arsenal
District 13
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2013
- Messages
- 2,806
- Reaction score
- 3,231
The following is based on over a year of observations as a moderator on this network, as well as almost three years as a community member on this network. Full respect to Chad. I do not intend for this to offend him in anyway, however I think change is needed in order for this network to have a successful future. Therefore, I have made the following proposal.
The decline of ChadTheDJ's involvement with the community has been a bit problematic over recent months to say the least. When he founded this network Chad was heavily involved. His dedication and hard work made MCSG turn into something very special. As you would expect, there was no way he could devote the amount of time he put in during the first year or so of MCSG forever. He slowly stepped back into a healthy level of engagement. This went on for about 1.5-2 years and it worked great. Chad would do an occasional livestream with the community and staff, do a Twitter giveaway every 1-2 weeks, engage with people on the forums, etc. Over the last 6-8 months though he has been slowly fading away. There was a glimmer of hope however, when towards the end of last year a few more giveaways occurred on Twitter, and he decided to do a Q&A session with the community as a way to get more involved. It went great. Chad knew it too, and soon enough he did another one. At the end of the second session we were told there was going to be a third, as there were too many questions to be answered in only two hours. Sadly, it got postponed and then never happened. From that point forward Chad has been pretty absent from the community. There have been a few announcement threads here and there, but over the last two months he hadn't even logged on to the forums once, until recently when he came on to let us know that AU was biting the dust.
I had seen a lot of people complaining about his absence, and I must admit that I thought it was a bit harsh. Nobody really knew what was going on, since Chad hadn’t said anything public about it himself. I believed that there was a good chance that he probably had some personal issue going on that needed immediate attention, and that if people knew the truth then maybe they wouldn’t be so critical of him.
It turns out that Chad has finally provided a little more insight into what has been going on. On announcement thread he posted to let us all know that AU was shutting down fexr asked him where he had been. Chad responded with, “Always was here, running things on the back end more so lately. Day job has been fun!” Now this certainly sounds like that any personal issue was not the problem, and that the communities criticism was probably totally warranted. Yes, it is certainly still possible that Chad didn't tell us about some personal issue because he wanted to keep it private. However, if he really did have a major personal issue going on, you would have expected him to at least hint at it. He didn’t do that, he instead said that he had been doing work just on the backend and that his day job is fun.
Chad is a business owner of another company outside of MCGamer. This is most likely what he is referring to as his “day job.” To fully understand and solve this problem effectively, we all must realize that Chad has a life. As he stated in his Q&A, MCGamer does not provide enough money to make a living on by itself. Therefore he also runs his own business outside of Minecraft to pay the bills. Unlike back in the day when this network was founded, Chad has a lot more stuff going on.
By only working behind the scenes Chad is causing lots of disadvantages to the community and staff. For example, if you went up to an admin today, and gave them a suggestion that was larger than some tiny little thing all they would be able to tell you is “I will pass it on to Chad.” This is something that every staff member can relate to. Way too many times at staff meetings are people told "that is a Chad thing” as a response to their question. Since Chad doesn’t have the time to attend the large majority of moderator meetings, what is usually a reasonable question goes unanswered. This is ridiculous. While I am confident that the admins do pass this stuff on, who knows if Chad actually takes the time to look at it. Even if he does, you are never going to get a response in your Slack DMs a week later. Essentially, you are taking the time to submit feedback, and you will never hear back. Instead you are left wondering if your suggestion was even considered. I have written up multi-page proposals before and never gotten a word back. To this day I still don't know if they were even read. There is simply not enough human interaction between the majority of the staff team and Chad. And of course, the same can be said with the community side. When was the last time you saw Chad respond to a thread not written by himself?
At the end of the day working only behind the scenes is hiding not leading. While I fully respect ChadTheDJ, as he has done amazing things for this network, right now things are not at acceptable standards. This is why I am making the following proposal.
Either Chad must decide to devote more time to MCGamer or he must put someone else in charge of day to day operations. A network manager basically. Someone that is similar to an admin, but with the power to make bigger decisions than the current admins are able to make. Someone who can actually respond to questions at staff meetings, because they have enough authority. Someone who is engaged with the community, because they have a little more time on their hands.
