To everyone on IG, we are not trying to rustle your jimmies, this is a serious proposal on reforming who the staff are and what they can do.

The staff are here to "keep the site updated" and they have not been doing a good job. This is not a recent problem, though. This is the new norm, and it is failing the site. This is causing it to go inactive and the front page gives a feel of stagnation. It promotes either the same topics to rise to the top and be active, or for no topics to be active at all.

a few points….
- staff of 10 on a site with only 6-7 active members
- the staff is not a “team”, they act more like a borg collective
- some are inactive for weeks or months
- they like to think they do their job properly but an obvious bias is apparent
- they are slow to deal with problems or people’s concerns

Recently, Yaya was added to the staff. Now, this might be one step forward but it’s also three steps back. We are sure Yaya’s doing a great job and all, but, he can not do everything. Now this has turned into a case of Yaya working his butt off while all the other “staff" are there and acting as dead weight. One can not possibly refer to a group where all work is done by a single individual as a team. Something needs to change to fix this. Even if the staff was a true team of 10 active people, it is still, really, too much for a site with only 6-7 active members. We have heard it, we know, you are all busy with school or working your job and you can not do anything. If that is the case, then quit the staff. We are sure there are others far more competent who can replace you! To name a few… Harumbai, canadianstickdeath, Sefro, jellsprout, Livio

With a dying staff “team,” and site, the way to turn things around is to start with establishing a team of active members who merit the position of staff, consisting of a select few, highly trustworthy and active members. Most sites need relatively few staff to run the site, such as Universe Sandbox. Universe Sandbox is a site with 12 highly active members and only 2 staff, one of which is inactive for that site yet is as active as the active staff are here. Our proposition is that a very select few members remain staff, possibly Isa, Bmwsu, and Yaya.

The system of trusted members that has set itself up on the site lends to members that are not involved in this corrupt system are suspended very often if they are active for the most minor of offenses, such as bang_jan or rocket guy. The staff take very little consequence when doing major actions, such as the suspension of four active members, when after days of apparently discussing and investigating, rather than handling it in a mature way, Livio just suspends all four of them out of the blue without giving an official statement first. The staff are too spontaneous for anyone to believe that they act professionally. Bang_jan is a member that you do not consider trustworthy, for the simple reason that he says he wants to make topics to break the outdated rules.

Please send any concerns or comments to thestaffislazy@hotmail.com

- Written by many, Posted by Thomas.

I've been wanting to suggest removing staff for a while now but I couldn't be bothered to write up a post about it, thanks

Then again this simply seems like a way to get back at the staff so I reject the idea on the spot despite the fact I agree with the proposition

Source plz

??????

Note that Bmwsu isn't a staff member.

Isa is one of the more inactive staff members isn't he?

Lolwut Isa is on more than any other staff member as of late.

His last level was made on May 5, and I haven't seen him post a lot.

He doesn't have to make levels to be active really. I'd say he's a large part of the community, even if it's just being online.

How exactly would removing nearly all of the staff actually improve the site? Most of the staff may not do much now, but they won't magically start doing more by kicking them off. Best case scenario, nothing changes. Worst case, the spammers strike when Isa isn't online and no one else is able to clean up.
Do you actually think this is a good idea are you just bitter about your (completely justified) suspension?

Firstly, I agree that the staff is not perfect right now and needs some improvement. I'll address this later in this post.

Despite what you say, I suspect that you are trying to "rustle our jimmies". I've been happy with what I've seen on the Interguild over the last week or so. We've had plenty of new levels and videos, friendly game-oriented discussion in the chat, no-one spamming garbage all over the site and no-one trying to stir up needless aggro. Myself and Yaya have also updated the front page somewhat, so there's been new content on there for the first time in ages. Yaya just approved a new game, which is super cool. By our own standards, the site has been in relatively good health recently. This is the state that we like it to be in.

However, some people insist on upsetting other members and subsequently disrupting this happy state with 'revolutionary' activity when they get punished for it. This isn't like the real world of politics - it's just a site where people make levels and talk about games. Displaying such aggression at the people who run the site is more trouble than it's worth in a community this size and damaging for the site's ethos - when members come on this site, they should be spending time sharing levels etc rather than worrying about who's running it or getting involved with 'political action'. If the staff were deleting everyone's posts and banning people willy-nilly, then making a fight of it would make more sense. I'm not trying to defend the staff here and pretend that they should be immune to criticism or being unseated; what I'm saying is that antagonistic finger-pointing isn't adding anything to the site.

I'd like to try and dispel the myth that the staff is some evil board of directors that sits around in a plushy office smoking cigars and mindlessly suspending 'innocent' members for their own entertainment. I agree that we don't do enough regarding site updates and I agree that we could be more responsive in some situations. That's a problem that we need to fix as I'd love for the members to be confident that there is a group of active guardians tending to the site and be able to see evidence of this on a daily basis.

