Community Discussion - Printable Version +- Dinkleberg's GMod (https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site) +-- Forum: Community (https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/forumdisplay.php?fid=5) +--- Forum: Community Discussion (https://www.dinklebergsgmod.com/site/forumdisplay.php?fid=17) +--- Thread: Community Discussion (/showthread.php?tid=13770) |
RE: Community Discussion - Raider Hanks - 02-26-2021 1) We do need more than one admin, and soon. Frankly it is frustrating. Nicol is a great guy, but he has a life like anyone else so can't always be available. Unless this issue is addressed soon, you're going to have very pissed off people and frustration within the staff team. 2) Yeah, we bad B). I'll come back to this point after I think about it. 3)Yes and no. Community points are taken in for consideration. If they mention a major negative, it is definitely hopped onto. Overall though, it doesn't really sway the acceptance. We do need to consider more of community input, while still not holding to majority opinion. Also I can't wait for someone to make this same exact post in 4 months when nothing has changed. RE: Community Discussion - MegaBits - 02-26-2021 All we need to do is free Laced bruh on god RE: Community Discussion - lacer - 02-26-2021 ok this post draws the line where all the original stuff has been said, everybody after this is a rep farming copycat RE: Community Discussion - La Flama Blanca - 02-26-2021 Point 1: Lack of Admins Point 1.1: Co-Owner Position I believe an ideal system would be a co-owner, accompanied by 2-3 admins. The co-owner position would have additional abilities - the most important of which would include the power to promote and demote on the server. This would solve the issue of delays in the granting or revoking of staff and donor positions that we have seen in this occurring.
Point 1.2: Additional Admins I agree that we should have additional TTT admins as well. With additional admins, there are other people you can go to with concerns or comments as needed. This allows for more responsiveness. Additional admins allow for a higher level of connectedness with the player base as well. As Jax noted, when the higher staff are more familiar with the player base of the server it allows for better administrative calls to be made when it comes to staff applications, suggestions, bans, etc. With just one admin, this becomes less feasible. That one admin can get caught up with work, life, or other events that may temporarily limit their ability to stay connected with the server. We have seen this with our current admin, through no fault of their own. But with multiple admins, when one admin becomes unable to stay as connected, the other admins will still be able to maintain that connection between the player base and upper staff. Additional admins can also be helpful in other regards. The role of the admin is not simply a server-side position. Admins also deal with rule changes, adjustments to the staff guidelines, staff applications, bans/unbans, responding to suggestion threads, etc. While each admin would still need to be responsive to these threads or concerns in the form of voting, being able to split the responsibilities among multiple admins would help to “lighten the load.” With regard to proposed rule changes, a vote would be held between the admins on deciding whether a change is needed. Then, one admin would be responsible for drafting up that rule change proposal. The next time a rule change is proposed, a different admin would step up. This would speed things up and make the role less burdensome.
Having previously served as the sole admin of one of the more-frequented servers in the community (Prophunt), I can attest to the fact that having one admin is less than ideal. It’s unfair both to the admin in that it leads to an unfair and stressful burden, and it’s unfair to the community for the reasons previously stated. When asked, the well-respected and long-serving former admin, Gabe, stated that the traits that make for a good admin are “someone who has creativity, can make objective decision making, adaptable, perhaps motivation knows how to properly interact with people and address issues, then all the basic things too.” I myself also posted some traits that I believe should be present in evaluating a future admin on another thread. We have people in our staff team that meet these criteria points. I have already hinted at who I think in our current staff team would make for good additional admins. My list includes the individuals that Jax stated. Point 2: Bad Staff Point 2.1: Continued Training Requirements for Existing Staff Consistency is a problem and I think it is something that could be addressed by additional training, both for current staff members and new staff members.
In most states, lawyers are required to take continuing legal education classes (CLE) in order to maintain their licenses to practice law. CLE ensures that practicing lawyers are aware of the current and most advanced thinking relevant to their particular field, which is especially important when there are shifts in common practice or law changes. CLE requirements help ensure that lawyers remain capable to adequately represent their clients. Without such requirements, the clients suffer.
