[Gabe]

1.) Lack of Admins
For starters, I think many people are frustrated with the current status of the staff team. There seems to be a significant disconnect between normal players and staff members. Specifically, TTT has not had a strong "leader" in months. @"Nicol" is an admin for TTT, and for the most part acts as a 'head' figure for all of Dinkleberg's, yet I do not believe he is active enough (especially on TTT). [Let me make note, this is not his fault necessarily. He has work, real life priorities, etc. On top of that, he is the sole admin currently] On top of that, @"Dinkleberg >:(" is rarely active. [Once again I assume Dink is in the same position as nicol, so the same 'excuse' can be used for him] However, that leaves the TTT community, and really the whole community without leaders. This can lead to the following problems:

- It takes weeks for ban requests / unban requests to go through
When I was Admin, ban requests were usually done within a day unless it was a super complex ban request. What changed? Does the full ban committee have to vote now? Are Mods inactive? I'd like to know because I have no knowledge about what the issue is here. As far as unban request, at maximum, they usually on average should take a week if it is a controversial or requires extended deliberation. Simple unban requests shouldn't take longer than 3 days. Is this because of the requirement of an Admin posting the final decision that it takes long? I can't address this either because I do not know the issue, but unban requests have usually been fine in my past experience. Obviously things may be different.
- Ranks not given out ie @Jammin (this causes problems, because there were instances where jammin could not ban aimbotters, ddosers, etc)
-This has always been an issue with ranks given out/taken away. This one is really beating a dead horse because it will not change. There is only one person that can do it, and it will likely remain that way. Some people don't receive their promotions for weeks and people who resign don't lose their ranks for sometimes up to several months even tho Dink was notified. This also makes it hard to enforce an "unresign" policy. Again, no offense to Dink because ik he's busy and all that, slow it is for people to even receive promotions or be demoted when they resign, some people have had their ranks for months after they resigned even after Dink was notified. So the solution is to give Admins the ability to promote, right? Unfortunately, Admins will never get the ability to demote/promote, believe me I've tried to go down that dark path with a few other Admins before in regards to doing promotions and demotions with Dink's explicit permission. It's just an unfortunate reality that will never change. At one point, there was talk that Admins would get the ability to promote up to Trusted, but that never happened. Mod is even more impossible and Dink's position has always been skeptical of giving anyone else that ability because of course, T-Mod/Mods can karma ban/ban. That I can understand to an extent. Again, I have tried to push for a change to this -even an active co-owner that can promote- it led nowhere. The only thing we can hope for is that Dink responds faster and does the action. Sometimes it requires multiple times telling him. I'm going to now copy and paste what I have said about this in the past, because as I noted, these issues get brought up often. Feel free to skip the next part of this response.

we don't have access to do somethings that would be essential to the "so called" Admin. One big thing, promotions. We accept the apps, promote on forums and discord, but cannot promote in-game. It would make sense if we could if we are able to do everything else.. right? I think it would be less of a hassle for both us, the player, and Dink if we were able to do it all in one swoop instead of having to wait. We would also be able to get into training right away. I did say I wasn't going to knock at old graves but I'm going to knock at one, sorry for being a hypocrite. Last year, Admins were likely going to gain the ability to promote up to Trusted. That did not happen, it might've been because Dink hasn't been able to figure out how to set it up in a way that we couldn't promote higher than that. Obviously actual demotes with his approval would-be off-limits and should be... I'm actually going to talk about that later. But perhaps being able to do Test Mod or even Mod would be nice if we could promote. 


Ik that may sound like me going on a power trip here, but it really isn't. It's just reality to me of what would make sense and I do believe that Admins should gain that power to promote and possibly demote those that have resigned only and strictly to that. Too many times, staff have come back onto the server still with the ranks even though they have resigned ages ago even after we tell Dink they have resigned and need it taken away. There have been past Admins with their ranks still sitting there for months. We've tried to enforce an "unresign policy" where staff that "resign" cannot come back and get their rank automatically, they' d have to start at the bottom. You can see the issues with enforcing this if people do not lose their ranks due to technical issues. Thankfully, not many if not any have abused and would they would sometimes still help out while they are on until it was taken away although they are technically not staff. So to those that have resigned and did that, thank you. 

