[Resolved] Staff Complaint - Mofo, Jackboot and Lore

[Azande]

BYOND Key: XanderDox

Staff BYOND Key: [mention]Mofo1995[/mention] , [mention]Senpai Jackboot[/mention]

Game ID: N/A

Reason for complaint: Unreasonable request of qualification for lore staff applications.

Evidence/logs/etc: https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10643#p94760

Additional remarks:

Preface: I have no issue with Mofo1995 or Jackboot, I am making this to discuss this recent development in the stipend for joining as the tajaran deputy position.

While I am not personally involved or affected - as I am disallowed from joining staff teams - I must express deep concern that our Lore Team has decided to employ what I see as a very high barrier of entry for a Tajaran deputy position, when the writer(s) themselves have never had to provide such for their senior positions.

I write three-page papers regularly for my education (probably about 10 this year), and writing three pages in a single application timeframe instead of developing a solid lore idea over a longer period of time does *not* sound like something that is enjoyable except for perhaps the most extreme lore fans.

Even now our lore team only slowly pumps out news articles, and news about NanoTrasen, the Syndicate, and Jargon - some of our major areas, are almost completely neglected, and when we get these articles - they are often filler fluff (looking at you Jargon news about sports and movies) and have no relevance to the game's playing.

I don't think its fair to instate any such requirements until our current team members each can produce three pages of new lore in a short time frame. It's taken three years for our lore to develop as far as it has, and all we've had is Sol not liking Tau Ceti, and the PRA's ongoing war which hasn't really been seen on board (why no lore events of the station producing things for the PRA, NT is 'allied' with them no?)

So the point of this complaint is simple:

- Apply the attempted deputy requirements to all current and future lore positions (current writers will submit three page papers on their assigned topic to Jackboot)

OR

- Agrees to pump out more lore and involve the community in it more

AND

- Reduce this requirement for entry, it's kind of ridiculous for a volunteer writer.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello. There is a lot to unpack in this complaint. I am glad to see you are providing feedback on our standards - your post expands into a lot of different areas of concern. I am going to focus first on my wider philosophy as the head lore developer first, then hit the rest in random sequence.

In general,

It has always been important for me to balance accessibility with depth. My barrier for entry has always been a reasonably low one, until admins finally became frustrated by my loosey-goosey nature and I had to tighten standards. The standards for lore positions as of now for applications remain the same. Whether or not we begin to have a conversation about raising the requirements across the board is a future possibility depending on how Mofo's own entry exams go.

Lore developers have a lot of free reign in their race management. Developers can apply what standards they choose to their race and their playstyle. This manifests the most clearly in whitelist applications. For example, Loow is known for having the strictest standards for Skrell whitelists. I on the other end try to give every benefit of the doubt to applicants because I do not like rejecting them. I get anxiety sweats when I realize I have to deny someone. It's awful.

On deputies,

The importance of deputies is also up to the standard of my devs. I pushed my staff around and into a few puddles to make them embrace a few deputies, but no one has been given deputies against their will. Being forced into a group project is not exactly a recipe for success. If I thought he was being FORCED to open a deputy spot and was malaciously and intentionally setting an unreasonably high bar, I'd recognize he was acting in bad faith, unsheathe my blade, and strike him down. As it is now, he came to me wanting a deputy slot. The standard he set is being made in good faith.

On activity,

If your problem is that lore developers that we hire are not writing enough, then it makes sense that we raise the standard to something that requires an investment of time, thought, critical thinking, and drive. It's become a more common complaint that applications are a popularity contest. Anyone can fill out an application and make vague promises, only to then retreat into inactivity.

I took the really annoying and time consuming step of checking over past applications for length. 2.5 pages is about the median length based on cursory pasting into google documents and without a calculator to fine tune that number. A lot of complaining about lore work from Loow that had me hire them on the spot (before I was no longer allowed to hire people on the spot) came up to just 2 pages.

On Mofo's specific standard,

Mofo has decided to place a lot of responsibility on a potential deputy, and Mofo wants to treat one as a potential heir*. It will be a very close working relationship from what I have gathered. Mofo wants to make sure whoever accepts the position cares for the spot as much as he does. The worst that happens is no deputy is hired.

*Positions are not dynastic. All openings are given out to the community at large. Groomed heirs can still be ousted by a maverick.

EDIT:

Skrell culture news is just as valid and important as grand political maneuverings from our major factions. It showcases their daily lives and fascination with human culture, and the atmosphere of them being vain.

