Serve the Servants

Since I'm a crazy self-obsessive, I pay attention to the referrals which are cheerfully logged in the machinery of the good ship Rock Paper Shotgun. When I wrote ridiculously lengthily about Travian the Servitor linked to us. This caused me to work my way back through their sporadically updated archives. They're a community manager for an un-named MMO, and the blog is an archive for assorted observations about managing a mass of humanity which has decided that - y'know - they don't fancy being that humane anymore. For example, here's their final point on how to file a complaint...

Don't make threats. At least, not in the initial few rounds. If you threaten to sue or call the Better Business Bureau right out of the gate, you're putting the company in defensive mode. At best, the person reading or listening to your complaint thinks you're a drama queen. At worst, you've just gotten your case escalated not to problem solvers, but to company lawyers. If you have a problem that you want to escalate past the person you're dealing with now, keep asking politely for supervisors. Filing BBB complaints or suing is your last resort, for when all other avenues have been explored. It is the proper place for these things to go sometimes, but it is never a place to start.

Which you may think obvious, but if it were, they wouldn't feel the need to growl about it on a blog. The tone's actually generally far less annoyed, however. For example, consider the notes on notes on kids on MMOS and real-life death in the world of MMOs.