Staff plz

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

First of all, I want to say that I am breaking my promise to no longer get involved with the site on this level and to not make FA threads anymore, but I feel like it had to be done. Mugen quit staff and everything is slowing down again. I knew this was going to happen, and I actually wagered with some people that he would eventually quit after taking on pretty much all of the creation work solo. Unfortunately, I was right in making this assumption, and things are slowing down again.

We need more staff, and considering the fact that there are really plenty of people around who have stated they would sign up, I suggest staff does something with that. Ruka recently got signed up and has done a good job at Evaluations, but that does not take away the fact that one person is doing the majority of the work. As for Creations, they get done from time to time, but there is also a lot of stuff in there that has not been checked for weeks or even months.

I personally signed up for staff a few months ago, but since I do not blend well with a certain person, I get skipped over. I won't lie and say that I have a lot of free time, but the fact that I am on US and post whenever it is my turn to post proves that I can manage my time well enough to handle both worlds, so to say. Aside from myself, there are plenty of other people that have been staff in the past or are willing to become staff now.

With the all too obvious absence of Admins and the painful lack of Moderators, I suggest you give people like me a chance to get shit done. Staff made some questionable choices as to who they put on the staff team in the past, so you have nothing to lose. If you want to slowly let the site wither and go back into its hibernation-death state, that is all fine and dandy, but people like Ruka have set up a massive plot to get people to remain active.

What I want to say with that is that there are plenty of people who want to do their best to keep the site going strong in any way possible. With the way things are going now, you really have nothing to lose by letting people like me on Staff. If you don't like the work I do, you can always void it and kick me off staff like was done with ReturningYoru. If you don't want to give it a chance, that is fine. If people are against me doing staff work, that is also fine, and I don't really give a shit. I am just offering my help and stating the obvious.

What people want to do with this thread is up to them. If you do not want people to work on keeping the site going in a fairly steady manner, that is also up to you. If no help is needed or wanted, just lock this thread up and forget about it. I'm going to leave this thread for what it is, so if people want to put in hate comments, that is fine, but I am only going to bother with replying if it is actually beneficial to me or the site.

Thank you for your time.

Age : 33 Posts : 718

First of all,

My leaving staff had nothing to do with the work load. It wasn't exactly enjoyable to be carrying such a large portion of the creation area on my back, but in all honesty I was only doing about 60% of the work. Reggie was doing a good job of picking up my slack when I was feeling overwhelmed or otherwise unable to dish out gradings.

I left staff because I, personally, want to make too many big changes on the forum to correct flaws that I see as a designer. As a staff member, I simply can't ignore these issues because they are constantly in my face as I approve/deny things. I feel like it's my job to address them and thus felt obligated to bring them up in the staff section. But many of those changes include nerfing things, re-balancing them, or otherwise changing the status quo and I was getting too much bitching about it from too many sources for it to have been worth the effort those changes would have required. I only scratched the surface too. If I really started pushing the kind of revamps I feel are necessary to repair the broken mess I saw, people would be chasing me off the forum in mobs with pitchforks and torches. As a normal member, I can focus on rping and let go of those perceived obligations in time. Forget about the problems I saw in the first place.

There were some other issues that contributed to my stepping down such as wanting more time to RP, an inactive admin never available for decision making when needed, and a few too many members who like to argue more than is socially healthy. But the main reason is those aforementioned changes and the difficulties surrounding them.

Please don't give people the wrong idea by suggesting it was because I was doing most of the creation area work. I've run entire forums pretty much by myself on multiple occassions. The forum would need twice as many active members posting things up for approval before I dropped out of staff simply because there was too much work on my shoulders.

That all being said, there is merit in the argument that we need some more mods. But more importantly, we need a new creations admin. From what I understand, there are so few creation mods because Trey considers the creation area his "baby" and he doesn't want to have mods that don't meet his standards. That's all well and good if he were active enough to take care of said baby as well, but you know what? This is child negligence abuse. I don't care how busy he is in real life, if that's the case then he should leave his baby in the hands of someone who can give it the tender love and care it needs.

