Community members not commenting on staff apps

General Policy Feedback
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I’ll be the one to bite the hook today. :fishing_pole_and_fish:

Transparency and feedback from a community who has a lot of different viewpoints is in my opinion what keeps a management team away from a simple echo chamber. My point here is that I think that to remain unbiased and fair about who gets to manage and moderate this said community is to allow the opinions of the fellow members underneath. Having to DM someone privately doesn’t cut it as your point can be slapped on the side and it removes the whole transparency people has fought for since forever.

Staff members aren’t omnipotent, some of them already admitted to not liking/playing the game as much as before and being out of touch with the playerbase can lead to some rather heavy blunders when the only way of basing your judgement is from a text someone can write and tidy up. To atleast back up my claim, I’ll give some of the recent examples I could witness. There are multiple old ones that could be named but this thread isn’t aimed at pointing all the admin drama that ever happened but rather to make sure those do not happen again by having a true general opinion before choosing people that are apt at having power in their hands. All of the examples will not have any name of the involved people, as I said before, I am not aiming for this thread to be a rock throwing gallery and I’m using those few examples to back my argument.

  • Recently during a CO application, two well known staff members were calling out the people of the community for denying the said applicant. One of them called the opposing people “silly” and that the applicant should already have the said WL. The other one mentioned how, if they were still with their full power, the applicant would have already gotten the WL only from their judgement. The mention was finally modified once the community pointed out that this applicant had said some very alarming death threat toward other members of the community. I am still unsure if the first mentioned staff knows about it.

  • A second recent example would be, inside a moderator application, a member of the staff team admitted of having glaring issues before still getting put up as moderator and using that argument stated that it’s only fair that an applicant could also have some. I did some digging as to be sure of the facts before I ramble and the said staff member old application was only accepted because no one was voting and, trusting only their judgement, a higher up got them in. I personally believe that this form of bias isn’t good for any side as it resulted with some eventful moments during which a clear lack of judgement was shown. I will not give more details as to not derail further away, cat got my tongue.

I do not think this corporate larping will do any good, SS13 is a community based game and I think the best people that knows who shouldn’t be over anyone’s head are the members of the population who interact alot with eachothers. There’s already an unhealthy line between staff members and the community, I’d rather have it heal up than worsening. The format of interview isn’t a bad thing, excluding the valid points of the people is. I am all in for obligating people to come up with concise paragraph stating why x person is apt or not instead of memeing. It is infact, very easy to spot who should be reconsidered when their application gets no vote since no one can vouch if they’ve made their proof, or if it’s simply a hot potato. Re-opening those public opinions at a later date still means that there’s a gap in which those mentioned blunders be seen having new repercussions.

I already know that this mere forum post will not achieve much and I don’t even know if it has any chance at staying alive, I atleast wanted to say what I thought about it before it simply gets forgotten. I still demand to anyone replying not to fling garbage at anyone, to not peanut post with useless drama and to simply discuss about your point of view on the matter. No baiting, no insults, stay civil.

This server is of course totally in Frozen’s hands and as such I am willing to retract this thread if the host and only him is the one behind these decisions. The one who pays the bills always has the last word :moneybag:.

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did you want this to be in Policy Feedback btw?

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Oh yeah sure, no idea it existed thanks harry! :slightly_smiling_face:

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In the case of the first example, where some evidence exists that disqualifies a candidate, Scarlet SPECIFCALLY told you to go to her or anyone in management by extension directly. You still have the option to present such issues, you don’t even have to go to Scarlet if you don’t trust her to handle mod applications responsibly. The community has n

You are going to have to provide some actual names and situations in your second example, also some concrete evidence to back your claim up, because I have no idea what you’re even talking about, sorry.

Yo are clearly misunderstanding the message, or deliberately misrepresenting it with some weak conjecture.

And this is, in short, why community feedback on mod apps has limited effectiveness. Dealing with 2-3 posts like the above is essentially time wasted for everyone involved.

You are also making a gigantic leap of logic if you are assuming that Scarlet posted it without telling everyone else first, which is what you seem to be implying by your argumentum ad frozen at the end.

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Thank you for your early reply.

“In the case of the first example, where some evidence exists that disqualifies a candidate, Scarlet SPECIFCALLY told you to go to her or anyone in management by extension directly. You still have the option to present such issues, you don’t even have to go to Scarlet if you don’t trust her to handle mod applications responsibly. The community has n”

As you said yourself, Scarlet specifically told us to go to her. As I also specifically said in my own text: “Having to DM someone privately doesn’t cut it as your point can be slapped on the side and it removes the whole transparency people has fought for since forever.” It was also stated to dm scarlet directly.

“You are going to have to provide some actual names and situations in your second example, also some concrete evidence to back your claim up, because I have no idea what you’re even talking about, sorry.”

Having to provide some actual names is exactly what I said I wouldn’t do, as this post isn’t to shame anyone behavior nor is it to light any drama. There’re enough hints for anyone to know exactly what I’m talking about and to be honest, the fact that you have no idea is quite alarming to me. I can share with you a part of the approval text I have mentioned in the previous example as you can probably link everything with it and you seem to believe I am making things up. “I know you well enough to know you’ll do fine. Application accepted.” This should proves enough without me having to throw anyone under the bus. Again, those examples simply served as to back up my argument, which still exists if you choose to totally disregard the said examples.

“Yo are clearly misunderstanding the message, or deliberately misrepresenting it with some weak conjecture.”

Accusing me of misunderstanding the message or doing weak conjunctures is the type of remarks I’ve clearly said not to make, please do be careful as I intend for this thread to remain as neutral as possible without any rock throwing.

“And this is, in short, why community feedback on mod apps has limited effectiveness. Dealing with 2-3 posts like the above is essentially time wasted for everyone involved.”