Edited March 19, 2018 by Marlon Phoenix

[Coalf]

Let me start with the fact that I indeed wrote a 3 page essay on Tajara fasion about 8 hours after Mofo1995 announced hte position and thus I speak from I think position of someone who has gone through the ordeal and thus I think I have quite the amount of information.

And strangely enough I somewhat agree, while Mofo said ANYONE who writes the 3 page essay is getting accepted, I have to admit that later on the pages were bit of an asspull as I had to make up lore almost off the top of my head and make some quite wide assumptions. (That might have been because I wrote 3 pages about Tajara fashion.)

I was told that I practically shit ideas so I might be speaking from a privileged position and this might be a lot harder for others than me, but I think that is a bit subjective.

Not really the main issue just a side-gripe.

My main issue isn't detailed within Xander's post and that is, well secrecy.

While yes you can call lore-deputy whitelists a "popularity contest" the fact is other people get to come in and put their two cents into the opinion slot machine and in some cases this can make or break an application, as for example some people might raise points that someone talks the talk but does not walk the walk in-game, this comes in useful as our Loredevs have been somewhat known to not frequent the game as much as regular players and frankly even those players aren't on 24/7 (most).

While I appreciate the positive outlook of pumping out more lore and something I wished to push for with my application at the end of last year, I realize that this isn't a job and a lot of people DO have jobs in REAL LIFE and don't want this passion project to turn into a soul-sucking demon.

It would also be very interesting to do Xander's first solution and apply this standart to EVERY LORE MEMBER, as I think this would make quite a lot of people who took up the position, turned AFK for 10 months and fucked right off, well impossible to sign up as the three pages require quite the concentrated effort and dedication.

HOWEVER you cannot forget how skimpishly small certain lore venues are, dionaea and IPCs come to mind or how certain lore is pretty much covered from all venues and there is quite the tight little box regarding what is allowed regarding the species, I'd point this at Vaurcae (Who have been quite boxed until the arrival of the new queen which offers a bit more variety.)

I do not disagree with either of those ideas, I'm simply pointing at the bad side of the coin.

If I were to advise anything, I would like Mofo1995 to perhaps create a "Post-whitelist thread" where community members could freely post about their issues with that and those players.

(And stop using "grooming" ffs mofo I ain't a dog mate)

[Mofo1995]

Hi there, Mofo here.

There's a lot to unpack here.

Let me start from the bottom and work my way to the top.

 

(And stop using "grooming" ffs mofo I ain't a dog mate)

 

Diamond Dogs.

 

Good and fresh criticism about secrecy vs transparency

 

The non-transparent nature of my proposed application process didn't even occur to me, actually. I'm not exactly of a democratic mind, so I really didn't even consider this. If everyone wants, I can change this so that all essays are posted to the forums too. My concern and why I wanted it from a word processor was for formatting's sake, since I know from personal experience how much of a clustered mess formatting via forum post can be. Now, I would still want a word processed document sent to me, but I would be willing to post them along with the submission's name if everyone wanted to come in and criticize it.

 

And strangely enough I somewhat agree, while Mofo said ANYONE who writes the 3 page essay is getting accepted,

 

Not literally. It would have to be a deliberate mess or absolutely effortless and unoriginal essay to get denied though. The fact is, if someone is willing to put that much effort into making an essay, it will probably be good enough if they also know the lore well enough to take a lore position. By its very nature, it requires the necessary skills for the position to draft and post in the first place.

 

*Positions are not dynastic. All openings are given out to the community at large. Groomed heirs can still be ousted by a maverick.

 

Obviously, if I should ever part from this community, I would endorse and encourage one of my deputies to take over with high hopes that they would take over. Of course I would want my vision to continue. But, I can't force the community to also want to follow my vision after I'm gone. When I'm gone it's out of my hands. But I understand that a deputy would very likely be the person selected and supported by the community based on qualification, and so I obviously don't want to take on someone who actively writes lore I don't like and put them in a position where I know its very likely they're going to be the next lore dev.

 

Lore dev activity criticisms

 

I'm not always going to be on Aurora. I want to be, but if I ever get promoted at my job, I'll be lucky to have one day off a week. With my dwindling play time, fears of one day getting forcibly retired are strong. While I try to push back, the fact is I've only been averaging about 2 rounds a week. And that's active for a lore developer. I understand that I'm at the beginning of a long unfortunate process of being phased out of Aurora, and while I think it may take a year to a year and a half to be seen through, I want to cling on as long as I can, but also to prepare. The reason I wanted to take on a lore dev is to help put out more lore to satisfy the community while also giving a select group of qualified players on-hand experience with the lore development and peer review process so that when the transition has to happen, there are some strong options who may also share my plans to carry the torch without that awkward transition phase. Should the community decide to select a maverick and wild card it away, that's up to them. Obviously I would disagree, but don't I have the right to have an opinion?

