Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27980194-20170224234227/@comment-27980194-20170225173340

InvaderrrZIM wrote: Sooo I just recently joined the Discord (didn't start using it til my job switched over to using it as our main chat thingy lol), what are the issues with it? Not really familiar with how Discord works, but couldn't we fix up use the one we currently have or is there some issue preventing this?

I definitely like Discord more than the wiki chat, though - more feature-packed and being very mobile friendly is a HUGE advantage. I kind of wanted to avoid this discussion though I figured it was eventually going to crop up so here it goes. I've held long discussions with a lot of the people from the people that go to that server, and one conclusion I've reached is, a lot of people practically are on the verge of walking out on it, even some of the staff (though they've avoided doing so due to their obligations, which I disagree with heavily). Here are some of the benefits to creating a new server in comparison to the current server and some of the detriments the current server face.

1. The control.

If we were to make a new server we could use it to benefit the wiki more i.e with the whole cross-mod communication thing. We can't really force the current server to change to our needs cause ultimately we don't really have much control over it (I mean Game is an admin and I have some influence because I'm a retired admin, but other than that, it's not much), and even if we could, to change the identity of such an established server feels like a lot more unecessary work than simply just starting anew.

2. The identity

One of the reasons I wanted to create a new server is so we can have something that identifies as THE official Gumball Wiki server. As far as it stands, the current one isn't really a Gumball wiki server, both because it generally just doesn't run as one, and because it doesn't really meet the standards that I presume an official Gumball Wiki server would be held to.

Now let's get into some of the issues.

1. The complacency

To answer your question, theoretically, yes we could make the current server work. However for that, it's required that we have people that want to make it work. We've had something like I believe four full-scale debates concerning the issues of the server, and yet it has never improved. If anything, it has only declined. This is because the staff on that server don't really want to solve the issues of that server, and they're more than content enough with making knee-jerk decisions and just coming up with band-aid solutions that fall apart within about a week. To give you an example, in response to low-quality discussion and borderline spam in other channels, one channel was created known as "Prison". This channel was for "Memes and roleplaying (because those two go together????????)" yet no one agreed on what its identity was, and it showed. That channel has been subject to so much chaos it's kind of hilarious and yet painful at the same time. I believe recently it got fixed though for the people on that server to take so long (a month or so) to realize that this was a poorly thought-out idea, is honestly shameful.

2. The Staff/The Moderators.

Honestly quite a number of the staff on that server are pretty poor. They're all pretty inconsistent, I've seen multiple situations where sometimes they're fine with things, yet other times they completely crack down on it. Some of them just don't really know what they're doing, some of them are generally weak authorities, some of them are too harsh, and practically all of them are not even close to being on the same page. To give some examples on the last point, the whole "Prison" channel, I mentioned no one agreed on its identity and that includes the staff members. To further this point, they all of different interpretations of the rules. For example, "No Politics" some of them have interpreted this to mean no political memes, while others are fine with political memes. I'm ok with having different standards, but at the very least, you should all be on the same wavelength as to what the actual rules really mean.

I feel some of the poor quality of staff, mainly regards to the way they're promoted. A lot of the promotions are honestly pretty arbitrary, with no input from the community whatsoever. A recent example would be the two most recent promotions, which were both made in response to the same attack by one spam bot. The result is what I would interpret as they ended up being in positions they were not yet prepared for, because they were not properly audited before they were promoted.

In conclusion, can we fix the old server? Probably. Is it worth it to try? Not really. I don't really understand the whole idea of wanting to barely keep together a server that honestly is on the verge of a collapse after an incredibly long period of declining, as opposed to creating a more solid foundation. Not to mention, to create a new server allows us to shape it more appropiately to benefit the wiki more.