What's happening in here?

[MarcusHawkins]

Seriously, what is up with Synthlight? Is he always busy or something? lol

[andy-o24]

Originally Posted by MarcusHawkins

Seriously, what is up with Synthlight? Is he always busy or something? lol

He's a grown man with a family and a career that is not focused on FFR. He is probably very busy.

-o24

[hi19hi19]

I'm pretty understanding of how busy Synth is. Guy has a high-profile job, a family, a life outside FFR.

I'm not understanding at all, though, of how he keeps promising stuff then disappearing, followed by not even acknowledging he's disappointed thousands of users (okay, dozens at this point, but when he first started making unfulfilled promises, it was thousands).
I'd much rather he just actually admit he's too busy to properly oversee the site and delegate that responsibility.

[MarcusHawkins]

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

I'm pretty understanding of how busy Synth is. Guy has a high-profile job, a family, a life outside FFR.

I'm not understanding at all, though, of how he keeps promising stuff then disappearing, followed by not even acknowledging he's disappointed thousands of users (okay, dozens at this point, but when he first started making unfulfilled promises, it was thousands).
I'd much rather he just actually admit he's too busy to properly oversee the site and delegate that responsibility.

Yea, I get mad when people don't tell me what's going on; it's like getting in trouble for something I didn't do. Like, when someone does something negative to me, I HAVE to know why. Otherwise, I just get more mad, and somethings never calm down...

[sickufully]

Wasn't this the exact reason why this thread started? Poor communication between users and staff. I'm not having a go at Synth, I understand he has a busy life outside of FFR, I (and every other regular) would just like an update every now and then of what stage the updates are at, regardless of which staff member informs us. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only communication I've seen from staff is from Dossar and he's doing a mighty fine job but that's only to do with the batch. What about everything else that was discussed? What's being done to reel in more players and ensure that they're sticking around? What initiative has been taken by staff to push things forward? Anything being done towards communication issues between staff and users & staff? What about the OT? Just a simple 2 sentence answer to any of these would be appreciated by the entire player-base.

I don't want this message to come across as aggressive, it's just that this thread took off from the start and was looking quite promising when multiple staff and admins were chipping in but now it's basically dead and very few things seemed to have changed.

Also, mentioned earlier in this thread, some staff apparently have his phone number. Is there any possibility of sending a friendly text asking what stage things are at?

[TheRapingDragon]

Originally Posted by hi19hi19

I'd much rather he just actually admit he's too busy to properly oversee the site and delegate that responsibility.

That's the only way I see this site going forward in all honesty. Synth becomes something akin to a silent partner, gets 'active partners' and explains where he wants the site to go to them, then gives them the the power and the backing to make it happen.

Originally Posted by sickufully

Just a simple 2 sentence answer to any of these would be appreciated by the entire player-base.

As well as assigning an active staff member as 'Personal Relations'. This person would aim to get FFR seen as much as possible through social media. I'm sure there would be enough people willing to do this on a voluntary basis, there are many people here who love this site.

Synth/the active partners could then advise the PR about what's going on and the PR could post these updates on the front page.

The current users remain happy at seeing updates, the PR keeps us social and builds up a bigger user-base and the active partners take forward Synth's plan to make FFR a self-sustaining site.

[psychoangel691]

Originally Posted by sickufully

What about the OT? Just a simple 2 sentence answer to any of these would be appreciated by the entire player-base.

I have answered about the OT at least a dozen times now. I can't do anything with the batch in it's current state unless users want to use files already in game. When I asked about that majority said no, wait for new files (http://www.flashflashrevolution.com/...59#post4310259). So please, tell me where else I can possibly go with this from here.

I haven't heard jack about anything else that's going on and I'm just to the point of giving up. I have little motivation to push for anything anymore when there's still no communication going on between all of the staff. If anything has been happening it's out of sight from most people.

Originally Posted by TheRapingDragon

Synth/the active partners could then advise the PR about what's going on and the PR could post these updates on the front page.

I mentioned earlier in the thread that I had tried doing this with the what's happening posts I was doing, I wasn't given the information needed to put anything up on the dev end of things. All I was able to do most of the time was put up SOTW type stuff and (user) events.

[justin_ator]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Maybe I am just too cynical, but I see threads like this every year or so, and it's always the same stuff that gets brought up. People focus too much on the minutiae and not enough on what would actually fix things overall.

