Discord - Supportbus

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Arianya
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Discord - Supportbus

Post by Arianya » #440632

Hi all,

See below an announcement regarding part of the discord changes that have gone through today:
We've changed how administrative support works through discord!

Trial and game admins are no longer pingable. Instead there is a supportmin role that can be pinged if you need assistance with something. The same rules on pinging apply to this role as before, so please dont abuse pinging it as a joke.

In addition, a supportbus channel has been created. Supportmins can add you to it to discuss administrative matters live, even during ongoing rounds. Useful for if you are unable to be in game but still need to talk to the admins. Currently we can only support discussing one situation at a time so please be patient if some other people are talking in there. We have plans to inprove that for the future though.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by oranges » #440661

Useful for if you are unable to be in game but still need to talk to the admins
So like never?
Currently we can only support discussing one situation at a time so please be patient if some other people are talking in there. We have plans to inprove that for the future though.
This is like you reinvented adminhelps poorly


What possible situations does this cover and what benefit does it bring to the server given that I now have to watch yet another channel to stay on top of admin related issues and rulings?
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by PKPenguin321 » #440669

the privacy aspect is odd. seems that it's only a thing to prevent IC in OOC, but generally if youre unable to join the game youve been banned and if youre banned you can wait until the round is over to discuss it (or youre not able to connect in the first place and need tech support in which case you dont know about the current round).

if youre gonna readd supportbus, i see no real reason to change it from how the IRC. if you want something to be private and one on one you can just use PMs
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by MrStonedOne » #440702

This was how we used to run adminbus, it worked rather well.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by Arianya » #440803

oranges wrote: So like never?
There are plenty of circumstances when we may want to discuss something with players or vice versa, and discord is eminently more accessible then ingame ahelps or the forum PMs for users on mobile.
This is like you reinvented adminhelps poorly
This is no different then supportbus back in IRC and is the nature of any chatting medium. There are plans to improve this process but those are reliant on coding efforts by others, hence why the process exists as it currently does.
What possible situations does this cover and what benefit does it bring to the server given that I now have to watch yet another channel to stay on top of admin related issues and rulings?
Being a supportmin is entirely optional (and can be toggled on or off at any time via the nadekobot) and you are not required to monitor #supportbus.
the privacy aspect is odd. seems that it's only a thing to prevent IC in OOC, but generally if youre unable to join the game youve been banned and if youre banned you can wait until the round is over to discuss it (or youre not able to connect in the first place and need tech support in which case you dont know about the current round).
The issue that arises is that there's currently no easy method for users to discuss any adminning matters via discord with any degree of privacy, since Discord PMs are problematic (unauditable editing and deleting) and as such are forbidden, and Forum PMs aren't the most accessible medium for the majority of users.

For the most part this is intended to work like old supportbus, though some changes had to be made for the different medium in use. It also folded in the changes in pinging which means that on average administrators are being pinged less, especially if they opt to not have the supportmin role.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by Rustledjimm » #440877

>more ways for players to communicate with admins
>apparently this is bad

I laugh.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by Cobby » #440899

Ban requests but purposefully worse for the sole purpose to not appear like ban requests.

Also the whole "b-b-bbut irc" to people who actually used the irc is weird.

1) Discord by design fixes the shortcomings of IRC's. Instead of opting into channels, you opt into servers with multiple channels easily accessible. Even if admins only look at say admin-voice-chatter, you can still privately communicate to them or ping them to direct them to another channel to answer a game-related question. In IIRC this was useless if they aren't in #tgstation13 or surprise surprise #supportbus. That said, supportbus was mainly used for singulo.io drama bait. I don't recall anything beneficial from it besides solidifying some players are absolutely mental and asking ingame questions, which can be done now on our current roster of channels (most suitable in probably tg-station-general).

2) We specifically moved away from IRC (because of 1).
Rustledjimm wrote:>more ways for players to communicate with admins
>apparently this is bad

I laugh.
It's a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist. Give a specific example (you can morph a ban appeal to be "oh this would be so much better if we just had supportbus!") where you need to use this channel that cannot be covered in ingame/wiki/current discord channels/forums/private messages.

The only thing I can think of would be if admins aren't on the server, and a simple opt-in supportmin role you can ping on any channel would suffice. The channel itself is not needed.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by oranges » #440912

Arianya wrote: This is no different then supportbus back in IRC and is the nature of any chatting medium. There are plans to improve this process but those are reliant on coding efforts by others, hence why the process exists as it currently does.
Supportbus was open to all and you couldn't discuss IC issues in it, so it's nothing like it at all.

If anything it's closer to the rare times the admins invited people into adminbus
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by TehSteveo » #440944

oranges wrote:
Arianya wrote: This is no different then supportbus back in IRC and is the nature of any chatting medium. There are plans to improve this process but those are reliant on coding efforts by others, hence why the process exists as it currently does.
Supportbus was open to all and you couldn't discuss IC issues in it, so it's nothing like it at all.