However, I disagree that all of the staff make spontaneous decisions. Six of us talked long and hard about how to deal with your personal attacks on Yimmy (yes, I'm aware of what's on his profile right now - we're currently looking into that) as we didn't want to make the wrong decision. Perhaps the group suspension that Livio settled on wasn't the best choice, but we had all agreed that you were in the wrong to some degree and just wanted to get it over with. Perhaps we should have deliberated further and given more appropriate suspensions to Jorster and Binary sooner rather than later - we're only human and can't be expected to make perfect decisions. And to give us credit, we did reduce the suspensions for those two once they appealed it and gave us further evidence as to why they weren't as involved with the Yimmy bullying. In hindsight, I think the punishments were perfectly reasonable; the four of you ruined the experience for one of our members and we won't stand for such behaviour. We'd be pretty irresponsible if we just let you continue to abuse Yimmy. I don't believe the staff stepped out of line there or behaved like a "Borg collective". I'm assuming your motives for posting this thread are fuelled to some extent by your bitterness about being penalised.

On the other hand, I do kind of agree that there should have been some kind of public explanation as to why those suspensions were handed out. It may have seemed like a random power splurge on our part. Again, we can't be expected to be perfect and be 'professional administrators' - I think we've learnt from that event that we need to be more open with our decision-making. It's not a situation we've encountered many times anyway - in the past, we've pretty much only banned Neezles and spambots. As we learn, we will improve.

And yes, some of the staff don't really do anything and will probably be happy to relinquish their positions. But do you really think that removing them will have any effect on the site? I saw on the IRC that you want to petition for CSD and Harumbai to be removed from staff - would anyone even notice if that happened? As I just said, I'd be surprised if they contested it and expect they would probably readily admit that they aren't active enough as staff.

Most of the staff (including myself) would admit that we don't do enough. However, this big staff reform that you're fighting for is unlikely to radically change the site - running the site is rarely fun for whoever's doing it. The hardest thing to do is to perform site updates; it's a pain in the arse to put new content up on there when there's several months of content that has built up. I've been proposing recently that the staff do a weekly 'featured content check' where they look through the week's content and see if anything is worthy of being added. That way, we won't get the intimidating build-ups of content that we had for 8 months. If there was some kind of 'staff duty alert' in place for things like that, this could be a handy way of keeping the content flowing in bite-size chunks that are easy for the staff to handle. Another suggestion in the staff discussion thread is to break down staff powers so that some staff can only post featured content, some staff can only moderate the Art boards, etc. Rather than all the staff being able to do everything.

I think the staff needs some new blood and I'm curious to see how well some of the non-staff could freshen up the site. There were multiple people we had in mind when we picked Yaya - there are certainly a couple of others that could do good things. What I'd like to hear from all the members (including the unnamed ones that you are representing, Thomas) is a list of staff that they'd like to see added and a list of staff that they'd like to see removed. And I'd like to see good reasons for each one. Then the staff will consider your suggestions. I am in favour of pruning inactive staff (not that it makes much difference, but it makes things cleaner) and adding some new ones, so I will support at least some of the suggestions.

Summary:
- As long as you don't act like knobs, the staff are happy to consider changes to their own structure.
- Making this thread doesn't mean you weren't in the wrong when you bullied Yimmy. Maybe you were feeling butthurt about having your behaviour exposed/punished and wanted to retaliate in some way. Fortunately, some of the points you make are legitimate ones, so we should take this thread seriously at least to some degree.
- We are actually nice people behind our keyboards and want the site to flourish - we're just too busy and/or lazy to perform all of our staff duties. Being staff isn't always a trivial task, especially when deciding how to deal with unpleasant behaviour.
- The staff don't claim to be perfect and can still improve. Most of us are aware of the problems with the staff and would most likely be happy to see them resolved.
- I think we should be more open in our decision-making in future.
- There are too many inactive staff and some non-staff who could potentially do a good job. We will look into resolving this.

Yeah, I wouldn't remove Isa or any other member as well; they are trusted and they can do it only better if they still remain staff. Additionally, Isa is the only staff member with my timezone (GMT+1) together with Jebby being in the universal timezone. Harumbai has also quite specific timezone from what I remember (New Zealand?).

Guys, guys, this wasn't written all by me... I wrote a small portion of it (and not the part about suspensions). This was planned before suspensions, actually. Would it have helped if someone who wasn't suspended had posted it?

Just like in mafia, I don't respond to defense that is simply a question. It holds no weight. You pig trying to defend your dead weight position where you do nothing. Could you, instead, tell us how clearing the staff wouldn't improve the site?

