Some Thoughts about recent events.

[Drakkart]

I don't want to point fingers at anyone a lot of crap happened but i got one question @schine
Why was it in the first place you thought that council thing was a neat idea? I mean what exactly would you like these people do/help you with?

Just be told, what ever it is, even without all the drama now, i think you would be better of with the forum and the suggestion thing and just keep playing your own game and you already might know what the game needs.
If i could vote for please remove the entire council, i gladly would! Instead you guys call out and ask if some people would like to summarize the most critical aspects to be fixed next ... and also gather some suggestions on how.
Anything would have been better than starting a popularity voting with no real expectations to the applicants and even motivating people by giving out rewards as badges ... what kind of quality personel did you expect to end up with such an approach? *shakes his head*

If schema really would require some external input, i am sure there is plenty of people to talk to, to get inspired.
So again what exactly was the intention behind that council thing? You are not lacking vision are you?

Thank you for reading. This railupdate is awesome!

p.s.: i wrote an entitre novel today and in the end it all boils down to this question why would a company want the community of their game to vote on representatives - for what purpose?! Even though there is a reason still a voting is the worst idea when dealing with communities.

 

[Jaaskinal]

The intention was to make it easier on the staff to read the immense volume of the suggestion forum, and to condense it down into good ideas. ~90% of that forum is useless or is in great need of a tl;dr.

 

[Comr4de]

sigh

If i could vote for please remove the entire council, i gladly would! Instead you guys call out and ask if some people would like to summarize and also gather some suggestions on what hte community would like.

ftfy. This may shock you, but my opinion differs greatly from the results of my survey. I didn't change the results to fit my view, I presented them to schine just the way they were. Implying that we have a chokehold on information just isn't true.

i think you would be better of with the forum and the suggestion thing and just keep playing your own game and you already might know what the game needs.

This is literally all about community feedback. Instead of hiring yet another employee to handle suggestions (which they have done in the past and it did not work well) they asked the community to vote in people who would be able to go over that information (for free) and present it to schine.

Anything would have been better than starting a popularity voting with no real expectations to the applicants and even motivating people by giving out rewards as badges ... what kind of quality personel did you expect to end up with such an approach? *shakes his head*

The only person who had this motivation has been removed. He even said as much to the Schine employee that removed him.

If schema really would require some external input, i am sure there is plenty of people to talk to, to get inspired.
So again what exactly was the intention behind that council thing? You are not lacking vision are you?

...I don't even know how to respond to this. This is just so bafflingly... ignorant. Schema tried this in the first place. Taking input from one or two people on an entire subject is likely not going to reflect the greater community opinion. The idea is to put the burden of giving feedback to the devs on the community. If the devs spent more time just reading suggestions and following those threads, that's less time they'd have to actually work on the game. Our job is to bring those suggestions to light. That is what we have been doing. I don't know what you think we're here and supposed to do.

If you'd like to discuss this further, please PM me or any other councillor. I can understand concerns have arisen about recent events but please consider that tomino's description of the events differs greatly from that of literally everyone at schine and the council, even those that he considered his friends. We are a united front on this. Ask any councillor and any schine member and they will stand by the actions made by the council.

 

[Krougal]

Thanks for that explanation comrade comrade.
I get that. I would like to think the other mature people around here get that, but already it's plain to see that a lot of people don't get that.

I was around here just long enough to be eligible to vote on voting day. I also wasn't too familiar with the community. I looked at candidates and their posts. I chose people based on their contributions. Obvious knowledge of game mechanics - shown through their uploads, videos (although I'm not much for watching videos, only 1 youtuber that I knowingly voted for that made it) or just contributions to discussions. Surprisingly a fair amount of people I voted for made it, so unless I unwittingly picked the "popular" people I think for the most part good choices were made for good reasons (obvious exception the person who was removed aside(and who I didn't vote for)

Those are the kind of people needed on the council.

 

[Snk]

What happened?

 

[Drakkart]

sigh

ftfy. This may shock you, but my opinion differs greatly from the results of my survey. I didn't change the results to fit my view, I presented them to schine just the way they were. Implying that we have a chokehold on information just isn't true.

I have no clue what you are refering to. What has that to do with my wish for less drama caused by a voting system that was a silly approach to begin with?

This is literally all about community feedback. Instead of hiring yet another employee to handle suggestions (which they have done in the past and it did not work well) they asked the community to vote in people who would be able to go over that information (for free) and present it to schine

Again why establish a voting system instead of handpicking some volunteers which really seem suited. If you misinterpret this as me saying you guys would not be suited you are again missing the point. I hope that the council members love the game as i do and will serve us well. the point is why putting that on a stage and let the mob vote? instead of just asking we are looking for some volunteers... and handpicking them?

