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Member Awards Feedback
- Thread starter Ellie
- Start date
Scott
Former TS Team Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
What we have to remember is that TS is little more than 6 months old! It wouldn't be right for us to have a huge list of awards when we don't have a lot of history to vote upon 
We had this debate many, many times between the team and decided it would be best to have less awards than there may have been in the past on another site with a lot more history...
Edit: Ninja Craig is a ninja.
We had this debate many, many times between the team and decided it would be best to have less awards than there may have been in the past on another site with a lot more history...
Edit: Ninja Craig is a ninja.
Ben
TS Founding Member
- Favourite Ride
- Your Dad
As I mentioned before we have a smaller basis of topics, posts, events and for now members to go with.
Also lets not forget we are a completely new site and wanted almost a fresh start. It took a while to agree as a team and at the end of the day we knew we wouldnt please everyone and I made the final decision at what was left in and out.
It just seemed ridiculous to have 20+ awards for a community 6 months old. But I fully expect next year we will have more.
Also lets not forget we are a completely new site and wanted almost a fresh start. It took a while to agree as a team and at the end of the day we knew we wouldnt please everyone and I made the final decision at what was left in and out.
It just seemed ridiculous to have 20+ awards for a community 6 months old. But I fully expect next year we will have more.
Rob
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
I don't buy into the whole new site therefore need less awards thing really but fair enough. As I see it, why should we change just because we've chosen to move sites? The meet/member based awards have always been good fun to vote on and we've still had a fair number of meets in the last 6 months.
Still, as Ellie said what's done is done. I'll have to have a little think before submitting my votes!
Still, as Ellie said what's done is done. I'll have to have a little think before submitting my votes!
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
Because the previous awards represented a community that had been in existence for 10 years, which is a little over 20x longer, with over 7.5x more members than TowersStreet.
Considering we started this community out as a seperate and fresh identity to the last, it didn't feel right to be considering awards on an equal number to those previous. The community experiences, chat, talk/forums and meets are quite new in this respect, so we felt it would have been harder to ask people to consider the experiences of this community for so many awards in such a short time, especially as we have a fair few new members too.
Of course, we wouldn't exclude experiences from times before TowersStreet, but as we started this community afresh we continue to think it as a fresh community, not a continuation of something past, and thus is reflected in the number of awards.
As the community grows in time, spirit and size, we will of course increase the awards to match also. But for now, it is as it is for these reasons
Considering we started this community out as a seperate and fresh identity to the last, it didn't feel right to be considering awards on an equal number to those previous. The community experiences, chat, talk/forums and meets are quite new in this respect, so we felt it would have been harder to ask people to consider the experiences of this community for so many awards in such a short time, especially as we have a fair few new members too.
Of course, we wouldn't exclude experiences from times before TowersStreet, but as we started this community afresh we continue to think it as a fresh community, not a continuation of something past, and thus is reflected in the number of awards.
As the community grows in time, spirit and size, we will of course increase the awards to match also. But for now, it is as it is for these reasons
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
It unfortunately may matter as The Tavern isn't really a place for much to be taken seriously, and with that in mind its hard to discern if someone is actually being serious or not - but given the nature of the forum, its likely to be perceived as not.
Yes, there has been some 'serious' discussion in here, which we would normally split off into Guest Services - however given that it was likely to be asked by further people, it was left here for the time being to save directing people back and forth between topics.
As always we welcome feedback in Guest Services or by PM or using the report button if it relates to an individual or personal matter, where of course the matter would be addressed in a serious manner.
The serious comment from me aside, back on topic (or not as the Tavern case may be) about the Awards please, kthxbai
Yes, there has been some 'serious' discussion in here, which we would normally split off into Guest Services - however given that it was likely to be asked by further people, it was left here for the time being to save directing people back and forth between topics.
As always we welcome feedback in Guest Services or by PM or using the report button if it relates to an individual or personal matter, where of course the matter would be addressed in a serious manner.
The serious comment from me aside, back on topic (or not as the Tavern case may be) about the Awards please, kthxbai
Ian
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Dizz, Bobby’s Yarn Land
While I don't quite agree with the way that Ben's put the point across ( ) it does still stand. The Tavern always has been a place where nothing is taken seriously. It's always been a more relaxed part of the site where serious talk is disregarded, and jokes and alike are posted.