If anything it's closer to the rare times the admins invited people into adminbus
Yeah, this iteration is different version as it doesn't allow people snooping. Not that it's a bad thing.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by Arianya » #440952

Cobby wrote:Ban requests but purposefully worse for the sole purpose to not appear like ban requests.

Also the whole "b-b-bbut irc" to people who actually used the irc is weird.

1) Discord by design fixes the shortcomings of IRC's. Instead of opting into channels, you opt into servers with multiple channels easily accessible. Even if admins only look at say admin-voice-chatter, you can still privately communicate to them or ping them to direct them to another channel to answer a game-related question. In IIRC this was useless if they aren't in #tgstation13 or surprise surprise #supportbus. That said, supportbus was mainly used for singulo.io drama bait. I don't recall anything beneficial from it besides solidifying some players are absolutely mental and asking ingame questions, which can be done now on our current roster of channels (most suitable in probably tg-station-general).
Sure, but Discord DMs create their own issues, as noted, and there's a reason the previous headminship ruled against handling any admin matters via them. Also, I don't see why or how you believe supportbus will be ban requests by another name, something no one has mentioned in any facet other then you. You also originally seemed to think it was going to be a policy discussion replacement so I'm not sure where you're getting either of these from, since it's not something that's been mentioned or even discussed outside of responding to you.

To save myself retyping, I'll just quote a couple of sections from the proposal I discussed with the headmins (and posted in adminbus asking for feedback on before implementation even started)
[...] [Supportbus is for] Players in need of help with in game issues, a question about the rules/policy or other similar *specific* questions [...]
Additionally, supportmin's can be pinged if an admin is needed on a particular server for a specific issue. Please do not ping simply because a server has no admins.[...]
2) We specifically moved away from IRC (because of 1).
I'm certainly not suggesting a return to IRC (I was and continue to be one of the advocates for never touching IRC again), that said, I believe there are useful things we can draw from it.
It's a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist. Give a specific example (you can morph a ban appeal to be "oh this would be so much better if we just had supportbus!") where you need to use this channel that cannot be covered in ingame/wiki/current discord channels/forums/private messages.

The only thing I can think of would be if admins aren't on the server, and a simple opt-in supportmin role you can ping on any channel would suffice. The channel itself is not needed.
First of all, while it's true that the vast majority of gameplay questions could be answered by checking the wiki, pretty much any admin will be aware that players still frequently ask them. I don't expect this to be the common use case for this channel, but I listed it as one of the possible ones.

And the forums, while incredibly valuable and a place I have spent a lot of time, are still not a low enough barrier to entry for your average player, and the vast majority don't bother unless they have a ban they want to appeal. That's not to say I'm suggesting replacing the forums/forum PMs with Discord, but rather that it gives another avenue that may be more accessible.

You may, in the end, be correct that supportbus is unneeded and that the supportmin role is the only part that's required, but I feel this is something that we're better off shutting down because its useless then rejecting out of hand.
Supportbus was open to all and you couldn't discuss IC issues in it, so it's nothing like it at all.

If anything it's closer to the rare times the admins invited people into adminbus
Fair enough, my memory isn't great but I recalled the mentioned aspects from the past. Apologies for the mistake.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by Cobby » #440995

I’m simply theorycrafting all the uses it could have since someone has yet to provide an example of a situation that would benefit from the supportbus channel not already accomplished by all the tools already at our disposal.

If you don’t think I’m going to answer ingame questions if asked in PMs you’re incorrect. Discord PMs are fine for ingame questions or simply just using the ahelp feature that goes through discord.

There’s no point trying to fix a problem we don’t know about or doesn’t exist. Again, what is a specific example that would benefit from this? What was even the driver for this? Throwing stuff and seeing if it sticks is a really poor process and I hope this isn’t setting the tone for how the next half year will be.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by MrStonedOne » #441022

Cobby wrote:1) Discord by design fixes the shortcomings of IRC's. Instead of opting into channels, you opt into servers with multiple channels easily accessible.
2) We specifically moved away from IRC (because of 1).
What you call ircs failing and discord's strength, I call discords failing and irc's strength.

You could choose what channels you wanted to be in in irc, on discord you can't without the use of bots and roles which is hacky at best.

Two, we specifically moved to discord for 1 and only 1 reason. Persistent chat. If you aren't connected you can still see what happened while you were gone.

Everything else discord does worst compared to irc.
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by Cobby » #441051

I think it also gets more usage than irc since it's the low-hanging fruit option but I don't think that matters for the point of this thread.

With discord, you're forced in to all channels so needing a specific channel for what basically can be covered in the general ones IE "@supportmin to bagil" or "@supportmin how do I deconstruct an rwall".
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Re: Discord - Supportbus

Post by Dax Dupont » #441086

Cobby wrote:I think it also gets more usage than irc since it's the low-hanging fruit option but I don't think that matters for the point of this thread.

With discord, you're forced in to all channels so needing a specific channel for what basically can be covered in the general ones IE "@supportmin to bagil" or "@supportmin how do I deconstruct an rwall".
This
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