Survey, Part 1

[Chaosphere]

Hi all,

First of all, thank you for your patience while we work through the survey. There is a lot of information for us to digest and discuss, and finding times when all 5 of us can get together can be difficult!

We appreciate also that it is one thing to talk through the survey, and another to actually begin to implement change. For now, we are focussed on the first bit â€" deciding what we want to do with the information you have given us.

Once we have gone through it all and made a plan of action, we will start to get things moving. Some things will be straightforward and take no time at all, but others might require a bit more time.

We are keen to bring you updates as we go through the process, both in the interests of transparency and to reassure you that we are in fact working on it all behind the scenes.

In our first chat, we spoke through some key things relating to community structure and communication â€" i.e. the forums and discord.

We are trying to make decisions based on what the majority want.

Here is a brief summary of our musings.

• Game admins / teams helped, but a genre (rather than game) specific structure might be the way to go. Hopefully this helps us keep up with an ever-changing list of active games.

This will involve a re-do of the current Community Admin set-up, which has not achieved what we had initially hoped. The main aim here is to organise and advertise set game nights to encourage community activity.

• WANs and community nights are popular and need to return.

We’ve enjoyed running these events in the past, and are keen to do so again. We will need to think more on the best timing and frequency of such events, but so far we are looking at running 1 or 2 WANs between the LANs.

• Supporting membership costs are low, but bring little value to those who do not attend the LANs or regularly use the server.

We are keen to look at adding value to supporting membership. We feel there is more that we could do within discord to recognise and reward those who support the community in this way.

• The forums still have their use for key organisational / structural work, but the day to day chat has moved to the discord.

The forums need a good tidy up. We plan to archive much of the content and streamline what you see and how we use it. They will remain essential for certain things (for example, LAN planning), but much of the gaming-related content and planning will move to the discord â€" we may need to further expand how we use the discord to facilitate this.

We feel that the forum platform we have now, although outdated, is still fit for purpose. An upgrade makes no financial sense, especially given the aforementioned reduction in use. As previously mentioned, it is in need of a good tidy up to ensure key information is easily accessible / visible.

We will continue to require forum signup for full discord functionality, but want to look at changing what new members see when they join us at either source to ensure there are no unintended barriers to entry.


We have another chat planned soon to go through the next section of the Survey â€" which focusses on Community Standards. The LAN admins will also plan to sit down in the near future and talk through the LAN-related content. I suspect changes here will impact the 2024 events more than the ones planned for this year.

[OldBloke]

Thanks for the update, Ben.

[Galatoni]

Thanks.

[Penfold]

Thanks for spending the time on this chaps.

[RogueTaylor]

Indeed, thanks for the update, look forward to what y’all come up with

[Mikep1212]

As the above sentiments, thanks for the update.