Kim Jong Divey

FearlessRP Recovery Proposal
Preface
In light of the recent performance of the server, in terms of player count, and the dwindling donation money, it is clear that steps must be taken in order to rectify this. Based on comments made by the community and members of the most recent administration team, it is clear that there are multiple different areas of concern;
●	Development
○	Output
○	The Contributor Team
○	Payment
●	Administration
○	Encourage return of Ex-Staff
○	Bring the team into more decisions
○	Make the team feel more included and connected
■	Involvement in certain discussions
■	Make the team more integrated and united
■	Staff Meetings
○	Ensure where possible the guidelines/protocol is followed
■	Rewrite pre existing guidelines to make them more enforceable and fair.
●	Team Adjustments
○	Removal of Media Team
○	Changes to Event Coordinator
●	Finances
○	Transparency with community
○	Budgeting
■	General server costs
■	Development
■	Administration
■	Reserves


Development
Output of Content and Updates
In order to boost the output of updates and additional content on the server, multiple aspects of development can be changed. The recent agreement of using GModStore addons as a base is beneficial as it provides the structure of multiple different updates, and so this is a step in the right direction.
Meetings would be beneficial to the output of updates, both with the development team and full team involvement, in order to generate ideas, plan out updates, and then to monitor the progress throughout, ensuring that developers do not fall behind.
Recruitment of Developers
	Due to the current inactivity of some developers, it could be beneficial to work to cycle in new, active developers. We should look for assertions from the current developers about their capability to keep developing for the community, in order to gauge whether they are still interested and willing to work on the project long term, or whether they have reached the point of disinterest.
There are 2 routes in which we can look at in order to bring in new developers; the current community, and outsourcing sites.
The community has had many talented developers come and go, many more who have passed without being involved in the development of the gamemode. We could post announcements displaying interest in bringing in more contributors and developers to the team. We could also suggest the possibility of payment for work if and when transparency is achieved.
Generally recruited developers from places like GModStore have a varied portfolio, and due to not having a connection to the team nor the community when paid the rate they are able to produce updates is greater than that of a developer who has emotional connections to both the team and community.
The Contributor Team
With the suggested removal of the media team, this would leave focus on the contributor team as a developer with less trust. Due to the introduction of Git, we are easily able to track any changes, and thus contributors should be handed more trust to access the gamemode and their own server via Git and Pterodactyl. This would be beneficial as the old system of contribution was a hindrance for everyone involved, which led to demotivation and less development work done.

 Development Deadlines
With the introduction of payments for work, and regular development meetings being held, it would not be unreasonable to hold developers to a deadline with certain updates, ensuring that work does not go unfinished for too long. Deadlines would work as such that any features being paid for would be discussed with the developer(s) involved and management, with a set deadline for different stages of the project. It’d be used as a loose guideline, but would protect us against constant delay, as if a deadline is broken on various occasions, this would give reason to pass the work on to another developer, outsource it, etc. etc.

Payment
Donation money should be invested into the development team in order to encourage developers, reward them for their work, and to pay for various costs associated, such as GModStore and various other requirements as and when they are needed. Budgeting will be discussed later in this document.

Administration
Encourage Return of Ex-Staff
	Sometimes it can be beneficial to have both old and new input and even though the team has been through many periods in which we have overcrowded the team with older members of the community and previous staff, the team now faces a problem of having too many ‘new’ team members and while they adjust to this new position it can make the team seem quite week and disjointed. A compromise with this would be to attempt to encourage old team members to return; the best of those to target are those who left due to being disgruntled with management. By giving the disgruntled ex-staff either a new role model to look up to or by publicly showing more work from management may encourage them to return.

Bringing the team into more decisions
	Decisions made internally can sometimes be brought onto the team however most of the important decisions are made solely by management, which is beneficial in certain circumstances however bringing the remainder of the team into discussions on topics as well as votes not only shows progress from management but also encourages them to keep up to date with issues as well as keeps them involved in changes to the community.

Making the team feel more included and connected
	The team itself has been quite disjointed for a while with general tension between team members which can be expected at times but were never ironed out before they progressed, creating essentially an unnecessary split in the team. Changes to way the team members interact as well as how their voices and opinions are managed are needed to ensure that the team feel listened to and respected in their ideas however rash they are; if the team don’t feel listened to how can we expect those within the community to?
	Reiterating the previous point the team needs to be more integrated on decisions, and are informed on changes that are going to be made and how they will affect them. Making rash changes without informing the team makes them distanced and disjointed from new systems and administrative changes.
	Even though greatly underappreciated staff meetings and generally meetings of all team departments are key for a number of reasons. A main advantage is the ability to collect the team together and get an opportunity to speak their mind and get a direct response from management which hasn’t been planned; normally making for a raw and reasonable response. Even though meetings take time and require many people its a very good way of unifying a team, and so long as its made clear that not all of what is said is guaranteed but a potential then the team can have some confidence in change. Meetings also would not need to require every member of management and one member could be dedicated to running them and relaying the information.