I'll take this chance to nominate Josi/Reggie to become the new creation area admin and publically endorse him.

Reggie isn't active enough to carry the entire creation's area on his back alone. But he is active enough to lead a modest team of moderators should he take up the mantle of admin. From what I can tell, he has a sound mind and decent judgement whenever we had group discussions in the staff chat. I believe he would do a decent job as admin so long as he gets two or three mods to help split the work. Preferably at least two of said mods living in different time zones so there is an active staff member available for approvals at all times of the day. But I digress, I'm straying too far into an ideal here. The point is that I believe Reggie would be more open to accepting new mods and has the capacity to serve as a good leader.

---TLDR---
Staff plz CgTi8Bd

Vote for Josi for Admin - 2015

Posts : 1729

Throwing in my two cents, "get more mods" is about as feasible as finding El Dorado.

Frankly, there aren't a lot of viable candidates. Anyone really qualified is too busy (Heida), gets along with the current administration like a sack a cats on fire (me, Vergil), or else has been there, done that, never again (also me, Persy).

More mods might solve the problem, but like I said, the pickings are slim.

Age : 24 Posts : 175

((looks at mugen, grabs torch and pitchfork))

yeah it's a catch 22, you need more mods, but when you get them you don't support them so you lose um. I personally fit in that "been there, done that" catagory over 12 years ago when I was back in HS. Then again, that was also on Groups.msn.com where alot more stuff needed to be updated on multiple sites. I guess it wouldn't be too bad here. I'm just lazy Razz

anyway.... I don't remember the point of my post. So I'm just going to fill the rest of this post with filler that will make it sound like I'm adding a bunch to the conversation, even when I'm not. It's really just a bunch of redundant crap. There is no meaning and even less effort being put forth, all just to fill space with random strings of words. I could start typing randoms sentences, such as, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" but I wont. er...wait a minute. Oops... Family guy is almost over. This episode is really boring, and there it goes. Stewie said something funny and fade to black. Well, I think I put enough filler in here, So I guess it is about time for me to stop talking and just end the post. I hope you think about the whole minute you wasted reading this, and how I stole it from you and will never give it back. It is mine now. I will place it in my safety deposit box where I keep children's lollipops and the tears from a cancer patient. It is right next to Donald Trump's collection of broken dreams and other peoples retirement funds. He really is a bad man, and should be put in prison. Actually, I made that last part up. The part about the retirement funds, not the broken dreams. That part is true. Why are you still reading this... you just gave me another whole minute. And now... I win. muwahahahahaahahahaha

TLDR: read it o - o

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

Since most replies pretty much don't need a reply of their own, I just wanted to point out that I said you would eventually leave staff and things would revert to things either happening slowly or not happening at all.

But that is about all that needs to be said about it at this point, other than that Travis is pretty much right about what he said.

Age : 28 Posts : 3145

I (as well as, I'm sure, a lot of others) would be quite interested in hearing what sort of vision you had for the site, Mugen.

As for making Josi an admin, making the only creative mod an admin would kill creations in the long run. It's more or less an established pattern now, that the mod generally drops all his mod work upon being promoted; I'm not saying this is a bad thing. The admins do a lot of things behind the scenes, some of which is scrapped, whereas some things have been in production since like 3 years ago due to a lack of people to work on them.

It happened with Darius, with (to a lesser extent) Enzo, with Puppy (Zack as well, I think?). It will probably happen to Josi too. While we do need an admin for the odd things, we need mods more, though I'm sure most people would be happy with Josi stepping up once he's not desperately needed as a mod.

Age : 32 Posts : 1178

Pretty much agreeing with what Chris said just now, though that just brings us back to needing more members of Staff. I think people should just be given the chance to do Mod work for a week or so. If they do bad work, they can be dropped and no real harm will be done due to how little custom stuff we get. Most of the work is pretty much evaluation, approving SC for training, approving said training and approving canon jutsu for our list. Still, I think getting some fresh blood on staff would not be a bad thing at all.

Age : 33 Posts : 718

And like I pointed out, the only reason why we aren't getting any new mods is because the currently inactive Trey holds absolute authority over the creation mods and refuses to bring on to people who are willing to help out.

