POLL: Questions & Suggestions Channel

Voting Rules
-The voting for this poll will be open for the remainder of November after which final count will be tallied.

-Votes only count with a corresponding post. If you just vote without dropping a post confirming which option you voted for, your vote will not be counted. The forum based poll function is just for convenience at a glance and will be disabled if too many anonymous votes skew the actual recognized vote.

-Do not include the reason WHY you voted what you voted in this thread. This is to avoid arguments here.

-No debating here. Do so in another thread or in the discord.

-Vote changing will be enabled in case you make a vote but are later swayed by an argument made by staff or a fellow member.

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Subject of Vote
Recently staff enacted a new policy regarding the Questions and Suggestions channel. It has been changed to the Questions for Staff channel and non-staff have been banned from answering questions related to the systems in said channel. In addition, DMing staff about systems questions is now forbidden.

Links to/Quotes of staff based arguments as to why these changes were made will be added in the spoiler below. I will update this as staff are given time to formulate responses for the purposes of this poll and bump the thread tagging everyone who has voted thus far that it has been updated so that votes can be changed in response to staff justification. If you are staff and have updated or given a reasoning and I haven't updated this list, DM or PM me your revised position as I might have simply missed it. I will have it updated within 24 hours of a DM/PM.

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Notice to Voters
This vote holds no binding power over staff and is only to gauge member response to these changes to provide staff with feedback regarding this recent change. Do not expect staff to make changes based on the results of this poll. However, by expressing our will it can likely influence their decision or negotiate a middle ground during the following conversations held. In that sense, it is worth doing so.

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WARNING TO STAFF
Locking of this thread will be construed as an attempt, by staff, to suppress members from expressing their opinions and voicing discontent with staff actions. Do so at your own risk. There is nothing I could personally do to you, but the damage towards good will should be obvious and self-evident.

No

I voted no. Just posting to validate.

no

I am voting no despite being staff.

It serves to just further the void between members and staff. Cutting off communication in regards to questions, who is able to answer said questions, and offering suggestions is a terrible idea. It gives more hoops for staff and the community to jump through to get things done and only offers confusion in the end. When the topic of change was first brought up in the meeting, I was getting ready for work. When I began voicing my own concern and dislike about the subject, I was at work and was unable to fully provide and voice my discontent any further than what I initially stated. The channel was changed and the announcement was placed before I could really have any proper say. Also, by adding these new set of rules so to speak, it allows staff to unnecessarily punish members who may be quicker to respond or accurately provide an answer to someone's question if the members of staff are busy with work, school, and/or family matters. If I am being completely honest, this means potential muting on the Discord server to non-staff members that answer questions in the "new" channel. The decision was made the the "majority" who felt the same without actually considering the full repercussions of the actions they were about to set to motion. However, it's claimed the downfalls were taken into account, but that the benefits outweighed the negatives in the long run. I strongly disagree.

I created the Discord server as a means for faster and more reliable communication between our community, not for it to be used less or to cause such a great divide because "other people do it and it works". This is Magi, this is our server (though to be technical my server but that's beside the point as I made it for the whole and not the one or select few) and we shouldn't have to be like others. I think what we have works for us, a small rping community.

TLDR: I vote no and offer my own stance on the matter publicly for the community and staff to see.

I voted no, not much to be surprised about, for all of the reasons which contribute to this being a unanimous vote in disagreement with the decision. If you know me at all, you will know I do not like strong wording that could hurt people, but I think this was a stupid thing and should not have even come about.

I’m about to leave the site soon, so I really don’t want to get any further involved in this. However, I do feel somewhat obligated to say something about this poll at the very least.

I honest to god wish this could have not been done so quickly. I had wanted to bring up the meeting again among chat to go over the things and reevaluate shit. But now that this poll has happened, changes are no longer likely to happen without a great deal of unnecessary pain. You’ve only done well to make the rest of us even more defensive and likely more stubborn. But what’s been done has been done. I can’t facilitate any reconciliation anymore even if I wanted to, however. All I can do is leave you guys with my parting advice.

Give the new implementations a few weeks without raising a humongous fuss. You guys keep saying this will damage the community and if this is true, staff will see and change things. They're definitely more likely to change shit in this manner rather than because of a poll.

Anyway, I’m not voting shit. Sure, I have my issues—doubts that some aspects were really necessary, annoyed by how quickly shit was implemented, etc., but by voting, I’m validating this poll, which as I’ve already said, was kind of counter-productive to getting anything changed.