The problems of Krysyy, Aikar and how EMC is run.

It seems like this thread has come now to be stuck between a rock and a hard place for the non-staff here, at least for myself - except the rock is "We've set ourselves up for this to happen", and the hard place is "we don't have enough information to engage in some of the topics that the staff are discussing".
Half of the burki and subsequent reply's issues are about a dislike of krysyy, which I disagree with but also have no context to 99% of the discussions. I can't argue with someone claiming krysyy talks trash about players behind the scenes, because I'm not there to see or not see it. I have no doubt that she has choice words for certain problematic players, myself included, but when I actually engaged with her about to see what the problems are, it was productive and no hard feelings were had. I have a hard time imagining she's brutally roasting people in the staff slack to the extent that some of you are describing it.
At the end of the day, I think all many players (such as myself) want to see is progress. Just about everything in this thread and countless others has either been shot down, told it's in progress, or been told it's not an issue. However, that's not a real solution, and the anxieties and fears will still linger in many. Chicken's response was a big step in the right direction, although it's still vaguely concerning because of the

Hearing that we "think" we will update, in an undesirably time frame, is not the most reassuring. Additionally, I can see why many players may be frustrated with krysyy's responses to their concerns because they're mostly either apologies or refutations. If we see a sudden shift (Which to be fair, earlier today we already got a new event), then that's comforting, but for most of us non-staff, the issues air today we will never see a resolution or change in because they take place in PMs and slacks.

Well shoot man, that's all you had to say. The fact that there's an end goal even in sight is reassuring because I know that when you're knee deep in a project the end can be completely hidden until you start to approach it. And of course, if you need help with specific code issues, I'm always around I'm not spending 60k a year on a degree in the area for nothing, or at least I hope I'm not.
Oh, and back to the papermc thing, I meant to mention this earlier, but it's annoying to hear "go help with papermc". Not your fault, but like you, school comes first, so I can't go chasing all 257 current issues listed in the papermc repository. I have to commit a large amount of my time developing projects that I can actually link strongly to myself because that's what companies/government organizations want to see (And right now, that's my number one priority so that I actually have a job come this summer and beyond). For something like paper, contributing has some value, but I can't call myself a papermc developer or team member just by making pull requests. Thus, I can't commit infinite time to it. However, if you give us(the emc community who codes) specific issue numbers that you need fixed on various repositories, paper included, then it's a lot more manageable for us to make contributions. I know you said paper is mostly good now, but for future reference, that's the case. Same with spigot, empirecraft, etc.

Time for Jinkies to give her 2 cents...

I originally came to this server to have a place to hang out with my son when he was away from home. I really like it here. The last server I was on shut down, never to return. I've played on some other servers. Some pale in comparison, even with their fancy 1.14 updates, and some are pretty good. So why stay? I didn't. I stopped supporting the server months ago, on multiple accounts. At the time it was because I was butt-hurt over dealings I had with Krysyy. With summer here, it was the perfect excuse to abandon ship and enjoy the New England humidity. Now that the leaves are falling and it's cold out, I came back with a different attitude. I'm not gonna lie, it was nice to come back to a quiet SMP6. The lack of drama has been wonderful. I even considered becoming a supporter again.

I haven't seen much staff interaction as of late and I do find that concerning, although I get that we all have lives offline, so I'm not up in arms over it. I have a cray cray life too. I can't imagine what our staff deals with, between complaints, updates, events, loss of staff, etc. Then throw real life on top of all of that. These aren't children running this site, they're adults, with jobs, bills, children. They come here to provide you with a place to hang and have fun. A place unlike any other I've seen. I have been playing Minecraft for a LONG time. I remember when they introduced testificates for gawds sake. If you think you can do it better, then step up and get staffed, otherwise...sit here and wait patiently like the rest of us. Ganging up on one person isn't going to resolve any one of the issues stated earlier. Petition for the changes you want to see on the site, not staff.

