Новини

Where the two first parts of this editorial mostly talked about hard, and sad, facts, misunderstandings, rumours and clarifications this last part will focus on more positive things: What GMs, and also the rest of us, can improve.

To start with the most obvious thing; it’s clear that you need to know more about the GMs and GM world. Not only out of curiosity, but to be able to trust the GMs and have confidence in that they do a good job (because they do). This editorial may have talked about some issues and some examples from the GM world, but there are still things left to clarify. So, we’ll make sure that the GM pages get pregnant soon, pregnant with a kind of a FAQ where you’ll easily find the answers to some of the most general questions together with explanations of ordinary GM routines and policies.

Over all we should aim at being as open as possible when it comes to discussing GMs issues on public conferences and chats, because a FAQ can’t cover everything and even if it would discussions like this are important if you want progress like we do. We don’t want to be community where we can’t stand a certain word or issue related to GMs - we don’t want to be like “the knights who say ni” from Monty Python’s movie “The holy grail”, who can’t stand the word “it”. I feel the GMs are much more secure and comfortable talking about stuff like this nowadays than just a year ago, but it can of course be even better.
This is also an area where the community in a whole can improve. Because it’s not only up to the GMs to be open about GM issues, it’s also up to the community to show that you’re mature enough to handle discussions about this by keeping these discussions on a constructive and polite level.

One area where the GMs have improved a lot lately is the customer relations area. Yes, I know we usually use the word user (goes for me too), but for us user is just another word for customer. We say user, but think customer. Even if GMs sometimes act as a police in cheating cases, they’re still thinking about how to phrase the mails they send to potential cheaters to make them sound polite and friendly without hurting the seriousness of the matter. There are still things left to improve on the customer relations area, but we’re moving in the right direction.

The final thing I’ll talk about in this looong editorial is humanity. Not only because it’s a fine word, more because humanity is very vibrant in the Hattrick community. Still I think we, most staff members in fact, lack in humanity sometimes. Mainly because we think too much about how a certain decision will affect Hattrick in the long run and in the same time forget to show our feelings and humanity in the current case. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important and we should of course think about how decisions affect Hattrick in the long run, but that shouldn’t stop us from showing in a better way that we have feelings, that we’re human beings and not machines.