An MCM Overhaul.

[Cal]

It is no secret that the opinion towards MCM has been on a downward spiral.

I would like to say the public opinion on MCM really started to downturn around the time Glove publicly announced his quitting the market. Prior to that it seems as though people were expressing that the market seemed to be stagnating and failing. However this did not turn negative until around Glove's exit.

The Causes
MC-Market is a forum of creators, not managed by creators. This discrepancy causes a difference in ideals in how the site should be run. Most people on the site use it as a platform for their services, however when the system is not supportive of that, they will grow angry and eventually, disappear.

Support
In it's current state, MCM will not run itself without human oversight. When the people that moderate and administrate the site are not moderating the platform, then any rules that are in place do not matter. There have been numerous cases of users on MCM such as myself experience ticket wait times of weeks. For a site that is filled to the brim with very competent, high skilled, and well spoken individuals already familiar with the rules and terms of the site, you would expect the platform to have no trouble expanding it's team or replacing those that aren't meeting the demand. These delays on a platform receiving the revenue of MCM and on the scale of MCM are unacceptable.

Scam Reports
I acknowledge that MCM has hired a new scam resolver, however seeing as he hasn't been on since Monday (posting this on Wednesday https://gyazo.com/a8a78bb311a2d07a4d6c75af20d8f601) and his counterpart has posted a grand total of twice since last Thursday at the time of writing this. These delays make the single most important principle of any transaction, trust, an unreliable. Scam Reports not only help bring peace of mind to those doing deals, but they allow those who get caught in scams, more often new members (the main source of MCM's revenue[Ads and ranks]) to have a way to fight against those who pull these scams. Scamming is inevitable, but with proper moderation, it can at least null some of the impact of it, impact which is being felt by the community very heavily currently.

Change is overrated
If there is one thing MC-Market administration is really good at, it's maintaining the status quo. Going through the previous 10 announcements, the notable changes to the platform have been (in objective descending order)
1) Various Staff Position Changes
2) A new theme
3) Business accounts
4) Forum reorganization
All of these changes are so minor, that you likely forgot about most of them, and this is where the problem arises. Though staff will be quick to say "we've still been increasing members at X rate." there comes a point where this stagnation of the forum will lead to a less interested and thereby less active userbase. The members in the shoutbox today are not the same members that were in the shoutbox 2 months ago. This is indicative of the nature of MCM, many members fading into obscurity due to it's being unable to retain interest. This is a failure of a system, and it will only be increased with the new problems arising.

The Solution
The major problems with the site are able to be fixed with relative ease. Despite the site administrators best efforts to maintain the status quo, a large change in needed. MC-Market's team needs an overhaul. The root of the overwhelming majority of these issues stem from the moderators and administrators of the site. The staff of MC-Market need new members, with fresh ideas, coming from a more diverse background. MCM needs to hit this growing mob of those growing weary of the failing system head on. Whatever you are trying to do now is not working. An ideological shift is needed, not brothers of current staff with no knowledge of the platform, not chatmods with no real impact on the site, real change is needed, or MC-Market will be facing a mob much bigger than it's current small but loud minority.

Please leave your feedback below.

 

[Mick]

I've been waiting until after our announcement has been posted to make a response to this because I feel like it is important to show the direction MC-Market is going in for these next few months. Our focus is on making sure that we provide the best platform for our users, and to do this we have been focusing on improving the aspects of the site that have needed the most help over these past few months. There is massive potential in resources as a market where we can improve faster than any competition to provide a better platform, so we have been working hard to make these improvements and updates. However, while these updates are always welcomed and beneficial to our community it's clear that there is one particular complaint made by our users; the MC-Market staff team.

It's easy to make a suggestion saying that something is bad and needs improvement without explaining any realistic solutions to the problems. The solution you proposed was to completely replace and overhaul the staff team to get "fresh ideas", but that's not a realistic solution to suggest or implement. Instead over these past six months, we have been focusing on growth and activity within our team rather than getting rid of everyone and hiring inexperienced or unprofessional staff.

I absolutely agree with many of the concerns brought up in the original post on this thread and think that a year ago our staff team was in very poor shape due to an over-reliance on individuals rather than the collective. Losing activity from our one scam resolver at the time really damaged the site and was a valuable lesson to have redundancy in our roles. If I recall correctly, at the time this thread was posted we had 8 staff members moderating a forum of 115,000 members. Today we have grown our team to be more than double the size with 18 members and we are in a much better position now than we ever have been. In the past month in particular, I feel confident that the quality of work provided by myself and the rest of the staff team has been top notch, and our most recent announcement reflects that.

I don't mean to try and say that our staff team at the moment is perfect, in fact I'd say that we're still far from perfect, but we have improved and intend on improving more over the coming months and years. We try to respond to potential issues before they come up, and I believe we did a pretty good job at that. Introducing staff applications has had some really great results with the staff we’ve recruited through them.

We’ve reduced wait times through the implementation of a larger staff team and through further role specialisation, such as our recent introduction of the reputation moderator role.

