Expectations of Staff?

[Skull132]

Okay, so, this is on my "To-do" list. A bit of an introduction is that there was apparently an SOP document in the works for staff. I quickly destroyed it with all firepower I could muster, because I'll be damned if I start hosting indoc sessions for SS13 -- I'd go back to ArmA if I wanted to do that. (The proper answer is: an SOP document is too clunky and requires too much investment for a game like SS13, in my opinion. Plus, everything the creators wanted to accomplish can be accomplished through alternate, less retarded ways.) One of those alternate ways is to update the "On Staff" area of the rules. And one of the things I want to include in there are standard expectations of staff members. I also want to create a child list from this one, and put it up as the expectations of Trial Moderators, that way we have a clear set of criteria to sift through, for the most part. (I'll still be doing my part to ensure that a free radical gets through here and there.)

Thus, I want all of you folks to write a reply to this post, and write down what you expect of our server moderators and admins and me. Do try to include a short elaboration, or a "Why I think this should be," just so that the intent could also be seen. Please do try to keep it reasonable, though! I also want members of staff to partake in this, because I think they should be allowed to play a part in determining these expectations, just like anyone else who is a member of our community.

Here are the main expectations I apply to myself, as an admin of our community:

• Be courteous - While I do absoloutely detest false happiness, I do wish for all of our staff members to be courteous and polite whenever they're acting within their official capacity. It's an easy enough request, I imagine, and will go a long way with fostering an open relationship with the community.
• Be familiar with the rules, know the "Why's" - Rules are important. Though, rules are not important to the letter, not in my book. Each rule has a specific purpose, and that purpose, which usually comes out whenever you ask the question, "Why does this rule exist?" is important. That answer should determine enforcement in most cases (though that answer should also remain uniform from staff member to staff member, which is more challenging at this time). There are obvious exceptions, usually in the "blanket enforcement" category. One example is the "No ERP" rule.
  
• Remain open minded - Getting bogged down in an argument is absoloutely the worst. Getting bogged down in an argument and locking yourself down to a single viewpoint is even worse. Staff should have the capacity to pull themselves back, assess the situation, seek council if required, and then re-engage with a clearer mind and higher perspective. This is one of the key steps to solving a good deal of issues, even in real life.
  
• Be active within the community - You cannot properly moderate something you are not involved with. It'll end in a lack of information causing erroneous decisions to be made, which in turn causes mistakes and creates distrust. Being active, one way or another, within the community ensures that you know what's going on, and how to respond to situations; instead of trying to approach a new situation with an old, blunt instrument.
  
• Know how to be wrong - Probably saved the best for last. There is no shame in making a mistake. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake. But you need to know how to make a mistake. Or, more precisely, how to act after one is being made. One step, two steps, three steps back; reassess, evaluate, think; acquire knowledge and experience, mend as needed. This is my personal practice, yours may very well be different, but what absoloutely should not happen is a member of staff turning tail and hiding after something went kaput. That is not how problems are solved.

 

These are my core expectations. I look forward to seeing yours!

Also, I wonder if we should have a thread, later on down the line, about expectations of fellow community members. I think that might also be interesting. Anyways, things!

[hivefleetchicken]

How about just make the game fun and find a way to compromise issues instead of assaulting them with your superior adminpowers as rule one and only.

I see so many staff lean in the direction of one side and completely ignore all arguments from the players who are then suddenly trying to defend themselves when ahelps, complaints, ban appeals, etc, start getting fiery. When I was admin on AA, I'd take the two players who were fighting and make them fucking hug it out by putting them in situations where they had to work together, and then after they had a blast with eachother in the thunderdome as anons, I'd reveal they were the two opposing players, at which point they'd just smile and learn to get along. If one of them acted sore in the ass and refused to be nice, I'd just fucking kill his ass and let everyone else enjoy the round, since he wasn't going to enjoy it anyway.

Why can't we just try things diplomatically? It's like, I don't even care if one person is in the right or not, if they aren't giving anyone a chance to compromise at all and sticking to their "NO NO NO I AM RIGHT YOU'RE WRONG" things, they should be the one getting punished for being so ridiculous. This goes for both staff and players.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Inter-staff communication.

