The GM/Community Problem? Includes: New Staff Position Ideas

I've noticed recently that quite a few GMs have been fired for breaking the rules, and I think we should do something to prevent this from happening again. Between Almo abusing his powers, IProSteelys giving maxed items to their brother, and Charlie, Jake, and Alan leaving, we've lost 5 GMs that I know of. I'm not sure how many we have left, but so many have been losing their GM position because of family, school, after-school activities, and rule-breaking. I feel like the community is falling apart. Recently, whenever I get online, the average number of people on in the whole server is 3 at the least to 8 or 9 at the most. I think this is mostly due to things in real life, but also partially due to the GMs leaving or getting demoted/banned. Because there are fewer GMs, there will be more times when no GM will be on. Thus, people either will get tired of not having as many events, or have a question they need answered, but they don't know about the forums.

I have also noticed that nobody is being promoted to fill in the empty spots and fix some of the problems, or they are being promoted but nobody is told, so nobody really knows that they're a GM.

For the GMs not being promoted, or nobody being told that somebody's a GM, I think that either the powers-that-be of SodaMS should take a look or two at the GM applications, or start posting on the Forums and making notices in-game to tell people about the new GM. I also have an idea about a system for picking GMs, right here.

In my first paragraph, I said that I felt like the community was falling apart. I think that we should try to do some things outside of the game and forums with the community. Even things like having people on staff that are not GMs might help, so that they can do things for the community. Perhaps there could be a certain staff position for things like writing for an e-mail that could go out to anyone who subscribes that tells people about things like open positions on staff, big events coming up, about the server or not, and maybe something like someone could e-mail the person in charge of the "newsletter," with a drawing they drew, a picture of something they made, or something that they wrote. Somebody could then decide what the best couple of things sent in were, and post them in the newsletter. This newsletter would help both get information out, and the people working on it would have to work together, thus they get to know each other, introduce each other to the others friends, which would help the community.

Another staff position could be something like designing graphic art for the server, or planning something if the server needed money to pay for something, such as the dedicated server.

Someone could also arrange times for people to meet-up in-game for things like themed parties. It could be, for instance, a party where everyone has to dress up as weird as possible. This way, people could meet other people, and help the community.

So that people don't leave after they join because their questions couldn't be answered, we could do something like make Sera, the lady you see right after you make a character, tell them the URL for the server website, and the forums. She could also give things like e-mail addresses of GMs that would be okay with it to send questions or ideas to.



I will edit this post if I think of anything else.

Ideas, questions, comments?

Reserved, if I think of more.

Your right.
I`ve been trying to fix Soda so I can go on, but nothing is working..
But once we get the new repack settled in, Only some GMs will be re-promoted, I`m not sure if they are promoting more people though :/

Well You really cant complain or help it Everyone has school like me. I Try my best to get online and find hackers and host little events, but i really cant due to homework. Im in middle school cant help it

It`s hard adjusting from elementary to middle school but after a year or two your set

Guys, I understand that there are things like school and homework that we can't help, but people still have free time on holidays and weekends, yet nobody is on.

I have tons of time, except SodaMS doesn't work for me.
I've been working my ass off by trying to recover my computer and it still didnt work. D;

Green wrote:

Guys, I understand that there are things like school and homework that we can't help, but people still have free time on holidays and weekends, yet nobody is on.

Well that's true. But I think they'd want to make better use of their free time than just playing games which most of their friends might not even play. Even if they had friends that played, their friends have their responsibilities and own likings, so that sets the player back to square 1. Also, I'm pretty sure homework is given on weekends and holidays. It may be short or long, but it may also be hard. As for holidays, there's family trips or just plain spending time with family, it can't be helped.
You also have to take into consideration that some parents, as soon as school starts up again, may set time limits to computer time, thus making the player want to make better use of that time( like stated above.)
Friends want to spend time with each other outside of school, whether it be going to a mall, going to each others houses, or just chatting away online. Playing a game where only a certain amount to or none of your friends play isn't exactly ideal.
Though it would be nice if they stopped by once in a while :]