Quality Assurance Team Revamp

Couldn't agree more with this idea, although I personally think that expanding the team should be focused a little more on mini-game maintenance and map updates (may be a little biased, as I'm a big mini-games player). I'd say and Alex and Vislo seem to have a decent grasp on sub-server updates and the general thoughts/ideas of the community there, especially with the presence of factions staff/admins, yet mini-games have had little-to-no work outside of the upcoming revamp. Even a 4-4 split, with 4 QA staff members covering sub-servers and 4 covering mini-games, would be good.

There was a thread by Ankh a little while back talking about mini-game staff (which I also would like) but specifically a mini-game map focused sub-team that deals with the sorting and implementation of community maps for more frequent updates. I think if you could combine that with the quality assurance team like you talk about here, it'd really make a difference to the mini-game community.

 

I think you have a great vision for the future of the Quality Assurance team. One point I want to bring up is regarding your ideas for dividing/assigning team members to a specific subserver or minigames. I feel that this would hinder the efficacy of the team by fragmenting it. For example, if there was a single Factions team member, they would have the undue burden of sifting through all of the Bug Reports and Server Suggestions relating to the Factions server. Compare this to if there was another member in charge of Creative persay, which receives less Bug Reports and suggestions than Factions. The workload would be divided unfairly and mean that the full potential of the team isn't being utilized.

I think it's important to preserve the versatility of the QA team. Instead of assigning specific areas for each member to be in charge of, the team should continue to monitor all aspects of the server. However, they should prioritize and use their resources towards certain aspects of the server when necessary. This is especially true close to a subserver reset. As you mentioned, with a Minigame revamp in the works, the QA team can dedicate their efforts moreso towards Minigames rather than say, Creative, which is not resetting soon.

 

Like Swinger mentioned I had made a suggestion in regards to a Maps Team that would handle the setup, maintenance and implementation of maps, however I could see what you mentioned working as well. Those tasks would fit the role of "Quality Assurance" pretty well if you ask me.

 

Every single day, countless ideas for minigames/sub servers are suggested and in no organized way. Sure, anyone who wants to can comment on forums and maybe get a few responses, sometimes from a staff member, but is anything really being done? Having specific members of the staff team collecting ideas to ENSURE changes would be incredibly beneficial to the server and would allow for so many improvements. Many staff members are educated on specific aspects of the server (i.e. SB players know most about skyblock and the community) so I think keeping that in mind when picking staff members is crucial.

There are an immense amount of suggestions that the community for each sub server has accumulated over time, many being overlooked. I really like your ideas to revamp the team to improve the status and quality of MCC. The title of the sub team is promising much more than is being given. Great work (:

 

I love this idea Mario! I feel like QA can't be completely organized and efficient without bringing in more members, and it would definitely help with finding and resolving bugs, suggesting ideas and maps, etc. (which the team currently does). The team has been so small for years. I have tried bringing up the new addition of members, but many tickets have been rejected; I don't think this revamp that people support will happen.
The reason Quality Assurance is so small is because it involves a LOT of trust. QA Members have access to a lot of things, and they work with the big boss man Markey as well. If a member were to break that trust, a lot of private and sensitive information could be leaked. In the past, I made a ticket where a response was that there did not seem anyone trustworthy and ready enough to be invited to the team. Granted, this was about a year ago, but this same response could be used today. Alex also said it himself that the QA Team is a great size right now to him, and there is no need to add anyone. Again, these statements were made when we used Enjin, but this can still stand today as a reason as to why this won't happen.
I can see this happening only if they restrict information QA members are given, but then the team is not meeting the purpose that the Owners and the Admin Team would want it to as a sub-team. The only way I see this working is if a new, hidden group is made for Kieren so that he can continue working with the Admin Team and Owners as if nothing happened, and then QA Team is revamped specifically to focus on bugs, suggestions, and maps in general with no real "private" information. This way, the original QA Team can focus on what they want, but this revamped team with more efficiency and oriented towards specifically suggestions and bugs can still happen without trust being a huge factor and now just activity and involvement in the community. I don't know if that's really a good idea, but that's the only compromise I can think of that would make this revamp happen if it even were to happen.
I see what everyone is saying and don't get me wrong, I agree with you, but I just don't see this happening. Maybe there will be an internal revamp to try to focus more on what you brought up, but specifically new members, I don't think that will happen, which defeats the purpose of efficiency. I'm not on QA; I'm not an Admin; I'm not an Owner; please don't take what I said in any wrong way since I'm just saying what I have been told in the past and what I personally think as well. Overall, though, I love the thread and replies that people have made. It would be cool to see this happen!

 

Others have already given some input that I agree with, but as an ex-QA member I do have some additional ideas and feedback.

You've pretty much summarized my vision of the team back when I was on QA. On the old forums, I would compile lists of ideas to send to Markey in the QA chat and reply to threads with my own ideas and feedback. I focused on both subservers and minigames, but the ideas were mainly pulled from the forums. I'm in no way trying to brag by saying this, but with the system I had, I didn't really need anyone's help. The only issue with my role is while I would send these ideas to Alex, he had other priorities. Bug fixing takes up a good chunk of his time, on top of having to prep for resets.

The problem isn't the size of QA or lack of ideas. Don't get me wrong, I'd talked to Alex all the time in the QA discord chat and I know that he doesn't just ignore ideas. The problem was that there were so many ideas and features to be implemented, and only Markey + Vislo to work on them. I would love if my old vision came to fruition and hey, I'd even try to join the team again to make it happen if that seemed plausible. While QA is entrusted with a lot of information, we didn't all have the ability to implement these ideas. We could pitch them to Alex, but we can't automatically add them.

The QA team size doesn't really matter until there are more developers that can lighten the load on Alex and Vislo. They'd tried having more devs but for reasons that I don't fully remember, things didn't end up working out. As someone who's been on the team, I also don't agree with having a big size because of the information shared within it. It isn't as secretive as people think, but there is plenty of information that would be very damaging to MCC if it was leaked. Information being leaked is a problem anywhere, even outside of MCC, so having a small team is much easier to manage for the admins and Alex.

I haven't been on the team for a long time so things might've changed since I've been gone. This is largely based on how the team was when I was around, but hopefully some of it is still relevant. There's probably more I could add, but I'd end up doubling this post size if I did that.