I got BWOINK'd for using a wizard staff, being told players can't use it despite it being one of the antag weapons not coded to be inert in non-antag hands.

Out of curiosity, I asked around. Several primary and secondary admins all had different expectations of whether or not a wizard staff could be used.

This is a single example, but it'd probably be good if you held little meetings or something where you had chats about what you guys do about X Y or Z?

[Guest]

^What they said, especially the points on inter-staff communication as well as a failure on the part of staff for not being willing to moderate instead of leaning towards a specific bias. Whether that be personal or not.

However, I would like to say that you are not required to be nice and courteous 100% of the time. There are some cases where people require a different method of communication in order to get the point across to them. If it means being ham-fisted in order to give the player a wake-up call, then so be it.

It worked for you guys dealing with me last year with my shenanigans. If you're still doing that, I'd say: Don't change, but know when it's best to exercise that. Don't be afraid to flex once in awhile to make sure the rules are being enforced for the sake of player enjoyment. Do what's necessary for the community at-large, when the time comes to make a decision related to that.

You shouldn't be afraid to set precedents.

[Baka]

There is one thing I say sometimes, but I think I should say it here.

Communicate. We are a team. If you have any issues, anything at all, bring it up with your team. If you have to leave for an extended period of time, don't drop off the earth without a word. This causes confusion and this is one of the biggest issue I have with the current staff.

[Japak121]

There is one thing I say sometimes, but I think I should say it here.

Communicate. We are a team. If you have any issues, anything at all, bring it up with your team. If you have to leave for an extended period of time, don't drop off the earth without a word. This causes confusion and this is one of the biggest issue I have with the current staff.

 

I..am very guilty of this and I'm sorry. I promise I'll work on it. I didn't even know it was a big deal, so I'm glad you said something!

[Frances]

I think empathy is a key value for being a good mod and not enough people seem to realize this.

Basically, put yourself into the other person's shoes. When you're trying to solve an issue, there's no reason to be mean, rude, or strict with the other person. They'll be a lot more receptive if they see you're making an effort to understand their viewpoint.

People generally don't mean to fuck up, and starting a conversation by showing the person you're talking to you actually understand what their intent was goes a long way towards solving disputes in an amicable way.

There's no need to make enemies

[jackfractal]

In addition to what everyone else has brought up, I'd say to know when and how to recuse yourself.

There are going to be times when you're going to be in a position where you're dealing with stuff you shouldn't be dealing with, either because you're involved in some way, or because you're missing information, or because you're just too busy with other stuff.

Staff need to be able and willing to pass things off to each other, and should be able to call on each other for support.

[Xelnagahunter]

What you already have SKull, along with the huge amount of support for staff communication with one another. Too often I would ask a question with 5 other staff either observing or playing, and not a soul would help me. I understand being busy, but yeah.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

I expect them to help with technical problems, ban griefers, and keep some of the more blatant stupidness in check. It's not a high set of expectations, but on the bright side I've never been disappointed.

[Gollee]

I think the amount of times things are just answered with "IC issue" is bad. All it does is frustrate the player, as it seems like the admin is just letting whoever they are Ahelping about, fuck around. I'm not saying admins should always intervene, but saying a bit more to the person than IC issue, would probably help their image.

[Tainavaa]

I expect them to help with technical problems, ban griefers, and keep some of the more blatant stupidness in check. It's not a high set of expectations, but on the bright side I've never been disappointed.

 

I wish more people had that line of thinking.

And just, rolled with whatever was thrown at them instead of immediately taking it to OOC. Bad things happening to your character can be fun. I know it's difficult to wrap your head around but. Bad things can be good. Just, shit. It's a game, have fun with it. I've had fun with being on the shitty end of situations. And if I can, a jaded person who loves telling people their opinions are wrong, then I'm sure others can to. Like, it can't be that hard... Can it?

[Tainavaa]

I think the amount of times things are just answered with "IC issue" is bad. All it does is frustrate the player, as it seems like the admin is just letting whoever they are Ahelping about, fuck around. I'm not saying admins should always intervene, but saying a bit more to the person than IC issue, would probably help their image.