All of that said, I'm happy to be back, and I would be sad if this server shut down. This IS one of the better ones.
Remember one thing, these are just regular, everyday, people providing you with an awesome experience. They work hard, both on and off this site/EMC. It may not be where we want it to be as far as 1.13/14, but the fact that Aikar and Krysyy have both chimed in to thoroughly explain the progress is enough for me.Imagine spending your entire Sunday defending yourself to angry mobs...so relaxing.

Thank you to everyone who was been staff, and is currently. This is a great place to waste all of my free time and sometimes real money. I appreciate it and your work to preserve it.

<3
V

What is "EmpireCraft" ?

Then how did Willies already update the code and the server can't update??

really confused there.

I think this might be the first time I've read through a thread like this and come out the other side feeling decent. Not good, but it seems like a lot got vented, and then a lot got discussed and addressed. Not everything of course, but a good bit. Some of it even turned into really productive discussion, and that is great.

I think it's better to praise in public and criticize in private. That said, this might be the exception when it's not horrible to blow a gasket and let out the steam. Apparently that was needed.

Burki, I am going to miss you so much. I hope you'll stay in contact with me, and let me know what you're doing and where you're at, and when we can hang out. You were a joy to work with on Build Team, and you contributed a lot in a very short amount of time. Thank you. (He hates me thanking him. Tough. I am grateful and I will express that gratitude no matter how much it makes him squirm )

I hope Burki and Krysyy can resolve whatever happened. Y'all are mad and hurt right now, but you're both good people. Whatever went down, it probably went down in frustration and anger on both sides. People don't get that mad if they don't care. Sometimes it's all about feelings and not about right/wrong. I'd rather not see you both ticked off at each other for eternity. I'm probably on thin ice right now and annoying you both, but I really do hope you settle things amicably in the future.

This whole thread has made me think about communication. A lack of communication. One of my favorite sayings is "if I don't write down, it didn't happen". As frustrating as it is and no matter how much time and effort you put into something, if you don't communicate about it, it didn't "happen".

Now I have to go write a build team post because I don't want to hijack Burki's thread, and I'm as guilty of not writing it down as the next person.

it would be cool if we could perhaps at least locate a suitable template for the forums and start a repo on github for at least the idea of one day updating the forums... I have a fair bit of web development experience and I'd love to help... I am willing to help in any way possible and not just repeatedly ask for change and not be willing to help

i mean i figure for the basic design, it isn't required to be hosted, so it shouldn't necessarily be that big of a deal, right?

then again, i do remember being told Aikar is the main guy with all things regarding Xenforo

my opinion: chickeneer is an absolute legend for his dev work on 1.14, thank you chicken

This doesn't seem at all constructive, Appleton2. What's your intention? You already made clear that you disagree with his post. It seems especially unwarranted in this case, though, because almost two hours before your post, belac posted this.

Thanks for your post, but at first I was greatly confused on how to read it, because you first type your answer, and then quote the post you're replying to. That's rather unconventional.

I thought I'd respond to this as I am the most passionate forum user on here. I recognise your fear. However, I trust Aikar and Krysyy that they wouldn't just go "Hey, we finally updated the forum. Enjoy.", and leave it to us to find all the missing features, unnecessary changes and undesirable features.
The three things that I think nobody will be against is fixing the list threads bug, fixing the search and implementing drafts for posts. However, I do expect that when we would update, other new defaults would be included as well.
But we could discuss about those. I think that there can be an approach of changing as little as possible at first, mainly getting the forum stable and reimplementing/readjusting everything that we already had. And then we'll see about new features.
And about your design point: I am certain that Krysyy wouldn't just want to throw away the aesthetic we've got going. Maybe this 'flat UI' feel could be easily implemented as a new optional theme, but also maybe Krysyy can finally finish the Dark - Rainbow theme.
I agree that not updating is the safe choice, and for a while I advocated against ever updating. However, these three issues that I have mentioned, while they can be dealt with somewhat (use Google for searching and use Notepad++ for post compiling) are quite convenient, and if they were fixed it would greatly improve my experience. And I think it will be possible to keep the forum quite consistent, as as far as I know newer versions of XenForo aren't actually that different from what we're on now. It's not like we're discussing a switch to tapatalk or something.

xenForo isn't as easy as you might be thinking. There are loads of styles for it. The latest version of xenForo changed how everything worked. There is no backwards compatability between the 1.x and 2.x. They've redone everything. With regards to updating the forums, from what I know, JustinGuy didn't actually implement a lot of features correctly. Instead of creating an addon which runs seperate from the main xenForo code; he instead built features into the core of xenForo. This has meant that EMC has been restricted. Updating xenForo could wipe those features out.

