Allow Players to add their own reactions to Announcements
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I actually completely disagree. As someone who makes announcements, and I'm sure many others agree with me here, I would prefer my announcement not be flooded with people's emojis from their own server, and the potential that those emojis are inappropriate. Regardless if we can delete them or not, IF it does happen, we need specific people to delete it because not everyone can.
TallBlondeDude
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TallBlondeDude
Auralock
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It really just feels like an unnecessary change that would have little-to-no benefits with a lot of downsides. My point still stands about us wanting announcements to have a clean appearance, but it's also the fact that this would add another thing that we need to moderate. How it is now, with the person making the announcement deciding on the emojis people can react with, makes the most sense. Those emojis mostly are relevant to the announcement.
I think that people would enjoy having the ability to add reactions. Seeing the community band together to react "BABABOOEY" to an announcement? That's the stuff that solidifies the community which is currently drifting apart. It may not be something you like as a staff member, but it's definitely something that the community would take joy in.
There are numerous moderators on this server, and saying that they can't reasonably enforce rules about inappropriate emoji's is preposterous. That would take negligible amounts of effort in comparison to moderating text chats. You only have to worry about individual letters, not entire pages of text.
I see where you’re coming from, though as a moderator myself I disagree that players should be able to add their own reactions.
In reality: there really isn’t. A lot of times we even struggle to have enough in-game mods, and there’s over 20 of us. Very little people are able to add/remove reactions, and a lot of times it can’t be accessed for awhile due to staff’s irl responsibilities and other positions.
Though this would be fun, we need to look at the professionalism side to the server. The announcements made on those channels are designed to look professional and easy to access as possible. With multiple reaction emojis in place, the professional aspect would go down almost entirely.
As I agree it would be fun, we need to look at how it will be moderated, as I’m sure there will be quite more than 1 inappropriate emoji on there. And look at the professional side to Potterworld, with multiple emojis would show lack of maturity.
In reality: there really isn’t. A lot of times we even struggle to have enough in-game mods, and there’s over 20 of us. Very little people are able to add/remove reactions, and a lot of times it can’t be accessed for awhile due to staff’s irl responsibilities and other positions.
Though this would be fun, we need to look at the professionalism side to the server. The announcements made on those channels are designed to look professional and easy to access as possible. With multiple reaction emojis in place, the professional aspect would go down almost entirely.
As I agree it would be fun, we need to look at how it will be moderated, as I’m sure there will be quite more than 1 inappropriate emoji on there. And look at the professional side to Potterworld, with multiple emojis would show lack of maturity.
Firstly, it's a lot easier to moderate Discord emoji reactions than logging onto Potterworld and following whatever protocols you must. It's a simple check by an individual moderator every once in a while. You could do it while scrolling through channels to chat with the community. There's just no way that it can be considered a burden on moderation. Furthermore, I have to be honest with you Cate, this is a Harry Potter Minecraft Server. I think it's willing to sacrifice professionalism for the sake of community, don't you? Also, please don't type in white it hurts my eyes.
I initially agree with what Avi is suggesting here but I also see a number of points that I would like to directly respond to. I might just be misunderstanding, but I'd like to know what the full idea behind certain points is.
I was surprised to see that nobody has mentioned this before but discord actually has a maximum amount of reactions that one can add to messages, and this amount is 20. I don't know what your personal definition of "flooding" is, but depending on how wide your screen is, this could actually fit in a single line underneath the actual announcement. I personally don't think 20 is an amount that can be seen as "flooded with emojis".
First of all, I was a tad disappointed to see this message (which was a direct response to what Tall said) not really touch on "but what if certain people are given the perms to moderate this".
You mention this being "an unnecessary change that would have little-to-no benefits with a lot of downsides". Just checking, correct me if I'm wrong, but so far this is what I've read in this thread alone:
Benefits:
- Community involvement
- Solidifying the community that is currently drifting apart
- The community would take joy in this
Downsides:
- Difficult to moderate
- Unclean appearance is deemed unprofessional
This is just quoting the things that have been said so far. And again, if I've missed something, please let me know, but so far within this thread alone I do not see more downsides than benefits so I think it's not very justified to say that there are a lot of downsides without mentioning more of the downsides, or saying there are little-to-no benefits when so far, the benefits are more in number than the downsides.
