Withdrawn.

[Marlon P.]

Suggestion withdrawn.

Edited October 11, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Zelmana]

For this to be true the inverse must also be true, no? When pop was good did we have more lax policy? Not necessarily. The overall reduction of Command is proportional to the overall reduction of the entire population. I remember times where we'd have very good pop, a consistent 40-60 players most nights not just hitting low 40s on the weekend, and almost all Command slots were filled or being roleplayed.

I've said this before, but the SS13 community is small, and they remember things. Aurora has in recent years fallen off slightly. Not that this should be a good measure- but we are rarely, if ever, mentioned on the subreddits or other forums, and if we are it is often in an undesirable light. What brings new players to Aurora? Often only randomly joining grays from the hub. In my opinion we should be more willing to readily establish ourselves as the creme de le creme non-ERP focused (degeneracy) HRP server. Addressing some of the points people make on r/ss13 may help with that.

[Marlon P.]

1 hour ago, Zelmana said:

For this to be true the inverse must also be true, no? When pop was good did we have more lax policy?

Yes. Command WLs have fluxed, but did not have the levels of requirements as now. The numbers show a decline in applications longterm -- again it includes ALL applications archived.

As for the rest... i disagree that we need to combat "degeneracy". Let's not use that language, it makes me feel like im reading youtube comments under jordan peterson videos.

I also have little idea what reddit says about auroras whitelist process; they're also hardly our target demographic. 

Addressing the whitelist process is best addressed by reducing the barriers between the tiers of play -- like not having an entire interview process et all.

We know there are more players than we get. Post-NBT and event pops prove it imo. This may be reinforced on Saturday if the lore event pulls in high numbers.

You are right about pulling in grays and randoms. 

Thank you for responding.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Zelmana]

7 minutes ago, Marlon P. said:

-snip-

I believe you're misreading me. What I'm saying when I refer to "degeneracy" is that we're the best HRP server there is, period. I'm not implying we are degen or anything like that, but rather that we're quite different from some of the other HRP servers. Other servers permit ERP and dangerous 18+ scenarios that we all know cause drama and legal issues.

As for not caring what is said on reddit or other places, you should. Low Whitelist pop is a subissue / symptom of Low GenPop. It's better to remediate the actual root of the problem which is low genpop.

A user who watches a few Nurse or Sseth or whatever videos on youtube will google "best ss13 servers" the first results would be reddit followed by 4chan and other servers. In general life, it's quite a meme that if you want good generic advice adding the suffix "reddit" to your search will often bring you to a good discussion page about things. It's not very hard to imagine that a majority of players seeking a server, and not just randomly selecting one in the hub, will likely go to the main community nexus of ss13, which most definitely is r/ss13 or some /v/ threads (but those are more rare).

Type "Aurora" into the searchfield limiting it to r/ss13 and you will notice we are hardly spoken of, and when there are the rare threads of "what do you think of Aurora" it is a neutral light of the greatest place to HRP yet many bad experiences even from long-term players who fell into the path of judgement.

As I've said before and will always, SS13 is a small community and those interested are small as well. The learning curve  wall for entry is deterrent, so the overall SS13 playerpool is rotating with very rare surges of fresh players, (this is a self proving concept known as 'greytide'). If we want to continue for the next 6 years we may wish to take our PR into risk management discussions, and what can be done not to just counteract negative experiences but correct past grievances people may have had.

 

[Marlon P.]

I understand what you're saying better. I did misread you.

I used to agree about appealing to reddit. I also recognize googling reddit discussions is slowly replacing googles own algorithmically curated list of advertisements. I used to post there advertising aurora during my tenure as loremaster.

I'm sure a coordinated ad campaign of our own would get some attention. Its just that ss13s reddit isn't super aligned with HRP. It focuses on our subgenre of funny stuff. A lot of the lowbrow humor. 

