We Need to Focus on Mc-Market

[Sloth]

I would like to preface this with a little bit of a background. I joined this site back in 2015. Make no mistake, I know there are members who have been here longer than me but 4 years is a really long time. Hell, considering how most the people I considered to be "valued" members of the community ended up exit scamming or making really poor decisions that ended in them getting banned I would say being around for this long is an accomplishment! About two years ago I decided to take a break and leave Mc-Market to focus on my personal life (or in better terms get an actual personal life). Now ever since I decided to come back to Mc-Market a few months ago I noticed something. This site isn't what is once was. Now this isn't a bad thing. What I'm saying is that the community that I remember, the website I fell in love with all those years ago had changed. It had evolved. I'm going to be 100% honest, I have no idea who about 95% of the people in this community are anymore. Yet that's a good thing! I really like this new atmosphere presented by the community. It's nowhere near as toxic and the amount of innovations that have taken place on here for the betterment of the site are incredible. Yet alongside all these new changes I have noticed with the site, there was something I also noticed and unfortunately recognized.

After 4 years of being a member of this site, Mc-Market continues to have a problem finding and maintaining a larger staff team. Now I already know what's about to be said: "Sloth this idea has been recommended 7664735647385 times over and nothing has come of it." Well if you're thinking this, you're 100% correct. If something had come from the countless suggestions about building up the staff team I wouldn't be making this suggestion. The point I would like to get across is that this is one of, if not the most important and fundamental issue plaguing the market to this day. The good news is, this issue can be fixed! Our staff members don't have to be constantly understaffed. A difference can be made. But how you might ask? Let me clarify this point.

First I would like to identify what seems to be the leading cause in this delicate situation, and that's trust. Our current staff team and past staff members have always wanted to preserve the integrity of Mc-Market and only hire the most reputable and trustworthy of our members. This is good, this is absolutely necessary when hiring new employees. Businesses only want the best of the best. However, I don't think Mc-Market makes a great enough effort to seek these respectable individuals out or as I said before, put faith or "trust" in these individuals. I understand that by giving people new responsibilities and power can have serious implications. They could abuse their title or they could make major mistakes that impact the community as a whole. All valid reasons to keep a tight leash on who is promoted. Yet the idea that I think is forgotten in this idea of preserving the market is that for every person a business hires, for every employee that has ever taken up a promotion or a new set of responsibilities, there has always been the factor of trust. I would ask each and every current staff member now. How do you think people viewed you when you were first promoted? Did you think the current staff members who chose to promote you at the time had any thoughts of skepticism? Any doubts on whether or not you would prove to be a valued member of the team? I'm willing to wager a yes on that point. At the end of the day, all staff members were new at one point, they all had to work hard to be respected. Its time that the staff team puts its trust in new potential candidates.

Another point I would like to address is the idea that promoting more staff members could lead to a "quantity over quality" scenario. Yes, promoting a lot of new people into a staff position can cause this if done incorrectly. If more people are going to be promoted to the staff team it has to be gradual. It doesn't have to be instantaneously done. We also don't need to promote half the website to a staff position. I'm not asking that and would never ask that. With just 2-3 new staff members, whether it be scam resolvers or resource moderators or even chat moderators. These small amount of individuals can make a difference.

Before this long post comes to a close, I would like to list some of the benefits and some actual suggestions (finally). Right off the bat, the first thing I noticed when I returned was that staff applications were actually a reality. Great! Excellent! These are a great way to find potential candidates for staff. I suggest these application waves happen more frequently until this issue has been fixed, or as a counter plan: Just make applications a permanent option for people to submit. In order manage the influx of applications in this situation just don't have to set a time at which a decision needs to be reached on each application. Just review applications when new staff members are needed and make this point very clear to the applicant. I would also like to suggest that if current staff members have anyone in mind who they believe could help benefit the site by becoming a staff member, then by all means allow them to nominate individuals and let those already within the staff team weigh in on whether or not they agree with a nomination. Of course still make them fill out an application to ensure they meet all the requirements but this could help get rid of any wasted time.

One benefit I would love to make is that having more people on the staff team can give a bit of diversity to the current decision making. It's great that the current staff team gets along and agree with each other on the majority of decisions made. Yet with everyone always agreeing on everything I worry that the staff team could be an echo chamber of sorts. If everyone has the exact same way of thinking and views everything out of the same lens then there's no objectivity. Having staff members with different opinions can provide alternative perspectives potentially not being seen by the rest of the team. A staff team can still get along and work together wonderfully even with differing opinions. This is a simple sign of maturity that has been lost in all the politics and debate nowadays. Now I would like to clarify that I'm not assuming that the staff team is an echo chamber. I say this because I honestly don't know what the staff team discusses or what perspectives they weigh in. I simply state this because having clashing opinions can never truly hurt.