How I see it is as follows: Whenever an announcement is posted, if people are able to freely react with their own emojis, there only needs to be 1 person available in the few minutes after the announcement is posted to remove any inappropriate emojis: 20 at the most. This would take a few minutes at most and then the emoji slots would already be full, so there doesn't need to be any more moderation as it would be physically impossible to add more reactions. Again, if I'm wrong, please correct my logic but personally I don't really see why moderation is being made such a great deal when it's only a few minutes of extra work for 1 person.
If you're worrying about professionalism on a minecraft harry potter server, I think there are much more important things to be worrying about than reactions on a discord server.
Furthermore, I think sometimes one needs to sacrifise part of their professionality in order for them to be truly professional. If staff members were completely professional, they would be distanced completely from the playerbase and the only interaction that would occur, would be warnings or help, in the most monotone of ways. But this is not the case, staff members enjoy communicating with the playerbase as well beyond those responsibilities, which gives room for a better relationship between staff team and playerbase. And that is, in my opinion, a far more professional way of operating than what I just described.
In a similar fashion I think allowing the playerbase more freedom when it comes to reactions would actually be somewhat more professional. The community gets more freedom and thus more room to get authentic experiences from the server. But again, that's just how I see this notion right now, I am open to hearing more of the downsides of this idea.
I was surprised to see that nobody has mentioned this before but discord actually has a maximum amount of reactions that one can add to messages, and this amount is 20. I don't know what your personal definition of "flooding" is, but depending on how wide your screen is, this could actually fit in a single line underneath the actual announcement. I personally don't think 20 is an amount that can be seen as "flooded with emojis".
First of all, I was a tad disappointed to see this message (which was a direct response to what Tall said) not really touch on "but what if certain people are given the perms to moderate this".
You mention this being "an unnecessary change that would have little-to-no benefits with a lot of downsides". Just checking, correct me if I'm wrong, but so far this is what I've read in this thread alone:
Benefits:
- Community involvement
- Solidifying the community that is currently drifting apart
- The community would take joy in this
Downsides:
- Difficult to moderate
- Unclean appearance is deemed unprofessional
This is just quoting the things that have been said so far. And again, if I've missed something, please let me know, but so far within this thread alone I do not see more downsides than benefits so I think it's not very justified to say that there are a lot of downsides without mentioning more of the downsides, or saying there are little-to-no benefits when so far, the benefits are more in number than the downsides.
How I see it is as follows: Whenever an announcement is posted, if people are able to freely react with their own emojis, there only needs to be 1 person available in the few minutes after the announcement is posted to remove any inappropriate emojis: 20 at the most. This would take a few minutes at most and then the emoji slots would already be full, so there doesn't need to be any more moderation as it would be physically impossible to add more reactions. Again, if I'm wrong, please correct my logic but personally I don't really see why moderation is being made such a great deal when it's only a few minutes of extra work for 1 person.
If you're worrying about professionalism on a minecraft harry potter server, I think there are much more important things to be worrying about than reactions on a discord server.
Furthermore, I think sometimes one needs to sacrifise part of their professionality in order for them to be truly professional. If staff members were completely professional, they would be distanced completely from the playerbase and the only interaction that would occur, would be warnings or help, in the most monotone of ways. But this is not the case, staff members enjoy communicating with the playerbase as well beyond those responsibilities, which gives room for a better relationship between staff team and playerbase. And that is, in my opinion, a far more professional way of operating than what I just described.
In a similar fashion I think allowing the playerbase more freedom when it comes to reactions would actually be somewhat more professional. The community gets more freedom and thus more room to get authentic experiences from the server. But again, that's just how I see this notion right now, I am open to hearing more of the downsides of this idea.
I don't think that it's necessary to have additional emotes added by other people for the announcements section in the pw discord channel. Just scrolling through them right now and I think that most of the emotes are sufficient enough to provide a quick reaction to the announcement itself, save for not being able to add a downvote for when another house wins the house cup or when applications get closed though.
The community involvement aspect could be done through replying to the thread posted in the forum, so there's that. It doesn't have to be a silly emote or word that's only done to be funny and get reactions in the #announcements section.
