Concept of better Staff-Community interaction.

[xElijah]

There are some staff members who are really nice and friendly. They try to help everyone the best way they can. They try to sound friendly and polite while talking. They try to avoid giving unnecessary warnings and bans, they avoid power abuse. On the other hand (I'm not giving names), there are some staff members who own qualities completely opposite to the aforementioned. They sound really biased. They use expressions that sound really offensive. They give out warnings not to maintain order but just to get rid of some person they don't like. Some of them are really inactive, they ignore messages and people because they don't want to spend time dealing with their problems.

So I have an idea how to improve the staff team, make them more friendly, active and professional. My idea is - THE STAFF ELECTION. Community should decide who should lead them, not a small team of administrators who were picked by @Eric Gurt long time ago and who don't want to improve or change anything. Community would elect staff team members who they think are nice, polite, active and professional. You may say "Community is mostly made of 10 years old children who would pick someone bad", and you would be right. But this is how we can prevent it: we pick one person who we all trust and like and make him a "member of an electoral college" similar to US election system where people vote not for the candidate, but for the elector who would give his vote to the candidate. Let's say we pick @Nyove (for example) as an elector. Then the most active part of the community would vote on the forum for person who should be an administrator, and if @Nyove agrees that this person is not a candidate picked by 10 years old kids for the sake of a joke, but in fact he is a candidate who actually meets all the requirements to be a good administrator, @Nyove would contact @Eric Gurt and tell him to make that person an administrator. Administrator would pick his team of moderators and lead PB2 community the way he sees the best. The elector (@Nyove) won't have any mod powers and cannot interact with the community as a member of staff team. If the elector lost his trust of the community and he votes for the unchosen candidate for no good reason, community would discuss the matter, vote for the new elector and write a group letter to @Eric Gurt explaining the case and reasons why they think the elector lost the trust. @Eric Gurt would set a new person as an elector and we can start over.

This would be a great improvement of Staff-Community interaction in my opinion. Right now there is no serious punishment for the power abuse of a staff memeber, and there is no motivation for staff members to do their work the most effective way. If we choose the election system, then picked administrator would feel the "pressure" of the community's opinion and would try to do his best to not let us down. I think it would solve many present and future issues within the Community-Staff interaction in Plazma Burst 2 and Plazma Burst 3. What do you think? Please tell me your opinion. And thank you for reading.

[phsc]

Well, a few things make this a bit not viable, first is the fact that Eric does not handle picking staff members or anything like that, Tempus does that, Eric believes in Tempus, and the thing is, around one year and a half ago, in 15 February 2019 I sent a message to Tempus with some similar ideas, not to your extent where the entire system is rebuilt, but more so people can actually have a voice about their views on staff members, my idea was simply making a poll for applicants and those in the Discord server can vote for or agaisn't them, would this set exactly who gets in and not? No, because sometimes staff can handle more technical parts, such as ZapruderFilm/MrMcShroom and his bot for the server, and many other possibilities, maybe there is someone who is competent at doing their function but not very likeable or social, and Tempus replied! saying that my suggestion makes the system go by popular vote too much, he also said this which I do not understand completely "What also a big issue is people will dislike someone getting staff instead of them" and he also said that this idea was suggested before.

Since your idea is more radical than mine, and correlates to the aspects of such idea Tempus considers negative, I don't think it is going to happen, actually I think any real change in how the staff system works is going to happen at all, maybe when 2.5/3 releases or anything, the thing is, the way people handle this game is slow and static, fixated, things do not change very often, but if you truly believe your idea go talk to Eric Gurt on twitter or something.

There is a bit more I'd like to mention about it, first is that, staff actually do not lead the community, the might be examples and such, but their function is actually applying the Code of Conduct and helping others, supposedly they should not be in a leader position or anything, they should simply apply the Code of Conduct, and most do, I have a big issue with the Code of Conduct and how things are very poorly defined or specific there, and I think this is a bigger issue, a staff member can be disliked if he applies the Code of Conduct, and some which often are disliked, apply it pretty damn well, a good example is Wasted Time, who is responsible for banning some of the most toxic people I've seen in this game, meanwhile he is very disliked because he mutes people quite easily and some say he is quite abusive on the power, a thing he told me on the Discord server is that, if it were not for him, because of the ticket system and how appealing works, many very toxic and abusive straight up sociopathic users would not be banned, and instead be unbanned, considering there is a fail in this part of the system, even if he unliked by many, he offers a very useful service, of course this other system could change as well and your system could work better, but actually I think the issue is in the application of the current system for appeals and not the system itself, the people who unban others, but that is quite private and I am unsure about it's inner workings or even if the person who told me the information I mentioned is saying the truth.

But I agree, there are abusive and toxic staff members, if you have been to the Discord server that gets even more obvious, and most staff members are very biased, I'd say that is common for those in power positions, and ignoring messages and such is what the staff team seems to be the best at, and actually, discussing ideas and such is actually considered a bad thing if you read the Code of Conduct, so it is to expect that this kind of behaviour would generally end up happening if this fits the general ideas behind the system that runs the game, but this gets to another issue, the fact that it is very rare for a staff member to leave the team, and the fact it is very easy for an older staff member to rejoin the team, I am pretty sure that if some staff members applied today, they would not join the team.

Another thing I think would be better if changed, instead of one user picking who elects others, why not multiple? and they debate and discuss, actually that is how it works, the staff members discuss if a member should join or not, as far as I know/imagine the levels of such discussion are quite low, some staff members can literally not reply or say anything which I think is quite unhealthy as well, and not to mention that staff has their own biases and such, which would be an issue in any system proposed, since the single person in power might deliciously exquisite pizza sauce it up, and multiple also might, as much as we have someone generally considered positive by everyone such as Nyove, this does not mean that in the future that will happen (Nyove as far as I know might need to serve in the army), and who could take his place? I think that long term multiple people would work best.

Another thing I'd like to say is that nobody uses the forums these days pretty much, the Discord server is way more active and has a poll system using ZapruderFilm's bot, also Discord supposedly only allows you to make an account if you are older than 13 so we kind of take the 10 year old kids who will just vote on people for very questionable reasons a bit out? and also out of those who can be voted for, of course they can lie and that is not cool as well.

Also, I think that maybe multiple people would work best, instead of one central administrator, why not multiple? currently things work like this, Eric says Tempus should control who does what and who joins the team, Doom was given the Discord focus, Kiriakos the map approval focus, and that is it, maybe actually pick people for every single position?

And then we get to the problems of democracy, someone can of course fake their image, get to the top and then abuse power, people often change when they get to power as well, someone might be very likeable and mature but when it gets to applying rules or choosing people they might be bad at it, maybe they are very liked because they have a social focus or a focus on their image and to keep it they might pick friends or people who keep him relevant, the fact that there can be a corrupt system where whoever is picked to choose who joins or not teams up with some candidate (this is another point for multiple people to check if the winner for the polls should actually end up in the staff team), and then there are a billion problems with democracy, if you are curious about them I recommend reading Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, also some of the works by Friedrich Hayek also mention similar topics, one that mentions democracy quite a lot is The Road to Serfdom which I think I did not mention last time.

I also think Eric would be very agaisn't this idea because it involves him dealing with staff stuff which he seems to dislike, anyways, to try to not be extremely negative and such, I think you should know that - believe it or not - this is probably the best staff team I've seen the game have, we do get inactive members who I see doing nothing, who are immature, and quite toxic people, but we also have some helpful, mature, open to discussion and nice members, and in the past it was not like that, we actually have people who are trying to change current systems into ones that should be better, this would not happen before, I think that aiming for something smaller might be the way to go, if you change enough parts of the system, slowly and slowly this idea can be seen as more viable, but I think it is rather unlikely that point might be reached, but as far as I know, there will be some pretty decent changes to the staff team and administration once PB2.5/3 is finished, so one can dream.

[mrblake213]

Yes, I do agree that there are a lot of things that is lacking from the staff team and I've personally initiated a discussion about the lack of staff intercommunication and staff inactivity that the community does not see behind the curtains.

However, also take note that the staff team is completely voluntary (which means no payment) and that it is only good for a hobby or a part-time job (which means that activity isn't really required). Sure you may say that this makes the staff team more lazy and incompetent but I've seen applicants that I don't even see in the discord or in the forums. I believe that the way we handle staff applications right now is the best system we can do - it's similar on how pb2 clans handle applications using forums (like BoZ, GeNo, or YrN) - because we can discuss our thoughts and opinions on what kind of people we actually want on the team and how they can actually bring something new to the team.

Other than that, I think your proposition of a staff team elections would be way too much effort for a little community that will give little to no benefit. There is no assurance that the ones elected would be more motivated or would be more competent. I've actually tried this 'democracy' type of elections within the PL on where the players would vote for their Council members that would represent the participant community when it comes to event decisions and it seems like that the participants only voted for the people that they actually like, have known before, or the ones that belong to the same group as them. There is little to those who voted on the actual competence, skill, or ability of the said person.

eric pls heed to my staff team ideas, tempus has locked me in the basement for a month already

[tehswordninja]

Hi, staff member here who probably falls under your complaints here

This post isn't going to be about activity or certain members or motivation, or anything like that (although rest assured that I'm self aware about issues that are going on, especially regarding motivation) - I'm going to solely talk about the idea, and why it is not exactly a great one.

Community should decide who should lead them, not a small team of administrators who were picked by @Eric Gurt long time ago and who don't want to improve or change anything. Community would elect staff team members who they think are nice, polite, active and professional. You may say "Community is mostly made of 10 years old children who would pick someone bad", and you would be right.

To begin, you completely fail to understand just how long our admins have been working with Eric - specifically Tempus. No one else on the team (or in the community) has that connection and knowledge to that degree. To just upheave that in favor of some perceived notion that a new, community voted team would be a better replacement, better suited to working with Eric, and be just as/more knowledgeable about not only the game but other things behind the scenes sounds downright illogical.

Oh, and you say it yourself regarding the community - the current state of the community is simply not comparable to 2011-2013, no matter how you look at it. Keep in mind there would be plenty of people who would want staff members who allow things that most certainly aren't currently, nevermind general biases (such as wanting members of a clan on the team, etc etc) that might crop up.

But this is how we can prevent it: we pick one person who we all trust and like and make him a "member of an electoral college" similar to US election system where people vote not for the candidate, but for the elector who would give his vote to the candidate. Let's say we pick @Nyove (for example) as an elector. Then the most active part of the community would vote on the forum for person who should be an administrator, and if @Nyove agrees that this person is not a candidate picked by 10 years old kids for the sake of a joke, but in fact he is a candidate who actually meets all the requirements to be a good administrator, @Nyove would contact @Eric Gurt and tell him to make that person an administrator.
Administrator would pick his team of moderators and lead PB2 community the way he sees the best. The elector (@Nyove) won't have any mod powers and cannot interact with the community as a member of staff team. If the elector lost his trust of the community and he votes for the unchosen candidate for no good reason, community would discuss the matter, vote for the new elector and write a group letter to @Eric Gurt explaining the case and reasons why they think the elector lost the trust. @Eric Gurt would set a new person as an elector and we can start over.