Yes, the number of qualified individuals is low, but we DO have at least a few willing hands. Hands that can be trained to meet a standard over time. The whole point of making Josi admin is that he wouldn't be as strict about who he lets into the team.

The reason why we don't have mods isn't because there is no one for the job. It's because Trey rules with an iron fist despite being a ghost.

Posts : 1729

That's all fine and dandy, but insofar as I'm aware, either Trey or Adamn are the only ones with the authority and ability to bring someone into the Admin fold, and more importantly, grant access to the Admin panel; lacking either individual around to administer those functions, then the subject of bringing Josi up to Adminhood is, well, moot. Without the actual power, he'd be nothing more than another mod that the other moderators deferred to.

Age : 33 Posts : 718

BK-201 wrote:: That's all fine and dandy, but insofar as I'm aware, either Trey or Adamn are the only ones with the authority and ability to bring someone into the Admin fold, and more importantly, grant access to the Admin panel; lacking either individual around to administer those functions, then the subject of bringing Josi up to Adminhood is, well, moot. Without the actual power, he'd be nothing more than another mod that the other moderators deferred to.

It's not like he'd need access to the admin CP to really fulfill the job of the position and we've got Alex who is active enough and has access to the panel in case it's ever needed.

Since Adam and Trey are never around, it's not like they are going to even have the time to run around and void everything Josi does with the authority as "admin" granted to him by the players. As far as I'm concerned, they lost the right to claim they have authority on anything the moment they decided that it wasn't worth 5 minutes of their life each day to show up here and do their jobs. Yes, they hold the account powers, but those powers don't have any weight if they are inactive.

The problem isn't the actual powers granted to an admin account. The problem is the authority to make decisions. Decisions such as, who should be accepted into the staff team as creation mods. If a large portion of the member base votes for someone else to have this authority then it doesn't matter if Trey or Adam come back temporarily and throw a fit. Unless they remain active and do their job, the site can just defer back to the replacement admin they voted in the moment the real admins disappear again.

What good does this do us? It lets us get more mods and lubricate the rough tracks of creation approvals. It's a bandaid patchwork fix. But it would help solve the present and short term problem. The real question is, does Josi even feel like taking on the responsibility. That is honestly the only thing that would stop this from working aside from a return from Trey. Even then, we could just ignore his supposed "authority" and continue on with a team that actually gets shit done. The worst he can do is throw a fit and abuse his admin powers to destroy whatever progress we make which would probably kill the site. Since it's on the path to death anyways, I think that risk is worth taking.

Age : 24 Posts : 175

((drops pitchfork and claps))

mugen's got some bite to go with that bark. Respect Razz

Age : 48 Posts : 1036

At this point I don't see much else that can be done to really fix the problem's raised short of the nuclear option. And no that's not a pun on my handle. I'm talking about abandoning the site enmasse for a new one with a completely new mindset, rules, and obviously staff. Something that in hindsight should have been done a while ago when it died the first time. Amy & Chris (before he sold his balls) managed to resucitate it then, thanks to Adam & company being gone, got it thriving again with a completely new staff and a new mindset. Then the old staff waltzed back, took back their positions of power, and it was back to business as usual.

Plus frankly I don't think the most-voiced solution, more mods, would solve the underlying problem. In the past this site has had an abundance of moderators but the problems being talked about now still happened then. Staff still got corrupted by unchecked power and did as they pleased, staff still went missing without warning in droves, and staff still treated the players as lessers even when said players had been on the site longer and proved they knew the rules we all agreed to on joining better than said staff.

Before more staff are added there needs to be a serious revalution of how staff are selected and even more importantly ways put in place to hold any staff - "official" or not - accountable. That way when another Darius/ Trey/ whoever shows up and acts their way through to a staff spot they can be exposed and removed promptly instead of having to wait around until they screw up so badly that Adam has no choice but to remove them to avoid getting painted with the same brush that the owner of Ingoo did.

