The Agora = ?

[Scarman]

What is / How to become / What are the rules to being... a Public Speaker
What is...

The Agora is the place where some chosen players can come and ask the MOD and BB team questions, open discussions about specific topics (such as moderation, rules or community mood) with the team, and share their thoughts and experience in order to make the game more enjoyable for all of us.

Through this process we hope to publicly address the hottest, most important or most controversial topics of the time in a controlled and calm fashion.


How to become...

If you wish to become a public speaker, please ask your favorite Moderator. Explain to him/her why you would like to become a Public speaker and what qualities you have that would help us choose you.

Be warned, it's the moderators choice to present you or not to the moderation team as a possible public speaker: make sure the moderator knows you from previous actions within the TSO community. Also, being an active member of the community, being calm and diplomatic, being mature and open to discussion are all qualities we expect from our Public Speakers.


The rules...

The basic rules are simple: be objective, be calm, be understanding, if you don't agree then do it in a constructive manner. Please do not denounce players or mods: point out a general mistake and give a constructive counter-measure.

If we respect these rules, we should be able to bring significant and long-term improvement to the game and the community.


Thank you,

BB_Azariel

I feel i had to make a thread about this as i feel the approach here is a FAIL.

If you wish to become a public speaker, please ask your favorite Moderator. Explain to him/her why you would like to become a Public speaker and what qualities you have that would help us choose you.

Well in my position i have No Favourite Moderator as i spend most of my Idle time in G-7, where for the most part we have self Moderated. I may be unique in this, but still a major fail in the Public Speaker department.

Be warned, it's the moderators choice to present you or not to the moderation team as a possible public speaker: make sure the moderator knows you from previous actions within the TSO community. Also, being an active member of the community, being calm and diplomatic, being mature and open to discussion are all qualities we expect from our Public Speakers.

Again another fail, The Public Speaker's Positions will be filled with 'Moderators Pets'.
I have played previously games with exactly the same set up and the outcome has never benifited the game for the 'whole community'.
If you want to have a discussion group, with players that will bring forth ideas and issues that are relevant to the day to day running of the game, 'pets' are not the answer.

In my Opinion other options need to be looked at.

Please be aware that i am not belittling Moderators, but they are human and therefore biased from the start.

[Scrooge]

Again another fail, The Public Speaker's Positions will be filled with 'Moderators Pets'.
I have played previously games with exactly the same set up and the outcome has never benifited the game for the 'whole community'.
If you want to have a discussion group, with players that will bring forth ideas and issues that are relevant to the day to day running of the game, 'pets' are not the answer.

I disagree with you in this.. The "Public Speakers" will most likely be a mix of "pets" as you call them and mature players who feel they can voice the concerns of the community in general.

I for one welcome this as it's an opportunity i askt for. And im certainly no-ones pet Altho i would have liked it to be publicly available instead of closed. But publicly addressing issues would lead to insufferable amounts of flaming and trolling.

You say this is a FAIL as if it was a certainty when in truth it's just an opinion.
Where others have failed we have yet to try, so why do you demean the effort?

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I have to ask tho, why only MOD's? clearly the BB's can cast a gander at the forum posts of any applicant and use the veto right.

[Scarman]

I have to ask tho, why only MOD's? clearly the BB's can cast a gander at the forum posts of any applicant and use the veto right.

This is my exact thoughts, so where is the retort... or did you miss

In my Opinion other options need to be looked at.

That is an option worth considering.

[Scrooge]

Well.. Scarman.

If you wanted to point out that more staff could appoint public speakers you hid the sentiment well.

I do still disagree with you in general but support your opinion of searching for other options, got any you'd like to voice at this time and day?
By the way, retort -> Explanatory Link

[Scarman]

I just feel that having to get friendly with a Moderator, to have any opportunity of being a 'Public Speaker' will not serve the community as intended.

Why not have an open Thread for players to put their name forward with the reason they would like to be considered for the role. Like an applications thread. Then by all means let the Mod's look through the list and 'Applications' to put forward who they feel maybe viable for the role, as they witness players in Global channels all day long.

And you have completely mis interpreted what i have tried to say Scrooge. The fact that after only a few months BB want player input as to issues in day to day play is great, real solutions to real problems in the game can be addressed quickly and efficiently.