Now I respectfully disagree with Jusser on this part. I don’t think that Chad needs to step down, as he called for in his letter to Chad. I think that it is totally fine for him to maintain ownership of the network, he just no longer should be the primary leader of this network. It is time for someone else to be put in charge of making most of the decisions. The massive ones like cutting AU, adding a new gamemode, and as well as the overall direction of the network can remain up to Chad. However, everything else should be up to someone else. This person should also share control of the MCGamer Twitter account, and they should be able to generate coupon codes for prizes connected to the store. This would allow for MCGamer events to have good prizes like they use to, and for giveaways to resume on the Twitter account.
Note: For those who are not aware, Chad is needed to generate coupon codes. This is why store related prizes are almost never a part of MCGamer events. Getting approval to have one as a prize takes months, and then getting Chad to send the coupon codes to the winners take an additional couple of months. I speak from experience. Sorry to everyone who won the Gamemode Spotlight a few months ago and waited forever to get their coupons!
Additionally, this new leader should have a full understanding of Chad’s desired direction, and of all the reasoning behind the occasional major decision that he makes. This ensures that the leader will be able to know what is going on at staff meetings, and when interacting with the community so that all the non-confidential stuff can be communicated much more effectively than it is now.
So who should this new leader be? And would they make all the decisions on their own? I will not directly answer the first question. However I will say that there is a current staff member who I think is the perfect fit for this role. They have been with this network for a very long time, and have served in both the administration and development positions. That is plenty of experience in my opinion. And it also is plenty of hints as to who I am talking about. *wink wink* Anyway to answer the second question the answer is mostly no. All their decisions should be made after consulting with the rest of the administration. However, the final decision would be up to them.
I must also acknowledge that the staff member that I am proposing for this new role is also very busy, as he is currently in school. However, I see him posting on the forums very regularly, he attends almost every staff meeting, and he is far more engaged with the staff team than Chad. This would be a huge step forward in my opinion. If in the case that this person did not want to take this role, then either the admins should fill this responsibility as a team, or Chad should elect someone else.
The decline of ChadTheDJ's involvement with the community has been a bit problematic over recent months to say the least. When he founded this network Chad was heavily involved. His dedication and hard work made MCSG turn into something very special. As you would expect, there was no way he could devote the amount of time he put in during the first year or so of MCSG forever. He slowly stepped back into a healthy level of engagement. This went on for about 1.5-2 years and it worked great. Chad would do an occasional livestream with the community and staff, do a Twitter giveaway every 1-2 weeks, engage with people on the forums, etc. Over the last 6-8 months though he has been slowly fading away. There was a glimmer of hope however, when towards the end of last year a few more giveaways occurred on Twitter, and he decided to do a Q&A session with the community as a way to get more involved. It went great. Chad knew it too, and soon enough he did another one. At the end of the second session we were told there was going to be a third, as there were too many questions to be answered in only two hours. Sadly, it got postponed and then never happened. From that point forward Chad has been pretty absent from the community. There have been a few announcement threads here and there, but over the last two months he hadn't even logged on to the forums once, until recently when he came on to let us know that AU was biting the dust.
I had seen a lot of people complaining about his absence, and I must admit that I thought it was a bit harsh. Nobody really knew what was going on, since Chad hadn’t said anything public about it himself. I believed that there was a good chance that he probably had some personal issue going on that needed immediate attention, and that if people knew the truth then maybe they wouldn’t be so critical of him.
It turns out that Chad has finally provided a little more insight into what has been going on. On announcement thread he posted to let us all know that AU was shutting down fexr asked him where he had been. Chad responded with, “Always was here, running things on the back end more so lately. Day job has been fun!” Now this certainly sounds like that any personal issue was not the problem, and that the communities criticism was probably totally warranted. Yes, it is certainly still possible that Chad didn't tell us about some personal issue because he wanted to keep it private. However, if he really did have a major personal issue going on, you would have expected him to at least hint at it. He didn’t do that, he instead said that he had been doing work just on the backend and that his day job is fun.