The odds of those changes to staff selection & accountability happening? Between zero and a wetland amphibian's in a Gobi salt flat. Changes like that would quickly remove Adam's control over the staff and with it whatever ego boost their toadying gives him. Which is at this point the only reason I can see why he hasn't offered to give the site to someone else since he obviously doesn't want to do the work associated with keeping it active and making sure the staff - and especially the admins - are actually doing what they said they would on becoming staff.

So I say go for broke. Either way something happens that puts an end to this places existence as a zombie that Adam & toadies visit when they feel the need to stroke their ego. Though I want to go on record as saying I told you f'ing so. Been saying the staff were going to kill this place since Adam came back the first time but I was dismissed as a negative Nancy. Well this Nancy is having the last laugh in the end.

Age : 33 Posts : 718

I've brought up the idea of migrating to a new site with new management to people over skype before. No one I've talked to wants to do the work of actually building a new site or deal with the many complications a migration entails. Honestly, that's fine. While I agree in thinking that's the best option, it isn't the only option. Unless the forum as a whole decides they want to move to a new site after all, that leaves us with the struggle of making the best of the current site and all the stigma it holds. If the day comes where majority of active members are down for a new site and we have the manpower/skilled workforce to make a quality site, awesome. I'm down to support it. Until that day comes, I'm going to continue to fight to make this forum work. Even if it's held together with gum, spit, and lots of love.

If you don't like the moniker of negative nancy though, lets hear your ideas on what these standards for how staff is chosen should be and what kind of accountability safeguards we should create. Because unless you put forward actionable ideas that could lead to solutions, you're just complaining and that isn't going to help anyone. So please, contribute to the discussion in a positive manner instead of going on a rant just to give some vague opinions and end with an "I told you so" smart ass comment. Because that kind of post is what earns people names teasing names like negative nancy.

Age : 48 Posts : 1036

Since you asked for it it. Do keep in mind that actionable doesn't mean likely to be implemented in the current situation. Aside from the matter of something that CAN be done being very different from what people are willing to DO, any changes that encourage an effective staff free from rampant corruption are exactly the sort that the current admins and prior staff will fight to their dying breath to prevent. Not to mention that such requires that the players as a whole make a real commitment to holding staff accountable even when said staff are their buddies or they benifit from misdeeds. Given how quickly many of the players here are to harass and belittle anyone who has the gall to be critical of their pals even with overwhelming proof that sort of community-minded spirit isn't going to happen. Even your suggestions, which are pretty damn mild, ultimately depend on the majority of the players putting aside personal gain, associations, and agenda's to have an actual impact. Something that has been proven to be about as far from reality on this site as you can get.

But to the list.
For selection the process needs to first allow everyone who wants to give the spot a try & meets the written criteria a chance unless they have some huge flaw directly related to the task. As in they can't write in basic sentences, were staff and got ejected for blatant misconduct, or have admitted to rarely having the time to even post as a regular player much less any reliable extra time. Doing that helps prevent the current situation of staff keeping the pool of trial staff limited to those who agree with their polices even when said policies are outright stupid or in flagrant violation of the rules.

Going from that, second the criteria for how permanent staff at all ranks are selected needs to be defined in black and white language, written down somewhere on the site that everyone has access to, and then left the heck alone unless there is a real need AND the revisions supported by a large majority of staff & players after an open discussion with all due process taken. That way people, applicants for staff or not, have a chance to see if the current staff are actually selecting additional staff on the basis of ability to meet the obligations of the post or if they're regressing to the "whoever kisses my tush the most" method.

Another big criteria is that whatever requirements do get put down for new staff, they're can't include the current "must get along with the other staff on all matters." Its one thing to be professional in your conduct with other staff, but its something else to insist that staff show a united front at all times even when it means supporting outright idiocy.

As for the accountability.
A big one requirment is to remove the staff lounge's "staff only" requirement - at least for viewing - and require that every discussion/ debate about the site between staff takes place there. Just like how during any corporate meeting minutes are taken that way there is a written record of what the staff are discussing, who is discussing it, etc that is available everyone and not just a few who are currently in favor with the staff. A written record that can be directly compared with a staff members statements to a player and if found to be inconsistent makes for pretty damning evidence when bring up a charge of abuse of authority. Plus having evidence is one of the best ways to undermine the various attempts to shift blame, dodge issues, or otherwise avoid having to own up to trying to violate the rules, which in turn goes a long way to shutting up the erring staffer's assorted toadies.

