Recently there seems to have been a spate of negative sentiment regarding some of the staff team’s recent actions. I won't go on a huge rant about VKL’s denial, since, well, VKL is VKL. However, the result seems to have caused some anger amongst the community. So this is an open letter to the staff team—a plea, if you will, for answers.
First off: How much input does the community really have in determining the status of applications? While VKL received numerous upvotes, the application was still denied. Denial of a candidate who the community highly values has become a trend. Although in VKL’s case this denial was justifiable due to his rude comebacks to commenters, I feel that there should be more of an effort to explain the rationale behind decisions. Having already been staff before, I can confirm that there are closed-door discussions on both suggestions and applications. Therefore, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to ask for a bit more transparency there.
For example, an application denial might look like this: “Denied. While you've shown great improvement over the last few months, we don't feel as if you're quite ready to handle the responsibility of being a helper. Your last ban for duping on 9/29 indicates that you wouldn't hesitate to jump at the chance to abuse power for your own benefit, and we can't condone that kind of behavior on the team. If you keep your record clean and continue to help people in shout, we'd love to see you apply in the future!”
It doesn't really take that much effort to write a quick summary of the discussion, does it? Now don't get me wrong—sometimes denials are written this way. But other times, the applicant is left completely in the dark as to where they need to improve.
Now as I mentioned earlier, I won't really argue that denial, as I personally think the staff team made the correct call. However, after the denial, a few threads and comments have been removed by the staff team. Ideally, there's room for dialogue. Though oftentimes these threads can get tricky to moderate, neither deleting entire threads at a time nor removing comments critical of the team is the correct way about this. As we can see, these deletions have led to situations such as an unidentified member (it's not Lordusan by the way, Courtney) writing in the ban appeal section. This “us-and-them” attitude between the high staff team and the player base cannot continue, and I'd like to see that addressed, either in this thread or elsewhere.
So in short, please stop deleting threads and removing “anti-staff” comments. They really just stir up bad feelings and inflame tensions even more.
Finally, on a completely different note: ban appeals. While I agree that some members may be toxic and don't necessarily deserve a second chance on the server right away, I'm not sure denying ban appeals with a message like “Denied. You are not welcome on the server again” is productive. When people see that, they're unlikely to give up on the server and walk away. Rather, they'll ban evade, troll the server with alts, and create a nuisance. Therefore I propose leaving the door open—something like “If you don't ban evade for 2 months, we’ll let you back onto the forums. Then if you contribute on the forums, we'll let you back on, but you better not cause trouble.”
And finally, a message to the community: don't treat members of the staff team like crap. They spend a lot of time ensuring that Meep stays up and running, and none of this would be possible without their efforts. We can't go “$&@! THE STAFF TEAM CORRUPT HATE DOWN BAD REVOLUTION,” because that stirs up emotions on their part, and makes them more resistant to change. So as the cliché goes, kill ‘em with kindness (but firmness).