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

"We need competent staff / we need more communication / we need more transparency / we need coders / we need a site overhaul / etc" -- these have all been brought up plenty of times over the years. What am I missing?

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

In what form?

zzz, you called it. Again.

[Rapta]

The only staff I've seen doing anything: Dossar, Psycho, Lurker, Badman, Silvuh, Hi19, OWA and Foxfire. A few others might be doing things too, but after following as much as I could the past week, these are the only people I have seen here doing anything so therefore if you are doing something too and are on staff, it's not being communicated with the players well imo. Shout outs to those cool people aforementioned~

[sickufully]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

I have answered about the OT at least a dozen times now. I can't do anything with the batch in it's current state unless users want to use files already in game. When I asked about that majority said no, wait for new files. So please, tell me where else I can possibly go with this from here.

Nowhere, you've put in more than your fair share of effort for trying to get the OT up and running, I commend you for that. I completely spaced about what you had mentioned about the OT, I was just picking topics that I remembered reading in this thread.

[noname219]

bump

I feel like we're stuck in limbo right now, and this isn't a good thing.

I don't want to put any pressure on Synthlight right now (I sympathize with any schedule he is on right now), but it is not normal that we don't have any global plan yet; who should be in charge of inter-communication between each part of the staff and the community, what are the tasks that are deemed the most critical, what should be fixed in what timeframe, etc. Dossar made a thread yesterday addressing communication problems within different parts of the staff, proposing ways to move things forward, yet barely no one left any feedback. Are we under the impression that we still care about the website ?

I have the upmost respect for people that are willing to help. I applaud Synthlight for getting back here and trying to fix things, but so far, nothing tangible has come up from the highest section of the staff. Leadership must come from the top, not the other way around.

I feel like reposting this post too :

Originally Posted by sickufully

After reading every post here, this is what I've gathered. This is just coming from a regular user who has no idea about any admin/staffing info. I've probably missed a few things but these seem to be the main topics.

PROBLEMS
- Lack of communication between staff (this one is huge).
- Lack of communication to the community as a whole.
- Staff not listening to idea's/projects/feedback from other staff (most of lower ranks).
- No staff taking initiative.
- Population of the site slowly diminishing.
- New users either come and go within a few sessions of playing or just don't come around at all.
- FFRs legal standings towards song permissions.
- Non-staff users becoming increasingly frustrated at the way the site is being handled and the direction of FFR.
- No new content as of lately.
- Songs/files needing extensive inspection before they are released causing major delays for files in the queue.
- Staff not knowing what stage current projects are at.
- No OT (for the first time in 10 years?)

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
- "Fire" all staff and reassign all staff positions via staff applications.
- "Fire" inactive/lazy/unmotivated staff and reassign the missing positions via staff applications.
- Interchange staff positions between a select number of users who are available at only certain times of the year.
- Shared roles of leadership, if possible, people in different time zones.
- Hire new (active) staff on top of the existing staff.
- Pay staff members to do their job.
- Pay ONLY head roles of staffing area's to keep everyone else in line.
- Look outside of the FFR community for devs/admins/mods to help with the progress of the site.
- Someone steps up and takes on the role of lead supervisor (who will look over all staffing roles and make sure all area's are up to date and keeping communication between these groups active).
- Create a communication method for all staff members to EASILY access and leave messages or feedback to one another. This SLACK program clearly isn't working. What was wrong with Skype?
- Release FFR to steam/kongregate/other free game hosting sites.
- Bring back micro-transactions for skins/songs/events/merchandise. Nothing that gives you an advantage in-game towards scores.
- Hold fundraiser events.
- Advertising (Don't know where and with what money).
- An osu-like system for trialing new songs (personally, I think this is great). Or a new genre in the game that's only available to Vets+.
- Bring back the changelog or something similar.


I think the most important question was asked by HeZe on the second page:


Also, since the site is run 100% off volunteer staff, there needs to be some system that allows staff to have a FFR to life balance. What I mean by this is that staff can keep their position, even if they are inactive for a month or two at a time (because of irl situations), and are allowed to come back to help finish off whatever they were doing or continue someone else's work. There should also be a staff only area on the forums (invisible to non-staff users). There should be sub-forums within this area that allow staff to post things like:
- When they need to become inactive
- Discuss projects
- Important messages to all staff
- An area which regular users can post to but only staff can see all posts (such as suspicious scores or bots or other questionable things)

I dunno if I'm making much sense, I'm just gathering idea's from various other sites I've used over the years and how they worked. Most seems to work much better than what's currently in place here.