Chad is a business owner of another company outside of MCGamer. This is most likely what he is referring to as his “day job.” To fully understand and solve this problem effectively, we all must realize that Chad has a life. As he stated in his Q&A, MCGamer does not provide enough money to make a living on by itself. Therefore he also runs his own business outside of Minecraft to pay the bills. Unlike back in the day when this network was founded, Chad has a lot more stuff going on.
By only working behind the scenes Chad is causing lots of disadvantages to the community and staff. For example, if you went up to an admin today, and gave them a suggestion that was larger than some tiny little thing all they would be able to tell you is “I will pass it on to Chad.” This is something that every staff member can relate to. Way too many times at staff meetings are people told "that is a Chad thing” as a response to their question. Since Chad doesn’t have the time to attend the large majority of moderator meetings, what is usually a reasonable question goes unanswered. This is ridiculous. While I am confident that the admins do pass this stuff on, who knows if Chad actually takes the time to look at it. Even if he does, you are never going to get a response in your Slack DMs a week later. Essentially, you are taking the time to submit feedback, and you will never hear back. Instead you are left wondering if your suggestion was even considered. I have written up multi-page proposals before and never gotten a word back. To this day I still don't know if they were even read. There is simply not enough human interaction between the majority of the staff team and Chad. And of course, the same can be said with the community side. When was the last time you saw Chad respond to a thread not written by himself?
At the end of the day working only behind the scenes is hiding not leading. While I fully respect ChadTheDJ, as he has done amazing things for this network, right now things are not at acceptable standards. This is why I am making the following proposal.
Either Chad must decide to devote more time to MCGamer or he must put someone else in charge of day to day operations. A network manager basically. Someone that is similar to an admin, but with the power to make bigger decisions than the current admins are able to make. Someone who can actually respond to questions at staff meetings, because they have enough authority. Someone who is engaged with the community, because they have a little more time on their hands.
Now I respectfully disagree with Jusser on this part. I don’t think that Chad needs to step down, as he called for in his letter to Chad. I think that it is totally fine for him to maintain ownership of the network, he just no longer should be the primary leader of this network. It is time for someone else to be put in charge of making most of the decisions. The massive ones like cutting AU, adding a new gamemode, and as well as the overall direction of the network can remain up to Chad. However, everything else should be up to someone else. This person should also share control of the MCGamer Twitter account, and they should be able to generate coupon codes for prizes connected to the store. This would allow for MCGamer events to have good prizes like they use to, and for giveaways to resume on the Twitter account.
Note: For those who are not aware, Chad is needed to generate coupon codes. This is why store related prizes are almost never a part of MCGamer events. Getting approval to have one as a prize takes months, and then getting Chad to send the coupon codes to the winners take an additional couple of months. I speak from experience. Sorry to everyone who won the Gamemode Spotlight a few months ago and waited forever to get their coupons!
Additionally, this new leader should have a full understanding of Chad’s desired direction, and of all the reasoning behind the occasional major decision that he makes. This ensures that the leader will be able to know what is going on at staff meetings, and when interacting with the community so that all the non-confidential stuff can be communicated much more effectively than it is now.
So who should this new leader be? And would they make all the decisions on their own? I will not directly answer the first question. However I will say that there is a current staff member who I think is the perfect fit for this role. They have been with this network for a very long time, and have served in both the administration and development positions. That is plenty of experience in my opinion. And it also is plenty of hints as to who I am talking about. *wink wink* Anyway to answer the second question the answer is mostly no. All their decisions should be made after consulting with the rest of the administration. However, the final decision would be up to them.
I must also acknowledge that the staff member that I am proposing for this new role is also very busy, as he is currently in school. However, I see him posting on the forums very regularly, he attends almost every staff meeting, and he is far more engaged with the staff team than Chad. This would be a huge step forward in my opinion. If in the case that this person did not want to take this role, then either the admins should fill this responsibility as a team, or Chad should elect someone else.
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