03-27-2018, 03:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-27-2018, 04:11 PM by Dinkleberg >:(.)
The issues I’m addressing in this thread are things that I should have dealt with long ago, but the recent resignations have brought these issues to the forefront.
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Oh-look-another-mass-resignation?pid=30422#pid30422
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Penguin-s-resignation
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Time-to-add-a-number-to-that-mass-resignation-Starky
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Might-as-well-too
My initial response to his OP was as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first thing I want you guys to know is that this thread is not being ignored.
I'm currently working and on my lunch break, so I can't formulate a full response to this post, but as a very quick introduction of how I want to reply to this, I want to say thanks to all PH staff, active and resigning, for everything they have done to make this server what it is today. None of it would have been possible without this staff core, and it breaks my heart to see you all leave, especially as some sort of organized, planned out riot against the server and against my inactivity.
Starky, you were an amazing co-owner and I'm incredibly grateful for everything you did for this community. You not having enough power to be handling situations was something that was never brought to my attention, and I certainly would have hooked you up with what you needed had you expressed that concern to me.
I apologize for my inactivity and for not being here. I have been pretty busy recently, was on vacation till the 14 (which is when starky messaged me about the admin thing again, was unable to reply at that time, and it later slipped my mind). I've also had a jam-packed semester in school and have been busy with family and friends since returning from vacation. Not saying any of this to pardon my inactivity - and please realize I'm here to hear you guys out and make changes.
As far as the main reason you all are leaving, I'm left confused on what to do. I realize there is a good bit of animosity between the TTT and PH servers, for reasons that baffle me. It shouldn't matter that TTT was here first or that PH has a higher ranking on GameTracker or whatever - none of that matters. At the end of the day, the servers exist for one reason and one reason only - to foster a fun and fair playing ground for staff members and non-staff members alike. The main reason these problems have existed for so long is due to the fact that everyone seems to have a problem with someone or multiple people but very few are willing to express their concerns. Also i'm sure that there are lots of complaints on people that I never even hear about. I'm currently chatting with several folks who are going to help me formulate a plan to have a more organized system for people to submit their complaints and concerns. Hopefully this will help us dig to the roots of this toxicity, and slowly start to weed it out.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a very condensed version of my response to this thread, and I will be forming some type of media to address these issues and also let you all know my plans for change. Whether or not it changes the minds of anyone deciding to resign in this thread, I think this thread ultimately shows a lack of cohesion across the servers and community and I believe its time to make some changes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m going to try to touch on each item in my response chronologically. Starting from the top:
PH Staff - You guys are the reason this server has seen the success that it has. Never allow anyone or anything to make you think otherwise. This particular staff group (the ones resigning) is one of the most tight-knit I’ve seen throughout all my experience running servers, and is an exemplary model that the TTT staff team should strive to follow.
Seeing all of you resign at once quite honestly breaks my heart. I wish everyone had came to me insead and offered me an ultimatum - saying what needs to change or else everyone was gonna quit. At this point, I feel like I’m too late, but I want to address your concerns and show you guys that I’m actually willing to formulate a plan to hopefully mitigate the toxicity that has turned you away from the community.
One of the main issues falls under the category of my (lack of) activity as of recent. For this I owe EVERYONE an apology, not just PH or TTT, as many items that have needed my attention have gone unattended for weeks and weeks. This includes not being around for stuff like upper staff promotions and adding new pointshop content. I’m hesitant to add new content to the PS as it may bog down the download time too much, but I thought up a system that may allow for some more variety. I feel like both TTT and PH have models in the shop that not a lot of people use, so if we can decide on one to get rid of every month or so, I could just replace the one we trashed with a new one that the community can vote on. I was thinking I could just add the same model to TTT and PH. It wouldn’t necessarily be every month, but at least for a while until people feel there is sufficient variety in the shop.
