Re: Hello?

by Tartra Wed Jul 17, 2013 11:24 am

There has to be someone to manage the staff or you risk losing all the potential you brought them on board for its the first place. That's supposed to be the admin, but it's just a good practise to let the mods themselves decide was legitimately not helping. You never know: sometimes you have to fire to guys at the top.

(As an aside, I never know why so much mod stuff was behind closed doors. A lot of harshness and gossip might have been stopped with the full weight of the community watching. If the problem was to stop cliquey infighting, that's the red flag to see who actually needs to stay and work together.)

by **Gadreille** Wed Jul 17, 2013 11:32 am

It just got to a point where there was no reason to worry about it because no one was posting. This is a free site, so, we worked to fulfill the needs of the members we had. But we've been having issues with member posting for a long, long time.

If we were being paid to keep this place afloat it would have been a whole other thing. But we're just volunteers with limited time on our hands.

As divisive as the staff and member line had become (trust me, I was aware of it, and I always struggled with it) all it would have taken was members posting. Post in feedback. Post in role plays. Post in OOC. But when I post and only get Kathryn or Ysopet to respond well...I talk to them outside of FOG already. I was here to write with other people, and no one was writing.

Then my life got harder, and I stopped trying and no one else picked up my slack. No one on the staff is stating otherwise. But that extra work I put in for FOG? That came from stubborn determination, not from the members actually doing anything to deserve it.

(sorry if that sounds harsh but...yeah.)

Edit:
To give an example, I'll refer you to the contests. I worked hard to get the contests going but it fizzled out even though everything I did was to give members recognition and power. After that failed, I cleaned up the caligo section and implemented Christoph's persistent world idea but that didn't take hold either. When a person doing work for free doesn't get any recognition, it feels a lot like role playing and not getting any recognition.

by Tartra Wed Jul 17, 2013 11:55 am

Communities are organised just like a business. Someone - anyone authority - has to be saying, "I'm here because I want this place to thrive." Everyone else can think whatever they want afterwards - mostly "I'm here because I want to use this place's services/forum/whatever" - but one person has to have making this place work at the forefront of their mind. Volunteers have to be thanked so much more for donating their time because they've agreed to help, and paid employees have specifically agreed to think in a certain way to help the group. The problem's that not everyone can be paid asd volunteers are just as much a group of customers as the actual users because they're free to leave when they aren't happy or plain on a whim if they don't feel a basic tie to the work.

Here the people with the highest authority started acting like volunteers, and did it without pointing to someone else to say, "My focus is having fun now. You run this place because you're fully motivated." Since nobody who had the right power had the exact right mindset, everything broke. You can't run without a head, is the moral of that story. And with nobody firmly dedicated to putting the fun stuff on the back burner to run the dull parts, the members lost interest and that punished the volunteers because they go unrecognised and stop enjoying their work.

I definitely don't like the mod structure now. You guys worked under tough conditions. Thanks for sticking with FoG for so long. You guys did make a difference, and I'm sorry it took this place dying for that to be brought to light. Had the members been more engaged, had the staff not been behind a curtain, had everyone taken to effort to talk to each other a tiny bit more, we might not be discussing this. So here's to some well-learned lessons. I'm not leaving before this place is dead, but to anyone who is, don't forget: there has to be a leader and they have to lead - for better or for worse - or find somebody that can.

I'm also sorry to hear that, Gadreille. Whatever it is on your end, I wish you all the support you need to glide through it.

by **Gadreille** Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:02 pm

I mostly agree, though I don't feel at all upset with our current admins. They implemented everything that members and staff could think of. If we had a more active member base, we would have responded to it. But this is how free sites work. We kept FOG alive for YOU guys and it wasn't enough. The members want to have a say, but 99% of the time it was to tell someone else to "get'er'done." So I disagree that this site would be fine if our current admins had been more active. They were as active as they needed to be, and with the site's state, that "wasn't very".

by Tartra Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:11 pm

The contests were a good idea. I just think the damage was done before that point.

The current admins (I'm gonna go right ahead and say Kathryn) really did do what could expected. I thought the main problems were before her, though, from some of the very old mods. I also feel like the part about the members making changes or suggesting new ideas to help never really got through. Hell, I'm guilty of this: FoG is so mod run that any changes suggested are as 'favours' and anything offered by a mod (like the contests) automatically becomes mod - not member - property, so it's up to who suggested it to make it work. You guys were stuck with a strict 'our show' persona that wasn't fair to you. I'm going out on a limb to say that had something to do with there being so many comparative staff, regardless of activity, that no member saw a need to pitch in regularly. I don't know - even the feedback threads seemed like 'We made this change!', 'Don't worry, we'll fix it!' more than mining for ideas. It was underused. That hurt things.

Edit: From what I saw, you guys had it all under control. Someone did only have to post at something and it'd be fixed like magic. That wasn't the case and because I personally only saw slivers saying otherwise, I figured it was a conversation/fight looking out of where the main chat was. It's a little surprising to hear that was all the conversation was.

by **Gadreille** Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:28 pm

Agreed. I pretty much think that we were done for because this site was set up for members to not have to work for what they get. When that started changing, members took off. Also, I think we tried to hard to please everybody. Any business owner such as myself knows that this is impossible.

Basically we all (including myself) wanted someone to make this site fun, pretty, exciting, welcoming, and most of all OUR WAY. But without putting in the effort. If I had been the one offered admin status instead of Kathryn or Lord Revan, I'd have said no. I wasn't prepared to do what fate did, and if you look at this thread, you can see just how bad it was. She worked her ass off to make everyone happy, and got burnt out. This thread is a great example of the thanks she got.

Not saying she did everything perfect. There were changes needed making and I disagreed with a fair share of it. But no one was prepared to take on the amount of work she had put in to making this site a haven for all of us. When I tried (too late) to dispense the workload, POOF. Everyone's gone.

I sincerely hope that the things we've learned from this site can be used elsewhere, and I wish the best of luck. To any of you admins, previous admins, or about to be admins of your own sites: I am so glad I am not you.

by **Gadreille** Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:32 pm

Oh, and for fear of the quote button:

"Edit: From what I saw, you guys had it all under control. Someone did only have to post at something and it'd be fixed like magic. That wasn't the case and because I personally only saw slivers saying otherwise, I figured it was a conversation/fight looking out of where the main chat was. It's a little surprising to hear that was all the conversation was."

I'm not sure I understood what you were saying here, so I didn't comment a response to it.

by Tartra Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:41 pm

Well said. I agree.

And what that was trying to say is that for as much as you worked your asses off to make us happy, we were perfectly willing to let you 'cause - y'know - oh, yeah, you guys are handling it just fine, look how speedy you are with fixing problems! And I always thought there were extremely in-depth mod conversations behind the scenes to the point that if we ever heard any reference to it, it was because you were all working so damn hard that you accidentally mentioned it outside of the main chat you were having. I took a few signals as signs that you didn’t need any help, so I never did. From what I'm gathering now, everyone was tired and stopped tossing ideas around, so the situation was interpreted even worse than I imagined.

by **Gadreille** Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:49 pm

I joined in rather late so I can't say that your interpretation was wrong at some other point during FOG's lifetime. When there were major issues, during major activity, there were major discussions. But the last time that happened was....I don't know, during Emoria's lifespan? Maybe when Keith joined (sorry to point you out, but yeah, you gave us your best shot).

We never stopped tossing ideas around, I had a stack of them, but getting them done was hard, and when I get three in a row rejected I pretty much say fuck it.