What's happening in here?

[xAlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by TC_Halogen

first off, don't ask that question and give people these ridiculous ideas about what to do when that's not the issue right now. Resolve the same issue that has been brought up every single time these threads have come up by concerned users: offer some transparency. Stop hiding behind your proverbial closed doors and actually talk to the community.

this question looks like a "oh how about you put yourselves in our shoes for a moment and think about things" -- no. Come up with a solution as an administrative team on your own and then confer with users and see where things go. Don't get users involved in this shit until YOU have a plan.

I agree!

[MinaciousGrace]

i just realized the fact that AJ has moved to the osu community indirectly indicates that he thinks the osumania dev team is more competent than ffr's

damnnnnnnnnnnnn

[DossarLX ODI]

I can't speak on behalf of the dev team but I can provide insight to restructuring that's taking place with how the batch is being handled. Recently some of you may have seen the post about adopting a Sprint-Style structure similar to what would be used on JIRA, and I'll explain how that fits in to the judging process after listing out the many inefficiencies of the traditional approach to the batch system. This post is informational and presents the situation the way it is, no sugar-coating or sensationalism -- the community should have a fair treatment to understand what's going on.

Traditional approach: Judges didn't get assigned tasks. They voluntarily said they would judge a set, but too often what happens is that weeks after stating this they don't give a response and then the original deadline would come up.

Better approach: To analyze the current practical judge team, find the most active judges and ask them for their availability. Assign tasks to the Judge Team. Organize what's in To Do, In Progress, and Done. Judges also need to log their hours worked on their set. This way the Judgment Team can see if the Judge is taking longer than expected on a set, that judge can do 50% and another judge can do 50% to split up the work of the task accordingly instead of having the task hang for a long time with no communication.

Essentially I can make a similar connection to the dev team. From what I've seen, they have no progress monitoring process and don't assign tasks clearly. With this new idea of 2-week sprints with a spreadsheet showing what's To Do, In Progress, and Done, the dev team can see who was assigned a certain development task, how long the person has spent on it and if that person needs help, and redefine tasks if a situation changes.

Silvuh has done a great job keeping track of which files have been submitted to which batch. However, right now there is a huge backlog that's just sitting in the batch email and to make OWA's idea come into life would be unrealistic. Right now I'm working on finding potential hard files to be in a special batch that should be open in the next week to contribute to this mentality shift of harder files and a bigger difficulty spectrum.

Here's currently what is on To Do, In Progress, and Done in the spoiler.

To Do

Sets
Set 2 Full Notes (1st notes) - Unassigned
Set 3 Full Notes (2nd notes) - Unassigned
Judge Passed Files - Unassigned

8/25/15 Song Release
Determine difficulties for the release - OWA
Convert and sync files - Dossar
Upload song levels and info - Dossar
Write thread and front page post - Dossar


In Progress

Sets
Set 1 Full Notes (3rd notes) - Razor
Set 3 Full Notes (1st notes) - lurker

8/25/15 Song Release
Determine two songs to be released - Dossar

Put together hard song batch
Discuss difficulty spectrum increase idea - Dossar
Determine current batch files for hard batch - Dossar


Done

Sets
Set 1 Full Notes (1st notes) - ilikexd
Set 1 Full Notes (2nd Notes) - Silvuh
Set 2 Full Notes (2nd notes) - DarkZtar
Set 2 Full Notes (3rd notes) - gameboy42690
Set 3 Full Notes (3rd notes) - gameboy42690

Put together hard song batch
Download and organize the batches - Silvuh
Run NPS generator through the batches - Silvuh

Take a minute to think about the above tasks. It's clear who is assigned what (and which tasks are unassigned). If dev also took this approach, similar to JIRA, they would know how much time has been spent on a certain task (I didn't include that here but the spreadsheet does list logged time) and be able to monitor progress appropriately.

[gameboy42690]

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

Batch I cannot say anything about because it's one thing I definitely do not know so someone can answer that accordingly, but the additions of judges should help with the process even if it's just a slight shift in help.