So instead of having a team that has multiple mindsets, the ability to keep itself in check, and has (depending on the member) up to nine years of experience, you want one person, one mindset, and one set of biases who doesn't even have any authority over the people they voted in? But, nevermind all that - who would this be? Would they be comparable to Tempus or any other member? If you find someone who's been talking closely to Eric for over nine years I would be quite impressed to say the least.

End of the day I understand change needs to happen for PB2.5 and rest assured that current standards, attitudes (including my own), etc etc will have to change for PB2.5, in some cases - drastically so.

[Gashadokuro]

1 - There's a lot we don't know or see about staff.
We don't see them answering tickets, approving discord members, approving maps, managing the official wiki. We don't know whether Jimmy applied to be staff one day and never did anything, or if he knew Eric since the very beginning.
And for example it's easy for me to see them as incompetent because they didn't fix my poll within 5 seconds, because that's the extent of most of my interactions.

2 - Democracy is bad.
It's too much work to organize, people have no moderation experience, there's a bias for friends AND our community is quite young. Which means Bob will not be picked because he's the best fit, but because he's popular, thus possibly being a poor asset who might never enforce rules. Besides, your system sounds too complicated when I have personally interacted with Eric, admins and mods publicly and privately with little to no delays.

3 - It's a thin line.
The playerbase is dwindling, which means enforcing rules more often can hurt what little activity there is left, Blake brought this up. Besides, the community is young, so they'll tend to post memes in general or make word chains, which honestly is not really a problem.

4 - There is a stagnation issue.
It looks like staff applications only opened once, but regardless of that, there seems to be quite a few people who retired, casually came back from retirement or are simply not active enough to warrant such a role (in the discord). While this isn't the end of the world, it's important to keep staff fresh and ready.

In conclusion, we don't need some representative due to tickets, dms and what not, but there can be improvements. That and what Blake and Teh said, which I already forgot.

[nightmar]

One thing I can tell for sure is that the staff team needs working. We can't call ourselves a community and have as an official page one that's continuously outdated (miraheze is heavily outdated). Also map developers will most likely go to the editor manual to understand better how things work, but the editor manual is even more outdated!

We also face problems with bugs (we have an endless amount of reported bugs, some of them being severe) but none of them seems to begetting fixed.

There are also the playe reports. Now that's where I think the big problem lies. The only way to get rid of toxic players (assuming they are not smart enough to disguise themselves as guests) is through the report button. But for that to work properly most of the cases the "victum" will have to record the event. Sure screenshots can work too but for cases where you are about to get kicked out you can not report them having as proof theit vote. What I am trying to say is that there are no active admins in Multiplayer. In other words, there is nothing for the toxic players to fear. Nobody is coming to get them.

As for the staff members that can not handle communication with players that well, I think it'd be best to avoid interaction that's out of their section and stick closer to their part.



Generally, while not being able to see what's going on behind the curtains, I can only assume that the staff team at least lacks organisation. For example, they do not have targets or assignments to complete. The same goes for the entire game. Everything just seems to be unorganised sometimes to the point where it becomes chaotic. Of course I do not know what's really going on, nor can I comprehend how many difficulties the staff must go through, but I am positive that a proper team organisation is basic for it's competence.

For example, Tempus can give each staff member a specific thing they have to do. For any actions that are irrelevant to their section (such as giving warnings, bans, deleting posts etc) they should ask for permission and follow a standard procedure or we can have staff members who work on checking on the rules specifically. Seriously we can't have posts deleted without warning or being given a reason and be okay with it (that being used as an example). This makes both the staff team look bad and enrages community members who witness it.

So in any case, the staff team needs some order.

[xElijah]

Responding to every single post would take too much time, so I picked some common statements that people share and did a Q&A:

Some Staff member handles the poll chat bot, so he should not be able to be excluded from the team. Otherwise how do we keep it?

Good argument. But ask yourself this: do you need that chat bot so badly? I don't think it's really necessary to have it. We can use forum for the polls. It would boost the activity on it as well which is a good thing.

Staff member is disliked if he applies rules and bans people for minor rule break. So the new elected staff will not do that to save their positions and power.

Not exactly true. A staff member can be nice and professional at the same time. If staff member bans people for minor rulebreak and being offensive to them, it only means that he is a bad staff member and should not be in the team. New elected staff team member will do their job properly and try to be nice at the same time which is possible. Also PB2 community is not stupid to think that rules aren't needed to be applied. They will not treat applying Code of Conduct as something bad. The key is just to be nice when you apply them and not be too harsh when it comes to warning/banning someone.

Changes aren't going to happen because Tempus doesn't want them.

Good point. But actually it doesn't matter what Tempus wants. If the community's will is strong enough Eric will be forced to change the system if he wants the community to like him and approve what he is doing.

One elector is not enough.

Correct. We can have a few.

New staff will become power hungry and abuse the power.

That's possible. But in the case if new elected staff abuses the power, we can run a new election.

Where should we vote for the candidate? On the forum or in chat?

I think it would be the best to use forum for such need. People here seem to be more mature and they try to actually express their opinion the most full and argumented way. Besides it would be a good verification system for the electors to check if the voter is mature enough, if he is not trolling, if he is not new/alt account.

Can we have more administrators than one?

We can, but I don't think it's really necessary as the most job will be done by moderators while administrator should just watch after his selected moderators if they do great or not.

What is the role of each moderator? One will do the map approval and other will watch the chat?

The elected administrator will set their inner working the way he sees the best. Besides I don't think that moderators have to be limited to doing only one certain thing. If moderator wants he can check the chat, if he wants to do the map approval and other staff members have no objections against it, then he can do the map approval.

Administrator will be chosen by kids because they like him. And he will be incompetent.

And this is why we have the "elector system". If the candidate is obviously incompetent then the elector will not make him administrator even if he has a lot of support.

Eric will be against this idea as he will have to deal with staff stuff.

While I do respect Eric for his job, I don't think that his opinion really matters here. Like any other person he cares what other people think of him and he wants the community of his game to be happy. So if majority of the community supports the election idea, Eric will have no other choice than to agree with it. Besides I don't think that going to user's page and setting his status to "administrator" is a much of a job. If there will be some problems, it won't take too much of his time to check a few messages to see what's going on. Also I don't think there will be any major or frequent problems with this system.

Staff is good so we should not change anything.

Some members are good, but some are bad. And current administration does nothing to replace bad members with good ones. I think the implementation of election system will make the staff team consists of only good members so it would make the overall staff-community interaction experience even better.

Staff will change to better.

It's been almost 10 years under their leadership, and the problems with their behaviour mentioned in this topic still exist, which tells that they don't really care about changing. If they cared enough we would of have best staff long time ago.

Staff is voluntary, so they don't need to be active/professional.

Not true. Even if they are voluntary it doesn't mean they are allowed to be bad at their job. We can already see a few staff members who are active and professional, so I don't see why we can't have more of them in the team.

Current staff team can do better job at picking new staff.

Not true. We had this system for quite a while and there is still no progress in qualities of certain picked staff members. Some of them are toxic, aggressive, disrespectufl. It shows that they are not good at what they are doing. Incompetent people will pick people who are incompetent as they are.

Implementing election system is too much effort.

It's not difficult actually. A few candidates post their staff programs on the forum, then users vote for them. When voting and elector's checking is over, the elector ask Eric to make him administrator. Administrator sets his team of moderators and teaches them the oath and mod tools and we are done. Not that difficult, is it?

We don't know if elected administrator will be competent or not.

We can actually. When we read his program or check his previous posts/activities, we can get a better picture of him. Learning Code of Conduct and basic mod tools is not a hard task. It's harder to be incompetent here actually. But even if he is incompetent, we have the aforementioned electors who will check if the elected person is suitable for position or not.

Tempus has a lot of knowledge about game so he should decide who joins the team.

There is not much knowledge about the game. There is Code of Conduct, some basic picture of how level editor works, mod tools, some other small things. It's not "lot of knowledge". Besides since he was leading the staff team for so many years and it still has a lot of issues within it, it only means that he is not good as a leader.

Eric trusts Tempus and has a good communication with him.

Like I said earlier it doesn't really matter. A new administrator will be in touch with Eric as well.

New elected staff team will have no knowledge about the game and mod tools.

Not really. First of all there are the electors who will check if the person knows the Code of Conduct and overall competent to be chosen. Secondly there will be instructions for new staff team where step by step it would be explained how to use the mod tools. It's not really difficult to use them. There is a ban panel on the profile page, there is master code for accessing all private matches on the multiplayer and a few other things. In a few words - not much. And it's not hard to understand and learn them.

New team will allow prohibited things to keep community happy.

Not necessary. First of all the requirement to follow the basic aspects of Code of Conduct will be applied to all candidates. They cannot write a program that states "we will cancel all rules if you elect us" otherwise the electors won't allow such candidate to be voted for/elected. Besides I don't think that the community is stupid to think rules aren't needed at all.

New elected staff has no moderation experience so they will be bad at their job.

First of all it's not hard to gather this experience quickly. Learning Code of Conduct and banning people for posting p*rn in chat doesn't require much experience or time if you ask me. "Staff job is too hard and only experienced people will be able to do it" is a myth and a lie supported by some staff members who want to save their power and position at any cost. Don't trust them so blindly.

New elected team will be biased. They will ban enemies and help friends.

One of the requirements for the candidates will fobid such activities. "Justice and equality for everyone" is something that must be stated in candidate's program if he wants the elector to allow him to participate in the election. The elector reserves a right to suspend clrealy biased candidate from the election. And in case of power abuse after successful election, like I mentioned earlier, we can run a new election.

The community is too small/game is dying so no need for changes.

We are not talking about implementing the election system in PB2 only. The same system if chosen will be transferred to PB3 too.

[Gashadokuro]

@nightmar Miraheze is literally just me & Teh lol

[nightmar]

Oh please. Electors will be kids chosen by other kids. As for those that will be elected they can ay whatever they want in their program, but when the time comes for them to execute it what's stopping them from abusing it? You seem to think that people will just read the rules and check on the admins, but I am afraid you're mistaken. From the people that play this game it is arguable that half of them know the rules and even less are willing to check up on someone else.

