Interteam Liaisons -- Admins<->Coders<->Players<->Admins<->Coders

[Bisar]

Hello.

I and at least one person raised this subject at the coderbus Q&A -- which I appreciated as a platform for coders and players to dialogue. I don't believe I've raised it regarding admins but nonetheless.

Countries have diplomats. Companies have salesmen and product managers.

I know it's a volunteer structure for maintainers and admins alike, and that there's no money in-hand. Instead you get the satisfaction of keeping the community cohesive, or of seeing your vision implemented in game, or just the satisfaction of having repaired something for a bugfix, or having kept the peace when you manage a problematic player or interaction.

In any case, it is still a structure, and interaction with other teams and groups is something that requires expertise. You don't have the customers talking directly to the software developers -- customers often don't appreciate the work that goes into the process, and software developers went to school to hide from people, not dealing with them face to face.

Just as well, admins serve a role more similar to judge and jailer accountable to the jury of gibbering public opinion and internal politck -- but that's people.

The point is, the task of keeping friction low between the groups shouldn't fall onto whatever random collection of coders, admins, and players are fighting to get their vision implemented, or the game kept functional, or the community out of an uproar. Half or even more of the time, I see people in knockdown dragout flame wars even when they all want the same thing -- it just happens that most of us are terminally online and where there would be a smooth talker between me and this fucking idiot who doesn't understand my PASSION and my VISION and the GAME I LOVE and the RULES I HAVE TO ENFORCE, it's just me and them and our being at odds because we've both become defensive or resentful or we just have terrible fuckin social skills.


I believe that there should be team agnostic advocates or liaisons or whatever pretty label we would slap on it. Internal affairs or mediator or guru or...

We need someone who doesn't feel like one group is We and the other group is Them. And I believe it we look for them or advertise for them we'll find them. Personally, I love to program and I'm willing to tolerate enforcement of the rules -- I also quite enjoy being the peacekeeper between people; I get the same satisfaction from harmonious community interaction that I do from seeing a game mechanic running smoothly. But I likely don't have the temperament, right now at least.

One person's work is another's pleasure, and having people whose sole role is to mediate and keep tempers cool will be a net win for /tg/. It is sorely needed, because it's either this, or making sure every maintainer, contributor, admin, and player are able to be fun at a party which is... Shooting for the moon, but Europa instead of Luna.

[Vekter]

I'm not really sure there needs to be a liason between players and admins, the headmins are kinda already that.

Otherwise this seems kind of sound.

[Bisar]

I'm not really sure there needs to be a liason between players and admins, the headmins are kinda already that.

Otherwise this seems kind of sound.

I'm glad you agree with the idea in principle, but to be frank I can't agree with you in the belief that a member of a team will be able to objectively mediate between their team and the other teams.

We're all part of the same community but we are still human, and the smallest distinction in which group we belong to will fuck with our head.

I believe it's absolutely essential for there to be an outsider who serves to help different groups of people mediate. The head coder can lead and be the spokesmen for the coders most certainly, and so can the headmins, and whatever prominent player who gets thrown up from the masses because they just won't shut the hell up... But none of these people can ALWAYS be relied upon to disregard the group they are a part of to evaluate a situation or miscommunication without bias. Not due to any character flaw, but a fact of the psychology from our biology.

There's certainly no need to rush this and no pressing crisis of community cohesion ( ... For now ... ). We keep each other in check for the most part, but we can do better by not being blinded by our identification with the people most similar or closest to us. We should at least come up with a framework or possible implementation or hypothetical position.

[Lacran]

Well, if coders are already committed to giving people more say over the codebase, we could float the idea of a codervote headmin.

This gives us elected reps for each, that have to work together.

[TheFinalPotato]

What do you actually want this role to do? what does mediate mean?
You seem concerned about them being outsiders, but if you give them power don't they just become insiders flavored differently?

What problem are you trying to solve?

[GamerAndYeahMick]

Sorry but I disagree that the head admins can't mediate, we aren't a good old boys club and I think especially my headmin term has 3 people who will quite rigorously do what needs to be done regardless of social dynamics between people, and in general I don't think we need assigned liasons, we have a forum and a discord where anyone can ping anybody and talk stuff out and try to come to solutions so no need for formality. This is all just my opinion and not a binding ruling on the policy though.

[RaveRadbury]

We've had player representatives in the past, I think Crag was one so he might have some wisdom from that experience.

By nature the admin team is better suited to handle social friction in the community, or at least that's how I've always seen it. When you're actively adminning the community is right there, you can bring up PRs with them as conversation fodder and help people become more aware. You also get to take the heat off of coders because you're kind a 3rd party to the situation. So the change isn't sudden and players are talking to people who can take the criticism and discuss it without having it feel at all personal.

I think that a little bit of coordination and the production of easy to digest infographics is likely the best course of action as that kind of thing is easy to share and cuts through noise while also having a lot of room for design and consideration to balance out the vibe. I don't know anybody who likes to make infographics (yet) so that's what's holding me up at this at the moment.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

All 3 head admins feel this is pointless sorry