Ensure where possible the guidelines/protocol is followed
	Something which has been majorly neglected recently has been the protocols set out by the team, and even though this may seem minor to some and major to others the problem was brought up by many ex-staff, those of which normally wouldn’t be seen to be vocal on issues like that. Like a set of rules their aim is to guide the team in the right path, and so ensuring a fair set of protocols can be wrote which should be followed most if not all of the time not only shows management's ability to practice what is preached, but also ensuring everyone an equal and fair chance no matter the situation; think how much different the team would be dependent on how the protocols were used in certain situations.

Team Adjustments
Removal of Media Team
	The current media team fulfils an unnecessary role that is surplus to requirements. Currently, the role serves little to no purpose, and has not benefited the community in any way since its creation, and thus by removing the role, all that is achieved is the streamlining of the team structure.

Changes to Event Coordinator
	As a role the coordinators job is to promote roleplay, however with the lack of abilities it has many of those who are more suited to roleplay environments instead choose to follow the path of becoming an Admin; some of those within the community and within the team itself would be more fitted for a coordinator role. The coordinator should have a more diverse list of commands which even though similar to the administration side would encourage them to take part and support their own and others roleplays. Commands such as;
●	Noclip (A notification can be displayed in chat when they use it like when moderators phased)
●	Access to change proplimits from the default up to 1000 (for mini-events/events)
●	Access to give mics to uses
●	Use of setsize
●	Playermodel manipulation tools such as setsize and copyinflations
●	Ability to set models and save sub-materials
●	Use of effects
●	Ability to change in-game time
These commands even though quite extensive would allow those who are passionate to roleplay to encourage it; however due to the trust these commands bring it would be beneficial to make the role itself harder to get into.

Finances
Transparency
Transparency would be beneficial to the community in many areas, such as finance. As the discussion of developer payment has been raised, this is a chance to bring this into fruition and show the community where their donation money is going. This transparency will cause the push for reinvestment in the community, due to scrutiny from both players and staff, and therefore would benefit the server and show the correct intentions of improving the server. For 12 years, a large community of players have pumped money into the server with no evidence of that being reinvested in, and as we are aware, no actual reinvestment into the community.
Transparency would take the form of publicly stating donation amounts, as well as the directions of the budget splits. For example:
	Total Amount | £500
Server Costs | £150
Development | £200
	Management | £150

	In this pot, there would be a split between development and management, however, these would not work on a simple fractional basis, but rather based upon how much work is done in the team. There would be a maximum total of £250 assigned this month to the development team, which could be spent on multiple updates. If it is not fully spent, it should be saved and stored in a pot for bigger investments on large updates - this would be important if we were to use GModStore jobs. This will be further detailed in budgeting.
Budgeting
There are 2 possible ways to decide how to budget the money that comes into FL - we could set a fixed percentage, or allow a donator to decide how their money is best spent.
As will later be suggested, due to the ill-need to include administration, there would likely only be 3 sections to cover after server costs, development, management and reserves, which leads to the best likelihood being a fixed split of profits to each area.
General Server Costs
Currently, the server costs £132 plus an additional £5 for backup systems, totalling around £137. General server costs should be covered before any other areas of funding are looked at.
Development
The development budget should command the biggest split of donation, with this requiring the most funding in order to produce updates and a new gamemode (ideally).
A percentage around 30-40% of profit (post server costs) would be good - in a month where £500 is donated, £200 will be proceeded to the development fund as per 40%.
If not all money is spent, it should be saved and potted in order to invest in bigger updates as and when needed.
Administration
	In terms of budgeting the administrative team need not be included in it as the job they perform, even though crucial is not a role in which is too struggling to do. The role itself has sufficient abilities and rewards which come with the role such as free donator as well as prop-limits and other ‘rewards’ for their work and so a payment would not be needed under any circumstances.
Management
	Management itself could receive a cut of the money due to the general supervision and overseeing that they do in which assists the owner. This cut should be based upon the work done by each member of management and should not be equal otherwise this could result in members of management going inactive and still receiving a payment for little to no work. Development costs take 30-40% of the servers profits, leaving between 60-70% profits remaining in which can be split between profits for the owner, payment for management as well as a percentage to go into reserves.
Reserves
Reserves are treated as a rainy day fund, something that we can fall back on if needed. There should be an amount set aside in order to fund the general server costs for 3 months, thus this number will currently preside around £400-500. This is for the general protection of the community should there be any unexpected circumstances (e.g. a data loss), and a backup in case of a failure in donation revenue on a month.
Reserves money should be built up to the £400-500 mark, taking a percentage of management budget until the total has been reached.

Afterword
The details in this document lay out a series of ideas that can be tweaked and edited, and should be discussed before finalisation. There would be the necessity to rewrite and edit various protocols should many of these come into play. The financial area would require some research into the legalities (reporting income mainly, payments could be considered gifts).












