The apparent disconnect between management and users
178 replies, posted
It's pretty obvious that the average user doesn't approve of the majority of large changes on this forum. Things like the notification tabs being combined, or threads suddenly having an arbitrary post limit, or that horrible 'we are locking all megathreads' debacle from a couple months ago.
Why does it feel completely pointless to give feedback in regards to the forum? I know Hezzy has said repeatedly that he has "given garry a list of feedback", but that list doesn't seem to have had any correlation between what users want and what actually happens.
An update comes out that everyone hates, people complain or protest, Garry permabans them, nothing changes, wait a month or two, the cycle repeats. Why does upper management not listen to users on what they want? Why is all this change forced on users without consultation or opinion? Why are genuine concerns or criticism brushed off with a "Deal with it" or even get people permabanned when posted in a non-adversarial manner?
It seems as though Garry does whatever he wants and ignores the people of the forum, Hezzy has to try to spin it as a positive thing, and pretend that he is able to get information to Garry in order to carry out community wishes but it doesn't happen.
And in the end all it does is drive this huge wedge between users and administration. Facepunch feels less active than ever. I remember when I would wake up and go to LMAO pics and it would have 80 posts since last night. Today I went to LMAO pics and there were 13 posts. I don't think that's everyone growing up and leaving the forums. It really feels like activity is being driven down by uncaring decisions and outright animosity towards the userbase.
TL;DR: Management doesn't seem to give a flying fuck about users, is often outright hostile, users feel helpless, forum feels like it's hemorrhaging users and becoming less active very quickly.
I know of one other website that has a huge disconnect like this one. It turned into a garbage dump because management don't care about their users and have their own objectives in mind. But I still go there for the people who stick around (though fewer every month) and the content they make. And I'm starting to see these forums here in the same way.
glad im not part of this shitshow anymore lmao
I don't understand the point of experimental changes if you aren't going to pay attention to the data you get back from them.
I'll repeat my post in another thread (since rating notifications were turned off I have no idea if anyone saw it there): we moved away from vB to escape the limitations it had due to its age - to a shiny new futuristic forum that was supposed to be everything and more. What we got has less basic functionality, no advanced functionality of any real consequence, and now, the same arbitrary limitations vB had - just because Garry decided to add them.
This is frankly ridiculous. Months after the change we're nowhere near the level of functionality vB had, the community isn't growing, subcommunities are being squashed, and still it's radio silence as usual from the bossman. What was the point of any of this?
Especially when almost all feedback is dismissed out of hand as "hating change"
i just want the "first post on new page doesn't exist" bug fixed
I posted exactly what was on the list here;
What are your top 5 requests for this forum?
I'm still speaking with garry to get things sorted out. These things take time. Please have patience.
got a major sense of deja vu from the thread title alone
this has been a problem with fp even back on oldpunch, but every time someone tries to change it their efforts end up fizzling out and we end up back at square one
How many times have you said this over the past 2 months? When will our patience be rewarded rather than punished for a change?
When this is what is said every time but nothing improves, it doesn't actually hold meaning. If the words don't align with the actions, you have a problem.
Look at the games section. Even one year ago after a thread got locked people would rush to get a new one up. Now we have tons of locked threads and practically none of them have been replaced yet, even by shitty half-assed versions.
With all due respect, change for change's sake especially when those changes have been largely negatively received, then swept under the rug, followed by more changes negatively received, with a few bans sprinkled in for good measure, doesn't instill confidence in the community that their requests are being heard. I'm aware that sometimes forcing a change to make people try it before complaining is a thing, but some changes, such as the recent example of shoveling all notifications under a single heading, were precisely things the community didn't want since the existing system worked well enough in that regard. Also, why do we need arbitrarily short word count and thread limits when, the primary reason for moving to the new forums, was to circumvent vB's old ass method of doing that? Sometimes change for change's sake may not be the best idea, which is something I hope garry will understand.
You say this every time, but nothing changes the way the community wants it, just how garry thinks he should do, but its killing the community. Maybe the numbers look fine since of the Rust section, but those people rarely even venture out of that section. If Garry just wanted a forum for the projects hes working on, and nothing more, just say it, so the community can move on else where.
To be fair, at that point we sorta knew when threads would get locked and people would be ready with new OPs, now we didn't get any notification and they just closed all threads
If that's the case why don't we just have a rust forum and a regular facepunch
https://i.gyazo.com/260e8af59b597d37971ac87766f050d6.png
Good thing we finally have the post limit back so low quality, worthless discussion like this can't proliferate.
it's definitely feeling like garry wants to focus more on the actual facepunch projects rather than keeping the community. he's not a community runner. I don't think he's competent to run a community the size of current facepunch. he doesn't have a sense of community, and he has an attitude that smells to high hell when it comes to criticism on these topics. he's a way better gamedev however, and it shows in the work he does on the projects he's involved in.
there's nothing wrong with that by itself, far from. facepunch is a game development company, and it's obvious they want to make the forums platform for their games and its communities rather than catering to the old crowd that grew from the gmod days.
but there's something so awfully sloppy about how the whole thing's been handled, there isn't a lot of good communication. you can call whatever you have in that thread for communication, Hezzy, but there isn't much to show for it. and it's not your fault either, it's garry and his neglecting the forum and its feature development for periods of time.
I think we should maybe look back to the original dilemma garry posted on oldpunch when this whole thing was announced and look towards the other option; separating facepunch from facepunch studios, and entrusting that part of the community to someone who knows how to develop for websites, and also knows how to run a general, "SA-lite" community.
Who could possibly think this unified notification panel was a good idea, I don't understand at all.
It feels very uncomfortable to have my online "home" managed and run by someone who is absolutely awful at taking criticism. I'm not considering leaving but I'm definitely seeing a downturn in overall activity because of this stuff. I find it sad.
In the end it'll be 20 users who just refused to leave, and the Rust section which may as well be an entirely different forum.
I agree with this. Garry is a pretty good game dev and not so good of a community manager, and Hezzy is a pretty good community manager. What sucks is that Hezzy's power is totally at garry's mercy.
If Garry really cares this little about the forum, he should make that official. Hand power over it over to Hezzy completely, and get someone to do actual development work on it.
EA bought out Facepunch Studios.
Remember when Garry said moving over to the new forums was meant to speed up development, and how making everyone use the new forums was so he could take feedback on changes?
Now he just makes a handful of highly unpopular changes every 3 months and doesn't interact with anyone.
That's alright, just make a new thread specifically for that post
I'm impressed by the large amount of coins op made from this thread.
if it ain't broke don't fix it, garry, we don't want facepunch to be reddit 2
I was about to post about how I'm excited to see those changes you linked to get implemented, but then I realized that you posted them nineteen days ago. Not only did did none of them happen between then and now, but Garry instead went and made changes that made the forum even worse. Furthermore, I really doubt the first item on your list ("Reverting / making the subforum change optional. Possibility of adding filters") is even going to happen at this point seeing as the now arbitrary, tiny post limit runs completely counter to the idea of megathreads.
You can say that you and Garry are working to make the forum better, but I'll believe it when I see it. So far, the community's grievances have been ignored and a bunch of non-issues have been """""fixed""""" to be worse than they were before. Has even one of our requests seen any degree of implementation yet?
Technically it's still broke
this is just an awful change. How do you manage to continue to ignore feedback and just make the forums worse?
any institution that fails to pay attention to their users/visitors and their needs is bound to fail.
He broke it even more.
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The apparent disconnect between management and users
