That does sound like a horror story. This is a special circumstance in that:
1. It was the CEO owner so there is no one else to turn too.
2. Lets be honest everyone knows that wasn't an appropriate subject for the forum. There is a clear difference between that conversation and "yeah man my favorite monster is the beholder." "Man they have nothing on the Aboleth" and them get a little snarky making their discussion and that discussion they were specifically having it I think to make people feel chased away from the forum
3. There are already community standards. Just apply them to mods as well when their mod hat is on. There are people that can talk to them.
I will slide away from the subject now to say I'm a supporter of Mods being members of the community.
To go back to the main subject: I'm a fan of AMA's though the standard post should mention things that can't be discussed (IE dates).
That does sound like a horror story. This is a special circumstance in that:
1. It was the CEO owner so there is no one else to turn too.
2. Lets be honest everyone knows that wasn't an appropriate subject for the forum. There is a clear difference between that conversation and "yeah man my favorite monster is the beholder." "Man they have nothing on the Aboleth" and them get a little snarky making their discussion and that discussion they were specifically having it I think to make people feel chased away from the forum
3. There are already community standards. Just apply them to mods as well when their mod hat is on. There are people that can talk to them.
I will slide away from the subject now to say I'm a supporter of Mods being members of the community.
To go back to the main subject: I'm a fan of AMA's though the standard post should mention things that can't be discussed (IE dates).
I do think if there was an AMA, a boilerplate of commonly asked questions/expectation management would be key to save a lot of people time. Certainly one explaining D&D Beyond's approach to dates/timelines.
The topic of, "Are staff / moderators always representing D&D Beyond" is an interesting one.
The short answer is, yes - anyone posting with a staff or moderator account is posting as a visible representative of the business and should be aware of that.
That said, those staff accounts you see posting visibly on these forums? They are all staff whose role in some way involves interacting with the community.
I'm part of the product team, and part of my responsibilities involve feedback about the compendiums and listings that our team builds. I need to post on here, and converse with people to do that. I also spend time on here helping people.
Of course, when I post in a thread about movies, to tell y'all that The Crow is one of my all-time favourite movies, it should be pretty clear that's a personal opinion. 😊
There are staff who post on these forums without their account being flagged in red - developers, designers, and others who want to chat about D&D without people asking them questions they're not in a position to talk about.
That is an unfortunately common failing of AMAs and similar one-time discourse events.
"I know you don't answer this sort of question and you've said why a lot, but if I ask really, reeeaaaaally hard, could you answer...?"
That combined with the dogpiling means "AMA" events generally need pretty heavy curating and moderation. Unsure if it's the right choice for the situation here, but frankly I'm not sure if it'd hurt that much to try one and see if it fits.
That is an unfortunately common failing of AMAs and similar one-time discourse events.
"I know you don't answer this sort of question and you've said why a lot, but if I ask really, reeeaaaaally hard, could you answer...?"
That combined with the dogpiling means "AMA" events generally need pretty heavy curating and moderation. Unsure if it's the right choice for the situation here, but frankly I'm not sure if it'd hurt that much to try one and see if it fits.
Yeah, those are potential weaknesses that would need to be addressed if it was something employed. My personal take; the only way to find out is give it a shot. As long as DDB is up front about it being a 'trial run' and if we didn't continue it, why, I think it'd still be a net benefit.
"We tried this new method of comms and it didn't serve the communities needs", that kind of thing.
"I once knew this fella, Aasimar raised in the Underdark. Was like a brother to me. When he escaped we couldn't take much with us. Poor, emaciated husks of the living we were. 'ts okay though. We survived and made our ways. I'll never forget the way the people from my home looked at us when we walked in the archway. Though, I'm frighteningly certain the feelings they would have, had they but the opportunity ta see us leave." --Manolovo the Traitor, Memoirs of a Scoundrel
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but it seems in line with a few of the suggestions in this thread so far, so I figured I'd put it here.
I have a suggestion for the whole "treated differently as a moderator even when not using orange text" problem:
Explain that in your profile's signature. Put something along the lines of "Unless I am speaking in Orange Textor Red Text, I do not have my moderator hat on. Treat me as you would any other person on these boards when not using that style of posting." in your signature so that it appears in every post you make.
It isn't a perfect solution, but I think that sort of explanation would help those that can't tell the difference between having a "normal person hat" and "moderator hat" on when posting.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I think a decent solution to the whole mod hat thing would be to give moderators a little tic box when commenting that when used outlines their post in orange similar to staff post red. Because I'll be honest @Davyd I didn't know that you were posting as a Mod with orange text and as a person with regular. And as far as the whole alt account thing goes I already assumed you guys did that, and I wasn't worried about the secret police thing since every post already has a report button as well as the fact that just because a Mod/Staff doesn't post on a thread doesn't mean they aren't reading it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but it seems in line with a few of the suggestions in this thread so far, so I figured I'd put it here.
