I worded it that way because of the way that he replied. He simply displaced the blame to the previous staff (which is fine), but didn't state that he would be changing it. ...And here we are three weeks later.
And here we are, a couple of months after Overkill spent a thousand dollars (!) on ForgeHub and all that's changed is that there's a worse looking forum with a slightly better layout, a frontpage which shows 3 maps and has a banner made by a guy who has a boner for gradients, one 'active' thread, and about 20 new mods which is a number higher than the amount of people that visit this website every week. To think you could've bought a thousand burgers at MacDonald's instead.
As always, such a positive outlook on life. I'm sorry the changes aren't to your liking. We were going to ask you to consult but you seemed busy practicing sarcasm at the time and figured you wouldn't want to anyway. Traffic is driven from outside exposure. So far we've made a lot of internal changes and have more changes planned. So it's not a stretch of the imagination that we aren't getting a lot of new members when we aren't advertising ourselves yet to outside communities through things like contests, events, or mentions by people from 343 or other halo community sites.
You realize I am considered previous staff, right? Maybe that original reply wasn't worded the best... U no i <3 u both, bbe. Trust me, I'll be near the back of the line in regards to the changes that have taken place.
I came across this thread today on my way home from work (the wonders of 4G!) and decided to take the time to read it all. I can see that when the change occurred, a number of staffers were no longer "in". That has to hurt, but it is a good life lesson of dealing with grieving for loss of hard earned status. This is what people who are laid off after many years of loyal service feel. How you deal with this today can help shape your character for tomorrow. Think about it before you post another word... Yes, Secret, Halo 4 is dead. The forging community is at an all time low. There is nothing that FH can do to change that. 343i cannot change that. The Community Cartographers cannot change that. But this isn't a bad thing. When Halo 5 comes out there could very well be a surge of forging again. I would work to strategically position FH for that day, because I believe it is coming. Forging will come back with XBox 1's amazing graphics, even if we still have the same palette of blocks as we do today. The biggest issue I have always seen in forums is people trying to control other people. The only people that should go about controlling anyone are the mods controlling those who cannot control themselves. The rest of you if you don't like FH, do what I did when nepotism reigned supreme here over the last few years - leave quietly......... If I see FH take a dive for the worse, I will simply step out again - you won't even hear the door creak. But I won't be banging on the desk trying to change the staff. Instead of comparing a boss to a leader, one might compare the followers to the complainers. Getting rid of the architect group is a logical decision. The title only served those with the titles. I never met an architect that I would want to learn from. If they actually helped anyone learn I never saw the fruit of it. And if they can't teach how to merge two blocks together without a title, how are they going to do it with a title? *flipping through the pages of this thread* I am almost done with June... Good grief, I cannot get over how self-entitled some of the old staffers act. This is what happens when you hand out titles, emblems, special neon colors, .... Why do I have strong expectations for FH? Because Overkill didn't buy FH to make a name for himself in the community. He was already a pillar in the Halo community and as such brings respect WITH him. As for signatures, I wouldn't mind them being gone entirely, or a limit of only one line across. I really don't like how people push the graphics' sizes. They aren't necessary. You can post the names of several maps in a single line.
Hand over titles? That's pretty insulting to the type of people who busted their ass to get that staff position; to the people who headed the Review Hub and Tester's Guild for two years; to the people who wrote countless feedback and reviews of maps to improve the community; to the people who regularly held customs lobbies in the name of FH. Most of the old staff had only one thing on their mind: "What will make FH even more awesome?" There is nothing to gain doing it for yourself. You do it because you want to see the community you love grow and flourish even when the environment it exists around is deteriorating (ergo Halo 4 being rather dead and Shock Theta disappearing). We did it for the love of Forge, and more importantly, for the love of Forge Hub, but you can only take so much accusation and so much abuse from a community you're trying to help out before you throw up your arms and just say "**** it". I want to see the place that I spent 4+ years being a part of thrive, but if you think anything has changed you are sorely mistaken. Because a new paint job is going to do nothing when all the integral mechanics of what made FH awesome are crumbling within. I can only wish luck to the guys in charge now and hope things improve when the next Halo rolls around.
Then why if your passion is truly for forge and FH do you care so much about titles? When I get home tonight I will address this very point more clearly. But from where I see things clearly people are more concerned with title than forge, FH, or community. Your post makes that abundantly clear.
