All Networks The new community feedback team and it’s issues

[Pineapple]

Insanity (in-san-i-tee)

• Doing something over and over again expecting different results.

Escalated threads, the original forwarding of threads with 25 agrees and now, back to square one? What makes this any different than an escalated thread from 2020? When the community was much more connected to the product team?

The biggest issue with my own thread is my biggest gripe with this system, I have no idea how it truly operates. Why is everything so secretive? Even the member list is now made secret, which to be blunt, I think is soft. I think if you want to volunteer you shouldn’t be a secret, I understand not wanting to be attacked, but I’m sure mods and other members of various teams don’t like attacks they receive yet they don’t get the option of having their name hidden. This is why it’s seen by the community as a private friend group disguised as a public team with too much power.

I think transparency of how this team works will help the members of the community who feel like total outsiders understand the functionality a lot better. To be frank, this is always something Cubecraft has struggled with, the community has felt like an outside watch party for the past couple years. Big changes happen so suddenly, take the translation team for example, there wasn’t much warning to anyone until the day it was removed if I remember correctly. I’ve seen team members be removed within hours of notice. As a member of the team I never took much notice to it as I was quite often in the loop, but now as an outsider I can see this lack of knowledge and this honestly complete disconnect from the directors at times.

History repeats itself

For people unaware for the longest time if a member of the staff team saw a suggestion they liked they could “escalate” where they would throw it in a channel and be discussed among the other team members. Eventually the channel became backlogged and escalated suggestions never got viewed as members hoped for a response, which was told wasn’t always going to happen. However it was found this was inefficient and replaced by the previous forwarding system. Now we’re back, if a member of this now mystery team likes a suggestion it can get forwarded, with a response not guaranteed. Difference now, I have no idea what gets forwarded and what doesn’t! Since this update I’ve seen 3 forums posts responded to by the product team. Two of which were the same thread in response to community drama (which was caused ultimately due to a lack of transparency and things being blown out of proportion by both side but I’m not here to discuss that) and the other thread really just seemed like a bug to be honest.

My solution?

Well I hate being the guy that says revert things when I don’t know why they changed but that’s kind of the way I think works best. That system, though slow, guaranteed a response from threads with large community agreement as opposed to what the feedback team likes, if we knew there was diversity of the player base on the team I’d be more comfortable with it, but as things stand we have no idea. If this system is going to work there NEEDS to be transparency, this isn’t some behind the scenes NDA team, these are members of the community that are being handed special privileges because they know someone, to put it bluntly.

A big issue

There really is no community admin anymore, I think this is causing somewhat of this disconnect between management and the community. I’m not trying to be the guy that constantly is like “look how great the past is,” I’m quite aware nothing is perfect but back when there was someone who’s only job was community management, the community was honestly so much happier from what it seems. I understand money is super important and hiring someone competent is a whole other story but if nothing changes this gap is only going to grow. As much as it sucks to say, even some of the moderation team is starting to grow distant from the community, everything is slowly starting to be more and more gatekept.

Being completely honest I wish I had a better solution than what I gave, this isn’t something I can really give my full input on without transparency which I think is the root of this entire thing. Love the entire team with all of my being still, I’m not trying to create issues with anyone on the feedback team I’m just pointing out clear issues I see with the entire system from the product team to the community. Hope this finds everyone well.

 

[Dualninja]

I'm a member of the feedback team and I do understand your concerns. We're currently working on an application form to bring in members and we constantly talk about transparency. Recently we've all be talking about the Blockwars update, we all unanimously agreed that 5v5 shouldn't be removed. Currently 5v5 is still planned to be removed, but we did forward the communities concerns.

We also forward many small or qol suggestions, some examples would be This suggestion by Reesle, or This suggestion by ProfParzival. We try to be as transparent as possible to the community and we ask for community feedback constantly. The recent community talk about Leather Armour in OP, was started because of many forwarded suggestions being discussed by the feedback team.

This is just my personal experience on the feedback team and I don't speak for the other members. I'm glad you've made a thread on the feedback team, it's not perfect, but with the communities help it can be. We are also actively making changes to the team and are currently working on an application form.