And since we are talking about elections, tell me what's stopping clans from electing their members? Because I am betting that this is what it will come down to. Sure every candidate can just say "equality for everyone" but when time comes to act they can jsut do whatever. Most people in this community also lack the ability to judge properly. You are expecting kids (who might not even know the rules and we can't force them to read them either) to make logical decisions and pick whoever will be best at their job. And after that you think that they will be able to check on a program and know if it's good or not. In reality most people who'll vote will choose their friends and/or clan members.

So what I'd expect to see through elections is the pb2 community being controlled by someone like paulstin. Because every theory is good on paper, but reality differs a lot from your expectations.





P.S.: I am pretty sure the staff's team job is not solely to enforce the CoC and monitor players. I think that's for 1 staff emember in particular and the rest can check up on these things whenever and if they want. It would be good for some clarifiation to be done here.

[xElijah]

Thank you @nightmar for your opinion. While I do understand your concern, I still think this election idea might work and let me explain why.

Oh please. Electors will be kids chosen by other kids.

Elector is a permanent position. I think people like @Nyove, @Ditzy, @Darkstar 1 could be the electors. They are not "kids chosen by other kids" if you ask me.

As for those that will be elected they can ay whatever they want in their program, but when the time comes for them to execute it what's stopping them from abusing it?

Like I said earlier the electors will look after it. And community will look after them too.

You seem to think that people will just read the rules and check on the admins, but I am afraid you're mistaken. From the people that play this game it is arguable that half of them know the rules and even less are willing to check up on someone else.

This is why the candidates will have to know the Code of Conduct before applying for administrator position. Otherwise they will not be allowed to participate in the election.

And since we are talking about elections, tell me what's stopping clans from electing their members? Because I am betting that this is what it will come down to.

The requirement to not be a part of the clan that will be enforced by the electors.

Sure every candidate can just say "equality for everyone" but when time comes to act they can jsut do whatever.

As mentioned earlier, the electors will look after the elected administrator and how he follows what he said in the program. Community will keep an eye on him too. Just like the way you see the problems within the staff right now you can do the same thing later if election system becomes a thing.

Most people in this community also lack the ability to judge properly. You are expecting kids (who might not even know the rules and we can't force them to read them either) to make logical decisions and pick whoever will be best at their job. And after that you think that they will be able to check on a program and know if it's good or not. In reality most people who'll vote will choose their friends and/or clan members.

You need more faith in people. The OP states that "kids selecting kids" won't work as there are electors who won't allow bad candidate to be elected. Besides I don't notice kids activities on the forum and this is the place where voting would happen. If the elected administrator is someone's friend but he is good at his job, then it's okay I think. As long as the administrator is competent, I don't care whose friend he is.

So what I'd expect to see through elections is the pb2 community being controlled by someone like paulstin. Because every theory is good on paper, but reality differs a lot from your expectations.

First of all someone like @paulstin will have to leave his clan if he wants to become an administrator. Secondly he will have to pass the check of the electors who will not allow someone incompetent to become an administrator.

Again, thank you for your opinion. I hope I was able to change some of your views.

[broforce1]

Properly you gotta predict that being a staff is alike when you get hired into a job, some people won't get encouraged to work as a staff if they know that there is no prize from working, but if the staff does really like the community, they would work all the time as possible as they can, but some people doesn't really want to waste their time on helping people in PB2, don't forget life situations, some old members might be good back in the days, but now they might be a little bit bored or pissed, because they felt they are working for nothing, for no salary, just to keep everything well only.

As for staff approval, we are not responsible for this, Tempus and Zerker are properly focusing on approving, some people just try to apply, and the administrators just choose the one who they can trust, the problem that there is no enough evaluation by the admin because the admin doesn't have time to be active to see how good is the staff is working, and properly the community members in PB2 doesn't really care at all, most of the online players are properly out of this context, they don't even know what's is happening, so how do you tell me that the community members should vote for the staff approval? well if eric was online and he was leading all of this, things would be more different, but he's inactive and he doesn't have time on this so he offers the admins to focus on that, so as for Tempus he's free with his choices, the old staff are trying as possible, some of them pissed or got problems in their life, and some of them still online, as for new staff, they are quite young but that doesnt mean anything, they are new so they are trying, well i dont say they are quite bad they are just trying, i actually agree that there are a lot of unessecary moderators and some of them should be removed, but we cant do anything, imagine the game owner is not responsible for this, 2 admins are focusing on the staff, properly if you yelled that wont do anything, properly you will bother the admin will drive him to ban you instead of agreeing, so we better not argue a lot.

properly we might see most of the staff inactive, but if you look at some good active staff, like (darkstar, mrblake, Zapruder, Lonewolf, Stryde, Creeperhunter and Nyove and also Wasted time) and all of the admins in general like Kiriakos, Tempus and Doomzerker, properly it all goes back to the fact that some staff wont be encouraged if they didnt got a prize from working daily as a staff, also dont forget it's hard to give vacations for staff, but i dont think we need vacations because after all most of the members are inactive.

also, that goes back to the example when the receptionalist in the hotel is being unhelpful because he gets a low salary, (for example) lol

overall, Eric just wanted to develop a game that all people would like to play, so he made a small community so he would keep the game alive as possible, but when eric found it difficult, he got some support from other people as well, enough that he's working on games by himself and real-life situations, gave him more pressure on him as well
properly if we tried to remove the staff and adding a new one everything would get good and worse at the same time, because if we tried to deal with more new members that would be hard, dont forget some people try to fake themselves to become a staff to earn the power to moderation, and then we will get into huge situations, properly i dont think we should remove or add new staff anymore, this is by far the best staff member team i have seen so far, and properly everything will be changed as soon as the PB3 game will get released and there might be a new page for a new community, i hope so lol.

[ZapruderFilm]

Or perhaps try respecting the wishes of the creator and not complicating a system for staff in a game that is potentially going to die in one month.

[phsc]

Good argument. But ask yourself this: do you need that chat bot so badly? I don't think it's really necessary to have it. We can use forum for the polls. It would boost the activity on it as well which is a good thing.

Discord is much more practical, and it generally has much more popularity over some different aspects of the forums, it is not really about PB2 or anything, it is just that Discord and chat services like that are more popular than forums, and it is just because of how practical it is, using it on your phone or simply the time it takes for every action, and another issue which is that the Discord already has the user concentration and sending them to the forums would simply be innefective because many would probably ignore the notification ignore the message and all of that because of the effort, I know that because many have said that to me, thing is, maybe getting some staff member to make a bot or using a third party one could also work pretty well, also this gets to another issue which I am unsure, but maybe whoever owns the forum could change poll info and posts? doing that on Discord is not really possible to an extent, because every person that votes is an user, and removing their votes you can see individually who was removed and such, so it could fight a bit on the corruption side of things if that exists/comes into existance.

Good point. But actually it doesn't matter what Tempus wants. If the community's will is strong enough Eric will be forced to change the system if he wants the community to like him and approve what he is doing.

Not at all, many people have tried to change PB2 and nothing happens, Eric does not care about popular opinion over trusting someone like Tempus like he has had for multiple years, knowing Eric and how he acts and has acted, I think the only real change could only come to PB2.5/3, not 2, does this mean you should stop with that? no, but I even then think it is pretty much not going to happen considering Eric's past behaviour.

That's possible. But in the case if new elected staff abuses the power, we can run a new election.

And who will apply it? if there is any link betwen the voted staff and the selected electors the system goes to shit, and naturally that happens in most democratic systems, it might not be with Nyove, Ditzy or Darkstar, but staff will change with time, the early democracies seem to work out really well, but with time it all goes to shit and that is a problem of the system, another big problem is that the worst get to power, explaining this is a bit complicated, if you did read the Hayek works I mentioned you could have understood this, but there is a natural tendency for the worst to get in power, and naturally people who are narcissistic and such can keep great images if they are decently smart and once in power they are extremely abusive, and these are the people who are the best at winning this kind of competition, and you can see this happening in real life all around the world and history.
Also elector cannot be a permanent position because people grow up and have more things to do, Nyove himself said he might need to join the army in the future, others seem to have their own goals, not to mention how someone might just not like the position anymore, this is a big responsability, the best way to make sure people stay in this position could maybe be a monetary reward but this goes agaisn't what Eric generally is for.

I think it would be the best to use forum for such need. People here seem to be more mature and they try to actually express their opinion the most full and argumented way. Besides it would be a good verification system for the electors to check if the voter is mature enough, if he is not trolling, if he is not new/alt account.

I actually am unsure about the security of the forums in some ways, and even then, I think a forum poll about discussions and such is great, but there are many people in the Discord which I would consider mature and capable of argumentation and discussion that do not use the forums, I actually think a poll system on the main website would be the way to go, any of these systems can be abused anyway and most will just vote and not argue, and people will probably just go around asking people to vote for them or whatever, pretty much what happens in democracy, and even if we try to make it as distant as possible from the 12 year olds, if they find out, they are the majority of the playerbase and the ones that are easier to manipulate.

We can, but I don't think it's really necessary as the most job will be done by moderators while administrator should just watch after his selected moderators if they do great or not.

Someone like Nyove or whoever is picked to select the team and such would need to have administrator powers as far as I know, so there are multiple ones by that, and there seems to be a big issue most staff members agree, which is that moderators and even head moderators barely have tools and such, something as simple as seeing a guest's IP and comparing that IP to accounts to try to ban a player who did something bad as a guest, as far as I know, is only avaliable to Eric, not even admins can do that.

The elected administrator will set their inner working the way he sees the best. Besides I don't think that moderators have to be limited to doing only one certain thing. If moderator wants he can check the chat, if he wants to do the map approval and other staff members have no objections against it, then he can do the map approval.

This gets to an issue which is also about the uncertanty about the future, people have their own preferences, and often since democracy works with a bunch of bundles, like people offering a specific combination of services instead of each individual service (like something the free market generally does), we might not have a perfect candidate in the future, or even a perfect candidate for the elector team or whatever (how to set the future elector teams?), and this might impact issues that are part of individual systems, if we add different categories, such as one admin for approval, one admin for Discord moderation, one admin for ingame moderation, etc, that works better since all areas will have a focus, this also gets into a problem which is that there are few players, and more people would be needed to run the team, maybe allow people to apply for only one position that seems core to the game's functionality (Eric decides this? kind of already has decided?), also, the no objections agaisn't it gets to a problem, what if there is no actual good candidate and the last one had to leave, what is going to happen?
Also why not just give power to the electors instead of actually voting for people? if they are going to be the ones to select stuff in the end, they are the direct powers, the system is naturally autocratic so why not make it directly autocratic? the only issue I see is that those nice people who prob could pick the best admins in a mature way, probably would say no to leading the game, Nyove, Ditzy, etc, I actually have my issues with both of them to an extent as well, but they are probably the better choices.