The only person who had this motivation has been removed. He even said as much to the Schine employee that removed him

You are again missing the point. don't read stuff i didn't want to talk about because it is just a sad story.
Point is why was this possible why even have such a nonexisting filtering system in place. one one side stateing well we are going to check back on anyone and on the other not utilizing the power by just saying no?
why the voting system?!
but now that you mention it two things went wrong in that regard 1. nobody running a youtube channel and a server and claims to have time 60 hours a week and has a job could possibly be taken serious. 2. since when is a council parlament allowed to vote out someone who was voted in. Again why the stupid public voting sytem in the first place = bad idea

...I don't even know how to respond to this. This is just so bafflingly... ignorant. Schema tried this in the first place. Taking input from one or two people on an entire subject is likely not going to reflect the greater community opinion. The idea is to put the burden of giving feedback to the devs on the community. If the devs spent more time just reading suggestions and following those threads, that's less time they'd have to actually work on the game. Our job is to bring those suggestions to light. That is what we have been doing. I don't know what you think we're here and supposed to do.

If you'd like to discuss this further, please PM me or any other councillor. I can understand concerns have arisen about recent events but please consider that tomino's description of the events differs greatly from that of literally everyone at schine and the council, even those that he considered his friends. We are a united front on this. Ask any councillor and any schine member and they will stand by the actions made by the council.

is this baffleing ignorant? i would call that concerned becasue if the developer of the game i like suddenly turns out to lack a vision for the future of the game then this would be worrying.
Now, i don't care about these events in particular, for those of you remembering i wrote something about reason guiding votes ... What i care about is the game and a game needs a community and dividing it by doing some silly voting crap and not being prepared for unpleasant outcomes and having to fix these with more questionable actions that is what worries me.

Dear schine no game developer is well advised to abandon their vision of something great, for public opinion.
So if you got the vision, stick to it, if you need council read up the suggestions, if you don't have time filtering them ask people to filter them for you and handpick some people you trust with that job but do not let the mob do any voting on stuff you should take responsibility for or handle yourself with care.
And best advice of all "gut ding will weile haben." there is no such thing as "no time" you guys need money to survive dun worry people promote the shit out of this game for sure because what you create here has potential for real greatness. All you need to do is play it yourself fix what annoys you and take your time to make it awesome.

 

[CyberTao]

Even though there is a reason still a voting is the worst idea when dealing with communities.

Propose an alternative then. Lots of people state that they are against the council because it's wrong to vote people into power (of which they dont really have) or something. Comr4de pointed out how hiring a new Schine member would not work, as well as how just selecting a few favourites would not work (would actually be worse. Devs picking favourites is a bad idea). How do we filter down the suggestions and opinions into a voice that Schine can easily hear and understand?

There are a few people hand picked by Schine; and they became part of schine eventually. They did not work for conveying ideas, because everyone has opinions. You also run into problems with a evolving community; 1 person can not represent everyone forever. Reps need to change as the game does, and using hand picked favourites would not allow that. It prevents new ideas from being considered because they are set in their own ways and opinions. That is stagnation. It does more harm than anything in the long run.

Is voting bad? Maybe. But the system for voting chosen helps to migrate most of that. Even if Tomato is removed, all the people who voted for him will still have valid votes. They will go to the next person that they preferred, people are still being proportionally represented.


Tomato was removed because he was not allowing the council to do any work at all. The entire purpose and directive of the council was being halted because 1 person was being selfish, and he was removed because of it. Stuff like that is not rare in the slightest, it's just politics.

If you have any ideas on how to improve on the idea of filtering down suggestions and opinions into something comprehensible, then suggest it. Hand picked favourites were tried before, and they failed. Hence we are here with the council.

What happened?

A bad comedy. Needless to say, a rotten tomato was tossed.

 

[Comr4de]

Because if you handpick those representatives, they don't really represent the community, do they?

It seems clear to me now that you would rather the democratic process be abandoned. I don't believe that an appointed community representative truly represents the community.

I apologize for bringing up the drama. I've been running damage control for 24 hours now, its beginning to affect my attitude. I totally agree with you there. People who would not be suited for council should have been filtered out. A decision was made by schine was to allow ALL applicants to run the first time in the interest in fairness. I think this was a misguided decision, and thankfully this won't happen again.

I don't think schine has lost site of their ultimate goal. They're simply acknowledging that they struggle with PR and community feedback and are trying a new approach. If the community decides that this isn't working, I'm sure that nobody would oppose the council being shut down. But I would humbly request that you let this term play out. Nobody expected things to turn out the way they did, and we never considered that an impeachment process would even be needed. I'm disappointed and I've considered resigning but I want to at least give this thing a chance.


Also I would appreciate reading the so called novel you wrote. Not to critique, but to hear another perspective.

I honestly do apologize if my first post came across as condescending or rude, it probably was. I appreciate you taking the time to voice your concerns in a civil manner, thank you.

