I Wanna Community
Fangames => Announcements => Topic started by: Denferok on September 28, 2016, 09:35:53 AM
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Hello everyone, a new Twitch feature was just released; auto hosting. What makes this a big deal is the fact that you can automatically host people that are in your Twitch team. I think this could be the perfect opportunity for us to strengthen our brand and help further support the smaller streamers in the community.
You can read about autohosting here httpss://blog.twitch.tv/grow-your-community-with-auto-hosting-e80c1460f6e1#.oobsqw3o0
First off, a bunch of questions pop upp immediately and I'll try my best to answer them.
The reason why I think we should do this is because once again this will significantly strengthen our brand and provide more of a reason to actually care about the twitch team. I'll be honest, right now the team feels rather meaningless, it's just there to show people that you're "hot stuff" or something. For example, if someone with next to no viewers is feeling bad then a massive host train could possibly cheer them up! Not to mention the other numerous benefits this would give.
Since this will increase the value of being in the team, I think we'll also have to make the team requirements more strict and overall require more professional attitude. Here are a few suggestions:
- Removal of inactive members (basically those who no longer exist within the community)
- Those who come back would not need to reapply and are able to rejoin instantly
- Make the whole "watchable stream" rule more strict
- Spend more time deciding whether the person in question is suitable to join (a small group of community managers would be great)
- Require english to be the broadcaster language (I.E the setting in your twitch dashboard, multiple language streams are still fine)
- Heavily discourage the use of follower alerts
- Heavily encourage all members of the team to use the autohosting
This is meant to be a discussion thread and this is not something that is set in stone. Please share your thoughts and this thread to get as many involved as possible, we need as many opinions and thoughts as we can get before we decide to pull the trigger on something as big as this. If you have any questions about this please post right away and we'll do our best to answer them.
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I don't see any issue with pruning inactive members / members who don't stream frequently. However I do think there should be exceptions for certain people. As an example: patrickgh3 shouldn't be removed from the team since he provides irregular content that other streams don't provide such as game-making and it's not reasonable to have a consistently active stream of in development work.
he 'no follower alert' should be as self-explanatory as 'don't call out lurkers'. If anything is a requirement, having a non-obnoxious stream layout should be it and a follower alert should fall under the category of being obnoxious.
I don't have any comments on the rest.
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Hello all,
I want to comment on some of Den's points that are up for discussion, as well as comment on the auto-host feature.
First, on the subject of the auto-host:
There is no "bad side" to auto-hosting that I can think of. Auto-hosting is just one of a variety of ways we can promote other team members. Auto-hosting has been used by other communities via a bot for quite some time now, this is nothing new for Twitch. I do believe that auto-hosting can get a little stale after some time if the same broadcaster is being auto-hosted for weeks or months at a time from your channel, however, there still is no "downside" to it. Auto-hosting cannot lose you viewers - you're already offline! Although I am skeptical of Twitch's claim of an "average of 10% increase of viewership for 50% of participants" (which is already poorly worded in a small case study done over a short period of time, red flags everywhere), I think this is an overall positive change for us to adapt to in the community.
On the topic of new team "requirements" and suggestions:
I believe inactive members should be booted from the Twitch team at this time. However, I also believe if these inactive members become active again, a re-application to the team should be accepted immediately.
Den is quite vague on "increase of requirements", so I'm not entirely sure what is meant here. This could mean a higher bottom-line for skill (I am against this), more streaming experience (stream quality comes to mind, I am for this), or being more-known in the community (potentially suggesting a higher follower/average viewer count, I am against this). Clarification would be great on this point, but I think the 3 areas I listed here are probably what comes to mind under this new requirement, along with my stance on each.
A removal of members who do not meet requirements sounds a bit shifty. This will probably not apply to the "skill" portion of the requirements, and probably doesn't meet the "known" requirement (since you really can't be less-known ... I think), so this probably refers to streamers who have downgraded in quality of stream for a variety of reasons. Although I am not completely against this, I believe this needs to be treated on an extreme case-by-case basis. I really haven't observed anyone who "fell below" the requirements, other than inactivity, which has already been discussed above.
I do believe English should be the primary language of streamers on the team. However, I wholeheartedly support streamers who use 2 or more languages on their stream in an attempt to reach other communities. I have met many wonderful streamers from the French community who played Boshy and some wonderful streamers from the Russian community who ask questions about Kamilia constantly, among others. Many of these streams you will see with [EN/FR] or [EN/RU], or something similar in their title to signify that they are essentially running two communities in their stream at the same time. This should be encouraged, and opens up our team to a wider audience.
Banning the broadcaster on the team from using any alert is simply an overreach of power. Den cited streambig, a popular site for streaming tips by iateyourpie (great variety streamer). Although many do not like follower alerts, this is no reason to ban. A majority of people don't like strawberry ice cream, either - so you can't eat it on stream? Simply put, this is way too far of a requirement. I personally no longer use follower alerts after seeing how they did not benefit me as much as I liked - but that's not to say I shouldn't be allowed to use them.
I'd like to hear more community input on these matters, as I hope I'm not the only one who holds some of these opinions!