In conclusion I would like to explain the title of this suggestion. One thing I noticed as of late is that Mc-Market is trying to combat leakers by essentially waging a multi-platform war on them that spans across countless sites. My question is how in the world is the staff team ready to wage a war against leakers on other sites when it hasn't fixed this fundamental problem. Likewise how can you even moderate what users on other forums are doing if you're so understaffed here and are busy working here? Don't get me wrong I hate leakers just as much as the next guy, but we need to focus on Mc-Market's problems first before we do things like this. We need more staff members, we need to solve the scamming epidemic, we need to make sure the website can actually stay online and make sure users can actually connect with the rest of the community.

I would also like to give a big thanks to everyone on our current staff team. I know they work very hard to keep this site afloat even under the current circumstances. Don't get mad at them if things are going a bit slow, they are overworked and are doing the best they can!

Please leave your thoughts and feedback in the comments and thank you if you actually read to the end of this long post

 

[Joey]

ok

 

[Sloth]

This part I can agree with quite a lot. I think the platform combating leakers from various sites and platforms is only a losing battle, one resulting in lost time and resources, and those resources could be utilized far better in other areas (i.e. staffing, new features, etc).

As of now I agree it is a losing battle. Yet I do like everything that was said in that post and I would love to go head to head against leakers. I just don't believe now is the right time to do it. Down the line sure, Mc-Market can go combat whatever it wants to so long as the site itself is in a stable condition.

 

[Mick]

Since the time this suggestion was made, our staff team has changed a ridiculous amount and I am incredibly happy with the current state of our team. In fact, I believe that right now the staff is in a better place than we have ever been in the history of the site. A year ago I believe we had around 8 staff members, and we are now up to 17. Having this many staff now has had a whole bunch of advantages and disadvantages to it, but I believe that overall it has been a net positive. The rapid promotions that we have made have had a few unexpected consequences that we have had to deal with and resulted in Kram's promotion to lead moderator in order to assist with some of the added managerial duties that were created from the expansion. With more team members it means that more time needs to be spent with communication between us all and it is often more difficult to come to a consensus with changes being made, but I believe the decisions we make now are better informed.

We currently have 2 admins, 1 lead mod, 7 mods, 4 scam resolvers, 2 feedback mods, 2 resource mods, 3 chat mods, and a few developers. I feel like we are finally getting into a position where we have redundancy in order to minimise backlogs, which has been a goal for a while now. In the future, I think that the perfect size I would like the team to be is 2 admins, 1 lead mod, 10 mods, 3 scam resolvers, 3 feedback mods, 3 resource mods, and however many chat mods. We won't be making any major changes to the staff team until at least 2020 now, but by mid-2020 I would like to get to this point and I feel like once we are there shouldn't be any issues in the future and we can continue providing the best quality service to our community members possible.

The way we have gone about making promotions hasn't exactly been in the way that you were wanting, but I believe it to be better. We tried releasing staff applications on the site twice, and after the promotions we made from them, Energy is the only application-recruited staff member we still have. Over the past few years we've found that a better way to recruit new staff is through internal suggestions and discussions, and we're pretty good at it by now I think. Kram has been ridiculously good at finding perfect candidates and a large part of our current team was promoted from his suggestion.

I'd like to open this back up to you all, especially Sloth since you seem to be pretty interested in the performance of the team. From the outside, how do you feel that the staff team has performed over these past ~3 months? Do you feel like our team is a good size now, or needs to be bigger or smaller?

Thanks for creating such a well-written suggestion.

 

[Sloth]

Since the time this suggestion was made, our staff team has changed a ridiculous amount and I am incredibly happy with the current state of our team. In fact, I believe that right now the staff is in a better place than we have ever been in the history of the site. A year ago I believe we had around 8 staff members, and we are now up to 17. Having this many staff now has had a whole bunch of advantages and disadvantages to it, but I believe that overall it has been a net positive. The rapid promotions that we have made have had a few unexpected consequences that we have had to deal with and resulted in Kram's promotion to lead moderator in order to assist with some of the added managerial duties that were created from the expansion. With more team members it means that more time needs to be spent with communication between us all and it is often more difficult to come to a consensus with changes being made, but I believe the decisions we make now are better informed.

