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Lelling

OpenCommunity Scheduling & Website Downtime

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Hello everyone!

This year has been a blast, and in October, the Pink Day in LA fundraiser has been super successful, raising over $6000 CAD for cancer research! Thank you so much for all your contributions! Now that Pink Day in LA has come to a close, we've got some time between major fundraiser events to take a step back from our daily routine and focus on making sure this community is the best it can be.

We're taking the opportunity to take a good look and update & upgrade several parts of the community, some of which have been largely unchanged since its founding in 2015. Now, it's hard to change the tires on a moving car, and this is why we'll be taking some time off from organising our regular events, so we can fully focus on improving the way things are, as well as have the opportunity to focus more on the social side of our community rather than just its events.

Several sections of the community will be going on a scheduled downtime from November 12th onward. This includes the website, calendar, the majority of our discord, and our organisational teams. During this time period, no events will be scheduled on the calendar by our teams - but that doesn't mean we'll be gone. Our Teamspeak will still be online, and everyone will still be able to use it the way they have so far - to play games and have fun together! During this downtime, our managers and commanders will also have more time to play and socialise without having to focus on planning, scheduling, and organising, and just hang out and have fun!

 

Here's to a bright & shiny future!

 

 -OC Staff

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1 minute ago, Cellize said:

12 November onward ------> for how long ?

For as long as it takes ? 

Our minimum time framework was 14 days, but realistically it might take longer than that depending on the time we have & the progress made. It's also likely that different features will come out of "downtime" status at different times, as we gradually roll out things that have been finished.

This is an important period of change for the community, and we don't want to rush any changes. The point of taking this downtime is that for once, we're not rushed to finish something by a specific deadline, but can instead take the time needed to properly move forward to the next chapter of OC.

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Will these changes include the Raid Team? I would have loved to do more with them, but it was kind of hard to get in there. And a static group is not something I can reliably fit into my schedule.

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28 minutes ago, Dawnkeeper said:

Will these changes include the Raid Team? I would have loved to do more with them, but it was kind of hard to get in there. And a static group is not something I can reliably fit into my schedule.

Yes, the Raid Team will continue their break during the downtime. A large part of the downtime is that we realized the reason the Raid Team required the 1-month break had some underlying issues that couldn't be resolved as easily as we'd hoped.

27 minutes ago, Wapervolk said:

Will this downtime affect the Minecraft server in any way?

No, the Minecraft server will stay online ?

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On 03/01/2019 at 09:05, Dawnkeeper said:

It's been two months. Any news?

It is a very legit question in my opinion.
As Lelling earlier said:

On 04/11/2018 at 19:15, Lelling said:

Several sections of the community will be going on a scheduled downtime from November 12th onward. This includes the website, calendar, the majority of our discord, and our organisational teams.

So it got me curious aswell (since there were a bunch of plans for Minecraft and Guild Wars 2 aswell back then) any news of what's happenning at the moment? The raid team is on a break for quite a while, the event team can't organize events, I'm kind of unsure how the TT team does at the moment and the Minecraft server is practically empty most of the time.

On 04/11/2018 at 19:32, Lelling said:

This is an important period of change for the community, and we don't want to rush any changes. The point of taking this downtime is that for once, we're not rushed to finish something by a specific deadline, but can instead take the time needed to properly move forward to the next chapter of OC.

Improving features and getting more organized is always nice, but from the start, I didn't really understand why is everything getting "shut down". If there are features of the website or the community that needs some work, it could've been done hidden from sight, while it's only accessible to testers and people who work on them. I don't mean to hurry anyone and I believe that's not what Dawnkeeper is intending to do either, but it would be nice to know what's going on with the whole community.

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On 03/01/2019 at 09:05, Dawnkeeper said:

It's been two months. Any news?

 

On 06/01/2019 at 16:22, Wapervolk said:

It is a very legit question in my opinion.

I replied to Dawnkeeper on Discord, where he also asked the question, but I really should reply here as well, so I'll post the (slightly paraphrased) reply here:

Posting any specific information on how that's going on is difficult. In the past we've had a lot of (both accidental and malicious) jumping to conclusions, false interpretations and spreading of unconfirmed rumors whenever making partial announcements, and it's something we wish to avoid and want to write something more complete. Basically, there's an environment where me just saying "I've been thinking about the possibility of X and Y" has led to some serious fallout (and personal attacks), and it's not something I'm interested in experiencing again.

I can say that we are definitely working on a future for OC, rather than giving up on the project.