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There's been some rumor and speculation flying around, so I'd like clarification on a couple of points:
1) Does the Twitch Auto-Host override a manual host you perform? If you are hosting a non-wannabe, in my mind it is not ok for the auto-host bot to decide when that host period ends. The only time it should be allowed to switch your host is when you are offline, and you have not chosen to host anyone, as that is literally dead time.
2) Can people be added to auto-host lists that are not on the team? If someone decides that sometimes they want to auto-host their friend who is not on the wannabes, should that be allowed?
Otherwise, I'm generally in agreement, except for a couple of points:
1) No follower alerts. I totally agree that they aren't necessary, and a lot of times I've not followed a stream to avoid the alert, but if someone wants a follower alert I don't think it should preclude them from being on the team.
2) English only. I agree with the general consensus that having non-English-speaking streamers on the team can only widen our audience. If you're concerned about language barriers, maybe ask that those streamers mark the languages in their title as most do, and also remember that you can specify your stream language on twitch itself, which handily notifies viewers what language they can expect in the stream.
The concept sounds good! I truly hope the introduction of this feature brings back some of the value offered by twitch teams.
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Hello to anyone who reads this.
Though I'm not the most active streamer if at all but I have a lot of experience with Twitch so I'd still like to present my opinion on this. It'd be quite nice to have auto-host as a thing and as TJ already said there nothing bad about. Myself I do watch a bunch of fangame streams and it'd only benefit me so I don't have to find another stream when auto-host will do it for me :atkHappy:
On topic of team requirements I strongly support the "no follower alert rule". Many lurkers will find it disgusting and imo not only they don't benefit but make the stream look worse and sound worse when suddenly there is some random picture and sound mid-gameplay part and I wanna enjoy the stream not getting distracted by some random notification that I don't care about and only provides info for the streamer rather than the viewers themselves.
In terms kicking out inactives maybe that should be done but as again TJ mentioned some members provide quite an original content of their own. All in all should be kicked the completely "dead" people.
In terms of language I encourage English only because double language creates a complete mess in chat and on stream. Yes that maybe nice to get in people from many communities but at the same time half the stuff won't be understood because of language barrier. And I doubt streamers will translate literally everything to one language :p.
As a conclusion I guess auto-host should be a thing and new rules such as "no follower alert" and "English only" should be included in order to join the team.
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There's been some rumor and speculation flying around, so I'd like clarification on a couple of points:
1) Does the Twitch Auto-Host override a manual host you perform? If you are hosting a non-wannabe, in my mind it is not ok for the auto-host bot to decide when that host period ends. The only time it should be allowed to switch your host is when you are offline, and you have not chosen to host anyone, as that is literally dead time.
2) Can people be added to auto-host lists that are not on the team? If someone decides that sometimes they want to auto-host their friend who is not on the wannabes, should that be allowed?
As for 1:
"When auto hosting is enabled, the system will select a channel to host whenever your channel is offline or whenever your channel is not actively hosting another user. Auto Hosting will never interfere with your live channel or active host. It will only take effect once your channel is offline. Auto hosting will wait for three minutes of inactivity before hosting a channel. So choosing someone to host is still ideal when going offline. This delay is because we do not want broadcasters to be surprised by unintended hosting if they are broadcasting but are having technical difficulties. Auto hosting will also immediately un-host when your channel goes live."
So no, it does not disrupt a manual host. It does however start autohosting 3 minutes after going offline.
Regarding 2:
You can add other streams to your list of auto host channels. From what I can tell it will always prioritize people on your twitchteam over the other channels.
If you scroll down in this article you can read about the autohosting.
httpss://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2508329
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yo, I really like the idea of making the team an actual thing again and removing the follow alerts is fine by me as I can't stand being but on the spotlight like that and I imagine its the same for others. But on the other hand I also feel like it wouldnt really tarnish the name of our team and stuff like that so im fine with whatever for that rule.
One thing I wanted to clarify however is what the word "inactive" would mean as there are streamers who stream none at all and there are streamers who stream 2-3 days a week.
My input on this would be to keep members of the community who stream occasionally and talk to the community on the team and removing people who almost never stream from the team. Even if they are a good part of the community and talk to people, if they dont stream at all or like once a month it just seems useless to keep them on the team.
But yeah i hope this is recieved well and that the team can finally be put to use again.
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I like the idea of strengthen Wannabes team and help further support the smaller streamers. So i'm totally behind you guys ! :atkHappy:
I have no opinion about "no alert notification", but i would like to share my experience about streaming in both langage (although i'm not a member of the team) as streamer and as viewer.
As streamer, i try as much as possible to speak in english because i do not want to ostracize english speakers, but sometime when there are no english-speakers, i speak in french (depending on my chat activities). The good point about that, that i can reach some people that english stream cannot.
Just an example, when i participate at some races from "Get Yourself Fangaming", some french persons seem interested and ask questions about these races (i managed to bring some persons to participate into some of these races ^^)
As a viewer, sometime i like watching german streams although i have no clues on what's going on. On Den's link about "follower alerts are bad", the author said : "That is a lot of people who are lurking that just want to watch someone play a video game or have a stream up for background noise". This is my case when i watch some german stream, sometimes i put them as background noise and I feel at ease.
