Allow Players to add their own reactions to Announcements

[Joshios]

Or random player heads that have no meaning/emotion.

These are emotes of Head staff members on the server. I know that’s not exactly clear, but I wanted tell you!

I’m going to have to disagree with this suggestion. Professionalism is very important, and I agree with Sunnya that if random emotes were used in announcements it wouldn’t look good for the server.

 

[Cate]

I do see some points here, maybe as an alternative: the PW server could have more reaction emojis. Like the Pepe emojis, and they can be added to each announcement! Another alternative in mind would be that we remove the ability to use emoji's from other servers, though for people with nitro, it wouldn't be very fair. So maybe regarding the alternative of adding more reaction emoji's to the discord, but with still needing staff to addd them, this may be a good way to still bring other's emojis to the announcements.

At the moment, only staff are disagreeing with this thread. Maybe in this case, what the community wants should outweigh staff's opinions.

Though I agree with this, in some cases like this, it just may not be fit for the server and used inappropriately. Around august (or September) I suggested adding a POG emote in-game, which this was respectfully declined, though I was staff at the time (and still am of course), and it was declined due to many not understanding what exactly POG means; and because it's just not fit for the server. Even though people agreed to my suggestion, it was still declined, by staff.

 

[Nyn]

Another alternative in mind would be that we remove the ability to use emoji's from other servers

Imo, perfect fix for the "people could use inappropriate reactions" issue

 

[Aviforma]

I'm completely happy with just using native Discord emojis. Removes the entire inappropriate emoji's argument, and means there's no reason it shouldn't happen.

 

[nathan1e]

Feedback on staff interactions (worth a read)
TLDR: Thread is about staff being too robotic, lacking authenticity and following templates for messages

oh wow that was such an interesting thread to read

 

[Chriss]

I completely disagree and don’t think this should happen. Players are able to add emoji reactions that can be put in a order and imply something that is inappropriate. Of course, staff can just remove them, but players most likely will just troll and add them back and that would just happen over and over again. Both staff and players would get annoyed with this and get into an argument or something along the things of an argument.

 

[Sunnya]

I do want to add that we do want to add our own custom emojis to the Discord that are a set of similarly styled emojis (kinda like how Hypixel has theirs). While we do want to do this, it's something that takes time as we would need to commission one person to make all of them. The current emojis we have now are, like Joshua mentioned, the MC heads of our Head Staff members (people who contribute a lot to the server and ensure it is running - not just random players) and ones we've carried over from when we switched from Slack to Discord.

For the native Discord emojis, there are still emojis there that can be thought of as inappropriate. It's all subjective, but one of Potterworld's aims is to maintain a player-friendly environment and we want to protect that at all costs.

Also, here are some screenshots from other popular MC server Discords:

Hypixel:​

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Mineplex:​

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Wynncraft:​

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[Cate]

Those are perfect examples. (Ty for finding those). In those servers, they allow very little interaction to the announcements. The fact we give quite a bit of emoji reactions in the first place is wonderful, and allows players to be more interactive with the announcements

 

[Llama]

Bababooey!

 

[nathan1e]

Of course, staff can just remove them, but players most likely will just troll and add them back and that would just happen over and over again.

As said before discord only allows up to 20 reactions on a single message. Those reaction slots would probably fill up so quickly that trolls wouldn't even be able to troll using multiple emojis. Furthermore if a reaction was removed, that slot would probably fill up with a different emoji in no time. If this suggestion were to be accepted (which I sincerely doubt it will) players would be keen to get their favorite emoji into a reaction slot, and the only way to do that is to be quick.

Both staff and players would get annoyed with this and get into an argument or something along the things of an argument.

I sincerely and utterly disagree with this notion. Even if this suggestion were to be declined for the sake of professionalism or impossible moderation, this very idea would be extremely unacceptable when it comes to not doing something, and I'll explain why.
Every single action of moderation creates annoyance, that's just what it does. Players don't like being told that what they did was wrong, but that's still what moderation is for. If your aim is to create as little annoyance as possible, all rules should be removed immediately, because those are what cause annoyance.
Completely uncorrelated example. Suppose for a moment (purely hypothetical) that swearing was allowed on PW, and someone made a suggestion to add swearing to the list of things that are not allowed. Someone could easily say that swearing should remain allowed, because making swearing forbidden would cause a lot more work for the moderation department and it would create annoyance within the playerbase, causing more arguments between players and staff. This last sentence does nothing to the notion of if swearing should be allowed or not, because arguments will always be formed after moderation actions are taken, regardless of which rules are being enforced. There's a reason why there's a rule that arguing with staff members is not allowed.

Bababooey!

hi llama

 

[Llama]

hi llama

Bababooey!

 

[Aviforma]

Potterworld isn't a network of hundreds of thousands of players. It's a smaller community, and thus we should have things such as these. Note in those announcements how much less "professionalism" there is in comparison to Potterworld. Hypixel even set an edit to their thread saying "thanks folks." That couldn't get through on Potterworld.

 

[Callie]

At the moment, only staff are disagreeing with this thread. Maybe in this case, what the community wants should outweigh staff's opinions.

I completely disagree. At the end of the day we'd be the ones having to moderate it and check for inappropriate reactions, so it should be an even say. While you can say that no one's gonna scroll that far up the bottom line is that we don't stand for anything inappropriate on this server. I don't think it's worth taking the chance that people are going to spam old announcements with bad/inappropriate emojis that we would have to consistently check. A common want here is community involvement, but would allowing the community to put 20 emojis on an announcement really bring us together? I agree we need community involvement, but in places where it's worth the time, like Community Engagement. And before someone quotes my post saying that I said it wasn't a big deal so it shouldn't be a problem, what I'm saying is this. It's not worth the time it takes to moderate or the manpower we would have to use to check all the old announcements so that people can give 20 emojis.

