[PMC] New Policy: Inactive & Returning Staff

[Guest]

Edit==

Please Click here to go directly to the 2nd and final draft policy for the Inactive Staff section.

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Further below I'll have both the Returning Staff Policy and the Inactive Staff Policy for you to view and share feedback upon. We [head admins] have already discussed these and have them in our final draft format as we feel that these policies are fair, will allow us all to take action and above all this was all constructed with communication in mind.

 

The sooner we can put the finished policies into motion, the sooner our next staff clean-up can begin which I will ensure that tools are ready, in tandem for that moment. So please, ask any questions you may have below. This dual-policy isn't yet set in stone but we're happy with it so far.

 

Returning Staff Policy

Over the years, we have had a number of both inactive and past staff re-join the team to assist the community once more. With few exceptions we have always tended to add former staff back onto the moderating team at the very least. However it isn’t fair on the community to add people back onto staff who aren’t active.

We want to ensure that there is a clear process for returning staff and that it isn’t just a case of pals being added to sit in a position without the knowledge of how to help effectively.

 

If you’re looking to return to staff, please use the following steps:

 

• Contact any / all head admins to state your intent with assisting on staff once more. I would recommend a group forum pm because it is easier to track and has timestamps.

• Show that you’re involved in the community by being active for 28 days (for example: spend some time bringing up your usage on the servers from your current point).

• The head admins will communicate your desire to return to staff in the private mod chat forum, allowing up to one week for any potential feedback.

• After 28 days of engaging with the community, provided your activity is in-line with the kind of average levels that our other staff have on the servers, we’ll move forward with updating your permissions and providing re-training.

Re-training will vary per person depending on the length of time since last helping out on staff.

 

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Read the 2nd Draft here.

 

Inactive Staff Policy

 

With this Staff Inactivity Policy, we aim to address the activity issues experienced across staff for years by having a clear process documented for updating permissions of people deemed inactive.

 

Members of staff are active if they are fulfilling their responsibilities and investing an appropriate amount of time in doing so (on the same order of magnitude as their compatriots). While some may go above and beyond, taking the time to assist in areas not expected of them, we primarily expect each person on staff to tend to the tasks underlined in their current role.

 

Staff who significantly drop their activity levels below those of their counterparts over the course of a three week period will be deemed inactive; these will be moved to the inactive section on our website and notified of this change. Admins, due to their responsibilities toward greater involvement with the community, have a threshold of two weeks. Exceptions can be made for people who inform us of planned inactivity.

 

Staff members who plan long-term inactivity (four weeks or more) will be moved to the inactive staff section and have permissions updated to ensure that the current staff list accurately reflects personnel status.

 

Movement to the Past Staff section will occur after four weeks of time in the Inactive Staff category (in addition to standard resignations and removals).

For people who are completely inactive, we will send a forum pm informing them that their permissions will be updated to be moved to the inactive staff section and will be further moved to past staff one month later should they not wish to return to the staff team at that time. We cannot take people’s word that they will start to be active just because we have sent this pm, from our past experience, this just leads to our staff list remaining inactive.

To those staff who are active in the community but are not engaging with their responsibilities to a level similar to their counterparts then we will contact you privately to discuss options such as stepping down to take a break or finding out ways in which we can support you.

Edited August 4, 2015 by Guest
Added link the 2nd draft.

[Trooprm32]

So what about involuntary inactivity? Vacation time? Speaking as a Padmin, I wouldn't want to see TheRandomnatrix or Sapphric removed due to these two reasons respectively. This outline would do that, and I value their experience and wouldn't want to see them let go.

 

Is this activity you say strictly in-game activity? If so this would have decimated the head-admin team many times over.

[Guest Former Staff]

So what about involuntary inactivity? Vacation time? Speaking as a Padmin, I wouldn't want to see TheRandomnatrix or Sapphric removed due to these two reasons respectively. This outline would do that, and I value their experience and wouldn't want to see them let go.

 

Is this activity you say strictly in-game activity? If so this would have decimated the head-admin team many times over.

 

The policy does answer these questions. I'm going to reply back a little later to point them out more clearly.

[Guest Former Staff]

So what about involuntary inactivity? Vacation time? Speaking as a Padmin, I wouldn't want to see TheRandomnatrix or Sapphric removed due to these two reasons respectively. This outline would do that, and I value their experience and wouldn't want to see them let go.