When i'm active on chat, i try to learn some german words by having fun with the streamer and viewers. If the streamer isn't a douche, then he can switch both langage and makes his viewers at ease. I agree with anyone who would say that it's only apply for small streamers with a decent chat activities.
So I will be sad if some potential members are removed because of "only english" rule, even if their skills are great.
Just leaving my thought here, and keep this great communities for being awesome ! :atkHappy:
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Autohosting seems cool, and TJ says there's no downsides, so let's try it out. And I also like the idea of trimming down / sprucing up the team at this time.
I like TJ's idea of booting a lot of people for inactivity, and then re-accepting applications immediately if they become active again. I don't know where the cutoff should be. Haven't streamed in 1 month, 2 months, maybe even 3 weeks? Right now it's been almost a month since I personally last streamed and I would be fine with being taken off knowing the re-add if active policy.
I don't think language should be a requirement. Having good streamers of other languages on the team can only help attract more people interested in fangames. See Ony's post!
I dislike follower alerts as much as the next guy, but the only person on the team I know off the top of my head that has them is Wolsk, and I don't mind them there. I'd say don't make it a requirement until in the future we have a problem with it.
Another note, I'd like it if the team page got some new graphics. Maybe we can get ToylineAssembly or someone to make some stuff.
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I made an account just to post here :denKamilia_v2: I'd like to chip in my thoughts as a viewer.
Autohosting would be cool and useful to me personally, I don't watch many people who aren't on the wannabes these days, so I can't see a downside to it. I'm not so sure about making it a requirement though. Some people may want not to (for various reasons) and it doesn't sound very fair to force it upon them if they want to be part of the team. You could strongly encourage it, sure, and you could ask people who don't enable autohosting to see if they have a valid reason for not doing so? But that's quite different.
I talked to Den about this and he felt that enforcing autohosting would do away with any sort of "if he's not doing it I'm not doing it either" arguments. Personally, I don't think that's the right way of dealing with that kind of thing. If there is such bad blood between wannabes then that should be managed maturely by the group leader, including kicking people out if it's felt necessary. You can't force people to like each other. In fact if there are any problems between people, this will most likely bring them to the surface so that they can be dealt with.
Moving on to the other requirements which I had a few comments on:
- Removing inactive members is a good idea as long as it's done on a case-by-case basis rather than a hard and fast principle, for the same reason TJ said.
- Increase the requirements - talked to Den, he said this only referred to people's status in the community. I hope this doesn't mean a viewer/follower count though, but I do agree people should be very well known to be part of the group. This and the previous point will make it quite a nice group for streamer and viewer alike, hopefully.
- Require the streamer not to have a follower alert - YES, please do this. This is probably the most agreeable point on here, I hope I don't have to explain why. If you don't do this I'll pester you until you do it.
Keep up the good work Den & Wannabes. ( •ᴗ•)
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As for removing inactive members i'm a very off and on member when it comes to streaming, since my equipment is made of potatoes and right now i have a personal problem on top of that. What would you do for members that say not stream for 2 weeks, stream consistently for a month, stop for another 2 weeks or more, so on and so fourth, this sounds like a stupid question to me for some reason but I feel like i want it addressed
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Looks like a good opportunity to strenghthen the team again.
-Remove inactive members:
Den and me already did this once. I wrote a personal message to everyone on the team and asked about their streaming future and if they intend to stream again. Most people answered and were totally cool about being removed, some didn't answered and just got removed. I would have not problem doing the same thing again. (Inactive means for me not streaming for atleast a month)
-Increase requirements to join the team
Depends on what you mean with that. I watch rather someone new to fangames who is interactive with a mic, than someone who writes occasionally into the chat and is a good player.
So im totally against using some kind of "Be able to beat atleast...." requirement.
What I think should be a requirement tho, is that the person MUST HAVE streaming experience and know how to make a stream not look like shit. I dont want someone on the team who is capturing the whole desktop just to see the 800x600 window somewhere in the middle of a blank desktop. Also having already streamed some fangames should be a requirement (maybe atleast since a month?) so no one completely new gets accepted just to leech the hosts.
-Remove members who no longer meet the requirements
Not sure what you mean with that. For example someone who is streaming, but no fangames at all? I would message them and kick them. The team is about fangames and not Runescape or whatever. Of course its alright to stream other stuff, there are always these days were you dont feel like playing them. But fangames should be still the "Main attraction" in your stream.
-Require English Broadcaster language
Im kinda torn apart on this one. I personally never watch anything else than english streams. But I can see on the other hand, how streams with other broadcaster languages can benefit the team.
-Follower alerts
Fuck follower alerts. But I dont know if you want to tell someone else how they have to design their stream. But everyone who is reading this: Dont use them. You will lose more possible followers than you'd get.
Alright, thats everything from my side !
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It all boils down to how "exclusive" you want The Wannabes to be.
Too many members and it doesn't mean anything to be in it, too little members and it might as well be a VIP club.