But its all for naught if people don't apply for our higher tiers of play. So we need to make them more acessible to players. People who dont bother with applying with a face to face interview, essay questions, and hidden and unknowable level of activity, can go invest elsewhere.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Zelmana]

To me it's less so about appealing to reddit and moreso about appealing to the seeking player. Who will go to Reddit for advice on what server to join.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SS13/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ALooking%2Bfor%2BServer
You can find some references to Aurora in the past month. So we're not entirely obsolete.

[Marlon P.]

11 minutes ago, Zelmana said:

To me it's less so about appealing to reddit and moreso about appealing to the seeking player. Who will go to Reddit for advice on what server to join.

Oh i get it. Talk "at" redditors in a way that talks "to" googling ppl. Good idea. Ill bring this into my main argument-- they wont stick around as much with how obtuse and dense the barriers between tiers of play are.

[Shadow]

For the sake of clarity.

16 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

To my understanding, to gain an AI whitelist whitelist you must show loyalty through 'dailies' for a minimum playtime that is, as said, unlisted, then complete the questionnaire, essay questions, complete an interview with a staff member for the role, and then show a continued duration of loyalty with activity during a trial period.

 

No. The AI Whitelist has no trial period.

 

16 hours ago, Marlon P. said:

• Remove the 1 v 1 interviews for whitelists. 
• Remove the mandatory requirement for positive feedback, allowing a player to stand on her own merits or demerits.

 

Continuing on, it also does not have mandatory feedback requirement.

We have a 1 on 1 interview to question the player regarding his knowledge about AI procedures, as well as getting to know them and how they think.

After the interview it gets discussed with the other AI whitelist people (Currently read and me) and then you get the whitelist, or you don't.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Marlon P.]

Thank you for responding and clarifying my generalization in the OP. I will edit it for clarity in a bit.

24 minutes ago, Shadow said:

We have a 1 on 1 interview to question the player regarding his knowledge about AI procedures, as well as getting to know them and how they think.

Can these questions be compiled and provided on the application, or asked in posts to follow up? The interview process takes place in two seperate mediums - a forum and discord.

In addition, what is the minimum playtime that your ai whitelist team looks for in a player, and can this number be provided to the public in the rules/guide?

[Shadow]

On 20/07/2022 at 21:59, Marlon P. said:

Can these questions be compiled and provided on the application, or asked in posts to follow up?

Our initial idea behind the interview being hidden was that players can't look at answers of people who have passed and essentially copy theirs.

That and there's usually small changes when we ask so not everyone gets the same questions.

What I can say however is that there are 2 questions regarding AI behaviour OOCly and 3 scenario questions where we ask the player what they would do in that case.

So I dont think we can compile and put up the questions somewhere except maybe really generic with the comment that these will differ from person to person.

 

On 20/07/2022 at 21:59, Marlon P. said:

In addition, what is the minimum playtime that your ai whitelist team looks for in a player, and can this number be provided to the public in the rules/guide?

To be entirely honest, we thought of quantifying it at some point but it's hard to pinpoint an exact number. What we except is a person to be active.

What does active means? Hard to say. Someone who regularly plays 2 rounds a week for several months is active. Someone who plays 5 rounds on a weekend every two weekends is active in my book.

Even then, at least when it comes to the AI whitelist, we care less about that and more about the interview.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Shadow

[Marlon P.]

Thank you for your responses.

9 hours ago, Shadow said:

So I dont think we can compile and put up the questions somewhere except maybe really generic with the comment that these will differ from person to person.

This is something Caelphon does in loredev apps. He poses essentially the same(ish) questions with slight modifications in the applications. This provides an interview format without increasing the requirements. 

 

9 hours ago, Shadow said:

To be entirely honest, we thought of quantifying it at some point but it's hard to pinpoint an exact number. What we except is a person to be active.

What does active means? Hard to say. Someone who regularly plays 2 rounds a week for several months is active. Someone who plays 5 rounds on a weekend every two weekends is active in my book.

