Community

Will these be added manually to members who already hold endorsements etc?

3 minutes ago, Fraser Cooper said:

Will these be added manually to members who already hold endorsements etc?

Hi Fraser,

Yes, where possible, these will retrospectively be awarded to people who hold the relevant endorsement.

If you spot any mistakes, please contact the relevant department.

Leon

When will we receive our awards, or will it be done automatically later?

3 hours ago, Louie Lister said:

When will we receive our awards, or will it be done automatically later?

Hi Louie,

Some departments have already begun issuing their awards out, the rest should be sorted very shortly.

If there are any questions regarding specific awards please contact the relevant department.

Leon

Blimey, glad to know the management time is well spent. 'Event idea contribution' haha would love to see the Germans implement this sort of thing ?

Hi Leon

I think this is a good idea, but unfortunately I do feel it's important to be honest - and I really do not hold you as responsible or the target of my feedback.

This is poorly executed and having seen zero real innovation in Community since my own time on staff here, I'm beginning to wonder what is wrong. Is this really "it"?

Awards such as this should be used to drive and increase desired behaviours. They should also recognise people who do fantastic things and get little to no acknowledgement. 

Giving badges for getting a LON rating or suggesting events is not appropriate, because people do these things for themselves as they benefit in some way, (i.e. can control a bigger position, or gets to experience a busy event at their favourite airport). The outcome is the reward and already provides motivation for people to achieve/do it. An additional badge is wasted and, if I am honest, de-valued.

I think rewarding people for doing things for other people and the wider community is more important. That has to be the focus. Not one award relates to mentoring yet there are threads asking why people don't do more of it. Mentoring is a selfless activity and often people feel unvalued or untrusted. Rewarding people who do it is so important.

I'd also be trying to drive engagement (i.e. invite a member who has fallen through the cracks back onto TeamSpeak for a chat and meet new people) etc. I used to be very active on here - nobody encourages me to get back involved or join in. I'm one person, think of all the others out there who may take up an offer. Being a friendly face and involving people is worthy of award - its going the extra mile.

This is "off the top of my head" stuff - I think it's fairly obvious, too. Sorry guys. Back to the drawing boards, I'd suggest. Whatever you're trying to solve (and I don't think you know...) this won't solve it.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Callum McLoughlin

23 minutes ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

Hi Leon

I think this is a good idea, but unfortunately I do feel it's important to be honest - and I really do not hold you as responsible or the target of my feedback.

This is poorly executed and having seen zero real innovation in Community since my own time on staff here, I'm beginning to wonder what is wrong. Is this really "it"?

Awards such as this should be used to drive and increase desired behaviours. They should also recognise people who do fantastic things and get little to no acknowledgement. 

Giving badges for getting a LON rating or suggesting events is not appropriate, because people do these things for themselves as they benefit in some way, (i.e. can control a bigger position, or gets to experience a busy event at their favourite airport). The outcome is the award and already provides motivation. An additional badge is wasted and, if I am honest, de-valued.

I think awarding people for doing things for other people and the wider community is more important. That has to be the focus. Not one award relates to mentoring yet there are threads asking why people don't do more of it. Mentoring is a selfless activity and often people feed unvalued or untrusted. Rewarding people who do it is so important.

I'd also be trying to drive engagement (i.e. invite a member who has fallen through the cracks back onto TeamSpeak for a chat and meet new people) etc. I used to be very active on here - nobody encourages me to get back involved or join in. I'm one person, think of all the others out there who may take up an offer. Being a friendly face and involving people is worthy of award - its going the extra mile.

This is "off the top of my head" stuff - I think it's fairly obvious, too. Sorry guys. Back to the drawing boards, I'd suggest. Whatever you're trying to solve (and I don't think you know...) this won't solve it.

Hi Callum,

Thanks for the feedback, we do take all criticism seriously and are open to any suggestions people have.

I must address one thing first though, because I'm struggling to understand how this awards project is not doing exactly what you've said the purpose of it should be. To encourage and drive desired behaviours and to recoginse the effort that certain members put in to keeping our division great. This is why this project was thought of in the first place and I think it is going to do exactly that... eventually when more phases are released.

I think you have missed one important sentence on my original post so I will be so kind to repeat it for you below:

Quote

Next we will start to introduce progressive/cumulative awards which have different stages of difficulty.

I'm sure from your short time here with us you can recall that dedicating massive amounts of time to VATSIM can often be difficult when real world responsibilities get in the way. This is why there are no awards yet for things such as mentoring, assisting exams by flying or providing adjacent control etc. But rest assured these are going to be implemented as I did suggest above. As you can probably imagine those sort of things take more time to get in to place due to them being progressive/cumulative and the pulling of stats is required.

I will refer you to the other selfless activities to which we are awarding people for in the meantime such as proposing events, helping with the sector file, helping with documentation and getting invloved with the Web Services Focus Group.

