[POLL] CDT/PR/TC - Usergroup colours/markups

I voted yes for the simple reason that when I saw color name I think moderator,
this update is confusing me when I look at threads when I see color and about to report a thread I think it moderator looking at the thread and then processed to report thread (despite me knowing who exactly in staff team).

 

Captivity of negativity

As for my vote, I will abstain because one way or another, I'm neutral.

Before the advent of this update, I personally thought having a fun rank would be enough to highlight the fact that x user was a part of x development team. We also had the discord where we already had the said colors and if you think about it, I think it's safe to say that more than 75% of Sythe's community is in the discord. So it was pretty easy to spot who was in such group, etc.

What Shin did is simply transpose an already established idea to the main scene.

Yes, of course it's a nice feature when you're a part of a development team, you can't deny that fact. You might get more visual attention but since the update aired, I, personally, have yet to receive a single Sythe private message or a Discord invitation about something related to staff. So as of now, if the only solid counter argument about this update is "People might get scammed because of the confusion" I think we can all settle down for a few weeks/months and see how things go.

 

[Volta]

I'm going to go ahead and vote no.

Although I do agree that the fun rank would've been enough, I do not see the problem in having the colored names. These are also people contributing their time to the forums and I truly don't see how it can be confusing to anyone. Not only is it abundantly clear that the colors are no longer coordinated with the staff, but even if someone were to PM a TC member mistakenly for a Staff, it'd still be clear with the fun rank.

 

Voted yes. The username coloring is an indicative feature of importance. It’s a way for users to easily identify who is staff and who is not, and the design will cause confusion when for example, viewing the online member list. There is no reason why anyone would want to know if these “club” members are online or not, as they provide little to no benefit in comparison to a staff member from the perspective of an average user (marketeer). This is presentation more than anything else. You’re sacrificing a good stucture for shits n giggles. For many years, we obstructed this from happening and for good reason obviously, but now we’ve succumb to poor systems continuously. What happened to quality and consistency?

 

[S]

I'd like to point out that not a single person besides @SellerMan has commented to support a yes vote.

Also, that as soon as I called you out on having multiple worthless/confusing fun ranks. You hid all of them.

I'd be willing to have the community teams names reverted if all excessive funranks were as well.

But that's not happening anytime soon.

Not sure if you realise, I've had all my ranks hidden for 7 years, aside a few months here and there, when promoting something. As mentioned before, ask anyone on this website.

Also, fun ranks aren't indicative of people being staff - i.e users having donor ranks, competition winner, etc. Coloured usernames are. How is that a difficult concept to grasp?

From what I can see, more are in favour of reversion.

 

[Cas]

I love how the people with the new colors are here basically saying it’s not a big deal so let us keep them.
If it’s not a big deal to you, request them to be removed off the groups so it’s crystal clear who is staff and who is a regular member. I remember everybody crying out loud that the cdt shouldn’t even get a minirank, let alone a funrank and now a user group color that has been an important mark of staff for the last years.

Voted for the change to be reverted.

 

[S]

Also, regarding peoples comments about users who've voted yes not stating why/openly supporting it - that's always going to be the case.

You see, users who aren't in favour of said change, but still want to attain/work towards becoming a staff member will not openly disagree with an Admins decision. It's always been the case, and it's quite natural to not go against the hand that feeds you, per se. I don't hold that against them, and if them posting openly why they support it ruins said chances for them, then I'm not one to force them to do so.

People are also missing the simple fact that, most new users who venture onto a forum, automatically assume that coloured username = staff, as that's been the done thing on forums for over a decade. You aren't going to change peoples preconceptions by hoping that they be more vigilant.

 

[S]

I also don't think that this is a good way to settle he debate.

Rich suggested a non staff/community member post a poll, so I did.

 

[Program]

I don't really see the need for colored names, but I suppose you can more than easily flip the argument around and claim 'well why shouldn't we have colored names?'. For the purposes of the poll, I am voting 'yes', but can see arguments for both sides.

