A Community Assessment

To like run to the bathroom, she means afking for farming purposes or leaving their account logged in over night. not just being afk, the more extreme version of afk ;-)

And this is what i mean, i try to ask a staff a question and wait an hour for them to respond, and even then they sometimes dont respond

Been gone for over a year, STILL talk of ICC and such? Oi.

Eh, its probably not a big deal crystal. That was probably similar to my initial reaction as well but I wouldn't want to alienate ben3400 for bringing up one of his concerns which may or may not be what he percieves. It might seem hypocritical coming from me but when I go on a rant its either dismissed or met with the same fervor as I don't have shiny green under my name. Which will change how people may view said rants. just trying to be helpful.

Ooh, ooh Look at me!
My turn!

Having been here for under 200 days now, Every0ne is new to me, senior staff are just as new as the new staff to me. the only way I have to judge them is on their competency, professionalism, and speed resolving my issues. When it comes down to it they are all competent, Some are more formal in their in their chosen speech patterns than others, but none unprofessional. That leaves me with just speed, and I have to say that's a mixed bag, the only times I have noticed any being slow have been those that I expected to be slow, the "Moderator in training". when it comes to fast I've been surprised at the speed of resolution I have gotten from the "newer" staff members. I have nothing bad to say about any individual, that hasn't already been banned for griefing my builds. To tell the truth the one and only reason I have not myself applied for a staff position is, with my "IRL" situations I can not list a regular schedule that would be good for me to be online. I have decades of customer service experience, decades of "systems" and trouble ticketing experience, Closed Beta test, Open Beta test, Alpha test, top 10 in game, top 5 in game, #1 on server.

And none of that matters one little bit. unless I choose to apply all that experience to MY community. What it all boils down to is "community", that's us, that's you.
You have made your voice heard that's step 1 good job. (seriously, please do not read anything into this but the simple text that it is).
Now can you manage step 2?

Having said all that, I've probably lost 1/2 the people reading it or inadvertently pissing them off or made them think I'm trying to brag, the only issue I have with anything you said (not that I agree or disagree with it) is the "not knowing the new staff" part. That is 100% your problem not theirs. They are trying to play a game, trying to do their jobs, trying to keep up the social commitments they have with their friends in the Empire. I think they can be forgiven for not taking the time to individually introduce themselves to all of us. You want to know them, go get to know them. I know a few, have semi regular encounters with some, have joked with others, and know a few fairly well (just the ones that it'd be creepy for a 40 year old guy to be following)

There's a joke in there someplace, if you find more than one, congratulations!

That's my 2 cents, I'll be waiting for my change.

Correct.
For the 2nd part, the troll would be muted almost all the time, that is almost for 100 years, under assumption that the time to troll and get muted is negligible in comparison with the time it's muted - and it is.

Now, back on topic

My opinion is that yes, EMC changes, but that it is neither extremely better not extremely worse then before. My personal opinion is that it is getting somewhat better. This might be because I have rather no nostalgic feelings towards the old ways...

Many old members leave or become inactive, so the community changes. When few key people leave the atmosphere can change drastically because people who stay are not inspired any more to do what, and behave how they did before. This can be both positive and negative, and as several wrote above, nostalgia can play a big role in how one sees it.

Many new players join, many are younger than old average, the community changes again, many are clueless n00bs, atmosphere and culture changes again.
This, again, can be, and can be felt as both positive and negative.

Old people who are here also change, mature - and this is positive.

There is some overall "inflation" - but this time I don't mean rupees.
What was worth a lot in the past has somewhat lost value. This is why I think we all shall resist the temptation to make the game easier, but strive to add new challenges.

Building / architecture, machines, farms, transport, economy, quests, competitions, friends, teams, sub-communities, social structure, politics (within the community) - this all invites to be explored and has challenges to be mastered.

Drama. Yes, drama makes the community alive. When people feel emotional about something, when there are motions, discussions, arguments. This is how a community lives.

Regarding staff, I shall resist the temptation to explain much and I shall say only this:
Good staff serves the community to prevent harassment and obvious damage.
Good staff does (really try to) NOT impose own preferences and views onto the community.

As far as I know them, the new mods on smp6 are really of the best kind.

If you love them - set them free.

To be honest, i haven't read all of this post, but the first 3 Pages should be enough for now.

I joined the Server a few years ago, and played a small amount of time, did not socialize and didn't contribute in any way, shape or form the the community. So getting bored, because i was pretty introverted back then, i just stopped playing and blamed it on my computer breaking down.
Now a few weeks ago i joined this server again, and started talking to people, having conversations and interacting with Staff.
One thing that immediately caught my eye, was the Players that did obviously never read the rules. They are spamming, using sometimes strong language and do not seem to behave very well. I'm just guessing now, but i think those players are to a large part children. Of course, i /report a player if they do not follow the rules. After telling them 3 times to stop spamming they still continue, but i can 100% understand a moderator not banning a (possible) child, for not being mature. Especially on a server that is Family friendly, enforcing rules is a hard topic to deal with, and i think that the Staff is making the correct choices. I myself am a guy that swears a lot in private, so there is some stuff that left my "hands" in chat, i shouldn't have said. I'm glad that they do not ban for one misstep, since that would lead to a chaos, that couldn't be fixed the easy way.