Correction: Updating xenForo, will wipe these features out.

What even happened here.

Alright, time to throw my hat in the ring.

I apologise if this isn't entirely consistent with everything that's been said as this thread is doubling in mesages like a bacteria.

Firstly, Krysyy, I really do feel like Burki is right to be frustrated at the current state of EMC. It's gotten way too quiet around here. I mean, where are the monthly news updates? They've been late in previous years, but it was always very open, and everyone appreciated your honesty about not having the time to do a news update on time every single month. However it is now October and the last news update we had was January unless one somehow slipped under my radar. Open and honest communication is needed more and more these days. It should not have taken a thread like this to get you to say that you're very busy lately. All that's needed is regular interaction with the community and assurance that the staff are not asleep at the wheel. I didn't want to really believe Burki at first, but now that multiple ex staff have come out of the woodwork backing up their statements I'm beginning to see what's going on. I still don't know if your actions are malicious or not, and I'd like to believe they aren't. However as some have said they can't even say things in a private Snapchat call without that risking their position on the team? That's ridiculous. If you can so publicly display your faults and use the 'I'm only human' excuse, then other staff should also have that outlet. They are real people, as you have said multiple times before in every new staff intro thread. So treat them that way. Trust them more. Loosen up. Allow them to have opinions, as long as they make the distinction that the opinion is not from the staff team but from themselves. . As cheesy as hammering on the "I'm only human" point was, you're not entirely wrong. You've had your fair share of ups and downs that will undoubtedly effect you. Staff have regularly had absences for real life issues, just look at DWmom and her kid. She had priorities, and that was fine. She was just more transparent than you were.

Secondly, Burki, didn't talk to you a whole lot man, but you seem like a really nice guy who just wants the best for EMC, as I'm sure we all do. I too have wanted to lash out at times. I also thought her really pushing the 'I'm only human' narrative was a little cheesy but it is true, however she really didn't need to hammer it home that much, it did look like she was just trying to find an excuse for the problems, rather than either addressing them, or, as she did later, say they weren't entirely her fault. She really should have redirected the anger before trying to make an excuse. This thread has been both a blessing and a curse. Normally this type of drama is not good for EMC, but I think this thread has been very therapeutic, allowing us all to vent frustrations we all wanted to say but would have been labeled as drama before. I think we should give her credit where credit is due, she cannot be blamed for all of EMC's problems, and she do not seem to have always been this way. From when I joined up until about 2 years ago I didn't really notice anything wrong, but ever since that auction rule change something has seemed off. I don't agree however that she don't interact with the community at all. Because she USED to regularly host events, (TNT Run last night was a nice return to the old days) and just this morning she came on to help a player escape a lava pool in the nether.

Lastly, I'd just like to say that I don't want to take sides here. Krysyy, you are of course a real human, with human needs, but just be honest with us instead of leaving the community in the dark. Burki, you made good points, but you have ignored a lot of the good Krysyy has done in her time. She has hosted and organised numerous events in the past, been great with player interaction, and just been nice to talk to in general. However things are very noticeably slipping lately. We just need communication. That is all.
I don't think either of you are wrong. I think, as I have said multiple times now, that we need better communication on all levels. Bring back Aikar's streams, bring back monthly news posts, get involved in threads.

Please don't let EMC die on this hill. I grew up here. I know we can return it to what it once was.

(please point out inconsistent areas of this post. I read most of the thread but a lot of it is slipping my mind)

I agree with most points you make, thank you for you the response it was an interesting read.

I am very glad to see that she helped with that lava pit this morning and I hope it is a step in the right direction