⚙️ Changes to the Suggestions System

[Story]

Hello everybody!

Last year myself and @Younisco unveiled our new plans for the suggestion system, at the time we described this as "massive in concept", which was quite an understatement.

At the time we unveiled this, it was incredibly difficult to implement & plan most of the suggestions coming at us, we'd hoped to build a team and system that would work, we gave it a go despite the difficulties because we wanted to test what was possible and push ourselves to achieve more.

It is clear that as more time has passed that the suggestions system cannot continue this way, as of today we will be changing the following:

• Suggestions will no longer be forwarded in any scenario. We will no longer guarantee a server team response.
• Currently planned suggestions will stay as planned. I will go over them and remove planned suggestions that are no longer in our vision for the network.

Instead we will evaluate suggestions on our own time based on where we think our priorities should be, suggestions will still be marked as planned but this is at our discretion, that way- when it does happen, it's 95% likely to get implemented. We still continue to read suggestions as we always have done.


The reason for these changes is the sheer amount of work required to make this system function, I wrote a large post here going into great detail about how simply getting every forwarded suggestion responded to was a monolithic task, and as you can imagine- that made the idea of implementing many of them near impossible.

Even at our peak team size we could never hope to implement them all, and even to this day have not managed to get all suggestions on our system internally yet so it's unlikely this will change in the future.

It's not all bad though, with the trial of this system we were able to get more suggestions implemented on CubeCraft than ever in its history, however the time sink required at this time is too large.


I understand this is disappointing to many, but we make all of our decisions with CubeCraft in mind, we're making this change as we strongly believe it's the best decision for the quality of the network going forward, it will allow us to streamline & focus a lot more on making a great network experience for you all.

If you have any questions at all, I'm more than happy to answer them below. Thank you for your understanding.

Spoiler: FAQ

Questions answered in the thread will be moved here.

 

[Silco]

so basically no one needs 25+ agrees it’s just if cube decide they want that kinda thing instead? And vice versa

 

[kaputendymion76]

sometimes the system goes so fast that suggestions that I've only gotten agrees on are not answered further.

 

[Story]

so basically no one needs 25+ agrees it’s just if cube decide they want that kinda thing instead? And vice versa

It's pretty much what we did previously but without the forwarding, previously we'd just mark forwarded suggestions as planned or denied based on what we wanted to do, we'll do that now but there will be no guaranteed response.

Agrees/disagrees will instead be used as purely for us to gauge community approval rates.

But yeah, you're right.

 

[Nightmare]

What happens with the suggestions that had a forwarded tag (not planned tag) before this change? Are they still getting looked at or do they just count as a normal post now?

I really understand the reason for this change and i think it is the best solution we currently have.

 

[Kualdir]

Very understandable change. I appreciate you still using tags to indicate if a suggestion is planned as it shows you're looking at the forum section!

 

[Conea64]

Will you at all consider letting people know about plans on a post with many, many agrees?
Cause surely if enough people care then it would become a higher priority. Is that correct?

 

[Story]

Will you at all consider letting people know about plans on a post with many, many agrees?
Cause surely if enough people care then it would become a higher priority. Is that correct?

We will consider it, yes, if we believe it to be the right decision.

 

[Goefy]

Might as well remove the agree and disagree reactions as they are useless now. Polls are much better than those reactions.

 

[Story]

Might as well remove the agree and disagree reactions as they are useless now. Polls are much better than those reactions.

Polls could've been used before as well.

The agrees & disagrees are built into all threads by default, they are still useful for gauging community approval rates. Keep in mind that we are still using suggestions, just not guaranteeing responses.

This is not a removal of the suggestions system.

 

[Rocks1]

So what I understand is happening is that the Cube will no longer listen to the community (that much) and implement/plan suggestions at their own will. Also what will happen to previous suggestions marked as forwarded? (@Nightmare asked the same question).

 

[Story]

So what I understand is happening is that the Cube will no longer listen to the community (that much) and implement/plan suggestions at their own will. Also what will happen to previous suggestions marked as forwarded? (@Nightmare asked the same question).

They have had their forwarded tag removed and they can be re-bumped if the creator wants to do that.

 

[Rocks1]

They have had their forwarded tag removed and they can be re-bumped if the creator wants to do that.

But what would be the reason for bumping the thread? I think there is something I don't understand.

 

[Story]

But what would be the reason for bumping the thread? I think there is something I don't understand.

Since they are no longer likely to get a response- it's fair for them to increase the chance of visibility for a few days.

 

[Nightmare]

Since they are no longer likely to get a response- it's fair for them to increase the chance of visibility for a few days.

Okay so if i understand you correctly, previously forwarded suggestions that have not been reviewed yet, are not guranteed to get reviewed and act as normal posts now, having the exact same chances as any other post.

The Creator gets the right to bumb his suggestion again as a compensation. Allright thanks for clarifying <3

 

[Rocks1]

Since they are no longer likely to get a response- it's fair for them to increase the chance of visibility for a few days.

Will I get in trouble for Necroposting/Bumping if I try bumping my old forwarded suggestions?

 

[Deleted member 584093]

I feel like removing the forwarded thing wasn’t a good idea since it’s less likely to be seen by staff and plus before it was removed if your suggestion got enough check marks it was guaranteed to be reviewed but now it’s just if cube wants it or no

 

[Younisco]

So what I understand is happening is that the Cube will no longer listen to the community (that much) and implement/plan suggestions at their own will.

I think that that is a bit of a glass-half-empty way of looking at things in my opinion. Since this whole system, the server team have had a massive focus on listening to the community, such as through suggestions. It's something that I taught the associates a bunch when teaching how to plan an update.

However - there's often a lot of risk with implementing suggestions, as it hasn't had much thought or discussion as most people would say "yea i like this" or simply click on disagree. As such, these suggestions are instead run by the focus groups where the producer on the project will be able to have meaningful discussions and reach a better solution to a suggested idea, instead of taking a (calculated) stab in the dark.

Just my two cents - but I know that the server team want to have super awesome updates for everyone to enjoy, but instead of making these stabs in the dark with a risk of everyone hating it, focus groups allow us to properly gauge feedback. I'm sure someone like @Fesa can attest to these conversations in the focus group being a bit more in detail than just a "yea sounds fun" xd

 

[Rocks1]

I think that that is a bit of a glass-half-empty way of looking at things in my opinion. Since this whole system, the server team have had a massive focus on listening to the community, such as through suggestions. It's something that I taught the associates a bunch when teaching how to plan an update.

However - there's often a lot of risk with implementing suggestions, as it hasn't had much thought or discussion as most people would say "yea i like this" or simply click on disagree. As such, these suggestions are instead run by the focus groups where the producer on the project will be able to have meaningful discussions and reach a better solution to a suggested idea, instead of taking a (calculated) stab in the dark.

Just my two cents - but I know that the server team want to have super awesome updates for everyone to enjoy, but instead of making these stabs in the dark with a risk of everyone hating it, focus groups allow us to properly gauge feedback. I'm sure someone like @Fesa can attest to these conversations in the focus group being a bit more in detail than just a "yea sounds fun" xd

Thanks for your in depth response,

So now I understand focus groups discuss suggestions. Also about your point on the implementing suggestions, you say it would be a risk if they were bad. But the server team would decide later on if the suggestion was a risk and it was good or bad, but now I understand a focus group does that instead.

Thanks for the clarification. :D