 

[Drakkart]

Propose an alternative then. Lots of people state that they are against the council because it's wrong to vote people into power (of which they dont really have) or something. Comr4de pointed out how hiring a new Schine member would not work, as well as how just selecting a few favourites would not work (would actually be worse. Devs picking favourites is a bad idea). How do we filter down the suggestions and opinions into a voice that Schine can easily hear and understand?

You know there are different versions of what happened so i will not comment on the other part of your post but why did we have to experience that "surprise" with all its consequences?
What would be better? well i thought i would have given some stuff to considerbut it seems like it all falls under not possible. ok then how about we try something technical. how about a system that let's people merge sugestions in a way that each and every post is still stored but then someone is able to do a writeup the suggestions about what the main problem is people are facing and what they would like to have it solved and maybe even allowing several options to solve it. this way some trusted sould handpicked preferably really just do something which everybody understands, they are merging our suggestions and rewriting them in a way so schine has less unneccessary input to filter. no voting no badges ... just pick people which understand the game and are good with words. they are encouraged to tap on their sources for best practice solutions ofc.
Imho looking at a company i would consider such an institution to be able to make it's decisions on whom they trust instead of hoping for a voting system to produce useable results. again i am pretty pleased with the council and the outcome don't put words into my mouth i did not say thank you.

Because if you handpick those representatives, they don't really represent the community, do they?

It seems clear to me now that you would rather the democratic process be abandoned. I don't believe that an appointed community representative truly represents the community.

I apologize for bringing up the drama. I've been running damage control for 24 hours now, its beginning to affect my attitude. I totally agree with you there. People who would not be suited for council should have been filtered out. A decision was made by schine was to allow ALL applicants to run the first time in the interest in fairness. I think this was a misguided decision, and thankfully this won't happen again.

I don't think schine has lost site of their ultimate goal. They're simply acknowledging that they struggle with PR and community feedback and are trying a new approach. If the community decides that this isn't working, I'm sure that nobody would oppose the council being shut down. But I would humbly request that you let this term play out. Nobody expected things to turn out the way they did, and we never considered that an impeachment process would even be needed. I'm disappointed and I've considered resigning but I want to at least give this thing a chance.


Also I would appreciate reading the so called novel you wrote. Not to critique, but to hear another perspective.

I honestly do apologize if my first post came across as condescending or rude, it probably was. I appreciate you taking the time to voice your concerns in a civil manner, thank you.

I know it must have been a rough day, again, i just thought well maybe on day two you could do your post...
Sorry to hear you still being in emergency mode man, get some sleep. And thank you for understanding. Thing is do you thing our council members represent the community better? - personal opinion yeah i like the outcome but looking at it from my standpoint or your arguments standpoint there is no real difference if voted or just picked. But thank you on agreeing with me on the misguided decision.

As i said i think schine should when facing difficult tasks step back a bit, slow down play their own game a bit more get a feel for it agian... just saying. i understand where they are coming from and it might look like a good solution geting some work of the shoulders for free but as always check the quality of such a process.
comrade ofc i would like you guys to proove that you can succeed it is just - it has been some hard days for all of us.

Rest of your post appreciated anddun worry you know i can take it i knew you might be still under stress so nothing happened worth apologizing for. And thanks to you as well for then trying to really read what i wrote instead of just going berserk really get some sleep

That novel got deleted the moment i decided to point it down to this one point that i felt like was the reason why this all went overboard in the first place.

Yes i did write it from my usual far away view on things pointing out the mistakes which were made and trying to avoid any strong emotions trying to nail it down to the sources of evil i thought would be worth mentioning while writing though it turned out it all came back to "why let the mob vote?!" There was a reason why politics in old greece was made by those which had not to worry about anything and not by the working class. because those people at least were not corruptable and had no more interest in power for they had it all.

 

[CyberTao]

I honestly don't see how the badge mean anything to you, it's just a way of telling who was involved with the council, past and present. For the most part badges have no value, they just serve as a title, to me anyways.

Any idea that involved hand picking individuals I am against. I would say that I would vote against such notions, but I doubt we would be given any choice with said system. When a person is elevated to a position of importance like that, they get swarmed. People trying to draw them to their threads and discuss various topics with them over and over, it sounds all good until you realize that a person can not form a proper community opinion by talking to 1 person.

We don't have that problem with elected person, because we vote for people that share our opinions, you don't have to worry your ideas and suggestions will be ignored, because the person you voted for also agrees with said ideas and suggestions. Just by having elected people, you remove almost half of the work that a selected individual would have.


There is no real advantage to selected individuals; they get swarmed with suggestions and PMs by people they don't know, they may stagnant and no longer agree with the community, and ultimately picking favourites puts us in a very bad spot. No one person can listen to everyone, so it's better to pick someone who people can at least agree with, but you can't do that by selecting a person, because you can't pretend you know everyone in the community. It was done before, and it caused a very nasty rift between people who didn't like all the attention 1 person was getting and the guy who let it all go to his head.