Reason for PMing staff issues instead of public post.

In short, its drama control.

People have figured out that making claims of staff corruption in a big huge public display, irreguardless if its actually true or not, is a quick way to get a lot of attention from nearly the entire population.

And they've been capitalizing on it.

The other issue is, making these huge public disturbances over it does absolutely nothing whatsoever to solve the problem. Whereas sending me a PM does.

When I get a PM about an issue of staff misbehaving, abusing power, being too strict, or whatever else is claimed they did wrong, I investigate it. If I find that the staff really did do something wrong, I correct it.

That is, after all, part of my job on the J&H team.

However, when you make these huge public spectacles, the only thing that happens is, you make a huge public scene, start a flame war, alert the staff member to the fact that its known that they do these things, and it totally messes up attempts to investigate or gather evidence on the staff member in question.

Consider this. Say staff member A actually did do something wrong. You make a huge public spectacle of it instead of taking it to me in PM.

Now that staff member knows that its widely known they did X wrong thing. Now they will be careful not to get caught doing it. They will get away with it. And further. They will continue to do wrong, but they will be more careful about it. (That's assuming they did wrong with genuine malicious intent, and not simply an accident, ignorance, or just a failure.)

On top of that, you will have made a huge mess, the kind that is the very reason why flame wars are not allowed.

And as if that wasn't enough, you create a huge drama scene that is completely un-necessary. It becomes a bandwagon thing, instead of a matter of actual facts or evidence. People jump on it just because its easy to blame staff. Easier than looking at the cold hard truth.

Yes, sometimes staff mess up. Sometimes, however, its not staff who messed up. In a big huge public spectacle, there's no way its going to get looked at objectively with evidence and facts.

I personally don't favor staff. I'm quite the opposite. I hold staff to a higher standard, and you can ask around. I have continually corrected them when they did wrong. I even corrected J&H themselves when they did wrongful things to the community.

So I am asking you. Let me do my job. Take your staff issues to my PM box. If you do, it will get taken care of. Making a public scene does nothing whatsoever for the problem except create a huge bandwagon problem that gets nothing accomplished.

EDIT: The reason I made this post, is I received a PM that made it clear that I needed to clarify exactly why I put such a rule in place. Yes, I realize it sounds like censorship. Trust me, its not. I honestly don't care if you talk about it in pm, or on the server in /msg, skype, whatever. I don't care. Your opinions are your opinions. The above reasons are why I had to make a rule on this. Drama queens were exploiting this to create...well, drama. Sometimes there was a legit complaint, but often times its just people jealous because they didn't get picked for staff.

 

Also to add on, if you make a massive thread about 1 issue, not only will everyone flip sh*t giving different thoughts, but in the end it'll turn into a flame war and will most likely not be solved properly and quickly.. that's why pm is better ^
PM is also 1 to 1.. so it'll be solved quicker. Guys that's what the staff (including Daorack) are here for.. so USE IT and we WILL sort it.

 

Ah, yes, this is a great point.
Ya know, I used to agree with this thread. So when a moderator asked me about a potential helper, I gave my opinion about it over Skype.
And turns out that because I gave my opinion, I was blacklisted from staff applications... Back when I didn't even have an application up.
Proof that talking to a moderator about staff/potential staff clearly works.

 

Didn't Understand 1 thing

 

You know, I did this once myself and i regret it now seeing this post.
Making public scenery isnt the type of thing to do especially with staff.
Im glad to see you handling this and telling everyone about it, and id like to say thank you.
You do your job well done Roby, and thats the kind of thing i like about you, the mature way you handle important things like drama.
Thank you roby, you are really shaping up this place.

 

Ah, yes, I know what your talking about. If you like I can explain to you over PM what the problem was, or you can just PM me and ask and I'll explain.

Also, it should be noted that "blacklisting" from staff is almost never permanent. Honestly, that issue is already water under the bridge to me.

Its also not quite the kind of thing we're talking about here.

Yes, I'm trying to get this mess straightened out. Now, that said, obviously this rule is more a temporary fix. I do have a more permanent solution I am working on that will be quite a bit more fair and provide you all a better feeling of safety. For now, this is the best solution until I get the other one sorted out.

 

Thanks for clarifying! I have an idea of what the other rule may be......

 

@RobyNub1337 I think you should put this in server information or pin it to the top of server discussion.

 

Mainly I have to work some things out with J&H and possibly even AJ in order to make this solution even work in the first place.

If it works, it should allow you to get issues handled more fairly, more quickly, and should ensure that there's a public viewable record of all incidents, allowing you to see how staff issues were handled, *after* they are over.

 

And this is why I posted that first message to you.
If that got publicised....wow. I would be probably permed x3

 

Well, some rather heavy accusations were made, and it would most definitely have started a "jump on the bandwagon" flame war. Sadly, most of your "supporters" would have just been in it to "stick it to the man", not to actually support your argument, which would have hurt your case instead of helped it.

 

Mmmhm, exactly why I would get banned.
It's blind following, a good example would be 1D & Justin Beiber.
If either one jumped off a cliff, many would follow, even to their deaths.
In this case, if it was me vs the owners, a lot would follow the owners, friends or not. It's due to blind following.
Rarely, people will back up the underdogs, but people would rather escape punishment and hate from the owners than stick up for their friends :/

 

In this case the owners are not the corrupt ones. Some staff members were making mistakes, and they have been dealt with.

And will continue to be dealt with as needed. :)

 

Funny how we've been trying to get this message across many times but people just keep doing it o_O

 

Giving the people a proper explanation instead of a blind order goes a long ways. This I'll accept responsibility for as my mistake. It should have been common sense. To many, the order sounded tyrannical. Having a proper explanation helped them see why it was necessary.

 

Thanks for clarifying. You really should sticky this, assuming it isn't already.

or maybe put it on the front page like you did with the "failure to read is not an excuse" one.

 

This should definitely be stickied for future reference. However, I'm confused on how a fight in a thread stops all progress in stopping an issue. The people in the thread are being unruly, but they have no final say in what happens. They just cause unnecessary drama. I mean this is a perfectly legitimate rule, but I don't see how a flame war can stop mods from correcting mods.

 

We are putting our sides to the story in a moderated thread, therefore we get answers and punishments if needed :P

 

Thank you Dao for making this thread. Some people need to learn that making it public won't help.

 

If I'm not mistaken, you already made a thread on the prevention of drama.

In my opinion threads that discuss staff issues are usually prone to drama(due to the fact that everyone has their own staff friends). Just asking though, do "staff issue threads" also go under "drama threads" and will be treated like such?

Sorry if the answer is already there, I can't seem to find it myself.