Declined Admins on Discord

[Dee]

Hello fellow community members, in the past couple of weeks I've been ignoring this issue but I've finally decided to make a thread about this. Now first of all, why did I say 'fellow community members' and not just 'people' or something along the lines of "Hi everyone"? Well you see whenever I go on discord there are two kinds of people; the admins: the ones who can force themselves in any channel they desire and the normies: people without admin powers who cannot join any channel if they so desire (normies can request admins to force them into a channel however)

The problem I have is that these two don't or rarely talk together and this is mainly the admins' fault. You see almost every time I go on discord (and when there are actually some people on it) a bunch of admins have forced themselves in the 'Sexy Time' room (which is actually a 2 player only room) or they're all in the 'Admins' room. This is favorable for the admins as they can go chat with other admins and normies whenever and wherever they like, normies however are treated unfairly as they cannot join a group of admins talking in an Admin-Only room or in the 'Sexy Time' room when 2 or more people are present.

I can completely understand when admins need to discuss things privately (that's why the 'Admins' room exists) but in the past couple of weeks I've come to the conclusion that most of the time admins just go into these Admin-Only rooms just to talk to other admins.

This is not only less fun for the normies but also very inconvenient for future or potential admins as they don't get to know the current admins better and thus get a lower chance of receiving +support in their future admin applications. How many admin applications receive a -support or a neutral just because the admins don't know the applicant well enough or how many applicants receive the feedback of "get to know the admins better"? Well I can guarantee you that a large group of people do in fact get this as feedback. And finally as said in my introduction the current state of discord divides our beloved community into admins and normies as this is just unfair towards normies.

With that all said, my suggestion is that:

1. Admins shall not force themselves nor normies into the 'Sexy Time' room anymore unless on special events
2. Admins shall not go into the 'Admins' room anymore when unnecessary
3. Admins may not force normies anymore into Admin-Only rooms (currently that would only be the 'Admins' room) unless on special events or certain admin situations

(EDIT1: Polishing everything up)

 

[Console]

i dont really see why its a problem?

 

[Dee]

i dont really see why its a problem?

Admins isolate themselves into Admin-Only rooms even when not necessary. Normies don't get to talk to admins. The community is divided.

It's unfair towards normies. Future admins don't get to talk to current admins. etc

 

[Kowii]

To be honest, that's the admins decision, if they want to be in admin only rooms, let them.

Besides, players could just ask the admin for a talk? Is it that big of a problem to just "ask"?

 

[Dee]

To be honest, that's the admins decision, if they want to be in admin only rooms, let them.

Besides, players could just ask the admin for a talk? Is it that big of a problem to just "ask"?

The 'Admins' room should only be used for admin-related stuff and not just to 'talk about pizzas' or idk. Why ask if you can also just not do it: you shouldn't ask someone to stop ignoring you or discriminate on you. They should just stop doing that.

 

[Kowii]

I've known in several communities where moderators/admins talk about random stuff in admin channels.

It's just their way of talking about stuff, I don't see why it should be changed.

Besides, I've seen nobody complain/talk about what you wrote in this thread, so It's not really a problem imo

 

[Ben289]

I see where you are coming from, and this is clearly targetted towards myself, @Grizzly, @Lucas, and @will5023. Since we are generally the ones in Sexy Time, or the admin room. But you are barking up the wrong tree. Why not just ask an admin to be moved? Suicide has asked on mutliple occasions to be moved into the room with us, he gets moved. Wanka asked Lucas, Wanka got moved, ThatPugGuy who rarely joins asked, and he got moved. It's a very simple concept, message us. The main reason we go there is because we might be in the middle of a campaign in L4D2, or a ranked game on smite, we don't really want to know what is happening on Jalibreak at this point. So we will isolate ourselves from the rest of the people on Discord, because we like to focus on our game. We move ourselves away from the majority of people due to the noise aswell. When there are multiple people in the same channel it is completely hectic, someone is playing Smite, a few people will be playing Jailbreak (Which requires you to listen to the warden, so its kind of hard to do Discord and JB at the same time in a large room.), A couple of people won't even be in a game, they might be working on something, for example me and Lucas working on the JB map. We don't need 10 different people inputting on a lot of the conversations we might have. But if we are in a position which we are welcoming people to join our conversations, we just move people who want to be moved.

