[PMC] Moderator Activity

[Guest]

We're approaching a staff clean-up soon. The gears are in motion in terms of preparing ourselves and this topic is a significant cog in that machine. Staff clear-ups will be quarterly, from when this one is completed and the entire process will be documented in the Mod Chat forum.

 

I'm here looking for feedback from anyone who can view this forum on your thoughts on what defines moderator activity. I would like to use feedback from this topic to detirmine how we filter people who are active and people who are inactive on the moderating team (we have a similar topic in the admin forum to address admin activity which is much further along).

 

Without question, there are two points that I feel are universally agreed upon:

• Anyone not logged in on Minecraft for four weeks or more will be moved to the inactive staff section on nerd.nu/staff
• We can make exceptions for activity if you inform us! Please start using the Mod Chat forum to relay these notices - There is a collective sticky post in there to use.

Here are the discussion points in my head currently, any feedback related to these are appreciated but if you have other points to share too, I will be interested to see your thoughts.

• If someone logs in for one day over the course of a four week period and completes a single modreq. Are they an active moderator - Is there a threshhold of modreqs completed that is expected of a person to be considered active?
• Moderators are primarily brought on to assist with modreqs upon each server. While there are secondary areas for moderation / participation, does this mean that someone not completing modreqs but moderating chat on the servers is active?

In a previous clean-up, several people who were clearly inactive as in not logged in for X weeks+ were approached to ask if they wished to stay on the moderating team. We took their word and we won't be doing so in future as this didn't address the activity issue, those people will be moved to the inactive staff section in future.

[Sir_Didymus]

If someone logs in for one day over the course of a four week period and completes a single modreq. Are they an active moderator - Is there a threshhold of modreqs completed that is expected of a person to be considered active?

 

 

I'd rather avoid a situation where I'm wondering if I should hold back from completing modreqs because there is another mod online who has yet to hit their threshold. I would prefer if it was not quantified, but rather a judgement call from the admins.

 

 

Moderators are primarily brought on to assist with modreqs upon each server. While there are secondary areas for moderation / participation, does this mean that someone not completing modreqs but moderating chat on the servers is active?

 

 

I'm not sure modreqs should be the only measure. Currently, it's fairly common to log on for numerous hours and see no new modreqs in that time frame i.e. it can be a bit subjective based on server, timezone, and time of year. I'd like to see some consideration of the secondary areas of participation.

[Silversunset01]

inb4 everyone fighting over flowreqs.

[Guest Former Staff]

Sir_Didymus, thank you. This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. I'll allow a little more time for other people to share their thoughts before I reply with a clearer definition of activity, based on the replies.

[MasterCommaThe]

How about, when modreq status is not enough, the original stats we consider for making them a moderator are reviewed. On creative we would consider, are they organizing community builds, making significant build contributions to other projects, or organizing mini-events (Speed Build)? 

As a moderator I sometimes devote a lot of time to building spawns and structures for future server maps (I think I spent an entire month building nothing but CTF stuff), off of our primary serers. I'm not really sure how/if you can measure activity on our planning servers. (<-- planning servers used to be the only ones with WE, and you know how much I love that.)

[Guest Former Staff]

I've just finished gathering data for the next staff clean-up and while I'll have a separate topic in the public Mod Chat forum documenting each step I've taken in terms of which data I've gathered and how I've used the data, I wanted to reply back here in a response to my initial discussion point based on the feedback.

 

I do have a list of names of those who have not logged into either of the three servers for the past four weeks, with one exception who has been spending their time working on the event server, all included will be moved to the inactive staff section, accounting for 24% of our current moderator list. I have checked each of these inactive people alongside our planned inactivity thread to see if there were any notifications of the inactivity. I'd like to stress that using this helps a lot.

 

From feedback earlier in this topic, I understand that a number of people would not like to see moderator activity measured purely on modreq completion statistics. Before I move forward any further, I would like to share some appraisal for everyone who has been contributing to the modreq queues we have had, thank you, together you're extremely effective. We're moving towards new revisions for creative and pve so there will be a surge of modreqs from their resets. Based on the last four weeks alone, 975 modreqs were handled by moderators, that splits to 451 (creative), 285 (pve), 239 (survival). The efforts of Bluuefuzzy, Sir_Didymus and Zburdsal have contributed towards closing 58% of those 975 modreqs.

 

The admin teams completed 616 modreqs in the same time period. Please, make your own "number of the beast" references at this point.

