The SW Admins
First of all, the SW admins and developers are doing a fantastic job making and running this site from a technical standpoint, and as someone with some experience in web development, I know just how hard they work to make this site function as well as it does.
However, where we begin to run in to problems is with PR. The approach of admins to things like new features and responding to criticism often is premature, unpolished, and sometimes unprofessional.
To start, I'm going to discuss the post made by Andrew on Jan 29 2017, talking about introducing games to SW. (Found here: https://similarworlds.com/27-Games/570571-Seeking-your-Feedback-Similar-Worlds-Games)
This, in my opinion, was a bad move. SW is an incredibly young website, which isn't even complete based on the original pitch yet. This is not a time to promise new features, especially features as prominent and complex as games. Web development and game development are two very different beasts, even for small games. Usually, when you're making anything like a game or a website, it's best to finish the original pitch before you start to add more, and this feels like a brazen move driven mostly by excitement rather than reason or pragmatism, that is more likely to fail than succeed if they continue to approach development of this scale as achievable within a feasible time frame with their current staff. I get the idea from the post that they haven't quite grasped the level of effort required to satisfy the majority of people on SW with these games.
But altogether more worrying than all that, is this response by Nuno to a post criticising the scarcity of updates from the admins:
[quote]There were announcements more often in the beginning, because we were working DAY and NIGHT to deliver the very critical basic features on Similar Worlds, with almost ZERO hours of sleep. Now, we balance work and sleep, as Similar Worlds is a lot more stable.
The progress bars disappeared, but that doesn't mean we are not working.
Tagging people is one of the next features we do want to get implemented.
As for the mobile app, please comment on this post with your feedback about our Mobile App Suggestion:[/quote]
(Post can be found here: https://similarworlds.com/30-Miscellaneous/827661-Lets-all-write-to-the-admin)
The first thing that stands out to me is the use of caps lock. Now, it should go without saying that caps lock isn't something used in a professional context. It gives the post an air of immaturity, which is definitely not something you want associated with the people running a website. The next issue that jumps out at me is not so much to do with what's there, but what isn't. I see a blatant lack of "Hello, thank you for your concern", or "We appreciate your comment", or "We will take your criticism on board", or anything else to that effect. The post doesn't create an atmosphere of helpfulness, but feels a lot more like a twitter rant. The response also feels disjointed, moving from point to point without any flow, and it doesn't actually address every concern from the user. At best, this post is ill-advised, and at worst, it's borderline hostile towards an already somewhat unsatisfied user.
I think the best way to illustrate my point would be to rewrite the response with all of the same information:
[quote]Hello, *Username*, this is Nuno from the SW team.
We appreciate your feedback regarding the regularity of posts, and we would like to explain the reasoning behind the recent changes in the way we communicate the development of Similar Worlds.
During the opening months of the site, we were working tirelessly to ensure that the core features of the site were in place, and so we had a much more rapid release cycle. In the months since, we have refocused and taken a step back to ensure that we all have a good balance of work and rest, and so we have been updating with new announcements about once a month, which we feel is a reasonable amount of time between updates. The progress bars have disappeared from the site because *enter valid reason (this is something that was conspicuously missing from the original post)*.
As for the features you spoke about, we are currently working towards implementing tagging, and to see more about the mobile app, go here: *link*
Thank you for your feedback,
- Nuno and the SW team.[/quote]
This post raised another issue however. These are people who are supposedly experienced developers, at least to some extent. So why did they not have a work/sleep balance in place before and during the launch? I know that I always had it drilled into my head that staying sane and healthy is more important than a deadline, and it doesn't take too much experience with deadlines to learn that anyway. This post casts yet more doubt in my mind over the experience of the team.
It is worth mentioning however, that most if not all of these issues with writing and communication aren't present in the Admin Announcement posts that we get every so often. Those are of much higher quality and professionalism, which is very encouraging.
Again, I have nothing but faith in the SW team's ability to create a technologically magnificent website, but I do think that the admins have gotten ahead of themselves and that they have a ways to go in terms of public relations and approaching new features and the development of the site with a level of pragmatism. I have lots of experience biting off more than I can chew when coding, and this is exactly what that looks like.
These are just a few examples out of many of the SW team communicating with us about SW, and most of those examples are damn close to exemplary, as far as I know. But it's always important to make a point of the worst examples so they can be learned from.
This post is now north of 1000 words, so I think I鈥檒l end it there. Thanks for reading if you did, and I wish all the best to the SW developers.
