What If: User Support Intermediary Organization

[TheAlmightyOS]

Honestly, I don't like how this went from being a not-official, only-sanction-helpful-users-within-thread idea to a full-blown change the forum hierarchy and rules to explicitly set up a group of extra privileged people. Frankly, I can't think of a better way to set modders and users against each other than create an official-modder-and-forum-sanctioned group of people for support, which will look a lot like modders are trying to avoid engaging with users. One of my concerns was about this becoming too official, with the perception of distance between users and modders, and it's been going down that path for the last few pages.

I don't think there's much value in pursuing this much more, and I'm just going to stick to whatever completely informal and un-sanctioned stuff already happens in my mod threads; it's certainly simpler for me to do that than deal with whatever shenanigans are needed for this, and there will be fewer unintended consequences to deal with for me and less work for the moderators.

And that is that. In the end it is about you ferram4 and the other modders and what is best for you. [i reread that, could be taken as hostility. NOT INTENDED! I mean it, it's all for you guys, every idea I am wracking my brain for!]

The structured idea come to light after I had been told that the user-base here is semi-hostile and consider abusive feedback to the modder as "expected". So I wanted to put a bit of a wall there for protection. But, with that being xed....

The wiki/knowledgebase is still a viable option, right?

Edited August 7, 2014 by TheAlmightyOS

[diomedea]

As I mentioned above to farram4, I am in agreement with you about implementation of the recognition of who is an expert and who isnt. I do not think it is feasible. The reason I had pointed it out a second time was to address the concern that the modders (namely farram4) have about impersonation. Without the distinguishing characteristics, would this be considered a viable option? without it I do not know how to address Farram4's concerns.

Sorry if I am late to answer.

Ferram4 provided a very good scenario with post #42, about impersonation. It actually helps with my considerations about the user status, because we would have no way to differentiate - once a user received such a status, we would have no way to state about what mod(s). Only the modder can actively make that evident (in the way he considers best) with his mod. A user who wanted to boast any competence with a mod may choose to show something with his custom user title or his signature (or other custom profile settings), as those are the only fields a user may directly change. If modders would like to allow for such visible signs of recognition, fine; but in case they weren't awarded, the staff may edit them from a user's profile.

Also, if modders do like other ways to improve support with their mods, all the better.

[cpast]

One of the biggest issues with using some forum mechanism to designate people as "experts" is that if staff put some status on a user's profile indicating that they're somehow special, it looks like that status was officially granted by Squad. If a user is formally designated as an "expert" using some forum mechanism that can't be replicated by other users (i.e. staff have to be involved), people won't think they're picked by the modder -- they'll think they're given that role by forum staff, and that they're officially endorsed by Squad. That might make sense if someone is helping people work with KSP itself (where Squad is fairly authoritative on "how stuff works"), but not when they're helping with a third-party mod.

For that matter, why do you need people to be appropriately vetted to be eligible to give support? If someone giving support is incompetent, that should be handled by the mod creator saying to them "No, that isn't how it works, don't tell people things if they're wrong things". It's not like people are giving medical advice or something, where the consequences of incompetent advice are very high. The worst that happens with an incompetent person giving support is a frustrated user who got bad advice, and a frustrated modder who can take it up with that person (or with forum staff if the person is persistent). No one will die if a user gets poor support.

[cybutek]

Lets forget about an officially sanctioned system that divides the community between the modders, helpers and users. It may have good intentions, but in the end will only help to boost self-importance and authority complexes rather than solving any problems. The egalitarian system which we currently have should remain. In the eyes of the system, mod makers and casual players are completely equal. Any respect the community has for specific people is thus earned on its own merit. This whole social structure where equality is key keeps things open to debate, and also allows the less technologically savey users to feel free in trying to contribute and help out. Be it a simple ModuleManager config or helping out others with problems. Even if this may result in some bad help here and there, this can be solved fairly easily. The alternative where the community could just end up relying on "authority" figures instead of helping its self, is a very bad prospect.