In order to keep all players aware of changes happening to the server, I plan to use the top of the MOTD as a changelog, listing any technical improvements made or any content being added/removed from the servers. That way everyone knows what’s going on and where to find that information.
In your post Starky you mentioned something about not having enough powers to administrate the server. I was not aware of the powers that PH Co-Owner was lacking until this post was made. Looking forward, I will give the PH Co-Owner rank adequate powers it needs both on the forums and the server, to ensure administration can sufficiently occur in my absence.
Another issue with staff on PH was brought up to me by a former tmod. He mentioned that there was a lack of communication amongst staff and a lack of communication with me. This became an issue because for some reason there was a chunk of PH staff that were not invited to the staff discord for some reason, and all the PH staff decided to make their own discord which I was never invited to and never even knew about until months after it existed. I really didn’t have a good way to reach ALL the PH staff at once, because few of you even paid attention to the staff discord and some of you weren’t even on it. This fault falls on BOTH PH and TTT. Any and all staff on any server should get an invite to the staff discord. Seems like common sense to me? I don’t know why these problems occurred, and I wish I would have been there to step in and make things right at the time. In the future I plan to make it common practice to immediately get ALL new staff oriented with the server’s staff discord, as that is by far the easiest way for me to reach a large group of people at once.
Throughout the past several years, the servers have been plagued with high levels of toxicity, both amongst the staff members of both prophunt and TTT, and it’s been very difficult for me to figure out a way to address this issue. One of the main reasons that several of the prophunt staff decided to leave was due to incredibly poor relations between staff members of TTT and prophunt. People would often crack jokes about how TTT was better because it was here first or how prophunt doesn’t matter so much stuff like that I’ve seen over the time I’ve been running the servers. At first I thought most of it was being exchanged as jokes but over time this turned into genuine animosity between TTT and prophunt, to the point where many active PH staff would not even visit TTT, despite the desire to play TTT.
Due to the high level of issues caused from the harsh tensions between TTT and PH staff, I’m going to have to start making rules against it. Please refrain from making any sort of reference to either server being “better” than the other in any way. There’s no need to say anything along those lines, clearly all it caused was issues between the two servers, and completely takes away form the whole “community” aspect of running multiple servers. I want to see much better cohesion between the TTT and PH staff. Since we are losing ALL of our upper staff on PH, this is essentially gonna give you guys a fresh start.
On the servers I want to add in a reports system, that way anyone on the server can make a report on another player without having to join the forums. The reports would be viewable on the server by (probably) admins+. I thought this would be a good way to ensure everyone has a way to have their voice heard, without having to worry about announcing all of their thoughts and concerns publicly. Those who have access to reports will be able to decide amongst themselves how to handle them, and if necessary will bring something to me if it requires my attention.
Another issue that I see is that the discord rules were never appropriately written. I plan to rewrite them soon, and I will probably make a thread so people can post things that they think need to be included in the rules. One thing I know will have to be in there is 0 tolerance for any harassment or racism or anything along those lines. In the past I’ve usually been relaxed about what people say but it’s gotten to the point where people are going way out of line with what they say to one another, and I’m gonna have to start filtering everybody. This means you can no longer tell each other to go die or call someone a n***** or anything like that. I get that it’s a joke most of the time but it doesn’t matter anymore - just don’t say it. I don’t care if you think it’s funny because there’s someone else out there that doesn’t.
As for current prophunt staff, we are likely gonna need some of you to step up into new positions soon. We will need moderators and we will definitely need an admin or two, but it will take time to see who of the remaining staff will best fit these roles. Any PH staff reading this, take this as a great chance to prove yourself if you have a genuine interest in this server and want to see it succeed. Several active TTT staff also have staff roles on PH, and I’m sure they will be willing to help out on PH during this period.
There’s still several things I want to address about TTT including handling upper staff inactivity, updating several scripts (which will be posted in changelog), and weapon balancing. Since those changes are all to TTT, I don’t wanna bog this post down any more than it already is, so I’ll be making a separate post about that shortly.