While I do respect Eric for his job, I don't think that his opinion really matters here. Like any other person he cares what other people think of him and he wants the community of his game to be happy. So if majority of the community supports the election idea, Eric will have no other choice than to agree with it. Besides I don't think that going to user's page and setting his status to "administrator" is a much of a job. If there will be some problems, it won't take too much of his time to check a few messages to see what's going on. Also I don't think there will be any major or frequent problems with this system.

His opinion is the only one that matters, it is his game, Eric does it as a hobby, and while he has a focus on the community, just like any service provided by the free markets (or even the state at the end of the day) who gets to choose it is the one offering the product, unless it becomes not viable, PB2 is not viable and it is not a product that allows Eric to survive or anything, he does it because he likes doing it, why should he have a system he dislikes? and if you say "oh but he is offering a service", well who cares? if you dislike it just leave, sadly that is how things work, maybe if intellectual property laws did not exist someone could just copy the game and make it better and then we have a better service at the end of the day, but that is not how the world works, Eric can just not give a deliciously exquisite pizza sauce about the election, he can, and knowing him and how distant he is, I'd say that is quite likely, many people literally do not care about what people think of them as well, and as much as it is not much of a job, executing and dealing with the current staff and changing all of that is, and Eric just wants to chill, make PB2.5/3 and that is it, also even then it seems like most people do not agree with your idea of a democratic PB2, many see problems, I myself kind of do not care and I personally think that short term the system would work better and long term worse, and I'd rather have the long term one since PB2.5/3 will come into existance and as far as I know staff changes will happen in the future, but I do not know which exact ones, I trust Eric and his judgement is at the end of the day the only thing that matters, discussing this is kind of utopic and useless, but I enjoy it.

It's been almost 10 years under their leadership, and the problems with their behaviour mentioned in this topic still exist, which tells that they don't really care about changing. If they cared enough we would of have best staff long time ago.

I disagree, we do have someone like Nyove, or someone like Ditzy or someone like Darkstar in the team, back then, were there such? in my experience no, I think the system is changing, not because of the system but because of the people changing, just because a thing has always been a way it does not mean it cannot change, the community is getting smaller and people are getting older and more mature, if the system is a function, the values that run the function are changing.

Not true. Even if they are voluntary it doesn't mean they are allowed to be bad at their job. We can already see a few staff members who are active and professional, so I don't see why we can't have more of them in the team.

I agree, the issue is that there is an issue which is the viability of the system, as I said, Nyove might have to join the army, people like Hexagon/LoneWolf56 which is also generally considered a good staff member, will need to focus on his life, not to mention the personal issues people have, there are very few good candidates and they cannot exist forever, currently I trust most of the good staff will stay for the future, but for how long? this does not mean the rest of the team is good, but a more complicated system where some people have to check if a candidate is actually good and not a 12 year old requires them to be active and look at the community, and generally speaking, the older you are the more complicated this gets.

Not true. We had this system for quite a while and there is still no progress in qualities of certain picked staff members. Some of them are toxic, aggressive, disrespectufl. It shows that they are not good at what they are doing. Incompetent people will pick people who are incompetent as they are.

Current staff team != Tempus, Tempus is the one who actually picks, staff only suggests, and Tempus can ignore the suggestions, does that happen? I am unsure, also incompetent people will not always pick incompetent people, that is very relative, they might like competent people who will do their job, or incompetent people because they are simply abusive, it all depends on why they are incompetent.

It's not difficult actually. A few candidates post their staff programs on the forum, then users vote for them. When voting and elector's checking is over, the elector ask Eric to make him administrator. Administrator sets his team of moderators and teaches them the oath and mod tools and we are done. Not that difficult, is it?

This requires more thinking, what if things go wrong? what if there is a draw? what if someone is the most abusive piece of shit who pretty much nukes the game for one day? what sets how valid a system is is how it deals with the what ifs and how often these happen, also when will we have new elections? how do people vote for impeachment? what about changes to the code of conduct or the elector team? this all has to be written out, passed away, not to mention dealing with the current staff, which I think is pretty much impossible, mostly considering how reluctant Eric is when it comes to deaing with such aspects of the game.

We can actually. When we read his program or check his previous posts/activities, we can get a better picture of him. Learning Code of Conduct and basic mod tools is not a hard task. It's harder to be incompetent here actually. But even if he is incompetent, we have the aforementioned electors who will check if the elected person is suitable for position or not.

THIS IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY! ok, so, JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE DOES A THING/ACTS A WAY/SAYS THEY WILL DO A THING IT DOES NOT MEAN THEY WILL ACT LIKE THAT FOREVER, let me explain, it is obvious people like Nyove have a focus on their image, talk to the guy, you will see what I'm saying, I am not saying he is someone who is abusive or whatever, but once people get to power, they can simply change, actual psychopaths are manipualtive and charming, they can win the election, and once they are in power, they can just change, this happens all the time all around the world in democracies, and this gets to by far the biggest issue with democracy: THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY OF BEING ELECTED IS TO CREATE DEMAND AND NOT SUPPLY, ok let me use real life examples, in real life maybe some country wants hospitals, and then candidates say "I will build hospitals!", we elect the dude, ok, then he does nothing, next year, we either elect another dude (there is generlaly a limited poll to be elected so we have this issue), but here is the thing, the guy can just do a slighty competent job, make like, one hospital instead of multiple, or just do stuff at the end of his mandate to get ignorant people to see "wow! he actually did what he said he was going to do!", and htis happens literally all the time in democracy for every single thing, what gets you elected and allows you to stay in power is the demand, if people need nothing, they do not need you, this happens with administration, if there are no toxic people or whatever, nothing to be reworked, why would you exist? to ensure systems work? well yes, but why would the elected one do that, because of his internal morality? and what if there is nobody who would do that? democracy is a really weak system, it has many many flaws.

Like I said earlier it doesn't really matter. A new administrator will be in touch with Eric as well.

As much as I agree for changes in general, here is the thing, I think this is not going to happen, imagine you have a game which you only enjoy working on and not dealing with people, and then you ahve some friend of yours who has been dealing with that for a while and in YOUR point of view as the developer there are barely any issues, would you change him?

Not necessary. First of all the requirement to follow the basic aspects of Code of Conduct will be applied to all candidates. They cannot write a program that states "we will cancel all rules if you elect us" otherwise the electors won't allow such candidate to be voted for/elected. Besides I don't think that the community is stupid to think rules aren't needed at all.

What about changing the Code of Conduct? that is a thing that seems to be necessary at least slighty over time, just like consitutions often need to be updated, also, they might slowly change it, not cnacel all rules but try to slowly lower them, and if the elected team and the one being voted decide to work together, that might as well just happen, and I am not talking about short term, but some day Nyove will not be able to be the elector (I personally think he would say no to such a position, knowing him), and what then? mostly when 2.5/3 comes out and the player base gets enormous, or at least bigger, it will be harder to actually know the candidates.

New elected team will be biased. They will ban enemies and help friends.

One of the requirements for the candidates will fobid such activities. "Justice and equality for everyone" is something that must be stated in candidate's program if he wants the elector to allow him to participate in the election. The elector reserves a right to suspend clrealy biased candidate from the election. And in case of power abuse after successful election, like I mentioned earlier, we can run a new election.

This will help any way and I would say it already happens, including even the most apt for the position, your system requires people to be perfect and they are not, even the best still have their weaknesses, and just because they say something it does not mean that will happen, or if they act like that, you give them too much power and they might as well change, and that seems to happen in history and such.

Also you mention clans, a thing you might not realize is that, the clan rule is dumb, it can still be abused, and clans are pretty much dead and now communities are the way to go, even if paulstin leaves DARK CLAN and he wants to be elected, he will still be supported, because he has a community, I do not think that the elector team would let him pass, but this would happen with any community, Nyove as far as I know is part/was part of/whatever of R!OT, which is a clan/community whatever, Stryde has the same with BoZ, if Stryde wants to be elected he can just ask for the BoZ members to vote on him, he could pass the elector check I would say as well, and you do not really seem to be happy with Stryde, it is a problem of democracy speaking again.
Also nightmar said "Because every theory is good on paper, but reality differs a lot from your expectations.", this is not how theories work, you first make a theory that explains reality, be it from Marx' view on capitalism to Friedrich Hayek and all the austrian school (Bawerk, Menger, Mises, Rothbard) who build up their theories of how the world works, and then you say how things should be, and I think this kind of shows here, how does PB2 work? this is what has to be studied first, how does the social side of PB2 work? does it change? will it change? when does it change? I think for an actual good rework to be viable, this needs to be done, but I do not think anyone has the time, effort and competence to do this, as much as some might have started or have some of this done, all the traits are needed and there is much more work to be done.

So I talked a lot, here is the biggest issue I see with the system, if the elector team is going to select whoever is going to be the admin at the end of the day, why not just make them the admins directly? or admins also? instead of a democracy, an autocracy, similar to the current system, I myself think it is all utopic and kind of detached from reality and no changes will ever happen, but in a more theoretical talk, why have elections and such and not just have the elector team pick people up themselves? and if they are bad, well go talk to Eric about it, the need for checking will inherently create an upper class to those being elected, and that is where the issue starts, as it also happens in real life democracies, and Eric is too detached and too isolated to deal with such issues, and I actually think the playerbase is way too small for such a democratic system to work, and if it gets big then the problems of democracy will just get worse and worse as happens in real life.

[ECC9]

Or perhaps try respecting the wishes of the creator and not complicating a system for staff in a game that is potentially going to die in one month.

yeah

But if this really gonna happen the first step for a better Staff-Community interaction would be demoting tehswordninja from staff cause he abuses his powers on others. (idk bout multiple cases but im pretty sure he do it on other people too not only me)

[xElijah]

@broforce1, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Though it was a bit hard to understand what you're saying sometimes so I could have made some mistakes in my reply. Please correct me if so:

Spoiler: Show More

Properly you gotta predict that being a staff is alike when you get hired into a job, some people won't get encouraged to work as a staff if they know that there is no prize from working, but if the staff does really like the community, they would work all the time as possible as they can, but some people doesn't really want to waste their time on helping people in PB2, don't forget life situations, some old members might be good back in the days, but now they might be a little bit bored or pissed, because they felt they are working for nothing, for no salary, just to keep everything well only.

People join and work for staff voluntarily. Some join because they want to be popular, some join for fun, some join for altrustic reasons to help people. If someone wants to spend his time doing it, he joins the team. If someone thinks it is a "waste of time" he is free to leave. Those who left will be replaced with those who join. It's a never ending cycle.