A question about the auto-hosting: How does it choose what member of the team gets hosted if several are streaming? This could lead to some very unfavorable situations if two or more members happen to stream at the same time frequently, while only one gets all the hosts (if it depends on viewer count, follower count or whatever).
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Just read through everything here and thanks for posting your thoughts, sorry about being so vague on some of the topics.
With the language thing, with broadcaster language I meant the option in your twitch dashboard. Changing that would change the language requirement for the chat and everything which I think is bad for the team. Of course multiple languages are fine, as long as you don't change the setting.
About increasing the requirements, I don't mean in terms of skill. In fact, the skill requirement is very arbitrary in the first place, it's mostly there to make sure the person in question is actually "serious" about fangames and doesn't just play them for a week and never again just to leech hosts. When I talk about increasing the requirements I mostly just mean about their activity within the community, personally I don't know if it's a good idea to accept someone who no one knows about. The person should at least be semi-known within the community. Having a follower / viewer requirement? Absolutely not, I'm heavily against this. And finally about the requirements, having a watchable stream would be further incentivized.
People who are removed from the team would be able to instantly join back if they wish, without needing to apply or anything.
When it comes to banning follower alerts, this is mostly to tell people that follower alerts are bad and hurt you more than they help. Smaller streamers might not realize this and think that the alerts are actually helping. Banning follower alerts sort of helps these streamers understand.
Also a few of your questions are answered here, sorry I forgot to link it in the OP httpss://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2508329
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Just read through everything here and thanks for posting your thoughts, sorry about being so vague on some of the topics.
With the language thing, with broadcaster language I meant the option in your twitch dashboard. Changing that would change the language requirement for the chat and everything which I think is bad for the team. Of course multiple languages are fine, as long as you don't change the setting.
About increasing the requirements, I don't mean in terms of skill. In fact, the skill requirement is very arbitrary in the first place, it's mostly there to make sure the person in question is actually "serious" about fangames and doesn't just play them for a week and never again just to leech hosts. When I talk about increasing the requirements I mostly just mean about their activity within the community, personally I don't know if it's a good idea to accept someone who no one knows about. The person should at least be semi-known within the community. Having a follower / viewer requirement? Absolutely not, I'm heavily against this. And finally about the requirements, having a watchable stream would be further incentivized.
People who are removed from the team would be able to instantly join back if they wish, without needing to apply or anything.
When it comes to banning follower alerts, this is mostly to tell people that follower alerts are bad and hurt you more than they help. Smaller streamers might not realize this and think that the alerts are actually helping. Banning follower alerts sort of helps these streamers understand.
Also a few of your questions are answered here, sorry I forgot to link it in the OP httpss://help.twitch.tv/customer/portal/articles/2508329
I'm glad we are in agreement with the multiple languages. It really does open the community up to others! English, however, should most certainly be the primary language used on the team.
I still believe the "semi-known" requirement is not defined enough. This would imply a follower / viewer requirement, which you stated that you are against (so am I). In order to keep a rigid team structure and requirement list, you need to be able to define everything you want from new applicants, as well as applying those rules to current team members. A watchable stream, in terms of quality (moreso bitrate) is worth mentioning to new applicants.
I'm also glad the auto-rejoin for members who were previously on the team is considered here.
My biggest distance in opinion, however, has been regarding the alerts. I actually think you are in agreement with me, Den. Yes, we've seen time after time again that a majority of people do not want a follower alert, and can be a turn-off for new followers. I, as well as basically everyone in this thread, understands that. However, you seem to imply that you want to make new applicants aware of how detrimental it can be. I think a ban on this is taking this too far - why can you not state to them, "we want you to know that not a lot of team members here use a follower alert because we believe it does more harm than good, but you are free to use whatever you want on your stream." This would be a much more appropriate way of handling this.
I also still have one question on the auto-host that wasn't made 100% clear by the article - if you are hosting someone manually, and then you go offline, will the auto-host wait 3 minutes and then override your manual host? The wording in the article is a little confusing, so I'm not entirely sure.
Edit: Thank you Zebbe! That clears it up quite a bit.
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Auto hosting is an interesting thing that is nice for people that want to use it. I don't mind it being encouraged but I am against forcing it on people to be a part of the team, it should be your own choice if you want to use it. On that note, hosting each other is something The Wannabes has always been good at, both for larger and smaller streamers. In the end it's the "end of stream" hosts that really make an impact, and that is something I think we are already excellent at.
On the topic of removing inactive members from the team. It's not something that I'm against but I guess it could be a bit tricky to say exactly what inactive means. Take Geezer as an example, sometimes it can be months between his streams and other times he streams every single day. I know people that used to stream a lot that now only streams occasionally. Some people only stream a few times a month. Personally I haven't really streamed much lately because studying takes a lot of my time, but I do try to stream occasionally if I got time. And I feel kinda the same as what Patrick said, I don't mind being taken off knowing I could get added back whenever I get back into streaming a bit more again.
I dunno about increasing the requirements. I guess it depends if you want the team to be exclusive to the "best" fangame streamers or if you want it to be more open for people that has a decent stream that mainly stream fangames. Personally I would have the requirements be something like:
-Fangames are the main attraction of your stream.
