and it kinda goes beyond what Moberry themselves feel?” in regards to this comment[ap.3] and I feel that this encapsulates my point perfectly. After this discussion Moberry and Wolf Muddler were banned from the discord, I was told that Wolf was also permabanned from the servers too and with no public ban reason or appeal forums we as a community are forced to only take the banned parties word as when asking an admin we are told that its “Not their place to hand it out” and whilst this is understandable it leads to massive misunderstandings between the community and the admin team and causes more flak for the admin team than if they had public ban reasons. As it stands I see no downside to having public ban reasons, it forces proper documentation and creates a permanent standard of what is and isn’t rule breaking behaviour that anyone can browse.
The divide between RP and Classic leads to a rift within the community, not only when it comes to general conversation but it creeps into balance and PR discussion a lot also. This can be seen mainly on the forums where a majority of the discussions boil down to RP vs Classic and how an item/antag would have to be balanced for both and how admins don't want Classic or RP deviating too much from one another. And this mindset really hurts the chance for any major developments within the codebase. During my two years in the community the few changes or added content I can name off the top of my head is the Wraith rework, Nadir and Flock getting finished. I am not saying that the reason people don't merge things is because of RP, just that it is incredibly hard to balance things for two inherently different servers and that it hurts the contributors as it limits them on what they could add.
The severe lack of transparency hurts the community a lot. We are often the last to know about the developments and changes and are often just surprised with admin decisions and are usually left wondering what happened or what was decided on. Admins do not communicate enough with the playerbase, in regards to their decisions within PRs and bans. This lack of transparency harbours with it a distinct lack of accountability and responsibility. More often than not an admin can come into a round, run a gimmick that may or may not ruin the experience of the players without any say on the matter. Just because they are admins. Compensation for these ruined rounds are very varied depending on the admin. Some will reward antag tokens, others will not with some arbitrary hidden rule about having ‘unspent tokens’. Whenever an admin complaint is filed, and there are some with numerous, It feels like nothing is done. It exists for show, so that there’s the option to write up a post and perhaps an illusion of being able to speak up when admins aren’t behaving properly, yet still little to no action is taken as far as we are aware because we rarely get any kind of information or feedback on the forum posts from admins other than the one involved with the complaint. This lack of transparency extends even into the code where we can find the Secret module. This module contains code that normal coders cant access, this includes Ranch code and Salvager code to name a few. And from the outside it seems that this module is mostly used for dev projects that they either; don’t want being public, or aren’t finished yet. This only goes for active player-facing projects within the secret module as far as I know. I don't know what exactly is in there since I cannot access the folder. This secret folder, whilst it may be used for some server side code stuff, I don’t feel that it's a good place to hold dev projects. It leads to confusion and makes it harder for the community to come up with changes, new ideas or fixes for bugs and it undercuts the “open-source” label that Goonstation has.
The handling of rule breaks applies the same way too, instead of a uniform or standardisation of punishments, one admin might just warn you the other might ban you for a week. Sometimes warnings are issued for rule breaks and sometimes they aren't, I understand that this is dependent on both the player and the admin involved and it's not just solely influenced by how the admin is feeling on one particular day. However it is odd to see people being granted leniency for major rulebreaks and others being banned for much less.
PR posts are also a victim of lack of transparency. The community is very passionate about the game, I myself am and would like to contribute but when a PR is posted, there happens to be a lack of proper response from the admin team when it is reviewed. I’m sure you’ve seen suggestions that are backhanded with “confused emoji” or just “nah”[ap.4]. The given PR here is the throwable baton PR, it received 2 public admin responses and 1 developer response before being closed wordlessly. Goonstation is a passion project for everyone involved,without players there would be no Goonstation just as if there were no admins or developers there would be no Goonstation. It feels extremely demoralising to show your work and for it to be turned down with a single word. It feels as if the person who made the change wasn’t even worth the feedback and can lead to people taking extended breaks or just leaving the community altogether.
We see a stagnation of the game. Pop count is lower than usual, and while I think this is due to work and what not, possibly being a seasonal issue, I think certain aspects I’ve mentioned here might drive away players. There is a veritable fear of speaking out against the admins because a ban might be issued. People want this game to do well, I want this game to do well. I would not be writing this detailed post if I wasn’t. However as soon as criticism is issued by the community, it is perceived in a negative light. I do understand that it is hard to sift out the positive feedback from people needlessly complaining over minor details. We want to make the game better. We want to enjoy Goonstation and I do hope some of these points are taken into consideration. This will most likely be the last time I interact with Goonstation.