At first we actually made good progress on the batch when the new judges (myself, Gradiant, DarkZtar and Lurker) were added to the team. But around late July to early August things just fell apart. I don't think there's been any actual progress in two weeks.

[TC_Halogen]

Originally Posted by Zageron

We have tried Halogen. I ask, because I honestly want another take on a solution. I poured all of my energy into a recovery effort last year and again earlier this year. Nothing has worked, even with many months of constant effort. You want transparency? Everyone on staff should be aware already, as if my frustrations weren't made clear many months ago. Very few care enough to help sail this ship. Those that do care can't actually sail.

I'm going to call complete and utter bullshit on this, because this has been a problem even when I was on staff too.

Or are you going to sit here and say that you talked to people like me when things were going bad? No, I went out on my own and said that problems were happening and fixed them accordingly with my corresponding teams, who I was very thankful for their cooperation.

If you're so pissed about the progress of the site, then you or someone else as a(n) administrator community manager need to do something about it.

[Rapta]

"as if my frustrations weren't made clear many months ago"

No they are not clear

transparency or riot

more ;like I have no clue what you are talking about, did you make a thread or somethign Zag?

[DossarLX ODI]

Zageron, I remember there was a word document on Google Docs stating a rewriting of the Site Rules and I participated in drafting some improvements on the old rules. After putting in some more content and asking someone else to look into improving what I wrote down, nothing happened. I strongly believe that the rewriting of rules idea never continued to progress because nobody was actually assigned tasks related to it.

Similarly, I can't tell what dev is doing to monitor progress or if there are even assigned tasks.

[noname219]

Originally Posted by Zageron

I've been trying to write a good response to this for a while, but I can't write anything that wouldn't make at least one person angry. Instead, I'll ask a question.

What would you do, given the ability to control the full direction of FFR?

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

Personally I just think there needs to be someone that is kinda like checking in with all the groups once in a while and getting an update on what's going on to make sure that things are getting done. The weekly what's happening posts were cool for a bit but then there were times I couldn't get anyone to let me know what was going on so I stopped doing them.

I think there just needs to be a lot more transparency about what's going on and if there's areas or people who aren't working out then maybe new people need to replace some people in those areas.

There's always been a huge lack of communication between the various areas of staff and from staff down to the users, which keeps sparking these threads.

Originally Posted by justin_ator

I'll humor you with your question though. I don't think I would want to be in charge of the site or its direction as a whole anyway, but if I were I think a big part of it would be having some accountability by staff to either have goals that they are pursuing, or projects to be working on. Have occasional meetings where people brainstorm things, and if nothing comes up that's fine.

Exactly. That's exactly how an organisation should work. Have weekly meetings, designate tasks, report on those tasks, etc. Then, it would be much easier to tell the community what's going on.

[xAlphaWolf]

Originally Posted by MinaciousGrace

i just realized the fact that AJ has moved to the osu community indirectly indicates that he thinks the osumania dev team is more competent than ffr's

damnnnnnnnnnnnn

>implying no dev cares about osu!mania
for example theres been a bug when you played a 7k song and then came back for a 4k song your arrows/notes get stretch
everyone knew that and they needed 2 years to fix it
and actually they didnt really fix it, ONE dev changed the configuration files( 4k,5k,6k,7k .ini ) to be inside the skin.ini , it randomly fixed the bug but removed some features such like using different images for combos

sry bad english

#fission 4 admin

[psychoangel691]

Ugh there's like so much I want to say right now but I don't want to end up pissing anyone off.

[Rapta]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

Ugh there's like so much I want to say right now but I don't want to end up pissing anyone off.

Sometimes to change old things you gotta piss people off

imo post something valueable with as little insults towards people or groups as you can, but place blame where necessary, you are the current events manager iirc so I'm sure we would like to hear from you

[MinaciousGrace]

feelings waste billions of dollars a year

trufax

[DossarLX ODI]

Originally Posted by noname219

Exactly. That's exactly how an organisation should work. Have weekly meetings, designate tasks, report on those tasks, etc. Then, it would be much easier to tell the community what's going on.

