Zedling Council Meeting 2017-12-30
From Zedwiki
Host: stumps290
Scribe: Spectatre, having felt moral quandaries about subjecting anyone else to this
Attendance
Council Members Present
- ABParadigm
- EmpressBethany
- Zedwick
- LadyBountiful (In Spirit)
- SneakySkeleton
- EliasRipley
- Aravero*
- FunkyTechnician
- HOMINIX
- Spectatre
- AmirTheTurtle
- Entity009**
- Forseth
'*Having come in part-way through our first topic, Ara took the decision to do something more productive with her evening, like climbing up a wall or learning the bassoon.
'**Fled to tend to a housefire. As one does.
Apologies
- Memery
- Dax23333
- _Swayed_
- ACERPROSPY
No Apologies
- Haztec
Other Zedlings Present
- tim1996
Today's meeting was inside a very pretty melon. :D
Topics
ABParadigm - Undercutting at the market
There were no less than three forum threads in the lead-up to this topic, so you knew it was going to be a doozie. Spec's SpotlightTM shines on EmpressBethany, who first suggested putting a 45 minute time limit on what could have otherwise been a total blowout of bureaucracy.
Undercutting in the market is when a player sells an item at a cheaper price than the 'going rate' in the market. This can be for multiple reasons - attempting to attract more sales, wishing to unload items quickly, or being unaware that other players are selling at a different price.
The concern that many market-goers had is the effect sustained undercutting could have on the market; discouraging other sellers from selling, making it harder for new people to enter the market as a seller, and also potentially as a buyer having a lack of stock to spend their hard-earned blue pixels on.
Matching most expectations, this was a very active topic, with many suggestions thrown in and discussed. An early suggestion was a 'gentleman's agreement' among sellers to try and hold, if not increase prices, Diamond Time Standard came up as a metric for gauging the fairness of a price, another was having a Market Guild which would do...something...there was a lot that went up in the air. Many many many things. It goes without saying (she says, saying it anyway), this was a doozie to try and resolve.
Of those who viewed undercutting as a problem, the majority did not want to resolve it through rulings, price-fixes or otherwise regulating the market. So, how to address the issue without doing any of that? Forseth took us on a trip back through time, a reminiscence of what the market did when Laurens_ ran it. When they saw what they viewed to be a good deal, or fair trade, they stuck a carpet about the place, intended to highlight this to prospective purchasers. The market now being in the purview of the Zriends, our lone blue representative recalled that it didn't have any negative effects at the time.
This idea melded with another suggestion knocking about the place to become (drumroll) Badges! Sellers who consistently have fair deals and good trades will have a lil' 'Community Seller' badge, highlighting them to a buyer, in the old Laurensian tradition. In the same way, new people entering the market as a seller will get a 'New Seller' badge, highlighting their entry into the marketplace. Sneaky mused that this could be done as a weeklyish, monthlyish thing as Zriendly discretion, and also wanted a 'feedback area' - marketgoers could then sign books with their notions and suggestions, and place them there for the Zriends to take into account.
There was voting on whether we should vote, there was a musical-chairs round of voting, funky kept looking at his hypothetical watch (as were we all), we voted that we should vote on Badges and then Badges were put to a vote and passed. Watch this space for 'em!
Are you a new seller, or an existing seller looking to sell some goods? But oh wait, you're not really sure what to price it at? Give a shout in chat! Sometimes there's a 'going rate' for an item you can base your pricing on!
ABParadigm - Freebie chests at the market
"It'll be a quick one," he said. "I just want a yes or no," he said. Fun fact: there is a silent, invisible H in ABParadigm; it stands for hubris. (I kid, I kid. If you bring up the market again anytime soon I crush you :D)
There are some areas of the market where stuff is advertised as being sold for free. Some people felt like this went against what the market was for (selling goods for other goods, instead of for nothing) and could instead go to the zookie stand. Others felt that some items shouldn't be in the zookie stand because of the potential for griefers. Others felt like there could be a separate area for zedling-freebies. In the middle of the last topic Zed and Elias mused on having a bargain-bin area in the market, for short-term selling at low prices. Not going to lie the only notes I have for this entire topic are 'this took twenty minutes, I don't even know'. The start of this paragraph was just my recollection because I felt it would probably be rude just to put 'I don't know', regardless of how much it would have amused me to do so. I'm sacrificing my humour for you all; you're welcome, I guess.
Nonetheless, it was put to a vote and decided that 'Free' chests are NOT allowed at Spawn Market. If you've got free stuff, your options are the zookie stand, the end shop, your house, into a volcano...the world is your oyster, except the spawn market, which is now an animal that is slightly more withholding.
Spectatre - Time Limits on topics
Who can tell where I got the inspiration for this one. The 45 minute time limit seemed to work well for the first topic, so I said 'why not do that all the time?'. Because we were feeling particularly talkative this meeting, this then evolved into: Why not have a time limit on the entire meeting? Why not do 30 minutes per topic? Why not have a maximum topic count per meeting? Why not only allow pre-agenda topics? Why not zoidberg
Some of these were accepted, some amalgamated into eachother, some kicked out for being a tired internet meme, and from it all came a new meeting format!
Topic discussion in a meeting is now limited to 90 minutes. Any individual topic is not to exceed 30 minutes. Topics posted in the pre-meeting agenda take priority; if there is time remaining in the meeting after these are dealt with, non-posted topics can be addressed on a first-come, first-served basis. After the 90 minutes of discussion (or when topics are exhausted, whichever is earlier), the meeting moves on to announcements, and end-of-meeting business.
Even more reason to use the pre-meeting agenda! (Please, please, please use the pre-meeting agenda. Let us scribes know what we're heading into, so we masochistically head into it regardless)
stumps290 - Offline messages
Winner of Neatest Topic of the Evening, stumps asked whether there was a way to leave players offline messages in-game. There is not a way to do this in-game (vanilla vanilla, the plugin killa), current suggestions are leaving a player a message on the forum. When asked about discord, Zed stated he was not prepared to run a voip server.
Want to get a message to someone who isn't online? Message them on the forums!
AnnouncementZ - Zed
Tomorrow, Sunday 31st, is our regularly scheduled Buildoff! 4pm-9pm, theme TBC. Bring in the new year by building something wacky!
Zed also teased a possible new Sunday event - Pocket UHC, training us up to fight Sneaky (or training Sneaky up to kill us - jury's out on whether Zed has accepted our fate)
The aim is to have all the shenanigans of a UHC, with the time it takes to do things reduced. Meat and ores auto-cook on murder/mining, trees might auto-destroy, anything that helps speed up the bit before the arrows fly.
Do you have anything you can think of to make a speedy lil' UHC? Let Zed know about it! He's going to post a topic for suggestions in the forums, hoping to be alpha testing as soon as next week!
Nominations/Next Meeting
There were no nominations, EmpressBethany volunteered to host, see you all in two weeks! You heard it here first, it's gonna be...fishy...