- Community stagnation

• I'll get into this later, but without strong leadership no changes can be implemented. @RussEfarmer brought to my attention in my spray thread, that even there was an agreement to make changes, no one but Dink has access to server files. This is a goodpoint, and just lends itself to possibly giving admins some control of the server / appointing a co-owner (through Dink's personal vetting process). I won't go into more on this because it's Dink's server and if he wants sole control of the files that's on him.
  

- No real environment for discussion. Without admins to talk to, or recommend things to, suggestions/complaints are lost to the wind.
The Ideal system that I tried with other admins to implement was have the suggestion committee go over these suggestions and complaints, vote on them, if approved the Admins and Dink work to see if they can implement them. Again, systemic issues in the staffing system prevent this from being a functional possibility.
One of the other problems that arises from only having one admin is the fact, and no offense to Nicol, that the admin is disconnected from the player base. It's my belief that an admin should know their player base as it's more conducive to making proper administrative calls (staff applications, suggestions, bans, etc)

Give @Jammin and @bryanbrr admin. We need the admins. They deserve it. They care. They're good staff. We've been without good admins for more than 3 months now. 

Again, this is beating a dead horse. No one will EVER get access to the files except Dink. No even Co-Owner. Not Co-Owner ever had file access, just access to restart the server and do promotions, at most. That will never change. Ik I sound like a debby downer, but this is just the reality. As mentioned before, Admins are nothing more than glorified mods. Yes we need more, an odd number. But the people chosen as Admin must be qualified instead of just having more for the sake of numbers. I can list all the traits of what a good Admin takes, but I want to keep this short. But instead, since these issues come up time and time again, I will now copy and paste something I said before what an Admin truly is in this community, in my view.

Admins:


Let's start with one question, what are we? What are we supposed to be? Oh wait, that was two questions, my bad. The answer to the first one is that we are the community leaders along with Dink. We act on guidance given to us by Dinkleberg and overseen directly by him while we oversee Trusted-Mod. For the second one, we are supposed to be part of the central authority of the server. We are supposed to make the minor executive decisions within our power in Dink's absence. So the question is, do we effectively carry out those duties, or are we "so called" Admins. Fun fact, critics would use to call the Monroe Doctrine a "so called" doctrine because it was not effective in carrying out its core duties it was supposed to... nvm I'll go on a long history lesson about that but ik you guys don't like that. Nonetheless,  sometimes we do in fact find ourselves powerless to effectively carry out those supposed responsibilities. We have been called many names because of this. "Useless Elite," "So Called Admins," and "Glorified Mods." 

2.) Bad Staff
This is going to get into, what I imagine, the more controversial territory. I'll try to be objective, but my own bias will be embedded in this. Other's feel free to give your input or disagree. There are members of the staff that, frankly put, are shit. They are just terrible at their jobs. I will not post names, because I want this post to be a discussion, not an attack on individuals. That being said, some of the staff are incredibly: immature, inactive, and inconsistent. The way they treat some players is totally different than how they treat others. It is often joked about, but in all seriousness, there is no reason for some staff members to worship @"Burb" . It comes off as creepy, cringy, and pathetic. It could probably even be considered harassment by the standards of the server. There have been multiple occurrences where rules are not consistent. For example, the situation with @thunderwalrusinnthebar and his approach to the word "tranny". While I personally think Thunder was wrong in this instance, I think it highlights a bigger problem that is not his fault. (Also, I should mention that while this is under the "Bad Staff" section, I don't necessarily think Thunder is a bad staff despite a personal disagreement with him) Consistency. There are far too many instances where the staff are inconsistent with their ruling. Other staff dismissed this as "at the moderator's own discretion" but I believe that this is a just an easy cop out. Some other quick notes:
- The staff team uses a committee system, which @Ethan described on discord to me. On paper, it looks like a pretty good system. However, in practice as it currently stands, I believe it is inefficient because of the aforementioned problem of bad staff. Bad Staff = Bad Decisions
- Former admins like @dong have mentioned that he could not do anything progressive with the community because of the current committee system. He also mentioned a problem with poor staff.

I'm going to copy and paste what I've said before about this because it was I and someone else who made the committees, but it has since become dysfunctional since we left. Not saying anyone is at fault for that because by design it is a complex thing. But, it was made per request by Dinkleberg to add a more democratic and inclusive decision process to include staff. At the time, people were complaining about "admin tyranny" "admins decide anything, staff do not have any say!" Now, I've always believed "admin tyranny" was perhaps the best thing with how the staff system here is designed.  I will now, again, copy and paste something I have said before about this issue.