I can guarentee that most of the time you are in Discord, Dee. You are playing Jailbreak or some TF2 related game. Now would you want to listen to me and @Grizzly constantly talking about our Smite game while you are trying to listen to the warden? If yes, then you must die a lot.

Also, your issue with admins not getting to know applicants is a bit odd for me. I've explained this before, it is not an admins job to jump into a conversation and force this applicant to talk to us. The applicant should attempt to talk with the admins, we already know each other, we normally talk with each other. Most of the time, an admin will be playing with another admin. (I will attempt to work on my phrasing) We shouldn't need to leave a room 1 by 1 to talk to this applicant. 2 or more admins might be in the same room at a time. I don't think any of them will have an issue with you jumped in on a conversation, or maybe even asked to join in on a game.

Also currently we have 3 people in Sexy Time. 2 admins, and one ...

So please tell me again, how we don't talk to "normies".

 

[will5023]

I go into discord with Irish, Brandon, suicide, wanka and others quite a bit but like Ben said sometimes we are doing something else and not looking to talk to people not doing the same, I have only been an administrator fairly recently and since I joined discord in January as per suggestion on my app I had no problems talking with admins or asking to talk to them. and to say we should not use the admin room to talk about random stuff except admin matters is a bit like saying we shouldn't use admin chat for the same reason, you're not in the admin room or chat so you have no idea whether we are talking about admin things or not is all, it's a fine suggestion but one that is easily fixed by asking an admin to come into a room.

 

[Dee]

Ben, thanks for writing a lengthy and thoughtful response on my threat (not that some replies weren't thoughtful, the ones that were were just very short)

I agree with almost everything you've said, however my question is: Why would admins need to isolate themselves if they can just go into for example 'General', 'Tf2 Channel', 'Naughty Corner', etc. Why do admins receive the privilege to decide to isolate themselves (and others on request) if they can just go to one of the summed up rooms. I can completely understand when you say "well maybe they'll follow us and they'll keep annoying us", don't you have the ability to kick people from discord or warn them they will be kicked if they keep being a nuisance?

Also of course I wouldn't like to be in the same room as yours if you were playing a different game and you'd just distract me but therefor we don't need a separate admin room. You can just go to 'General' or 'Naughty Corner'. Hell there are like 3 all-general rooms you can go to (if tf2 channel is also considered a all-general room) do you really need to hide in the admin room or in sexy time?

As for the applicants, people go to discord to talk to other people, admins are also in that collection. When I first joined discord I was so shy I didn't even dare to join the 'Naughty Corner' room, how was I supposed to act if you guys were in the admins room or in the sexy time room? (of course my experience=/=everyone else's) When can I be sure when I can talk to you? Maybe one day when you're in the admin room and you're actually discussing something very important admin-related. I'd ask you if I could join and what happens then?

Why not make the admin room an actual admin room and not a semi-talk part-admin room? Why do we need to ask the admin if we can join if we don't have to?

or maybe my anxiety is just manifesting itself

 

[Ben289]

I would like to point out that Sexy time is not an admin only room. It is there specifically to limit the amount of people who join the room. I know it says 2 people, but we can simply increase that number to meet our needs. If we wanted it to be a public room, we wouldn't have a put a limit on it if we didn't want a small room for a small group of people. It's not public for a reason, ever thought about that?

In respones to us talking about admin-related topics in the admin room, and you ask. We do a very simlpe thing, some do not think of this, it's a word which people need to learn I think instead of being push-overs. Now, some people may struggle with it, but I find it quite easy. This amazing word is "no". As it is an admin room, we do not have any responsibility to move a non-admin to this room. It says it in the name, "ADMINs". We are most likely not talking about admin only stuff, so this is when you can ask.

You also stated you may be to shy to join Naughty Corner. So your solution to this is, to move everyone into a few rooms, grouping large numbers of people together who may talk to each other. Then putting someone new to Discord into the middle of a 6 way converation which may not involve this person. 4 may be talking about JB, 2 others talking about Smite and then this new guy, right here, isn't doing either. How is that less awkward, and less hassle for this new person?

