The regressive nature of the sites community

@marrow
- We do need to shift away from runescape whether it is via expanding or simply shifting the niche. How we do this? I don't know. I do know the lackluster effort of simply making a section (often times this didn't even happen) and hoping activity would follow hasn't worked. I like Sellerman's idea of offering multiple copies of the donor ranks to promote a shift away from solely RS.

- I don't necessarily see staff being in place until they step down as a problem like you. If they can do their job decently then there isn't an issue imo. What I would like to see however is a shift in activity from staff. Currently staff don't post around casually much at all, the current modlog system simply says to be a good moderator they need to do x amount of spam reports, scam reports etc. Even that in itself is flawed as vader reports and anything in the dispute section doesn't count towards it but that's another story. I've always firmly been a believer that staff should actively participate in the community. That's why when I was a rune fag back in the day it pissed me off to no end to see users like Wolfdog & Pk Frenzyy promoted who imo 1. didn't merit the promotion and 2. Had no interest in the section so merely policed it. I remember when I was still relatively new to sythe, seeing Zerkerfist post around it felt really cool knowing a moderator was spending some time posting round with the common folk. It's a small thing but can be big.

- From what I've heard of User Education it wasn't really useful but I'd love to hear from you either here of via PM why it was so good. From what I've heard it was literally just users producing guides on the regular - somewhat helpful for SEO I guess but that's about it imo.

- I do think drama threads and suggestions/feedback often get shut down prematurely. That needs to change imo.




@Punjabi
I agree with everything. The 0 shit taking policy should be removed. I think the supposed debt that several users owe for being caught up in the events on 12/1/13 is bullshit. That's been discussed for days though so I won't delve into it, instead what I will say is this: I'm glad I was at work at the time it happened. No doubt I would have been in the chat and I may have posted the link in the chat which would create a "debt". I wouldn't repay this debt and thus would be banned to this day - that's an active user that eventually became a moderator snuffed out. That's just one person, imagine how much activity 5 involved members would have contributed over the year they've been banned now. By no means am I supporting their actions, rather that their time banned has been sufficient punishment instead.

 

There is a DNP list but it's pretty small & I can't remember the last time someone got added to it. It's not abused in any way over little disagreements , people who've been denied at polling before aren't added, etc.


The biggest issue I have is the lack of activity with upper-Admins. Most of the approved suggestions for the past 3/4/maybe 5 months are sitting there on a list waiting to be coded/added. Only when these basic things are approved will bigger and better additions be possible (if the simpler things are being overlooked, what chance do complex/bigger expansion suggestions have?). We got Govind back as Admin, why doesn't he have server access to start chipping away at them?

When the folks at the top do their share then the rest of the staff follow, usually. The staff become unactive and demotivated if their efforts to compile such lists and additions are ignored. When staff become more active, there tends to be better community, where everyone feels involved because they're listened to, then follows the better community atmosphere we used to have.

It's like a conveyor belt, if the last stage of the system is backed up, so is everything else. If the end of the system doesn't get fixed then the processes before it come to a halt until it is fixed.

 

Yup, rawry is right. I'm pretty sure my post covers this in what I believe to be the solution. It's not competitive, and we just rotate the same staff on/off with typically no struggle for the "top."

 

What I'd say is the plan of attack:

- What do we want? Govind server access! When do want it? Now!
- Get todo list chipped down, or even addressed.​

Once that's out the way;

- Other, bigger suggestions can be looked at and worked on
- Restructuring and rule reforms can be looked at​

Hopefully when change starts happening, staff become more involved/active and so does the community. Better community, ergo:

- More staff candidates
- More activity so people hang around​

 

Yup, I agree. We currently have a sole focus on the market, when what needs to happen is a move towards the community side of gaming. Online currency trading is too much of a niche market to sustain constant growth, users come to trade and leave when they're done. We have a crazy amount of registered users, but very very low active users.

The Gov thing confused me, but I chose not to speak up about it. We need an actual effort from the vast majority of staff to make a reform happen, and the sooner the better.

Anyone have the data for when the influx of new users comes in? IIRC it's the beginning of July. We should target completion of the project for July 2015.

 

I guess we're at a bottleneck in the sense that we have an admin saying it's his colleagues that are the issue. There's not much we can do besides bug Richard more, but that hasn't worked over the years. Richard and Matthew have always kept the site locked close to them and realistically for good reason(i.e people like Shredderbeam and Finn).