One strike and out. If a staff member violates the rules they're gone from the staff and possibly the board with no chance to return. Otherwise there is no point in even trying to hold the staff accountable as they'll simply go on a boot-licking spree until they get a second, or third or umptenth, chance from someone in charge then revert to their old ways when the heat dies down.

Another way to improve accountability is changing the rules to eliminate the sheer amount of wiggle room staff have when making so-called "judgement calls". I've seen firsthand how often those "judgement calls" boil down to their unsupported opinion and the classic "I'm staff so I'm right" appeal to authority. At the least a set of actual rules, instead of the loose (as in more loopholes than material) "guidelines" we have now, makes it more difficult to hide favoritism & corruption by removing the ability to change the "meaning" of the rules at a whim.

Jumping off that, require that any denial of a submission include a direct quote of the rules that the staff member thinks support their decision with failue to do so having all attenant consequences. That way the staff's urge to substitute the site's rules with their own personal interpetions then throw around the "I'm staff so I'm right" card when they start losing the argument gets curbed. It also gives the staff who do stick to the rules some support and heads off the wonderful issue of trying to reconconile two different staff members personal rules with the main rules when their favorit player's characters clash.

Though I really don't see why I went through that effort. I think I've made it pretty clear that none of these would ever be implemented here precisely because they're inflexible barriers to staff having the sort of freedom to do whatever the hell they please and get away with it. Which the staff & players have repeatedly made clear they value above everything else including this places existence. Otherwise we wouldn't be discussing what amounts to a revolution based on civil disobedience as the most likely fix to the problem instead of the worst-case option. Plus even if this whole last-ditch gamble works this place's past proves that whatever changes are made to fix the problem will be removed soon enough due to the staff & players not wanting to have to put forth the effort keeping them up would require.

And its only smartass because it reminds those who were too busy kisisng the staffs arears that they were the idiots. People don't like it then maybe they should put in the effort to not automatically follow the herd when it makes stupid decisions.

Posts : 1729

As far as Critera for Staff members, I find myself agreeing with Nuke. Mostly. That's about 2 out of 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And then he gets to "accountability." Yes yes Nuke, you have this huge, massive hateboner for staff. We can all see it. Put it back in your pants.

And before you bring up that horseshit about you clan, again, I reiterate that the only reason that "Killing Intent" nonsense got approved in the first place was nobody wanted to deal with your shit at the time. I, being a fresh and new moderator, was woefully unprepared for your blatant hateboner-grudge-vendetta against staff, and the deeply held belief that everyone on it was personally out to get you.

Age : 31 Posts : 1495

I see where this is about to go, I suggest you guys refrain from going there. You've given some interesting suggestions like making Staff Lounge or at least most parts of it visible to the public, I suggest you keep giving suggestions instead of arguing and delving into the past grievances, something which will bring nothing and only cause this thread to be dismissed due to toxicity present. Once again, there was none yet, because I'm interested in this thread I'd like to see it stay that way.

Age : 24 Posts : 175

I got to agree with Ruka there... this thing has started to go from "we need some more staff, give me a shot" to "the admins suck and here is what they should do but they wont cause they are stupid-heads"

you can't type a post filled with site management suggestions and then just tell the reader to disregard everything you wrote because the admins suck at the bottom. Be constructive.

[yes, this coming from the person who made a post filled with random nonsense]

Age : 33 Posts : 718

After sifting through the heavy bias and naysaying in Nukes post, there are some good points and some bad in my opinion. I'll go ahead and address my personal take on all of them.

Selection Process:
I agree that there should be a written public standard of what is expected from staff as well as staff applicants. The requirements to apply should be clearly stated and made public for everyone. They should be specific enough that those who meet all fields of requirement should be eligible for a trial staff position so long as one is open. There should definitely be a limit on the number of active mods and trial mods though. All things are toxic in excess.