 

[Wildd]

I agree completely.
It is unacceptable that a team with this much power can be kept secret with no public knowledge on how they operate. As I was in the team I'd like to share a few things that I hope people pay attention to.

Firstly, they quite like silencing disagreement. @privqted @wheatyl and I were all removed from the team for disagreeing with the idea. I was then demoted for disagreeing with the idea.

The suggestions forwarded by the team are odd. I've seen suggestions from 2021 forwarded, suggestions with 4 agrees forwarded, and this can in no way reflect what the community actually want.

Suggestions that do get forwarded get basically altered in discussion, an example of this was when my suggestion to add leather back to eggwars was forwarded but hoshi tried to alter it to chain instead for no reason.

Hoshi is the only one in the team with contact to an admin, she has a fortnightly VC with Luke, and when we asked why we weren't there she said it would get too 'rowdy'. And when we asked why she's the only one with perms on the forums she said we'd 'abuse' them.
This was a crazy thing to say, we're a group of equals but hoshi is under the impression we are 5. I have screenshots of her saying this so she can't deny it, she will just avoid responding and any confrontation, like she did by getting me demoted rather than having a discussion.

All in all it is an awful system of hoshi and a few friends (almost all java players) and I can see no downside to reverting it back to how it was.

 

[Hoshi]

Your concern for the lack of transparency is very understandable and I would agree.

I'm happy to inform you that we are currently working on ways to be more transparent with the rest of the community, such as by creating applications, working on providing biweekly public updates on what has been discussed within the team & forwarded and more. Regardless, thank you for the feedback. We will take it all into consideration.

I understand money is super important and hiring someone competent is a whole other story but if nothing changes this gap is only going to grow. As much as it sucks to say, even some of the moderation team is starting to grow distant from the community, everything is slowly starting to be more and more gatekept.

This is where the feedback team comes in - or is supposed to. Once we can push out the changes I mentioned before, we can finally start working on decreasing the size of that gap.

For the time being, I just want everyone reading this to know that we are currently trialling the team, hence it's natural for the way the team operates to be imperfect. That's why we require constructive feedback like this.

 

[Desiderata]

fortnight

NO WAY

(I will discuss my thoughts regarding the community team in a bit)

 

[Desiderata]

I could've saved all of my thoughts for the Cubecraft FHG by writing symbolism of certain stuff in light of recent events lmaooo well here we are

From what I've seen, the community is in desperate need of a way or form of communication between them and the product team. This is evident especially with how the Devil Bundle and the more recent (planned) removal of BlockWars 5v5's gamemodes were handled, only escalating things further and disappointing the majority of the playerbase.

If I'm being honest, the idea of a community feedback team sounds great on paper given their abilities and intention to forward feedback to the product team. Do note that I 100% support the decision to implement a feedback team given the intention of bringing the community closer to the product team. However there are quite a lot of glaring issues that have a very likely possibility to emerge, as well as those that were already pointed out and seen by the community.

Firstly, the lack of transparency. Ironically, the feedback team that's supposed to provide a sense of such by providing assurance to the community had only contributed to the issue. People would love to hear which suggestions were forwarded and how the team operates/whoever is a part of this team, given that only those who know the community well are surely more competent to be entrusted with such tasks. It's undeniable that the team might have members who are unfit with such, and at the same time, there are also a lot of deserving community members who aren't even in the team, which is why giving feedback and constructive criticism is there in the first place.

I understand that some of the members of the team would like to remain anonymous as well as (edit: apparently nobody wanted this) Hoshi's reasoning behind this, however, they must still acknowledge that volunteering for a team like this comes with some sort of accountability, responsibility, and of course, transparency. This anonymity or the act of keeping things from the public could be attributed from the lack of confidence or the fear of being attacked by community members (with Hoshi herself admitting it to me after we talked), but the feedback team (and those who will give feedback to the feedback team) should always remember that harmful forms of criticism is always unwelcome in the server, and that we are all working towards the common goal of bettering the server. I wouldn’t call it gatekeeping, really. Now this is where my second point enters.