I have a suggestion for the whole "treated differently as a moderator even when not using orange text" problem:
Explain that in your profile's signature. Put something along the lines of "Unless I am speaking in Orange Textor Red Text, I do not have my moderator hat on. Treat me as you would any other person on these boards when not using that style of posting." in your signature so that it appears in every post you make.
It isn't a perfect solution, but I think that sort of explanation would help those that can't tell the difference between having a "normal person hat" and "moderator hat" on when posting.
I think this is a great idea and I'm going to do it right now. Thank you!
Heya, sooooo this thread has been a few posts to catch up on! 😊
There's some really passionate and valuable feedback in this thread from some of the most active members of our community, and I thank you for that.
I highlighted and discussed this thread with other members of staff last night. I didn't jump in here to respond though as it was around 11pm by then.
Anyways, it's morning and I have coffee now, so I'd like to jump in on a few things.
ISSUES AND CHANGELOG
We hear you. We've been discussing internally, since before Christmas, that we need to look at our changelog system, how we use it, and how to improve it.
Simply put, as a user of a site myself, I hope to be able to click somewhere obvious and see what changes have happened. All of them. The large changelogs with images and explanations on how to do things are great, but currently we're lacking a simple way to see and organise changes.
I'm looking at alternatives and how to improve.
I know this is meme-worthy by now, but I don't have a date to commit to on this ...
PUBLIC DISCUSSION OF MODERATOR ACTIONS
Not publicly discussing moderator action is a rule that has proven itself to be beneficial for this community and many others.
Any issues with moderation can, and should, be taken up with the moderator team, or escalated to staff if needed.
I use sites that don't have active moderation. Just look at Twitter, or some Facebook groups. D&D Beyond forums/discord is not those places. We can, and will, expend the effort to keep these places inclusive and civil. If people choose to push back against that, because they feel they have a right to do so, they will find their access to these forums & discord reduced accordingly.
I will reiterate that we never moderate or ban people for criticising D&D Beyond.
STAFF PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY SPACES
I used to be a forum moderator for D&D Beyond.
glances at post count
At one point, I had way more posts on these forums than anyone else, but with my role here at Fandom, I have a lot more that I need to do, and less time to spend engaging here. I do scan read through forum posts in most subforums while eating breakfast. Also I may have a bit more time free to post random stuff soon, so we'll see on that front.
I've been thinking for a while that it might be nice to have some form of periodic AMA on these forums. We've done similar on discord and have Q&A at the end of each dev update stream. I was imagining something along the lines of, "Hey, I'm Faith and this is a some info on my role at D&D Beyond and what's going on with my team. Any questions?"
Is that something that would be fun/useful?
DEVELOPMENT CYCLES & BUG FIXES
Ohhhh wow, so this isn't my area to talk about, but I can say a few things:
We've not been great about telling you all the things we've actually been working on. We'd love to be able to, but we can't.
There are backlogs of issues from books, that we need to solve. I feel that pain every time I build a character (I build a lot of characters) and some feature doesn't work as I would like it to.
Personally working in Tech I think the community is expecting a lot thinking you should give a running commentary on what you are working on right now, we have multimillion dollar companies as our customers and we don't tell them sprint to sprint what we have been doing, mainly because things change and so we don't commit to deadlines other then to say we hope a feature will be in release X, but everything is subject to change.
It would be nice to have some visibility of the roadmap, maybe without dates on it, but I also understand some of that you might not be able to publish until release time especially where it relates to changes WOTC are making that you have visibility of and are implementing.
For me the main thing would be a physical release note, for first pass it doesn't have to be anything as complicated as a Changelog with images or videos etc like you have described above, for MVP a simple one page document detailing the features added and the bugs fixed would be fine, not buried on a forum page but with its own dedicated page with all previous releases linked there so people can go back (if they wish) and see when stuff got released. Over time you could then expand this out to become more detailed and include additional information like the change-log you mention above.
I just watched this week’s Dev Update. I can tell that the concerns discussed here were passed on. While he didn’t directly reference it, it was obvious to me that Joe knew the substance of the concerns and had adjusted his approach to the update and how he explained things as a result of that. Thank you to everyone who heard our concerns and helped others hear them. Obviously the changes/improvements many of us on this thread have shared go further than the Dev updates (and in many ways are more about the forums), but this was heartening to see. I have always believed that mods and staff have meant it when they have said concerns are passed on, and I know from my own work that there can be very good reasons for hearing a concern but not acting on it in the way the one lifting the concern desires. At the same time, it felt really good to have such a clear confirmation that concerns had been heard and were being acted on at least in one arena. Thanks again!
