Mumberthrax Posted September 15, 2014 Report Share Posted September 15, 2014 Hey folks, I've been sent a suggestion regarding the preparation of survival maps/revisions that pertains to all S moderators, and perhaps to other mods/staff that may have an interest. Rather than paraphrase, I'll just copy-paste it here: Council- This was brought up by djt832 and Dizney07. This basics of the idea is to have a group of 7 Survival mods. Their job would to take some pressure of Sadmins and their duties. They would get all the submissions from Maps,Spawns,Arenas and, event ideas. They would pick 2 of the best as voted on by the council. Then the council would send the 2 best of each categories to the Sadmins and let them choose between the two. They would also help out with game play changes and rule changes. Sounds simple enough. Is it a good idea? Who would be interested in being a part of such a "council" aiding in the preparation of survival maps? What else might such a group be responsible for? Does it need to be anything so formal as a special council, or can it be just something that mods can do if they feel like it? Maybe the formalized structure will help provide a sense of organization for the task. Is this even really necessary when the admins could do it on their own? Any other questions or thoughts about this suggestion, please share them here. I personally like the idea of involving anyone and everyone who is interested in helping prepare the map or plan revisions or even the direction of the server. Whether they are staff or not, if they want to help why turn them away? So some additional questions I have which relate to this are, what can non-staff do to help apart from creating awesome builds like spawns and arenas and roads? What sorts of things should be relegated to staff-only, or admin-only? There are no wrong answers, so share whatever comes to mind. Sadmins will be making a post on the general discussion forum about preparing S rev 27 soon, so non-staff can have a place to work together on it if they like too, but the main focus here is this council idea and what role moderators ought to have in general in revision preparation. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dizney07 Posted September 15, 2014 Report Share Posted September 15, 2014 Aw only saying Djt and I came up with this is a little harsh, we talked to a lot of players regarding this idea (including the person who submitted it who wasn't me or Djt). On the topic of the idea, I obviously support it. When I saw moderators before I became one, I thought they were so much more included in the decision making, but being here I don't really feel as involved. Players like MrGauthier, Djt, Tornadohorse, Smdavis etc. are players that can really help come up with ideas and build upon what we already have to make S a great server. We wouldn't be taking over, we just want to help the sadmins out to make their life a little easier and maybe let them play a little bit during the revisions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djt832 Posted September 15, 2014 Report Share Posted September 15, 2014 I am probably just echoing diz here.... The idea is to spread some of the work out. We only have 3 Sadmins, who we cant expect to handle all ideas/ concerns/ complaints brought upon by players. This would be a way to have multiple opinions sort through ideas. Ideally, the council would be comprised of moderators that are active in game. This is important because not every user is active on the forums or responds to our surveys. As far as structure... We need it. I think before implementing this idea, there needs to be a clear cut focus for the council. I believe communication should be a big focus, because it has been severely lacking as of late. The discussion should not drag on though, as some of ours tend to do. If this, or any further ideas, are going to work, they need to be discussed and brought to fruition in a timely manner. This should also give us an opportunity to restructure the admin-mod-community relations for S entirely. Some things the council or other councils could be responsible for.... Events and Arenas- There was already an idea floating around for specific moderators to be in charge of nerd events, I am unable to think of the user who brought up this idea at the moment. Hopefully someone can give that person credit for me. Communication- Making sure actions decided on by Admins or moderators as results of surveys, opinions, etc. are effectively communicated to the public. Ideation culling- Sifting through the many ideas brought to us by the community and narrowing it down to a few plausible options. It should be a touch easier for those who are actively involved in game to get a feel for what the community might want. Moderators seem to have a bit less on their table, allowing for more general play time. Hopefully we can get some responses to this and move forward with something. I am looking forward to hearing (reading) all your opinions on this matter! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumberthrax Posted September 16, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 16, 2014 Submissions for the new map (eg. spawn, arenas, roads, etc.) Let me offer a short rundown of how we handle this process: we make a post or two on the subreddit or forums announcing we would like to see some submissions for spawn or arenas, etc. we put an alert/motd thing in-game saying the same we receive messages from players with submissions we look at the submissions we decide which would work well, which looks nice/cool we check to make sure there's nothing hidden in the submission that would provide an unfair advantage to anyone we grab a schematic of it, give it to techadmins, who make it available for us to paste in on a dev server we log into the dev server (which contains the world for the revision) and begin using worldedit to paste in the builds, roads, and tidy things up we set all the worldguard regions (protections) up for those builds, roads Selecting builds is not that time consuming or difficult. But the overall process of asking the community for builds, being a contact point to explain how the builds can be submitted and getting access to the builds, and reviewing the builds could be considered slightly time consuming - but essential work. If a group of moderators want to be