There was a lack of preparation for the feedback team which was shown during the release, given how a lot of things were kept hidden from the public and that things were still being planned and thought of up to this day. It would've had a better outcome and it would've most likely prevented or at least lessened the damage of the recent events if it only had preparation. From what I've seen, the stakes are pretty high for the team and there was a lot of pressure surrounding Hoshi, which might be why some of her decisions felt like they came from the heat of the moment, and that her responses weren't exactly kind.

Spoiler: for Hoshi

@Hoshi, I hope this message finds you well. I understand the pressure that comes with handling a big group that has the ability to shape the community itself, especially with the given time frame. Always remember that you’re free to take a breather and that you always have ample time to think things through. No rush. It would be really hard to make more sound decisions given how hectic things are. As a concerned someone who considers you as a friend, I hope you take my word and clear your mind. You’ll be able to see things more clearly that way, and understand where Wildd and a few others came from. If it doesn't work out, it's fine. Everyone's gotta start somewhere and maybe the server needs something else. I still support you as a friend and as someone who believes in your ability to bring the community closer.

The following issue would be possible bias, given that its members were hand-picked and that there isn't a definitive or set criteria on how one could be a member, although the team is now working on an application form which would allow Hoshi to filter out the possible candidates and see which ones are more worthy to be in the team so I guess this could be a good step in eliminating the potential bias.

Lastly, the possibility of creating a larger gap between the community and the staff and the lack of communication, which is what the team intends to eliminate. To the feedback team, please consider addressing all the aforementioned stuff and working on a change regarding these so that the worsening state of the community feedbacks and the communication involving such could be solved as intended.

To conclude, the idea of a feedback team or some sort of entity that will hear the community out is needed, although the one that we currently have needs to address its issues and work on certain aspects to ensure properly relaying the community’s thoughts to the product team.

I wish for the best for the feedback team and the entire Cubecraft community itself.

We will figure this out together <3

 

[Roxrock]

Insanity (in-san-i-tee)

• Doing something over and over again expecting different results.

Escalated threads, the original forwarding of threads with 25 agrees and now, back to square one? What makes this any different than an escalated thread from 2020? When the community was much more connected to the product team?

The biggest issue with my own thread is my biggest gripe with this system, I have no idea how it truly operates. Why is everything so secretive? Even the member list is now made secret, which to be blunt, I think is soft. I think if you want to volunteer you shouldn’t be a secret, I understand not wanting to be attacked, but I’m sure mods and other members of various teams don’t like attacks they receive yet they don’t get the option of having their name hidden. This is why it’s seen by the community as a private friend group disguised as a public team with too much power.

I think transparency of how this team works will help the members of the community who feel like total outsiders understand the functionality a lot better. To be frank, this is always something Cubecraft has struggled with, the community has felt like an outside watch party for the past couple years. Big changes happen so suddenly, take the translation team for example, there wasn’t much warning to anyone until the day it was removed if I remember correctly. I’ve seen team members be removed within hours of notice. As a member of the team I never took much notice to it as I was quite often in the loop, but now as an outsider I can see this lack of knowledge and this honestly complete disconnect from the directors at times.

History repeats itself

For people unaware for the longest time if a member of the staff team saw a suggestion they liked they could “escalate” where they would throw it in a channel and be discussed among the other team members. Eventually the channel became backlogged and escalated suggestions never got viewed as members hoped for a response, which was told wasn’t always going to happen. However it was found this was inefficient and replaced by the previous forwarding system. Now we’re back, if a member of this now mystery team likes a suggestion it can get forwarded, with a response not guaranteed. Difference now, I have no idea what gets forwarded and what doesn’t! Since this update I’ve seen 3 forums posts responded to by the product team. Two of which were the same thread in response to community drama (which was caused ultimately due to a lack of transparency and things being blown out of proportion by both side but I’m not here to discuss that) and the other thread really just seemed like a bug to be honest.

My solution?

Well I hate being the guy that says revert things when I don’t know why they changed but that’s kind of the way I think works best. That system, though slow, guaranteed a response from threads with large community agreement as opposed to what the feedback team likes, if we knew there was diversity of the player base on the team I’d be more comfortable with it, but as things stand we have no idea. If this system is going to work there NEEDS to be transparency, this isn’t some behind the scenes NDA team, these are members of the community that are being handed special privileges because they know someone, to put it bluntly.