Tying back to point 1, expanding training to include current staff members would be aided by having additional admins. Additional admins to write up the google docs or slides that will be used to present the information, additional admins to discover how different staff members are currently using their staff discretion, and additional admins to take the time and hop into a voice chat to lead a training session with current staff members. Point 2.2: Committee System Adjustments At present, I believe the committee system is a good system of decision-making. If additional admins are added, then perhaps the role of committees can be shrunk to an extent. With additional admins, I believe committees could become less relevant for staff applications. TTT has historically sought the opinion of staff members on staff applications through means other than the forums. The other servers do not follow this system. With regard to bans and unbans, I think committee involvement should remain high. Perhaps I am biased, but I appreciate the fact that I recently joined the ban/unban committee. I think it is useful to have more voices involved on bans since they can have significant impacts, especially when they involve regulars. Point 2.3: Increase the Ability to Demote or Remove Staff Our current system only allows Dink to both promote and demote staff members. As I already noted in point 1.1, this is not ideal. There is a need for someone more active to be able to promote and demote staff members (and donors) in order to avoid harmful delays. But tying into my idea on continuing training requirements at Point 2.1, there needs to be an increased ability for the admins and potential co-owner to demote or remove staff members. The bar for removing or demoting staff members is currently extremely high, with Dink being very reluctant to do so. And based on past events, there is some explanation for such reluctance. On its face, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can prevent staff members from losing their positions based on personal slights or rash decisions from being made. The high bar for demotion, however, is problematic for other reasons. We have an enormous list of inactive staff members. Of the more than 50 people on our inactive staff list, 15 are moderators and retain the ability to ban people. We want our staff members to actually know what is going on with the server - which is why I suggested the continuing training requirements at Point 2.1. There is nothing stopping these inactive staff from just popping up again out of nowhere and staffing essentially however they want. If a staff member has been inactive for more than three months (or whatever might be deemed appropriate), they should have their rank removed in-game and elsewhere. If they wish to have it restored, they should retain the ability to petition the admins for such a rank restoral. However, they should be required to go through some form of training once again before having their ranks restored. Point 3: Ignoring the Community Point 3.1: Increased Involvement of the Community and Non-Staff Jax, you are correct. The community should have more involvement than they have been given thus far. Garry’s Mod is a game that is more than 15 years old at this point and many servers have come and gone over that period of time. Our TTT server is quite unique in that it has lasted more than seven years. But its continued presence should be taken for granted. This server exists solely because players choose to spend their time on it. Without our players, we would be saying farewell to Dink’s TTT. But our staff community has far too often marginalized the voices of the non-staff players and made decisions without considering the community consequences. With regard to the spray thread, I will apologize for not giving a more serious response. My post was joking, but I did intend for it to reflect my concern that sprays would be NSFW. In the future, I will try to remember to add on serious commentary alongside any jokes I might make on such threads. Point 3.2: New Rank Jax, I like the idea of the new rank. I think this is something that could, and should, definitely be implemented. The way I see it working is that we allow for a rotating group of respected and regular players to be granted this new rank. This group would consist of some of our former staff, longtime players, and players that have been known for trying to make the community a better place - the people bringing forth ban requests or pinging on-call staff on the Discord. Hell, it might even be useful to bring in the voice of some of our traditional “troublemakers” for the sake of getting some diversity of opinion. We would then invite these individuals to join our staff Discord server, only allowing them to see two or three specified channels which will then be used to gather community involvement. I think that this group should be rotating as well, sort of like the UN Security Council which has 5 permanent members and 10 rotating members. That way we aren’t always hearing from the same people. Point 3.3: Treatment of Regulars I have also been disappointed with regard to the treatment of some of our TTT regulars. I believe that when problems do arise on the server, there are generally two types - malicious and non-malicious. Malicious activities are those that are meant to hurt server gameplay or intentionally upset people. Non-malicious activities are just people having fun, though that fun may have unintended consequences that may or may not be harmful. I’m not entirely familiar with the circumstances regarding Ernie’s ban, but I do know he was known for “shitposting” in the incorrect channels on the Discord server. I would describe