 

I don't think they're to blame for all the problems, there are other issues we need to work through to ensure the site's longevity, but help getting the ball rolling would definitely help and probably motivate a lot of people

 

So what's the plan, then? It seems before when things have been attempted in order to reform for the better, there is a gap in communication to the higher admins and the entire ideas are just forgotten about.

Exhibit A: http://www.sythe.org/approved-suggestions/1569107-operation-castia-its-our-time-fix-sythe.html

This was awhile ago, but the tl;dr - the same exact indented purpose of this thread

 

Im tired of hearing this shit. No it wasnt. You cant look because you are SF banned but anyone can easily go back a couple hundred pages and see SF was more or less ... the same. Just with a better community (because they werent all banned yet).

There is plenty of OP is a faggot, hate, bandwagoning ect. Quit deluding yourself and perpetuating a lie to newfags. These SF glory days everyone remembers so fondly doesnt seem to be content driven, but rather the users that were present.

Punjabi hit the nail on the head.

Good post fgt. U shud b admin or something

 

Y'all need to be proactive.

 

I like the idea here of setting a very specific date for completion of certain projects. IMO setting concrete dates/times helps very much with visualization of the goal and motivation to actively work towards it.

The question is what can we implement to bring more activity towards the gaming side of the community? I'm almost positive it's been suggested before and there was even a short mention of it in a recent CDT poll, but perhaps we should look into incorporating games into the site itself. Simple things to start off with, we can even create custom flash games and the like. This could also spur the creation of a new gaming forum/section dedicated to Sythe Gaming in particular if the games become popular and warrant a lot of attention from active users.

 

I get all my torso orders from this site currently, and it's no more/less active than the last time I had a monopoly on the torso market a bit over a year ago. Felt like throwing that in since it's relevant and something I can contribute.

 

The site is at a standstill, I'm sure we all acknowledge that fact.

There needs to be a division of practical and impractical suggestions. There is probably a long to do list that hasn't been targeted for a while. We have 3 pages of current suggestions that are waiting to be approved or denied. These things are starting pile up unnecessarily. Prioritize sensible suggestions that don't require advanced developing, and clear out the suggestion forum.

What exactly is Govind doing? We all would like a reasonable answer other than, "behind the scenes stuff". His return to staff was anticlimactic, and unnecessary as far as completing goals from a pending list. We know he doesn't have the necessary perms to actually take on the list, but with that in mind, why was he reinstated unless he was assured access?

There isn't a noticeable difference in transition from a global mod to an admin, the titles just change. All of this is not an immediate problem of immense urgency, but some foreseeable effort in blockading that would help a lot.

 

The site needs more than technological improvements. Even further, technological improvements are not all that important in the big scheme of things. They are nice but will not magically solve the sites problems.

 

Skimmed a few responses.*

This actually came to my mind a bit earlier; glad to see it's up for discussion.

IMO, it may be beneficial to 'change the niche' (as OP said) of the site by redirecting it's focus to a more general stance as opposed to "RuneScape first, then the other things."
1. RuneScape is the first thing you see getting on the site.
Yeah, the site was created with RuneScape in mind but as OP said, most oldies aren't on RS as much/at all. While RuneScape could still be a main section of the site (as it contains the most activity), I see no organic reason to heavily project the RS sections to users new and old before they see any other parts of the site.

2. The slogan 'the craigslist of virtual goods' keeps the site within the confines of the 'mainly for games, also includes etc' mentality. While seemingly small, if a new niche for the site were to be considered, I'd imagine the direction of that niche would be more general and covering all aspects of the site instead of gaming, which the slogan plays an immediate part in for new users.

3. The Sythe chat is a good idea but it's very inactive. Perhaps a different layout/style of 'sythe chatting', one that's more evident to the user who skims/doesn't know much about the site/etc etc. (TBH, it pretty obviously has 'Sythe Chat' in plain view but I didn't know about it unless weeks after becoming active again.) I remember being in a chat with Finn, Shredder and just other users prominent and new and being more immersed in the community of Sythe in that way.

4. If a broader perception of Sythe were established, organic marketing/user interaction has great potential to increase. I posted my coding progress on Instagram with hashtags, prompting a lot of people to ask where I go for different resources to which I cited Sythe as one of them.

 

I'm sorry friend. Those days are well and truly behind us.

 

Something deep inside me still holds on.