Oh ye old Extrinsic vs Intrinsic motivation... For me, as an outside that also had an ear on the inside, my stance is that the old regime was almost purely extrinsic motivation and corrupted by nepotism. I've heard my share of bullshit first hand in privacy with old staffers, and I've seen my share of bullshit with my own eyes. To call it otherwise is just ludicrous. But as Mr Green said it, the rewards should be in the act itself. Intrinsic motivation at it's core. Plain and simple. If you need extrinsic motivation to push you, perhaps you're in the wrong place.
Unfortunately life doesn't work like this most of the time. If it did communism as Marx described it (not how Lenin executed it) would be the prevailing societal system, but it's not. Do you know why it's not? Because it has been proven through history and psychological study that people act based on exterior motivators, whether they be bad or good. Doing something good purely for its intrinsic value sounds nice to say but is so rarely done that to denounce others for thinking that way is plain naivety of how things work in real life. The most common exterior motivator of human action is money. Since the staff is not paid for their effort and time spent the second most common motivator are superficial status symbols such as titles, ranks, what have you. These act as ways for the individual to stand out amongst the crowd giving get them recognition for their actions. Since recognition is all one can hope for when not being paid, that is the best and easiest way to get people to consistently donate their time.
To better answer green's observation earlier, it's not the old staff's titles that have anything to do with their previous complaints. To them it is a matter of respect. They put their time and energy into making the site as good as they could given the problems at the time (declining interest in Halo, shock and kain disappearing, constant staff turnover) and to them ovr's attutude at the time he bought the site, without most of the active members or staff of the forum even knowing the site was for sale, was not respectful to them. The flip side of the situation is that the site was dying, whether the past staff want to admit it or not. We had less active members on per day than most sites a fraction of our site's size. No foreseeable change was going to happen with the previous ownership so the forums most probable path was closing down due to inactivity. Maybe to the people in the PPC or ex-staff this situation would have been the better option for them. Go down with the ship you know I suppose. However, the site was bought by someone with a large incentive to make the site active again. Granted many things could and should have been handled better (and if you could see our Skype chat you'd see a lot of arguing over said mistakes) but in the long run these changes indicate signs of growth and a willingness to adapt, something people from outside ForgeHub talk about all the time as our main problem. Change will always lead to complaints from the people who liked the status quo. It's important to be able to pick out valid criticism and suggestions from unhelpful trolling designed only to slow down progress, and for the most part I feel in this regard we're getting much better at it.
Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation is a bit more complicated than some of the previous comments. For example, you could have an intrinsic desire to win - not for glory in the eyes of others but rather for the joy of winning. Since the outcome of competition is only defined relative to the performance of others, the means of determining success is necessarily extrinsic, even if you don't care about either the award or recognition that comes with the win. So is that intrinsic? Or extrinsic? Or both? Some amount of extrinsic motivation on the part of the members is essential to the existence of places like ForgeHub. Were your motivation entirely intrinsic, you would find no need to share your creation with others. Certainly if someone asked you'd pop your creation in your fileshare for them, but you would not feel any need to spend the time on a public forum posting about what you did. You may not be motivated by titles, but maybe respect from peers instead. Either way, even if the desire to post your work is due entirely to a request by someone else, some sort of extrinsic motivation drives your participation. So there's nothing (in my opinion) wrong with titles or status or other visible displays of validation. There are only good and bad ways of implementing them. For my part, I prefer awards to titles, since they can be better customized to reflect the actual accomplishment and are less likely to be perceived as self-aggrandizement. In a different forum dealing with a different field, I had several years as staff during a [successful] turnaround effort. One of the things we did was build an awards base (where the award was a pretty icon visible in every post the member made) to recognize members who won contests, provided mentoring and tutorials, discovered innovative ways to do something, etc. We started slow (as it is much, much, much worse to eliminate a bad award than it is simply to miss having a good award) and built an awards base over time. Initially, it was the obvious things - like we had a few regular contests for which we started handing out awards. We did not initiate any award without talking about it a lot and letting it sit as an idea for weeks or months, so it's not something you do wholesale. But once you start establishing them, they can be far more effective as external validation than titles or status. Besides making sure that the awards themselves were sustainable and fair, the other key is that the awards were integrated into the user profiles and automatically displayed in an "awards" field below the signature. Unlike some statuses / titles (like "Staff"), once you earned an award, it was yours to keep without further conditions. Moreover, someone always complains about titles being unfair. Few people complain about displayed awards, unless they are complaining that the contest itself was judged unfairly (a separate issue). We had both publicly judged contests (so, for the masses) and expertly judged contests (generally some non-participating staff members plus a few acknowledged non-participating experts). Other types had fixed criteria (like producing a tutorial that was good enough to be placed in the tutorial archive). Anyway, as Atheos mentioned, competition is a good way to drive interest. It doesn't just have to be making maps, either. We had tutorial competitions that were publicly judged. Things like that increase the exposure of the site if the winners are posted to, say, youtube on the FH channel (for example). And while winning the competition alone might be enough for some, a highly visible, pretty awards system is a damned good supplement.