 

It's very difficult to argue with a player for 15-20 minutes every time they're angry about something. Every time we decide what people are doing is fine, despite our investigations no matter how thorough, is always deeply questioned. Often times it ends up in some sort of in depth conversation or argument over whether or not this is "technically" against the rules by semantics or some very specific circumstance which validates or invalidates their actions. To put it simply, it's draining on the staff to know that in order to explain it to the player it would take back and forth.

And that leads back to what I was saying about just, rolling with what's thrown at you. Is this small, semantic detail what really makes it against the rules? Maybe but if it's that fine line in an ambiguous situation which is often a high intensity situation that makes it against the rules SORT OF, should we really reprimand them for that? And I don't want to argue with a player EVERY TIME it's deemed alright for one reason or another. Like if people just decided to roleplay whatever happened instead of immediately jumping to accusations of rulebreaking and anger I'm sure they'd have a lot of fun with it, even if it WAS rulebreaking. And I commend certain players for doing that. They ahelp a situation (sometimes) but instead of getting angry at it, they roleplay it out and have fun with it. And that's something I admire in some players. They realize it's a game and roll with it. Shit happens, let's face it.

[Guest]

I think the amount of times things are just answered with "IC issue" is bad. All it does is frustrate the player, as it seems like the admin is just letting whoever they are Ahelping about, fuck around. I'm not saying admins should always intervene, but saying a bit more to the person than IC issue, would probably help their image.

I agree, "IC issue" can cover a wide array of actions and staff reinforces a premise that they are omniscient, regardless of the good intent. It also helps metagame when actions that are clearly prohibited to everyone but the antags are put into question. Understandable, staff has to be ambigious when dealing with "IC issues", but I guess listening to the player's case instead of brushing it off helps.

[SierraKomodo]

I haven't read the other replies so I don't know if this has already been brought up here (Although it has been brought up many times before). Communication with the playerbase.

Now, I'm not asking for you guys to make all of your staff sections public viewable, show everyone full logs from *say/ahelp/etc, but just a simple 'Hello, I'm XYZ and I'm looking into blorkblork with ABC' on the forums, or a simple 'Hello, looking into this' (Although the current feature of the server telling you 'XYZ will be handling your ahelp.' is sufficient for this imo, as long as we /know/ someone's there and looking into it) in response to an ahelp followed by 'handled' when it's done, regardless of what the final decision was. If you want to tell us more than that, that's up to you; Just let us /know/ you're doing something.

We currently have player complaint threads that are still open, and some are reaching 2 months since the last response. There's a staff complaint thread up that has a month since it's last response and doesn't look like it was resolved, or even looked at by an admin (None have replied).

That's been my biggest (And I think only) issue with the current staff, and there's been alot of people saying the staff aren't doing anything because they haven't seen or heard anything.

[Witt]

The biggest thing that NEEDS to be addressed and worked on is communication. we cant survive with out it and frankly from, my view there is next to none.

- The biggest issue (and yes I know this is a staff related thread), us that communication is a two way street, just like it takes two to tango; it also takes two people to communicate.

- Yes, I get it sometimes mods/devs/DOs spell shit wrong or phrase something weirdly. but lets remember; most of us have real jobs and are tired occasionally, a lot (possibly all) of us (dev, mods, DOs) speak more than one (sometimes more than 3) languages and a fair few are not native English speakers. So lets take a step back and look at what they mean (or heaven forbid actually ask what they mean) before we start one of our many these mods don't know the rules crusades.

[Jboy2000000]

I don't know what to add here, I think everything I could say has been said. Here, and else where. The best thing I can think to do is give examples. For example, people seem to feel they're needlessly censored on the forums, obviously thats a bad thing. Also, people are less trusting of admins, and less likely to actually report things they see,because they don't know what, if anything happens, so with the information we have, we can't assume anything but the admins do nothing, which is downright annoying to the people who actually took the time to make complaints and keep up to date with the slow updates from staff. Which only becomes worse, when people look at player/character complaints and see there are four complaints there haven't been touched in a month, and three that haven't been touched in two months.