Again, the passive aggressiveness of that remark has no place in such thread. I took the time to elaborate clearly my point so that anyone could discuss about the matter at hand. I am not obligating you to respond to this thread, if you do not want to involve yourself in what you believe is a waste of time simply do not. There is no need to undermine one’s effort at solving a believed issue simply because you believe in the opposite. Please refer to this previous line: “simply discuss about your point of view on the matter. No baiting, no insults, stay civil.”

“You are also making a gigantic leap of logic if you are assuming that Scarlet posted it without telling everyone else first, which is what you seem to be implying by your argumentum ad frozen at the end.”

I didn’t thought that this line out of every others would be the subject to scrutiny. This was more of a wink to Frozen, acknowledging the right for him to shut this thread, and myself, as he is the one with the upmost power. You can totally ignore it if you want, it isn’t an argument nor is it implying anything. You have the right to draw those conjectures but I also have the right to deny them existing, which is what I am doing. The only leap I’m trying to make is crossing that weird border the community seems to have when talking about the staff team.

For anyone else that would like to discuss about it, please do read the full contain of my argument as I do not intend of repeating myself over and over again on things I’ve already stated. Thank you.

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I think it is a good idea for the community to be able to comment and pose questions on moderator applications. Within reason. Just moderate the thread if people are not giving substantive feedback. That is the best solution. Moves like this feel like a step back.

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Transparency should be in all things that don’t compromise the security or integrity of the game, and players should absolutely get a vote in who is going to be upholding server standards.

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Correct take.

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Personally, the reason I don’t comment on the apps is because I don’t know anyone applying. You have to think, of all the people who play CM13 each week, a fraction are active in discord. An even smaller fraction of that have overlap with the people in their time zone. A fraction of the people active in discord, in your time zone, post on the forum. Of that fraction, who are active in discord and the forums in your time zone, how many would you be able to form a cohesive opinion about, and of that pie, how many are going to apply for staff? We’re at that community size where it’s hard to get to know people unless you have some meaningful interaction with them. Shouting into the LSD like void of #last-round-chat as the scroll of colors and names wash over you is not exactly conducive to forming relationships.

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Check this:

We trust the common community population to comment on CO apps, a role which, if given to the wrong person, can grief an entire round for 70% of the server population.

We don’t trust the common community population to comment on Staff apps, a position which, if given to the wrong person, can grief an entire round for 100% of the server population.

Hmmm.

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Big agree

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Heya so I’m the new moderator manager for anyone who doesnt know yet.
And since I’m in charge of moderator applications these days I can just say how I feel about community feedback I guess, since this policy feedback thingie got semi-revived anyways.

I appreciate people wanting to speak their mind about stuff and I do think non-staff commenting on an app can be useful sometimes. So consider this your go ahead, its fine if you reply to mod applications as a non staff member.

But I don’t really have any use for responses that are just “+1 cool guy” or “-1 fuck you. You played one round of MP and I hate you”. If you actually have constructive feedback then it can be really good to hear it, but someone telling me that they like or dont like a person doesnt help me in judging whether or not someone would make a good staff member.
The same goes for hammering the same point home that someone else brought up. If someone comments saying “I’ve only seen you on the server four times during the last 5 months, and every time you were getting arrested by MPs while yelling LRP stuff.” that is really good to know. But I dont need 5 people repeating it afterwards.

I’m also going to sound mega elitist, and I realize that, but sometimes community members dont know what they’re talking about when it comes to staff applications, so I will almost always give more weight to staff responses compared to responses by community members. Usually its caused by not seeing all of the behind the scenes stuff and that causes people to care about certain attributes of a staff candidate way too much or way too little. So while I do appreciate the feedback dont be totally surprised if I just dismiss some feedback outright.
And for that I’m sorry but yeah thats just the way it is. So I’m not going to pretend that that isnt the case.

Also just to address that stuff from like 4 months ago now lol.
A lot of “issues” brought up by people can be just based on hearsay/wrong impressions and really easily devolve into just straight up character assassination.
If someone has a genuine concern that goes beyond someone’s conduct on the server/discord/forum then I really do want to know. But I would like to know via PMs so I can actually go out and verify if its actually the case or if it is just someone who heard something somewhere and is repeating wrong information/slander.
I get that that might not feel totally transparent, but I’m just gonna have to ask people to trust me when I say that I do actually look into every single issue someone brings up. I pinkie promise I dont ignore them.


And just to get it out there. I REALLY dont like people being unreasonable toxic/mean to people. So if you are planning to just yell at someone and try to drag their application through the dirt to kill all their motivation of ever becoming a staff member or if you’re trying to ruin their reputation and sabotage their application just because you dont want them being a staff member, I will just straight up delete the response and genuinely consider giving you a forum ban along with blacklisting you from becoming CM staff. At least during my tenure as mod manager.
I really do believe in a positive atmosphere when it comes to people volunteering their time to help make CM even better. And while its not really part of this policy feedback discussion I figured I’d just throw it out there since I’m already talking about what I think of community feedback on staff apps anyways.



Anyways TLDR:
I appreciate community feedback if its constructive, has substance and isn’t repeating the same stuff that other people already mentioned.
I will totally ignore the popular opinion sometimes since people dont always know what they’re talking about if they havent been staff, or have been gone from the staff team for a while. (I know it sounds elitist and pretentious trust me, but thats just the way it is sorry!)
If you have genuine issues with someone outside of their conduct on the CM server or in the discord reach out to me, dont just toss it into the application reply.

And if you’re ever considering being a toxic prick in the staff application replies think again. I will be extremely upset with you and at the minimum take down your response. But most likely I will take further action.

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