To WRAP-UP this post, I’d like to list the changes that will be occurring, both to the servers and to the discord. This will serve as sort of a TLDR for anyone who didn’t wanna read all this (and I wouldn’t blame you).
1. Thanks again to all retired PH Staff - You helped the server reach a great place and you will be dearly missed. I wish you all the best and I hope you are having fun wherever you are playing. You’re all welcome back on the server at any point, hope you stop by for a visit sometime.
2. New models will be added to the shop periodically, one at a time, until no more can be removed. It will likely be the same model for both TTT and PH, and I will need to remove 1 custom model in order to replace it with a new one. I’ll have to think of a way to get as much community input as possible on which model should go, as well as think of a way to compensate those who lose the model that gets deleted.
3. Changes and updates to the server will be listed at the top of each server’s MOTD.
4. Future PH Co-Owner will be given powers similar to TTT Co-Owner, and PH Admins will receive powers similar to TTT admin. This will include more administration over the forums and discord. This will ensure adequate administration can occur on PH in my absence.
5. Future PH staff will all be added to staff discord as soon as they receive their staff rank. This will provide the best platform for me to contact the PH staff as a group, which is something I wasn’t really able to do before. This will also ensure more communication between staff members and less “clique” activity.
6. PH Staff Application hour requirement will temporarily be lowered to 60 hours, until I feel the server is at least somewhat under control.
7. Add in reports system to TTT and PH so that people can anonymously voice their concerns and complaints about other players. This also will not require them to join the forums to make a complaint. Might look into getting some sort of ticket system set up, not really sure what system I want to use yet.
8. Rewrite discord rules with help from TTT staff. There will likely be a thread about discord rules suggestions so we can get community feedback. These rules will include 0 tolerance for racism/harassment or anything along those lines, as well as prohibit any sort of TTT superiority or talking down to PH players.
9. I’ll be making a thread soon about some pretty big changes to TTT. This will include staff changes and some modification of certain weapons that are creating a game balance issue.
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Oh-look-another-mass-resignation?pid=30422#pid30422
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Penguin-s-resignation
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Time-to-add-a-number-to-that-mass-resignation-Starky
https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/Thread-Might-as-well-too
My initial response to his OP was as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first thing I want you guys to know is that this thread is not being ignored.
I'm currently working and on my lunch break, so I can't formulate a full response to this post, but as a very quick introduction of how I want to reply to this, I want to say thanks to all PH staff, active and resigning, for everything they have done to make this server what it is today. None of it would have been possible without this staff core, and it breaks my heart to see you all leave, especially as some sort of organized, planned out riot against the server and against my inactivity.
Starky, you were an amazing co-owner and I'm incredibly grateful for everything you did for this community. You not having enough power to be handling situations was something that was never brought to my attention, and I certainly would have hooked you up with what you needed had you expressed that concern to me.
I apologize for my inactivity and for not being here. I have been pretty busy recently, was on vacation till the 14 (which is when starky messaged me about the admin thing again, was unable to reply at that time, and it later slipped my mind). I've also had a jam-packed semester in school and have been busy with family and friends since returning from vacation. Not saying any of this to pardon my inactivity - and please realize I'm here to hear you guys out and make changes.
As far as the main reason you all are leaving, I'm left confused on what to do. I realize there is a good bit of animosity between the TTT and PH servers, for reasons that baffle me. It shouldn't matter that TTT was here first or that PH has a higher ranking on GameTracker or whatever - none of that matters. At the end of the day, the servers exist for one reason and one reason only - to foster a fun and fair playing ground for staff members and non-staff members alike. The main reason these problems have existed for so long is due to the fact that everyone seems to have a problem with someone or multiple people but very few are willing to express their concerns. Also i'm sure that there are lots of complaints on people that I never even hear about. I'm currently chatting with several folks who are going to help me formulate a plan to have a more organized system for people to submit their complaints and concerns. Hopefully this will help us dig to the roots of this toxicity, and slowly start to weed it out.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a very condensed version of my response to this thread, and I will be forming some type of media to address these issues and also let you all know my plans for change. Whether or not it changes the minds of anyone deciding to resign in this thread, I think this thread ultimately shows a lack of cohesion across the servers and community and I believe its time to make some changes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m going to try to touch on each item in my response chronologically. Starting from the top:
PH Staff - You guys are the reason this server has seen the success that it has. Never allow anyone or anything to make you think otherwise. This particular staff group (the ones resigning) is one of the most tight-knit I’ve seen throughout all my experience running servers, and is an exemplary model that the TTT staff team should strive to follow.
