A user (who wishes to remain anonymous) approached me today with some complaints about staff handling of certain subjects, and approachability in general. The user felt that staff are not approachable as a whole, and that they felt unable to voice complaints without retribution, or at very least without causing staff to dislike them. They also felt it was not clear enough that staff would not ban someone for something outwith breaking the rules, mentioning concerns staff preemptively ban users for reasons such as being members of other wikis, or voicing complaints against staff.
This thread is not about discussing the validity of these concerns; the point is that a user (and, according to them, multiple others) feel that staff are not there to help, and that they have no means to voice this concern. This is of course not what we want, and so I propose one of two things.
Firstly, we set up a system for anonymous comments or complaints to be made. An online poll, or similar, could be set up (much like how the yearly surveys are done, but with a space for complaints and availability year round. This would ideally be placed in a prominent enough position (perhaps the sidebar, or main guide hub), and could be routinely checked by CO or MAST. There are of course issues, such as susceptibility to trolling, but I do not foresee this as a major problem (as we already deal with this kind of issue with the yearly survey).
The alternative is to make it clearer what existing avenues users have to make anonymous complaints; the user was not aware of a possibility to use IRC or Wikidot to message staff without utilising their identifiable account.
This thread is open to any member of 05 to comment, and I'm willing to receive input from other users. This is about approachability, after all.
~🌸~Flower Power~🌸~