A big issue

There really is no community admin anymore, I think this is causing somewhat of this disconnect between management and the community. I’m not trying to be the guy that constantly is like “look how great the past is,” I’m quite aware nothing is perfect but back when there was someone who’s only job was community management, the community was honestly so much happier from what it seems. I understand money is super important and hiring someone competent is a whole other story but if nothing changes this gap is only going to grow. As much as it sucks to say, even some of the moderation team is starting to grow distant from the community, everything is slowly starting to be more and more gatekept.

Being completely honest I wish I had a better solution than what I gave, this isn’t something I can really give my full input on without transparency which I think is the root of this entire thing. Love the entire team with all of my being still, I’m not trying to create issues with anyone on the feedback team I’m just pointing out clear issues I see with the entire system from the product team to the community. Hope this finds everyone well.

The list was made secretive during a period where cubecraft as a whole was facing drama, and several people in the team had just been removed. The decision was made to protect the safety of us volunteers from any outside harassment. However, several members including myself agree it should be brought back.

Right now, the team is still internally organizing itself. As mentioned we are working together to create applications for the team. Apparently the forums perms are currently scuffed and the planned, implemented, etc. tags can’t be edited, from what I understand. This will hopefully be fixed soon.

Here are the problems I have with the 25 agree system:

I think that the 25 agrees system is flawed for several reasons. For one, players could create alt accounts and use those to agree. For a more subtler way of gaining support, they could just tell all of their friends, followers, etc. to agree with their suggestion. Ultimately, rigged elections would result from this 25 vote system. Another major problem is that there are unequal amounts of forums members for the different cubecraft servers and games. We might have one suggestion reach over 40 agrees because there are well over 40 active eggwars forums members (making numbers up obviously) while another suggestion for lucky islands doesn't reach above 10 agrees because less than 10 forums members play lucky islands. And don’t you think that the number 25 is a little arbitrary? The same problem can result from unequal amounts of bedrock and Java players. In addition, 25 people agreeing to a suggestion doesn't equate to 25 people which that suggestion would effect. Players who play other game modes, on other Minecraft versions, or with different input devices then what the suggestion would effect have an equal voice as those who would be effected. Let me give you an example.

Lucky Islands used to be a game mode where blocks were given in scarcity. For players who disliked game modes where blocks are given in excess, that is, blockwars, eggwars, SkyWars, these people came to lucky islands to enjoy a PvP experience where blocks were scare, and therefore, rationed. However, there were far less of these players, especially ones who were forums members. When players who enjoyed eggwars, skywars, and blockwars played lucky islands, they complained that there weren't enough blocks being given at the start. These requests were agreed with, as the cubecraft community as a whole enjoys games where blocks are given in excess. As a result, the blocks lucky block was added to the game. An example of this is forums user WorriedSkate, who reacted positively to this addition but, as shown in a poll by Triple6, doesn't include lucky islands in their top 5 favorite games. I believe that many suggestions end up being agreed or disagreed with by people who aren't actually playing them, but already play many other cubecraft games which cater towards a different niche of players. The current team is intended to be as diverse as possible (probably one of the reasons I’m in) so that people who actually play those game modes are able to approve of the suggestion.

I completely agree that we haven’t been as responsive as I would like and think we should make it one of our main goals to fix this. I advise you to give us time, I have a feeling communication will become a lot better once things actually start rolling.

Finally, I wanted to mention that member aren’t just being selected because we know someone. We have talked about who to reach out to publicly with other members, I can even see my own name being discussed if I scroll up far enough.

This is as much as I want to share for now, but I’ll try to address any replies to this thread unrelated to the issues described in the main post, or any replies to this post, once I get back from school.

 

[Wildd]

I think that the 25 agrees system is flawed for several reasons. For one, players could create alt accounts and use those to agree. For a more subtler way of gaining support, they could just tell all of their friends, followers, etc. to agree with their suggestion. Ultimately, rigged elections would result from this 25 vote system.