The community involvement aspect could be done through replying to the thread posted in the forum, so there's that. It doesn't have to be a silly emote or word that's only done to be funny and get reactions in the #announcements section.
If this is true then I think there is no reason not to have it. Most of the people who have made an announcement have discord perms anyway and don't immediately alt f4 when they do it so it won't be an inconvenience to anyone. Plus its not like this is some kind of new issue with people having freedom on the discord server, there are like 10 text channels that all have to be moderated at once at all times.
EDIT: Also to anyone who believes that adding reactions by the players ruins "professionalism" I ask, is :cryingkim:, :happyblob:, : omg: or :rupaul: professional? These were all reactions on the last 5 or so announcements.
EDIT: Also to anyone who believes that adding reactions by the players ruins "professionalism" I ask, is :cryingkim:, :happyblob:, : omg: or :rupaul: professional? These were all reactions on the last 5 or so announcements.
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I honestly don't get what half the fuss is about omG. It's been said mANY times - if there are any inappropriate reactions that r used then it takes ONE! ONEEEE! moderator to check occasionally and if there are bad ones they remove them. And also sometimes being professional is not always the best thing :/ It's a MINECRAFT server
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you here. Professionalism is INCREDIBLY important. As the Head of Media & Public Relations, it's my responsibility to make sure that we ensure all visuals and branding are professional and look clean. By being professional, we show that what we are doing here on Potterworld is taken seriously by our staff team (especially Head Staff & Leads) and that we care about our image. If we were to always just be relaxed and fun and only do what the players wanted, we would not be seen as reliable as a team or server. Yes, we are a Minecraft server, but we also have a store and are trying to maintain a reputation. For example, if we do not look professional, would parents be willing to trust their young kids and buy items off our store? The answer is no, they would not. We also want Potterworld to grow and to do something like this, professionalism is incredibly important.
I've also just joined the Discords of two incredibly popular Minecraft servers (Wynncaft & Mineplex) to see how they go about with reactions on announcements. Neither of them allows players to react with any emoji they want. Wynncraft only puts one emoji/reaction per announcement. Mineplex typically has between 0-6 emojis/reactions on their announcement. They also do this to maintain professionalism. Again, professionalism is incredibly important. I know that it's easy to say that it's not from a player's perspective, but that is really not the fact of the matter.
As for the emoji idea, I am also not a fan of it. You all are saying that it's easy to moderate or just remove the reactions. There are quite a few trolls on the Discord. I know for a fact that if a staff member removes an emoji that's not really appropriate, two things will happen. 1) They will re-add the emoji. 2) People will start getting angry at staff for removing a certain emoji. There's also the fact that trolls will also go through the old announcements and add random (perhaps inappropriate) emojis to them. We don't want this either. Personally, I don't like using the :cryingkim: & :rupaul: emojis in announcements because I don't think it's professional, but at the end of the day they are incredibly minor and are emojis we already have on the PW Discord. Also, 1-2 emojis like this being used on an announcement are vastly different than 20 random unrelated emojis. BUT, if their use is truly a concern, I'm more than willing to bring it up with the other Head Staff & Leads.
I also want to say that having staff members constantly go through announcements and remove reactions is not something that we'd want our staff to do. Personally, as a Head Staff member, I have a lot of things I have to focus on. I manage a team of over 50+ members, but I also am a university student. I do not have the time to go back and scroll through the announcements channel and search for emojis that are inappropriate. People who are not HS also have a lot on their plate. A Jr. Prefect's job is to moderate in chat and ensure that players are comfortable and safe in-game. I would never want to distract those team members from their actual job to do something like this. An Unspeakable for example is really busy building quests (which mind you is incredibly difficult and takes hours). Again, I would not want to distract them. Every team member's time is valuable and I appreciate all the work they do as a part of our team. I do not want to take their time away from the work they applied to do. I do also want to say that this type of "moderating" requires more manual work. The bots we have on the main Discord aid Discord Moderators in finding inappropriate messages, nicknames, names, etc. This makes moderating all the channels much easier.