With all confidence I can say we know exactly what we're trying to solve and soulfully believe this is a step in the right direction to making that happen. This isn't going to happen overnight however, mainly due to the fact that all of us here are managing these projects in our free time, hence why we need to encourage members to help out also.

Hope this clears things up for you,

Leon

Edited October 3, 2018 by Leon Grant

Hi Leon,

It doesn't and unfortunately it is quite clear you are unwilling to reflect on what I have said, based on your patronising language. Is that all part of the Community spirit? Ask for feedback and treat those who don't give it a glowing report like morons?

Since you know what you're doing and my "short" time with VATUK/VATSIM was of no value, I'll leave you to it. Please don't use the "staff time" defence - I've been staff on VATSIM for longer than you've been a member. 

What benefit does giving somebody a badge for getting a Gatwick Ground validation have for the division? What value does it give to the member?

What value is 119 people having an award for being a member of a Web Focus Group (i.e. giving an opinion on new website features)? Is that really a selfless act? Is proposing an event really a selfless act?! I am speechless.

Why where these even considered award-worthy?

What behaviours are you trying to drive and why will these awards accomplish them?

Why is recognising somebody who has donated X hours to mentoring, or is recognised as somebody without fancy coding to have done fantastic things without reward, staff titles, not right up there. Why does that need to be "phase 2"? If you really had this thought out this would have been the very first thing on there.

There is not one community related award on that list. Not one.

As you say, you've got it all under control. Just as another piece of advice (I wasn't going to mention it, but as you've been quite rude, I will) please use clear titles for your news thread. Your title is unhelpful gibberish. ?

Edited October 3, 2018 by Callum McLoughlin

Hi Callum,

I did reflect on your points, I just don't agree with them. I don't think it is at all helpful to accuse me of being rude and patronising just because we don't see eye to eye on a certain matter.

As I said above, we are welcome to all feedback but not all suggestions are good suggestions and putting them across in a way which makes us sound like we don't have a clue what we're doing isn't a good way to go about giving criticism.

If you want the specifics of the purpose of each and every award then please get in touch the relevant department to do so, I can only give you an overview of why these are here and that is to promote and encourage people to get involved, not only with assisting the division but in enjoying their time here on the network. We're not only here to be mentors or staff members or to make documentation, although these things are great and you should be awarded for them, we shouldn't forget to enjoy and take part in the network itself by flying and/or controlling.

This is the secondary purpose of these awards. Lets encourage people to try something different and get a military, Shanwick or AFISO endorsement. Lets get pilots flying in to smaller aerodromes which they wouldn't usually go to and get controllers staffing up obscure airfields which aren't usually manned. These are the sort of things that this project will be used for in the future when us volunteers get around to putting these in to place. Same goes for community awards which will come in to place once our other projects are launched such as the community regions.

The reason it has been released now with only one phase rather than waiting until all awards have been created is down to the fact that I really don't see a benefit of waiting? Why not start awarding people from now instead of in 3 months time?

I'm simply having a discussion with you, I'm interested to hear your side of things in the hope it helps with this project but unless you put them across in a constructive way, then I don't see the point in continuing this on here when I could be using my time more efficiently to get more awards released.

Leon

Leon,

Thanks for your reply. Lets leave the original tone of your reply to one side. You'll note my original criticism and feedback was not levelled at you, but at others who have held positions in that department for many years but have not delivered a single innovation despite many meetings and "action points" being raised. As an example, the community regions you cite have been floating around as an idea since around 2012 when the RTSM/RTSI system began to be phased out and replaced with a system similar to its current evolution. I remember the discussions very well. My frustration is not with you. I see lots of activity in ATC training, Pilot training, Web, Operations (perhaps your 'quip' over my short time on staff relates to when I got fired for suggesting that an FIR/Ops Director position on the DSG should be created and trying to push it through... ? ) but not with Community. Perhaps some who volunteer in that area could focus more on this sort of thing, driving real change and improvement to member, rather than working out plots, being particularly friendly with certain member demographics, and threatening to resign to have people forced out, (who evidently turned out to be right, a couple of years later...).

But I digress ? I understand you want to encourage people to get online more and do more, but my concern/criticism really is that awards are so much more powerful than this and could be used to greater effect, sooner. People get something back already for all of the things where awards are given (other than documentation).

That is why I am so keen on aspects of membership where there is no other means of recognition. Will we see a coherent plan of what the community team aims to improve and methods of measuring change? Generating a real sense of community, outside of certain friendship groups and staff circles, recognising the efforts that some members who do not benefit from staff titles/recognitions or a rainbow forum name, who do it purely because they see value in it for others, has to be a top priority - surely? What could be more important from a community aspect than that?