I've made a thread about this, but I think users would feel far more heard if the Feature Request portal was actually checked, and requests actively denied/planned etc. Currently, that portal seems to have not been used by DDB staff for at least 3 years, and it's not helping your case. I do understand if you might not have the manpower to realize that latter bit, but if you're not going to use/check/mark threads on the Feature Request portal, you should just shut it down.
Hey Z3DT, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I wanted to respond specifically to your recommendation. We are actively aggregating all of the posts and comments from the Feature Request portal and using them to inform our roadmap decisions. To clarify, we added a post to the portal here. We are still actively listening so please keep sharing your ideas!
I recognize that doesn't address the larger concern of this thread about communication frequency and transparency. The internal discussion of what has been thoughtfully shared here is ongoing.
I've made a thread about this, but I think users would feel far more heard if the Feature Request portal was actually checked, and requests actively denied/planned etc. Currently, that portal seems to have not been used by DDB staff for at least 3 years, and it's not helping your case. I do understand if you might not have the manpower to realize that latter bit, but if you're not going to use/check/mark threads on the Feature Request portal, you should just shut it down.
Hey Z3DT, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I wanted to respond specifically to your recommendation. We are actively aggregating all of the posts and comments from the Feature Request portal and using them to inform our roadmap decisions. To clarify, we added a post to the portal here. We are still actively listening so please keep sharing your ideas!
I recognize that doesn't address the larger concern of this thread about communication frequency and transparency. The internal discussion of what has been thoughtfully shared here is ongoing.
Hey there! I appreciate the message and you involving yourself in this discussion. Thanks for listening and trying to find a way to find a solution.
However, I don't think having a message up top that says "Hey, we do still check these" is going to be enough. It doesn't really show that you're actively watching the portal, only that you checked it last on the time of posting.
I'm sticking with my request to start labeling the threads again. It shows a constant, active involvement. That message is going to get old, and still be there in three years. In three years, no one is going to think that that message shows you're still actively involved. However, if we can see threads are still being labeled, or have been labeled until the very recent past, we can see at any time that you're still there, still watching, and still listening. Even if you do nothing else.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
That does sound like a horror story. This is a special circumstance in that:
1. It was the CEO owner so there is no one else to turn too.
2. Lets be honest everyone knows that wasn't an appropriate subject for the forum. There is a clear difference between that conversation and "yeah man my favorite monster is the beholder." "Man they have nothing on the Aboleth" and them get a little snarky making their discussion and that discussion they were specifically having it I think to make people feel chased away from the forum
3. There are already community standards. Just apply them to mods as well when their mod hat is on. There are people that can talk to them.
I will slide away from the subject now to say I'm a supporter of Mods being members of the community.
To go back to the main subject: I'm a fan of AMA's though the standard post should mention things that can't be discussed (IE dates).
I do think if there was an AMA, a boilerplate of commonly asked questions/expectation management would be key to save a lot of people time. Certainly one explaining D&D Beyond's approach to dates/timelines.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
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D&D Beyond FoundersThe topic of, "Are staff / moderators always representing D&D Beyond" is an interesting one.
The short answer is, yes - anyone posting with a staff or moderator account is posting as a visible representative of the business and should be aware of that.
That said, those staff accounts you see posting visibly on these forums? They are all staff whose role in some way involves interacting with the community.
I'm part of the product team, and part of my responsibilities involve feedback about the compendiums and listings that our team builds. I need to post on here, and converse with people to do that. I also spend time on here helping people.
Of course, when I post in a thread about movies, to tell y'all that The Crow is one of my all-time favourite movies, it should be pretty clear that's a personal opinion. 😊
There are staff who post on these forums without their account being flagged in red - developers, designers, and others who want to chat about D&D without people asking them questions they're not in a position to talk about.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
That is an unfortunately common failing of AMAs and similar one-time discourse events.
"I know you don't answer this sort of question and you've said why a lot, but if I ask really, reeeaaaaally hard, could you answer...?"
That combined with the dogpiling means "AMA" events generally need pretty heavy curating and moderation. Unsure if it's the right choice for the situation here, but frankly I'm not sure if it'd hurt that much to try one and see if it fits.
Please do not contact or message me.
Yeah, those are potential weaknesses that would need to be addressed if it was something employed. My personal take; the only way to find out is give it a shot. As long as DDB is up front about it being a 'trial run' and if we didn't continue it, why, I think it'd still be a net benefit.
"We tried this new method of comms and it didn't serve the communities needs", that kind of thing.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
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D&D Beyond FoundersThat's pretty much where I am at - I'm willing to give it a go.
I'll chat to Mellie and organise it.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
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D&D Beyond StaffWould you rather fight 40 horse-sized cats or 40 cat-sized horses?
What, too early for questions?
Is that even a question? o_o
Forty ten-pound herbivores, or the equivalent of forty dire tigers with weights ranging in the quadruple digits?