I understand how you guys believe this would lift up the community and make things more fun. Those are things I'm all for, but this is truly not the proper way to do this. We provide many ways for players to get involved in the community. The latest way for players to be involved in the Community Engagement Times hosted & run entirely by the Inquisitorial Squad. They work really hard to make these happen each month and I encourage you guys to attend them. We know that our engagement with the community needs work and we're working on more ways to do this. For example, we're working on having all Head of Houses more involved in the community. I as a Head Staff member am also trying to be more involved in the community as I believe that it's incredibly important. We are doing whatever we can to make the community come closer and it's something that takes time. BUT to do this, we will always make sure that there is a clear line and ensure we have professionalism no matter what.
I'm sure many of you will disagree with me, but as someone who has played on the server for years (5 years to be exact) and has been staff for a good portion of my time, this is my take on this. Thank you for reading.
I've also just joined the Discords of two incredibly popular Minecraft servers (Wynncaft & Mineplex) to see how they go about with reactions on announcements. Neither of them allows players to react with any emoji they want. Wynncraft only puts one emoji/reaction per announcement. Mineplex typically has between 0-6 emojis/reactions on their announcement. They also do this to maintain professionalism. Again, professionalism is incredibly important. I know that it's easy to say that it's not from a player's perspective, but that is really not the fact of the matter.
As for the emoji idea, I am also not a fan of it. You all are saying that it's easy to moderate or just remove the reactions. There are quite a few trolls on the Discord. I know for a fact that if a staff member removes an emoji that's not really appropriate, two things will happen. 1) They will re-add the emoji. 2) People will start getting angry at staff for removing a certain emoji. There's also the fact that trolls will also go through the old announcements and add random (perhaps inappropriate) emojis to them. We don't want this either. Personally, I don't like using the :cryingkim: & :rupaul: emojis in announcements because I don't think it's professional, but at the end of the day they are incredibly minor and are emojis we already have on the PW Discord. Also, 1-2 emojis like this being used on an announcement are vastly different than 20 random unrelated emojis. BUT, if their use is truly a concern, I'm more than willing to bring it up with the other Head Staff & Leads.
I also want to say that having staff members constantly go through announcements and remove reactions is not something that we'd want our staff to do. Personally, as a Head Staff member, I have a lot of things I have to focus on. I manage a team of over 50+ members, but I also am a university student. I do not have the time to go back and scroll through the announcements channel and search for emojis that are inappropriate. People who are not HS also have a lot on their plate. A Jr. Prefect's job is to moderate in chat and ensure that players are comfortable and safe in-game. I would never want to distract those team members from their actual job to do something like this. An Unspeakable for example is really busy building quests (which mind you is incredibly difficult and takes hours). Again, I would not want to distract them. Every team member's time is valuable and I appreciate all the work they do as a part of our team. I do not want to take their time away from the work they applied to do. I do also want to say that this type of "moderating" requires more manual work. The bots we have on the main Discord aid Discord Moderators in finding inappropriate messages, nicknames, names, etc. This makes moderating all the channels much easier.
I understand how you guys believe this would lift up the community and make things more fun. Those are things I'm all for, but this is truly not the proper way to do this. We provide many ways for players to get involved in the community. The latest way for players to be involved in the Community Engagement Times hosted & run entirely by the Inquisitorial Squad. They work really hard to make these happen each month and I encourage you guys to attend them. We know that our engagement with the community needs work and we're working on more ways to do this. For example, we're working on having all Head of Houses more involved in the community. I as a Head Staff member am also trying to be more involved in the community as I believe that it's incredibly important. We are doing whatever we can to make the community come closer and it's something that takes time. BUT to do this, we will always make sure that there is a clear line and ensure we have professionalism no matter what.
I'm sure many of you will disagree with me, but as someone who has played on the server for years (5 years to be exact) and has been staff for a good portion of my time, this is my take on this. Thank you for reading.
I can't agree with you more Sunnya. It'd have to be a whole separate sub-department in Community Management if we were to do this. As a Jr Prefect myself, if we were to look through all announcements and remove unwanted emojis, that'll direct our attention from moderating a whole larger picture, to something small like this.
I fully agree with this. From my POV as an inquisitor, Community Engagement events are an incredible way of getting involved. Bonds strengthen, friends are made, and so much more. With a new emplacement of allowing players to add their own reactions, this'll also drive away the attention needed to make these amazing events.
