Guide To Giving Useful Feedback

[Kyet]

When giving feedback to our staff, please:

1. Cite Examples. E.g: if your issue is that two supposedly similar cases were handled differently, you need to cite both cases in enough detail for us to examine them. For forums, this means providing the URL of the threads. For stuff that's only in-game you need to provide the date it happened, and the name of the admin who handled it. "Sometime last week" is usually not enough for us to go on.
2. Be Prompt. If you see something that you think is an issue, report it IMMEDIATELY. Do not wait! Reporting something in the round that it happens (via ahelp, typically) is better than waiting until next round to ahelp it. If it is serious enough to go to the forums (ban appeal, admin complaint, or whatnot) then do it as soon as possible after the round is over. The longer you wait, the less reliable everyone's memory gets, and the harder it becomes to gather all the relevant facts.
3. Be Clear. E.g: if your issue is X, stick to talking about X in your report. Don't offhandedly bring in other things unrelated to X. Stay on topic.
4. Be Concise. Most issues brought to our attention need no more than a paragraph to explain them. If you find yourself going much over a paragraph, you probably need to edit it down, summarize, and focus on the key thing.
5. Be Direct. If you have an issue to raise, raise it directly with the relevant person. E.g. Hosting/backend issues should be sent to me, mentor issues should be sent to the CMs, code bugs should be logged as Github issues, etc. Don't ask a third party to deliver your feedback for you. Similarly, if someone complains to you about something, and you are not responsible for that thing, tell them to take it up with whoever is responsible for that thing.
6. Don't Over-Generalize. Any comment like "most of the playerbase <insert anything here>" is probably over-generalizing. If you feel that other people agreeing with you is significant to your point, cite those people by name. Anyone can say "lots of people who I won't name agree with me" about virtually anything. As a result, such claims are meaningless. If you want someone's endorsement of your opinion/claim/etc to have weight, you must name them, and you must be prepared for us to ask them to confirm that they support what you said.
7. Be Willing to Offline PM. It is better to leave the right person a message, even if they are offline, than it is to go asking other people because the right person wasn't online at that exact moment. Staff are used to signing on to a bunch of messages. It is okay. We'd rather you just contacted the right person at the start, even if they are not online at that second. For roles which commonly get a lot of feedback (like the Community Managers, who are in charge of everything related to Mentors) there are multiple people in that role, so there is usually at least one of them online who you can contact.
8. Remember: Staff Are Volunteers. None of us get paid for this. While we work very hard to deliver you the best SS13 server out there, remember, we're volunteers, we have real lives, jobs, etc, and sometimes, ban appeals/etc can take a week or two to process. This is especially true for situations that are complex, require very specific people, etc. Those can take longer. Your patience is appreciated.