No one is alting to inflate their thread. It takes forever to make a forums account and is also against the rules and alt accounts will be banned and the reactions un-inflated. It's also obvious.

As for asking friends to agree, so what? No one is going out of their way to agree with a suggestion unless they also want it, so what's the issue with them being told the thread exists because they aren't active forums users?

And about your point about the forums users not being proportional, that's true but it reflects the community. Lucky islands has no, or virtually no, community. That doesn't mean lucky islands will never receive an update it just shows that maybe some parts of the server with more of an active community should get priority?

It works better forwarding threads that are popular than your little team forwarding the threads you want. Which is what happens. I've seen it.

 

[Desiderata]

I agree with you both

We could still find a balance between the quality and quantity of reception of certain posts that the feedback team will be forwarding, always remember that the community comes first before everything.

what I do these days is pinging Hoshi in a thread with a banger of a suggestion just so she and the feedback team will be informed and at least consider something that is generally agreed upon

 

[Casualpoalrbear]

It works better forwarding threads that are popular than your little team forwarding the threads you want. Which is what happens. I've seen it.

I disagree with that. Popular threads aren't ignored, we just include small suggestions that don't have any disagrees and are easy for the devs to add. If a suggestion is popular it's pretty much is going to be asked about from the team. If it going to be added or not is still up to the Dev's but we make sure the Dev's atleast seen it and acknowledge it, which is our role after all. We are meant to be messages in a way.

However I do personally agree that their should be a reaction score where the team does have to 100% bring it up to the Dev team. I don't think the team should be limited to that and it should be allowed to recommend suggestions with a lower to that as long as it well received and possible to do but their is definitely should be a point where a suggestion should get forward not matter what.

I speak for myself here and not for the rest of the team.

 

[Dualninja]

I agree with you both

We could still find a balance between the quality and quantity of reception of certain posts that the feedback team will be forwarding, always remember that the community comes first before everything.

what I do these days is pinging Hoshi in a thread with a banger of a suggestion just so she and the feedback team will be informed and at least consider something that is generally agreed upon

Trust me, we see every suggestion. I personally read every single suggestion on the forums and so do many other team members. A lot of suggestions get forwarded without the community ever being informed, which is due to the tags being broken. We can't add the forwarded tags to suggestions, which makes it harder to be fully transparent. I always say if I forward a suggestion, but it's harder to notice if a suggestion is forwarded or not without the tag.

 

[Desiderata]

Trust me, we see every suggestion

now how do we assess the validity of this statement? back it up with a source

jokes aside, props to the members of the feedback team clarifying some stuff regarding the handling of suggestions, this is exactly what we needed and yes, given that i could see some truth regarding seeing every suggestion

i won't have a say on these for now and i'll be patiently waiting on how things will turn out regarding suggestions and community feedback but i believe that you guys will do a great job

 

[Blom]

A couple of points addressed. I will try to quote all of them and answer them to the best of my ability. Note that as a member of the team, I do not want to speak for the entire team about some points. I might think differently about points compared to the other volunteers.

If this system is going to work there NEEDS to be transparency, this isn’t some behind the scenes NDA team

Couldn't agree more. I am happy to see a list being published just now here.

There really is no community admin anymore, I think this is causing somewhat of this disconnect between management and the community.

Exactly. Because there is no community admin anymore, the feedback system there was previously fell into ruins. As long as this is the case, the Escalate system nor the 25-agree system cannot or will not return. This is the reason Hoshi started working on the feedback team. Before, there weren't any replies to threads at all. This voluntary team is just hoping to give more threads a chance to get seen by the admins, not only the controversial ones or the ones that are already being implemented at the time.