I've said my piece. I hope you succeed.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Callum McLoughlin

Good work community team,

Its a very good idea and I'm sure it will be successful. 

Oh and by the way, I love the title ?

 

If we've previously had an endorsement, then it has been removed due rating upgrade, do we get the badge anyway? (KKGMC + AGO/AFISO)

23 hours ago, Callum McLoughlin said:

Mentoring is a selfless activity and often people feel unvalued or untrusted. Rewarding people who do it is so important.

Just on this point specifically, reward for continued engagement I'd say - perhaps some form of reward for sessions all time and/or in recent times? Don't really know how much a badge on my profile would encourage me to keep mentoring, but I think the important thing is that continued mentoring is rewarded in some increased way.

I agree Harry. You can't be all things to all people, some just aren't interested, but sometimes it is nice for people to say "thank you" in a fairly low key way. You may have seen my little diatribe on the .net forum about a certain ex Division Director in a far away land receiving a staff title and callsign (equivalent of an official ex Division Director and VATUKx login) and how inappropriate it is, but it doesn't mean I'm against recognition. In fact, I think recognition is something that the whole network is poor at doing. It only has to be small, it shouldn't be used to convey status, but it should be a token gesture of thanks. People don't say thank you on VATSIM enough. There is plenty of grovelling, but very little genuine kindness and warmth to those who don't influence people's "career", that I see anyway.

How does one meet the requirement for the 'Event Contribution' - 'Contribute an idea for and be involved in the organisation and running of an event.' award? I contributed the idea for the recent Southend event and controlled for it. Now in my eyes, I'd say that I took part in organising because I suggested the event and I also took part in the running of the event, as I controlled for it. 

Somehow I still don't qualify for this award, I wouldn't want people to think my logic is flawed. Just wanted some opinions from the membership on this. 

Just now, Louie Lister said:

How does one meet the requirement for the 'Event Contribution' - 'Contribute an idea for and be involved in the organisation and running of an event.' award? I contributed the idea for the recent Southend event and controlled for it. Now in my eyes, I'd say that I took part in organising because I suggested the event and I also took part in the running of the event, as I controlled for it. 

Somehow I still don't qualify for this award, I wouldn't want people to think my logic is flawed. Just wanted some opinions from the membership on this. 

It appears Marketing haven't started issuing this award out yet because 0 people have it.

Please contact the relevant department if you believe you are missing awards.

Hiya Leon,

I've already asked Marketing & Community. I'm looking for opinions from the membership, not staff.

17 minutes ago, Louie Lister said:

How does one meet the requirement for the 'Event Contribution' - 'Contribute an idea for and be involved in the organisation and running of an event.' award? I contributed the idea for the recent Southend event and controlled for it. Now in my eyes, I'd say that I took part in organising because I suggested the event and I also took part in the running of the event, as I controlled for it. 

Somehow I still don't qualify for this award, I wouldn't want people to think my logic is flawed. Just wanted some opinions from the membership on this. 

 

"Be involved in the running of an event" means taking an active part in the organisation, planning and setting up of it, not be an active controller/pilot for it.  There will be separate recognition for the latter at a future date.

As I told you on Teamspeak, the decision for the awarding of this particular award is not retrospective - it's for events starting from now (or the turn of the year when there's scope to look at more).  And I know you'll say that other departments have done so differently (as you said that in our earlier conversation) however it's up to individual departments to decide how they issue the awards and that is how the Marketing ones will be dealt with.

I don't expect you to be happy with that given your reaction earlier but that's how these awards will be given out.

‘Being involved in the running of an event’ - Seems like it means controlling for the event. Without controllers there would be no ‘running’.

If this is the case, maybe there needs to be more detail to be added to the description of that particular award. It comes across false/inaccurate advertising.

If it meant controlling, it would say controlling but we'll take your comments on board.

1 hour ago, Trevor Hannant said:

If it meant controlling, it would say controlling but we'll take your comments on board.

Well, not really. There's no need to use such tone in response to a membership query. This is becoming a trend on this thread..

Edited October 9, 2018 by Louie Lister

There's no tone Louie, I'm clarifying the meaning of the description of the award which, despite me telling you earlier in TS, you want to keep arguing about.  The last statement is me trying to make you see what it actually means...

Why folk arguing over badges ?

17 minutes ago, Trevor Hannant said:

There's no tone Louie, I'm clarifying the meaning of the description of the award which, despite me telling you earlier in TS, you want to keep arguing about.  The last statement is me trying to make you see what it actually means...

It came across very blunt and rude. A simple query about a badge was all I intended to post for.. yet I’m having my head bit off for it.. oh well, there’s only so much the membership can ask for..

Goodnight

I don't think Trevor's response was rude Louie. It's a bit of a nonsense debate, clearly the running of an event would mean the rostering/organsing/management side of it. 

Don't stress yourself, sure you will get a badge at some point.