This is going to be a very long read, so sit down, strap in, and shut up.
Due to my inactivity I have been removed from my Voobly staff position. This is not a protest of my removal, I quit doing anything, so that decision was fair and logical.
I came very close to posting this several months ago, when some drama surrounding Emin and Ertug surfaced. I chose not to then, because all moderators were told in no uncertain terms that they would be removed if they said anything bad about voobly. Making a rule that you can’t talk to the community says a lot about how bad the situation actually is. It won’t surprise me if I am banned from playing on voobly for this post but I don’t really care anymore since I quit playing rated.
The highest level staff members all have their heads so far up their own butts that they eat their meals twice. Take a look here: http://www.dahlem.uk/display/vkb/About+Voobly+Staff, and you can read some propaganda about Voobly moderation, written by Chris, the highest ranking staff member. Here’s how it begins:
Voobly staff is a cult, structured somewhat like a large corporation. New moderators are assigned a "department" (CS, RM, NPL, etc.) and given “Trial” status. Basically what that means is you have the “voobly staff” account level with absolutely zero power to do anything.
Each department has a lead, basically your boss who you report to. Most leads do nothing but occasionally message their underlings passive aggressively, just to remind them that they are inferior beings. Leads report to his majesty, chris@voobly himself.
You stay at the trial level for a random period of time, reviewing game complaints and making recommendations on what should be done. After a while you get promoted to full staff, at which point you still have almost zero power but you get an endorphin rush anyway.
Now that you are a fully-fledged moderator the fun really begins. You get a ton of messages from angry people making requests, just like if you were working a real support job. Many of the requests are quite reasonable, but usually you aren’t allowed to do anything so you have to tell everyone that you can’t help them.
The limited powers that you do have as a moderator are watched extremely closely. You aren’t supposed to do anything without having a screenshot of your evidence showing you had a good reason for taking an action. This sounds fairly reasonable but in practice it’s insane because the rules are so stupid.
For example, I once kicked someone for being AFK in an unrated room and stopping the game from launching. A couple days later I was chewed out for doing this because I was “abusing” moderation tools. Even though the chat was recorded (all Voobly chat is recorded) and clearly showed that my kick was reasonable, logic is no match for the stupidity of the people making Voobly policy.
Another example of stupid rules, you aren’t supposed to kick someone for spamming unless you’ve given them several warnings, then if they keep going you still can’t kick them till you’ve muted them for 5 minutes, then muted them for ten minutes, and after that you are allowed to kick them. So if you follow the rules it takes at least 15 minutes and 5 screenshots to actually stop the spam.
Obviously rules that are that stupid don’t get followed very closely. This was fine for a while, but the top levels of Voobly staff were enraged that we dare defy their idiocy, so they removed the right to kick from moderators, under the pretext of “power abuse”. Now you can feel free to whatever you want in a voobly room because moderators can’t kick anyone.
At the same time as removing mods ability to kick people a bunch of other restructuring happened. I don’t remember all of the details but Chris and co. decided that the best way to put mods in their place was to make a rule that they weren’t allowed to ask questions of any kind in the forums.
It sounds like I’m making this up but it’s completely true. Following this new rule all of the moderators got chewed out for asking any question, even tech support questions in the tech support forum.
Anyhow, now that I’ve finished that rabbit trail, back to staff structure. Once you’ve been a moderator for several years, dutifully doing all the work for no benefits whatsoever, you might get promoted to a Lead position.
Once you are a Lead you are set. You don’t really have to do anything at all, so most of them don’t. You also have access to all of the moderator tools with no one supervising, so you can go crazy.
The criteria for promotion is based solely on length of time as a moderator and how much work you pretend to do. This is a serious issue because good moderators rarely last very long once they see how much stupidity there is. This has created a viscous cycle that actively chases away the best people and promotes the worst ones.