And I'm hoping we'll be able to inject some FRESHNESS into everything. I'm feeling really positive about what we're cooking up - positive not just for the people who agree with OC's ideals and the way OC's been ran in the past, but also for those who wish things had been run a bit differently. It's really exciting and I'm hoping everyone will like it.

Keeping that in mind, I'll reply to your other stuff as well ^^ (And perhaps that'll make it more clear why we're being so cautious with what we want to write in the announcement)

On 06/01/2019 at 16:22, Wapervolk said:

So it got me curious aswell (since there were a bunch of plans for Minecraft and Guild Wars 2 aswell back then) any news of what's happenning at the moment? The raid team is on a break for quite a while, the event team can't organize events, I'm kind of unsure how the TT team does at the moment and the Minecraft server is practically empty most of the time.

I find "the event team can't organize events" to be very strange wording.

All Teams have been suspended and were effectively disbanded when we went into downtime. It's not that the Event Team can't organize events, it's that the Event Team doesn't exist. And neither do the other teams. We just decided that while we decide exactly what we want to do with the teams - whether we want to reform them in pretty much the same way they existed up to now but with new leadership, whether we want to change their internal structures, whether we want to make a single new team, or something else entirely - rather than remove everyone's tags, we're just going to "freeze" them as they are, since, while the teams no longer exist, the people in those teams do still exist, and can do events - no point making it harder for them to do so by stripping them of the tags (it also makes it easier for us to regroup after the downtime is over). This is also one of the reasons there were no promotions in the TT Team leading up to the downtime - since we knew the trainee hierarchy was going to be reworked for sure.

Regarding Minecraft - it was something I was really looking forward to as well, particularly running a server which has community-wide goals and events / challenges that everyone can participate in, but based on the response we got, it's not something people really wanted - neither to participate in as members, nor to help in preparing these events and running the server as team members. Basically, people just wanted a server where they can do whatever and the admins will spawn whatever they want for them at any time, which is not something we're interested in running. The server will stay up, but all general plans have been put on hold for now.

On 06/01/2019 at 16:22, Wapervolk said:

Improving features and getting more organized is always nice, but from the start, I didn't really understand why is everything getting "shut down". If there are features of the website or the community that needs some work, it could've been done hidden from sight, while it's only accessible to testers and people who work on them. I don't mean to hurry anyone and I believe that's not what Dawnkeeper is intending to do either, but it would be nice to know what's going on with the whole community.

Organizing events and managing teams was a daily, time-consuming and mentally exhausting task - which no one else wanted to do. By the time we went into the downtime, I was the temporary team manager of both the TT Team and the Event Team, and keeping things going as they were up to that point was the equivalent of using a spoon to try and save a ship from taking up water. Staff members would get several messages on a daily basis, on discord, in-game and on the website, writing in with questions, requests, and most commonly, demands. In the weeks leading up to our decision to go into downtime, I also got two threats of lawsuits (ridiculous but stressful nonetheless) and even threats of physical violence by someone who had my address (I put my return address on all OC packages that go out, so a lot of people have my address).

Pressing the proverbial "pause" button on the community was the only way to gain some distance and allow us to evaluate the community, its teams, and everything that's going on, without having to fight 5 fires at any given time while trying to figure out the best way to keep the fires from happening. It also didn't help that some of the very people we relied on in our own teams would turn on us and try to set fire to the firetruck.

It also gave us a nice insight into how much of our community is actually a community, and how much is just people wanting someone to organize events for them and who see OC as a service provider. Basically, everything that makes OC a community is still up and active, the only things that have been properly suspended are things that made us a service provider.

But like I said above, we're not giving up on the project just yet ? The idea of shutting down did come up, but while I can't speak for the other staff members, I still believe there's a lot of good we can do!

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i say fairplay to all that give there free time and effort to organise these things and keep things going! EVERYONE and i mean EVERYONE! at some point needs a break and a wind down so doing it as a whole makes sense and will inject a bit of buzz about the community when its revival happens.... absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that! im shocked and saddened to hear that people within this community would threaten you personally and your finances with lawsuits!!! its beyond crazy the one thing that attracted me and the majority of the NUTS guild was the fact that everyone here seemed nice helpful fun and all inclusive! so from me and my guild i want to thank lelling and all the other OC staff and event organisers helpers raid leaders generally chatty people within this community and im sure when everything is back full swing it will be better than ever 

So all take as much time as you need refresh your battery's 

Much Love 

xxx

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