We made the committees with an intent that those with the with the most relevant experience, skill set, preference, etc. would sit on a specific committee rather than arbitrarily placing people in committees and stacking them with so many members, which is why it was so selective at its inception especially for Mod and Test Mod committees. If a commitee had way too many members that did not have to be there, it would get out of hand. When Dink tasked the Admins with coming up with something like the committee system due to yk admin tyranny. more staff inclusion, blah blah blah etc,  Queef and I made it with the intent that if you don't have 10 hours of consistent in-game time within 2 weeks then you weren't allowed to formally do anything in the committee such as voting, and this was actively monitored when I was around, I hope it still is. This was the standard Admins were held to by Dinkleberg for voting eligibility, which is a good thing. If they were inactive and they had any prior past interactions with say, someone applying for trusted, they were more than welcome to share it with the committee but they had no part in a final decision.


I will now add onto this. We wanted to retain the Admins ability to proactively engaged in the final decision and  have the final final say in very important cases. I do not know how committees operate now, but it seemed to work with a smaller and more selective number of qualified members. So perhaps it should be overhauled to be more selective and smaller member counts of each committee. That seemed to work fine., for the most part. This makes it so people just are not arbitrarily placed on committee just for the sake of them wanting to join a committee. Like you said by design it sounds good on paper, but it has to be managed right for it to work. 

 

3.) Ignoring The Community
What the hell is the point of +1s and community feedback if it doesn't mean anything? I can already guess that there will be a response that says something along the lines of "We do listen to community feedback!" but that's demonstrably false. An example being @"aethy" s unban request. He can give more input on this more in the replies if he wants. Another example, would be the spray thread. As @JesseTheUndeadCowboy mentioned in the discord, the only person giving legitimate criticism was Russ. Russ was able to pretty much pinpoint why it was a bad idea, but the other staff, as Jesse mentioned, kinda just jerked themselves off with non-answers in a dismissive way. (He said it a lot nicer than that.)

Another big example of this lies with how staff currently treat regulars like Rylo, Ernie, Stuppidy, and Crab. Crab got permabanned for, possibly one of the most BS examples of teaming. Staff will ban people who have been with the community for years, and then pikachu face when the playerbase spams "ASAB" or complains about the staff being trash. #FreeCrab

A possible solution to this would be to introduce a new rank (no in-game powers at all) that members get when they reach a certain time limit, activity, etc (whatever is deemed as a good qualification) that allows them to vote within the committee. Regulars, and people who have dedicated a lot of their time (take Jesse for an example) should have more input than they already do.

The point of the feedback is it being input for the decisionmakers to well, make a decision. Unfortunately in the real world, decisionmakers ultimately have the final say. It is like when you hand a report to a Congressman, give them policy recommendations and feedback on an issue. They will look at it but do they not have to accept the feedback because they are the decisionmaker and ultimately have the final say. Feedback in the context of unban and staff apps play a major factor, but is not the final aspect. Sometimes Admins and staff know things that others giving feedback do not know. Either because people PM with evidence, past interactions, and making an objective decision based on the rules. Or, feedback given is not always insightful on apps and unbans too. That is why we say it has to be meaningful, otherwise it is completely useless. In other words, they are not persuasive enough because they either do not answer the question "so what?" or "Why do we care about what you are saying here?" As in, backing up their feedback with reason, evidence, logic, etc. There are many instances where feedback is seen as a popularity contest and +1ing people because they are cool and seem to know what they are doing on the surface. 

Again, a new rank is beating a dead horse. Will not happen. Regulars and Donors should already to an extent be able to provide meaningful insight on an application or unban request if they are serious enough. A rank won't change that and will only be for show and theatrics. They should also never be able to "vote" on an actual application or unban request. That's just my opinion, though.
Summary
- We need admins.
Yes. but they have to be good and qualified rather than just having more admins for the numbers. I talked about this above.
- There are too many bad staff.
Yea. Demotions are a difficult and rare thing, because of again, systemic issues and a high burden set by Dink for demotion. There is a strike system in place, though. I hope that is still used.
- Stop ignoring regulars.
Inherently bad systemic system, feedback, etc. All talked about above

TLDR: Not much will change if the system remains the way it is and these threads will continue to be made every 6 months with the same cycle occuring: A thread made, discussion, a period of complaining, then another thread on the same exact issues made again a few months later.

I will end this point by embedding a video that sums up how the community is ran: Yes, this video is intended as a joke.