Sell Chicken Smoothie (Poll Has Been Reset!)

[Lacuna]

Admins posted the announcement, not me. I only have the power to dress my own pets, though, so I can't dress up Tess' custom Avian/Totoro pets. Tess was hugely involved in the event planning too!

[onion]

honestly i agree with the above post (what blackfoot and wormgod said i mean.) the staff have been... painfully honest. the way we have wanted them to be. but theres some paranoid part of my brain that thinks theyre hiding something from us and i just cant shake it. its not that i dont trust staff. i just... tess still hasnt responded. tradition has been broken. shes nowhere to be found. worst case scenarios are on my mind

[Shinryu]

You have to see how that looks to us, though. 11 years of a tradition, a steady decline of communication from Tess, and now someone else is filling that role, and yet again we weren't told. It's a small thing so this might sound like an overreaction, but the silence is deafening. Why would we not think the worst--that Lacuna is filling Tess' role here? Nobody tells us members anything anymore. It's gotten so bad that we legit have to float selling the flipping website to get some sort of reaction. C'mon, admins, give us some clear communication here. We're dying for it.

I understand how this may seem to you in the context of this particular thread's topic, but you do have to keep in mind that the entire site's direction isn't centered around this debate, and that to the vast majority of users, simply seeing someone else's pet as an announcement on the front page is pretty meaningless. You're focused on the fact that Tess has not made an appearance on this thread yet, and that's why the news post stands out to you so much, but most players quite honestly will not even bat an eye at the post. They'll see a pet dressed up with a note about our upcoming event, think "ah, neat", and that's it.

While one of the aspects of this thread is, yes, improving the communication between staff and users, there are simply things that just don't require any being told. Nobody told users that Tess wasn't gonna post a Totoro dress-up this year because nobody thought it would ruffle anyone's feathers to give Liddi the one-time spotlight.
I'm not quite sure why the automatic assumption would be that Liddi is trying to fill Tess' role to begin with, given that Admin Assistants in general normally do not write the news posts, so if there was a role that needed filling here, the pet would have come from Simon, Sorren or Nick.^^

[wlw]

I hate to be like this but if she was active in creating the event, then why wasn't there a reply here? It's great to have Nick involved, and all of the other staff but.. Just something from Tess would be great.

this is my point exactly. clearly she's not "gone" like a lot of users thought, myself included, so why hasn't she made an effort to comment on this thread? a lot of the staff seem down to implement changes, including the ones that nick has already implemented in response to this thread. the rest of the staff seem to be making an effort, why isn't she? maybe now that the summer event prep is finishing up, she will have more time?

[Wormgod]

another thing that this pings in my head is the idea that tess IS here. with what zel said, im assuming that it was likely tess's choice to have lacuna make the post. (please, correct me if im wrong). it gives off even stronger vibes that tess is kind of just sitting back and refusing to reply to this thread until it blows over.

honestly i agree with the above post (what blackfoot and wormgod said i mean.) the staff have been... painfully honest. the way we have wanted them to be. but theres some paranoid part of my brain that thinks theyre hiding something from us and i just cant shake it. its not that i dont trust staff. i just... tess still hasnt responded. tradition has been broken. shes nowhere to be found. worst case scenarios are on my mind

Admins posted the announcement, not me. I only have the power to dress my own pets, though, so I can't dress up Tess' custom Avian/Totoro pets. Tess was hugely involved in the event planning too!

Was Tess involved? Truly? Because she's not talking to us. Communication is a two-way street, not a "one party trying to be polite and calm until that isn't enough and they have to shout, and then some people vaguely affiliated with the other party respond." We're asking for Tess and getting's Tess' employees, not her. I'm not trying to scaremonger or lie--Blackfoot is most likely correct and Tess is just hiding until this blows over--but us members don't know that. We have to assume that is the case. Assumptions like this are not healthy.

[Lacuna]

Removed some posts that were spammy/not constructive. Please continue to stay on topic.

[Wormgod]

i honestly feel like if we keep pushing tess for a response it’ll be out of annoyance / maybe anger(?) or feel pushed. good handful of the staff has already spoken up and taken their careful time to form a response / sat by the sidelines carefully planning their response, and if she wanted to say something by now, she would’ve. i don’t see a reply any time soon, and unfortunately it’s just way too late to make a reply now, it will just feel forced. i did want a response, but i feel it should’ve been a while ago.

same thing goes for sorren fey. you do realize how the silence of tess gets mentioned everytime, staff members don’t directly address it, because they don’t know why themselves either. they haven’t even said a “tess is carefully working on a response” or “tess hears you” or any of the sort.

I agree. Tess and Sorren Fey should have responded the day this went up. I honestly doubt Tess will respond to my nagging. I hope she will. Any response is better than no response. But I can’t in good conscience let the issue slide. I’ve done similar things in the past and let the unhealthy communication continue.

I don’t see any other way of getting my message across, though. Politeness only works if the other party follows similar societal constraints. It’s clear with the constant ghosting that Tess does not. Or maybe she has the same issue I do: hiding for far longer because you’re afraid of the backlash from ghosting in the first place. Either way, it’s really unhealthy and needs to stop.

[- Alice -]

I also want to say that this is still very early days ^^" the issue of blm a very very serious thing took days still to get any kind of response. It's given that it would take longer over something "not necessary" like this - Please don't think I'm saying it's not needed as I do, I feel very strongly about the site and the lack of communication.

Mods and GH + all those lovely people- I just want to say thank you for your responses to this and the positive and understanding reaction to this matter. It's astounding that we have this kind of response so early on. And thank you already for taking the steps to improve upon the sites condition- thanks for being awesome

[smile3933]

Admins posted the announcement, not me. I only have the power to dress my own pets, though, so I can't dress up Tess' custom Avian/Totoro pets. Tess was hugely involved in the event planning too!

i honestly feel like if we keep pushing tess for a response it’ll be out of annoyance / maybe anger(?) or feel pushed. good handful of the staff has already spoken up and taken their careful time to form a response / sat by the sidelines carefully planning their response, and if she wanted to say something by now, she would’ve. i don’t see a reply any time soon, and unfortunately it’s just way too late to make a reply now, it will just feel forced. i did want a response, but i feel it should’ve been a while ago.

same thing goes for sorren fey. you do realize how the silence of tess gets mentioned everytime, staff members don’t directly address it, because they don’t know why themselves either. they haven’t even said a “tess is carefully working on a response” or “tess hears you” or any of the sort.

we really appreciate all tess has done behind the scenes <3 so truly thank you tess if you can see this. we would just like to hear from you and feel reassured that you care.

and i don't want to push tess for a response, i just want to let her know that it's still not too late. i can imagine the amount of pressure she must feel to respond and how it would take time to come up with a statement that covers everything. it's understandable & most of the cs community will also understand a delayed response; after all, anything is better than nothing. we would just appreciate it <3

[nickjr]

I understand how this may seem to you in the context of this particular thread's topic, but you do have to keep in mind that the entire site's direction isn't centered around this debate, and that to the vast majority of users, simply seeing someone else's pet as an announcement on the front page is pretty meaningless. You're focused on the fact that Tess has not made an appearance on this thread yet, and that's why the news post stands out to you so much, but most players quite honestly will not even bat an eye at the post. They'll see a pet dressed up with a note about our upcoming event, think "ah, neat", and that's it.

Just wanted to piggyback on this point--it's reasonable to expect Tess and Sorren in this particular thread, but the news post? For all that CS is shrinking, CS is still big. There are a ton of casual users who aren't analyzing the site as much as us. CS is attractive to more than just people who simultaneously are brave enough and have enough time to be active on the forums.