these are members of the community that are being handed special privileges because they know someone

two points in one sentence: we are handed special privileges and we are being chosen because we know people. Starting with the first.
We do not have the power to accept or deny suggestions. I can assure you that, otherwise we would've had MinerWare on Java already . The only thing we do is to filter out the nonsense suggestions from the actual suggestions, then look at how much they are appreciated by the community to go ahead and forward them to CubeCraft Admins. For significant suggestions, all the team members still make forum or discord posts to submit their suggestion, before it is forwarded by the team.
I do agree that, certainly at the start, there are and have been a couple flaws in the system and how the team operated. I can only join the rest of the team to say that we are working on it and trying to make sure the system is running smoothly, without interfering in suggestions that were made and making significant changes, something brought up by @Wildd, which I can only say is a totally fair point.
Second point: For a newly starting team, we have been discussing and being discussed by the members in the team. Obviously, this is not the correct way of recruiting new members for the team, so as said, we are working on applications. The reason why we have been doing this before is because we needed volume in the team. Changes coming soon.

There was a lack of preparation for the feedback team which was shown during the release, given how a lot of things were kept hidden from the public and that things were still being planned and thought of up to this day. It would've had a better outcome and it would've most likely prevented or at least lessened the damage of the recent events if it only had preparation.

This is indeed a good point. I think we might've been a bit too enthusiastic with the release. However, we didn't know what the impact would be. I think you can go back and forth on whether that day was the correct day of the release, or we should've waited longer, but we hope to eventually have a correct structure that works as smoothly as possible.

No one is alting to inflate their thread. It takes forever to make a forums account and is also against the rules and alt accounts will be banned and the reactions un-inflated. It's also obvious.

As for asking friends to agree, so what? No one is going out of their way to agree with a suggestion unless they also want it, so what's the issue with them being told the thread exists because they aren't active forums users?

And about your point about the forums users not being proportional, that's true but it reflects the community. Lucky islands has no, or virtually no, community. That doesn't mean lucky islands will never receive an update it just shows that maybe some parts of the server with more of an active community should get priority?

It works better forwarding threads that are popular than your little team forwarding the threads you want. Which is what happens. I've seen it.

I'm just going to reply to this as a whole, because I think that does more justice to your post than separating each point.
The forums are not really user-friendly. Not in making an account, not in exploring the entirety of the website and not in navigation. This means less users and therefore less agrees. On top of that, there are way more Bedrock players on the forums compared to Java players, while the gamemode representation is also not entirely equal. Player count does not equal the amount of forum accounts that are interested in a specific gamemode. To illustrate this, a lot of players come to play casually and not full time leaderboard grind invested. As a reaction, you say that because a game receives more likes on feedback, they should be prioritised for updates. This comes with several issues.

First of all, we should look at what updates are and why they are made in the first place: after all, if a game works, why change it? Updates are there to do two things: enhance the player experience and make games get more attention. Less played games should get updates to keep them relevant for the entire community, not only the small group that plays it regularly. I personally am not a fan of SkyWars, but I do play it after an update to see what the new content is that has been added. It's not only about making content better.

Secondly, if a game gets prioritised, it is only a matter of time for the other games to be completely shoved aside. There is no good time for updating a less popular game when you can also work on the most popular game. All games need updates (even skyblock), which is why every game should also be discussed equally. because an entire discord server that's focussed on one game votes for a thread doesn't mean it is worth more than a game full of casual players that has less forum interaction.

Besides all of this, threads that are controversial and/or threads that are made by people with a rank (partner, moderator, etc.) get way more attention. These two combined can bring a massive result, with RelatedNoob's post about double clicking rule as example, reaching a grand total of 190(!) reactions. Something that wouldn't have been possible for any other post. The agree to disagree ratio is just above 2, meaning 2 agrees over 1 disagree. That's not a rating to be considered significant. However, these posts get seen by staff anyways, that's not what this team is interested in forwarding (even though we will because of the massive interaction from the community). We are looking more at the smaller suggestions that would have had more agrees if it was posted by a partner for example. Good suggestions with small interaction. Definitely seeing that past year, only 3 suggestions got a reply by the admin team, so any improvement is something.

Note how I already talked about your point of power in the second reply, so I will not do that here again.

now how do we assess the validity of this statement? back it up with a source

Source: trust me bro.