I understand where you're coming from Rob, however, as the other team members have said we decided that as a drastically smaller site and community scaling back the awards was necessary. In the past back over on TT we often found that some awards had very very few votes cast for them. Considering that we found this when we were running the awards with considerably more members it felt more appropriate to make cut backs than to have lots of awards with very few or no votes. I think you would agree it would have looked a bit silly in the end.
Just as a sort of follow on to Joel's point earlier though, TowersStreet is a completely new site, which we created. We want to do things a bit different sometimes. Some people seem to suggest that we are simply TowersTimes rebranded a bit. We don't claim to be so, and we would like to try and do things differently to how they have been done in the past. Sometimes we may get things wrong, but ultimately I for one don't see why we are expected to continue everything as before. We like to try new and different things but with other things we simply have to adapt to suit our new home, members, and surroundings.
Don't think that your opinions are going un-noted Rob. On the contrary this is a matter which we had many late nights of discussion over! However, in the end we decided that it came down to a choice of cutting down the awards or simply not bothering. We know a lot of people enjoy the awards, so cutting them completely was something I think we would all be sad to see. We have offered what we feel is a fair reflection of the site's activities, and hope that the response will be positive.
As has been said, the awards will undoubtedly grow over time, but for now we are offering a smaller number, rather than being left with empty categories and aiming too high for what we are. On occasion we do have to tailor some aspects of the site and community down to ensure they work properly though, this being one of them.
Now... Back to the awards!
*begins his canvas campaign for hottest male once more*
) it does still stand. The Tavern always has been a place where nothing is taken seriously. It's always been a more relaxed part of the site where serious talk is disregarded, and jokes and alike are posted.I understand where you're coming from Rob, however, as the other team members have said we decided that as a drastically smaller site and community scaling back the awards was necessary. In the past back over on TT we often found that some awards had very very few votes cast for them. Considering that we found this when we were running the awards with considerably more members it felt more appropriate to make cut backs than to have lots of awards with very few or no votes. I think you would agree it would have looked a bit silly in the end.
Just as a sort of follow on to Joel's point earlier though, TowersStreet is a completely new site, which we created. We want to do things a bit different sometimes. Some people seem to suggest that we are simply TowersTimes rebranded a bit. We don't claim to be so, and we would like to try and do things differently to how they have been done in the past. Sometimes we may get things wrong, but ultimately I for one don't see why we are expected to continue everything as before. We like to try new and different things but with other things we simply have to adapt to suit our new home, members, and surroundings.
Don't think that your opinions are going un-noted Rob. On the contrary this is a matter which we had many late nights of discussion over! However, in the end we decided that it came down to a choice of cutting down the awards or simply not bothering. We know a lot of people enjoy the awards, so cutting them completely was something I think we would all be sad to see. We have offered what we feel is a fair reflection of the site's activities, and hope that the response will be positive.
As has been said, the awards will undoubtedly grow over time, but for now we are offering a smaller number, rather than being left with empty categories and aiming too high for what we are. On occasion we do have to tailor some aspects of the site and community down to ensure they work properly though, this being one of them.
Now... Back to the awards!
*begins his canvas campaign for hottest male once more*
Rob
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
I can accept the awards being formatted differently, I just wanted to provide a little feedback on how I felt. I just didn't then expect a team member to post a sarcastic reply basically taking the piss out of me for providing this feedback. I am not happy about that at all, it may look petty or whatever to some people but I never thought I would get a reaction from a team member to genuine feedback like that.
Anyway that's enough from me, good luck with the awards.
Anyway that's enough from me, good luck with the awards.
Dan
TS Contributor
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
Just seen the questions and I'm also disappointed with the lack of awards. I appreciate we are a new site but the main community moved over so I expected at least the meet awards to remain the same, if not expand. I might be in the minority here but as TST are so focused on the community I thought I should at least share my opinion
Ben
TS Founding Member
- Favourite Ride
- Your Dad
Great suggestion.
As we build up as a community we will (hopefully) have more members to give awards to, and while the current awards are voted by the community the way you have suggested is another way of involvement. I like, alot. Will deffo make a note for next years.
As we build up as a community we will (hopefully) have more members to give awards to, and while the current awards are voted by the community the way you have suggested is another way of involvement. I like, alot. Will deffo make a note for next years.