Another problem with upper level staff is a complete loss of touch with the community. Once you get above the mod level there’s only a couple of people that play even occasional games so the people with the most power have no idea what’s going on. With that in mind it’s no wonder so many stupid decisions are made. Take for example the decision to add an “Inter-Player” lobby which was literally the exact opposite of what should have been done. They added it approximately a year ago and it was obviously a failure from day one but it still exists, sitting empty. They pretend they understand what is happening, and act like they are trying to fix it, but in reality they are too lazy and clueless to know what they are doing. The only person I’ve ever seen do much is Genette, and he’s a narcissistic liar.
This level of brokenness in the staff has created quite a few problems. I imagine it was one of the large factors that caused the entire voobly stream team to quit all at once. Basically the only good person keeping things running was Taff, and now he’s gone.
At this point, when real issues do arise, there’s no one capable of making rational choices. Several months ago I made a request for Voobly to make a rule about whether or not macros are allowed in rated games. Unfortunately no one cares enough about RM (The current head of RM moderation isn’t even a RM player) to spend 5 minutes adding a simple rule.
Another outright stupid rule enacted by staff is the streaming policy. If they actually enforced it basically all streamers wouldn’t be allowed on the platform since you aren’t allowed to use voobly for commercial purposes without consent.
My plan isn’t to turn this into another debate thread about Emin but that whole situation is a perfect example of how poorly staff works. An extremely stupid person (you know who you are) added him as moderator after cheating and lying about it during the WiC tournament. This goes against both logic, and the rule that you have to have a completely clean Voobly record in order to be a moderator. It’s pretty dumb to claim you care about rules and integrity while actively promoting cheaters. In the argument following, actually good moderators left/got removed, including ekimku and fallstar. So basically the net result was -2 good moderators for +1 cheating moderator.
Anyhow I think that’s a good spot to end this post. If you want to discuss do so quick, I don’t know how long this thread will stay up.
TLDR: Voobly staff actively chases away the best people and promotes the worst ones. Most of the rule changes that do happen are worse than useless. At this point the only hope for saving it is a Carlini8 buy-out.
Due to my inactivity I have been removed from my Voobly staff position. This is not a protest of my removal, I quit doing anything, so that decision was fair and logical.
I came very close to posting this several months ago, when some drama surrounding Emin and Ertug surfaced. I chose not to then, because all moderators were told in no uncertain terms that they would be removed if they said anything bad about voobly. Making a rule that you can’t talk to the community says a lot about how bad the situation actually is. It won’t surprise me if I am banned from playing on voobly for this post but I don’t really care anymore since I quit playing rated.
The highest level staff members all have their heads so far up their own butts that they eat their meals twice. Take a look here: http://www.dahlem.uk/display/vkb/About+Voobly+Staff, and you can read some propaganda about Voobly moderation, written by Chris, the highest ranking staff member. Here’s how it begins:
Welcome to the most exciting community program available on the web today.
Voobly staff is a cult, structured somewhat like a large corporation. New moderators are assigned a "department" (CS, RM, NPL, etc.) and given “Trial” status. Basically what that means is you have the “voobly staff” account level with absolutely zero power to do anything.
Each department has a lead, basically your boss who you report to. Most leads do nothing but occasionally message their underlings passive aggressively, just to remind them that they are inferior beings. Leads report to his majesty, chris@voobly himself.
You stay at the trial level for a random period of time, reviewing game complaints and making recommendations on what should be done. After a while you get promoted to full staff, at which point you still have almost zero power but you get an endorphin rush anyway.
Now that you are a fully-fledged moderator the fun really begins. You get a ton of messages from angry people making requests, just like if you were working a real support job. Many of the requests are quite reasonable, but usually you aren’t allowed to do anything so you have to tell everyone that you can’t help them.
The limited powers that you do have as a moderator are watched extremely closely. You aren’t supposed to do anything without having a screenshot of your evidence showing you had a good reason for taking an action. This sounds fairly reasonable but in practice it’s insane because the rules are so stupid.
