(08-05-2021, 06:00 AM)anjo Wrote: I suppose we could also make a split system where people could vote both via Discord and via the RMB so people can use whichever they like best. I just believe that we should at least give gamesiders the option to involve themselves in the WA recommendation process because it's mainly a gameside function with primarily gameside effects

I'm fine with this and think it's a good option to satisfy both "discussion good" and "game-side input good"

(08-05-2021, 06:00 AM)anjo Wrote: I don't think that using the RMB as a place to drop your ballot is what's having everything grind to a halt - the problem that we need an active senior staff member for the manual opening is, and when we can simplify that as I suggested above, that problem would be gone.

I think this doesn't just need to be analyzed through the angle of "we need active senior staff" but rather "we need to encourage people to actually want to be active on staff by making it more engaging for them".

We fall prey a lot of the time to thinking "well we can make the processes required to do X take Y hours, and we should try to get Y as low as possible" - and that's not a bad instinct, efficiency is generally good. However, in a game where people play for fun, while RL often takes players away from the game, disinterest and apathy are perhaps even larger dampers on the amount of time that players put into NS or even their ability to get involved to begin with. If we make the process more fun and compelling for them, they'll put net more hours into NS - then you can have a more intensive process, as long as it compels people to keep working on it, and then it'll serve our needs better. The current form of intensity is busy-work, do X to make a Y, quote people for Z, literal checklists, etc. which I am concerned is bad for overall engagement. 

While I'm fine with Discord + RMB as voting, we need to make sure somewhere in there is actual discussion/collaboration/engagement so that staff can learn, talk with one another, and generally participate in a fun collaborative social and intellectual project that they enjoy because it's part of a game where they're trying to have fun. Doing that is obviously a challenge - but if we aren't trying for that goal, we're going to keep having staffing problems.