TL;DR: Community involvement is something I am 100% behind and definitely would like to see more of, but this just requires too much work for too little payoff.

 

[Pankakes]

Players are able to add emoji reactions that can be put in a order and imply something that is inappropriate

Default Discord emojis have letters, you can spell a lot of inappropriate things yet I don't see anyone doing it.

Honestly, if staff has it's hands full with moderating both Minecraft server and Discord I suggest:
Turn on Slow mode in every single channel
Disable reactions to messages
#art - only allow images, no text
#general - only talk about server specifically
#random - delete it, who wants to moderate the memes that are posted there, am I right ?
Allow chatting only when staff/moderator is present
Allow messages to be posted in certain format in order to be professional + Proper salutation, body paragraphs with the mention why the player is writing a message and a signature at the end

Stop looking into a crystal ball trying to know the future. Player emotes have not yet been enabled, yet you all know that every single troll on the server is waiting specifically on that and how that everyone will forget their manners once such thing is allowed.

Instead of trying to find the reasons as to why YOU (as in mostly staff who disagrees) don't want it, why didn't you propose to just try it for a week or two, to see if it'll be a fiasco or not.

Edit:

Community involvement is something I am 100% behind and definitely would like to see more of, but this just requires too much work for too little payoff.

Right click > Edit channel > Permissions > Student > "Add Reactions: ✓" "Use external emojis: ✓"

6 clicks isn't that much work

Right click > Reactions > Click X on the reaction you don't want

>3 clicks isn't that much work

 

[Pankakes]

Edit: moved the message to previous one

 

[Callie]

If we did the things you "suggested" you would come after us for making things too strict and professional. We have our hands full because it's a job that takes a lot of time and effort. We're trying our best and I hate to say this again but we are HUMAN. At the end of the day (and at the beginning and in the middle) we have lives and families and for you to imply that we don't want to do what we applied to do and spend hours if not days out of the week doing is rude. Bottom line, that's rude.

#random - delete it, who wants to moderate the memes that are posted there, am I right ?

So while three or six clicks "isn't that much" to you, scrolling through every announcement every day to make sure no one's posted anything inappropriate in the reactions (or spelled anything) is too much work for something with so little payoff.

And if we didn't look into the future at possible consequence this server would be chaos. We can't say that players would join with modified client if we made it no longer against the rules, but that doesn't mean we should take away that rule. Preventative measures are everything, and in more cases than not it's better to be safe than sorry.

Instead of trying to find the reasons as to why YOU (as in mostly staff who disagrees) don't want it, why didn't you propose to just try it for a week or two, to see if it'll be a fiasco or not.

Most staff replying to this thread aren't the ones making the final decision, we're giving our opinions just like you.

 

[nathan1e]

TL;DR: Community involvement is something I am 100% behind and definitely would like to see more of, but this just requires too much work for too little payoff.

(Only quoted the last bit for shortening purposes but consider this post a reply to your entire post)

I understand where you're coming from but I think Avi also has a point. How it looks like to me (and I assume also to Avi) is that a suggestion is being posted that has sparked quite a bit of controversy: a number of people agree, and a number of people disagree, and the people that disagree are mostly (but not all) staff members. I ask myself the following questions:
Do staff members truly disagree because this would be too much work for too little payoff, or do they simply not want to do the work for payoff that only reaches students and not staff members?
Are the staff members that disagree even open to an idea where they would have to put in more work for the sake of the community's joy?

I understand that this idea isn't easy to implement but I don't think that should in any way or form mean that it should immediately be discarded for that very sake.

And by all means, the 2 questions I just listed that I ask myself are in no way or form an attack towards any individual or group, it is just something that I wonder based off the way I see staff members respond in this thread. In my first post I invited Zmiya to tell me more about why he disagrees, and while he unfortunately didn't reply to that (yet), the same goes for any other person as I'm intrigued to read why people would disagree with this notion. However, I don't see much of a discussion going on when people just come here and disagree with this idea because it would at least be reasonable to explain why different notions or logic wouldn't apply to the PW discord server. But since that isn't happening, I (and, like I said, Avi, as far as I assume) get the impression that the staff members that come here to say they disagree would always have had that opinion, regardless the idea, regardless the points that have been brought forwards so far.

 

[Callie]

Do staff members truly disagree because this would be too much work for too little payoff, or do they simply not want to do the work for payoff that only reaches students and not staff members?

This question in particular strikes me as odd because most (if not all) of what we do includes us putting in work for things the playerbase gets to enjoy. While yes, because I'm a moderator I can enjoy the benefits of an appropriate server with good rules to allow everyone to have a good time, I do this because I love the community, it's an amazing group of people that I wouldn't trade for the world. As a Seer I create roleplay events and spend countless hours working behind the scenes so the students can enjoy something of high quality. So I would say that we do a lot of work for payoff for you guys, just not unnecessary work, as we have other things to do.

 

[nathan1e]

So I would say that we do a lot of work for payoff for you guys, just not unnecessary work, as we have other things to do.

But that wasn't the question. I don't doubt this and have never doubted or questioned this; the question is if staff members can be open minded enough to look at a suggestion to add even more work for the pure sake of the community's joy and still consider it without immediately discarding it.

 

[Callie]

I would say we're open minded to most suggestions, but looking at the evidence provided by (most notably Sunnya) other staff members and even a player or two, adding more work (and a lot more work at that) for 20 emojis seems a bit far fetched to ask us to do. We're always looking for ways to make you guys happy, as that's part of our jobs, but to say the minute we disagree with you that we're not being open minded enough to look at a suggestion is a tad ridiculous. I personally thought this was a good idea going into it, but after seeing other people's opinions (from both sides) my opinion changed.