Additional ideas for "MCM Overhaul" (v2.0?)

[1337]

I realized that my reply to Mick's comment was probably too long to be a comment and warranted its own post, so here goes:

I'd love for MCM to take a direction or attempt in making it more of a professional "marketplace" for creators and buyers, rather than just a meme other sites joke about. The changes being done with the hosting forum are a good start; but even they are likely not enough. The current target audience for MCM is one that seems to be getting more and more toxic/"hostile" than even when I joined back in 2017, and it's really unfortunate to see that. This isn't to say we should get rid of joking/fun as a whole, but I definitely do feel that if this site wants to both recover from the damages it's taken to its reputation over the past few year(s) of incidents and go back to its roots of being a true marketplace at heart; many changes need to be made to how certain subforums and situations are handled.

One potential solution/suggestion would be to "appoint" or contact well-known and reputable members of a certain category to possibly moderate or look over their area of expertise so that we can have a staff team that can handle not only general/broad issues but also one that has both the numbers and in-depth knowledge of each field to make more accurate and more informed decisions.

As an example, let's say user X and user Z are both very reputable and well known for their skill in their field of Pixelart (made up a category to avoid saying any specifics). User X and/or User Z could then potentially be given the ability to regulate or moderate the subforum (or at the least weigh in on decisions being made) they have an expertise in, allowing both the rest of the staff team to focus on more general issues/reports and more informed decisions to be made in these specific categories.

Another possible improvement would be to have an "Anonymous Report" function where a user can submit evidence of wrongdoing by either a staff member (this report obviously also then being not visible to said staff member) or another community member without their identity being stored or revealed. This could increase the number of people who are willing to come forward with evidence that they previously didn't want to share due to concerns of having their identity revealed to the reportee.

One final additional idea would be to potentially promote an additional moderator/staff member to the position of Administrator as Justis is only human, and can only handle so much load. There are plenty of seasoned and experienced staff members on the team who would likely be capable and willing to take on the responsibilities of Administration, and would also alleviate many of the delays faced when issues that require an Admin occur.

TL;DR: The new announcement was a step in the right direction, but there's a lot left to do before all the issues are resolved.

Thoughts/additional feedback welcome below, if you disagree, please be sure to say why :tup:

 

[Red]

The current target audience for MCM is one that seems to be getting more and more toxic/"hostile" than even when I joined back in 2017

Let me put some context to this. A large percentage of MCM’s business comes from the accounts sections. Selling accounts is against Mojang’s terms of service, because it helps proliferate the sale of accounts that were once cracked and stolen (not starting a debate about this, there are plenty on here if you look). So to try and counteract this and answer some questions, Marc from Mojang made an account, and was active in late 2015. The guy was just being chill and interacting with fans of the game like he usually does. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do it. In February 2016, he made a farewell post. Said the reason he was going wasn’t because of accounts being sold, but because of us. There was so much bullshit and hate thrown towards him, and exponentially more thrown towards us by ourselves. His last words?
“Quit being dicks to each other.”

That was 3.5 years ago. Let’s just say that we… didn’t.

 

[Daave360]

Yes very good

 

[utaninja]

I don't think apponting well-known/reputable members is a solution for backlog. If anything, because of the new staff we've gotten, there's next to no backlog. I feel like this is just a honor type of thing and will make people say things like "Oh I moderate this area, I'm safe to deal with" What if someone scams? Do they get perms?
It's like chat-mods but for a different section. If you really feel this is needed, make some of the chat-moderators "section mods'
So just like chat-mods in terms of ranking but they focus on one section rather than just the chat.
This is kind of like the new rank reputation moderator.

-

Adding a administrator is easier said than done. As said before, staff candidates have to make a certain criteria. We've had candidates that everyone voted in for, but after some digging we found disgusting behavior by that candidate.
There's people on the site that we wish could be staff if not for some posts they've made. Perfect on the outside.

 

[Harry]

It's like chat-mods but for a different section. If you really feel this is needed, make some of the chat-moderators "section mods'

I was going to suggest this exact thing, but where would this division of labour/specialisation stop?

You could apply the same logic to scam reports and say that there should be a specific scam resolver for MC account sales (who knows all the nuances of that specific market).

 

[utaninja]

I was going to suggest this exact thing, but where would this division of labour/specialisation stop?

You could apply the same logic to scam reports and say that there should be a specific scam resolver for MC account sales (who knows all the nuances of that specific market).


Mick already hinted at this in the SB, but who knows - we cannot be certain what he's thinking until changes are actually made.

You could make people dedicated to easier sections but that need support. Kind of like Zeiyon went to resource moderator but still can be promoted to moderator.

You could do something like - [Section Moderator] They would be in charge of other products and other services. Or otherwise.

 

[Sloth]

Let me put some context to this. A large percentage of MCM’s business comes from the accounts sections. Selling accounts is against Mojang’s terms of service, because it helps proliferate the sale of accounts that were once cracked and stolen (not starting a debate about this, there are plenty on here if you look). So to try and counteract this and answer some questions, Marc from Mojang made an account, and was active in late 2015. The guy was just being chill and interacting with fans of the game like he usually does. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t do it. In February 2016, he made a farewell post. Said the reason he was going wasn’t because of accounts being sold, but because of us. There was so much bullshit and hate thrown towards him, and exponentially more thrown towards us by ourselves. His last words?
“Quit being dicks to each other.”

