[Rejected] TeamSpeak

I am not making this post to come off as hostile in any way but just wanted to voice my opinion and hear others'. I think our voices should at the very least be heard, but if your decision is final that is completely fine by me. I'm sure the title is self-explanatory, I don't believe removing TeamSpeak is the best option and I think you're doing the community a disservice.

It's no secret that TeamSpeak is used way more than Discord for speaking in our community. It doesn't even come close, I don't need statistics. TeamSpeak has and would've always been the place to speak to each other and socialize. We have a distinct set of regulars who constantly utilize the server and most definitely appreciate the fact that we have it. It's extremely rare that you log on and won't see multiple channels with people in them who are chatting with each other. It's also used for our community meetings and is extremely effective for running them with the ability to request talk power and easily mass mute channels.

Discord may be the next big thing for voice communication, but TeamSpeak is still the current thing. Lots of communities still have TeamSpeak servers which are active. Even GFL, they have ranks dedicated to improving Discord, have pushed to get official partnerships with the site, and have custom plugins implemented into their server, but they still run a TeamSpeak server. It's not as if we're on the last batch of people who use TeamSpeak either, people who are coming into our community are still joining up and are beginning to regularly use it as well.

The quality of the voice chat is worse, too. Even though it may not be the main reason people don't use the voice chat on Discord, there is a distinguishable difference between TeamSpeak and Discord voice quality. This isn't some thing that makes Discord literally unusable, but it's just another thing on the list of reasons we shouldn't make the switch, especially when we're talking about our main way to communicate over voice. You absolutely can't run another Karaoke event or any event in which there's a significant amount of people on mic, we've tried it. It's god awful and it doesn't work whatsoever.

Another thing you may want to consider is the fact that we'd be encouraging the use of the text chat as well. We all made the jokes when Discord first came out, the text chat is literally just another shoutbox. Now that we're making such a big transition though, people may begin to use Discord more than the actual shoutbox which, in turn, decreases forum activity. Our amazing forum activity is one thing that is currently setting us apart from other communities. We have an extremely active forum and possibly influencing that does not seem like a good idea for us.

The final, extreme issue I see with this is the fact that it's painfully easy to set up your own Discord server. Literally two clicks and you can have a voice chat and text chat up and running, a few more and you can customize it how you like. You can invite anyone you want, make your own rules, etc. There's no need to use SG Discord, because you can just start up your own. TeamSpeak is not as simple and SG running the service makes it easier for people to communicate with each other. This simple fact is going to be the reason SG Discord won't get utilized.

I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing and I'm sure there's points to be made against some of my own. I also think some different plan could be formulated, but I'm trying to target the issue that is the shutting down of TeamSpeak. I just believe there should at least be some sort of discussion about this, whether that be here or in the form of a community meeting perhaps. I'd ask kindly that this doesn't get locked immediately, despite whether or not the decision is final. I think there's a lot of people with a lot of strong opinions about this and it'd at least be nice to show them the respect of letting them respond.

Despite all my opinions here, I know for a fact that there is a lot of people here who care a lot about TeamSpeak. I just hope there's some agreement that we can come to which preserves the server everyone loves so much.

I’ll respond in like 30-45 mins.

Okay, so this reply is going to be covering this whole Teamspeak situation as a whole, and not just this specific thread. This thread is fine and is more or less the definition of healthy debate and disagreement. We are, however beyond the point of debating it. The points that you have brought up in this thread were brought up by the Board and discussed.

Initially, we had a unanimous agreement among all of us, and then later one vote was swapped from yes to no. Even after the points were brought up for the nay vote, we were still on board to make the push to Discord. Mad Dogg brought up an excellent suggestion the other day about utilizing a trial run to give Discord a shot on its own, since there is still some time left on the TeamSpeak subscription. As always, with every single thing in this community, virtually nothing is set in stone. Everything is constantly reevaluated to make sure it's an effective addition to the community. Server rules, forum features, admin protocol, etc.

Some of you really should have been at that community meeting where I said numerous times that SG is not, and has never been, a democracy. There are instances where we gather AT opinions, CA opinions, SA opinions, community opinions, or no opinions. Every single decision in this community is made by the Board, whether directly or indirectly (IE by proxy because we put someone in charge). Even if we took an issue to a community vote - we are establishing the parameters of the outcome. Once again - SG has always, since it's creation, been this way.

In this situation, we more or less kept it among the board (although it wasn't a gigantic secret), because we figured there would be a decent group who hates change just because it's change (I will definitely touch on this later), and we were able to weigh the pros and cons decently among ourselves. More or less the same exact situation when we left Ventrilo for TS3. I spoke with the Board this morning because a lot of you even had me second-guessing my own vote on this whole exchange, but we agreed again to push forward.