Even then, at least when it comes to the AI whitelist, we care less about that and more about the interview.

This dynamic prevented is the uncertainty that mentioned, which creates confusion for aspiring applicants.

Applicants have no way to judge their own activity. It creates standards that only the individual staffmember is aware of, and it can change even between applicants. How can the merits of a decision be judged if there is no standard to compare the decision to?

I've skimmed old ai whitelists and I've seen people who appeared to pass the interviews / thread but whom were rejected for inactivity. How inactive were they? What was the lowest playtime shared among the rejected applicants? If activity is not a requirement, but people are rejected due to inactivity, doesn't that mean that is the most important standard that its judged by?

As well, it puts across that not playing enough somehow invalidates their ability to function in the whitelisted role. It creates an uncertain and nebulous requirement for loyalty thru completing dailies (with no transparency on how many dailies) in an otherwise merit based application process.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Cnaym]

On 20/07/2022 at 04:57, Marlon P. said:

The more whitelists a player gains, they gain higher 'tiers of play'.

In my years of Aurora I never seen this concept. It was never about who has which whitelist, but how a person is OOCly for me. Engineering is a great example to me, almost all the well known longterm players who knew what they were doing were baseline humans who had to be semi forced into applying for a command whitelist, while Heads of Security come and go like there is a spinning door on their office.

 

As for the lowering numbers of people playing command currently, those that "main" command are usually the hardcore player base with far too many rounds played per weak. It's just not for everyone and getting bwoinked a couple of times per day makes even the most passionate command member consider a mining trip or tending to the bar tbh.

There is this weird idea that command players have anything of value from playing a restricted role while most of the time you are just the one at fault, getting yelled at by the other command members, getting taken hostage for entire rounds or sitting in more tickets than some staff members.

If it really was a much desired role we'd be swamped in interims every round, but most folks seem to prefer to do low responsibility jobs that allow for stress free roleplay.

At least that's why I played mostly humans in none command roles, even though I have almost all the options available. 

As for activity, I think it's overall a terrible concept to judge by. We got AI mains who could come back after two years of break and still perform better than some frequent players who only maimed a single job for years, it's just not a good indicator of how capable a player is when it cokes to roleplay, gameplay and OOCly being able to follow the rules.

[Garnascus]

It has been years since i was on the command whitelist team so take anything i say with a grain of salt. Back in the day the command whitelist served one purpose and one purpose only, as a commitment check. The assumption being that if you where able to muster the energy to create a forum account, read the application format and create an application then you can probably handle having authority in game as a head of staff. Those of you who are extremely old may remember myself, tishinistalker and @Shadow repeating the phrase "Command whitelists are easy to get and easy lose" a lot. 

That philosophy carries over to current day Aurora. Any temporary ban results in a loss of your command whitelist. On the other hand there is no strict playtime requirement and there is also no hard requirement for the amount of feedback you need. In the olden days the only reason we "required" some level of feedback was to make sure that there was no immediately negative opinion of a particular player before we handed them the keys to the station. If we found one we investigated it based on the feedback and went from there. I could be wrong but I imagine @MattAtlas and the other members of the team do something similar. A command position has the ability to greatly shape a particular round so we have a duty to do some quality control. Nowadays we have a week trial period but again there is no hard requirement for play time. I admit the policy makes me personally raise an eyebrow but I come from an era that threw people to the wolves and solved issues later. Its arguable better to have a process that tries to stop issues before they crop up :). 

I know that sounds like a lot of boring history and it is. I also haven't really come to any conclusions. Most of your suggestions I do not necessarily disagree with. From my perspective i just do not know that they happen to a degree where I would personally have an issue. So for example I dont know if people are being denied for playtime requirements that aren't REALLY new. The few times I poke my head into the discord channel for the whitelist team they are denying someone who has been here for like a week. I do agree with that they need some more time. 

