First, please don't take this as a rant thread, I honestly would like to see PS evolve, but I also see some problems in matters of organisation. Here I would like to address some:

The processes are too closed. You barely know what is happening right know, on what the devs are working. If this work would be more open, the community could give much more feedback, even before things "go live".

The community as a whole should be much more integrated in the development process. I think much bigger steps could be taken much faster if some work would be delegated to the community.
So connected to this issue is the problem that applications are much too long in the queue, without "somebody looking at it soon" ;-)
So maybe more people should evaluate applications.
Actually it seems far too much is only the responsibility of Talad. More things should be delegated too other Devs or as said the community whenever possible. Anyhow anyone has to know exactly what his/her responsibility is.
A quote from Karyuu:
"Other NPCs are involved, and their involvement needs to be approved by Talad. Hopefully approval of the new quests won't take long, as well as loading them into the game."
Why does this have to be approved by Talad? Why not other people who maybe are not so overworked? I suggest to transfer such tings to the matching department, or a work group.

The setting should be much more detailed. If there is more, release it. I do not mean to release huge spoilers if there is a big story going on, I mean different details about the world. Like descriptions of flora and fauna, politics, who is who - things your character would know if he lived a couple of years in Yliakum.
The reason for this is simple: good role-playing needs a common basis. If everybody creates their own world it is hard to come together.

To solve some of these problems I suggest to create community-working-groups. Special groups to work on a single field of interest. Those groups could get support and input by a developer who coordinates a single group. And they should have the promise, that their work somehow really would get implemented.
Developers, or any other dedicated group leaders, could define precise goals to speed up processes.
Some groups I thought of:
- Setting
- Artwork
- Rules
- PR
- Homepage
- ...

Of course it would take some initial effort to set up those structures and to create a manifest on how things should be done etc. but ones established things would speed up and really involve the community.


And now start the discussion, cause my proposels are by far not perfect - some issues stay untouched by this post and of course not everybody will agree.
But I do not want to see this thread burried in small rants about single persons or anyting like that and of course I really would like to see some developers taking part in the (maybe) discussion, posting their point of view.
And I would really like to see some changes in the nearer future...

I thought about creating a PS survey to cover the following questions:
What wishes does the commuinty have?
What problems does the commuinty see?
What does the community likes most/what annoys them most?
Many statistical data (how long do does one play/ since when/ why/ whats the OS/etc...)
Well I think this could be of use for the devs. What do you think (mainly the PS-team) would it be helpfull for you?
Of course I would analyse and interpret the data, so you don't have to worry about any work.
So if you like the idea you can also tell me your fileds of interest for such a survey...
(I am a student of sociologie [social sciences], so I have some experiences in doing such work - and thats also a reason for me to do this -> experience)