Seeing all of you resign at once quite honestly breaks my heart. I wish everyone had came to me insead and offered me an ultimatum - saying what needs to change or else everyone was gonna quit. At this point, I feel like I’m too late, but I want to address your concerns and show you guys that I’m actually willing to formulate a plan to hopefully mitigate the toxicity that has turned you away from the community.
One of the main issues falls under the category of my (lack of) activity as of recent. For this I owe EVERYONE an apology, not just PH or TTT, as many items that have needed my attention have gone unattended for weeks and weeks. This includes not being around for stuff like upper staff promotions and adding new pointshop content. I’m hesitant to add new content to the PS as it may bog down the download time too much, but I thought up a system that may allow for some more variety. I feel like both TTT and PH have models in the shop that not a lot of people use, so if we can decide on one to get rid of every month or so, I could just replace the one we trashed with a new one that the community can vote on. I was thinking I could just add the same model to TTT and PH. It wouldn’t necessarily be every month, but at least for a while until people feel there is sufficient variety in the shop.
In order to keep all players aware of changes happening to the server, I plan to use the top of the MOTD as a changelog, listing any technical improvements made or any content being added/removed from the servers. That way everyone knows what’s going on and where to find that information.
In your post Starky you mentioned something about not having enough powers to administrate the server. I was not aware of the powers that PH Co-Owner was lacking until this post was made. Looking forward, I will give the PH Co-Owner rank adequate powers it needs both on the forums and the server, to ensure administration can sufficiently occur in my absence.
Another issue with staff on PH was brought up to me by a former tmod. He mentioned that there was a lack of communication amongst staff and a lack of communication with me. This became an issue because for some reason there was a chunk of PH staff that were not invited to the staff discord for some reason, and all the PH staff decided to make their own discord which I was never invited to and never even knew about until months after it existed. I really didn’t have a good way to reach ALL the PH staff at once, because few of you even paid attention to the staff discord and some of you weren’t even on it. This fault falls on BOTH PH and TTT. Any and all staff on any server should get an invite to the staff discord. Seems like common sense to me? I don’t know why these problems occurred, and I wish I would have been there to step in and make things right at the time. In the future I plan to make it common practice to immediately get ALL new staff oriented with the server’s staff discord, as that is by far the easiest way for me to reach a large group of people at once.
Throughout the past several years, the servers have been plagued with high levels of toxicity, both amongst the staff members of both prophunt and TTT, and it’s been very difficult for me to figure out a way to address this issue. One of the main reasons that several of the prophunt staff decided to leave was due to incredibly poor relations between staff members of TTT and prophunt. People would often crack jokes about how TTT was better because it was here first or how prophunt doesn’t matter so much stuff like that I’ve seen over the time I’ve been running the servers. At first I thought most of it was being exchanged as jokes but over time this turned into genuine animosity between TTT and prophunt, to the point where many active PH staff would not even visit TTT, despite the desire to play TTT.
Due to the high level of issues caused from the harsh tensions between TTT and PH staff, I’m going to have to start making rules against it. Please refrain from making any sort of reference to either server being “better” than the other in any way. There’s no need to say anything along those lines, clearly all it caused was issues between the two servers, and completely takes away form the whole “community” aspect of running multiple servers. I want to see much better cohesion between the TTT and PH staff. Since we are losing ALL of our upper staff on PH, this is essentially gonna give you guys a fresh start.