I think that about covers the decision for TS in itself - @Prez feel free to add something if I have left anything out, since we've talked a bit about this.

Now we're going to cover conduct!

The thread here is fine, this portion really isn't addressed to you , Dominic (although taking it to CB is annoying. just PM whoever next time). I want to steal a few words from Prez about this situation, because they were spot on about the amount of childish bullshit happening right now among a lot of you...but I'm going to deliver straight from my loving heart:

Some of you are being fucking ridiculous. It's a trial run for Discord: grow the fuck up . For those that abused the reputation system, neg repping on some dumb shit - your rep has been set back to 0. I don't know exactly what, if any, punishments will be in the future for abusing the system (maybe just removing it, idk) - but I thought setting it to zero would be fitting. If you left a neg rep that was actually constructive, you're fine. Although you're shooting the messenger, because this isn't me just making some random fucking decision.

If you're a higher up in this community, I seriously suggest you check what you are saying in public. Handle your shit in private with me, my VP, or close your mouth. If you have an issue with that: step down. I'm not going to sell you a rose garden and tell you anything you do or say is fine and dandy and will go unpunished. You are absolutely, completely, 100% allowed to disagree with something, voice your opinion in an adult manner, etc., etc.. What I saw last night was ridiculous, and completely inexcusable. One thing I will steal from Prez is the absolute fatigue we are experiencing from this group of people preaching to SG from their soapbox.

We don't get every single decision right. It absolutely does not happen, and no one is saying that definitively Discord will be the one true beacon of light. We do, however, sometimes decide to step out of the box and take a risk. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. It is what it is.

TLDR: We're giving Discord a trial run. Stop being dickheads about it - we've listened to a lot of you, and have still decided to go in this direction: it happens sometimes.

I just told all of you to chill out with this, and Euro continued it. She is banned until further notice (would have just been a day or something, but she already has multiple bans - will discuss with Board).

All T's has had his rank removed for, once again, continuing, among the previous drama associated with his step down.

Okay, so this reply is going to be covering this whole Teamspeak situation as a whole, and not just this specific thread. This thread is fine and is more or less the definition of healthy debate and disagreement. We are, however beyond the point of debating it. The points that you have brought up in this thread were brought up by the Board and discussed.

 

Initially, we had a unanimous agreement among all of us, and then later one vote was swapped from yes to no. Even after the points were brought up for the nay vote, we were still on board to make the push to Discord. Mad Dogg brought up an excellent suggestion the other day about utilizing a trial run to give Discord a shot on its own, since there is still some time left on the TeamSpeak subscription. As always, with every single thing in this community, virtually nothing is set in stone. Everything is constantly reevaluated to make sure it's an effective addition to the community. Server rules, forum features, admin protocol, etc.

 

Some of you really should have been at that community meeting where I said numerous times that SG is not, and has never been, a democracy. There are instances where we gather AT opinions, CA opinions, SA opinions, community opinions, or no opinions. Every single decision in this community is made by the Board, whether directly or indirectly (IE by proxy because we put someone in charge). Even if we took an issue to a community vote - we are establishing the parameters of the outcome. Once again - SG has always, since it's creation, been this way.

 

In this situation, we more or less kept it among the board (although it wasn't a gigantic secret), because we figured there would be a decent group who hates change just because it's change (I will definitely touch on this later), and we were able to weigh the pros and cons decently among ourselves. More or less the same exact situation when we left Ventrilo for TS3. I spoke with the Board this morning because a lot of you even had me second-guessing my own vote on this whole exchange, but we agreed again to push forward.

 

 

TLDR: We're giving Discord a trial run. Stop being dickheads about it - we've listened to a lot of you, and have still decided to go in this direction: it happens sometimes. [/size][/size]

I will address this part in this post. Let me let you guys into a bit of the decision making behind this push as well as some of my personal thoughts. In the Canadian Forces, we learn how to deal with situations that involve decision making in order to further a goal, plan or objective. In order to do this, we do what is called a 'risk assessment'. In order for a decision to be made that is in the best judgment of the individual or group, the following process is followed (adjusted for a gaming community vs military force):

- Specify the mission at hand

We, as a board, are looking to consolidate our platform offerings to the community in order to provide a more streamlined and consistent approach to socializing within the Steam-Gamers gaming organization.

In order to do this, we are looking to merge our voice and text platform offering into Discord. Discord is a newer gaming social media platform that allows for simultaneous voice and text-based conversations in a community sphere. We are looking to merge our existing Teamspeak server base into Discord to provide a single source for Steam-Gamers social media.