-You have some experience playing fangames.
-You have some experience with streaming.
-You have a decent quality on your stream (as in don't capture your whole desktop with your tiny fangame in the middle, don't have your computer audio played trough your mic and stupid things like that.)
-You have some experience with the fangame community (You know about essential fangame sites like the wiki, delfruit, the forums etc. You interact with the community in some way/s, for example: Watching and chatting in fangame streams, interact on the forums or in the community discord or maybe you made a fangame or something)
Remove members who no longer meet the requirements? I have a hard time seeing how someone could no longer meet the requirements unless they are drastically changed from what they are now. (Other than inactive people.)
I wouldn't say force english broadcast language on your streams but I would say if you cannot speak english then you can't really interact much with our community. As TJ said, I don't mind dual language streams as long as it's possible to interact with the streamer in english.
The follower alert is something that I don't particularly enjoy but I do think that some streamer can make it work ok-ish. I don't think it should be a requirement to be part of the team though, I think you should be able to run your stream as you want.
edit: I see Den clarified some of the things I mentioned while I was writing this. Also for TJ and others that may be wondering about the auto host thing, look here: https://i.imgur.com/kdl51eB.png
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Fair enough TJ, I guess discouraging the follower alerts is enough to make those who use it rethink. I personally just have a deep hatred for them and I don't like hosting channels with them. And zebbe, those requirements you listed was basically what I was going for, and there are definitely people who don't live up to those as of right now. Because I basically handle applications on my own, I don't even know if you guys notice when new members are added.
About inactive members, I mostly just mean those who are "dead". If you wanna take a month off streaming, that's fine and you shouldn't feel stressed out about streaming. I don't want anyone to feel forced to stream just because they don't want to be removed. Basically as long as you still "exist" in the community then a removal wouldn't be necessary.
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Fair enough TJ, I guess discouraging the follower alerts is enough to make those who use it rethink. I personally just have a deep hatred for them and I don't like hosting channels with them. And zebbe, those requirements you listed was basically what I was going for, and there are definitely people who don't live up to those as of right now. Because I basically handle applications on my own, I don't even know if you guys notice when new members are added.
About inactive members, I mostly just mean those who are "dead". If you wanna take a month off streaming, that's fine and you shouldn't feel stressed out about streaming. I don't want anyone to feel forced to stream just because they don't want to be removed. Basically as long as you still "exist" in the community then a removal wouldn't be necessary.
Hmm, I guess maybe I don't know about all newly added members. And thanks for clarifying about inactive members.
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Here are my thoughts on things.
Follower alerts in general from what I've seen are quite in your face and can cover up a lot of the stream.
This can get particularly annoying during fangames, especially with audio alerts. Something subtle like a "ping" and small piece of text on stream wouldn't be too bad, however an outright ban on them is fair enough. You'll definitely get noticed by chatting in streams, which brings me to my next point.
I feel like if you're going to add someone to the team, have idk, for arguments sake say 3 current team members who know this new applicant and who can say "Yeah I know this user, they seem cool and would be a good addition to the team" because if you're going to join a team, at least be familiar with a few of the members of said team. It'll make breaking the ice with the rest of the team members a lot easier.
As for stream layouts and experience, you want viewers to come back to your stream so stream scenes have to look nice and non-tacky.
Minimal layouts tend to go down well.
Regarding the point on stream experience, I think you should have a mic at least. Camera is totally optional, I've seen streams both benefit from adding one and removing one, it's up to whatever the streamer is most comfortable with.
Having a re-application form for former members is also a good idea. We all need a break, sometimes more extended than others. Sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes they lose their spark but it can always come back.
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For the most part I agree with all of these reasons, one of my only problems would be removing follower alerts.
For many small streams follower alerts are something that they use to interact with a stream. Of course there are some really really bad ones that take up a ton of space, but there are also some really nice small follower alerts that take up little space and don't really do anything to the stream. A good follower alert example would be peekingboo's stream (He has one of the best stream layouts I have ever seen, especially for his viewer count). His follower alert pops up in a tiny space unoccupied by any camera, in tiny font and it causes the stream mascot at the bottom of the screen to grow a tiny bit.
It's something that isn't obnoxious and gives the streamer a way to interact with a viewer for a short time even though you usually don't notice it. These follower alerts usually help a stream look a bit better and gain a few more viewers. Of course some people will disagree, but if a follower alert can be small and go unnoticed it shouldn't need a ban.
Another thing I can kinda disagree with is probably having only English for the team, some points have already been made about this which I can agree with.
As long as the streamer can speak English well enough to communicate he shouldn't be banned. This could help people get better at English who come from non-English speaking backgrounds. Of course the stream needs to speak English as the language mainly spoken, but having some other languages can be fun.
Edit: I think the auto-hosting should be trialed by somebody before we start using it.
Thanks!
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1) Remove inactive members
Keep in mind that this has been tried before and was an ABSOLUTE MESS. Last time it happened, I got removed after not streaming for 2 weeks and did not receive any message regarding it. I think this can be done properly and should be done, but more thought and time is going to have to be put into it this time around.