All I am going to say, is that it seems like the strongest advocates for these colored names seem to be the vocal (and at times, emotional) minority who are receiving the perks. On the flip side, it seems as the majority who 'oppose' the viewpoint are those who used to be most active in the past. I won't touch on the perks = trust argument as that argument seems to have gone in circles in the news thread and above in this thread. These positions DO have a certain amount of implied trust, and this 'power' tends to either attract dishonest members, or 'corrupt' those who hold it. Just look back to DD, I had to step in as CDT leader for the remainder of his term as he had gotten banned for shady behaviors. Paper Shark just recently vanished while he was holding prize money for a CDT event. I would try and include more examples as well, but the stickies haven't been updated in a great deal of time and these were the only examples that I could remember off of the top of my head.

We've already "been there done that" with teams that have ranks / icons / lounges / additional perks in attempts to foster activity and interest in said teams, only to fall short and scrap the teams entirely (I'm looking at you OGV/UE/CA/ CDT before it was 'revived' by Jack / roary). First we gave the CDT miniranks to have them stand out and be unique among the community. Then someone added a fun-rank to the 'CDT-Leader' position. Following this change we incorporated fun-ranks for ALL team members. Throughout all of these changes I would argue that member turnover increased, while interest, activity and community involvement in all that these teams do has declined. Why would adding another large, previously staff-identifying perk be any different? The usergroup colors on Discord were created so these said groups could have private areas to chat with eachother after migrating from Skype group chats. What purpose do colored names on the site serve? Will we soon be adding colors for DNT / TWC / Verifier usergroups as well?

We should encourage community members joining these teams out of their own free well, and passion to improve / benefit the community, not for a minirank / fun-rank / colored name.

I think the perk is nice, but if they took it from me specifically and left it for everyone else in the groups I'd still argue to keep it.

People should also be joining the staff team of their "their own free well, and passion to improve / benefit the community," but I think we all know many do it for the perks. And that's how it's always been, not fair to single out the groups for having ulterior motives.

 

[Program]

Voted yes. The username coloring is an indicative feature of importance. It’s a way for users to easily identify who is staff and who is not, and the design will cause confusion when for example, viewing the online member list. There is no reason why anyone would want to know if these “club” members are online or not, as they provide little to no benefit in comparison to a staff member from the perspective of an average user (marketeer). This is presentation more than anything else. You’re sacrificing a good stucture for shits n giggles. For many years, we obstructed this from happening and for good reason obviously, but now we’ve succumb to poor systems continuously. What happened to quality and consistency?

The groups are important to the site imo, I've seen a lot more people be actively participating with Sythe and its members because of the things the groups do. I don't see any reason not to be deserving of a simple color

Also, fun ranks aren't indicative of people being staff - i.e users having donor ranks, competition winner, etc. Coloured usernames are. How is that a difficult concept to grasp?

But staff get exclusive access to the majority of funranks this site offers among other exclusive perks. A simple color that is removed afterwards is a sad comparison to the perks of staff.

request them to be removed off the groups so it’s crystal clear who is staff and who is a regular member.

People are also missing the simple fact that, most new users who venture onto a forum, automatically assume that coloured username = staff, as that's been the done thing on forums for over a decade. You aren't going to change peoples preconceptions by hoping that they be more vigilant.

Man idk how you guys think people are so retarded lol. If this was such a big issue we would have heard of scams happening caused by this issue by now. Everyone on Sythe knows that moderators have specific miniranks and have the WORD moderator on their profile?? If they can't read then getting scammed because of this will be the least of their problems.

Also colored username does not equal staff whatsoever. That may be the case in some places, but isn't common enough to be viewed as a common preconception or else scams on osbot because of colored names would be rampant, which it isn't.

People throwing out these wide claims without any evidence to back it up.

 

Yes - It's confusing for new members and even I was confused for a bit. Unless they want to put in their sig that they are clearly not staff members have fun with the bombardment of new members asking them to do staff related things for them. Honestly, it doesn't really matter to me, but it is confusing.

 

[Mootrucks]

Not really seeing the whole people seeing colors and automatically assuming that it means someone is a staff member when there's a usergroup guide at the bottom of the forums and a link to all the current staff members can be viewed here which is also linked at the bottom of the forums.

 

Not really seeing the whole people seeing colors and automatically assuming that it means someone is a staff member when there's a usergroup guide at the bottom of the forums and a link to all the current staff members can be viewed here which is also linked at the bottom of the forums.