[Warhunger]

this is what we call corruption over here, the speaker has to talk for the players, but is not chosen by the players.

its almost like politics the only difference is that ppl dont get payed for this job.

i have many issues about this, but who am i to say

[DamianG]

I would have to agree with Scarman on faliure of the fact that to become a Publick speaker you need to befriend one or more moderators, therefore you will have to share they opinion and as such your figure of public speacker will be partially onesided, so the "public" bit is not as "open" as it sould be. but from this being friendly to be the pet vision is a long, long gap.
On the other hand if what BB wants is a public speaker that is afin to the moderation team, why bother? nominate directly the moderators themselves, after all, they the ones that will forward the speakers, so cut the middle man and go strait for the already settled public figures that we all know and respect. and i say respect, with the due respect; in my case in particular i know some of the today moderator since the times of the BBGC (blue byte game chanel) from Settlers 4.
If what BB wants is the opnion of general players they sould monitor the chats themselves or even beter create a section on the forum where each one of the pretendients to the role will forward themselves and be voted for the general player, in this way, we all will know exactly wich candidate is more popular, after all none of us (the players) are stupid and whether intervining on the chit-chat of every day or not, we read the chat and know who talk rubish and who is a potencial pet and who is interested in helping and who has good (or bad) ideas, atitude and who chats becouse they like to hear thenselves and so on and so ford. And most importan of all, we ( the players) are the ones that pay for this game to be on line.
So no, i disagree with BB that the public speacker sould be "recomended" for a moderator.

[Kioco]

I have no problem with players that send a application to me about being a public speaker, I have received one already.

I am not recruiting any moderator pets at all, infact I will turn the other way if any players turn to ( sucking up) to me to get what they want from me, I have plenty of respect for players that act muture, play the game to their best ability and learn the strategy's to be the best at it, respect the rules and everyone involved in the game, they are the people that I would recommend to BB about these positions.

I am only a new moderator, and I don't know many of the other mods that well yet, however I do know Moderators Penny and Sciba for a number of years, and I know for a fact they wont give anyone a chance that comes running up to them to be a pet, they will turn towards supporting the players that act mature, be helpful, trade fairly, respect the rules, the game, the players and so forth.

I am in trade channel a lot, as I do quite a lot of trading, mostly through whispers but I am there watching the channel often, specially during australian peak time, so I dont believe in these mod pets that you speak of, I will always give the people that deserve the right attention and benefits of my support when needed.


Kioco

[Scrooge]

I share the concerns of you all but i do not fear them becoming a reality!
I believe that the moderators rather than the public have been chosen to present players to speak for the community because their trusted to bring forth people who know how to properly voice ideas, concerns and so forth.

Furthermore i also feel confident that should the appointed players not properly represent themselves on behalf of the community the BB team would have them striped of the privilege.

being an active member of the community, being calm and diplomatic, being mature and open to discussion are all qualities we expect from our Public Speakers.

I would like to highlight this section of Azariels introduction to the Agora.

If you wish to become a public speaker, please ask your favorite Moderator. Explain to him/her why you would like to become a Public speaker and what qualities you have that would help us choose you.

It seems to me that we as players should have favorites rather than the aforementioned moderators having pets.

As to why the Agora is not publicly available.

The Agora is the place where some chosen players can come and ask the MOD and BB team questions, open discussions about specific topics (such as moderation, rules or community mood) with the team, and share their thoughts and experience in order to make the game more enjoyable for all of us.

the Agora is as quoted above, a place to question the rules etc without having to deal with trolls, wizards or flamers throwing a fit.
As i understand it anyway.

as Azariel put it (forgive me for quoting a pm here Azariel)

This would help you (for example) talk about sensitive subjects without fear of being modded.

I hope this have cast some light on the dreads i have seen posted so far.

[stalk]

I simply applied to a random MOD i saw in help (Kioco). He was very friendly and immediately posted my application on some type of internal application forum. That part seems to be working fine in my eyes. Haven't said two words to him before this.

I just hope they don't choose people based on their fame from global-1 and help. Alot of the more advanced players i know got bored of the repeated questions and spam that is frequent there on day 1.