2) Increase the requirements to get in the team
As others have mentioned, this is mostly an exclusivity issue. Since Den defined it as "isn't brand new to fangames and doesn't have an ugly stream," we now know the kinds of people allowed. However, I would still recommend discussing new additions to the team more rather than taking care of the applications by yourself. The "vouching" process that Ciaran described would be good.
3) Remove members who no longer meet the requirements
Again, this will take a lot of thought, discussion, and time. This kind of stuff isn't easy to do and could be extremely detrimental to the team if not handled properly. That being said, I agree that it should be done.
4) Require english to be the broadcaster language
No special opinion here. I agree that more language variety is good, but English should still be the primary one.
5) Require the broadcaster to not have a follower alert
I'm sure some people were eagerly awaiting my response to this as the only person in the team still with a follower alert. I get that you don't like them, Den, and most people don't, but you really can't tell someone how to run their stream. You tried this same thing before by saying that you cannot join the team if you look at your viewercount while streaming. Explaining the negative effects of things like using follower alerts or calling out lurkers or watching your viewercount is enough, and then it's up to the streamer to do what they want with that information. Doing/having these may work for some streamers even if it doesn't work for everyone. HOWEVER, I do understand the negatives of using the alert, and at this point mine has way overstayed its welcome as something that was just supposed to be a joke. This just gives me a reason to finally go back to not having one. I will remove mine, but do not make it something you're forced to do in order to be on the team.
6) Every member in the team would be required to enable auto hosting feature
This part I'm very much on the fence about. On one hand, conformity with a change like this could strengthen the bonds in our team, but on the other hand, there are still members who don't want big chats and don't want a ton of recognition (which was made very apparent during FGM if you remember). I'm kind of leaning towards forcing its use because then no one is allowed to distance themself, but I would like to see opinions from the more reclusive members of our team.
And what BBF_ asked about hosting is something I was also wondering about. It wasn't answered in the blog post, so it'd be great if someone here knows and could shed some light on it:
A question about the auto-hosting: How does it choose what member of the team gets hosted if several are streaming? This could lead to some very unfavorable situations if two or more members happen to stream at the same time frequently, while only one gets all the hosts (if it depends on viewer count, follower count or whatever).
*EDIT* We should definitely hold off on using auto-host for now, though, because it is a new feature on Twitch which means it will be horribly buggy and broken. Apparently auto-host kicks on if you keep dropping frames, and I'm sure it does the same if your internet completely dies for a bit too long. Would be really annoying to deal with.
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I didn't read the blog on autohosting so i'm kinda in the dark here, but this may add onto Bbf's previous question, is can you control who gets autohosted, if you can this might be a feature and rule i'd be willing to follow and if not then will, the opposite effect will take place on my end. I'm full willing to do this but I really would like to control who gets hosted, adding onto what wolsk said some of us would like to distance ourselves from others or just distance ourselves in general, that's the only thing i'm skeptical about with this feature, if the answer is confirmed the answer will vary my actions on this rule.
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Alright I guess I should've edited the OP earlier instead of expecting people to read through all the posts before posting, my bad!
Anyways, I updated the OP, let me know what you think of the new suggestions
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I have a suggestion, since the team tends for improvements, the idea of using a discord server came in my mind. It is not a VIP discord server, but more like an organisation discord server. (Like fangame marathon discord server).
Let me explain, when i read opinions about "Removal of inactive members" part, it seems to be fair to deal with them case by case. Then you agree to accept them whenever they are active again. And by doing so, the team is looking for more interactivities, more reactivities, short time responses (this is what it looks like for me). That's why i suggest discord, since it is a powerful tool (and friendly user) which provides you these features, plus it gives you more visibility (who are the moderators), and pinged private messages (unlike twitch).
Let me illustrate this:
They can informe the team and moderators about their stream. For example : "Sorry, i won't stream for X amount of time because [reasons], but i will be back". Or "@moderator, can you remove me from the stream ? Because [reason]". Plus, if an inactive member is on the discord server, his re-application is easier.
It is easier for them to contact and send messages or warnings to members via pm, and by doing this, this is more professionally made. It could prevent some problems like Wolsk's. For example (via pm): "Hello, we haven't see you streaming for a while, do you plan to stream again ?". Or "Be careful, we notice you are not streaming a lot of fangames on your stream. Dont forget the team mainly provides fangames stream"
If you like this idea, it could become a requirement (just giving some ideas here):
- Must be on team discord server
- Must use discord
Hoping it will help you :atkHappy:
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Alright so i read through alot of the replies and gave everything some thought myself, and as a member who will probably get kicked for inactivity(i don't really stream often anymore, and haven't streamed fangames in a long time except 3 days in a row a couple weeks ago) i thought it could be nice to give some input.
One of the things i thought about is the thing about stuff like follower alerts. No indeed you cannot tell people the way they need to stream BUT as a team you can make the decision to ban follower alerts, personally i don't use them but i don't really mind it too much if streams use them, since i rarely encounter them.