 

Following on from interesting statistics, in terms of average number of modreqs completed by moderators across each of the servers respectively over the last four weeks, I discovered the subsequent information: The average number of modreqs completed on creative, per moderator is 10, upon pve it is 6 and on survival it is 5. In the second draft of the Staff Activity policy, we talk about activity as such - "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)."

 

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect that active moderators meet that average number of modreqs closed on at least one server (over a four week period - inactivity posts factored in) as this would match the average time dedicated by people alongside us. Of all the current moderators, 35% have logged into the servers within the last four weeks and completed between 0 and less than the average number of modreqs on any of the three servers. My approach here would not be to name and shame individuals - Each person has contributed a great deal of time to the community, more-so in the past however I'd like to contact each person who fall into this group, individually to discuss the disparity of contributions, encourage people to use the inactivity topic and check in with people to see how they are finding the role.

 

It's been great to see people involved with other areas of moderating from working on the event spawn to taking the initiative to record videos for the community of our servers and I'm looking forward to sum fun across the next few months with you all.

 

Summary: Our current moderator list can be split into four groups of people (percentages to two decimal places).

• 35.55% are active moderators (meeting at least the average number of modreqs closed on one or more servers). Plan of action: Keep helping you guys out with the modreqs.
• 35.55% are semi-active (logged in within the last four weeks but with less than the average number of modreqs closed on any server). Plan of action: I'd like to check in with each person privately to see how they are doing.
• 24.44% are inactive. There are no log ins to any of the servers within the last four weeks. Plan of action: Move to the inactive staff section.
• 4.44% are exceptions - These people have been actively working on other areas of moderation - Such as assisting with special events / projects. Plan of action: Get in touch more often to see how these two are doing.

 

[buzzie71]

For me I don't like the idea of using modreqs completed as a major metric of mod activity or attaching a quota for them (though I would admit that for PvE the proposed average of six modreqs over four weeks sounds rather generous) - they are dependent on some factors that are beyond control of individual moderators:

• Modreq response time is highly variable and partly dependent on moderator.  Mandating mods to handle a certain amount per unit time is reasonable if all mods have a similar response time to modreqs; however, in the past some members of staff have become well known for consistent, extremely quick claiming of new modreqs.  Someone who logs in daily for long periods of time and is extremely quick at claiming modreqs would deny other mods the ability to handle them.  Historically, a frequent topic of banter in P mod chat is "<X> takes all the modreqs" (the moderator in question has changed over time), and while it is excellent for staff members to be so enthusiastic, I am less eager to see mods penalized for not finishing enough modreqs because someone else got there faster.
• The number of modreqs depends both on age of the revision as well as its gameplay.  The Civcraft rev of S (25?) featured plugins that were designed for self-policing by players, which (at least what I heard) resulted in fewer modreqs.  If gameplay ever switches to a mode where less staff assistance is required and there are fewer modreqs overall, either more mods fall below the set average of modreqs completed or the average needs to be revised down to compensate.  Likewise, an older revision usually leads to fewer players and fewer modreqs.

I think de-emphasizing modreq activity as a measure of staff activity is a good idea; I am more worried about the idea of quantifying it and the possibility of mods who are willing to fill modreqs but don't often run into the chance to handle them being classified as potentially inactive.

[Guest Former Staff]

I think de-emphasizing modreq activity as a measure of staff activity is a good idea; I am more worried about the idea of quantifying it and the possibility of mods who are willing to fill modreqs but don't often run into the chance to handle them being classified as potentially inactive.

 

Echoing Sir_Didymus' thoughts, it's good to see more people are on the same page.

[Silversunset01]

I agree - I would think that sort of metric would only be a concern if there are mods online with a queue building. But i know there have been plenty of times when i was on with 1 other mod and due to my amazing internet lag i wouldn't be able to claim *any* modreqs (by the time i'd see them in chat they'd already be filled). We just need to be careful we are taking that into consideration or else it may become more of an argument over reqs.

[nealsmith]

I believe it will be fairly hard to set modreqs as a base, it should be a factor though. I personally have had this subject close at hand.  I feel as though I might be a C+ mod since I am kind of vagrantly playing as of late.  this is due to work, health and family activity.  I have been through enough resets to value the need for mods at refresh and would plan to clear as much time as possible. I agree that activity, reqs, and overall review  should be components weighed.  I also think that new mods (and existing) should have knowledge of any expectations set prior to becoming ( or continuing to be a ) mod.

[redwall_hp]

It's also worth checking MC Bouncer and forum activity, as another major moderator duty is moderating chat. Sometimes modreqs will be sparse, as Sir Didy mentioned, but they may still be doing things like issuing warnings for chat conduct or contributing in other ways.