The great position we’re in now as a staff team was not brought about by revolutionary change, but instead incremental improvements. I strongly disagree with the idea that doing anything different to maintaining the status quo is the right direction to go in. MC-Market is massively successful in the position we are in. The way that we should aim to grow isn’t changing to be something so different that our users wouldn’t want, but instead by changing to be even better for our users. Users always come and go, but that doesn’t mean that we’re dying and it is not a reason to be scared.

Rather than denying this suggestion without giving anyone the opportunity to respond, I’m going to be opening this suggestion up once again, I’d love to hear what you think.

 

[1337]

I've been waiting until after our announcement has been posted to make a response to this because I feel like it is important to show the direction MC-Market is going in for these next few months. Our focus is on making sure that we provide the best platform for our users, and to do this we have been focusing on improving the aspects of the site that have needed the most help over these past few months. There is massive potential in resources as a market where we can improve faster than any competition to provide a better platform, so we have been working hard to make these improvements and updates. However, while these updates are always welcomed and beneficial to our community it's clear that there is one particular complaint made by our users; the MC-Market staff team.

It's easy to make a suggestion saying that something is bad and needs improvement without explaining any realistic solutions to the problems. The solution you proposed was to completely replace and overhaul the staff team to get "fresh ideas", but that's not a realistic solution to suggest or implement. Instead over these past six months, we have been focusing on growth and activity within our team rather than getting rid of everyone and hiring inexperienced or unprofessional staff.

I absolutely agree with many of the concerns brought up in the original post on this thread and think that a year ago our staff team was in very poor shape due to an over-reliance on individuals rather than the collective. Losing activity from our one scam resolver at the time really damaged the site and was a valuable lesson to have redundancy in our roles. If I recall correctly, at the time this thread was posted we had 8 staff members moderating a forum of 115,000 members. Today we have grown our team to be more than double the size with 18 members and we are in a much better position now than we ever have been. In the past month in particular, I feel confident that the quality of work provided by myself and the rest of the staff team has been top notch, and our most recent announcement reflects that.

I don't mean to try and say that our staff team at the moment is perfect, in fact I'd say that we're still far from perfect, but we have improved and intend on improving more over the coming months and years. We try to respond to potential issues before they come up, and I believe we did a pretty good job at that. Introducing staff applications has had some really great results with the staff we’ve recruited through them.

We’ve reduced wait times through the implementation of a larger staff team and through further role specialisation, such as our recent introduction of the reputation moderator role.

The great position we’re in now as a staff team was not brought about by revolutionary change, but instead incremental improvements. I strongly disagree with the idea that doing anything different to maintaining the status quo is the right direction to go in. MC-Market is massively successful in the position we are in. The way that we should aim to grow isn’t changing to be something so different that our users wouldn’t want, but instead by changing to be even better for our users. Users always come and go, but that doesn’t mean that we’re dying and it is not a reason to be scared.

Rather than denying this suggestion without giving anyone the opportunity to respond, I’m going to be opening this suggestion up once again, I’d love to hear what you think.

-- reply was snipped into its own thread --

 

[Jack]

I'm interested as to if/how your view has changed on this now that you have been both a normal user and a staff member for a significant amount of time.

I'm sure Eclipse has his own opinions, but I would agree with his first post.

For the most part, it doesn't even take a minute to look at a report, read what the reporter wrote, look at the content in question, and make a decision if a rule was broken. Giving warnings is fully automated, so there's no struggle there either. Occasionally there is something that's in a gray area and may require extra attention, but the biggest issue is staff simply just not handling reports.

MCM has grown a lot since I was a moderater, so I imagine the number of reports each month has also grown significantly (was a few hundred per month then, wouldn't be surprised if it gets close to a thousand each month now).

So it is mostly easy, each individual report isn't "time consuming" per se. What is time consuming is when people start getting lazy and not resolving reports, and if you feel like you have to do dozens of reports (which nobody is forcing you to, you could just do 10 a day), that is when it can start to feel time consuming.

Of course reputation moderation, scam reports, and support requests are all instrinsicly time consuming since those systems require a lot more individual attention.

 

[Harry]

I'm sure Eclipse has his own opinions, but I would agree with his first post

Her***

 

[Jack]

Her***

What a fantastic contribution to the discussion :tup:

 

[Harry]

What a fantastic contribution to the discussion :tup:

Well, I didn't have time to read your full message, but still wanted to correct that mistake. :tup:

 

[Cal]

As it has been a year since I posted this suggestion, it's time for an reflection and then an update on my thoughts.

The solution you proposed was to completely replace and overhaul the staff team to get "fresh ideas", but that's not a realistic solution to suggest or implement.

You already have.
At this time of posting, Justis, TechBanana, and yourself are the only staff left from the time I made this suggestion a year and a few months ago. As far as I'm concerned, my intent at the time of this suggestion has already been accomplished. Though less drastic than I was initially pitching, the goal of the suggestion has been achieved. Aside from you three, the staff team has been completely and totally replaced.