 

 

Exceptions can be made for people who inform us of planned inactivity.

 

Staff members who plan long-term inactivity (four weeks or more) will be moved to the inactive staff section and have permissions updated to ensure that the current staff list accurately reflects personnel status.

 

For the example of Sapphric who is planning long-term inactivity for four weeks or more, we would be looking to move them to the inactive staff section to protect against any hostile logins and also to reflect the admins that are currently active. One discussion point we had on this type of scenario was to have an "On-leave" section added to the nerd.nu/staff page to be more distinct with staff who are inactive and those who are inactive but on vacation.

 

 

Is this activity you say strictly in-game activity? If so this would have decimated the head-admin team many times over.

 

 

Members of staff are active if they are fulfilling their responsibilities and investing an appropriate amount of time in doing so (on the same order of magnitude as their compatriots). While some may go above and beyond, taking the time to assist in areas not expected of them, we primarily expect each person on staff to tend to the tasks underlined in their current role.

 

For example, take myself. I was invited to join the head admin team to help handle a number of tasks from policies to leaks and staff management to communication. I would love to put time into creating a short-term event sometime in future by creating a map, builds and whatnot. If I were to pour all of my time into the event I'd like to create and neglect my responsibilities then you could say I was active but I wouldn't be doing the tasks asked and expected of me. This wouldn't be fair on the community, or the other head admins (and would also have a knock-on effect for other tasks).

 

If policies such as these help us to address admin activity and not just moderators (as has been a focus in the past), then we need to be a bit braver and stop holding onto positions if we're not fulfilling our responsibilities because that is one of the catalysts for this policy.

[Trooprm32]

Returning admins from inactivity or planned leave of absence, will they have to go through the moderator loop before rejoining the team? Will they be allowed to straight up rejoin the admin team?

[Guest Former Staff]

Returning admins from inactivity or planned leave of absence, will they have to go through the moderator loop before rejoining the team? Will they be allowed to straight up rejoin the admin team?

 

From a planned leave of absence (or unplanned - as long as it is communicated), that individual can return to their role. That said, this does bring into question multiple occasions of prolonged absence which can result in people sitting in admin positions but rarely contributing.

 

For former admins re-joining staff, it would be a very similar process of joining the moderating team first but now with the additional requirements to "prove" activity outlined in the returning staff policy. This also gives us as staff a chance to discuss them, should we have any concerns to raise, in the Mod Nomination forum.

[Trooprm32]

That said, this does bring into question multiple occasions of prolonged absence which can result in people sitting in admin positions but rarely contributing.

 

I agree that this has been a problem in the past.

 

For former admins re-joining staff, it would be a very similar process of joining the moderating team first but now with the additional requirements to "prove" activity outlined in the returning staff policy. This also gives us as staff a chance to discuss them, should we have any concerns to raise, in the Mod Nomination forum.

 

And I know it works differently for former admins, I'm content with how they are currently handled in regards to returning to staff.

 

Thank you for the response and answering my question.

[Guest Former Staff]

I agree that this has been a problem in the past.

 

And I know it works differently for former admins, I'm content with how they are currently handled in regards to returning to staff.

 

Yes, it's definitely been a problem in the past and as much as I'd like to see people focus on more important matters to them, it isn't fair on our community to have people rarely contributing.

 

In regards to how the process works differently for former admins, would you mind reminding me of that please? I'm thinking back to a couple of individuals who re-joined the staff team over the past few months but have joined as moderators and don't recall any other examples that are different.

[Trooprm32]

Yes, it's definitely been a problem in the past and as much as I'd like to see people focus on more important matters to them, it isn't fair on our community to have people rarely contributing.

 

In regards to how the process works differently for former admins, would you mind reminding me of that please? I'm thinking back to a couple of individuals who re-joined the staff team over the past few months but have joined as moderators and don't recall any other examples that are different.

 

Different as in different than inactive or on-leave admins, which you explained above. Former admins who have stepped down for whatever reason are dealt with in the same manner as former moderators.

[buzzie71]

I think this can be a dangerous idea:

 

• From the proposed policy it sounds like the heads are the sole judges of whether a staff member has demonstrated sufficient activity.  This would penalize admin groups who do considerably more internal discussion and planning which can be perceived as a lack of activity to anyone on the outside - on the other hand heads (who appear inactive to anyone outside but are clearly active internally) would not suffer from this.
• This policy potentially gives heads a mandate to remove staff members with little warning once the time is up.