As for staff approval, we are not responsible for this, Tempus and Zerker are properly focusing on approving, some people just try to apply, and the administrators just choose the one who they can trust, the problem that there is no enough evaluation by the admin because the admin doesn't have time to be active to see how good is the staff is working, and properly the community members in PB2 doesn't really care at all, most of the online players are properly out of this context, they don't even know what's is happening, so how do you tell me that the community members should vote for the staff approval? well if eric was online and he was leading all of this, things would be more different, but he's inactive and he doesn't have time on this so he offers the admins to focus on that, so as for Tempus he's free with his choices, the old staff are trying as possible, some of them pissed or got problems in their life, and some of them still online, as for new staff, they are quite young but that doesnt mean anything, they are new so they are trying, well i dont say they are quite bad they are just trying, i actually agree that there are a lot of unessecary moderators and some of them should be removed, but we cant do anything, imagine the game owner is not responsible for this, 2 admins are focusing on the staff, properly if you yelled that wont do anything, properly you will bother the admin will drive him to ban you instead of agreeing, so we better not argue a lot.

I'm proposing this system because I don't like the current one where administrators hire incompetent/abusive/offensive moderators. I think we have enough people and resources to launch the new election system. As for the voting, those who know will vote. We would make an announcement. Those who don't know/don't care won't vote. Eric will be able to keep the new team in check. He won't lose any control over it, but he will let new fresh people to do a better job than old administration.

properly we might see most of the staff inactive, but if you look at some good active staff, like (darkstar, mrblake, Zapruder, Lonewolf, Stryde, Creeperhunter and Nyove and also Wasted time) and all of the admins in general like Kiriakos, Tempus and Doomzerker, properly it all goes back to the fact that some staff wont be encouraged if they didnt got a prize from working daily as a staff, also dont forget it's hard to give vacations for staff, but i dont think we need vacations because after all most of the members are inactive.

I don't consider some of these people good staff members. I do agree that some moderators may be good. The election system I suggest will give the community a possibility to get an even better staff team, 100% members of which would be good. With the old system (current one) we have like 50% bad moderators and 50% good moderators which is not a healthy thing if you ask me. New election system will be aimed at getting 100% good moderators in the team.

overall, Eric just wanted to develop a game that all people would like to play, so he made a small community so he would keep the game alive as possible, but when eric found it difficult, he got some support from other people as well, enough that he's working on games by himself and real-life situations, gave him more pressure on him as well
properly if we tried to remove the staff and adding a new one everything would get good and worse at the same time, because if we tried to deal with more new members that would be hard, dont forget some people try to fake themselves to become a staff to earn the power to moderation, and then we will get into huge situations, properly i dont think we should remove or add new staff anymore, this is by far the best staff member team i have seen so far, and properly everything will be changed as soon as the PB3 game will get released and there might be a new page for a new community, i hope so lol.

He did not make a small community. Community made itself and it was big back then, but now due to a lot of deifferent reasons the community became much smaller. And in fact one of the reasons why certain people leave may be bad staff members who banned them for no solid reason. Dealing with new staff won't be hard actually. We only need to check the candidate and vote for him. It's quite easy. They would pretty much do the same thing as old staff but better because they would feel the pressure of community's opinion. If some new elected staff is bad, we have "the electoral college" (some good and trusted people) who would be able to exclude the elected staff for the rules break and run a new election. I don't think that current staff team is "the best", but it is certainly better than the one we had many years ago. With the new election system we would actually be able to get the staff to be "the best", but not just "better".

@Zapruderfilm, hello:

Spoiler: Show More

Or perhaps try respecting the wishes of the creator and not complicating a system for staff in a game that is potentially going to die in one month.

I do respect his wishes, but respecting them doesn't mean I cannot disagree with them. The system won't be overcomplicated. If you read my other posts you would see it's not really hard to install and run it. Also it won't complicate the system "for staff" because they are not the ones who will run and control the election. Also if you read my previous post you would see that I propose this system not just for PB2 but also for PB3. And I have doubts that it will die in a month. Sure the switching to standalone might have some impact on the activity, but I don't think it will necessary kill the game.

@Phsc, thank you for your opinion and the time you spent writing all this. I have some things I disagree with though. Also I was a bit tired when I was typing so I apologize if I made some mistakes:

Spoiler: Show More

Discord is much more practical, and it generally has much more popularity over some different aspects of the forums, it is not really about PB2 or anything, it is just that Discord and chat services like that are more popular than forums, and it is just because of how practical it is, using it on your phone or simply the time it takes for every action, and another issue which is that the Discord already has the user concentration and sending them to the forums would simply be innefective because many would probably ignore the notification ignore the message and all of that because of the effort, I know that because many have said that to me, thing is, maybe getting some staff member to make a bot or using a third party one could also work pretty well, also this gets to another issue which I am unsure, but maybe whoever owns the forum could change poll info and posts? doing that on Discord is not really possible to an extent, because every person that votes is an user, and removing their votes you can see individually who was removed and such, so it could fight a bit on the corruption side of things if that exists/comes into existance.

In my personal opinion discord is bad thing to have first of all, despite that people like it or think it is practical. I see lack of activity in multiplayer and on the forum. And I think closing the discord server will increase the activity in them. Sure some people will be angry and leave, but I don't care. That's one of my personal wishes that nobody is forced to agree with - I want bigger activity in the game itself and on the forum. I want to see more matches filled with many people who would chat and have fun like in good old days when this was one of the main sources of communication and interaction. I don't care about the discord's future or if its users leave. I don't like that PB2 community has turned into discord community. I don't like that it draws people away from the game. PB2 is a game that is supposed to be played, not a discord chat source.

Not at all, many people have tried to change PB2 and nothing happens, Eric does not care about popular opinion over trusting someone like Tempus like he has had for multiple years, knowing Eric and how he acts and has acted, I think the only real change could only come to PB2.5/3, not 2, does this mean you should stop with that? no, but I even then think it is pretty much not going to happen considering Eric's past behaviour.

Many people tried doesn't mean they tried well enough to actually achieve the result. I speaked to Eric a lot of times myself to come to conclusion that he does care what people think. The problem is that there is not enough support of certain idea to make him consider any changes. He is that sort of guy who first wants to make sure that community is absolutely certain about something before doing a thing. That's my personal experience of speaking to him that you don't have to agree with.

And who will apply it? if there is any link betwen the voted staff and the selected electors the system goes to shit, and naturally that happens in most democratic systems, it might not be with Nyove, Ditzy or Darkstar, but staff will change with time, the early democracies seem to work out really well, but with time it all goes to shit and that is a problem of the system, another big problem is that the worst get to power, explaining this is a bit complicated, if you did read the Hayek works I mentioned you could have understood this, but there is a natural tendency for the worst to get in power, and naturally people who are narcissistic and such can keep great images if they are decently smart and once in power they are extremely abusive, and these are the people who are the best at winning this kind of competition, and you can see this happening in real life all around the world and history.
Also elector cannot be a permanent position because people grow up and have more things to do, Nyove himself said he might need to join the army in the future, others seem to have their own goals, not to mention how someone might just not like the position anymore, this is a big responsability, the best way to make sure people stay in this position could maybe be a monetary reward but this goes agaisn't what Eric generally is for.

You tend to be very pessimistic about everything. "Everyone is corrupt", "democracy will fail", "worst will get to power", "good person will become bad", "all electors will leave". Reading your posts makes me think that if you consider some system not 100% perfect it will come to sh*t with 100% possibility while in reality there aren't many systems that are perfect, yet they work somehow. They don't work perfectly but they work. There are problems, but they are being worked on. I don't want to argue with you about real life politics or democracy issues in this topic, but I'll just say that I see a lot of leaders in developed democratic countries that are not evil, not villains. They might not be 100% altruistic or honest or professional, but they still do their job. I'm not talking about pseudo-democratic countries where of course what you say happens very often. Tell me, do you pay attention only to bad examples of democracy and ignore all the good ones? If so it would explain why you are so pessimistic about everything. If some elector plans to leave he will inform other electors and the new elector will be chosen to replace the retired one.

I actually am unsure about the security of the forums in some ways, and even then, I think a forum poll about discussions and such is great, but there are many people in the Discord which I would consider mature and capable of argumentation and discussion that do not use the forums, I actually think a poll system on the main website would be the way to go, any of these systems can be abused anyway and most will just vote and not argue, and people will probably just go around asking people to vote for them or whatever, pretty much what happens in democracy, and even if we try to make it as distant as possible from the 12 year olds, if they find out, they are the majority of the playerbase and the ones that are easier to manipulate.

Security questions should be discussed of course. Asking people to vote is not a bad thing imo. That's how democracy works, no? It involves talking to people, expressing and discussing opinions, activity overall. Also the electors will check if the voter is mature enough before counting his vote. Besides I think the voting should be in the form of posting replies on the forum instead of just clicking in the poll. Like I said earlier kids who don't have basic knowledge of anything won't be allowed to vote. It's like in real life election where person has to be 18 years old to vote, but in PB electors will check the maturity of the voter by checking his pervious posts/activity/etc (discussable).

Someone like Nyove or whoever is picked to select the team and such would need to have administrator powers as far as I know, so there are multiple ones by that, and there seems to be a big issue most staff members agree, which is that moderators and even head moderators barely have tools and such, something as simple as seeing a guest's IP and comparing that IP to accounts to try to ban a player who did something bad as a guest, as far as I know, is only avaliable to Eric, not even admins can do that.

Electors should only have access to the logs to keep the new elected staff in check I think. They will also have an easy way of communication with Eric if needed. Moderators if election system is accepted will be granted all necessary tools to work (Eric will have change who has which tools).

This gets to an issue which is also about the uncertanty about the future, people have their own preferences, and often since democracy works with a bunch of bundles, like people offering a specific combination of services instead of each individual service (like something the free market generally does), we might not have a perfect candidate in the future, or even a perfect candidate for the elector team or whatever (how to set the future elector teams?), and this might impact issues that are part of individual systems, if we add different categories, such as one admin for approval, one admin for Discord moderation, one admin for ingame moderation, etc, that works better since all areas will have a focus, this also gets into a problem which is that there are few players, and more people would be needed to run the team, maybe allow people to apply for only one position that seems core to the game's functionality (Eric decides this? kind of already has decided?), also, the no objections agaisn't it gets to a problem, what if there is no actual good candidate and the last one had to leave, what is going to happen?
Also why not just give power to the electors instead of actually voting for people? if they are going to be the ones to select stuff in the end, they are the direct powers, the system is naturally autocratic so why not make it directly autocratic? the only issue I see is that those nice people who prob could pick the best admins in a mature way, probably would say no to leading the game, Nyove, Ditzy, etc, I actually have my issues with both of them to an extent as well, but they are probably the better choices.