That was 3.5 years ago. Let’s just say that we… didn’t.

I mean I can’t really blame people for potentially harboring negative feelings towards him. He works for a company that has zero accountability and is actively trying to find a way to leech as much money off Minecraft as possible.

 

[1337]

You could make people dedicated to easier sections but that need support. Kind of like Zeiyon went to resource moderator but still can be promoted to moderator.

You could do something like - [Section Moderator] They would be in charge of other products and other services. Or otherwise.

That could be one way of looking at it, instead of just chat moderator (or in addition to), people would start out as section mods and potentially get promoted up into general mod with a specialty of that section (i,e Lotus and Hosting). Could be very interesting to see how it'd play out, and it'd have to be done in a way where the moderators can't abuse their positions to eliminate competitors. The end goal would be to allow all sections to be fairly moderated by people who are proven to be competent at said field.

 

[Lotus]

That could be one way of looking at it, instead of just chat moderator (or in addition to), people would start out as section mods and potentially get promoted up into general mod with a specialty of that section (i,e Lotus and Hosting). Could be very interesting to see how it'd play out, and it'd have to be done in a way where the moderators can't abuse their positions to eliminate competitors. The end goal would be to allow all sections to be fairly moderated by people who are proven to be competent at said field.

What sort of complicated corporate hierarchy are you making? That sounds fairly inefficient for a site to this scale, adding more levels to the organisational structure. There isn’t a direct necessity in terms of workload to split responsibilities, nor any need to reduce the flexibility of our existing team to respond to situations.

I’m not sure what you mean by abuse positions to eliminate competitors. If any moderator is actively engaging in that, any regular user has the ability to report that specific moderator for such practices and I’d be more than willing to push for their demotion for malicious activity. We’re fairly intolerant to that behaviour as you may have seen recently.

 

[gorman]

i agree with section mods,

 

[Mick]

One potential solution/suggestion would be to "appoint" or contact well-known and reputable members of a certain category to possibly moderate or look over their area of expertise so that we can have a staff team that can handle not only general/broad issues but also one that has both the numbers and in-depth knowledge of each field to make more accurate and more informed decisions.

I'm pretty hesitant to introduce this, and I don't really see the benefit of doing so. Implementing something like this means that we would have to promote several (perhaps even dozens) of new section-staff members, and this just isn't feasible. It is ridiculously difficult to find great staff, and I don't want to take an approach of promoting a massive amount and expecting that to fix anything. Every single category is expected to follow the exact same rules, so I don't really see what benefit this would have either. The accounts section is the only part I think that having experience and knowledge can be beneficial with making decisions, but everything else is completely fine with our moderators handling it since we have the same expectations. We have aliensushi handling accounts moderation at the moment, so I guess he is a little bit of a sectional moderator on top of his moderator duties.

Another possible improvement would be to have an "Anonymous Report" function where a user can submit evidence of wrongdoing by either a staff member (this report obviously also then being not visible to said staff member) or another community member without their identity being stored or revealed. This could increase the number of people who are willing to come forward with evidence that they previously didn't want to share due to concerns of having their identity revealed to the reportee.

We've been slowly rolling out a new ticket system on the site, and one advantage of this new ticket system (which many of you will see in your navbar now) is that once it is that guests will be able to create tickets once it is fully rolled out. This means that if you would like to make an anonymous report, you will be able to do so as a guest user by putting in a different email address.

One final additional idea would be to potentially promote an additional moderator/staff member to the position of Administrator as Justis is only human, and can only handle so much load. There are plenty of seasoned and experienced staff members on the team who would likely be capable and willing to take on the responsibilities of Administration, and would also alleviate many of the delays faced when issues that require an Admin occur.

Since the time this was made we have promoted the lovely Kram to be a Lead Moderator, essentially being there to assist Justis with many of the duties that he handles on the site. Right now there are an unfortunate amount of backlogs for management-level support requests, but once we get those down they should stay down for good with the three of us.

 

[Mick]

I'm pretty hesitant to introduce this, and I don't really see the benefit of doing so. Implementing something like this means that we would have to promote several (perhaps even dozens) of new section-staff members, and this just isn't feasible. It is ridiculously difficult to find great staff, and I don't want to take an approach of promoting a massive amount and expecting that to fix anything. Every single category is expected to follow the exact same rules, so I don't really see what benefit this would have either. The accounts section is the only part I think that having experience and knowledge can be beneficial with making decisions, but everything else is completely fine with our moderators handling it since we have the same expectations. We have aliensushi handling accounts moderation at the moment, so I guess he is a little bit of a sectional moderator on top of his moderator duties.


We've been slowly rolling out a new ticket system on the site, and one advantage of this new ticket system (which many of you will see in your navbar now) is that once it is that guests will be able to create tickets once it is fully rolled out. This means that if you would like to make an anonymous report, you will be able to do so as a guest user by putting in a different email address.


Since the time this was made we have promoted the lovely Kram to be a Lead Moderator, essentially being there to assist Justis with many of the duties that he handles on the site. Right now there are an unfortunate amount of backlogs for management-level support requests, but once we get those down they should stay down for good with the three of us.

Amen brother.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion.