Join the new world

Hello everyone, from 64kbps land! 😃 I wrote this article two days ago but it took it a while to reach eRepublik. (kidding)

Today's topic is not about the respect you should give (in order to deserve it back), but the one you owe it to yourself - the self respect.

ACT 1 - "Be brief"
When people argue with you, fight you, mock you, and so on, you can't just sit like a dummy and do nothing about it - at least not forever. But the way you reply makes the whole difference.

Although I really tried to weigh my words and comment as relevant as possible to an article, yesterday, after 3 comments full of insults from zmeuNY, I replied shortly in a sarcastic manner and drew the conclusion that some people can rarely be addressed to reasonably, so it almost makes no sense to even try. Then again, to completely ignore such articles would also be a mistake considering that people acting like zmeuNY should not be taken seriously. So I owe it to myself to stay brief with them.


ACT 2 - "Be reasonable"
It helps a lot not to rush your answers. Taking time to really comprehend someone can save a lot of time from undoing the damage you might do if you react poorer than you're capable of. This doesn't mean we will always react properly if we take time or that we should contemplate for a long time to react on something. Just take some time, look at it from different angles and then reply as well as you are able to. You owe it to yourself.


ACT 3 - "You are not a victim"
Even people who make use of their common sense most of their time can get out of their comfort zone and use some harsh words sometime, in some outrageous/ridiculous/alarming situations. That doesn't necessarily mean you are a victim, that you are specifically targeted nor that someone's arguing with you. The people who usually have a generous amount of patience will rarely use harsh words and when they do, they will most likely refrain from using strong language - because it's what they do anyway, most of the time when you screw up small or BIG. But when it's ***HUGE*** and they slightly offend you, check ACT 2. Take your time to check the facts and be reasonable about it.

Yesterday I've been asked to be understanding, I was told that it seemed like I don't want to understand that "my" issue (not eRepublik's) was forwarded to the development department, I was also thanked for my insistence and that they appreciate my concerns for the good of the game, for my suggestions, dedication and time to analyze eRepublik. Yay! 😃

Well, you already guessed ACT 3 is about the eRepublik support. Right now, I have 107 tickets in my support history. Simply out of curiosity I wanted to find out how many of them are actually solved, so I took a look at the latest 20 active tickets. And by active I don't mean new tickets but any ticket that got replies from the support staff.

20 tickets
7 solved
13 unsolved

Out of those solved, 2 of them got fixed after I offered them the solution - a typo in the class name for some decorations in the citizen profiles. I just got tired to wait for two months for a fix so I checked the code myself. Yeah, how lame of me to work for free, and for Plato!

Another ticket was invalid on my part. I used some bazookas on the battlefield during the National Shield II competition and I didn't know why my damage wasn't counted properly.

Two other tickets were reports of illegal content so I might say I helped eRepublik and the community.

OK, so they helped me with 2 tickets out of 20. That's 10% but as you surely know if you ever created tickets, they close them all anyway. This really begs for a question: what's going on? So I took a deeper look at my tickets. Here are the most common used phrases in these 20 tickets:

10 x will be solved (as soon as possible / in the near future)
7 x we will check
5 x we will analyze
3 x we apologize
3 x we were not able to reply
3 x we have forwarded your message
3 x try to understand / I hope you can understand
2 x thanks for your support (yes, the two tickets I fixed myself 😛)
2 x we have taken the proper measures (yes, I report weird crap. BOO-HOO!)
2 x we will take into consideration your opinion
2 x your suggestion is on the analysis list in the development department
2 x please stay tune for further updates
1 x we are very sorry
1 x found nothing wrong
1 x forwarded to be analyzed
1 x forwarded to be solved
1 x clear the browser history
1 x we encountered some issue with our system and some messages were hidden (I actually tend to believe this but I won't say why, please don't ask)
1 x the issue was submitted to be analyzed and solved
1 x we don't do preferential treatment (awww... after I fixed tickets?! 😕)
1 x your opinion is helping us improve the New World (we all know we got plenty of these but I just didn't dig in the other tickets)
1 x we will have it in mind for future updates (same as above)
1 x your issue is not a critical one (*my* issue? LOL)

One of the tickets was about the Cupid mission, which got reset after the first Day Change. They described it as "a minor glitch which was fixed in a matter of minutes."

Well, you know what? Out of my latest 20 active tickets only one *solved* was something I wanted from them: an API key. I guess the key is awarded automatically for having the patience to wait for a year for it, because that's how long I had to wait.

So all this for 5% chances of success? WOW!

Now regarding the topic of the article - self respect - I find it hard to come up with the right words. I would just put myself in their shoes and honestly, I would keep a maximum of 2-3 support staff (the best of them), maybe fire the others, and hire developers. Just because I owe it to myself to do something right.

But I'm not in their shoes and I don't know what's really going on at the eRepublik Labs. All I know is this feeling that things could be a lot better if they would move their focus on development. It would bring money anyway, so they might as well keep all the support staff - I don't actually want to get anyone fired. Well, maybe Plato, but then we would miss a lot of fun articles. So let's keep him.

Respect!
o7


Respect - part 2: http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2390916