Also, if we "isolate" ourselves into Sexy Time, maybe there might be 4 of us. We are playing L4D2, campaign mode. This is a maximum of 4 people. So the 4 people in there are probably playing L4D2. But hey, lets bring in some more people, let them talk over us while we are trying to communicate with each other in the middle of a game. If we join a normal channel, like General we will get people jumping into the conversations, or someone coming in every 10 minutes "Oh theres a freekiller on JB please help.". Maybe we prefer some privacy when playing games. If you want to join you ASK. It's very simple.

Also can you stop isolating yourself in AFK please?

 

[Viking34]

If I want to have a private conversation but still reveal my online identity in order to let people know they can still reach me in #requesthelp or by tagging me, I'll go to a room that normal people cannot join. I do this because I don't want to upset people by telling them 'Hey, sorry, you cannot talk to me but this guy can. Please leave.'

As you've pointed out, there's a difference between 'casual' discord rooms (for everyone, edmons and normies) and ...'limited' discord rooms. These are limited because it's still impossible to have a private conversation in them; they'll still be drowned out by people with permissions to join or maybe someone will lob a pablo or ear-destroying musicbot bomb into it for a laugh.

I asked Bene to make that two-slot room (now dubbed Sexytime) because I was going to have a private conversation with Triix, but it's essentially just another 'limited' room where those who can will casually join because there are people there. Same goes for Smite, for instance, where people will join not to play smite, but to have a nice chat with Ben Jr. and Grizzles who happen to be residing there, actually playing Smite. Then another person will join to talk with the three, and suddenly it's an 8-person spamfest.

The problem is just that people don't care about what the rooms are for. This is fine, they shouldn't have to. The distinction between 'yo I'll talk to anyone' and 'oi I'm talking to these two and we're in the middle of a game' is here, as it should be, but is manifesting itself in the 'casual' and 'limited' rooms. Doubt there's a way around it without either forcing people to follow room-rules, which would be pretty lame and against the idea of a casual voicechannel, or just removing our ability to join and move people into private channels. Much better solution.


Oh, and it really doesn't matter too much. I just happen to have spare time.

 

[Noodl]

Very passive aggressive responses above to a fair point he's making. As I write this, the admin channel is 9 strong, with 1 user in Jailbreak.
People can talk to who they want to. It's the internet. Be less serious about it.
I have the freedom of choice of 'isolating' myself and calling Ben on Skype, or joining a full channel on Discord, either in admins or public.

You could look at it from another perspective and say that admins shouldn't downvote applications for "not knowing the applicant" if they don't leave the admin channel often.

"Mind moving me to the admins voice channel? Kind of quiet in TF2 Jailbreak channel."
^This pretty much reinforces his point. He got moved, which means there was clearly no sensitive topic, so why couldn't it be done in a public room?

 

[Ben289]

I don't actually remember an admin giving a -Support for not knowing the applicant, most of the time it is related to maybe not being active on Discord or the forums. If an admin does not know the applicant, then they will say something along the lines of "Haven't actually spoke to this person before, so I am solely basing my opinion off the application and forum activity.".

"Mind moving me to the admins voice channel? Kind of quiet in TF2 Jailbreak channel."
^This pretty much reinforces his point. He got moved, which means there was clearly no sensitive topic, so why couldn't it be done in a public room?

Now, as I was reading this yesterday, I was thinking to myself that this was a fair point to make. We were playing L4D2, Myself, @Grizzly, @2010wolf | Blw.tf, @will5023, @Fish-Related Crimes, and a few others were all playing the same game. We got moved into General from admin by someone, no idea who, and everything was going fine. Then out of the blue someone joined us. Okay, fine, sure, this is okay, no problems here. Let me just give you a breakdown of what happened.

"GUYS HELP HELP SMOKER"
"WHERE YOU AT?"
"BY TH- So guys I just found a festive ubersaw."
"WHAT DID YOU SAY?"
"ABO- so what are you guys playing?"
"OVER HERE!!!"
"I CAN'T SE- lol just joined orange server, this is the 100% crit one it's so fun."

So I moved us into Sexy Time. So would you look at that, we were playing a game and we were trying to actually enjoy ourselves, communicating as a team to the best of peoples ability, but what we really need to do, and this is a major point, we need to be in a public room because it's unfair for those who can't talk to us, due to 5+ of us playing the same game which requires communication. So even if it's not a "sensitive topic" we do like our privacy when playing games, we don't need someone jumping into the conversation during that kind of situation, and since we have been doing that a lot lately, maybe we do enjoy going into Sexy Time and having privacy when playing it. But when we stop playing it, atleast 50% of us leave to go to other channels to play something else, or go AFK.