Species whitelists I have never personally managed so I can only speak about them in a cursory way. I do think I have some position to speak on them given I have been head admin for a number of years now. I can say with certainty that species whitelists have always been fundamentally different from command whitelists. A command whitelist like i said was a commitment check. Sure you have a lot of power and new rules to follow but the roles are fairly intuitive and its best learned by actually playing the role. Species whitelists are a roleplaying check. A barrier to make sure you understand the nuances of that particular species and understand how to play them. You kind of need an understanding of unathi culture and mannerisms before you start playing one so logically it does make sense that a species whitelist would be more involved. I am not too knowledgeable about how current lore devs conduct them but from 10000 feet away they seem to be in a good place. 

AI whitelists are...different. They are the only whitelist I see consistently having an interview done. You could argue that this is needed since the AI has hard rules that dictate how it has to act in situations. Not even species have rules that hard because while they might have rules regarding their conduct there are still grey areas and they are still individuals with free will. AIs are slaves to their laws and an AI has an insane impact on the gameplay loop. They can make every single job on the station harder because they are incompetent, griefing or just new to the role or easier for the opposite reasons. They can dip their toes into nearly every facet of the game and deliver information and aid where it needs to go exactly when it needs to go. The place of AI on our server has been hotly debated over the years and the whitelist we have now was an attempt to quality control the harm done to AIs by people joining as an AI and having no clue what to do. There is no other role even close to it so it was kinda strange that there was no gatekeeping on who can play it. 

In conclusion I love consistency. I think whatever number we could come up with for a strict playtime requirement for whitelists is going to either be arbitrary or suffer a little from Goldilocks's porridge and either be too high or too low. I think that is fine honestly because if every whitelist had the same time we would gain a lot from clearly communicating with the players. 

[MattAtlas]

We deny people based on playtime only if they're very, very new -- we're talking one or two weeks worth of playtime. At that point you aren't really ready to be a Head of Staff, mainly because you aren't familiar with OOC proceedings regarding security (which you will need to handle, a lot, every time, no matter what Head of Staff you play -- acting captainship comes to mind) or, in general, how command staff is supposed to act. You can go to the archives and see how often we deny people for low playtime. I, myself, got my head of staff whitelist in 2017 after a month of playing, and 3-4 weeks is the standard we generally expect.

On 20/07/2022 at 04:57, Marlon P. said:

Remove the mandatory requirement for positive feedback, allowing a player to stand on her own merits or demerits.

We can't do this, as it's a form of seeing player activity that's a bit easier to see than by using the WI (since we have to go character-by-character and some people have a lot of characters). It also ensures that we aren't dealing with people that are practically transparent IC.

On 20/07/2022 at 04:57, Marlon P. said:

Remove rejections based on on-going playtime.

We can't do this either. I already argued my thoughts on active playtime to a large extent in this thread:

If you aren't active or committed, I have no real reason to give you a whitelist.

[Marlon P.]

On 23/07/2022 at 07:18, MattAtlas said:

We deny people based on playtime only if they're very, very new -- we're talking one or two weeks worth of playtime. At that point you aren't really ready to be a Head of Staff, mainly because you aren't familiar with OOC proceedings regarding security (which you will need to handle, a lot, every time, no matter what Head of Staff you play -- acting captainship comes to mind) or, in general, how command staff is supposed to act. 

The application itself asks several questions about command play and what it means to play command. If someone who has played for 5 days a week vs someone who plays 1 day a week answer the questions similarly, what's the difference? Isn't the trial period meant to be where an aspirant addresses your concerns through playing Command?

Quote

You can go to the archives and see how often we deny people for low playtime.

I did that for a few pages of the archives and found more examples of the appearance of inconsistency from the whitelist management.