I think the second point has been carried out before in the moving of moderators to inactive - which is honestly fair.  And so is the rest of the policy, and clarifications, as given here.  But I see a potential for abuse and conflict if this policy is not fairly carried out, or perceived to be so, because it does give heads more authority in internal server affairs (by giving them greater ability to remove server admins) - and I think everyone here knows my wariness about that.

 

I will also echo Troop's sentiment about Sapphric and TheRandomnatrix and add that I will not take kindly to any attempts to forcibly eject either of them, or otherwise make it overly difficult for them to return to their roles when they come back.

Edited July 18, 2015 by buzzie71

[Guest Former Staff]

I think this can be a dangerous idea:

 

• From the proposed policy it sounds like the heads are the sole judges of whether a staff member has demonstrated sufficient activity.  This would penalize admin groups who do considerably more internal discussion and planning which can be perceived as a lack of activity to anyone on the outside - on the other hand heads (who appear inactive to anyone outside but are clearly active internally) would not suffer from this.
• This policy potentially gives heads a mandate to remove staff members with little warning once the time is up

 

I do think it's more dangerous to let inactivity fester within the admin teams. This policy does go against the comfortable inactivity people have been involved with and will certainly help the head admins address it within ourselves, other admin teams and also provide a clearer process for inactive moderators too.

 

 

To those staff who are active in the community but are not engaging with their responsibilities to a level similar to their counterparts then we will contact you privately to discuss options such as stepping down to take a break or finding out ways in which we can support you.

 

For those staff who are more focused on internal discussion / planning for a period of time, yes, this may be perceived as inactivity from anyone not within that inner circle. We've already addressed this with more regular contact with admin teams to check up on how everyone is doing. If ever we had serious concern, then we would be approaching the individual to talk before any action is considered. Action that would be mutually agreed upon rather than imposed, similar to my recent contact with Smiler100, Sapphric & TheRandomnatrix, respectively.

[redwall_hp]

Staff who significantly drop their activity levels below those of their counterparts over the course of a three week period will be deemed inactive; these will be moved to the inactive section on our website and notified of this change. Admins, due to their responsibilities toward greater involvement with the community, have a threshold of two weeks. Exceptions can be made for people who inform us of planned inactivity.

 

 

That is incredibly short and, I must say, a terrible idea. By that standard, we'd have to remove most of the heads, padmins and the sole remaining sadmin. Hell, I was sick for three weeks that I certainly didn't plan on. Never mind that this is all a volunteer position, and having such high expectations is kind of absurd...especially given that the definition of activity is vague, and pretty hard to pin down at an admin level.

 

Can you, as a head admin, honestly judge the activity of...say...the padmins? The rev is fairly stale, and most of what they'll be doing is planning and dev stuff, which is all done behind your back. In their own IRC channel, private channels, who knows. They're fulfilling their duties, but it's not like they're hanging out in game and waiting for modreqs or whatever. Does that count as "active?" Most of them pop in and out of IRC and don't leave a client idling or use a bouncer. Are they inactive? I'd argue that reachability by other staff is a key point of activity.

 

How about techs? I guarantee that nobody outside of the tech team has a clue what goes on behind the scenes. You get a glimpse now and then, but only at the surface. We've got our own channel where we discuss things, and there's always something in development or maintenance of some sort to be done. But all that everyone else sees is superficial stuff, when someone needs permissions adjusted or some issue is raised on the Trello boards. And especially at that level, I don't want to be mucking around with revoking permissions over a minor absence. If c45y or Dumbo or whoever wants to take a break for a month, pulling their SSH key and crap would just be a bureaucratic waste.

 

And...well. How about those head admins? It's certainly hard to get a hold of them at times, and they have chronic activity problems. It's a bit hypocritical to talk about activity levels when the heads, of all the admin groups, have the worst reputation in that regard. It's possible it's exaggerated by the same issue as the techs (back-room activity being more important than what everyone sees), but reachability has been a huge problem in the past.