I'll start a new thread with a prototype of what these standards might look like asking for feedback from both players and active staff to begin the process of possibly making this into a reality.

Accountability:
Staff Section - I disagree with the idea that the staff section should be made publicly viewable. This wouldn't increase staff accountability at all. During my brief time as a mod I viewed just about every thread in the staff section that wasn't over a year old and there was nothing contained within its posts that would overturn an argument or otherwise reveal a staffer as corrupt. There is nothing there which could expose abuse of staff powers. What the staff section DOES hold is discussions on system updates, events, and new ideas. All of which get publicly posted and announced if they reach a point of completion.

That being said, I have always believed that discussions about system updates should always be made public once staff finishes discussing a prototype for the changes. But this would not require the staff section be made public. Simply that staff post their completed updates in a public board for all to see before going through with the changes. It's also important to note that I don't believe everything should require user feedback though. While I advocate involving the community in updates, some things like rebalancing of OP abilities or fixing wording mistakes simply don't need to be vetted by the community first. Players have a biased reaction to balancing updates pretty much 100% of the time and wording corrections don't need a thousand opinions to be completed. So long as these kinds of things are announced, that is good enough. People with complaints about the results can raise them after the fact.

One Strike Standard - I disagree with this draconian approach to staff accountability. People make mistakes. Permanently firing an otherwise great staff member because they were upset about something IRL and slipped up once is a waste of good talent. If we're talking strikes, then three is the general common approach. Zero tolerance rules are foolish and lead to elementary school kids being suspended because they ate their poptart into the shape of a gun(this really happened in the US.)

Instead, I would recommend that violations and abuse of staff responsibilities should be met with increasing punishments. Starting with a week probation of no staff powers, then a month, followed by a final ban from holding staff positions. But regardless of what degree of punishment we go with, there should definitely be a locked in standard for how staff corruption is dealt with.

Rule Clarification - I agree that much of the rules regarding various aspects of the site need refinement. It's sometimes hard to grasp just what the standards for things are. But I feel like your suggestion goes to unreasonable lengths to try and deal with the issue. It sounds more like you're simply scorned that you couldn't get something approved even though you believed you were "right" when staff refused to accept your perspective as such.

Lets be real. No matter HOW specific you get the rules on jutsu, clans, summons, equipment, and everything else to be...there is no way in heaven or hell you're going to remove opinions from the picture. There are simply too many creative directions in which you can take all this content. Many things aren't denied because of "rules" and instead are blocked because of balance reasons. Staff gets to make the call on this not because being staff makes them "right" but because they are entrusted with the responsibility to pass judgement on unfair and unlikely content. Of course, this means that I would not support a move to require staff members quote the rules any time they deny something.

If you see aspects of the rules which could use further specification, then I implore you to bring them up in a new thread as you encounter them so they can be publicly discussed and acted upon. But I will not advocate a removal of staffs ability to make judgement calls on approvals for the aforementioned reasons.

Ending Statements:
I'll be pming you about your general attitude and tone of writing. This isn't the place to discuss that. But I will say this for all to read.

While some of these ideas might be unpopular and I disagreed with many of them, it is still important that they are brought forth. Even if they've already been shot down in the past. New members and new perspectives can have profound effects on forum communities sometimes and things that were never even considered a year ago could gain traction and support tomorrow.

It's always better to offer suggestions for improvements than to simply complain about how much you dislike the current state of things. It is the difference between stagnation and growth. So thank you Nuke, for taking the time to share your opinions. They could have been tempered with a bit more impartial tolerance, but I'll take what I can get.

EDIT: The criteria prototype I mentioned has been posted here.

Age : 31 Posts : 1490

Mugen Kousen wrote:

That all being said, there is merit in the argument that we need some more mods. But more importantly, we need a new creations admin. From what I understand, there are so few creation mods because Trey considers the creation area his "baby" and he doesn't want to have mods that don't meet his standards. That's all well and good if he were active enough to take care of said baby as well, but you know what? This is child negligence abuse.

You're right.

Age : 31 Posts : 1490

Solved.