 

[RainbowRobb]

"I can completely understand when admins need to discuss things privately (that's why the 'Admins' room exists) but in the past couple of weeks I've come to the conclusion that most of the time admins just go into these Admin-Only rooms just to talk to other admins."


As an admin who died his fair share of reports, and responds to help requests on discord and steam regularly, I have something to say.

I only enter discord voice for a couple of hours a week, but when I do, I don't want to worry about censoring myself, so I almost always enter an admin channel. Also, other than @Ice I don't have to hear any random kids screaming .

Lastly, it's not like admins have scheduled meetings, this is not a job. So instead of 3-8(usually) admins jumping around channels 10 times a day, we just stay in an admin channel for extended periods of time. And use our super duper top secret admin threads on discord to leave things for admins who aren't online/awake. Then we seem to discuss them with those who are on and leave our opinions/comments. It's like a revolving door with everyone passing along information informally. We never talked about it this way, it just happens organically.

I spent the time in my Uber to respond to you, to help you to understand the (usual) reason why we camp in our channels. There is also a substantial chunk of time when no admins are in any voice chat at all.

 

[Console]

https://gyazo.com/303773db6e13feb2a3071eed199b024e @Dee
mind asking me Why you rated Ben's 'dislike'? since ben pointed out some good things you did and i Agree with all That so i'll just say you shouldnt give him a 'dislike' rater a disagree or something not negativ

-Console also sorry if it sounds Rude it didnt meant to sound rude

 

[Dee]

https://gyazo.com/303773db6e13feb2a3071eed199b024e @Dee
mind asking me Why you rated Ben's 'dislike'? since ben pointed out some good things you did and i Agree with all That so i'll just say you shouldnt give him a 'dislike' raters a disagree or something not negativ

-Console

Ben and I have actually talked about this on steam, I told him that I felt like he was attacking me and that I found the reply to be disrespectful. Later he agreed that some aspects in the reply might have been offensive. I don't think he's going to mind the dislike though, look at me, I've received tons of disagrees on my thread even though there is a poll going on but you don't see me complaining.

Also if I was that kind of guy who rates every post of someone negative because I don't agree with said someone then why did I only dislike this one reply? There oughta be more meaning into this. At the end of the day I think people shouldn't decide what other people think. No thought police for me, you can say whatever you want, unless of course when you start insulting or offending other people.

Also next time please make a higher quality image

 

[Console]

Ben and I have actually talked about this on steam, I told him that I felt like he was attacking me and that I found the reply to be disrespectful. Later he agreed that some aspects in the reply might have been offensive. I don't think he's going to mind the dislike though, look at me, I've received tons of disagrees on my thread even though there is a poll going on but you don't see me complaining.

Also if I was that kind of guy who rates every post of someone negative because I don't agree with said someone then why did I only dislike this one reply? There oughta be more meaning into this. At the end of the day I think people shouldn't decide what other people think. No thought police for me, you can say whatever you want, unless of course when you start insulting or offending other people.

alright im sorry pls ignore my post before

 

[Ice]

If you don't enjoy how our discord works make your own tbh. No one else seems to be upset about this.

 

[Moku]

Okay well I feel like I should stat my opinion, I have encountered this before and don't get me wrong when I was admin on other servers I'd like to be alone from "Normies" as well but it's not too frequent that I see @Ben289 and @Grizzly but what can I say they are basically best friends we should respect that they would like to have time alone to talk, play games ETC.... as stated above by many people all we have to do is ask and POOFFFFF we are in there it's nowhere near as difficult as people think to talk to an admin, @Dee just ask to be put into one of the chats that they are in and just have a decent conversation and hopefully you guys come to be friends or at least acquaintances

 

[Dee]

Can someone please close this thread? I don't like it nor the replies I've received upon it and I feel very stressed out because of it. I just want it to get closed and people to forget about this ever happening.

I would also like to apologize for all the admins I may have alienated by making this thread. This thread was a mistake and I want it to stop.