The idea of a knowledge base that's simple and easy for anyone to use and add to is still the best idea. A standardised place that all mods can make use of. I'm sure that if the bigger mods got behind it and asked their respective communities for help populating it, there could be enough momentum to get it rolling. From then on, if an answer is on the knowledge base and someone asks in the thread, they can then be linked to it as the means of getting the word out.

[TheAlmightyOS]

That is the beauty of a discussion like this. One branch does not work out you just end it and move on to the other. So the non-official, non-sanctioned user support idea isn't buried. We just need to get back to it .

I am not a modder (yet. working on it. documentation is crap) so I do not have any experience to bring to the table as far as this goes. I guess what needs to be discussed about it? For an informal system any modder could do that right now without putting anything special in place.

Lets forget about an officially sanctioned system that divides the community between the modders, helpers and users. It may have good intentions, but in the end will only help to boost self-importance and authority complexes rather than solving any problems. The egalitarian system which we currently have should remain. In the eyes of the system, mod makers and casual players are completely equal. Any respect the community has for specific people is thus earned on its own merit. This whole social structure where equality is key keeps things open to debate, and also allows the less technologically savey users to feel free in trying to contribute and help out. Be it a simple ModuleManager config or helping out others with problems. Even if this may result in some bad help here and there, this can be solved fairly easily. The alternative where the community could just end up relying on "authority" figures instead of helping its self, is a very bad prospect.

The idea of a knowledge base that's simple and easy for anyone to use and add to is still the best idea. A standardised place that all mods can make use of. I'm sure that if the bigger mods got behind it and asked their respective communities for help populating it, there could be enough momentum to get it rolling. From then on, if an answer is on the knowledge base and someone asks in the thread, they can then be linked to it as the means of getting the word out.

As I mentioned upthread, I would be more then willing to start work on a wiki or knowledgebase. I would just need a set of requirements from the modders. Features and such.

Edited August 8, 2014 by Vanamonde
Quoting removed post.

[Vanamonde]

Several needlessly personal posts have been removed from this thread. Please confine the discussion to the topic and avoid commenting on each other's personalities.

[Greys]

So uh, I was away for all of that, I watched it in horror on my phone as many of you deftly avoided getting in a fight several times.

Thanks Vanamonde.

I just want to say that I really don't think there's any need for 'experts' to be that mechanical, but if yalls really wanted the way to do it would be with user managed user groups, similar to Guilds on Gaia Online or Outfits in Planetside 2, anybody who wants can make one and they're in charge of who joins and who stays, and there's some kind of badge thing; The problem is that any solution which displays on the post will be limited in how many groups a user can display next to their posts simply because too many would mess with the page layout. I took a look and couldn't find any decent looking thing for vBulletin, closest I could find was a bunch of things for minorleague esports team roster epeen billboarding, so it'd need to be made from scratch and in a lot of ways that's not something we can expect Squad to go along with, my main concern would be that a custom solution may be unstable or insecure.

Still, I don't think we need it on the forums, but what we could do is have sig ribbons, and even that I wouldn't bother with.

The support doesn't need to be the exclusive source of assistance either, by no means should the modder picking a guy or few to help equal the modder telling everybody else to shut up and let the professionals handle it, but through the relationship those people would be able to help better, and the modder would be able to step back, and if somebody else is wrong, the designated support should know and be there to inform all parties of the correct truth. Where it is helpful for the support to have legitimized authority is on other-sites, knowledgebase, bugtrackers, maybe the mod gets it's own forum, maybe the mod has it's own reddit, maybe there's a multiplayer server, or a planetside 2 outfit. In these places there's more to do than just posting and if a lot of users descend upon them it'll take a lot of work to keep up with.

[NathanKell]

A spur-of-the-moment suggestion. One way to informally try this out: if modders add a section to our OPs thanking particularly exemplary users for the help they've been providing. This will flag out those users as having a bit of official weight behind them, and also add some positive reinforcement, without creating a formal structure.

[cpast]

A spur-of-the-moment suggestion. One way to informally try this out: if modders add a section to our OPs thanking particularly exemplary users for the help they've been providing. This will flag out those users as having a bit of official weight behind them, and also add some positive reinforcement, without creating a formal structure.

That would definitely be nice.