Staff Post Addressing Your Feedback

Addressing Your Feedback!

We've received lots of fantastic feedback on our Anonymous Community Survey, and as promised we're going to address many key and important points you've made. Let's go over these!

"Being ignored and undermined despite being an active part of the community makes me feel less valued."
This is a shame and we never want any users to feel ignored or like they aren't an important part of the community, as you all are. Unfortunately, this is a common trend in many communities. Since many users already have established friendships, they don't tend to reach out to others as much. This is something we've been thinking about at great lengths and want to change. Our Mentors system was just one step to make sure every user has the support they may want or need. We will be taking this even further however and doing our best to make sure no user feels left out. If you have any ideas for how we can improve upon this as a community, let us know!

"I feel as if staff is chosen on the basis of friendships between them and not giving hardworking users a chance."
This is simply is not true. I can tell you with complete honesty that none of the administrators or super mods knew the new staff members personally, with the exception of Wizard who was already a Discord Mod and a former Moderator, so we knew he had the experience. Choosing new staff is never easy and it is never done with bias. We look for users who we feel fit the role based on activity, experience, dedication and many more forum related factors, and every higher staff member chips in with their own perspective.

We can't staff everyone, so we try to staff those that we feel deserve the job the most. There are many, many more close candidates, but if we staffed everyone, no one would be staff. Please remember that a hardworking user is subjective - someone you may see as hardworking, someone else may not. We have to make the calls, and it is never easy.

To address this point even further, we will soon be creating a new page which will detail how we choose moderators which will go even more in-depth about the process. It will be announced in Updates & Changes soon.

"The staff is brutally honest, sometimes too much so."
We try to be as honest as possible, as transparency is an important part of our community. That being said, we can always improve how we share information and how that may affect others. Going forward, staff will be even more mindful of how their words may come across and affect users.

"Some staff members are nice, others are rude."
We're sorry you feel this way! If you have a problem with a moderator, you can come to a super moderator or administrator of your choice and they can help you. If you have a problem with a super moderator or administrator, you can come to an admin of your choice. We understand this can be awkward, but we take this very seriously and no bias is involved when dealing with staff issues, and your complaints will be kept anonymous and dealt with. It's an important part of the job to be firm when necessary, even if this involves other staff members.

"I want to see a more detailed explanation of the rule regarding age 13 and up."
Good idea! We can always stand to be clearer about our rules. This rule is to do with COPPA, which is an actual law stating we are not allowed to advertise our site to anyone under the age of 13, therefore we are a 13+ community. We will work to make this rule even clearer and perhaps design an informative page about it soon.

"Keep track of the username changes of previous Members of the Month to prevent confusion in future nominations."
Another good idea. This page can stand to be updated more, so we shall commit to that.

"Please think about revising the weak parts of the catching/buddy system, such as the catching rates and the prices."
Absolutely. The Catcher is very important to us, and we're glad you all care about it so much. We'll be doing many updates on the Catcher this coming month, having some sales so PokéBalls are easier to get your hands on and looking at catching rates so you're not using up too many balls!

"I got a spam user to invite me to this website, instead of an actual person. I would much rather not be invited by a robot, as it doesn't feel sincere."
Spam sucks, but this (for the most part) is something we can't control. We don't go out there and find users as a staff team, it is up to each individual user if they want to go out there and invite people, especially during recruitment events. We certainly don't have robots set up to invite users, either! All we ask users is that they do not spam anyone with invites and are respectful and genuine when inviting people to our site.

"If I don't like a good portion of Pokémon, users get offended and are not kind towards my feelings."
This is an accusation we take very seriously. Please don't hesitate to contact a moderator if any users are being unkind to you, or use our report button which makes the process much easier to handle. We'll do our best to help resolve the situation.

"The staff team could improve on faster responses to reports, more checks on mini-modding and double posting, faster checks on threads that were posted in wrong sections, stop making normal members feel less because they aren't staff."
I'll address each point individually here, for clarities sake.

In regards to reports, I agree that we should take action as soon as possible, but staff have lives too. They cannot constantly dedicate every moment of the day to attending to reports, even if they would like to. LV is and will always be a hobby. That being said, if a report is being taken days to be dealt with, that's an issue and you should come to a super mod or administrator to help resolve the issue, as moderators typically deal with reports.

As for the checks, we'll also try our best to handle any issues that breach our rules, but we'll need your help reporting them!

And for the final piece, staff have never ever intended to make users feel less than staff. We're sorry if you do feel this way, but sincerely we do not feel that users are any less important than staff. This point however would need to be addressed further - since only you (or anyone who feels this way) can answer this, how would you suggest we improve in this regard? Feel free to approach an administrator, super mod or moderator in confidence and they can relay your feedback to other staff members so we can improve ourselves in this field.

"Staff could interact with forum threads more."
Absolutely. Speaking personally, I sometimes struggle to decide what to respond to threads and I feel many staff and users would agree it can be hard to wrack your brain together for a response. That being said, encouraging activity and being involved heavily in the forums is genuinely so important to us, so this is something we can and will be doing more often.

We also learnt that users were mostly happy with the frequency of events, but would like to see more variety in events. There we will be reopening the Event Suggestions thread soon, allowing you to chip in your ideas so we can get some more varied events and prizes!

We will be implementing changes as soon as possible. We really appreciate everyone who took time to send in feedback, even if you aren't entirely happy with the site right now. It is our goal to help everyone feel happier on Lake Valor and serve you guys, so here we are. As always, feedback, ideas and suggestions are always welcome in our Support Hub section.