Implying they are read at a consistent rate. You could say the same about sticky’s that instruct users to do certain things and they still don’t follow them. You could argue they are at fault, but it is still no excuse not to have a clear cut system that confuses no one. Beyond that, these “clubs” simply are not important enough to have the same recognition as staff from an outside looking in point of view. The only users with enough prominence are staff and it should have stayed as it was.

 

The groups are important to the site imo, I've seen a lot more people be actively participating with Sythe and its members because of the things the groups do. I don't see any reason not to be deserving of a simple color

Not as important as staff. For the output these “clubs” are giving, the rewards are not equal in comparison. Consider progress from creation to now, then ask again how important are these “clubs”.

 

[Program]

Not as important as staff. For the output these “clubs” are giving, the rewards are not equal in comparison. Consider progress from creation to now, then ask again how important are these “clubs”.

And the rewards reflect that. Our reward pales in comparison. They get free name changes, funrank in perpetuity in the form of retired staff, chances at exclusive funranks, huge amount of trust, funrank, colored UI's, etc. So my argument stands. We get a funrank and colored name as long as we contribute and then after that, nothing. Huge difference.

 

[-Ryan]

Voted yes because this is just pointless. Was the rank not enough? You might as well have just gotten rid of the sectional usergroup, they do the same things as globals anyway just less sections.

 

[Pain]

I have a problem with the fact that every person commenting saying they voted yes used to sit on the old Staff team which mass resigned or was demoted in protest of DNT and site changes.

I would hope administration takes these votes with a grain of salt - Clearly the old staff team has STILL not been able to cope with the site changes considering every single one on this thread voted to revert the changes.

That is both disappointing and depressing to see that so much of the old team is still so set in their ways they cant even let the changes happen and see how they go down, instead wanting to reverse them before even giving them a chance which implies a certain narrow viewpoint that apparently is still sunk-deep.

I would hope @Sythe and @Shin take the above into consideration.

 

[Angels]

I voted yes because I also believe it is pointless. It was a very firm no about having non-staff names coloured before, and I honestly don't think it warrants the colours.

 

[S]

I have a problem with the fact that every person commenting saying they voted yes used to sit on the old Staff team which mass resigned or was demoted in protest of DNT and site changes.

I would hope administration takes these votes with a grain of salt - Clearly the old staff team has STILL not been able to cope with the site changes considering every single one on this thread voted to revert the changes.

That is both disappointing and depressing to see that so much of the old team is still so set in their ways they cant even let the changes happen and see how they go down, instead wanting to reverse them before even giving them a chance which implies a certain narrow viewpoint that apparently is still sunk-deep.

You actually have no idea what you're talking about. Nor is even 10% of what you said accurate.

Ps. Only 3 people that voted yes resigned due to DNT and other changes while on staff. 3/22.

 

[Pain]

You actually have no idea what you're talking about. Nor is even 10% of what you said accurate.

Ps. Only 3 people that voted yes resigned due to DNT and other changes while on staff. 3/22.

Sellerman, Ryan, Mootrucks, Gohan, Cas_m, Kmjt, Sypherz, Flyingtoast(mootrucks didn't vote really so I'll say hes neutral ).

All of the above sat on staff during what I would call some of the most dictating/anti-change based staff teams since I've been on Sythe - I am not saying any of them were bad staff but the fact remains that during that era change on the scale we've been seeing lately was non-existent.

You say its a community poll yet, 8 of the people are all ex-staff during the above eras.

To put that in perspective, 19 of the 39 posts on this thread(I counted) were made by the above users.

That means 48.7% of the comments were made by people who traditionally are not pro-change on the scale Sythe needs, thus biasing the vote massively.

This is not a community poll, its a old staff poll with the rest of us thrown in, any new member voting is going to side with the group commenting and talking the most and nearly 50% of the posts supporting this idea were made by the exact same group of people.

If you removed old-staff out of the equation this poll is like 35-65% with the majority falling in saying no don't revert the changes. So no, the "almost 100%" u claim wanted these reverted in the announcement thread clearly does not exist, even with them in the polls 50/50 nearly.

I am not criticizing but I also don't want to see changes reverted just because old-staff are all going back to their old ways.