Apples and oranges... If this is your mind set, then you will never rise to your potential to help people, because your need for recognition in any form (e.g., paycheck, title, whatever it is) will stand in your way. It is not necessary for a place like FH to have titles. It is an option that some places include them. But it is also a problem introduced into the community overall. I was going to comment in detail on this topic, but I read another thread that is now locked, entitled something like Isn't it dramatic to QUIT forgehub.com? I am torn now how to present my thoughts...
To diminish extrinsic motivators as a driving forces does not equate to Communism. To remove them entirely can result in stagnation of similar extent, but that's not what I advocate as there must be a marriage of extrinsic and intrinsic drivers. Intrinsic factors are much more important in today's corporate culture though, as it's become one of the core principles of modern HR Management. In regards to the strongest motivator is money, you're flat out wrong. Research on the subject of monetary incentives as a driving motivator haven't changed much over the course of the pay 20-40 years. They're antiquated models based off of Taylorist and Skinnarian principles. Sure they're a great short term solution to motivation, but they're only that... Monetary incentives actually are pretty lowly ranked in most surveys of employees as to what actually motivates them. Oddly enough, the things that are really important to employees actually correlates strongly with Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid. Monetary incentives do little more than a kick to the ass in terms of motivation, they produce movement but they do produce long term results. They're nothing more than a band-aid for creating short term compliance. Sorry for digressing here, but this little topic actually happens to be the very subject I just did an hour long presentation for one of my Professors. Now back to the subject of motivators at FH... This is a hobbyist website for hobbyist designers. The thought that titles or recognition is something people need to motivate themselves in a game is completely wrong. To require such extrinsic motivators to compel them to do something that they, as hobbyist, should enjoy intrinsically just does not click. It's not a good fit. It's the same as in the corporate world where if an employee needs a heavy dose of extrinsic motivators to be able to motivate themselves, they're not in a good career feild. There is no job fit and the HR/Recruitment staff have essentially failed in vetting the employee in the hiring stage. The importance of job fit and intrinsic motivators have revolutionized today's HR Policies. Google is one of the strongest adherents to this new HR Management style, and guess what! They're ranked the highest in employee satisfaction. It's not just Google though, more and more companies that adopt this Intrinsic Motivation driven style of HR Management are experiencing similar results. So back to the point. As hobbyists, we forge because we intrinsically enjoy forging. We should participate on a web forum because of our intrinsic enjoyment of sharing our knowledge and helping others. Our interactions should be conducted in good faith and for the betterment of each other.
Schnitzel, I liked most of what you wrote, especially the part about generic motivators. That is exactly correct, and some of the bigger companies in the corporate world are recognizing it as well. I work for one that pays Gallup to do an annual employee survey for engagement where the survey questions are directly related to Maslow's. Much more effective to act on the survey results than simply handing out bonuses. However, I do not fully agree with categorizing all Forgers as hobbyists for whom extrinsic motivation is (or should be) meaningless. That simply is not true. Certainly the desire to forge for the sake of forging motivates all (or almost all) of us, but for some, it is not the only thing. To prove this, I need only point to myself. I love competition - even informal competition - and I want to eventually produce something that gets a feature (to your earlier point, $$ reward would be fairly meaningless to me). More than that, I want to produce something that gets into Matchmaking. I recognize that is unlikely, but it's a cool potential that makes me want to improve. While those are not strong motivators for me to forge - I would continue forging regardless - they are the reason I would spend time posting the maps here and making changes to them beyond what I myself notice needs to be fixed. The subtlety there is that the act of forging (or, my field, for the corporate version) is intrinsically motivated. That I will continue to do - and I don't need Forge Hub to do it. But the desire to compete (or, obtaining credibility / respect as an expert in my field, for the corporate version) requires external validation to measure success. If titles and awards are the only thing motivating someone to forge, then that person probably will not forge for long and attempting to design titles and awards to retain that person is fruitless. The intrinsic motivation must be there. But for anyone who wants to forge competitively, external validation is required simply due to competition requiring the participation of others and being judged relative to the performance of others. Whether a contest winner post, respect from peers, number of downloads, or a shiny award icon best suits each person's validation need varies by individual. But it is there for any who forge with competition as a motivator. Mazlow's Hierarchy does not include only intrinsic factors. Both the Esteem and Self-Actualization levels contain a great deal of external motivators. So yes, you must be internally motivated as a base . . . but to dismiss the external motivation is a mistake. It may not matter for you, but that does not mean it does not matter for others. (With that said, as I mentioned earlier, I much prefer a flat community - few titles except to distinguish staff from members - with recognition given as awards; titles tend to be much more divisive than awards.)