In my current workplace JIRA is used for assigning tasks to Developers and the QA Team. There are daily Scrum meetings so everyone on the Team is on the same page and knows if anyone is blocked by another developer (there's a software defect preventing QA testing, etc.)

I have no issue with providing weekly updates on the batch similar to a format like I showed in my earlier post about what is To Do, In Progress, and Done. I feel like if dev adopted this kind of structure, they would have a much better idea of who is assigned a development task and provide better estimates of how long something will take -- it will also allow the definition of a task to be made clear so the team knows it's done.

For posts regarding hurting feelings, remember that it's important to provide a sense of direction when giving feedback. There is nothing wrong with having genuine concerns.

[justin_ator]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

Ugh there's like so much I want to say right now but I don't want to end up pissing anyone off.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Originally Posted by Rapta

imo post something valueable with as little insults towards people or groups as you can, but place blame where necessary, you are the current events manager iirc so I'm sure we would like to hear from you

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI

For posts regarding hurting feelings, remember that it's important to provide a sense of direction when giving feedback. There is nothing wrong with having genuine concerns.

For real. If it's legitimate and constructive it honestly does have a place in a thread (and general discussion) like this.

[Trumpet63]

I have to say that AJ's big post mirrors a lot of what I've been feeling lately, and then a lot of these other posts seem to exemplify Parkinson's law of triviality. Basically, everyone has an opinion on how management should work, which is not really the core of the problem if you ask me.

Before I became staff, I really felt like transparency was a HUGE issue, like, I lost sleep over it because I cared so much about the site. At this point however, while transparency is important, I think it's the transparency between the different staff groups that needs improvement. The dev team specifically is likely to have low transparency because we're the ones who are most likely to have big crazy ideas that would kind of explode if everyone knew about them... in a bad way. But, for issues like bugfixing, yeah, transparency is important.

Another issue that I kind of just noticed is like with OWA changing the difficulties around: DEV NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT THAT! Especially me, because I'd need to completely rework the skill rating system, but I think there are other reasons too. In general, each group needs to know what each other group does so that we can work together if necessary, or at least be aware of changes that will effect everyone else's work.

If we're thinking that the solution to this problem is to remove most of the staff and then reopen applications, the first issue is deciding who exactly wants to be responsible for each of the groups (in a volunteer organization like this, that's A LOT to ask) and then those people have to figure out what they're looking for, and then review the applications. But if you can manage all that, I'm fine with reapplying for my position. Normally I'd say it's a waste of time, but like, very little progress is being made, so w/e.

Oh and another thing, sometimes people just want to do one specific project, and then leave, which I think should be allowed, and we should READILY allow those people into the group temporarily to give them CRUCIAL FEEDBACK, with the option of joining if applicable.

Please pm me if you have questions about dev stuff, I never get any pm's

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI

From what I've seen, they have no progress monitoring process and don't assign tasks clearly. With this new idea of 2-week sprints with a spreadsheet showing what's To Do, In Progress, and Done, the dev team can see who was assigned a certain development task, how long the person has spent on it and if that person needs help, and redefine tasks if a situation changes.

Hahaa... dude yeah we tried that. Organization is not currently the issue for dev.
I would be ridiculously happy if the dev team could get to work on, i dunno, making a new version of the FFR engine (that's what dev is meant to do right)? That is what I want to happen, and what I want to be a part of. Unfortunately we've got a laundry list of bugs on the site and in the engine, and I'm not qualified to fix them, neither is anyone else so far.

[psychoangel691]

Since my first time on staff in 2011 I've begged for there to be a better system with things. I was always brushed off or when I'd offer to take on certain roles to try to help resolve things I was told oh well that's so and so's job but they weren't doing their job. It's also always felt like you only get somewhere on staff if you're buddy buddy with someone. And not to be rude but it almost looks like there was some goal to make the entire admin team from Canada given the current active admin staff.

I was an admin for a little bit and I resigned because of a lot of this stuff that happened but when AJ decided he couldn't deal with it all anymore I was ready to jump back on. Despite all the hard work I had put in over however long I had to fight to even just get back the accesses I needed to do my job as event manager. There was no reason for that, I never did anything malicious to the site ever. I've had some outbursts sure, but I never once abused any power I was ever given.

