I hope no one takes this personally. It's not a personal attack on anyone; it's meant to be constructive, not destructive. :)
I feel like there is a lack of leadership in actually carrying out many of these initiatives, going back to the other thread and many of the things people agreed about. I feel none of the no-brainer initiatives that were discussed over the summer ended up happening until I came back from months off and did them myself over the last few weeks. I can't tell if this is fair or not, but I am a little frustrated that something like the building workshop or building competition, ideas that have been around for months, didn't happen until I pseudo-returned and did them myself. I know people are busy IRL and there are responsibilities that I didn't have to deal with when I moderated this forum (coding the server in particular), and I haven't forgotten how exhausting and demotivating having a staff position here can be, but something like the building comp's OP took very little time. Ditto with the workshop. Fair or not, I don't think it's too much to expect that those things have a better turnaround than half a year.
So yeah, while I'm sure this sounds unbearably pompous, I always feel like I'm stepping into a leadership vacuum whenever contributing to a thread like this or carrying out the ideas. I think it's very easy for people to put little effort into battling and whatever else when the server leadership in particular is not very active (at least visibly so) in dictating the direction of the forum, actively participating in battling events (or even in some cases the server chat), etc. People follow the example of their leadership, so I think leadership should set a more active and deliberate example.
I think this thread is a good start in reversing this trend, but it is just a start. It means very little if none of the suggestions are carried out or if the direction of the community remains unclear or seems haphazard. I think the following proposals would help:
1. Have somewhere where planned tournaments, events, initiatives (like the league aggregate, as an example) are visible to everyone so people who what is coming down the pipeline and what leadership has planned. Besides being more communicative, I think this has the advantage of encouraging people to volunteer contributions--"hey i saw that you're prepping a viability list/threat list, can i help?"--as well as offer suggestions. I think the OP of this thread is as good a place as any to have such information, though the rules or some other sticky could work as well.
2. The staff should more actively participate in the forum's battling events. Look at the team-building workshop or the building comp or the UU ladder race (or the old OU one) or really anything similar. How many BSS members do you see participating? I have no desire to rehash the "BSS members should be battlers!" debate from the last thread, and I think that would miss the point. It's not about battling/non-battling, it's about being visible as leaders and being an active presence in the community you lead or help moderate.
3. I already know what answer I'll get to this ("we already do this") but absentee staff should be removed.
D_A's old post sums up my feelings nicely. The most minor of these points, but I might as well echo these sentiments while I'm on the topic.
4. The proposals that people agree on in this thread need to be carried out in a timely fashion. There is no point in asking for feedback if it won't affect change. I know I initiated the last thread so that pretense didn't exist last time, but now it does.
This isn't supposed to be a callout. I know there are things that happen behind the scenes that I am unaware of. That's fine, but then those things need to be communicated so there is more clarity and accountability in what happens here.