A bunch of people do not seem to have any experience with communities beyond being a member of one. The administrative process of having a community can, and most likely will be, a difficult, and exhausting process. Moderating topics itself can be let off as not that difficult, but doing it in the right way and finding the right wording can be a really difficult task, especially if the person writing it is not from an English speaking country. And saying that every staff member needs to know 100% perfect English, is just not from this world. We are a community, that has members from every country around the world, so logically the people taking care of us will also be from different places on this globe. We are on the Internet, and accepting that some people might not be able to speak your language a hundred percent from the beginning, is necessary to be a part of a large community.
If you didn't notice by now, i myself are not from an English speaking country, and taught myself to read, write and speak English. I'm proud of where i am now, but i cant be mad at people who are still learning.

It is a totally normal process that this community goes through, in my opinion. Since this community is pretty old by now, things got "stuck" and the people here need a refreshment to get back on track. The old days are always awesome. I look back a few years ago when i had my own server, and we got excited for every Minecraft Update and researched every change and tested stuff for hours on hours, it was an awesome time. I would love for that memory to live up again, but it will never be - since it is a memory. Most members seem to want to change hundreds of people, just so they have the old feeling back. That will not work, sorry.

If a Community gets bigger and bigger, it will also get less personal over time. There are too much people to know everyone, and get the sense of a big "Family".

Just my two Rupees though,
Akaikee

I would like to make a couple of points here in response to some comments or points of view

I think what you are feeling or suffering from is a touch of nostalgia, a loss of the past. I have had this also I like many others here joined EMC over 3 years ago, at that time you may recall we had 60 player capacity on all servers and you would struggle to get online at times because all servers where full. But things change in life and EMC has changed, I think a point made in one of the posts highlighted this, that most of the new players are much younger due to MC becoming more available to the younger audience through schools programs etc, but we still have an older player base, maybe you just need to get to know some of them.

Sadly when Aikar took over and ICC left, a lot of the old players decided to go also, no one wanted them to go they chose to leave and not support the new owner and the new changes but most of us stayed and in what ever capacity try to help and do what we can in support of this.

being here a long time you see many changes and I can honestly say things have improved massively since Aikar took over with Krysyyjane9191 as Community Manager.

As I mentioned when I first joined with 60 players on the server the chat and the server was a buzz with activity. That did not last long though with players being banned for little or no good reason.

We went from 60 players per server to just a few and sometimes 0 players, after going through a rough time with many players cheating building sand generators although not everyone realised these were a banned item at the time but regardless they got banned, no if's no but's bang they were gone. ( There was no tolerance! )

So yes feeling nostalgic for the old days and how some things where is something we can all suffer from, but only selective parts. I watched EMC forced into recline due to bad leadership and moderation with nothing or very little done to improve things.

Now move ahead since Aikar took over, things have improved hugely, the number of players on EMC has improved due to the efforts of Aikar and the team

1. Advertising the server
2. Complete - rebuild of the tutorial
3. Overhaul the wiki info adding a ton of new content
4. Introduced the voting rewards for the server
5. Introduced promo items
6. Introduced new levels of staff - giving many players the opportunity to play a part
7. Youtube Team
8. Contribution Team
9. Games and events - EMC Olympics and many others
10. New additions to come to EMC - Games Server and more

This I think is a short list as there is much more that has happened on EMC in the past year that is new but this just helps put into perspective some of the improvements we have seen in addition to the increased player base.
Along with the above changes we also have a much more tolerant server where questions are asked and players given a chance to make the needed changes when they do wrong. It is not always easy when you are staff to be so tolerant but giving ppl a chance to change is the right thing to do, even if the odd one persists in their bad behaviour and is eventually banned.

Try send them a PM on the website, when in game it easy to miss a question from a player when dealing with a situation. The screen only holds so much information and there could be several players sending a staff member a question or a hello so not everything gets picked up. But they will always see and respond to a pm on the website

Yes, that's it. EMC is improving, and not in a downwards spiral, I think. But still, people get bored. People crave for something new. And then they think back to the old times, when things were still new to them. This reminds me of discussions I often see in YouTube comment sections regarding Minecraft.
People wanting Beta Minecraft back. They want Beta Minecraft back, they say. Other people tell them to use the launcher to select a beta version, but they say "No that's different, I can't get onto servers then". And then the other people agree, and conclude "Minecraft was much better back then, bla bla bla, it's all getting worse and worse." But it isn't. Compare the facts, be rational. Minecraft 1.8 is much, much better than Minecraft Beta 1.8. It really is. But these players are nostalgic. And that's completely logical and understandable! When you're new to something, it just all feels so magical... and Minecraft especially has this feeling. But then, when you keep playing it for years, do everything, get to know everything, it starts feeling more casual. And for some people, it does so much that they start to feel bored, perhaps a bit empty. That's not because things got worse, that's because their interest decreased, because they want something new. And that's when nostalgia arises. (If you hadn't noticed yet, this all can be applied to EMC just as well as Minecraft.) People start thinking back to "the good old times". But here comes the interesting part. These "good old times" differ from person to person. The people that started in Alpha, say that Alpha was the golden age. The Beta players hymn Beta. But now, ask someone who just found out about Minecraft during the first 1.8 snapshots. Do you think they'll feel bored? No. They're experiencing a totally new thing, and thoroughly enjoying it. Now, at least. But they will probably think back in three years too, to the "good old times", who now suddenly apparently happened between 1.7 and 1.9.
And like I said, the same applies to EMC. We're not only missing the players and the features from the past, we also miss the curious feeling that surrounded EMC when we first joined it. But luckily, new players are still joining every day. And among all those players, inbetween the griefers and the trollers, there are people out there, thoroughly enjoying our experience, and embracing our community. And that's what we want, right?