We currently have 2 admins, 1 lead mod, 7 mods, 4 scam resolvers, 2 feedback mods, 2 resource mods, 3 chat mods, and a few developers. I feel like we are finally getting into a position where we have redundancy in order to minimise backlogs, which has been a goal for a while now. In the future, I think that the perfect size I would like the team to be is 2 admins, 1 lead mod, 10 mods, 3 scam resolvers, 3 feedback mods, 3 resource mods, and however many chat mods. We won't be making any major changes to the staff team until at least 2020 now, but by mid-2020 I would like to get to this point and I feel like once we are there shouldn't be any issues in the future and we can continue providing the best quality service to our community members possible.

The way we have gone about making promotions hasn't exactly been in the way that you were wanting, but I believe it to be better. We tried releasing staff applications on the site twice, and after the promotions we made from them, Energy is the only application-recruited staff member we still have. Over the past few years we've found that a better way to recruit new staff is through internal suggestions and discussions, and we're pretty good at it by now I think. Kram has been ridiculously good at finding perfect candidates and a large part of our current team was promoted from his suggestion.

I'd like to open this back up to you all, especially Sloth since you seem to be pretty interested in the performance of the team. From the outside, how do you feel that the staff team has performed over these past ~3 months? Do you feel like our team is a good size now, or needs to be bigger or smaller?

Thanks for creating such a well-written suggestion.

I would have to agree with you on the current state of the staff team. I think they do a tremendous job running the site and I do believe that the staff team has never been better. The staff team has grown exponentially since I wrote this suggestion back in March, back when we were severely understaffed and basic support services were backed up for weeks. Now, everything is well maintained and running smoothly. The size of the staff team is completely acceptable at this point and the members that make up the team are also very qualified. This, as you mentioned, is due in part to Kram's suggestions. I believe Kram is one of the best staff members Mc-Market has ever had and I trust his judgement on all matters. Adding any additional users to the team wouldn't be a bad thing but their presence would simply be to ensure Mc-Market continues to operate at peak efficiency.

I'm very curious to hear what other outside users have to say about the current state of the staff team and whether or not they believe they are doing a good job operating the site.

 

[Mick]

Since the time this suggestion was made, our staff team has changed a ridiculous amount and I am incredibly happy with the current state of our team. In fact, I believe that right now the staff is in a better place than we have ever been in the history of the site. A year ago I believe we had around 8 staff members, and we are now up to 17. Having this many staff now has had a whole bunch of advantages and disadvantages to it, but I believe that overall it has been a net positive. The rapid promotions that we have made have had a few unexpected consequences that we have had to deal with and resulted in Kram's promotion to lead moderator in order to assist with some of the added managerial duties that were created from the expansion. With more team members it means that more time needs to be spent with communication between us all and it is often more difficult to come to a consensus with changes being made, but I believe the decisions we make now are better informed.

We currently have 2 admins, 1 lead mod, 7 mods, 4 scam resolvers, 2 feedback mods, 2 resource mods, 3 chat mods, and a few developers. I feel like we are finally getting into a position where we have redundancy in order to minimise backlogs, which has been a goal for a while now. In the future, I think that the perfect size I would like the team to be is 2 admins, 1 lead mod, 10 mods, 3 scam resolvers, 3 feedback mods, 3 resource mods, and however many chat mods. We won't be making any major changes to the staff team until at least 2020 now, but by mid-2020 I would like to get to this point and I feel like once we are there shouldn't be any issues in the future and we can continue providing the best quality service to our community members possible.

The way we have gone about making promotions hasn't exactly been in the way that you were wanting, but I believe it to be better. We tried releasing staff applications on the site twice, and after the promotions we made from them, Energy is the only application-recruited staff member we still have. Over the past few years we've found that a better way to recruit new staff is through internal suggestions and discussions, and we're pretty good at it by now I think. Kram has been ridiculously good at finding perfect candidates and a large part of our current team was promoted from his suggestion.

I'd like to open this back up to you all, especially Sloth since you seem to be pretty interested in the performance of the team. From the outside, how do you feel that the staff team has performed over these past ~3 months? Do you feel like our team is a good size now, or needs to be bigger or smaller?

Thanks for creating such a well-written suggestion.

To add onto this, now we're at a spot where we have 22 staff members, 5 more than we had a year ago. We've been able to expand our staff team to match the growth that our marketplace has had and I think that it's been going really well.

Since this suggestion didn't really say much more than "promote new staff" which is a pretty standard thing that has been suggested dozens of times, I'll move this to denied. Thank you muchly Mr Sloth.