Suggestion Purge/Move.

[AtlasOLimbo]

I believe that the suggestions forum has kind of become overwhelmed as it were. A lot of suggestions are simply left to rot, repeats, or something in between. I think that either a purge of the suggestion forum into an archive maybe, or moving suggestions to a new service may be beneficial for the future of the server. I also think in a new environment suggestions should be archived more frequently to discourage clutter.

[Quietthecutie]

in agreement that the suggestions section is currently a swamp. lots of good discussions, but no real actioning or organisation by the people who actually have the power to do it. you're left feeling like you're just going round in circles.

[Requiem]

I recently posted this else where as well, but I will post it here too for feedback from everyone else. I have an idea for fixing the suggestions area:

Summary: Rework the forum suggestions in a way that is more streamlined and vetted by server staff to make the suggestions more meaningful and visual assessible for the developers and staff members. Purge the current suggestions area, more heavily moderate the new suggestions area, and server staff members place the top ranked suggestions into a spreadsheet. 

Note: I am aware that the suggestions area already has guidelines defined, so some of what I mention below may be a repeat of those guidelines, but no one seems to currently follow said guidelines, hence why this suggestion is being brought forth. 

Details:

Currently, the ECRP suggestions area is a wasteland of suggestions that are years old at this point that just get overlooked and forgotten about after a few days of no one responding to them, just to be covered up with new suggestions, many times suggestions that have already been made numerous times in the past (Impound lot and phone rework, I am looking at you). In addition to this, individual suggestions get cluttered up with spam of simple +1's or -1's, many times with no real explanations as to how to improve upon the suggestions. If its not the spam of +1's, its commonly toxic or slanderous comments made about a group of players on the server (Crim vs LEO every other suggestion). This spam that is either pointless or turns into crazy arguments between groups of players often devalues or changes the focus of suggestions, and sometimes even results in them being closed altogether by server staff due to the toxicity that comes of it. 

Due to these issues, I recommend a rework of the suggestions & discussions sections of the forums. The start of this rework could be done a few different ways:

• We erase all open suggestions and start from scratch due to all the duplicates and long forgotten suggestion, and make an announcement that players should reopen a new suggestion should they still believe it would be beneficial and relevant.
•  Sort through the current active suggestions and keep the ones that have been commented on within X number of days (I.e. keep suggestions that have been active within the past 90 days)
• Staff members could sort through the suggestions, and the most popular of them could be put into a spreadsheet or document of some kind to be noted down. (This one could be done in combination with the prior two ideas if we wanted)

Once the current suggestions area is cleaned up, I recommend we "re-introduce" a new suggestions area as follows:

The discussions section would be the defined area where these long debates between players can occur (as long as they aren't toxic of course) that are often occurring on forum suggestions currently. These debates and discussions can be used for players to discuss what issues they currently see within the server and can serve to assist in deciding what constructive and reasonable suggestions can be made. 

The suggestions section of the forum will be reserved for suggestions only. There should be a standard format for a suggestion with sections such as:

• How will this suggestion benefit the server and players? 
• Does the suggestion require development or script changes?
• Who is the target audience of the suggestion?

Here is the "newer" suggested part for the new suggestion area:

Once a new suggestion has been made by a member of the community, it should be moderated by server staff members to ensure it is firstly posted within the guidelines and uses the proper format, and also stays on topic. Community members wishing to +1 or -1, will be required to use designated emotes on the original post and will not be allowed to simply +1 or -1 in the comments. The only comments that should be allowed are those that are suggested ways to POSITIVELY improve the suggestion. Negative comments, troll/toxic behavior, or off topic comments should be moderated and deleted. 

Once the suggestion is posted and begins receiving support from the community (if it does), perhaps server staff could maintain a spreadsheet or document where the top suggestions are rated based on community support and placed in order on said spreadsheet. (Example: Suggestion A gets 80 upvote emotes, suggestion B gets 20 upvotes, and suggestion C gets 50 upvotes. We take the title of the suggestion and place it in the spreadsheet in priority order, where Suggestion A is first on the sheet, Suggestion C is second, and Suggestion B is third.) This spreadsheet could provide an easy visualization for server staff and developers to assist in decision making for positive change in the community and would easily show what the most requested and supported suggestions by the community would be.