this as a non-malicious activity. A couple of minion gifs aren’t hurting anyone. A simple click and they are deleted if need be. No harm, no foul. I dealt with Ernie by simply placing the “PH Chat Restricted” and “Murder Chat Restricted” roles on him so he wouldn’t be able to disrupt those channels, which are sometimes needed for transmitting important information to the staff. That solved the problem. Now if someone leaves the Discord and returns simply to get out of those roles so they can shitpost in those channels, then there is a problem. Again, I’m not familiar enough with the ban to know if this was the case, or what actually led to the ban. I have disagreed with all of the recent teaming bans, which is why I posted a thread to gather feedback for a new teaming rule. I disagreed with Stupiddy’s ban and was especially upset because I had bumped the teaming rule thread mere hours before she ended up getting banned. I even sent Stupiddy a filled-out unban request that she could just copy and paste into the forums for a basically guaranteed unban. She chose not to take advantage of that and the ban was justified based on the current staff guidelines on teaming. With regard to Crab, this was not a first-time offense, but a permanent ban is still a ridiculous punishment. If the teaming rules had been adjusted, this wouldn’t have been the result. The situation here was again one that I would describe as non-malicious. That being said, there are still going to be some expectations for behavior on the server that simply being a regular will not excuse. Some regulars feel that it is appropriate to use slurs in the chat, engage in harassing behavior, or (intentionally) queue earrape. These are malicious activities. They are done to annoy both the staff members or the rest of the server for the amusement of the person doing the activity and, perhaps, some of their friends on the server. There are several regular players that frequently engage in these activities on the server and should be punished accordingly. I would say that we already make a number of exceptions for certain regulars that engage in malicious activities, with some players have 20+ warnings for things like using slurs with no punishments. Jax, I appreciate you taking these concerns to the forums. I’d also like to thank kneegee for creating a thread on adding additional admins in the suggestions subforum, which I merged into this one for the sake of having a unified conversation in one place. RE: Community Discussion - RussEfarmer - 02-26-2021 I don't really have much to say, but it's very disappointing that one of the most popular TTT/PH communities of the past 5 years runs so inefficiently. We can gripe all day about how to fix certain issues, but the backend process is so tangled up that anything you send through is just going to get lost in the middle. RE: Community Discussion - Gabe - 02-26-2021 (02-26-2021, 04:31 PM)I\m just going to be a realist and say that these same exact issues, unfortunately, get brought up at least three separate times a year. It always yields the same result, a discussion, then nothing happens and the thread gets made again. As someone rightfully pointed out, it is like beating a dead horse. Why is that? Well, for starters the staffing and operational capability/process system to enact real change is systemically bad. There may be good people(Admins) in leadership positions, but the reality is that Admins are nothing more than glorified Moderators and the only person that can change things hardly responds or it takes a prolonged period for the idea to get anywhere. Though I will note that is from my experience as an Admin, and I'm sure a decent amount of former Admins share this view at least partly. From what I heard, Nicol has more perms and better communication with Dinkleberg than what previous Admins had, which was next to nothing. I do not know how much that has changed things as I've been inactive for quite some time. Ok, now I'll throw in my two cents for each category. Wrote: 1.) Lack of Admins RE: Community Discussion - Hello Kitty - 02-26-2021 (119) u r the man 4 the job - YouTube RE: Community Discussion - Deer-ly - 02-27-2021 (02-26-2021, 04:31 PM)jax Wrote: 3.) Ignoring The Community Im responding to this part only don't shoot me, new member role im sure there are more but i remember this one. i love the idea of a testing committee regular players that can apply or ask to participate in testing new maps/models/weapons/ect. and it could give long time committed players a bigger role to help out than applying for staff and staff is stressful so can't blame them for not applying and its a load off staff or whoever else does testing. You could give them a shiny Orange/light purple role ingame but most likely in discord is the only place to have it maybe. But i think it would be a great idea and maybe even a discord sepreat or just a locked channel in the main where they could discuss about new items, currently suggested items, and any fixes and patches that may need hence why i suggested the MapPatcher it is basically hammer for the ulx menu and it is an amazing tool all the servers should utilize and the testing committee could have permission to use such an item so they can quickly fix things for staff/admins/dink in maps while they don't have time for example Murder has maps like, mu_springbreak: roof of hotel, out of map glitch, the wall;ttt_...resort: behind the bush. and like dong said "The first thing I did after being promoted to Admin was reworking committees. Completely wiped all of them and re-added people who were active. Great system up until recent because people got inactive again. My advice is to not wipe them again, just remove people