Priorities, Ownership Style and where I see the future of TF

**wild1145** · November 24, 2020 at 11:59 PM

So in the interests of this being something the community have been asking for and it's something that I've not had a chance to pull together properly yet, I wanted to make this thread in an effort to explain where I'm at, how I see myself running the server for those who haven't already seen my ownership application. This will probably be a long thread so feel free to jump to the headers that interest you!

My Ownership Style

So this is something I've had a lot of questions about, and while this obviously can't possible to cover every possible scenario and all that good stuff, but hopefully this gives you a taste.

To start with, I want to make clear that I'm not Seth, Windows, Mark or anyone else. I will absolutely have my own way of running things and handling things, and ultimately that's something I really hope you had all expected.

There are going to be things with TF that I want to formalise and run more like a business compared to how the server has previously been ran, in part that's because it's what I feel comfortable with, but I think some level of order and being professional is going to be needed in order to present ourselves in a sane way and to grow.

The other key thing that I want to make sure that I cover off is around community engagement and how I am going to handle that going forward. My attitude always has been and continues to be that while community engagement is encouraged and will always be taken into my decision making, however just because there is a community majority on a suggestion / proposal / anything else, does not mean that is the decision I will make, I am happy to take guidance from the community, but will not feel forced down a route if I feel it is not in the best interests of the server.

In the shorter term I'm also keen to interfere as little as possible in the immediate future, to try to understand who is doing what and how it works, however where I need to step in I will, and where I can make improvements I will.

Updating The Freedom Server

Currently getting the freedom server updated to 1.16.4 is my main priority. We're currently having to run ViaVersion to ensure that we are not losing an audience on the grounds that we're not running the latest version. We've recently lost the previous lead developer, so re-establishing the development team and progressing with the upgrade is taking a lot longer than I had hoped.

Supporting the SMP Server

The SMP Server is going through the process now to re-launch and my current second priority is to look to support that where I can, at the moment I've delegated this to a chap called James who is part of the ATLAS Leadership team who I've asked to take the lead from an ATLAS perspective on SMP, to work with the SMP owners to get things in line, my home is it won't be long until we can bungee the SMP back into the Freedom server.

Bungee Setup

One key priority for me is that I'd like for us to enable the hub world properly and transition it to a full hub server which will bridge the freedom and SMP servers, along with potential new game modes in the future. My hope is that once we do bungee things together it should bring a mutual increase in players to both servers.

The Forums

This is something I'm currently progressing in slow-time. At the current time I've asked some of the ATLAS Team to pull some ideas together for me based on conversations we've had. Flarum isn't a long term sustainable option for the forums, and I think we're currently leaning towards a migration to WoltLab as it's something I already have licensed and the uplift to the latest version should be a fairly cheap cost, and WoltLab from experience is very good from a user and admin perspective however, I want to get an internal call made within ATLAS, and some time put into getting a working prototype / pilot setup to show the community what it will look like.

Other than the stuff above, my priorities are to keep fighting the fires that come up and try to rationalise and improve things where I can.

I also appreciate this isn't a full detailed thing for everything but I wanted to get something out there so there is at least an understanding of what my priorities are and where I see things running but yeah... Hopefully that is helpful.

Miwojedk · November 25, 2020 at 5:56 AM

transparency is always appreciated. I think this might've been a major issue with Seth's tenure, because he didn't have a clear vision / "ownership", as in: he kept flip-flopping every two seconds. One moment he went against community-opinion (while declaring that he was not going to change his mind), and then the next he caved in to the pressure and undid his actions. This is not to say that this is/was always a negative, because it wasn't, but the the fact still remains that his leadership was utter pandemonium. In the way he displayed himself he went from one extreme of wanting the server to be purely community-driven to ruling with an iron fist. A perfect example of this are the countless times Wilee was banned.

When you give off the impression of wanting to steer the server in a certain direction, and then ultimately going the other at some points, you put the community in an awkward position. But now you have given us a clear outline of how you envision yourself as TF owner, thus we now have realistic expectations of what's the come.