The current electors will be chosen right now by people who are interested in installing the election system into PB. I think we are not the only two persons who name the same people for this position. Future electors will need to match certain personality characteristics like being known, unbiased, fair, smart, nice, etc. If one leaves, two other electors can choose a replacement for him after the discussion with other known/mature in community people. The final choice will be after the electors. I doubt they can all leave at the same time. It is highly unlikely to happen. Again, this system is not perfect. It doesn't work as a clock. It has its flaws, its subjective/biased/based on personal preferences/etc, but I doubt it will have too many problems while operating. This is a game where things are quite simple. Many systems that are not perfect can work. Things can happen quite easy on its own. Electors shouldn't be the new staff, otherwise we will get back to square one with inactive/abusive staff ruling the game. Elector's job is to only set the election system and keep it running by certain rules. They should be like neutral watchers pretty much who will run the election and check staff's acitvity and action logs. If some staff candidate leaves during election, the electors will set the candidate who took second place as new administrator. If administrator leaves after election and setting a new staff team, the electors will announce new election. If there are any problems (perfect/imperfect candidate/, good/bad electors/no electors) each one will be dealt with individually depending on the context of the situation with people we currently have (Eric, electors, staff, known community memebers). Don't expect the worst scenario to happen on the first day. But even if the worst scenario actually happens we can always go back to the old system. But again, this election idea is just being at the state of discussion. It's not full and complete yet. You can suggest exact instructions if you want. Right now I'm just proposing basic concept. It literally says "concept" in the topic title.

His opinion is the only one that matters, it is his game, Eric does it as a hobby, and while he has a focus on the community, just like any service provided by the free markets (or even the state at the end of the day) who gets to choose it is the one offering the product, unless it becomes not viable, PB2 is not viable and it is not a product that allows Eric to survive or anything, he does it because he likes doing it, why should he have a system he dislikes? and if you say "oh but he is offering a service", well who cares? if you dislike it just leave, sadly that is how things work, maybe if intellectual property laws did not exist someone could just copy the game and make it better and then we have a better service at the end of the day, but that is not how the world works, Eric can just not give a deliciously exquisite pizza sauce about the election, he can, and knowing him and how distant he is, I'd say that is quite likely, many people literally do not care about what people think of them as well, and as much as it is not much of a job, executing and dealing with the current staff and changing all of that is, and Eric just wants to chill, make PB2.5/3 and that is it, also even then it seems like most people do not agree with your idea of a democratic PB2, many see problems, I myself kind of do not care and I personally think that short term the system would work better and long term worse, and I'd rather have the long term one since PB2.5/3 will come into existance and as far as I know staff changes will happen in the future, but I do not know which exact ones, I trust Eric and his judgement is at the end of the day the only thing that matters, discussing this is kind of utopic and useless, but I enjoy it.

He may be distant, but I do believe he cares. As I said earlier, if he sees big support of the idea, he will consider installing it. That's my personal prediction and my personal picture of him I got while talking to him.

I disagree, we do have someone like Nyove, or someone like Ditzy or someone like Darkstar in the team, back then, were there such? in my experience no, I think the system is changing, not because of the system but because of the people changing, just because a thing has always been a way it does not mean it cannot change, the community is getting smaller and people are getting older and more mature, if the system is a function, the values that run the function are changing.

Nyove/Ditzy/Darkstar =/= result of Tempus's work. It's just luck that these people once joined PB2 and got into the team. It has nothing to do with basic tendency of staff team managers to change anything. Have you ever witnessed how right people wanted to join the team but staffs didn't let them in? Have you witnessed how some people suggest good ideas but getting ignored by staff? That's what I'm talking about.

I agree, the issue is that there is an issue which is the viability of the system, as I said, Nyove might have to join the army, people like Hexagon/LoneWolf56 which is also generally considered a good staff member, will need to focus on his life, not to mention the personal issues people have, there are very few good candidates and they cannot exist forever, currently I trust most of the good staff will stay for the future, but for how long? this does not mean the rest of the team is good, but a more complicated system where some people have to check if a candidate is actually good and not a 12 year old requires them to be active and look at the community, and generally speaking, the older you are the more complicated this gets.

Nyove and Hexagon are not the only people in this community who can be good/active moderators. You can join staff, I can join staff, other people can join staff. The problem is that current staff doesn't let a lot of new people in and want to stick to the old ones they like so many people cannot actually show their good sides and become properly known.

Current staff team != Tempus, Tempus is the one who actually picks, staff only suggests, and Tempus can ignore the suggestions, does that happen? I am unsure, also incompetent people will not always pick incompetent people, that is very relative, they might like competent people who will do their job, or incompetent people because they are simply abusive, it all depends on why they are incompetent.

I did not say "always". I want Tempus to be replaced with elected administrator who will do a better job at picking new staff so we will not be stuck in a situation where half of the staff is good and half is bad. I want all of them to be good (relatively/subjectively, please don't be picky on words).

This requires more thinking, what if things go wrong? what if there is a draw? what if someone is the most abusive piece of shit who pretty much nukes the game for one day? what sets how valid a system is is how it deals with the what ifs and how often these happen, also when will we have new elections? how do people vote for impeachment? what about changes to the code of conduct or the elector team? this all has to be written out, passed away, not to mention dealing with the current staff, which I think is pretty much impossible, mostly considering how reluctant Eric is when it comes to deaing with such aspects of the game.

It's highly unlikely to be a draw, but if there is a draw, we can either have debates and second tour or let electors do their personal pick which would be considered legit way of solving such situation. It's hard to nuke the game if even possible and it would be hard for an "extremely abusive piece of sh*t" to become an administrator. No pessimism, cheer up. We can have an election once per year. Impeachment through mass discussion of electors, Eric and community active/known/mature members. Some parts of Code of Conduct like "no posting p*rn" cannot be changed, some can through discussion. Elector team rules probably won't be changed unless if a majority of community and Eric says otherwise.

THIS IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH DEMOCRACY! ok, so, JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE DOES A THING/ACTS A WAY/SAYS THEY WILL DO A THING IT DOES NOT MEAN THEY WILL ACT LIKE THAT FOREVER, let me explain, it is obvious people like Nyove have a focus on their image, talk to the guy, you will see what I'm saying, I am not saying he is someone who is abusive or whatever, but once people get to power, they can simply change, actual psychopaths are manipualtive and charming, they can win the election, and once they are in power, they can just change, this happens all the time all around the world in democracies, and this gets to by far the biggest issue with democracy: THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY OF BEING ELECTED IS TO CREATE DEMAND AND NOT SUPPLY, ok let me use real life examples, in real life maybe some country wants hospitals, and then candidates say "I will build hospitals!", we elect the dude, ok, then he does nothing, next year, we either elect another dude (there is generlaly a limited poll to be elected so we have this issue), but here is the thing, the guy can just do a slighty competent job, make like, one hospital instead of multiple, or just do stuff at the end of his mandate to get ignorant people to see "wow! he actually did what he said he was going to do!", and htis happens literally all the time in democracy for every single thing, what gets you elected and allows you to stay in power is the demand, if people need nothing, they do not need you, this happens with administration, if there are no toxic people or whatever, nothing to be reworked, why would you exist? to ensure systems work? well yes, but why would the elected one do that, because of his internal morality? and what if there is nobody who would do that? democracy is a really weak system, it has many many flaws.

Pessimism again. "Worst scenario", "they all lie", "everyone's bad" again. Problems can be dealt with. I believe so. You need more faith in people.

As much as I agree for changes in general, here is the thing, I think this is not going to happen, imagine you have a game which you only enjoy working on and not dealing with people, and then you ahve some friend of yours who has been dealing with that for a while and in YOUR point of view as the developer there are barely any issues, would you change him?

I would dig into the issue, talk to people, see what they want and make a decison after deep considerations.

What about changing the Code of Conduct? that is a thing that seems to be necessary at least slighty over time, just like consitutions often need to be updated, also, they might slowly change it, not cnacel all rules but try to slowly lower them, and if the elected team and the one being voted decide to work together, that might as well just happen, and I am not talking about short term, but some day Nyove will not be able to be the elector (I personally think he would say no to such a position, knowing him), and what then? mostly when 2.5/3 comes out and the player base gets enormous, or at least bigger, it will be harder to actually know the candidates.

The electors will report it to Eric to take further decision regarding current elected staff team. I'm pretty sure if new staff team does something obviously stupid, everyone would notice it and Eric too. Eric can kick them all out if he wants to.

This will help any way and I would say it already happens, including even the most apt for the position, your system requires people to be perfect and they are not, even the best still have their weaknesses, and just because they say something it does not mean that will happen, or if they act like that, you give them too much power and they might as well change, and that seems to happen in history and such.

The system doesn't require anyone to be perfect. It requires certain people to be better than average. Banning people on forum is not "too much power" that will turn everyone into villain. Bad history examples should not be used as proof that something like that will happen in future for sure. You did not mention all good people who did not become bad after getting the power, did you?

Also you mention clans, a thing you might not realize is that, the clan rule is dumb, it can still be abused, and clans are pretty much dead and now communities are the way to go, even if paulstin leaves DARK CLAN and he wants to be elected, he will still be supported, because he has a community, I do not think that the elector team would let him pass, but this would happen with any community, Nyove as far as I know is part/was part of/whatever of R!OT, which is a clan/community whatever, Stryde has the same with BoZ, if Stryde wants to be elected he can just ask for the BoZ members to vote on him, he could pass the elector check I would say as well, and you do not really seem to be happy with Stryde, it is a problem of democracy speaking again.

Clan rule can be discussed. Mass support of clan leader won't really ensure he will get the position because the electors will check who votes: typical 10 years old dark clan member who was ordered to vote for Paulstin or mature and known community member who is able to think on his own. If majority of dark clan are mature and smart people who have at least 50 "normal" (please don't be picky on this word, we are writing walls of texts again) posts on the forum and they all vote for him because they deeply thought about it, then ok. That's how democracy works and I'm okay with that.

Also nightmar said "Because every theory is good on paper, but reality differs a lot from your expectations.", this is not how theories work, you first make a theory that explains reality, be it from Marx' view on capitalism to Friedrich Hayek and all the austrian school (Bawerk, Menger, Mises, Rothbard) who build up their theories of how the world works, and then you say how things should be, and I think this kind of shows here, how does PB2 work? this is what has to be studied first, how does the social side of PB2 work? does it change? will it change? when does it change? I think for an actual good rework to be viable, this needs to be done, but I do not think anyone has the time, effort and competence to do this, as much as some might have started or have some of this done, all the traits are needed and there is much more work to be done.