Here are my ragtag band of sources:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lux0aYa0vV8i33MrA8Drdf9JRH2cl1OxP2aZ9f76Rh8/
From my short time on Goonstation I have come to see that there is an outlook that rears its head out from time to time and it pushes the community in bad directions. It feels like some admins take a strong standpoint on their views and how it should affect the servers, and this leads to ostracization of community members and pushes a further divide between players and admins to the point where people are scared to talk against admins for fear of being banned[ap.2](the names of people in conversations outside the Goonstation discord server will be censored to avoid any unnecessary drama). There was a discussion on the discord recently involving multiple community members and admins in which both sides aired their issues and during this, Curie posted ”it feels unnecessarily hostile and makes other players uncomfortable to speak up. it's not what was said but how it was said and it kinda goes beyond what Moberry themselves feel?” in regards to this comment[ap.3] and I feel that this encapsulates my point perfectly. After this discussion Moberry and Wolf Muddler were banned from the discord, I was told that Wolf was also permabanned from the servers too and with no public ban reason or appeal forums we as a community are forced to only take the banned parties word as when asking an admin we are told that its “Not their place to hand it out” and whilst this is understandable it leads to massive misunderstandings between the community and the admin team and causes more flak for the admin team than if they had public ban reasons. As it stands I see no downside to having public ban reasons, it forces proper documentation and creates a permanent standard of what is and isn’t rule breaking behaviour that anyone can browse.
The divide between RP and Classic leads to a rift within the community, not only when it comes to general conversation but it creeps into balance and PR discussion a lot also. This can be seen mainly on the forums where a majority of the discussions boil down to RP vs Classic and how an item/antag would have to be balanced for both and how admins don't want Classic or RP deviating too much from one another. And this mindset really hurts the chance for any major developments within the codebase. During my two years in the community the few changes or added content I can name off the top of my head is the Wraith rework, Nadir and Flock getting finished. I am not saying that the reason people don't merge things is because of RP, just that it is incredibly hard to balance things for two inherently different servers and that it hurts the contributors as it limits them on what they could add.
The severe lack of transparency hurts the community a lot. We are often the last to know about the developments and changes and are often just surprised with admin decisions and are usually left wondering what happened or what was decided on. Admins do not communicate enough with the playerbase, in regards to their decisions within PRs and bans. This lack of transparency harbours with it a distinct lack of accountability and responsibility. More often than not an admin can come into a round, run a gimmick that may or may not ruin the experience of the players without any say on the matter. Just because they are admins. Compensation for these ruined rounds are very varied depending on the admin. Some will reward antag tokens, others will not with some arbitrary hidden rule about having ‘unspent tokens’. Whenever an admin complaint is filed, and there are some with numerous, It feels like nothing is done. It exists for show, so that there’s the option to write up a post and perhaps an illusion of being able to speak up when admins aren’t behaving properly, yet still little to no action is taken as far as we are aware because we rarely get any kind of information or feedback on the forum posts from admins other than the one involved with the complaint. This lack of transparency extends even into the code where we can find the Secret module. This module contains code that normal coders cant access, this includes Ranch code and Salvager code to name a few. And from the outside it seems that this module is mostly used for dev projects that they either; don’t want being public, or aren’t finished yet. This only goes for active player-facing projects within the secret module as far as I know. I don't know what exactly is in there since I cannot access the folder. This secret folder, whilst it may be used for some server side code stuff, I don’t feel that it's a good place to hold dev projects. It leads to confusion and makes it harder for the community to come up with changes, new ideas or fixes for bugs and it undercuts the “open-source” label that Goonstation has.
The handling of rule breaks applies the same way too, instead of a uniform or standardisation of punishments, one admin might just warn you the other might ban you for a week. Sometimes warnings are issued for rule breaks and sometimes they aren't, I understand that this is dependent on both the player and the admin involved and it's not just solely influenced by how the admin is feeling on one particular day. However it is odd to see people being granted leniency for major rulebreaks and others being banned for much less.
PR posts are also a victim of lack of transparency. The community is very passionate about the game, I myself am and would like to contribute but when a PR is posted, there happens to be a lack of proper response from the admin team when it is reviewed. I’m sure you’ve seen suggestions that are backhanded with “confused emoji” or just “nah”[ap.4]. The given PR here is the throwable baton PR, it received 2 public admin responses and 1 developer response before being closed wordlessly. Goonstation is a passion project for everyone involved,without players there would be no Goonstation just as if there were no admins or developers there would be no Goonstation. It feels extremely demoralising to show your work and for it to be turned down with a single word. It feels as if the person who made the change wasn’t even worth the feedback and can lead to people taking extended breaks or just leaving the community altogether.
We see a stagnation of the game. Pop count is lower than usual, and while I think this is due to work and what not, possibly being a seasonal issue, I think certain aspects I’ve mentioned here might drive away players. There is a veritable fear of speaking out against the admins because a ban might be issued. People want this game to do well, I want this game to do well. I would not be writing this detailed post if I wasn’t. However as soon as criticism is issued by the community, it is perceived in a negative light. I do understand that it is hard to sift out the positive feedback from people needlessly complaining over minor details. We want to make the game better. We want to enjoy Goonstation and I do hope some of these points are taken into consideration. This will most likely be the last time I interact with Goonstation.