I do strongly agree with this. And this is why, though as a staff member, making friends and being an active communicator on the server is a strong priority to me, which is why I'm commonly recognized as the one with all the chat fails. However, in this particular situation, there's no need for immaturity. They're just common announcements upon updates.
I fully agree with this. From my POV as an inquisitor, Community Engagement events are an incredible way of getting involved. Bonds strengthen, friends are made, and so much more. With a new emplacement of allowing players to add their own reactions, this'll also drive away the attention needed to make these amazing events.
I do strongly agree with this. And this is why, though as a staff member, making friends and being an active communicator on the server is a strong priority to me, which is why I'm commonly recognized as the one with all the chat fails. However, in this particular situation, there's no need for immaturity. They're just common announcements upon updates.
The amount of moderation it would take is insanely low. You just have to *glance* at the reactions a couple minutes after the thread's posted, for the negligible chance that someone even put an inappropriate emoji. And I understand your drive for professionalism, but at the end of the day this is a Harry Potter Minecraft Server. Sacrificing professionalism for community involvement isn't ridiculous. I don't think parents are going to scroll through #announcements, see someone react with a dead crewmate among us emoji, and tell their kids they can't buy items off the store.
How is this professional ?
Most of the emotes are either black text which is hard to read. Or random player heads that have no meaning/emotion.
Custom emotes (such as peepo dreamworld) provide way better reactions in order to express feelings one may have about such announcements.
This is a server for a game made for kids. I doubt that the young folks here care about "professionalism". Also, by being "professional" things like this happen:
Feedback on staff interactions (worth a read)
TLDR: Thread is about staff being too robotic, lacking authenticity and following templates for messages
What stops players from adding inappropriate emojis to previous messages in general ? Does the staff check every single message that was send just to make sure there are no bad apples ? I doubt that. Also, people who troll want attention, they won't get any attention by reacting to messages that are 6 months old.
One more thing, just because there's a few people that are bad, doesn't mean everyone is or that everyone should suffer. This seems like 4th grade again when if one kid did something wrong, the whole class was punished.
"Yes, we do want more engagement with the community, no, not like the community wants, but how WE want it."
Apologies if I'm being too harsh, but I'm tired of seeing the staff trying to find the reasons on why something can't be done instead of how it can be done.
Most of the emotes are either black text which is hard to read. Or random player heads that have no meaning/emotion.
Custom emotes (such as peepo dreamworld) provide way better reactions in order to express feelings one may have about such announcements.
This is a server for a game made for kids. I doubt that the young folks here care about "professionalism". Also, by being "professional" things like this happen:
Feedback on staff interactions (worth a read)
TLDR: Thread is about staff being too robotic, lacking authenticity and following templates for messages
What stops players from adding inappropriate emojis to previous messages in general ? Does the staff check every single message that was send just to make sure there are no bad apples ? I doubt that. Also, people who troll want attention, they won't get any attention by reacting to messages that are 6 months old.
One more thing, just because there's a few people that are bad, doesn't mean everyone is or that everyone should suffer. This seems like 4th grade again when if one kid did something wrong, the whole class was punished.
"Yes, we do want more engagement with the community, no, not like the community wants, but how WE want it."
Apologies if I'm being too harsh, but I'm tired of seeing the staff trying to find the reasons on why something can't be done instead of how it can be done.
I also want to add this screenshot I took, as this is what announcements would look like if there was multiple reactions https://gyazo.com/e9381af6c797bc053b781ac72101b288 . Though these are just random emoji's, this is how it'd be if this were the case.
Cate, you explicitly asked people to add random emojis. While some people would put things like 
range: to be funny, the majority of the reactions would likely be people responding in various ways to changes on the server. For example, someone might put an angry face when the Honeybadgers won the house cup, or a dabbing emoji when their own house won. That's prime community involvement, not mini events or classes where staff play with players.
range: to be funny, the majority of the reactions would likely be people responding in various ways to changes on the server. For example, someone might put an angry face when the Honeybadgers won the house cup, or a dabbing emoji when their own house won. That's prime community involvement, not mini events or classes where staff play with players.- Status