On the servers I want to add in a reports system, that way anyone on the server can make a report on another player without having to join the forums. The reports would be viewable on the server by (probably) admins+. I thought this would be a good way to ensure everyone has a way to have their voice heard, without having to worry about announcing all of their thoughts and concerns publicly. Those who have access to reports will be able to decide amongst themselves how to handle them, and if necessary will bring something to me if it requires my attention.
Another issue that I see is that the discord rules were never appropriately written. I plan to rewrite them soon, and I will probably make a thread so people can post things that they think need to be included in the rules. One thing I know will have to be in there is 0 tolerance for any harassment or racism or anything along those lines. In the past I’ve usually been relaxed about what people say but it’s gotten to the point where people are going way out of line with what they say to one another, and I’m gonna have to start filtering everybody. This means you can no longer tell each other to go die or call someone a n***** or anything like that. I get that it’s a joke most of the time but it doesn’t matter anymore - just don’t say it. I don’t care if you think it’s funny because there’s someone else out there that doesn’t.
As for current prophunt staff, we are likely gonna need some of you to step up into new positions soon. We will need moderators and we will definitely need an admin or two, but it will take time to see who of the remaining staff will best fit these roles. Any PH staff reading this, take this as a great chance to prove yourself if you have a genuine interest in this server and want to see it succeed. Several active TTT staff also have staff roles on PH, and I’m sure they will be willing to help out on PH during this period.
There’s still several things I want to address about TTT including handling upper staff inactivity, updating several scripts (which will be posted in changelog), and weapon balancing. Since those changes are all to TTT, I don’t wanna bog this post down any more than it already is, so I’ll be making a separate post about that shortly.
To WRAP-UP this post, I’d like to list the changes that will be occurring, both to the servers and to the discord. This will serve as sort of a TLDR for anyone who didn’t wanna read all this (and I wouldn’t blame you).
1. Thanks again to all retired PH Staff - You helped the server reach a great place and you will be dearly missed. I wish you all the best and I hope you are having fun wherever you are playing. You’re all welcome back on the server at any point, hope you stop by for a visit sometime.
2. New models will be added to the shop periodically, one at a time, until no more can be removed. It will likely be the same model for both TTT and PH, and I will need to remove 1 custom model in order to replace it with a new one. I’ll have to think of a way to get as much community input as possible on which model should go, as well as think of a way to compensate those who lose the model that gets deleted.
3. Changes and updates to the server will be listed at the top of each server’s MOTD.
4. Future PH Co-Owner will be given powers similar to TTT Co-Owner, and PH Admins will receive powers similar to TTT admin. This will include more administration over the forums and discord. This will ensure adequate administration can occur on PH in my absence.
5. Future PH staff will all be added to staff discord as soon as they receive their staff rank. This will provide the best platform for me to contact the PH staff as a group, which is something I wasn’t really able to do before. This will also ensure more communication between staff members and less “clique” activity.
6. PH Staff Application hour requirement will temporarily be lowered to 60 hours, until I feel the server is at least somewhat under control.
7. Add in reports system to TTT and PH so that people can anonymously voice their concerns and complaints about other players. This also will not require them to join the forums to make a complaint. Might look into getting some sort of ticket system set up, not really sure what system I want to use yet.
8. Rewrite discord rules with help from TTT staff. There will likely be a thread about discord rules suggestions so we can get community feedback. These rules will include 0 tolerance for racism/harassment or anything along those lines, as well as prohibit any sort of TTT superiority or talking down to PH players.
9. I’ll be making a thread soon about some pretty big changes to TTT. This will include staff changes and some modification of certain weapons that are creating a game balance issue.
![[Image: Hm5Xb2n.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/Hm5Xb2n.gif)
![[Image: J6yUs0g]](https://imgur.com/J6yUs0g)