In all seriousness, as Hoshi said, we hope to bring you bi-weekly feedback soon, coming back to all the threads we have forwarded. This is also why we have stopped responding 'forwarded' under threads, in combination with the prefix issues. SoonTM

That being said, I hope I answered a lot of your questions and clarified most. I do want to state specifically that we try everything in our power to resolve issues we have had during the start of the project, some of which is undeniable. Eventually, we all work towards the same goal: make CubeCraft the most enjoyable it can be, implementing our feedback and helping our favourite network forward!

Also I am sorry, I can't seem to make short threads and replies...

 

[Desiderata]

Also I am sorry, I can't seem to make short threads and replies...

same

 

[Casualpoalrbear]

same

That seems like a short reply to me.

 

[ToonBer]

Why is everyone writing whole papers here . “Déjà vu”
Eating a whole cake is much better than a whole paper :)
For the once that know know that eating a whole cake can be dangerous and funny.

 

[Pineapple]

Trust me, we see every suggestion. I personally read every single suggestion on the forums and so do many other team members. A lot of suggestions get forwarded without the community ever being informed, which is due to the tags being broken. We can't add the forwarded tags to suggestions, which makes it harder to be fully transparent. I always say if I forward a suggestion, but it's harder to notice if a suggestion is forwarded or not without the tag.

You say broken, I say removed

Spoiler: image

We do not have the power to accept or deny suggestions. I can assure you that, otherwise we would've had MinerWare on Java already . The only thing we do is to filter out the nonsense suggestions from the actual suggestions, then look at how much they are appreciated by the community to go ahead and forward them to CubeCraft Admins. For significant suggestions, all the team members still make forum or discord posts to submit their suggestion, before it is forwarded by the team.

I'm aware there isn't real power, however, the type of power I'm referring to is more of a symbolic power. I made a suggestion within like 45 minutes it had about 7 agrees including my own, and was forwarded. Now i very much like my suggestion being forwarded for selfish and biased reasons but I don't think this should have happened this quickly with no previous discussion. Now I am not saying this happens every time at all, however with no criteria of what a suggestion needs to be forwarded this will continuously grow as an issue, it just takes one unpopular thread being forwarded to make the bedrock community go into a spiral (speaking from experience, I've seen it before) and I don't think anyone wants that to happen

Second point: For a newly starting team, we have been discussing and being discussed by the members in the team. Obviously, this is not the correct way of recruiting new members for the team, so as said, we are working on applications. The reason why we have been doing this before is because we needed volume in the team. Changes coming soon.

This is really awesome to hear, however, I think this is something that definitely should have been made known to the community. I think the proper way to have gone about it in the first place was to have this released slower! Announce the change and open applications the same day, this would be possible in the understanding that the team only has one member at this point, Hoshi. I worry that the newer members after applications are made will feel inferior to the older members as they had to apply while the older members were selected by the team lead.

I think that the 25 agrees system is flawed for several reasons. For one, players could create alt accounts and use those to agree. For a more subtler way of gaining support, they could just tell all of their friends, followers, etc. to agree with their suggestion. Ultimately, rigged elections would result from this 25 vote system. Another major problem is that there are unequal amounts of forums members for the different cubecraft servers and games. We might have one suggestion reach over 40 agrees because there are well over 40 active eggwars forums members (making numbers up obviously) while another suggestion for lucky islands doesn't reach above 10 agrees because less than 10 forums members play lucky islands. And don’t you think that the number 25 is a little arbitrary? The same problem can result from unequal amounts of bedrock and Java players. In addition, 25 people agreeing to a suggestion doesn't equate to 25 people which that suggestion would effect. Players who play other game modes, on other Minecraft versions, or with different input devices then what the suggestion would effect have an equal voice as those who would be effected.

Your issues are pretty unrealistic, I think I've only seen an alt agree with a forums thread once and the account was banned and their reaction was removed as well. I do however, agree with the issue that 25 might be a bit much, I believe it started at 15, which is the ideal number imo, however it became too much for the product team to reply to as there became a backlog once again. My idea that I think could work, 15 agrees on the forums and 25 on Discord and it will then move to the next stage, the feedback team, when/if agreed upon by a margin of 80% (roughly) it then moves on to the product team for final review, at that point the thread receives a response from the product team itself regarding what will happen going forward.