Remove inactive/ people who don't stream fangames anymore:
I definetely think this should happen. i looked through the list of people on the team and i think that more than half i've never seen stream, or atleast not in the last few months, but ofcourse there could be people who only stream at times i'm asleep, so that number could be smaller. I definetely think that this should go through though. But the reapplying thing of kicked members being isntantly accepted i'm not sure about. I feel like this would be good but that you would need to make sure that they are actually serious about picking up streaming again and don't rejoin for a couple days and then stop streaming again.
English language for streamers:
I think it is definetely a must to use english. Sure i don't mind if people use multiple languages but they should atleast also use english and not only the other language.
The enforcing of autohosting:
Again, as a team you can make the decision to do this. I really don't think it's that big of a deal. I really don't see any good reason to not do this. Ofcourse there might be people who don't like it, but as a team you can just have set rules, if people don't like them they can also just join another team.
Different requirements:
I really think this point is too vague, semi-known is just too unclear so i can't really say much about this, but i do agree that people who have only been in the fangame community for a week shouldn't be allowed to join yet.
Remove members who no longer meet the requirements:
I don't see how people could all of a sudden not meet requirements anymore unless it's being inactive.
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I don't think you should remove the inactive members... What's even the point of that. Why don't people just streaming when they want to. And this auto-hosting thing, what if you host someone you do not want to host. I don't think people feel bad if they do not have viewers. I don't know if you think people should be more skilled to join the team now... It is really easy to get into this team, so I guess you have a good idea. Also why does English have to be the language, because many fangamers do not speak English. That does not make sense to me. I don't like follower alerts either but I think people should use it if they want. Also, I think in a different thread you said that people can't read chat list, but I don't see why they can't read chat list. Calling out lurkers is annoying but I think it should be allowed... Also about "stream quality," what is wrong with the quality. Are you talking about that flashing Wolsk played when he got follows? I don't think any streams are unwatchable so I don't know why you bring that up...
Anyways, I think this team is pointless. No one uses this team, they just use the IWBTG page unless streamers are not playing IWBTG. I don't think being in the team makes you cool like you said...
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The twitch team is for people who actually stream on a regular basis, bananaguy. Just because you aren't on the wannabes doesn't mean you aren't part of the community. We want to boot the inactive members because there is no purpose for them to be there.
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I don't know why you say that thing about me being in the community or not. I thought the twitch team is just for people who play fangames.
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I don't know why you say that thing about me being in the community or not. I thought the twitch team is just for people who play fangames.
It's kinda for mainly fangamers. if you stream at a high quality and want to promote the community then you meet the goals of the twitch team.
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I have a few questions and comments about the content in the original post.
The reason why I think we should do this is because once again this will significantly strengthen our brand and provide more of a reason to actually care about the twitch team. I'll be honest, right now the team feels rather meaningless, it's just there to show people that you're "hot stuff" or something.
What do we want the brand "The Wannabes" to be? :cirPrise: I think it's great if we want to improve something, but what is it we're working towards? Similar to what BBF_ mentioned earlier, I think we could either make the Wannabes an open community of everyone who streams fangames or an elite membership for only a select few.
Up until now I think people have joined to build/be a part of a community as well as to benefit from gaining exposure. I think it creates a really fun and diverse Twitch community at the moment, but if we want the team to have a more specific purpose than that, I would like to know what that is.
Since this will increase the value of being in the team, I think we'll also have to make the team requirements more strict and overall require more professional attitude.
Before getting to the other requirements, I'm curious about the team requiring a "more professional attitude". I've read through the discussion so far but haven't seen this brought up again. I would like to hear Den's thoughts on this, and discuss it from there.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Removal of inactive members (basically those who no longer exist within the community)
- Those who come back would not need to reapply and are able to rejoin instantly
- Make the whole "watchable stream" rule more strict
- Spend more time deciding whether the person in question is suitable to join (a small group of community managers would be great)
- Require english to be the broadcaster language (I.E the setting in your twitch dashboard, multiple language streams are still fine)
- Heavily discourage the use of follower alerts
- Heavily encourage all members of the team to use the autohosting
When I initially read this post the other day, these suggestions were much more vague and I wasn't so sure about them. At the moment, these look pretty good. Changing some of these things from requirements to strong recommendations is a great move, and leaving an open door for inactive members to return is fair.
As a current member of the team, I plan on activating autohosting to help out other team members once any bugs/issues are worked out (hosting seems all messed up for me lately). I'm all for strengthening the team, but I think it'd be interesting to know what exactly we want to accomplish.