The CR ratings for those two encounters are not similar, I tellz ya!
Please do not contact or message me.
We got a word for those...
Tiger...
40 Tigers...
Nah I'll take "I want to live" for 500.
"I once knew this fella, Aasimar raised in the Underdark. Was like a brother to me. When he escaped we couldn't take much with us. Poor, emaciated husks of the living we were. 'ts okay though. We survived and made our ways. I'll never forget the way the people from my home looked at us when we walked in the archway. Though, I'm frighteningly certain the feelings they would have, had they but the opportunity ta see us leave." --Manolovo the Traitor, Memoirs of a Scoundrel
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D&D Beyond FoundersI am NOT fighting cats.
I'm also not doing an AMA in this thread. 😝
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but it seems in line with a few of the suggestions in this thread so far, so I figured I'd put it here.
I have a suggestion for the whole "treated differently as a moderator even when not using orange text" problem:
Explain that in your profile's signature. Put something along the lines of "Unless I am speaking in Orange Text or Red Text, I do not have my moderator hat on. Treat me as you would any other person on these boards when not using that style of posting." in your signature so that it appears in every post you make.
It isn't a perfect solution, but I think that sort of explanation would help those that can't tell the difference between having a "normal person hat" and "moderator hat" on when posting.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I think a decent solution to the whole mod hat thing would be to give moderators a little tic box when commenting that when used outlines their post in orange similar to staff post red. Because I'll be honest @Davyd I didn't know that you were posting as a Mod with orange text and as a person with regular. And as far as the whole alt account thing goes I already assumed you guys did that, and I wasn't worried about the secret police thing since every post already has a report button as well as the fact that just because a Mod/Staff doesn't post on a thread doesn't mean they aren't reading it.
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
I think this is a great idea and I'm going to do it right now. Thank you!
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Personally working in Tech I think the community is expecting a lot thinking you should give a running commentary on what you are working on right now, we have multimillion dollar companies as our customers and we don't tell them sprint to sprint what we have been doing, mainly because things change and so we don't commit to deadlines other then to say we hope a feature will be in release X, but everything is subject to change.
It would be nice to have some visibility of the roadmap, maybe without dates on it, but I also understand some of that you might not be able to publish until release time especially where it relates to changes WOTC are making that you have visibility of and are implementing.
For me the main thing would be a physical release note, for first pass it doesn't have to be anything as complicated as a Changelog with images or videos etc like you have described above, for MVP a simple one page document detailing the features added and the bugs fixed would be fine, not buried on a forum page but with its own dedicated page with all previous releases linked there so people can go back (if they wish) and see when stuff got released. Over time you could then expand this out to become more detailed and include additional information like the change-log you mention above.
I just watched this week’s Dev Update. I can tell that the concerns discussed here were passed on. While he didn’t directly reference it, it was obvious to me that Joe knew the substance of the concerns and had adjusted his approach to the update and how he explained things as a result of that. Thank you to everyone who heard our concerns and helped others hear them. Obviously the changes/improvements many of us on this thread have shared go further than the Dev updates (and in many ways are more about the forums), but this was heartening to see. I have always believed that mods and staff have meant it when they have said concerns are passed on, and I know from my own work that there can be very good reasons for hearing a concern but not acting on it in the way the one lifting the concern desires. At the same time, it felt really good to have such a clear confirmation that concerns had been heard and were being acted on at least in one arena. Thanks again!
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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AlumniHey Z3DT, thank you for sharing your thoughts. I wanted to respond specifically to your recommendation. We are actively aggregating all of the posts and comments from the Feature Request portal and using them to inform our roadmap decisions. To clarify, we added a post to the portal here. We are still actively listening so please keep sharing your ideas!
I recognize that doesn't address the larger concern of this thread about communication frequency and transparency. The internal discussion of what has been thoughtfully shared here is ongoing.
Just another elf in the wide world.
Hey there! I appreciate the message and you involving yourself in this discussion. Thanks for listening and trying to find a way to find a solution.
However, I don't think having a message up top that says "Hey, we do still check these" is going to be enough. It doesn't really show that you're actively watching the portal, only that you checked it last on the time of posting.
I'm sticking with my request to start labeling the threads again. It shows a constant, active involvement. That message is going to get old, and still be there in three years. In three years, no one is going to think that that message shows you're still actively involved. However, if we can see threads are still being labeled, or have been labeled until the very recent past, we can see at any time that you're still there, still watching, and still listening. Even if you do nothing else.
Leaving OGL 1.0(a) untouched and making SRD 5.1 CC-BY-4.0 is a great first step. The next is a promise to do the same for future editions. Here's a discussion thread on that.
#OpenDnD
DDB is great, but it could be better. Here are some things I think could improve DDB