 

At a moderator level, I'd definitely rather have a surplus of moderators that have unknown activity and could come and go on their own instead of removing permissions on a very tight deadline. That will only create a shortage, when our less active ones might tire of Minecraft and not play for a few weeks, then come back on the fourth week. No sense in having to adjust permissions everywhere over and over again.

 

This is draconian and impractical. I hope I don't come off too strong here, but I think this will cause some serious problems, which will lead to a further shortage of moderators and create more issues at an admin level.

[Guest Former Staff]

Can you, as a head admin, honestly judge the activity of...say...the padmins? The rev is fairly stale, and most of what they'll be doing is planning and dev stuff, which is all done behind your back. In their own IRC channel, private channels, who knows. They're fulfilling their duties, but it's not like they're hanging out in game and waiting for modreqs or whatever. Does that count as "active?" Most of them pop in and out of IRC and don't leave a client idling or use a bouncer. Are they inactive? I'd argue that reachability by other staff is a key point of activity.

 

I answered this question in the post above you. :-P

 

 

For those staff who are more focused on internal discussion / planning for a period of time, yes, this may be perceived as inactivity from anyone not within that inner circle. We've already addressed this with more regular contact with admin teams to check up on how everyone is doing. If ever we had serious concern, then we would be approaching the individual to talk before any action is considered. Action that would be mutually agreed upon rather than imposed, similar to my recent contact with Smiler100, Sapphric & TheRandomnatrix, respectively.

 

 

 

How about techs? I guarantee that nobody outside of the tech team has a clue what goes on behind the scenes.

 

Yes, to some extent people do not see what goes on behind the scenes. However we were all added to our roles for a set of key responsibilities, for the Tech Admins, those tasks seem to be across your trello page(s) and that is what is expected of you for the most part. This would be a good way of measuring, to a degree, tech admin activity. However, similar to my response to Buzzie above, more frequent chats / meetings will help us to understand what is going on.

 

 

And...well. How about those head admins? It's certainly hard to get a hold of them at times, and they have chronic activity problems. It's a bit hypocritical to talk about activity levels when the heads, of all the admin groups, have the worst reputation in that regard.

 

This policy is not aimed at "other" admin teams, it is aimed at all staff, head admins and all. It would be hypocritical for us to not consider ourselves with this policy and a foolish mistake to ignore the issue of comfortable inactivity.

 

We aimed for a 3 week period of inactivity for moving moderators and 2 week period of inactivity for moving admins, given that admins have more responsibilities to fulfill. Which time-frame were you thinking would work better for either / or the moderator and admin teams?

[c45y]

Eh seems fine mostly, I'm glad to see that there is a clear requirement for admins to be contributing and not just keeping a seat warm.

 

Only real feedback would be to allow for a longer duration of inactivity on admin teams if the other members of that particular server admin team are all aware of the duration and comfortable with the time that a person will be absent.

[redwall_hp]

However we were all added to our roles for a set of key responsibilities, for the Tech Admins, those tasks seem to be across your trello page(s) and that is what is expected of you for the most part.

 

 

That's...not really the case. The majority of things aren't on Trello. They're quick things done on on a more ad hoc basis, upgrades and restructuring that are important to ensuring things run smoothly (but don't constitute new and shiny things or fixes to issues submitted), discussion of such things, etc.. Trello is mostly "things someone asked for" and not "things that ensure everything continues to run smoothly." (Nobody's going to make a Trello item for something they intend to do themselves over the next hour or ten minutes or whatever.)

 

The best people to judge inactivity is the teams themselves. Nobody's going to know better. If group X has concerns about the activity of member Y and desires outside involvement, then they should ask the heads. If they're all decidedly AWOL with no means of contact, then emergency intervention may be necessary. To use padmins as an example again, if they had inactivity problems, they should communicate that with the heads. That's all. No arbitrary time limits, no half-baked attempts to apply metrics to activity. The team in question will know if someone's fallen off the face of the earth, or if they're out for a reason, or whatever.

 

For moderators, the same way we've always done it works: just do a quarterly cleanup of the obviously inactive. It's far less work for everyone, conveniently in batches, and doesn't result in prematurely removing permissions only to have to re-add them two weeks later.

 

This policy is not aimed at "other" admin teams, it is aimed at all staff, head admins and all. It would be hypocritical for us to not consider ourselves with this policy and a foolish mistake to ignore the issue of comfortable inactivity.