If I recall correctly, at the time this thread was posted we had 8 staff members moderating a forum of 115,000 members. Today we have grown our team to be more than double the size with 18 [15] members and we are in a much better position now than we ever have been.

I totally agree.
Looking back, the change I wanted at the time was inevitable. The platform was in quite dire straits at the time of posting this thread, and change was absolutely necessary. Though a much less radical, and much more gradual approach was taken, the same goal was achieved. It just took a year and a few months to get there.

Looking to the future;
To stop on a philosophical trope, the ideas conceptualized by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs can be applied to a platform such as MC-Market. Fundamentally, the platform needs the code to run on, then on top of that it needs people to use it, and on top of that it needs users to administer it's community. At the time of this suggestion, I and many others felt the site was failing to meet the need of people administrating the community. In the year since the post has made, that has changed. As previously outlined, the site's administration has greatly improved. I believe those needs are met. It is my belief that the site must going forward divert energy into reaching the next step on this hierarchy, developing a product that can better meet the needs of it's community.

Spoiler: Off The Record

I would like to go into some more detail here as to my specific thoughts and aspirations for this post. These are some of my related thoughts to the suggestion, just as food for thought, as well as some more explaining of my point. This section will be a little chaotic.

I am aware of the nebulous nature of my final thoughts. The subject of future directions of a business is never exactly an easy topic to discuss. I do ask the community to provide your own, independent suggestions as to how to innovate within MC-Market's goal.

Going forward, I believe MC-Market is to transition it's focus towards innovating on the service it already offers, the streamline, expand and improve on it's ability to serve it's userbase. Administration should consider developing tools that better optimize the site towards commerce, by expanding a system that allows for a much wider variety of products and services to be purchased in platform.

A better communication system for MC-Market is desperately overdue. MC-Market needs to allow for a better way to communicate with users on the website. The platform is essentially desktop only, I would like to see better mobile support.

I believe automation is key to the many low margin businesses on the site, and going forward, I would like to see a push towards allowing automation and more technological advancement on the site.

I plan on at some point making another suggestion as to the specific direction I would like to see the site is going.

Spoiler: TLDR

The goal of my suggestion has been achieved. In the future, I would like more innovation and improvement to the user experience.

 

[Mick]

I've been waiting until after our announcement has been posted to make a response to this because I feel like it is important to show the direction MC-Market is going in for these next few months. Our focus is on making sure that we provide the best platform for our users, and to do this we have been focusing on improving the aspects of the site that have needed the most help over these past few months. There is massive potential in resources as a market where we can improve faster than any competition to provide a better platform, so we have been working hard to make these improvements and updates. However, while these updates are always welcomed and beneficial to our community it's clear that there is one particular complaint made by our users; the MC-Market staff team.

It's easy to make a suggestion saying that something is bad and needs improvement without explaining any realistic solutions to the problems. The solution you proposed was to completely replace and overhaul the staff team to get "fresh ideas", but that's not a realistic solution to suggest or implement. Instead over these past six months, we have been focusing on growth and activity within our team rather than getting rid of everyone and hiring inexperienced or unprofessional staff.

I absolutely agree with many of the concerns brought up in the original post on this thread and think that a year ago our staff team was in very poor shape due to an over-reliance on individuals rather than the collective. Losing activity from our one scam resolver at the time really damaged the site and was a valuable lesson to have redundancy in our roles. If I recall correctly, at the time this thread was posted we had 8 staff members moderating a forum of 115,000 members. Today we have grown our team to be more than double the size with 18 members and we are in a much better position now than we ever have been. In the past month in particular, I feel confident that the quality of work provided by myself and the rest of the staff team has been top notch, and our most recent announcement reflects that.

I don't mean to try and say that our staff team at the moment is perfect, in fact I'd say that we're still far from perfect, but we have improved and intend on improving more over the coming months and years. We try to respond to potential issues before they come up, and I believe we did a pretty good job at that. Introducing staff applications has had some really great results with the staff we’ve recruited through them.

We’ve reduced wait times through the implementation of a larger staff team and through further role specialisation, such as our recent introduction of the reputation moderator role.

The great position we’re in now as a staff team was not brought about by revolutionary change, but instead incremental improvements. I strongly disagree with the idea that doing anything different to maintaining the status quo is the right direction to go in. MC-Market is massively successful in the position we are in. The way that we should aim to grow isn’t changing to be something so different that our users wouldn’t want, but instead by changing to be even better for our users. Users always come and go, but that doesn’t mean that we’re dying and it is not a reason to be scared.

Rather than denying this suggestion without giving anyone the opportunity to respond, I’m going to be opening this suggestion up once again, I’d love to hear what you think.

This is still the stance I have on your original comment, and I don't think that there is much more to say other than this. The changes that we go for are incremental, and not as brash or bold as the way that you have suggested.

Sorry that this wasn't able to get to 2 years.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion.