Why this hasn't been done is honestly beyond me at this point.
Every now and then, mods and GMs and whatever will occasionally be around in chat to stop it and get them to shut up for at least 5 minutes but when they're not, those same content creators have like 3 or 4 alts and they constantly. Spam. The. Same. Message. Over and over and over and over. It's always advertising their Twitch Streams or YT videos. And nothing ever gets done about them. It's specifically the same few people and yet absolutely nothing gets done about link spamming in chat other than a kind little "Don't do this". Given how unbelievably quick mods and GMs can be on blocking even the most miniscule mention of other topics, i.e politics or even remotely inappropriate content, how they somehow miss the mark on the most toxic parts of chat is stunning.
In fact, I'd probably go further and just say completely revamp how moderation takes place. There's evidently a lack of moderators for chat given that you see them maybe once in a blue moon talking, let alone taking action against anything, as mentioned previously. However, it's not like even if players report it, much gets done. I've heard from people that've had tickets open for literal months over tiny issues without any single response from mods/GMs. Nothing gets done at all in regards to community wishes by those staff members and more often than not, it's other players that actually do a better job than any of them.
For example, take the Shaymin release. How did the staff do on that one? Well, it took around 24 hours for changelogs to actually be made for it. After it was revealed. How does that even happen? I'd assume you guys had at some prior knowledge as to how the whole Shaymin event worked and yet you just decided to...not release any information whilst everyone scrambled to do stuff? Why? There's literally no reason for that other than: a) Not actually being told how it works, b) Sheer laziness from the team, or c) Some sort of weird idea that letting the community figure it out was better. It was overall really odd that that even happened tbh. Yes, it was only 24 hours, but you guys somehow managed to make a whole changelog for the Lunar New Year Event for 2023 that gave a well decent summary of how it worked and then just. Didn't do anything for Shaymin. For over a day. There's no rhyme or reason behind it.
This did just start out as a criticism of just the main issue of Twitch Global spammers but it's quickly devolved into just overhauling staff in general, solely due to the fact that such a poor job is being done of moderating the right things in chat. There'll straight up be people spamming slurs in chat and no one bats an eye for around an hour until a staff member logs on, notices, and bans them. That's a clear sign that there's a lack of staff present to actually cope with this sort of thing, or just overwhelming laziness. But then, on the otherhand, someone says something with even the slightest level of inappropriateness, probably not even enough for anyone to have caught on, and the staff will sic themselves upon that user like rabid dogs and mute them for the next eon.
Other than those two things mentioned in that last paragraph, I feel like staff members are doing absolutely nothing for the community as of present. We hardly see them in chat ever interacting with the community, either being offline or just ignoring chat for the most part. When they are around, they're doing too much or too little and never just the right amount. Furthermore, the playerbase governs itself so much better than the staff ever could that it's downright embarassing for them.
As a result, I highly encourage the introduction of a few of the following changes at minimum:
Introduce a new, more accessible layer of staff that allows for muting of players for a select time to allow for more staff to be added on to the team and in addition add to the levels of appropriate moderation in chat.
Loosen rules in chat, so that whilst overly explicit/gross text is removed, chat can go slightly adult if it gets to that point (why this isn't already a thing, I don't know. The vast majority of the PokeMMO playerbase is at least 16, I would have expected).
Make the current staff team more active in taking action on moderation.
Increase staff interaction with the community to lessen the complete mysteriousness and lack of information going between the two groups.
Actually work on changelogs and distributing appropriate information to the community when needed instead of keeping it a complete mystery all the time.
Maybe these are just how a select few in the community feel, but I definitely know that that population is growing exponentially given how poorly some recent events have been received and how annoyed some people are over the complete inactivity of staff at times.
I think it should also be noted that these changes are completely within the realm of expectations. I've seen Pixelmon Minecraft servers with thousands of players do all of the things I've stated, plus more, with even less staff than the ones currently present on PokeMMO. That was with several thousand people and considerably less staff present. PokeMMO has apparently around 23,000+ daily players in January 2023. You absolutely can afford to do much better given the playerbase.
TL;DR: Do some of the following: Bring new staff in, add new staff layers, loosen rules in chat whilst keeping it more appropriate, make the team more active, increase interaction and actively work on resources for the community to use, as well as banning Twitch chat spammers on the side.
Because we all know how a lot of the playerbase feels about staff at the moment.