 

 

I'm not saying it was. Just that the head admin activity issue needs to be fixed far more pressingly. Everyone else manages to move their inactive team members out and select new ones on a timely basis. (Except perhaps Survival these days. I have no idea what's going on with that mess. Apparently C45Y is running Survival now?) Yet we keep running into the problem of only one head admin being active for a long stretch. This is more or less a non-issue for everyone else.

 

My Proposal (Admins)

• Issues of staffing should be more or less left to the individual admin teams. They have the final say on who gets added or removed, but heads have veto rights on someone being made an admin. It's all on them to decide whether someone is being acceptably inactive or not. If an admin falls off the face of the earth or doesn't do anything at all for a month and a half without making it known that they'll be absent, they should make the problem known to the heads, who can officially reach out and figure out the inactive admin's intent. (A fully staffed server should be able to handle one admin taking an extended leave, and one more being less than active for a shorter period. That's why you have four of them.) It should be fully up to the server's admins, unless there are circumstances that dictate intervention.
• If a whole admin team more or less disappears (*cough* Survival *cough*) then the heads should take emergency action and intervene. This would be one such case of "extenuating circumstances."
• No arbitrary time periods. Each server has different activity requirements, depending on where they are in the rev cycle. As long as things are getting done and nobody's getting the work dumped on them exclusively, we're good.
• Additionally, I have no problem with there being "inactive techs." They're a rare and important resource, and I'd rather keep someone like smiler100 or LadyCailin around, even if they aren't "active." They may resume being active, and even if not, they have knowledge of the workings of things, and we may have things to ask them. (We keep LadyCailin and muldoonaz around in the tech channel exactly for that reason, even though they officially stepped down and no longer has access to things. That, and because drunk Cailin is amusing. :P) If they want to step back their activity indefinitely and come back when it suits them, I have zero problem with them remaining "on staff" for that time.

 

My Proposal (Moderators)

• Quarterly cleanup of obviously inactive moderators. Do a sweep and reach out to the ones who are barely around and ask their intent, and flat out remove the ones who haven't logged in at all in that quarter. Modreq and forum activity should be considered as well, though not to the point of ignoring non-request-based moderation. (Half of moderating is, well, moderating discussion. Not just flowing water.) But in saying that, time spent in-game vs. time spent moderating should be considered in cases like gabe/minotaur/geb/whateverhisnameisnow, with excessive time in game and a small percentage of reqs completed.
• Once a list is compiled of who to remove, pass it on to the techs so it can be done in one batch.
• A planned inactivity thread where moderators can post "yeah, I have finals for the next month" or whatever as insurance against being removed in one of those batches, and so we have some idea of why they're inactive for more than a few weeks.

[SwitchViewz]

I like the returning staff policy but I have some concerns about the inactive policy part.

 

As mentioned above, a 2 week period of inactiveness seems incredibly short. We would be spitting out staff left and right if this were put into place. 

 

One of my biggest concerns about the policy above is that it in no way defines what the responsibilities of certain staff are and the activity levels required for them. Such as:

Server Admins: Must be active in game regularly on there server, must be actively completing modreqs and adminreqs

Tech Admins: Must be actively contributing to a project, must be active on Trello

Now those are just examples, but it defines what each group should be doing and where they should be active. Right now it just says "as long as they do there responsibilities and are not inactive for 2 weeks." What are the responsibilities and what should they be doing? What are we considering "inactive?"

[schererererer]

These are some good critical points being made here - I'm definitely re-examining the proposed policy with them in mind. I think the biggest weakness of this is that the "exceptions clause" is understated - the only case I really see the inactive staff policy muscle being fully flexed is if a staff member has vanished without a trace or any communication for (n) weeks. In my mind, as long as they've given a heads up, they can just hold in stasis until they return (as long as their fellows can hold up the fort while they're out, of course). We could add something about communication (or attempting to communicate) with the person in question before making any changes, but this would just provide us with more information to make a decision.

 

With regards to the threshold, yes, arbitrary time limits have the weakness of not reflecting real activity needs, but the current situation is pretty subjective - the only guideline is "absent 1-2 months or so", which has allowed some mods to show up briefly every month or two and retain their powers, leaving the mod list plumped relative to the actual situation (broadly causing underestimation of the need for new staff). If we can keep on top of accurately tracking the demand for additional mods (by time zone, etc. is even more beneficial), this actually shouldn't be that much of an issue.