I read your post on community, and agree with you that it needs to start with a sense of friendship and desire to help others for the sake of helping others rather than self-aggrandizement. But I disagree wholeheartedly with the above. Even your community post disagrees with the above. I will post here rather than there, because I really liked your post and think it's better for people to be able to read it without getting distracted by others nitpicking small details. In your community post, you give the example of the staff member who rips apart a map that someone posted. You recognize that the person posted the map to say, "Look at what I did." That is seeking (at the very least) acknowledgement - which is recognition - else the post would not have been made. And if recognition was not what the poster was after - if he cared nothing for that - then he also would have cared nothing for the subsequent treatment his map received, rendering the point of your example meaningless. Recognition - even if it's only a quick thank-you post or willingness to test your map or gametype - is important to much of the member base. Formal recognition in the form of titles, status, ranks, and awards is one method of providing it - but to your [very good] point, is one that is also easily abused or easily gives the impression of abuse. Informal recognition in the form of help, playing, testing, or otherwise commenting on people's work is the same thing - but in a different form that is more difficult to abuse and often more satisfying. But it is also one that is fraught with favoritism - however unintentional. People only have so much time to comment and test others' maps, so they must use some criteria to sort which ones get the most attention. This leads inevitably to some members (typically new ones, who need the help the most) getting the least feedback. So while your ideal of zero formal recognition is a nice theory, its success depends on those with the knowledge to assist having unlimited time and resources to provide the assistance. Real life is messier than that. Some formal recognition helps fill the gaps. In the case of contests, for example, as long as all maps are treated equally, then every member who submits a map will have the same level of evaluation - regardless of who they might be. In the case of regular testing lobbies, every member who joins gets the opportunity to have others play on his or her map. All of that is recognition. They are just different forms. So to discount the need for recognition as you have done above is a mistake. I understand your point about the abuse of formal recognition, and agree with it. That is why formal recognition must be done with care. But ignoring the need for it ignores the fact that the informal recognition will be doled out on a time-permitting basis that inevitably will leave someone feeling left out. The second portion of your community post where you unintentionally recognize what I am saying is in the discussion on having the availability for expert opinions to be given on competitive - not casual - maps. This requires that you (1) have recognized expert players and (2) some means of distinguishing between competitive and casual maps. Recognition as an expert player necessarily confers status. It may not be a title, or icon, or different color to the name - but it is a status nonetheless. Whether it is formal or informal is really irrelevant. In order to be able to provide what you ask to be provided, the need for recognition for gameplay necessarily follows. So at least one aspect of what we do we all agree requires some sort of earned status to be able to do it. In determining whether a map is competitive or casual, what are the criteria? I fully understand and agree with the pragmatic need to whittle the testing field down to a manageable level for the experts, but how is that done? Do you think we ought to depend on each individual member having the ability to distinguish whether the map he or she made qualifies? If so, the whittling will be small. Most maps people post are self-entitled as "competitive". The reason is that the forger wanted to make a competitive map, and in his or her eyes, made a competitive map. But many of these maps would not truly qualify as competitive. I made a map I called "competitive" (Artifact), but in hindsight, it's anything but. I posted it in Fated's thread for testing. He either (after looking at it) realized it was not truly competitive, or did test it and decided not to make a long post why the map was a horrible competitive map out of kindness. That map had no business being in that thread - but I did not know that at the time. So if you cannot rely on the individual forger to sort his or her own maps, then you must rely on others to do the sorting for you. Those whom you pick to do the sorting are necessarily conferred the status of "experts" - regardless of whether you formally title them in this manner. The rest follows. The need for recognition does not spell the death of the forging community, or any other community. That need is present in almost all aspects of our lives. How we choose to fulfill that need is up to us. I agree that most places focus entirely on the formal recognition, which can depersonalize and fracture the community. But for any large or growing community, failure to provide the appropriate type and quantity of formal recognition inevitably leads to some members being excluded. The core members may not even realize this is happening, as those who feel excluded disappear too quickly to be remembered. Okay. Wall of text too long. I will stop after saying one last thing: This is not meant to take away from your point in your community thread. It is an excellent point, and I agree with it. This is intended more to say that first come your concerns - that is the base from which all else builds - and second comes the above, to fill the gaps that yours cannot. Sorry for the overly long response. I didn't intend to go on for so long!