Plaease consider Disclaimer's suggestions, that post is fantastic. Transparency and communication should be two things to focus on.
Staff has said this would be hard to moderate and a minefield of attacks when rejecting this idea. Which, fair, could happen considering the precedent of the old feedback thread - and, well, the fact that in any heated thread staff is overwhelmingly outnumbered by users posting - but that can't be a reason to ignore this suggestion indefinetely. Stuff like postcount restrictions, registration date filters to participate, a rotating set of users who can actively post, or whatever that helps weeding out bad faith actors while letting as much people as possible share their feedback. Basically, they could be creative to make it manageable while also moderating it with some rules like you said.
This so much. It's the power dynamics of feedback-over-PMs what makes it such a bad - and even scary for some - way of handling criticism. And that's without even considering the accountability issues arising from the lack of transparency and the resulting "They said" and "No, you said" back and forth when stuff doesn't work out and gets referenced in other places.
I'm not sure about this as it was never explained, but the impression I get is that DownUnderCoder may be a paid member of the staff. IIRC they appeared out of nowhere after the 2.0 implementation, when one or two folks left the tech team.
It'd be nice to have this and other logistics explained in an official thread rather than being brought up in random posts by staff here and there. Dunno how much would be wise to reveal, though.
While you ruminate on the possibility of creating a thread chastising the community's treatment of staff, what is more needed -- and what would assuage the tension that keeps snaping back on y'all -- is a general community feedback thread, stickied permanently in place not in Announcements, but in EtcEra. Have a strict rule therein against unproductive tone or attacks in individual staff members -- absolutely -- but it needs to exist, because as it stands the only public place constructive discussion about the forum itself is allowed to happen is in the Meeting threads (e.g. Asian Era Meeting), which is unacceptable on multiple levels, and takes away from focus on those specific communities' issues.
Staff has said this would be hard to moderate and a minefield of attacks when rejecting this idea. Which, fair, could happen considering the precedent of the old feedback thread - and, well, the fact that in any heated thread staff is overwhelmingly outnumbered by users posting - but that can't be a reason to ignore this suggestion indefinetely. Stuff like postcount restrictions, registration date filters to participate, a rotating set of users who can actively post, or whatever that helps weeding out bad faith actors while letting as much people as possible share their feedback. Basically, they could be creative to make it manageable while also moderating it with some rules like you said.
(No, PMing staff members is not a solution, and it's shocking to me it's ever been thought of as a primary feedback venue, rather than a supplementary one for people uncomfortable with public feedback. It's antithetical to the forum format and precludes the possibility of larger-scale transparent discussion. The only purpose it serves is to disenfranchise members from communicating together about the forum on the forum, and while that secrecy might be thought to keep scrutinizing eyes away from staff, all it does is deepen community bitterness towards you.)
@B-Dubs, even when you are faced with hostility, which you no doubt are, you still have to recognize that you are an admin and we are not. You wield absolute power over us. At most we can fling insults at you, while you can effectively erase our presence from this forum. And now you threaten with 'hefty bans' to anyone who continues with 'outright hostility', a term that leaves plenty of room for interpretation. Don't you see what this looks like?
This so much. It's the power dynamics of feedback-over-PMs what makes it such a bad - and even scary for some - way of handling criticism. And that's without even considering the accountability issues arising from the lack of transparency and the resulting "They said" and "No, you said" back and forth when stuff doesn't work out and gets referenced in other places.
And, this might be a sensitive subject, but about being unpaid volunteers:
I'm not sure about this as it was never explained, but the impression I get is that DownUnderCoder may be a paid member of the staff. IIRC they appeared out of nowhere after the 2.0 implementation, when one or two folks left the tech team.
It'd be nice to have this and other logistics explained in an official thread rather than being brought up in random posts by staff here and there. Dunno how much would be wise to reveal, though.