A Little Request

[bkgmjo]

In hopes forum staff actually still reads at least something and cares about some of the stuff that happens here I'll try again on this subforum.

A few days ago I posted something on the second subforum on the list named "Public Suggestion Box" which in it's sticky claims "[...]One time a month, we will meet together, and review every suggested proposal. [...], the idea will either be scrapped, changed, or used as is.[...]". (my post if anyone cares: http://forums.trenchwars.org/showthr...s-with-players)
Out of curiosity I contacted some people on the list given there and the PR manager(Shaddowknight) about when this meeting will happen the next time and got interestings responses which look like the people listed here officially in the name of staff do not even know about it and the whole thing is just another outdated initiative left on the forums to annoy the community. A little excerpt of the answers I got:

fiS
In a talk in person she noted this thing does not exist.

Beasty
P bkgmjo!> hey, when is the next suggestion council meeting?
P Beasty> ola, not sure
P Beasty> better ask qan
P bkgmjo!> forum states monthly, ur the dean :P
P Beasty> Im just a sitting sysop on the board
P Beasty> Qan is the director
P bkgmjo!> ooo okay
[...]

qan
bkgmjo!> ?message=qan:hey, when is the next suggestion council meeting
[Feb 28 20:47] qan: there will be no suggestion council meetings :P only members can speak. can talk to a member of council, but it's not formed yet because at present we barely have enough players to run a vote. hoping to get a few more (hint!)
[ The sticky post is from 09-28-2012, 10:49 PM, which I guess is not the same as the recent council plan which is still in the making and qan is talking about here ]

Shaddowknight
P :shaddowknight:hey sir, got a second?
P (Shaddowknight)>sure
P :Shaddowknight:forum sticky talks about monthly suggestion meetings internal to staff, do those happen? asking because several staff members now told me they dont exist
P (Shaddowknight)>they used to happen more regularly, havent had one since like november or december though
P :Shaddowknight:so i wont get an official responds there i guess?
P (Shaddowknight)>we're probably due to actually have one, but that's up to deans/syops to handle.
P :Shaddowknight:hmmm, beasty said no, who does it?
P (Shaddowknight)>M_M or Demonic then
P :Shaddowknightkay thanks, ill try to bug them
P (Shaddowknight)>kk

M_M God
[...]
P (M_M God)>yeah that's outdated. Aura isn't even staff anymore
P (M_M God)>Mainly because forums aren't properly maintenainced I bet
P (M_M God)>or people simply forgot about it
[...]

It would be nice if forum staff could find out what is going on and if this project does not exist anymore delete or update it and stop fooling players in the name of game staff. This also goes for a bunch of other outdated stuff like the stickys with wrong links to password retrieval I reported 2 years or so ago already. Also, the forum is still buggy since the skin was updated so greatly years ago and does not work completely (by constantly changing skins and browsers you can use most options, although still not all) which is a little shameful for a staff that keeps repelling offers from players who want to fix this and keeps promising to do it, but apparently lacks the know-how and motivation to learn it.

[Shaddowknight]

Unsticky'd that one post as it's no longer relevant. I havent gone through every sticky to see if it's at all relevant, but something that could be done. If you happen to know of others let me know and I'll handle it.
As for the forum skins, that's not something I will touch. I looked at the stuff for it on the admin panel, and it's a bit much for me to try to learn myself from scratch, so decided it was best for me to leave alone.

It also seems as though some of us confused the previous Suggestion council with the recent TW Council, hence our given answers.

On the subject of staff meetings, we do hold them on occasion, but less so. With the restructure of staff it is probably seen as less relevant, as each department can/should hold it's own meetings. Upperstaff hasn't even had a real meeting in like 2 months.
We're also still getting used to this staff structure somewhat internally. Things seem to be going fairly smoothly though.

[Azov]

I've encouraged meetings within our ranks. I think its good as a whole for any institution to have meetings so everyone can be on the same page with respect to changes, policies, and what management expects. If everyone hears the same thing at the same time, then there is less room to claim we didn't know something.

[bkgmjo]

@Shaddow
I appreciate your quick reaction a lot and unstickying seems to be a good first solution. Also thanks for being blunt about not knowing enough about the code, others before you claimed they do and this is where we ended up. I will accept your offer and report things I run into to you.

@Azov
Sounds good but I have heard this way too often. Still hope it will succeed though, a single, one for all channel of staff work - even if it only includes short headlines of what happened like an RSS feed - could be a major improvement.

Guess I will not give my thoughts about current staff restructuring as this is only meant to be about the forums in which I see a very bad need of cleanup and fixing. Would be really nice of you guys to at least go through those stickys and see if they claim wrong stuff or are outdated subforums(move the whole subforum to some kind of archive subforum) as this is just adding unnecessary confusion and frustration to an already pretty chaotic system. In return I guess I'll turn the ancient tech topics into a FAQ for ease of use when I find the motivation.

[KrynetiX]

I'll take over suggestions and come up with something spiffy in the coming weeks. Talk to me in-game about it if you've got ideas to implement a suggestion 'box' of some sorts. Or through PM on here. Or on Skype, preferably.

[bkgmjo]

PMed

[qan]

Sorry about that -- hadn't heard of the suggestion meetings you are talking about and thought you were referring to Council, as you correctly assumed.

Don't really have much else to say except that I have inklings of an opinion on whether such meetings are more a way to fix things in the zone, or more just a way for players to let off steam.

Re: fixing forum skins, if you're offering help, don't see any reason why you couldn't fix them. Web stuff is littered with sensitive data -- that's the only reason it's rather tricky to give access, from what I understand. But something could likely be worked out.

We just don't have a large staff anymore, whereas we have a much greater need than ever before for simple routine maintenance just to keep the zone going. (So many different, interconnected systems these days.) As a result it means stuff stays broken a lot -- including not updating a forum post. That's not good ... but, we just don't have many people. Fewer "workers," more "administrators" ... and not many people in general who can afford to put in the time or have the desire to. Facts of life.

So, maybe temporarily join webdev?

[v4g4b0nd]

If you are short on staff, I can put in some work, Ive got a lot of time on my hands

[Shaddowknight]

If you are short on staff, I can put in some work, Ive got a lot of time on my hands

http://www.trenchwars.org/index.php?v=staffapplication