For example, I once kicked someone for being AFK in an unrated room and stopping the game from launching. A couple days later I was chewed out for doing this because I was “abusing” moderation tools. Even though the chat was recorded (all Voobly chat is recorded) and clearly showed that my kick was reasonable, logic is no match for the stupidity of the people making Voobly policy.
Another example of stupid rules, you aren’t supposed to kick someone for spamming unless you’ve given them several warnings, then if they keep going you still can’t kick them till you’ve muted them for 5 minutes, then muted them for ten minutes, and after that you are allowed to kick them. So if you follow the rules it takes at least 15 minutes and 5 screenshots to actually stop the spam.
Obviously rules that are that stupid don’t get followed very closely. This was fine for a while, but the top levels of Voobly staff were enraged that we dare defy their idiocy, so they removed the right to kick from moderators, under the pretext of “power abuse”. Now you can feel free to whatever you want in a voobly room because moderators can’t kick anyone.
At the same time as removing mods ability to kick people a bunch of other restructuring happened. I don’t remember all of the details but Chris and co. decided that the best way to put mods in their place was to make a rule that they weren’t allowed to ask questions of any kind in the forums.
It sounds like I’m making this up but it’s completely true. Following this new rule all of the moderators got chewed out for asking any question, even tech support questions in the tech support forum.
Anyhow, now that I’ve finished that rabbit trail, back to staff structure. Once you’ve been a moderator for several years, dutifully doing all the work for no benefits whatsoever, you might get promoted to a Lead position.
Once you are a Lead you are set. You don’t really have to do anything at all, so most of them don’t. You also have access to all of the moderator tools with no one supervising, so you can go crazy.
The criteria for promotion is based solely on length of time as a moderator and how much work you pretend to do. This is a serious issue because good moderators rarely last very long once they see how much stupidity there is. This has created a viscous cycle that actively chases away the best people and promotes the worst ones.
Another problem with upper level staff is a complete loss of touch with the community. Once you get above the mod level there’s only a couple of people that play even occasional games so the people with the most power have no idea what’s going on. With that in mind it’s no wonder so many stupid decisions are made. Take for example the decision to add an “Inter-Player” lobby which was literally the exact opposite of what should have been done. They added it approximately a year ago and it was obviously a failure from day one but it still exists, sitting empty. They pretend they understand what is happening, and act like they are trying to fix it, but in reality they are too lazy and clueless to know what they are doing. The only person I’ve ever seen do much is Genette, and he’s a narcissistic liar.
This level of brokenness in the staff has created quite a few problems. I imagine it was one of the large factors that caused the entire voobly stream team to quit all at once. Basically the only good person keeping things running was Taff, and now he’s gone.
At this point, when real issues do arise, there’s no one capable of making rational choices. Several months ago I made a request for Voobly to make a rule about whether or not macros are allowed in rated games. Unfortunately no one cares enough about RM (The current head of RM moderation isn’t even a RM player) to spend 5 minutes adding a simple rule.
Another outright stupid rule enacted by staff is the streaming policy. If they actually enforced it basically all streamers wouldn’t be allowed on the platform since you aren’t allowed to use voobly for commercial purposes without consent.
My plan isn’t to turn this into another debate thread about Emin but that whole situation is a perfect example of how poorly staff works. An extremely stupid person (you know who you are) added him as moderator after cheating and lying about it during the WiC tournament. This goes against both logic, and the rule that you have to have a completely clean Voobly record in order to be a moderator. It’s pretty dumb to claim you care about rules and integrity while actively promoting cheaters. In the argument following, actually good moderators left/got removed, including ekimku and fallstar. So basically the net result was -2 good moderators for +1 cheating moderator.
Anyhow I think that’s a good spot to end this post. If you want to discuss do so quick, I don’t know how long this thread will stay up.
TLDR: Voobly staff actively chases away the best people and promotes the worst ones. Most of the rule changes that do happen are worse than useless. At this point the only hope for saving it is a Carlini8 buy-out.