Joel
TS Technical Admin
- Favourite Ride
- Closed season on TST
The posts concerning the feedback of the Member Awards have been moved to here, along with a statement from the team about the Member Awards feedback and concerns raised with posts in the topic.
The topic was reviewed shortly after the series of posts around the feedback for the Awards, and it was felt that we had not acted in the best possible way that we could have, and so I wished to offer our apologies to those concerned and disappointed, and attempt to explain what happened and what we have done to prevent it from happening again.
The Awards were retained by the team as a way of recognising members for their contributions to the community by their peers, and we know that it has always received good feedback previously when held on TT. Obviously we wished to retain this, but it was felt by the team that there were perhaps too many awards given the comparative size, time and experience that TowersStreet as a community had in comparison to TT.
TT had chosen not to complete member awards at all, perhaps knowing that their response would not have been so great, and we felt it right to scale back our awards to reflect these facts and to try and maintain a "rich" experience for our members (rather perhaps explained better in the opposite way - we didn't want too many awards saturating the smaller userbase we had, thus to try and keep it more "special" than diluted), and we didn't want people struggling to nominate people for categories because we had far too many. We also reviewed the awards from last year and chose to cut out some that were not popular, and those that perhaps would be difficult to select given the shorter history and experience of the current site.
The team did spend a lot of time discussing the matter, and usually a majority vote is carried out amongst team members to make a final decision, which was approved by the team. We were aware that obviously some people may feel disappointed by the reduced awards, however we were hopeful that our members would also understand our reasoning too.
Clearly the feedback was a little more stark in its passion than we had imagined, and so team members tried to explain the reasoning behind the changes to those that offered the feedback.
This was one of our first things we could have done better - we have a passionate team of people that care for the site, and our members greatly, and thus several people replied to feedback in a short period of time. This wasn't the experience we would have liked, and we have now implemented a suggestion within the team for one team member to take ownership of an issue, respond and liaise with the member concerned to prevent an 'en masse' and perhaps confusing array of replies.
Secondly we were aware that a team member had chosen to reply in a way members felt perhaps intimidating or rude to some other members. This was not the intention of any of our team members, and unfortunately the misplacing of timing and perhaps tone of the comment was again not the experience we'd have liked. The comment was intended as jovial, given the nature of The Tavern, however upon reflection we know that wasn't clear at all.
That said, the member concerned has been apologised to personally by myself on behalf of the team as well as these notes to explain the process and learnings.
The team have again also taken measures to ensure that any feedback that is perceived as serious is dealt with accordingly, including encouraging and relocating any such feedback to the Guest Services forum where it can be responded to appropriately without concern of being misinterpreted by either our members or the team.
Lastly, we perceived that our comments may not have indicated and been clear that we do welcome feedback from our members, and in fact is one of our core values for TowersStreet. We do, and will always welcome feedback from members, and ensure that we respond clearer to indicate that we have taken feedback on board as well as an explanation for our actions and decisions, rather than perhaps just an explanation which may appear as solely defensive. We aim to be clear and transparent wherever we can be.
So again I would like to make it clear that we have indeed taken everyones feedback on board with future Member Awards, and it is our intention to expand the range of awards next year to reflect the communities standing as well as the feedback we received. Unfortunately given that the awards voting process has begun we aren't able to look at reviewing this years awards, however we have been approached by a member to run an alternative additional unofficial awards after the TS Awards, which we have given our full support for and will look to see how it runs to improve our own.
We do try hard to be different - and that includes admitting when we're wrong and could have done better, as well as learning from our mistakes and I hope that reflects in the details above.
Thank you to everyone for their support as ever with the TowersStreet community.
Regards,
Joel Stanford
On behalf of the TowersStreet Team
The topic was reviewed shortly after the series of posts around the feedback for the Awards, and it was felt that we had not acted in the best possible way that we could have, and so I wished to offer our apologies to those concerned and disappointed, and attempt to explain what happened and what we have done to prevent it from happening again.
The Awards were retained by the team as a way of recognising members for their contributions to the community by their peers, and we know that it has always received good feedback previously when held on TT. Obviously we wished to retain this, but it was felt by the team that there were perhaps too many awards given the comparative size, time and experience that TowersStreet as a community had in comparison to TT.