who are inactive and keep adding newbies. For the Training committee Nicol and I had originally planned for that to be application based. I think that you should wipe the committee and make it what we had planned Nicol. The people currently in it are fine, but they're all mostly inactive. If they were all active it would be fine. Training is done by random people at times which is fine, but set people is a more concrete system idk." Don't wipe them like he said here just pick and remove. The only issue "i see" is some on purpose picking addons that are borked but people want them (COUGH COUGH PIDGEON BOMBS COUGH COUGH) but in all i love this idea and i think it should be implemented. RE: Community Discussion - dong - 02-27-2021 The committee system is active since I completely revamped it. The only thing that I felt like was wrong with it was that my admin vote didn’t really matter. Committees shouldn’t make an executive decision, more like a private input and put their votes in, but to me it felt like lower staff were making promotional decisions. Admin votes used to override any other vote and now it just didn’t really feel like that to me. RE: Community Discussion - matt_st3 (Strongrule) - 02-27-2021 I’ll write this throughout the day since I don’t feel like adding a wall of text in one go. The community lacks strong leadership. Be it for whatever reasons and point fingers at whatever group you want to blame, you no longer have people in positions that are both willing and able to make the changes. Able being the most obvious issue, tied to the “in positions” problems, while willing is mostly a problem in that the community runs on people who make it that far. This isn’t admins, owner, or committees since those are just titles but rather actual leaders. Willing and able needs both the want and energy to pursue goals while able needs the critical thinking and ability to actually deliver on community goals. The servers have seen many of those people come through, and they did not all carry the title admin or committee member. Hell some that have held that title should never have even made it there because they did not meet those qualities but rather knew the right people and/or brownosed to get there. Everyone has their opinions and their favorite picks for who was the best this or that, but the successful ones made a lasting impact. In an opinion that I previously expressed the committee system failed out the gate based on why it was implemented. In an attempt to fill this void committees were created to boost the raw number of people who could directly affect server and community decisions. While some members now had more access and could actually make the system *work* you still lump in a number that could not. Even with this, you still actually change nothing because no one gained any real access only a title slapped on. The same mods that joined committees were only able to express their opinions in other channels, a good admin/owner/person in charge would still be taking in the opinions right off the applications. But let’s get away from that and say that committees changed the framework and that slapping a title on helped mods feel like they have more of an objective say. Even then they have no more access to actually implement what they vote on. Ban, and boy do I have opinions on why bans shouldn’t be a voted on item except in 1% cases, and unban committees have more of a direct use as the mods have the command access. Unless I’m forgetting a committee the others all still rely on someone to pull the trigger. Give up on co-owner, I and others have written full models on how to make that work and it won’t happen given past examples of this being abused. Slapping a title on regulars and saying they have more of a say than others based on a random or hand picked selection defeats its own purpose. Instead, have leadership that values a well written argument over a time played in a game. *But Matt, you just said that leadership doesnt exist - well maybe if people would stop acting like shit heads to people trying to prevent a guy from moaning in his mic or taking a break-up and stringing it all over the forums those people that do exist would stay and make it to the needed ranks.* And I’m not going to sit and wear on dink Bc it’s a beaten horse, but man you know there’s a direct line between your activity to people staying and community happiness. It’s a necessity yet at the same time we already know that the server/community will putter on so long as important issues get *just* enough attention. But until the minimum bar is raised people will continue to be upset - and some of them even give solutions that are viable. As to the admin number, yes an ideal number rests in 3 or 5. Any more and you bog down the position by too many votes needed and you can polarize the admin team who then need someone to manage them. Any even number will reach a point where they need a tie breaking votes, same polarized issue. One admin requires a 24/7 activity that you cannot maintain due to life and burnout. 3 or 5 provides a small revolving door of activity and a massive boost to the simple tasks of approving unbans and the like. With each sever having this number the community becomes a daily well oiled machine. The very few times were a massive issue comes up you now have a large group of experienced leadership to draw from shot then *draws from their own groups*. What a wild concept. ‘18 didn’t needs half of the hoops to jump through simply because you had more people around that were both willing and able to moderate and implement needed changes. Hell dink was faster and yes, the co-owner having access sped things up. Still it won’t be back. I’ll add later |