Denied

• AI, for activity
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/17318-kaedwuff-ai-whitelist-application/#comment-157855
• AI, for lack of feedback
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/17141-generalcamos-command-application/
• Command, for lack of feedback
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/17062-armaliterifle-command-whitelist/
• Command, for lack of feedback
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/17097-risingvaliant-command-wl-application/
• AI, for being too new
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/17110-trustyasheck-ai-whitelist-application/
• Command, for lack of feedback
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/17009-sh4rds-command-application/
• AI, for lack of activity
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/16921-xdwbxthe2nds-ai-whitelist-application/

Accepted

• AI, despite lack of feedback
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/16910-cakeisossims-ai-whitelist-application/
• AI, despite lack of feedback
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/16854-geeves-ai-whitelist/
• AI, limited feedback
  • https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/16597-fyni-is-not-an-ai-but-would-like-to-be

From the outside looking in, there is no rhyme or reason to why someone would be rejected for one standard and then another accepted despite the seemingly same standard. While I don't know any of these applicants I know of Geeves; what I imagine the ones that were accepted despite lack of activity were old, established players and "known" actors?

This is what I was pointing out earlier. The inconsistency creates uncertainty, and reinforces the barriers between tiers of play for core players and the new players. Filling out the application in which I answer questions about how to play command is not an acceptable minimum standard for entry for me, but it is for another player?

On 22/07/2022 at 21:37, Garnascus said:

In conclusion I love consistency. I think whatever number we could come up with for a strict playtime requirement for whitelists is going to either be arbitrary or suffer a little from Goldilocks's porridge and either be too high or too low. I think that is fine honestly because if every whitelist had the same time we would gain a lot from clearly communicating with the players.

A consistent minimum for playtime, a consistent standard applied to the application form, a consistent standard for activity, and consistent application of these standards will reduce the barriers between the tiers of play and the reduction in confusion and inconsistency will encourage more command applications due to the greater perception of fairness and accessibility.

On 22/07/2022 at 21:37, Garnascus said:

[...] species whitelists have always been fundamentally different from command whitelists. A command whitelist like i said was a commitment check. [...] Species whitelists are a roleplaying check. A barrier to make sure you understand the nuances of that particular species and understand how to play them.

Command applications have incorporated roleplay checks, meaning you have to pass both. There is a question that explicitly requires you to be aware of the geopolitical/sociopolitical situation of Biesel and how it impacts your command character.

On 22/07/2022 at 20:18, Cnaym said:

As for the lowering numbers of people playing command currently, those that "main" command are usually the hardcore player base with far too many rounds played per weak. It's just not for everyone and getting bwoinked a couple of times per day makes even the most passionate command member consider a mining trip or tending to the bar tbh.

The barriers to entry for Command should be low enough to have replacements waiting in the wings. The standards as they are -- appearing inconsistently applied on top of being an unreasonable show of loyalty -- is insufficient and will see Command activity decrease, thus harming the health of the overall server.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Marlon P.

[Marlon P.]

Also to complete my OP with more data: Aurora pulled in 76 players during Saturday's event before returning to normal. Seems like the peak is ~70 players.

[Scheveningen]

my two cents

 

Quote

Remove rejections based on on-going playtime.

Remove the 1 v 1 interviews for whitelists. 

Remove the mandatory requirement for positive feedback, allowing a player to stand on her own merits or demerits.

Time-lock Command WL’s behind a transparent minimum of playtime clearly posted on the board for everyone to see.

1. I think playtime usually represents being relatively in-touch with the server and its culture, in addition to knowing how the departments here function and also how the command structure interacts with others. If you don't have this, it's a bit sus for someone to be given a command whitelist without having some level of guarantee how the social environment actually works in relation to the Aurora-specific side of things, rather than explicit experience with SS13 servers in general.

2. I don't see a problem with the interviews. It allows the whitelist team member and the potential whitelistee to hash out any details or otherwise exchange perspective and see if there are any incompatibilities for the role being applied for.