[Rapta]

Prawnskunk viewing thread. Say something please; do you know what is going up with Devs? Synth?

edit: and gone..

[ItsOnlyDanO]

we seem to be coming full circle once again

deja vu anyone

[gold stinger]

Well obviously PrawnSkunk is in the same boat as noname if he didn't respond

[_Zenith_]

I can't find the quote by Psychoangel but she was right; everything went back to the way it was before this thread with the exclusion of Dossar taking charge of things and actually getting FFR Progress done, Max fixing the ability to delete Replays once again (and mentioned level rank clearing in another thread to fix things further), and the other staff teams that are currently working on their own things (Wiki Staff is still cranking their business the most effectively of all of the staff teams on FFR, Difficulty Consultants getting their own changes and discussions done, Simfile Judges cranking through new batch thing and the Hard Songs Batch, and the Event Staff still doing the TCG and I would assume working on a future event).

I don't even want to say this, but it seems like Devs are visibly the ones with little to no transparency along with Admins coming into thread or saying words that doesn't result in actions. I'm not bashing Devs specifically here, but it is visibly one of the biggest problems with Staff.

[MinaciousGrace]

actually the difference now is osumania > ffr so people have somewhere to go if stepmania is 2 hard for them

[mrpreggers]

Originally Posted by MinaciousGrace

actually the difference now is osumania > ffr so people have somewhere to go if stepmania is 2 hard for them

hey man : - (

[Velocity]

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

I don't even want to say this, but it seems like Devs are visibly the ones with little to no transparency along with Admins coming into thread or saying words that doesn't result in actions. I'm not bashing Devs specifically here, but it is visibly one of the biggest problems with Staff.

The real problem for devs and why much isn't being said is because there isn't any active devs for FFR anymore. Of the single Dev (Prawnskunk), everyone else is working actual jobs and don't give much thought into FFR once the day is over. If and when something does happen, it will most likely get posted in the thread. The same can be said about Admins which really only applies to Synthlight but his absence isn't anything new nor suprising.

[_Zenith_]

Originally Posted by Velocity

The real problem for devs and why much isn't being said is because there isn't any active devs for FFR anymore. Of the single Dev (Prawnskunk), everyone else is working actual jobs and don't give much thought into FFR once the day is over. If and when something does happen, it will most likely get posted in the thread. The same can be said about Admins which really only applies to Synthlight but his absence isn't anything new nor suprising.

iirc I heard somewhere that two devs were apparently joining the team but I have two problems with that.

1) Do these Devs know the current standing of the Staff Structure? Do they know exactly what Staff is like for FFR?

2) Are they going to be silent and in the back like most devs (excluding PrawnSkunk)? Are they going to even last for a healthy duration where the new devs actually get things done?

Similar to qqwref; he is qualified to join Development Staff due to his Saffron Engine work but doesn't want involvement in Staff due to his own reasons (logical reasons might I add such as Staff being in huge disarray).

Dossar deserves a lot of props and big ups for being one of the only people to display a lot of transparency because of this thread and it led to the Weekly Batch Updates, the Hard Songs Batch, and other things he is working on. Other people have mentions too (Prawn fixing Replays is huge) along with those whom I don't know what is going on because they aren't disclosing information to the playerbase/public.

[_Zenith_]

Originally Posted by Velocity

The real problem for devs and why much isn't being said is because there isn't any active devs for FFR anymore. Of the single Dev (Prawnskunk), everyone else is working actual jobs and don't give much thought into FFR once the day is over. If and when something does happen, it will most likely get posted in the thread. The same can be said about Admins which really only applies to Synthlight but his absence isn't anything new nor suprising.

Also more on this, would it be beneficial to start opening Staff Applications for assorted branches? There are people here who are more than capable of doing a staff duty (and it'd be up to them to sign up for it), but I feel like Staff is still tight nit in the sense they don't think adding more people is going to solve problems when they are wrong; it'll surely help in any aspect that the current staff is incapable of achieving.

Hi19 stepping up helped too and I'm not sure what he has planned but at least he's transparent, brutally honest, and still getting shit done.