I think we know enough about social side of PB2 to launch the system, but of course more knowledge = better.

So I talked a lot, here is the biggest issue I see with the system, if the elector team is going to select whoever is going to be the admin at the end of the day, why not just make them the admins directly? or admins also? instead of a democracy, an autocracy, similar to the current system, I myself think it is all utopic and kind of detached from reality and no changes will ever happen, but in a more theoretical talk, why have elections and such and not just have the elector team pick people up themselves? and if they are bad, well go talk to Eric about it, the need for checking will inherently create an upper class to those being elected, and that is where the issue starts, as it also happens in real life democracies, and Eric is too detached and too isolated to deal with such issues, and I actually think the playerbase is way too small for such a democratic system to work, and if it gets big then the problems of democracy will just get worse and worse as happens in real life.

As I seaid earlier if we set the electors as new staff team we will be back to square one with lazy and abusive staffs. The electors are mainly the watchers. Competition and community activity will give the quality (yes, there are more things that will or will not give quality, please don't be picky).

Sorry if I missed/misunderstood you again somewhere. I've never been arguing and writing walls of text so much in my life. I may be wrong in many things but I still believe these changes need to be made to make the game better. And I'm optimistic about them. I could go to Eric with the idea, but he won't listen unless if it gets enough support of the community.

@ECC9 hello. Thank you for checking this topic. Here is my reply:

Spoiler: Show More

yeah

But if this really gonna happen the first step for a better Staff-Community interaction would be demoting tehswordninja from staff cause he abuses his powers on others. (idk bout multiple cases but im pretty sure he do it on other people too not only me)

I answered on Zapruderfilm's critique and I think his opinion is not 100% correct. You can check my reply to him in this post. In case of the election system to be accepted all current staff team member including admins will be demoted. Some of them may become "the electors" (like Nyove, Ditzy, Darkstar), some may participate in the election to become a staff again, some may join the election winner's team.

[eru_]

Hello Xelijah.

I totally agree with regarding making Staff votes, More like democracy.

[xElijah]

Hello Xelijah.

I totally agree with regarding making Staff votes, More like democracy.

Hello @Eru. I'm glad to know this idea has your support.

[mingo1]

I agree that a lot of our team doesn't fit the ideal image of a staff member. Staff are talking about this kind of stuff behind the scenes, especially in wake of PB3 - thanks for this post

[phsc]

Many people tried doesn't mean they tried well enough to actually achieve the result. I speaked to Eric a lot of times myself to come to conclusion that he does care what people think. The problem is that there is not enough support of certain idea to make him consider any changes. He is that sort of guy who first wants to make sure that community is absolutely certain about something before doing a thing. That's my personal experience of speaking to him that you don't have to agree with.

Eric does care about what people say but not when it comes to a system like this or when it takes people he trusts, and I believe Tempus is one of them, I think you'd require an absurd amount of people to complain about the system and even then, Eric probably I think would not follow this system suggestion and instead go for something else, but Eric is someone who seems to not punish or take people out, he might talk to it with Tempus and such and make his conclusions, even with supports for ideas and such often he has not changed his mind in some things, just look at the netcode, map approval, hell I am pretty sure Eric gets a message at least every week talking about removing stryde-sniper.

You tend to be very pessimistic about everything. "Everyone is corrupt", "democracy will fail", "worst will get to power", "good person will become bad", "all electors will leave". Reading your posts makes me think that if you consider some system not 100% perfect it will come to sh*t with 100% possibility while in reality there aren't many systems that are perfect, yet they work somehow. They don't work perfectly but they work. There are problems, but they are being worked on. I don't want to argue with you about real life politics or democracy issues in this topic, but I'll just say that I see a lot of leaders in developed democratic countries that are not evil, not villains. They might not be 100% altruistic or honest or professional, but they still do their job. I'm not talking about pseudo-democratic countries where of course what you say happens very often. Tell me, do you pay attention only to bad examples of democracy and ignore all the good ones? If so it would explain why you are so pessimistic about everything. If some elector plans to leave he will inform other electors and the new elector will be chosen to replace the retired one.

Yes, you criticize a system by saying how it may fail, you do not assume the best situation, you might mention something like the nirvana fallacy, but it can also be inverted, you just assume things will work out, and you ahve to always look at the worst situation, the case where it all may fail, because that is how you find flaws in systems, of course you do not assume the absurd like "what if a black hole appears inside of earth, what would government do, huh?" or like "what if Eric Gurt is shot, what would this staff leader do, continue PB2.5???", that is just ridiculous and that is when the nirvana fallacy is applied, but considering that things might just not work perfectly is completely valid, I am negative and being negative in this is right, the general point of the discussion is if the system is better than the current one, I think that a democracy would start out better and then very likely go bad, just like most democracies, you might say "there are good democracies", I disagree because I think democracy is a very, very bad system that is often capable of being carried by other things, such as free markets, but here is the thing, if your system requires people to be competent and good and all, then why not simply... just the current team? may I mention that with the current system we supposedly only need one person to do a good job, the administrator that picks the other staff, in this case Tempus, just put like Nyove in there (not going to happen but kind of a way to show what I mean) and the system should work, why add a bunch of other steps, with a bunch of systems that might just make so things may go wrong? also, about real life ones, if you take out the democracy and add literally any system with the leader behind it, it would pretty much be better, just saying, also may I mention that Venezuela was once a "democracy", and Brazil has been a democracy for a long time and we did get some of the worst presidents I've ever seen elected, and many of them did start good, many of them did show potential, just read about Getúlio Vargas, Fernando Collor, Lula and Dilma, and well to an extent Bolsonaro, just to mention some, casual reminder that bad person germany was once a democracy, see the issue? democracy is a system that can easily be abused by the worst, it is pretty much the perfect system to give power to psychopaths, there is also more but again I mention Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek, also here is the thing, often times the reason a system work is not because of the system but because of what surrounds it, I think democracy is a good case of showing how the government generally sucks mostly in a democracy, but stuff like the free markets allow society to function, in quite weird ways because democracy and free markets = crony capitalism which is like one of the worst systems ever and somehow society works based on this.

Asking people to vote is not a bad thing imo. That's how democracy works, no? It involves talking to people, expressing and discussing opinions, activity overall. Also the electors will check if the voter is mature enough before counting his vote. Besides I think the voting should be in the form of posting replies on the forum instead of just clicking in the poll. Like I said earlier kids who don't have basic knowledge of anything won't be allowed to vote. It's like in real life election where person has to be 18 years old to vote, but in PB electors will check the maturity of the voter by checking his pervious posts/activity/etc (discussable).

And now we get to another problem of democracy, this one was more common back then but still kinda is, I will actually use examples, I am from the Workers Party (in Brazil known as PT), if you vote for me I will give poor people money, straight up that, turns out that the poor people vote them! ok, this seems... fine right, just leftist measures, now lets go back like 100 years ago to coronelism and the weirdass early brazilian democracy, so back then it worked like this, "you vote on me or you get shot", then it slowly became "you vote on me and you get some direct material gain", the issue with this is that, first, as I have said, the most effective method of staying in power is not doing what people want you to do to create demand, this seems quite dumb but this is how the brazilian Workers Party had power for 14 years, and this is how most politicians operate, so lets take an exaple, take paulstin, he probably would not pass the criteria, but imagine a DARK CLAN member might, imagine some generic more apt for the position DARK CLAN member, I mean I was in DARK CLAN so that can be me, I can tell for every single DARK CLAN person to vote on me, pausltin goes around them and such, for them to help me, now lets say I leave DARK CLAN, I still have a community and can still help the community, see the issue? also this checking maturity thing allows for even more corruption, just like in older brazilian democracy where only the upper classes could vote, also no women as well, so it always gave an extreme focus to their issues, not the issues of more simplistic people, in PB2 maybe a big issue for the more simple player is toxicity ingame, but the forum-discord mature people probably do not play the game a whole lot and might overlook the issue, see the problem? it is still about staff-community interaction, also, imagine PB2.5/3 drops, and there is an increase in the playerbase, how would this work out? checking every single person who wants to vote, considering that maybe the game might have an older playerbase since older players who left could come back, that would be hell, also people can straight up try to fake it, lie, and see, what is the real difference betwen the current system where staff individually votes if someone should join the team or not and Tempus gives them a pass or not, to the system you are proposing, the mature people vote and some elector/electors say if they pass or not, almost the same, slowly and slowly the system gets more democratic and closer to how it works, but it seems like it would work out more because you use Nyove and Ditzy or whatever as examples.

I think we are not the only two persons who name the same people for this position. Future electors will need to match certain personality characteristics like being known, unbiased, fair, smart, nice, etc. If one leaves, two other electors can choose a replacement for him after the discussion with other known/mature in community people. The final choice will be after the electors. I doubt they can all leave at the same time. It is highly unlikely to happen. Again, this system is not perfect. It doesn't work as a clock. It has its flaws, its subjective/biased/based on personal preferences/etc, but I doubt it will have too many problems while operating. This is a game where things are quite simple. Many systems that are not perfect can work. Things can happen quite easy on its own. Electors shouldn't be the new staff, otherwise we will get back to square one with inactive/abusive staff ruling the game.

I have issues with both Nyove and Ditzy actually, as much as I talk to them and like them, Ditzy might just pass for OCPD and I could see him maybe taking his opinion a bit over a few others when it comes to certain things, Nyove seems to care a lot about his image in this community, at first I even distrusted Nyove, and I am unsure of why he really does that, but I think that can be internal insecurity to some aspects, such are flaws that can be abused, I do think they are some of the best candidates, but I actually think the best ones are people who are kind of not that well known, but this is discussion for another time.
Ok so let me understand a thing, you want to change a system so it is better than the current one, just because it might work, but here is the thing, the current one does work! and the reason your system seems to superior is because of the people who pick who, not really because of the system, put Nyove Ditzy and Darkstar 1 as admins, and let them rework the staff team, suddenly it seems like the current system is better, doesn't it? I think you are too positive and kind of for some reason thinking that the function (the system) would inherently have better values, while I think they could very easily be worse, also, if the DARK CLAN example I mentioned in the last quote was bad, think of USF, or like GeNo or YRN, also, don't you think that limiting the electors, and considering that such a position will generally take the best PB2 has to offer, kind of limiting? we are limiting some of the most mature and helpful community members in this system as well, if they all become admins, they can still run the system and see who should join staff and such, but they also could do more practical work, and if you do not limit them, why are they electors and straight up not admins? what would differ? if they can only do stuff once people leave, you might as well just make the election straight up add more people to the team, but why not just allow them to pick people individually instead of some great leader with his mentality and team like normal democracies? let the best of the community control the community, I really don't see why PB2 should be a democracy instead of an autocracy, if the general idea behind the system is a democracy with an autocratic filter.