Maybe they don't do this where you live but here we have group projects in school. There's always a point where too many people in a group makes it too much to manage and coordinate and there's a point where too little can cause too much work for a small number of people. Right now the staff is at the end of the spectrum where it's too many, and they all do nothing except for Yaya.

Above was written before jebby posted.

Can you tell us who else your post is representing? That would be useful.

Statements like "You pig trying to defend your dead weight position where you do nothing. " don't really help your cause. Please be civil - it'll be much easier to take you seriously if you are. Your OP does have some valid points, but they don't need to be backed up by rudeness.

And yeah, there are too many staff. Too many cooks spoil the broth as they say. But half of our cooks are asleep, so there isn't quite as much pandemonium in our staff discussions as you may think.

Yaya has done quite a bit since he's joined, but it's unfair to say that none of the other staff have done anything.

I'm not responding to that large portion of your post about the suspensions since I didn't write that in the OP, anyway.

"we're only human"
We all are human and lots of others could do a better job. It only took you 5-6 days to decide for a 5 week suspension and it took like a month for you clueless to even catch on to this "bullying."

Thomas is acting cute again. The discussion is sure to be healthy.

We are not firing half of the staff. Period.

I am sitting out from further comments and unless someone can argue the position that Thomas favors (who didn't think there was any reason to come back to IG after his suspension ended), I can't recommend anyone else from the staff to engage in this discussion with him. I am nowhere near convinced that a group of newly unsuspended users have the best of the Interguild in their heads.  

TIL Isa doesn't want what is best for the site. #jellsprout

let's list how many people think firing staff will do any good.
Thomas

now let's list people who think the opposite
Teo

let's list people who think there won't be a change
Jebby
Jellsprout
Isa

if i missed or got anyone wrong, tell me

I was trying to be reasonable; I wish Thomas would be willing to do the same.

I agree that this call for reform comes mainly from bitterness. But I do believe some of the points are valid - it would be great to get a fresh wave of new staff to replace those who haven't done anything for years. This shouldn't involve 'firing' a load of people - I think if we decide someone should be let go, we should ask them how they feel about it first. As I said in my Great Wall of China, I'm pretty sure a few of the existing staff would be happy to step down to make room for a couple of new staff. If they didn't, the staff-to-member ratio would get even sillier. Maybe we could have a separate category called 'Veteran Members' or something if we want to pay respect to those who have been here a long time (but may not be doing much as staff).

I'll have to spend some time thinking for myself about who I think should change roles. There are a fair few that should definitely stay for obvious reasons. We should maybe ask those that have been inactive the longest whether they want to remain staff. There are a couple of non-staff that I'd really like to see in the staff team.  

Can I just say that if we were to hire new staff, I wouldn't want Thomas in control? I'd be very open to hearing new ideas or propositions from him rather than him just saying we need new staff.  

Alright.

some things here need to be explained for people.
firstly, we are all, as jeb said, good and nice people who only want the site to work well. us making levels is quite irrelevant to us being staff- moderators are here to moderate. the fact that we make levels once in a hwile is a good thing, but being active=/=making levels often.

secondly, I think it is safe to call us just 'staff' and not 'admins'. Livio is the admin, and he, like probably that active mod in Universe Sandbox - has the power to do everything. we don't, we only have the powers given to us by livio. that's a lot, but that's not being gods. The fact, for example, that it took us time to pick up on the whole yimmy saga, was a wrongly coded reported-pm system, which required time until we could actually see the items in question, and also relied on us and yimmy communicating online.

we can contact livio in many forms out of site in order to get him here ASAP in need, but may I remind you that he too is now a working man with a real job who also stutdies for a degree in the same time = BUSY. and having him here on every tipsy thing is problematic.

third.
the staff has been discussing this. Yaya was added to the staff as indeed a trusted member that is more active than us, yes. but removing people from it, while making the staff-member ratio look better, really isn't doing anything good. all the people who are currently in the staff are still trusted to use their powers appropriately, so as Jell said, firing them will at best do nothing, and at worst cause havok.

If the staff-member ratio is bugging you - well, instead of reducing the staff - get more members! you're 15, I'm sure you have loads of friends who are into computer gaming and stuff. I advertise the site wherever I can do that too.

such threads are ok, but first and foremost - you shouldn't hide, guys, writing anonymously is unneeded we're not going to bite. and also, if you've been keeping this in for a long while now, you can always share it with us via PMs, or in the chatbox etc; you don't need to make it official and lengthy and stuff. just talk to us, we'll consider.

Merry christmas to everyone! hope you guys are having a wonderful Silvester and happy new year

if anyone is jewish apart form me and jor, well, you too, lol

TIL getting more members will cause all inactive staff to be acitve and the staff will work as a team without any changes to the staff members.

why are you even here lol thomas

get out

I'm here to suggest solutions to problems the site has at this time.