Identify problems that may arise

Change is always difficult within any organization. There are entire courses dedicated to change management, giving people the tools they need to manage change within an organization. A change in any system is never easy, so it's expected that there will be backlash or arguments against. Within SG, TeamSpeak has been used for years (since Ventrilo was discontinued) and has been used for official meetings for the last few years. As a Board, we are looking to keep abreast of the gaming sphere and officially adopt platforms that can adapt to the changing needs and requirements of the community.

As a result, our agreement in the Board discussion was to adopt Discord-only as a trial to see how it ran overall with the community. I believe we would have done better by stating that at the outset, but either way the end result is the same. While we didn't have unanimous agreement in the thread I voted in, the majority of the board agreed to trial this for a period and gather feedback post-launch.

Implement Controls

Once Discord-only launches at the end of the month, we will definitely be taking feedback from all sources. In the run-up to launching, we are working with CA+ in their section to identify shortcomings of the Discord currently and are working with the Technical Team on beefing it up in anticipation of the switch over. We are currently looking to gather their thoughts and recommendations to make it as good as it can be in anticipation of full launch. In terms of community feedback, as Caution noted it's fully kosher to offer your thoughts - until the launch happens however, we are in construction mode and would recommend you pipe feedback to the CA+ team for discussion. One thing that doesn't help with any process is the creation of public drama, as it's counterproductive to any team trying to make a new change while still including positive feedback from their base.

Assess decision and make changes

As the rollout happens and continues on, we will as a team (staff with BD decision) look at how the Discord rollout has happened and will make decisions on how best to proceed. Based on the result and response, we could see:

- Continue as discord-only with no changes;

- Continue as discord-only with changes (all staff involved + community feedback);

- Re-introduce hybrid TS/Discord system and re-evaluate; or

- Removed Discord in favor of TS.

Personally, I like TS. I don't think it's a bad platform, nor do I think it should never be used by anyone again. However, with Discord, it bridges two different systems that I think can do better together rather than independently - a primarily voice-based system (TS), and a text-based system (Slack for staff, Discord currently for the community at large). We use multiple systems to accomplish similar goals, so I think it makes sense to try bridging things together. Now, I'm not saying that for staff we're moving Slack. I think it would be interesting to try, and I did detail my thoughts last night to some people; however, that is up for discussion later as it hasn't been brought up as a group at all.

Happy to discuss the upcoming changes as we continue planning.

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In terms of the rest of the post, I prefer to speak with those people involved privately via PM, but I will say this - as VP, I have worked with the various teams consistently and exhaustively over the last few months to continue pushing changes, making updates, and helping where needed. When all of the drama went down in December, I was at my wit's end - I could not believe how much drama had picked up and how utterly exhausted and stressed it made me. I took this holiday off to re-evaluate my position within SG and how/if I wanted to continue forward. After taking time off to de-compress, relax and truly think about things, I have come to this conclusion: we all treat this place way too fucking seriously. While I am happy that some of you (as well as myself I'd like to say) have put in hours and hours of work here, we have to remember that at the end of the day, it's just a gaming community.

Nothing in this place will matter in your life more than school, your jobs, or your social life. We are here to run a community for CS:GO and other serves and let people have fun - the forums and discord can also be a source of fun, but when people bring up drama, call others out, step down and complain, etc. etc. it does literally nothing for you nor us. At this point I could literally not give half of a shit about all of the drama that is ongoing and continues to happen. My job stays the same - ensure that our managers have what they need to run our servers effectively, keep rule breakers off of our servers, work with the board on expanding our offerings and keeping us in the top echelons of gaming communities, and more. What my job does NOT cover - stand idly by when people step down because they're mad, then pick apart current staff for decisions they make; make passive-aggressive comments to the point of utter annoyance; continue in the back-and-forth that adds nothing to any conversation; etc.

I don't like to take sides in arguments around here, nor do I usually elect to make longer posts on drama in the public sphere. I much prefer to keep these things private as the rest of the community doesn't deserve to see this spilling out into the limelight. But at a certain point, when you cause me to lose sleep, arrive late for work, and miss out on visiting my girlfriend who lives 6 hours away because I have to stay up until 3am dealing with pathetic drama - I have had enough. We are all one community. The board makes decisions that it feels is in the best of the community - and these decisions can always be reversed; nothing is set in stone. If you have a problem with the way that our staff of over 40 people does things, or if you feel like you are being dis-credited, dis-honored or offended, feel free to go somewhere else. We are inclusive of anyone who is willing to work with us, rather than against us.

I truly love this community and hope that we can reach new heights and places we've never been before. I will continue to do my best to accomplish this, by working with our teams and admins to make the community as fun as possible to be a part of.

If you would like to speak more on this, please feel free to private message either myself, Caution, or anyone else on the Board.