Sunday, February 20th, 2011
Issue: 69   Editor: AbracadabrAldarion


Social Experiment- Staff BuzzPoison
Those of you who missed last weeks Buzz will have no idea what this is all about, so just for you we'll give you a little recap...

A few weeks ago, Poison stopped his egotistical need to have 'Poison' in every name and went undercover as DonOfMafia. He then used this opportunity to ask people questions without them knowing that they were being monitored for the Buzz! 
Mwuhahahaaaa!
Last week we took a look into how generous people are, and whether they would give some money to 'a returning player who had been away for a while'. Poison asked about 30 people in all, some in his usual articulate and professional manner (guess who's writing this?) and some in a more abbreviated manner. If I've aroused your curiosity then you can check out last week's article here:
http://www.bootleggers.us/buzz/index.php?view=960

Anyway, on to this week!

This week:
Just how helpful are staff?


At the time of our undercover operation, there were 10 members of staff. So you know who they were, here you go:

BSF2000
Sweetie
Riserva
Mika
David
Zeb
Altro
CustomStyle
Lew
Sky

This week's question was simple; we are all told in very simple terms that "If you need help, please use the Help Desk rather than writing to the staff." So just how inclined are staff to help you if you message them with a question. 

The question that I sent couldn't be simpler, I went for the 'I'm a returning player' line as per normal and asked:


DonOfMafia aka Poison wrote:
Hi, I've just got back to playing again after being away for a while... I was wondering if you could explain the new crimes system to me, I thought TonyT was the missions guy?



So here are the results, I've split the results into each category of staff. 

Administrators

Helped- 0
Didn't help- 1



Moderators

Helped- 1
Didn't help- 4



Help Desk Operators

Helped- 1
Didn't help- 3



So as we can see, out of the 10 members of staff, just 2 managed to get around to replying and helping me out. Not a great response we thought, why should we only be able to ask questions in the Help Desk? Is their name not coloured on the users online page so that people can ask them questions? Or is it simply for their self gratification?

Food for thought perhaps, maybe we're being overly harsh and they just were very busy at the time... You never know. 

For comparative purposes I also asked 10 ordinary players selected at random for an explanation:

Helped- 3 (4 tried but one was such a terrible answer I couldn't count it)
Didn't help- 7



So this weeks conclusion, if you want help then use the Help Desk or ask a fellow player! Avoid asking the Admins for sure!

Now, something very exciting- I've been nagging Aldarion that he always gets to give away all the money, so this week I've got some! Here's how it will work- what you need to do is send your guess as to which two members of staff did help the Buzz as a 'contest entry' (at the bottom of the Buzz). 
Remember, you need to guess two members of staff, one a HDO and one a Moderator. Everyone who guesses both correctly will be entered into a dice game and the winner will receive $2,500,000. Good luck!

Next Week:
Organised Crimes