 

On the subject of head admins, I think we're keeping on top of that pretty well, especially compared to nearly the entirety of nerd.nu's past. Recently, jchance stepped down precisely because he felt like he was becoming too absentee, and we are / have been bringing aboard new active people like Barlimore. The last time I was online (two days ago) there were three of us ingame doing things, in addition to the daily (or more often) policy discussions all of us are involved in. I absolutely agree that admin activity can't be measured by ingame/forum stuff only - which requires at the very least checking in with admin teams before making any changes. Redwall's thought on admin teams being the best judge of each others' activity is a good one - I wouldn't be averse to codifying it a joint decision between heads and the respective sub-admin-team (at the very minimum trying to check in with the vanished admin and talking it over with the rest of their sub-admin-team).

 

Regarding inactive techs, I personally don't have any problem with them on the roster to help out and provide advice when they can, but we need to be able to realize when we need new techs and act on that. Inactive techs typically aren't able to help as much in picking out new candidates for tech since they aren't really engaged with the community enough to know who is trustworthy and knowledgeable enough for the job. Finding new techs is already difficult enough. We've historically had 5-6 techs on board at any given time, but the plausible situation of having 10 techs on the roster and still being unable to get everything done that we need is unappetizing to me.

 

The responsibilities of different staff types were delineated by WickedCoolSteve in a forum post some time back - this isn't anything official, but we've returned to it as a guide of sorts for a while. Something more official could form the core of a "constitution" (along with codifying the ethos of our community, financial setup, etc.), but that's for another post.

 

Overall, redwall's proposal is effectively what we have now, but with allowances for inactive techs. I think there are a few too many issues with the current operation, but I think we could modify the (original) proposal to lengthen the threshold times some, involve server/tech admins more in the decision, and be more clear about the "exceptions" really being more frequent than the rule.

[redwall_hp]

In my mind, as long as they've given a heads up, they can just hold in stasis until they return (as long as their fellows can hold up the fort while they're out, of course).

 

 

I think that's the biggest thing everyone wants to see here, basically. That, and not having any changes made without the agreement of the server admins. I'll agree that a harder policy is needed for the moderator group (we do have a lot of basically inactive mods who just pop in to remain "active") though any system can be exploited in such a manner. I think we can get away with a more flexible system for admins, though.

 

Inactive techs typically aren't able to help as much in picking out new candidates for tech since they aren't really engaged with the community enough to know who is trustworthy and knowledgeable enough for the job.

 

 

While it's true that they can't make a blind assessment of trustworthiness or capability, they can still be involved in the interview process. We don't let anyone in until they've passed a technical interview to assess skills directly. (Deaygo and LadyCailin asked me a pile of technical questions and had me explain the workings of a messy bash script Cailin had stripped the comments from, for example.) Nobody gets in without proving they're capable, even if there's a lot of "on the job learning." Cailin has expressed interest in remaining involved with the interview process, even though she's in the aforementioned state of "stepped down, but still hangs around anyway."

[SwitchViewz]

I think that there is a important part that is being left out of this policy: in-game and mumble activity. This doesn't really apply to techs, but it does to the head admins. They are the leaders of this community and should be regularly involved. They should be active in-game and mumble, communicating with the community and being involved very often.

 

I don't think that is really the case at the moment. In-game activity is good for most of the heads except for a few (Cyotie911...) but I rarely see heads hanging out in mumble just chatting or even idiling. We are expanding to other games now, simply playing minecraft isn't going to cut it. You need to interact with the other players of the community that don't play minecraft. 

 

In my mind this is how I would lay out a policy for head admin activity:

• Make a appearance in mumble regularly to hang out with community members
• Have a fair amount of playtime across all servers, not just minecraft
• Active and communicating in IRC and the forums
• Other head-adminy-things I may not know about

If they can not meet the majority of those points above then they should not be leading the community. We can not have people sitting in a position, especially a community leadership position, and not interacting with the community.

[c45y]

I think that there is a important part that is being left out of this policy: in-game and mumble activity. This doesn't really apply to techs, but it does to the head admins.

 

I think this applies every bit as much to us as any other admin team. We have a lot of work to complete that doesn't require us to be in game, but again so do head admins and even server admins during revision preparation. Being seen and interacting with the community more would go a long way to mending many players negative opinions of this team.