*Fingers crossed the devs aren't in a vengeful mood! 馃槄馃*
However, where we begin to run in to problems is with PR. The approach of admins to things like new features and responding to criticism often is premature, unpolished, and sometimes unprofessional.
To start, I'm going to discuss the post made by Andrew on Jan 29 2017, talking about introducing games to SW. (Found here: https://similarworlds.com/27-Games/570571-Seeking-your-Feedback-Similar-Worlds-Games)
This, in my opinion, was a bad move. SW is an incredibly young website, which isn't even complete based on the original pitch yet. This is not a time to promise new features, especially features as prominent and complex as games. Web development and game development are two very different beasts, even for small games. Usually, when you're making anything like a game or a website, it's best to finish the original pitch before you start to add more, and this feels like a brazen move driven mostly by excitement rather than reason or pragmatism, that is more likely to fail than succeed if they continue to approach development of this scale as achievable within a feasible time frame with their current staff. I get the idea from the post that they haven't quite grasped the level of effort required to satisfy the majority of people on SW with these games.
But altogether more worrying than all that, is this response by Nuno to a post criticising the scarcity of updates from the admins:
[quote]There were announcements more often in the beginning, because we were working DAY and NIGHT to deliver the very critical basic features on Similar Worlds, with almost ZERO hours of sleep. Now, we balance work and sleep, as Similar Worlds is a lot more stable.
The progress bars disappeared, but that doesn't mean we are not working.
Tagging people is one of the next features we do want to get implemented.
As for the mobile app, please comment on this post with your feedback about our Mobile App Suggestion:[/quote]
(Post can be found here: https://similarworlds.com/30-Miscellaneous/827661-Lets-all-write-to-the-admin)
The first thing that stands out to me is the use of caps lock. Now, it should go without saying that caps lock isn't something used in a professional context. It gives the post an air of immaturity, which is definitely not something you want associated with the people running a website. The next issue that jumps out at me is not so much to do with what's there, but what isn't. I see a blatant lack of "Hello, thank you for your concern", or "We appreciate your comment", or "We will take your criticism on board", or anything else to that effect. The post doesn't create an atmosphere of helpfulness, but feels a lot more like a twitter rant. The response also feels disjointed, moving from point to point without any flow, and it doesn't actually address every concern from the user. At best, this post is ill-advised, and at worst, it's borderline hostile towards an already somewhat unsatisfied user.
I think the best way to illustrate my point would be to rewrite the response with all of the same information:
[quote]Hello, *Username*, this is Nuno from the SW team.
We appreciate your feedback regarding the regularity of posts, and we would like to explain the reasoning behind the recent changes in the way we communicate the development of Similar Worlds.
During the opening months of the site, we were working tirelessly to ensure that the core features of the site were in place, and so we had a much more rapid release cycle. In the months since, we have refocused and taken a step back to ensure that we all have a good balance of work and rest, and so we have been updating with new announcements about once a month, which we feel is a reasonable amount of time between updates. The progress bars have disappeared from the site because *enter valid reason (this is something that was conspicuously missing from the original post)*.
As for the features you spoke about, we are currently working towards implementing tagging, and to see more about the mobile app, go here: *link*
Thank you for your feedback,
- Nuno and the SW team.[/quote]
This post raised another issue however. These are people who are supposedly experienced developers, at least to some extent. So why did they not have a work/sleep balance in place before and during the launch? I know that I always had it drilled into my head that staying sane and healthy is more important than a deadline, and it doesn't take too much experience with deadlines to learn that anyway. This post casts yet more doubt in my mind over the experience of the team.
It is worth mentioning however, that most if not all of these issues with writing and communication aren't present in the Admin Announcement posts that we get every so often. Those are of much higher quality and professionalism, which is very encouraging.
Again, I have nothing but faith in the SW team's ability to create a technologically magnificent website, but I do think that the admins have gotten ahead of themselves and that they have a ways to go in terms of public relations and approaching new features and the development of the site with a level of pragmatism. I have lots of experience biting off more than I can chew when coding, and this is exactly what that looks like.
These are just a few examples out of many of the SW team communicating with us about SW, and most of those examples are damn close to exemplary, as far as I know. But it's always important to make a point of the worst examples so they can be learned from.
This post is now north of 1000 words, so I think I鈥檒l end it there. Thanks for reading if you did, and I wish all the best to the SW developers.
*Fingers crossed the devs aren't in a vengeful mood! 馃槄馃*