 

Criticism about lore output

 

I put out about one article a month and roll out wiki updates in roughly the same span of time. Not all the wiki updates are spectacular, since translating from my scratch notes on my writing pad to the wiki is often a laborious process. One I intend to get better at. But realistically speaking, it doesn't take all that long to come up with that much content in lore. When I first got my position, I shat out the Tajaran Military Structures page very quickly, and that page is huge. I had to cut myself off from adding more to it, because it really just got too big. There's more to Tajara than just killing and combat, and so I had to break away and start writing other things. This was also reflected in news articles as I tried to give better insight to the slice of life for Tajara, instead of just nonstop war reports. It may come off as filler, but at the time I was responding to community demand to lighten the mood and give people more facets to life than just a controversial 3-way clusterbomb of a messy gritty civil war, a metaphorical struggle between allies, axis, and Comintern with a few flavor differences. There's also pacing to be concerned about, since pretty much majority of the next year and a half of Tajaran news articles are going to be war related, and I wanted to give everyone some fresh air to breathe before they had to crawl back into the foxholes.

 

developing a solid lore idea over a longer period of time does *not* sound like something that is enjoyable except for perhaps the most extreme lore fans.

Most extreme lore fans. I want a most extreme lore fan. Also the prompt is freeform. So long as it is in the domain of Tajara lore, it does not have to be new lore. Heck, it could be a critical essay about Tajara. It could be an essay about anything already in the lore. However, the hardest essay to write, an essay which provides new lore, is obviously going to be the strongest on the merit of how it forces the writer to flex their creativity and writing skills at the same time.

 

Criticism about length

 

Endurance is a factor being tested here, friends. I want to encourage them to write entire lore pages or mini-arcs to flesh out other aspects of Tajaran life between major events and remind everyone the war isn't everything. I don't want to just hand someone the position after a popularity contest. I want them to go through the effort to put a whole foot in the door, and buy in with serious investment so that I can trust they won't just wonder off and wane away. Really, a three page essay in the minimum requirement for what I want to totally vet someone before taking them on. My deputies are going to be the fellow lore staff of mine that I associate with the VERY most. They're going to be the ones I'm talking to often daily. I wanna make 300% sure the people I pick are going to be people I can associate with this much without wanting to repopulate a courtyard with bread. And people who put out poopy content and lore ideas are going to fall into that category, or people who always post about nebulous lore ideas without actually posting it or writing it down anywhere.

Really, I would've been more comfortable with higher requirements, and ideally if I knew for a fact that I'd be here always, I wouldn't pick up anyone in the first place. But this is the minimum test of skill, commitment, and knowledge that I'm comfortable with issuing to the community to pick my closest coworkers. I don't advocate this test for all lore development positions, but honestly I would support it if the bar was raised. I wouldn't pressure anyone or encourage them to adopt it, but I definitely would give it my endorsement if it happened. I only brought it in for the listed reasons above, and because of my intense passion for our server's Tajara lore, a passion which doesn't extend to every single other section of our lore, but still some large areas.

Thank you for following the development of Tajar-ere simulator.

[Azande]

The responses from both Jackboot and Mofo are satisfying to me, and do clarify why they felt the essay was a reasonable standard to be met, so I'm mostly satisfied with that. I still believe that a standardized and public application system should be used for deputies across the board, because while they answer to their species maintainer and the loremaster - in the end they write for the community and the players that play their species.

In response to a piece of Jackboot's post - you are right that previous applications did have multi-page writings from the authors - but these pieces were almost always personal pet projects from the writers, that they did not have assigned to them as part of the application process. I myself have many, many pages of fictional writing and world building, but these are things I've done in my spare time and have had done for quite a while, not something I need to write up within the time frame of however many others are competing for the position.

While I am satisfied with the responses given and understand the desire to give a higher barrier of entry for this position in hoping of improving the quality of the Lore Team in the future (this is what it is coming across as), I'd like this to be kept open for any more community responses. Thank you guys for responding!

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

If you're satisfied with the responses then the complaint is resolved. If you have additional discussions you'd like to have about the policy then you should make a general thread or a suggestion thread.

[Garnascus]

As both the OP and the named parties have agreed this is resolved i will now lock and archive it.