Right now, the team is still internally organizing itself. As mentioned we are working together to create applications for the team. Apparently the forums perms are currently scuffed and the planned, implemented, etc. tags can’t be edited, from what I understand. This will hopefully be fixed soon.

This worries me, I really believe a team shouldn't be released until it is organized internally first. This just seems rushed. I don't think a program like this can work immediately if it's not organized internally in the first place (which I think is becoming increasingly evident.)

Finally, I wanted to mention that member aren’t just being selected because we know someone. We have talked about who to reach out to publicly with other members, I can even see my own name being discussed if I scroll up far enough.

This is slightly reassuring, however I do not think this is the right way to pluck members from the community to join as some may go unnoticed. I think if an application is in place then having discussion regarding them is a much more secure method of gathering members, it gives everyone a very equal shot.

For the time being, I just want everyone reading this to know that we are currently trialling the team, hence it's natural for the way the team operates to be imperfect. That's why we require constructive feedback like this.

This is 100% what needs to happen. It's a new system, perfection is impossible. This thread is NOT meant to attack you Hoshi or the feedback team, just issues I have regarding transparency and a big step has already been taken by simply letting us know WHO the team is. I wish you the best of luck with your project, my goal is reformation not separation.

 

[Dualninja]

I made a suggestion within like 45 minutes it had about 7 agrees including my own, and was forwarded.

The reason I forwarded your suggestion was because it had unanimous support. It's also a qol change, making it easier to implement after being forwarded. Also most forwarded suggestions don't get implemented, this was the case back before the 25 agrees system and during the 25 agrees system. This is still the case, although a few suggestions forwarded by the team have been implemented, many more haven't.

Thanks for the feedback, I do agree that we need to change how the team works. We are actively making changes in the team, but we are suffering some technical difficulties with the forum perms.

 

[Hoshi]

I would quickly like to mention that a suggestion getting forwarded to the team and by the team are two wholely different things.

The process is currently as follows:

1. A team member sees a new suggestion thread on the Forums or suggestion post in the Discord.
2. They review how many positive/negative reactions/replies it's had up until then.
3. If they think it's a good QoL change or if it's a popular suggestion with overwhelmingly positive reactions (or both), they forward it to the feedback team Discord.
4. Here, we discuss the proposed changes a second time. During this time, we also keep track of new responses to the original post and try to also provide our own opinion on the topic publicly.
5. These suggestions will then be forwarded to the admin and development team, or put on hold in case it is impossible to implement with the current resources.

Please note that if our team does not forward a suggestion, it doesn't mean the chance of it being reviewed by the admin team is nil. The purpose of the team is to improve the communication between Team CubeCraft and the community and to increase visibility on quality suggestions (namely smaller QoL changes).

As said before, we are continuously working on improving the internal process so that we can be more transparent with everyone and include more community members in what happens behind the scenes. The feedback is greatly appreciated, @Pineapple :)

 

[Catss]

This seems like a very big topic at the moment, so I just wanted to leave my concerns and questions here so they can be addressed. I would like to preface this by saying that I am not against the feedback team, I am just simply unaware of all the inner workings. All the information I have is from this thread, since there is no where else explaining how things work. If anything I’m saying is incorrect, please do correct me as I’m mostly just trying to understand how things work.

From what I can gather from this thread, it seems that there is really only one person in charge. Only one person who has perms, despite there being more than one mod on the team. Also only one person who discusses suggestions with admins. No hate to hoshi on this, as she is great. But I do so multiple flaws with this system. First of all this leaves hoshi with more work than necessary since she could share these duties with another person. Second of all, when sharing these suggestions with admin(s), there is only one opinion from the team. Yes I imagine hoshi would try to include all the team members opinions, but this is not nearly as good as having even two members from the team. I don’t think that having 2/3 people would make things to messy. It just allows for opinions to not be lost. To me, it seems that there are no checks and balances with only one person leading the team. If I am misunderstanding anything, please let me know :)

Other than what I mentions above, it seems like the team is going in a good direction. With more transparency I think this team could work well. Thank you to everyone who’s in it, for spending the time to help make cube a better place <3