TT had chosen not to complete member awards at all, perhaps knowing that their response would not have been so great, and we felt it right to scale back our awards to reflect these facts and to try and maintain a "rich" experience for our members (rather perhaps explained better in the opposite way - we didn't want too many awards saturating the smaller userbase we had, thus to try and keep it more "special" than diluted), and we didn't want people struggling to nominate people for categories because we had far too many. We also reviewed the awards from last year and chose to cut out some that were not popular, and those that perhaps would be difficult to select given the shorter history and experience of the current site.
The team did spend a lot of time discussing the matter, and usually a majority vote is carried out amongst team members to make a final decision, which was approved by the team. We were aware that obviously some people may feel disappointed by the reduced awards, however we were hopeful that our members would also understand our reasoning too.
Clearly the feedback was a little more stark in its passion than we had imagined, and so team members tried to explain the reasoning behind the changes to those that offered the feedback.
This was one of our first things we could have done better - we have a passionate team of people that care for the site, and our members greatly, and thus several people replied to feedback in a short period of time. This wasn't the experience we would have liked, and we have now implemented a suggestion within the team for one team member to take ownership of an issue, respond and liaise with the member concerned to prevent an 'en masse' and perhaps confusing array of replies.
Secondly we were aware that a team member had chosen to reply in a way members felt perhaps intimidating or rude to some other members. This was not the intention of any of our team members, and unfortunately the misplacing of timing and perhaps tone of the comment was again not the experience we'd have liked. The comment was intended as jovial, given the nature of The Tavern, however upon reflection we know that wasn't clear at all.
That said, the member concerned has been apologised to personally by myself on behalf of the team as well as these notes to explain the process and learnings.
The team have again also taken measures to ensure that any feedback that is perceived as serious is dealt with accordingly, including encouraging and relocating any such feedback to the Guest Services forum where it can be responded to appropriately without concern of being misinterpreted by either our members or the team.
Lastly, we perceived that our comments may not have indicated and been clear that we do welcome feedback from our members, and in fact is one of our core values for TowersStreet. We do, and will always welcome feedback from members, and ensure that we respond clearer to indicate that we have taken feedback on board as well as an explanation for our actions and decisions, rather than perhaps just an explanation which may appear as solely defensive. We aim to be clear and transparent wherever we can be.
So again I would like to make it clear that we have indeed taken everyones feedback on board with future Member Awards, and it is our intention to expand the range of awards next year to reflect the communities standing as well as the feedback we received. Unfortunately given that the awards voting process has begun we aren't able to look at reviewing this years awards, however we have been approached by a member to run an alternative additional unofficial awards after the TS Awards, which we have given our full support for and will look to see how it runs to improve our own.
We do try hard to be different - and that includes admitting when we're wrong and could have done better, as well as learning from our mistakes and I hope that reflects in the details above.
Thank you to everyone for their support as ever with the TowersStreet community.
Regards,
Joel Stanford
On behalf of the TowersStreet Team
DiogoJ42
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- The Metropolitan Line
Just a thought, which is slightly off topic but...
Maybe there could be some sort of sepecial smiley or different font for team members to use when they are posting from a personal perspective, rather than with their team hat on?
Or maybe the other way round would make more sense, so that "official moderating" is in the different font, and normal posts are taken to be that team member's personal voice?
It may help avoid such incidents in future if it is more clear when someone is "just having a laugh", rather than speaking as a team member.
Maybe there could be some sort of sepecial smiley or different font for team members to use when they are posting from a personal perspective, rather than with their team hat on?
Or maybe the other way round would make more sense, so that "official moderating" is in the different font, and normal posts are taken to be that team member's personal voice?
It may help avoid such incidents in future if it is more clear when someone is "just having a laugh", rather than speaking as a team member.
Dan
TS Contributor
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
In the grand scheme of things these are small issues but it is important the team respond to all feedback in a professional manner to encourage all future feedback. After reading your post it shows that our opinions have been seriously considered and responded to, as set out in the promise the team made to the community back when the site was created.
I know its not easy to please all of us but I just wanted to thank you and the team for reviewing the situation and responding.
Dan
I know its not easy to please all of us but I just wanted to thank you and the team for reviewing the situation and responding.
Dan