The Wallening

[TwistedSilicon]

Greebings

I'd like to ask the candidates about the most recent notable event server side that caused some problems within the community. I understand that as headmins you are more community based rather than code aligned, and I would suggest against promising to make any changes to the coder team or how the codebase is ran. This is purely a set quesitons for you as a figure of the community and to get a gauge of your opinions.

My questions to all ye candidates is as so:

What is your view on the wallening?

How would you, as a headmin, theoretically approach a situation like the wallening?

Do you have any suggestions or plans to prevent situations like the wallening in the future?


Sidenote:
I do understand this is a bit of a nothing burger question considering the Wallening is done and over (apparently? But also some sources say otherwise) but I'll still be interested in the hopefull naunce of your takes regarding it.

[TheRex9001]

What is your view on the wallening?
I thought it looked kinda cool but the gameplay was terrible, I liked melberts alternative to the shifting issue and that got closed which bummed me out. I really think the main issue was the "go play somewhere else" and general ignoring everything from the maintainer team, I hate to push blame but imo this one isnt on the admins and most certainly not the head admins who did make their dislike for the project very obvious and were vocal about it. I also didnt like how shafted mapping got but mainly it was just the sheer damage it wrought to pop by having such bad gameplay.

How would you, as a headmin, theoretically approach a situation like the wallening?
I HOPE the maintainer team have learned from their previous mistakes and never repeat a situation like this again, but I would ask the host to prepare to host an older rolled back version and I would try to listen to the community and express my own feelings on the matter as to make it clear that this is not some decision from the evil cabal or anything and that at least the headadmins are on the players side. Ultimately I believe this will not occur again but this would be my theoretical response to the matter.

Do you have any suggestions or plans to prevent situations like the wallening in the future?
Nothing much from the headmin end, but I believe there should be a bigger focus on feedback for large changes like the wallening. If nobody likes it you should cut it, I've had prs closed because the community didnt want it, and that is how it should be to some extent, but ESPECIALLY on large visiual/gameplay changes like the wallening included.

[xzero314]

Not going to lie I thought wallening lavaland and Icebox looked pretty epic. Was a fan of that part.

A few parts of it I didn't like. I was having a-lot of trouble clicking stuff as the ai. One time as a human, I went to disarm a flux anomaly but I couldn't click on it due to clutter. The perspective shift in general was a tough sell.

I liked the look of alot of the sprites though. Windows not so much but quite a few things had a cool fresh look. (I thought new blob was cool as hell personally)

The issues with the wallening to me had nothing to do with the sprites or any of the actual content of the wallening.

The issue with the wallening is that a week after the servers were DEAD due to how disliked it was. And our entire base being on Wall station, It was STILL an upward battle to convince people "Hey this is pretty unpopular and we should probably revert it"

There were a few days where I was picking captain on Manuel all day just to try to get some pop going.

I remember one quote from a maint that I wont name that really struck me as just insane "If this is what kills the servers so be it"

I have no plans to give coders any kind of grief/be up in their dms or anything like that as headmin over any code change. I can say for sure I would be vocal if I think something is unpopular and leading to major player burn out.

[RaveRadbury]

The Wallening was bad and I played my own part in that. The only comment I have on the code itself is that hard-working and kind people spent a lot of time working together to make it happen and I felt defensive of them.

I spent last election engaging the community and hearing out the people who were most upset with me. I put together plans (as laid out in my campaign thread) to keep another Wallening from happening. The organization owes an informational debt to the community. My plan is to fix that by getting some capable community talent to help me with making infographics to assist new players in orienting in the community while also communicating incoming code features clearly and well-ahead of time to allow for proper discourse.

[iansdoor]

Yes hello!

What is your view on the wallening?

I fought for the right to genuinely give test merge a try, in order to stamp out real feedback on what direction to go with it. During October to Nov 2024, that DDOS went for a month straight through the testing period, the timing couldn't be more impeccable by that jerk. The Manuel community split off, due to built up resentment from the community towards "maintainers." Maintainers, in general, cannot do the actions that was spoken about them. There were few copy/pasted comments that fanned the flames into a firestorm, and they were from players that code. The whole situation was a mess, and the amount of misunderstanding was too dam high.

I cannot forget that wallening was up on test branch for folks to dip their toes in, this was up for a month before. Wallening is unknown in the 2.5D art direction, but I loved the energy that our artists/mappers came together to get this working. Everyone, besides our artists, were so focused on hurling insults out of frustration, that those same artist/mappers were just taking a beating for no reason. The toll at the end, between the revert, the insult hurtling and lack of consideration in a community driven game, lead to a lot of people departing, burning out for number of reasons.

I hate to end on a sour note, the wallening was impressive on the visuals. I fell in love the lighting above on upper Z, casting genuine shadows below on tramstation, wall textures, even though false walls were buggy as hell, the work to create visually pleasing stairs that aren't squares that person could slip down from, or messing player dir variable. The amount of just topics springing up and artists vibing was neat. I would like to see that spark once more in our community.

How would you, as a headmin, theoretically approach a situation like the wallening?

First, I would clamp down on all the details of any big argument that were made and go one by one to calm the flames. There is a clear understanding with admins that you cannot please everyone, this is impossible. Lord forbid, that long standing admins partake in the fake information that they were fed to parrot it out, they would be out for that moment to calm down and asked to look at the bigger picture. In regard to that DDOSer, pray for them to be bored of it and hope they run out of money.

Do you have any suggestions or plans to prevent situations like the wallening in the future?

I don't know, if there would be another event like this. However, my suggestion would be a need for a community meeting immediately to address their issues, then take those issues to different segments and address them even more, similar to a check list. We did try the thing and there were suggested changes that helped temporary fix concerns. They were not accepted for some reason, there also needs to be more talks about open mindedness.

[kinnebian]

I was largely inactive in ss13 spaces during the wallening, so I think it would be disengenous of me to comment on the situation directly. I liked the sprites quite a lot, and felt like there was a shitstorm hurled both ways. I defer to rex's comment for what I would prefer to do if a similar situation ever happened.

[Jackraxxus]

I still struggle to not make snide remarks about the wallening when I see green names lecture admins about public relations.
I'll forgive them when they give us roundstart foxgirls.

[Maxipat]

• What is your view on the wallening?
  I personally thought that while visuals were cool, the game was turned into a buggy and mechanically often unplayable mess. I think for many of our players being able to interact with game mechanics is a key reason they play here, and wallening only made that significantly harder.
  
  BUT
  
  I think the worst thing that came from wallening was maintainers' and some admins' response, that often came out as dismissive and ignorant of community's voice, on top of disregard to our mapping team that was left with "suck it up" responses. It quite literally burnt out or pushed away people that made a lot of contribution to our community with previous winter/summer balls and toolbox tournaments and i think is the main reason a tournament didnt happen last year. (On top of us being ddosed). I'm with Jackraxxus on this one, i'll forgive if we add foxgirls.
• How would you, as a headmin, theoretically approach a situation like the wallening?
  
  Of course headmins don't control maintainers, but i'd try to mediate and stand as a community's voice trying to talk to maintainers about it. In the end it's up to them, but being a headmin gives you some soft influence as de-facto head of community, especially if the result of the merge was most of the playerbase leaving for wallstation (which i also helped to admin).
• Do you have any suggestions or plans to prevent situations like the wallening in the future?[/b]
  
  Headmins can't meddle in coders affairs, so the most i'd be able to do is to tell them my opinions about it and convince them to something else.