Nyove/Ditzy/Darkstar =/= result of Tempus's work. It's just luck that these people once joined PB2 and got into the team. It has nothing to do with basic tendency of staff team managers to change anything. Have you ever witnessed how right people wanted to join the team but staffs didn't let them in? Have you witnessed how some people suggest good ideas but getting ignored by staff? That's what I'm talking about.

Ok, what people? like I was thinking about it, did the Tempus team pick some of the worst moderators? like just look at tehswordninja, what does he even do for the game other than talk shit to people on Discord? pretty much nothing, but here is a big issue I have, people often do not apply, Nyove almost did not, Ditzy and Hexagon/LoneWolf56 I believe also originally intended to not apply, I constantly told Darkstar to apply and I think others doing that also allowed that to happen, may I also mention I think the staff team now has a ton of nice people, I unironically like mrblake and I think he does a good job, Kiriakos might be a bit strange but I do not think he is negative for the team at the end of the day, Stryde getting in just shows that systems can be reworked and such, even tho I can see why people dislike him and how he moderates, and I do think that mr jaks nes and CreeperHunter55 were not good picks, but I really think that the general tendency over the last... year? years? has been positive, I actually don't hate staff anymore, this is a bit bizarre, I do think the system is not perfect but it seems to be getting better, just because of the people who got in, it is about people, not about the system, and it is a result of Tempus' work, this does not mean that they wouldn't join staff if it was someone else, and it could mean that some of the very negative people would not join, but this is even more for what I have been trying to say, it is about people and not the system, take Tempus away and put someone else, put Ditzy and wow, things probably seem better in your head? I do think Ditzy is a bit reluctant to changing some systems (my experience with him in Cult of USE), do you see what I mean? I think the new system would do more harm than help, and it seems better because of how positive you are over the people, while you can be even more sure if you just have it all static and not constantly changing in weird ways, and as I said, democracies start out great, and often go to crap later on.

Nyove and Hexagon are not the only people in this community who can be good/active moderators. You can join staff, I can join staff, other people can join staff. The problem is that current staff doesn't let a lot of new people in and want to stick to the old ones they like so many people cannot actually show their good sides and become properly known.

It is a limited number of people, if I were elected the ultimate ruler of PB2 I would invite you, and many others, but there would still be few I think could pass, also I'd rework half of the game, but this won't happen because I am not the best at keeping a good and likeable public image, probably because I say my opinions in direct ways instead of just sucking everyone's pizza sauce.
But here is the thing, Tempus is actually good for the team I would say, I actually applied for staff, and cancelled my application, Tempus is someone busy and such and I think this is the most negative part of him on the team, but he did talk to me, took some time, and he does seem to pick people even when staff seems quite agaisnt it, he even told me that often he does not really go completely by the judgement of other staff members, and I think this is good considering the staff team gives more voice to tehswordninja and mr jaks nes than to Ditzy and Nyove, but I agree, the current staff team is very static and I think this is the issue, dandamage just rejoined the team, why? what did dandamage even do? I actually for real don't know.

I want Tempus to be replaced with elected administrator who will do a better job at picking new staff so we will not be stuck in a situation where half of the staff is good and half is bad. I want all of them to be good (relatively/subjectively, please don't be picky on words).

This does not require the rework of the entire system, and this is my biggest point, the current system is not bad, it is very autocratic and greatly requires good people at the top, I actually think that having more people and more discussion and making things more public would be the way to go, I would never be elected in your democratic system and I think I'd do a great job reworking PB2 and such, I actually have more chances under the current system even, people would just pick based on who they like and who they dislike, there are so few unbiased and actually rational people on ths community, that if the maturity check is too high, we just end up with the current system pretty much, but more limited with more bureaucracy for no reason.

It's hard to nuke the game if even possible and it would be hard for an "extremely abusive piece of sh*t" to become an administrator. No pessimism, cheer up. We can have an election once per year. Impeachment through mass discussion of electors, Eric and community active/known/mature members. Some parts of Code of Conduct like "no posting p*rn" cannot be changed, some can through discussion. Elector team rules probably won't be changed unless if a majority of community and Eric says otherwise.

Ok, let me tell you an story, back in the 90s, in Brazil, we had this charming dude called Fernando Collor de Mello, dude seemed real great, what did he do once he got to power? he pretty much took everybody's life savings to the government, and then he got impeached out, but people sitll did not get to see the money, nobody expected that, it was a complete pizza sauce move, but he did get to power, over an entire country, and this is quite modern, the 90s, if it was like the late 1800s, I could see this kind of shit happening, but really, the 90s? I think you are way too positive over this system, it opens up so many holes and it just makes it easier to be played, easier to be abused by someone cancerous than the current system, and yeah, some of the Code of Conduct is required for the game to be functional, but a lot of it is is not, and a lot of it is simply not well defined and extremely... confusing and strange, it is very hard to apply PB2s rules objectively.

Pessimism again. "Worst scenario", "they all lie", "everyone's bad" again. Problems can be dealt with. I believe so. You need more faith in people.

I don't have faith in people because people are by definition egoists, by the definition of "acting" (read Human Action by Ludwig von Mises), if your systems depends on trust and people being good and such, it is a bad system, and it can be abused, have you ever met a psychopath in your life? or a smart narcissist, see, people are not cool and you should not trust them, just pointless risks.

The electors will report it to Eric to take further decision regarding current elected staff team. I'm pretty sure if new staff team does something obviously stupid, everyone would notice it and Eric too. Eric can kick them all out if he wants to.

Ok, kind of a cliche example but, bad person germany, it was all slow, slowly changed, to the point the culture and the zeitgeist and such all changed, slowly, if you move your hand super fast close to a fire, it burns and you feel it, if it is slow, you feel it very slighty and get used to it, this is how bad person germany happened, and this is the biggest problem of democracy, the natural problem that people act for their own personal gain (by definition, you might misunderstand this but like, just go read Human Action, this is a bit complicated and people misunderstand, but every action by definition is the best one for you to take otherwise you would not act, as in what options you currently have, even if someone has a moral side and such, the moral side is still the best action and it is an egoistic move, because it is your morality and whatever you want, this is a bit complicated to understand at first, if you don't feel like reading it I can try to explain it but it might end being very long and confusing).

You did not mention all good people who did not become bad after getting the power, did you?

You know, I was reading the brazilian president list, and literally, nobody, nobody from this list, actually is good, the best out of all is probably deliciously exquisite pizza sauce Bolsonaro who unironically has flat earthers on his team, but does have people like Paulo Guedes and such who still are very limited, this is how bad democracy is, in the US I could see some of the early presidents, mostly the ones behind the consitution and such, Thomas Jefferson and such, but as time passes, we get to Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, not to mention the ones who justify wars, or are simply straight up dumb, but they did get to power, I see you don't want to talk about politics, but give me a period of 12 years with good presidents, I can easily give you 12 years of bad ones. May I mention my judgement mostly comes from my knowledge in economics, and this can et to an extremely long and exhaust debate you probably don't want to have and neither I do, but I want one example, the general tendency is what matters, and democracy sucks because of it.

Clan rule can be discussed. Mass support of clan leader won't really ensure he will get the position because the electors will check who votes: typical 10 years old dark clan member who was ordered to vote for Paulstin or mature and known community member who is able to think on his own. If majority of dark clan are mature and smart people who have at least 50 "normal" (please don't be picky on this word, we are writing walls of texts again) posts on the forum and they all vote for him because they deeply thought about it, then ok. That's how democracy works and I'm okay with that.

Think of USF, GeNo, YRN, BoZ, simply having and owning a community, also literally, if you want people to be rational, the amount of people I've seen in this game who will accept being wrong if you point out a logical fallacy in their reasoning is so small, and this gets to points I mentioned earlier.

As I seaid earlier if we set the electors as new staff team we will be back to square one with lazy and abusive staffs. The electors are mainly the watchers. Competition and community activity will give the quality (yes, there are more things that will or will not give quality, please don't be picky).

Why would the electors become lazy? you did not explain this, and I am curious, if they are competent and such, why would they become lazy in the current system? I really don't think that, ditzy already is lazy xd xd.

Sorry if I missed/misunderstood you again somewhere. I've never been arguing and writing walls of text so much in my life. I may be wrong in many things but I still believe these changes need to be made to make the game better. And I'm optimistic about them. I could go to Eric with the idea, but he won't listen unless if it gets enough support of the community.

This is normal, I do think the general idea behind the system is good, but not the execution, I think that the people changing would be the best way to go, I believe that autocracy > democracy by far, not for real life, but for passion projects such as PB2 and such, I think that is the way to go, in this case, it is not really an autocracy because there are multiple people involved, but I think a council is the way to go, I actually think that testing out could work, but I think it is not really practical, in general, I think the most practical measure currently would be, all staff members having to reapply, with simply a poll for popular opinion over them on the website, nothing fancy, just something basic to start things out and see what people think, I don't think changing the entire system from night to day is the way to go because one flaw can damage things a lot, but I trust Eric, and if he ends up agreeing with this idea, good, but I still think this is not going to happen even if you have an absurd amount of support, unless it is truly absurd, like half of the community or something.
Also I did not comment on some points because I either agree or think it is pretty redundant/pointless to reply to them, also I made some quotes smaller so it looks like less of an absurd wall of text, tho it still is one.



Also...

I agree that a lot of our team doesn't fit the ideal image of a staff member. Staff are talking about this kind of stuff behind the scenes, especially in wake of PB3 - thanks for this post

Read the title, "Concept of better Staff-Community interaction.", this is the biggest issue I have with the staff team and management, how things are always secretive and far from the player, from reworks to the systems and such, to even the criticisms people make to your staff application, how can you fix your flaws or see your chances or anything if you cannot even see what the staff team says about you when you apply? communication is a big problem.

[chelyn]

Democracy is like a fruit that is fresh and sweet (just picked), then the fruit is sold by a trader at a separate price or according to the market. Initially the fruit was selling well because it had just been picked, but in a few days the buyers of the fruit began to decrease, because the trader had to bear the risk of competition between other fruit traders. He was getting more and more annoyed, and the longer he wanted to say lies the more it grew. In the end he said that the fruit he was selling was freshly picked, and very, very sweet, so that he found himself and its fruits a pleasure that was covered by a great loss. Such is democracy, at first a clean candidate, can say sweet, and promises, but over time the candidate finds a formidable match. He is getting crazy (starts to lie), then he spreads the issue of lying to his competitors, so that he can win. In the end the candidate won, with great distress to his competitor, what cruel slander.