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- Removal of inactive members (basically those who no longer exist within the community)
i think this is fine aslong as you try to actually contact the people you want to remove and try to atleast talk to them about it
- Those who come back would not need to reapply and are able to rejoin instantly
i think this is fine if they really want to get back into streaming more regulary again
- Make the whole "watchable stream" rule more strict
what makes a stream more watchable? i don't think we had a single stream yet where the game wasn't the focus of the stream so i don't really get this point. if it's just about the bitrate or something then no. i used to have a really bad bitrate too but it didn't stop people from watching the stream
- Spend more time deciding whether the person in question is suitable to join (a small group of community managers would be great)
i don't get why it needs to be something that special to get into the team. if someone enjoys playing these games we usually already know those people a bit. so it barely takes any thinking if they should be added or not
- Require english to be the broadcaster language (I.E the setting in your twitch dashboard, multiple language streams are still fine)
think this is ok if it's only about the chat language setting. i don't mind watching someone if it's fun and he doesn't speak english
- Heavily discourage the use of follower alerts
i hate follower alerts and it usually makes me wait until someones stream goes offline to follow him, but it is the streamers decision how he wants to run things like this so i don't think this should be a thing. it is the same with donations or other popups which always should be the streamers decision and it really doesn't hurt the team if someone does have these
- Heavily encourage all members of the team to use the autohosting
i'm personally have a pretty split opinion about this, but i think autohosting isn't bad so it is fine. the whole hosting feature just loses the kinda "personal" contact between the streamers. before you were happy when someone decides to host you and it brings maybe sometimes even some motivation to clear things you are playing at that time. with the autohost this is kinda gone since it's just not having any meaning that you got hosted by it. still i think it is fine if everyone does it
Final thoughts
i don't think the team should be some elite club or shit like that. it's supposed to be a place where people who enjoy these games and other can come together and enjoy them together too. what i really would like is more stuff happening with the team. i know it's always easy to say that but for now we have like 1 event per year kinda. i personally don't even think we need only big things like FGM. the races between more people blind are completely gone which is sad (a lot from this comes because people just take stuff too serious which is another problem). the whole playing fangames to just enjoy them and have fun seems to slowly go away for many people. i really would wish that the team just gets closer together with each individual and that it is not only some split up group of people that maybe do something together every now and then. i hope people maybe kinda get my point and read through all this :4Head:
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Final thoughts
i don't think the team should be some elite club or shit like that. it's supposed to be a place where people who enjoy these games and other can come together and enjoy them together too. what i really would like is more stuff happening with the team. i know it's always easy to say that but for now we have like 1 event per year kinda. i personally don't even think we need only big things like FGM. the races between more people blind are completely gone which is sad (a lot from this comes because people just take stuff too serious which is another problem). the whole playing fangames to just enjoy them and have fun seems to slowly go away for many people. i really would wish that the team just gets closer together with each individual and that it is not only some split up group of people that maybe do something together every now and then. i hope people maybe kinda get my point and read through all this :4Head:
You made an interesting point here about the team being really only "1 big event" per year. I am in complete agreement - I think the overall attitude has gotten more serious and less spontaneous when it comes to events, races, etc. We really do need to organize any and all events, even if its literally same-day friendly races between streamers (or even viewers). Bingo was promising when it was first released, but no one really uses it anymore. Get Yourself Fangaming is really the last weekly event we've ever done, and I'm glad it was being kept alive.
I think the main problem with this is that it stems from no community or team support for these events. I can't tell you how many times I've mentioned the "GYF races" and a lot of viewers have 0 clue what I'm talking about. If there's any planned event, even for the same-day or the next, it would be great if we received some team support for the idea from their own streams.
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I'm a very competitive person, so I am totally guilty of that. Always get sad that "serious" speedrunning is becoming such a small part of our community (except Get Yourself Fangaming and the couple of people seriously speedrunning something)...but that's besides the point.
Auto-Hosting seems to be pretty broken still, I randomly get hosted sometimes after my stream has been long down, so I won't be using it for the time being.
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Hello again, I have not forgotten about this topic, don't worry.
For this to work I'm gonna need a small group (3-4 people) of team managers to deal with applications, inactive members and other similar things.
If you are interested in volunteering for this, let me know!
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Since there hasn't been a reply yet, i guess i can accept a position here, however the bugging part of this is where would everyone talk about inactive members? To be honest i don't really have a need for Discord and i don't really want it and i know you den don't want to use skype at all either, so this is the only thing i object to with something like this, and since i recommend members a lot to you, i feel like i can do something like this.
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Yea, I can help you. Just hook me up on discord
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Hey everyone,
Just wanted to see team feedback regarding the 'auto host' feature on Twitch -- is this working as intended? Do you still agree with it? We had this discussion a while ago, yet it seemed that we never "officially" committed to using it, despite everyone basically now using it. Is there any other part of this that needs discussion?
On a somewhat related note -- after talking with Pat, I am in full agreement that the Wannabes team page on Twitch needs a little sprucing up, any ideas?
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I've heard some streamers complain about a sea of host messages when they start up their stream, dunno if that was changed recently but I disabled my auto hosting for that reason.
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Auto-hosting is incredibly irritating because of what piece mentioned. Because we have so many members on the team, when you get the auto-hosts, it basically replaces your entire chatbox and even does that multiple times because for some reason it hosts more than once from the same channel. Twitch is a good site that only adds features that have been well-tested.
Outside of that, I have seen an increased viewercount for my channel which is nice, but I will not enable it for my own channel since it is still a mess of a feature. There are a bunch of bugs that I'm sure have been reported hundreds of times that Twitch still hasn't fixed, and I'd rather not be another message in the sea of spammy auto-hosts. As of now, I just manually host whoever I'm watching at the time, and that accomplishes pretty much the same thing.
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There's a big purge of inactive team members coming, so the autohost spam shouldn't be as ridiculous