Another annoying thing is having to rely on anyone else for anything because it's like things just go ignored or get forgotten. I asked about the av-miss engine and if it were still around got I'll check into it, then never heard anything. Way back when I first started on staff I was always giving new ideas for things and asking if I could do them, checking with all of the staff every step of the way and it would go ignored. Then when Jae took my position all of a sudden he was doing all my ideas and gaining credit for them. That was like a huge slap in the face to me. I always always tried communicating with all the staff and it was like no one cared to participate in any sort of discussion.

I checked the staff slack and I see there really hasn't been anything going on in there either, idk if there's more in the dev chat that I can't see but it just seems like everyone has gone astray and there's no real structure to anything.

There needs to be a top level manager who is actively checking in with the managers of the various groups and posting updates on the happenings that are going on to the users. And if those managers aren't effectively doing their jobs than this top level manager needs to be able to remove that person and find a replacement. It seems like too many people pussyfoot around to try not to cause a stir, but that's not getting the site anywhere. Same goes for the managers of the various groups, they need to be able to take charge and remove people as needed. I removed Zenith from my team because things weren't working out and he was really pissed off at me for a good long while (might still be, idk) but that's just part of taking on these roles, you have to be willing to step up and do what you need to do to make it work. There is more staff that have become inactive in their roles and need to be retired and possibly replaced if needed. I think we actually have an excess of admins right now honestly.

I think that there needs to be another thread asking users what features and upgrades they're looking for when it comes to ffr. Then go through them and figure out which ones are actually manageable for this site and which aren't

I also want to note of course users are going to be pissed off when they barely even see the staff members post at all around the site, let alone let them know what's going on. My file has been sitting in the batch queue for over a year now and that annoys me, I can't even imagine how those feel who are still waiting for things to be judged. (I mean no offense to the current team working on it right now) But I've said for years that staff needed to be more active with the users, so this is really nothing new from me.

I'd gladly go back to writing weekly or bi weekly what's happening posts if the teams would be willing to speak with me on that (bi) weekly basis so that I can actually make good posts about what's going on.


Not the best structured thing ever but it's just coming straight off the top of my head.

[_Zenith_]

FTR Kayla I hold no anger towards Event Staff; I at the time really fucked up by leaking one of the images in a Scavenger Hunt to Zageron in profile chat, and rightfully so was discharged from the team.

Since then I tried to get back on staff but it takes a lot of hard work to prove yourself once again after a fuck up like the one I had made, but nevertheless the brutal simple statements work wonders in some situations where one can be blunt about what is happening.

Throughout this entire thread, just having various staff members and leaders from various groups within staff talking within the thread mixing in the boiling pot with various topics is somewhat a right step in the right direction.

[Rapta]

Trumpet:

sometimes people just want to do one specific project, and then leave, which I think should be allowed, and we should READILY allow those people into the group temporarily to give them CRUCIAL FEEDBACK, with the option of joining if applicable.

I think that sounds like a good idea. That one guy a while back made an epic offline engine but didn't want to be dev. We could use people like that.

[hi19hi19]

Originally Posted by Rapta

That one guy

lmfao

Originally Posted by Rapta

made an epic offline engine but didn't want to be dev. We could use people like that.

And honestly, read this thread. Can you blame him?

[psychoangel691]

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

FTR Kayla I hold no anger towards Event Staff; I at the time really fucked up by leaking one of the images in a Scavenger Hunt to Zageron in profile chat, and rightfully so was discharged from the team.

Since then I tried to get back on staff but it takes a lot of hard work to prove yourself once again after a fuck up like the one I had made, but nevertheless the brutal simple statements work wonders in some situations where one can be blunt about what is happening.

Throughout this entire thread, just having various staff members and leaders from various groups within staff talking within the thread mixing in the boiling pot with various topics is somewhat a right step in the right direction.

These threads come up, some of the staff replies, then it goes back to the same ol same ol every time.