Response from Divey
Development: We discussed this before and you recommended 20-40% and we set it at 25% for now and said I could increase it in the future depending on how things play out - nothing has really happened since then, nor has much time passed. I don't mind upping it to 30% if necessary but as I previously stated it's already at 25% and wanted to see where things go and what was required. This also isn’t to say that I don’t want to just pay people regardless of the percentage too, but it’s an investment and at the moment no updates have been going ahead to invest in

Financial transparency: I'm sorry but I don't want this, people don't need to know this and they’ll be up our asses either way. Maybe I wouldn't be opposed to the percentage of Development - Why do people need to know really? Sure they donate, but as long as it's genuinely being put towards the server which it is with the percentage system we have - I don't think it's necessary particularly as we are not a business.

Encourage ex staff: Sure if they're genuinely good, already spoke to Conn about putting dead weight in the EC role which we discussed changes for. We shouldn't be begging though and also some may have left for good reason.

Removal of media team: Why? I get they're not doing much but they're still useful to have imo, if we're talking about the longevity of fl I don't really see why removing them would do anything really at all

Staff meetings: I hate meetings already discussed why, think people delay ideas - forums are better from my experience. Only benefit I can see is making the team closer and equal to less arguments, fine with them going on. I'm just not enthusiastic about them. Also the people who want them are way too loud and drown out the voices of those who aren't as confident. We've had the issue of people agreeing to things because the mass said it and later disagreed with the points they seemingly were fine with because of the mob mentality. Perhaps we could have one every other month at a minimum

Dev meetings: Sure these I actually like, I'd go to any if I'm available and they're actually scheduled properly and not on the day. I was speaking to Edned about checking in with Developers too, could do a weekly check in on the forums/discord

Dev activity: Sure, definitely people who are AWOL - Did discuss outsourcing devs the other day with Conn. Only problem with taking on new people and outsourcing is based on their familiarity with the gamemode. How easy would that realistically be?

Contributors: Sure always been up for giving contribs more access if the devs think it's reasonable

Deadlines: Sounds good, would probably be better out the Dev SA's mouth rather than my own though as previously it's been stated 'I don't understand how long things take'

Bringing the team into new discussions: I really don't mind what happens with the HR side of things, I'll stay in the know but for the most part the impact it has it very little to the overall community as a whole. I think Development should still be seperated though, testing and feedback would be appreciated however.

Team inclusion and connected: Sure as I said before I don't mind this. I'd like to make the forums an official stamp of votes though. I really dislike the idea of people missing a meeting and all of a sudden a decision has been pushed forward without other people being able to have a say for whatever reason is holding them back. I think another big problem is a lot of people trying to appear as a 'white knight' of the community and speaking out against other staff members, this needs to stop

Guidelines/protocol: Yep, not much more to say on that considering the last few months. However - SAs still have access to overrule if something is genuinely bullshit - Also, if we were to edit guidelines, they need to be fair, if someone is 0.5 hours away from getting their activity mark, allow it, etc. A toxic environment is not just from peoples attitudes, it's from ruthless leadership too. I know a lot of the issues stem from Fultz's suggestions, but you have to remember he was not the only one in the wrong, both sides did bad things

EC:
-	No clip, Sure
-	Proplimit, Ye
-	Mic, Ye
-	Set size, Ye (limited maybe so they cant do the rediculous sizes)
-	Save models, Ye
-	Effects, Ye
-	Time, Ye
-	Lamps should be increased too
-	And yeah agreed on making it harder to get into

Budgeting: Just keep donator the same to how it is now and just do a set percentage

Reserves: Eh, I've not really been spending the server donations, I’m an adult and can handle the financial side.

Management: I'm not sure about this, it's not really like that on other communities either really. When I was SA I didn't really ever expect cash for my work I did it because I enjoyed doing it. I think this also wouldn't go down well with administrators. I feel like say if Fultz were still in the team and he was getting paid while staff members are on the server are administrating it wouldn't go down well. Management are appreciated, but administrators previously have really put more hours into the community whereas SAs are sort of there to talk to the admins, do promotions, etc.




Overall:

Bigger percentage to be considered however nothing has actually been done, we’ve bought some gmodstore addons but we haven’t done too much with them yet, prior to this I said I’d consider upping it or just paying an addition to the already existing percentage. We could try and outsource devs ASAP if you think it’s a good idea

Financial transparency: No, unless we make it just the development budget for devs to look at and see, etc. - as we discussed prior.

Ex staff: Again, not required but could be nice

Removal of the media team: Not going to impact us either way so why remove it

Staff meetings: One every other month at a minimum, could trial every month to start off with - also all final decisions should be on the forums.

Dev meetings: Whenever, I’m up for these as previously discussed

Dev activity/deadlines: Sure with payment, but as I said should be handled sensitively

Contributors: Mhm

Team discussions: Sure, bar development really and then SAs should still have power if something is genuinely BS

Guidelines: Sure, but let’s not be anal

EC: Listed already

Budgeting/Reserves: Not needed, stick with percentage style system and I can handle the finances fine

Management: Not been like this any other way, would cause upset in the team - Hard to balance what is deemed good work ethic, would rather focus on Development because I can just pick up on it.