[schererererer]

...but I rarely see heads hanging out in mumble just chatting or even idiling. We are expanding to other games now, simply playing minecraft isn't going to cut it. You need to interact with the other players of the community that don't play minecraft.

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to idle in mumble - the 10% or less of my time spent on nerd.nu that lets me play in game is mostly multitasking for me and even then I often cannot be in mumble (unless I'm muted and deafened). If I were to sit and chat in mumble, it would either be a paltry showing or come at the expense of administration stuff that takes up the other 90% of my nerd.nu time. If this becomes a requirement, I'd probably just have to step down because I can't do it.

Regarding other games, sure I'd love to try them out, but keeping up a high level of activity on every game and server we will have seems excessive. That's a recipe for burnout.

[Trooprm32]

I don't think it should be necessary to use mumble all the time. Most of the time there's no one I care to talk to anymore... or I'd rather spend my time watching movies or listening to music.

[Guest Former Staff]

In my mind this is how I would lay out a policy for head admin activity:

• Make a appearance in mumble regularly to hang out with community members
• Have a fair amount of playtime across all servers, not just minecraft
• Active and communicating in IRC and the forums
• Other head-adminy-things I may not know about

If they can not meet the majority of those points above then they should not be leading the community. We can not have people sitting in a position, especially a community leadership position, and not interacting with the community.

 

I'm going to respond in bullet points to reflect each of your own points.

 

• Similar to Schererererer, I find that working through tasks, receiving and participating in communication through channels such as IRC and using mumble are unworkable. Earlier today I had to completely mute and deafen myself so I could focus. Personally, I think this came across a little rude to people who I was in the channel with. That said, having more head admins / admins attending fireside chats would be great. It's an hour or so out of your week to chat with the community.
• I'd like to think that I have quite a lot of time for the community to spare, however I don't think that I could divide up my time between admin tasks and playing to this extent. I would end up playing games for the sake of appearances. Respectfully, I say no thank you, I play to have fun and I'm fortunate that the games our community has / is expanding into appear to be games that I enjoy.
• I think we're doing pretty well in terms of IRC and forum communication, overall. I completely agree that this is core to our role because we need to be available.

While I agree with the spirit of your suggestion, I do not think it is feasible. I'm quite certain that I wouldn't fit the bill for those requirements.

[SwitchViewz]

I'm not asking for all of you to sit in mumble for 3 hours a day and talk to people, but making absolutely no appearance is a problem. If my PC is on then I am in mumble and I rarely ever see any of the heads talking with people. Are you guys aware there is a group of people that play CSGO together every so often? Or perhaps that another group plays Civ regularly? The only heads I've seen within the past month in mumble just chatting are Mrloud15 and Barlimore.

 

That is the problem I have. You guys are not making the time to interact with the community outside of minecraft or other channels, in some cases not even minecraft. You are leaders of this community, how can you not make time to hang out in mumble or play a CSGO match or two? I understand you guys are busy and your time is limited. I'm not asking for you guys to preform miracles but I want to see something. Some effort to interact with the community outside of minecraft.

 

That's why I gave just an example of a policy I'd write. To hold you guys accountable at least somewhat.

[Guest Former Staff]

I'm not asking for all of you to sit in mumble for 3 hours a day and talk to people, but making absolutely no appearance is a problem. If my PC is on then I am in mumble and I rarely ever see any of the heads talking with people. Are you guys aware there is a group of people that play CSGO together every so often? Or perhaps that another group plays Civ regularly? The only heads I've seen within the past month in mumble just chatting are Mrloud15 and Barlimore.

 

That is the problem I have. You guys are not making the time to interact with the community outside of minecraft or other channels, in some cases not even minecraft. You are leaders of this community, how can you not make time to hang out in mumble or play a CSGO match or two? I understand you guys are busy and your time is limited. I'm not asking for you guys to preform miracles but I want to see something. Some effort to interact with the community outside of minecraft.

 

That's why I gave just an example of a policy I'd write. To hold you guys accountable at least somewhat.

 

Mrloud and I joined the last Civ V game set up. I think we're making a good effort to spend time outside of the head admin bubble to engage with the community. Could we do more? Yes. Though I think your expectations are unrealistic.