3. I believe the feedback requirement is more practically for garnering negative feedback or observations with some level of concern via the community that plays/observes at a wider range than the whitelist team is properly able to observe from. It's basically a fail-safe system that works most of the time when people check the forums. Positive feedback is another element of this from my observations and generally helps reinforce the candidate via a more well established member of the community whose word can be trusted. Having more people support it helps the candidate even more, but most people don't even use these forums anymore. What's there to read nowadays anyway? Discord has turned our brains into short attention span mush, as well, so some people aren't that motivated to even check the forums here unless directly prodded, which is what I think these candidates should be doing. Tell A Friend is all I can suggest to these people who were denied before if they want better chances at getting the whitelist -- ideally their friend should actually play, so...

4. I don't think this is necessary. This isn't something that requires direct mechanical restrictions for, and as someone who oversaw and hosted another server that implemented job timelocks: they freaking sucked. They do not really work on servers that have zero greytide presence, which Aurora is quite known for.

[Marlon P.]

On 24/07/2022 at 18:05, Scheveningen said:

1. I think playtime usually represents being relatively in-touch with the server and its culture, in addition to knowing how the departments here function and also how the command structure interacts with others. If you don't have this, it's a bit sus for someone to be given a command whitelist without having some level of guarantee how the social environment actually works in relation to the Aurora-specific side of things, rather than explicit experience with SS13 servers in general

These conditions are achieved without the current inconsistent and opaque system.

On 24/07/2022 at 18:05, Scheveningen said:

people aren't that motivated to even check the forums here unless directly prodded, which is what I think these candidates should be doing. Tell A Friend is all I can suggest to these people who were denied before if they want better chances at getting the whitelist -- ideally their friend should actually play, so.

People without friend circles deserve a method of proving their ability.

Whitelist application rates have decreased. The data doesn't show the rate of accepted apps vs denied. The data also tracks all whitelists. So the actual intake of command players is far lower than the decrease shown in the data.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Marlon P.

[MattAtlas]

On 24/07/2022 at 18:01, Marlon P. said:

The application itself asks several questions about command play and what it means to play command. If someone who has played for 5 days a week vs someone who plays 1 day a week answer the questions similarly, what's the difference? Isn't the trial period meant to be where an aspirant addresses your concerns through playing Command?

Because it's not just about the questions but also the competence and decision making you can show in game. Sure, questions paint a picture, but not the whole story. If you get your trial period you're basically most of the way there, you just need to not fuck up colossally.

On 24/07/2022 at 18:01, Marlon P. said:

• •  

From the outside looking in, there is no rhyme or reason to why someone would be rejected for one standard and then another accepted despite the seemingly same standard. While I don't know any of these applicants I know of Geeves; what I imagine the ones that were accepted despite lack of activity were old, established players and "known" actors?

This is what I was pointing out earlier. The inconsistency creates uncertainty, and reinforces the barriers between tiers of play for core players and the new players. Filling out the application in which I answer questions about how to play command is not an acceptable minimum standard for entry for me, but it is for another player?

AI whitelists are not command whitelists and they are handled by different people with different standards. Comparing the two does not make sense and should be avoided. Of course, if staff know that a player is well established and have seen them on the server plenty, they can accept them regardless. You can see that this happened in the past to people who you could not really call "old/established players". And considering the volume of Command whitelist applications we get (which is pretty significant, honestly, and most of the people that apply have played for maybe 1-2 months at most) I don't really buy that the situation is as dire as you make it out to be.

We could discuss adding a minimum playtime required (three weeks?) and specifying that one-two posts of positive feedback are required for an application to go through, bar whitelist handler endorsement, but like Garn said it's a bit problematic to measure playtime. I can say that you need to play "three weeks", but the way the server measures playtime is "days since first login", not "time played", which makes the addition of any real hard requirement kind of bullshit, since we can't measure how much someone has actually played. Hence the requirement for feedback.

[Marlon P.]

I withdraw this suggestion.