responsible for this, we can do that. If any mods want to help in pasting roads in or setting up WG regions on the dev server, we can do that too. Events and Arenas Arenas are already fairly easy for moderators to run. Main thing is prizes. Just need a prize list for admins to check off on, admins to put said prizes into chests, and give operating mod chest access. If a specific mod or group of mods would like to be in charge of running events, or setting up an events schedule, we can do that. If the event requires special plugins that aren't currently installed or configured on the server, then we'll need to find ones that do what we want and make sure they don't do anything bad (conflict with other things, crash or lag the server). Communication If a moderator of group of moderators wants to take responsibility for ensuring that communication between staff/admins and non-staff is happening effectively, we can do that. I'm not sure what all that would entail, but it's feasible. Ideation culling This one I'm a little fuzzy on. This would be a group of mods sort of sifting the wheat from the chaff and presenting it to the admins? In all, most of this is perfectly fine. I hesitate to call the people volunteering for these jobs a "council". Perhaps all we need is just a periodic brief server mod/admin meeting or post where we ask if anyone wants to help out with this or that task, and if someone raises their hand then they're the task leader and main point of contact with the sadmins - easy peasy. I hesitate too to create some kind of permanent structure separating some mods from the others, which might end up developing complicated rules or procedures, and if someone gets overwhelmed and can't do it then we have to appoint a new person to take on the title of Arbiter of Nether Roads or something... :P I understand wanting to help. The current S revision doesn't have much in the way of modreqs considering griefing was basically allowed, water flows freely, and, well, there's not much traffic at the moment, so I can understand now more than ever there might be a feeling of being underutilized. I'd like to help resolve this, and I'm not certain we need something quite as formal as the vibe I'm getting from this - but I'm open to hearing more discussion if there is any. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TornadoHorse Posted September 16, 2014 Report Share Posted September 16, 2014 A question for the current sadmins: What do you feel is currently overwhelming you? What can you not handle and deliver promptly and efficiently? To have mods do some of the admin's job seem strange to me if they can handle it fine, although I think it's good that more people would be able to get involved. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djt832 Posted September 17, 2014 Report Share Posted September 17, 2014 A question for the current sadmins: What do you feel is currently overwhelming you? What can you not handle and deliver promptly and efficiently? To have mods do some of the admin's job seem strange to me if they can handle it fine, although I think it's good that more people would be able to get involved. This is a really good point Torn. We may be jumping the gun here, having only heard from one Sadmin so far. Ideation culling This one I'm a little fuzzy on. This would be a group of mods sort of sifting the wheat from the chaff and presenting it to the admins? In all, most of this is perfectly fine. I hesitate to call the people volunteering for these jobs a "council". Perhaps all we need is just a periodic brief server mod/admin meeting or post where we ask if anyone wants to help out with this or that task, and if someone raises their hand then they're the task leader and main point of contact with the sadmins - easy peasy. I hesitate too to create some kind of permanent structure separating some mods from the others, which might end up developing complicated rules or procedures, and if someone gets overwhelmed and can't do it then we have to appoint a new person to take on the title of Arbiter of Nether Roads or something... :P I understand wanting to help. The current S revision doesn't have much in the way of modreqs considering griefing was basically allowed, water flows freely, and, well, there's not much traffic at the moment, so I can understand now more than ever there might be a feeling of being underutilized. I'd like to help resolve this, and I'm not certain we need something quite as formal as the vibe I'm getting from this - but I'm open to hearing more discussion if there is any. With the ideation culling thing, I was trying to figure out a more efficient way to address all the great suggestions brought up to us. I think the polls are doing a great job of this for their specific questions, but the suggestions that do not fit into polls take more time to read through and discuss. I could be misinterpreting this too, its hard to tell. I agree with not having this turn into an extremely formal "have to be voted in", hierarchal group. The way I have envisioned it is, like you said, more of a voluntary thing. However, I do think having some sort of steady commitment from mods/players to it is essential. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djt832 Posted September 19, 2014 Report Share Posted September 19, 2014 Bumping for a Sadmin other than Mumber to respond 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumberthrax Posted September 20, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 20, 2014 Bumping for a Sadmin other than Mumber to respond Oh I see how it is. :'-( 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djt832 Posted September 20, 2014 Report Share Posted September 20, 2014 Oh I see how it is. :'-( Sorry mumber, I didn't mean it like that :(. Just some more opinions would be nice. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeastBruiser Posted September 20, 2014 Report Share Posted September 20, 2014 I am probably just echoing diz here.... The idea is to spread some of the work out. We only have 3 Sadmins, who we cant expect to handle all ideas/ concerns/ complaints brought upon by players. This would be a way to have multiple opinions sort through ideas. Ideally, the council would be comprised of moderators that are active in game. This is important because not every user is active on the forums or responds to our surveys. As far as structure... We need it. I think before implementing this idea, there needs to be a clear cut focus for the council. I believe communication should be a big focus, because it has been severely lacking as of late. The discussion should not drag on though, as some of ours tend to do. If this, or any further ideas, are going to work, they need to be discussed and brought to fruition in a timely manner. This should also give us an opportunity to restructure the admin-mod-community relations for S entirely. Some things the council or other councils could be responsible for.... Events and Arenas- There was already an idea floating around for specific moderators to be in charge of nerd events, I am unable to think of the user who brought up this idea at the moment. Hopefully someone can give that person credit for me. Communication- Making sure actions decided on by Admins or moderators as results of surveys, opinions, etc. are effectively communicated to the public. Ideation culling- Sifting through the many ideas brought to us by the community and narrowing it down to a few plausible options. It should be a touch easier for those who are actively involved in game to get a feel for what the community might want. Moderators seem to have a bit less on their table, allowing for more general play time. Hopefully we can get some responses to this and move forward with something. I am looking forward to hearing (reading) all your opinions on this matter! It could actually be very helpful having server ideas consolidated and centralized to one spot so they are harder to miss/forget. I definitely think that more open communication couldn't hurt, both between moderators<-->admin and staff<-->public. As far as moderation duties, there was discussion about re-enabling a moderator chat log that would allow moderators to handle a few more of the adminreqs that require culling the logs which can be quite time consuming sometimes. I need to track down that discussion and see where it went. I think it was broken during one of the updates and never got fixed? As far as responsibilities go, I would be fine letting a group of moderators handle SAL. I personally haven't been involved much besides just helping whoever may be running it as my schedule tends to be a little bit too flaky to commit to being around on a weekly basis. Moderators have been allowed to run arenas as far back as I can remember but I think that kinda got forgotten since few took initiative until recently. A question for the current sadmins: What do you feel is currently overwhelming you? What can you not handle and deliver promptly and efficiently? To have mods do some of the admin's job seem strange to me if they can handle it fine, although I think it's good that more people would be able to get involved. For me personally I started a new job that includes an hour+ commute each way right around the beginning of rev 26 which hasn't left much time do dedicate for admin responsibilities. I've done fairly well keeping caught up with everything but it hasn't left much time for me to respond, let alone play. I wouldn't complain having more time to actually dedicate to breaking and placing pixels. I agree with not having this turn into an extremely formal "have to be voted in", hierarchal group. The way I have envisioned it is, like you said, more of a voluntary thing. However, I do think having some sort of steady commitment from mods/players to it is essential. I would agree with you and mumberthrax that an semiformal group with some solid structure would be beneficial, but asking for a strict commitment can be off putting as life can change unexpectedly leaving more/less time to play than anticipated. djt832 Bumping for a Sadmin other than Mumber to respond Nice to see someone telling that Mumber guy what's what. :D 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djt832 Posted September 22, 2014 Report Share Posted September 22, 2014 Thanks for replying Beast! Now if we could only get that last Sadmin to put a word in... It could actually be very helpful having server ideas consolidated and centralized to one spot so they are harder to miss/forget. I definitely think that more open communication couldn't hurt, both between moderators<-->admin and staff<-->public. Communication can definitely be tough, but I think it would be a good start to establish more moderators<-->admin and staff communication. Im not sure what steps we could take to achieve this, maybe just an open thread in private mod chat. Again, nothing too formal, we don't need this feeling like a second job for anyone (unless you really love your first job). As for grouping together ideas, maybe lump them into an organized google doc? The results from surveys are easy enough to record. As far as moderation duties, there was discussion about re-enabling a moderator chat log that would allow moderators to handle a few more of the adminreqs that require culling the logs which can be quite time consuming sometimes. I need to track down that discussion and see where it went. I think it was broken during one of the updates and never got fixed? That would be nice! Keep us updated on that. I'm sure all of the moderators would be willing to take on some of that responsibility. As far as responsibilities go, I would be fine letting a group of moderators handle SAL. I personally haven't been involved much besides just helping whoever may be running it as my schedule tends to be a little bit too flaky to commit to being around on a weekly basis. Moderators have been allowed to run arenas as far back as I can remember but I think that kinda got forgotten since few took initiative until recently. I would be more than happy to help run SAL. I would not be able to do it solely on my own, as my schedule limits what times I would be able to host them. However, if we could get a group running and planning it, we could have a successful SAL this upcoming revision. Nice to see someone telling that Mumber guy what's what. :D Some has got to from time to time :D 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djt832 Posted September 25, 2014 Report Share Posted September 25, 2014 Bumping so this thread doesnt go stale, I really think we've come up with some ideas worth testing out here. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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