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Alright then, how about this? DM/DL ____ says "I don't see you on servers very often", so the appropriate response is "Oh, well then screw it, I quit"?

How about instead you find that higher up in a game on our servers and join it and maybe play with them a bit? You know, show them you're alive? Do this a few times and "I don't see you" becomes "Hey, you're pretty active!"

 

Standing out doesn't mean wearing a lime green Scout set and hitting people with a pan, it means showing a lot of initiative and potential with being staff. When the time comes for promo/demo, staff would be able to say "Hey, you know Mod ____? They do a really good job, they're active, and they're super mature, we should promote them"

No that's not what I'm saying D: I'm saying what I think she means, not what I mean D:

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Everyone knows I love putting in my post on controversial threads!

 

I'm not quoting anything because then I will have a cancerous time editing down the pieces I want to respond to for everyone. Since clearly @Ms.Spooks will not be responding and or reading, I don't feel like this is directed at her more so at others who are saying "this is 100% true! omg xg sucks!"

 

  • A piece of advice I was given was "Keep your supervisors accountable, especially when it comes to potential promotions to a position of leadership. But do not pester them with constant nagging about said promotions" Basically saying every once in a while (2 or more promotion cycles in the case of xg and being on the internet, longer in the case of real life), ask a few questions about it and see what kind of constructive feedback can be garnered. but if you are asking about it every other day or even 1 a week, the thoughts behind your application/request will gradually (or quickly) go from "this person wants to be promoted/do more" to "this person is needy/demanding/needs to get over themself.
    • Don't be discouraged when you are not promoted as quickly as you think you should, there are a lot of factors that come into the minds of those responsible for the promotions, be it an internet community, or a workplace.

    [*]Staff are volunteers not lackeys, yes this is true, but as staff even on a volunteer basis, you are expected to do the job that you agreed to do. I can volunteer to rebuild my brother/sisters master bedroom shower for them, and they will expect that I complete the task of rebuilding their shower, and that it is completed correctly, all the pipes connected, all the water working, and that on the outside there is no discernible error that looks completely awful. they also would expect that on the inside I haven't done anything that will break under normal wear and tear conditions in a less than average timespan, as well as not do anything that makes a hassle for repair during special circumstances. If I were to not complete the rebuild, or do a pretty shitty job at rebuilding it, then they would be rightfully pissed. likewise, if I am asking them for food/beer/to dog-sit while I do it, they would rightfully expect that my standard is of a better job. (this sounds confusing but the point behind it is that if you volunteer to do something, expect to be held accountable to it, and if you want to be given a title for it, expect to be expected to do more.)

    [*]Transparency is necessary, however there are some limits. Promotions were something I used to think "oh why dont they just tell me what i need to do to be promoted" but that is a very backwards ideology, something I learned is that if you want the position of leadership then show some leadership, take the initiative to mentor newer mods or explain why something is against rules/what they are to newer players. for those that I would promote back in the day, I based it off of a few things: are they active (dont have to be the most active person, but not have noticeable gaps of inactivity), do they have any bans on record for major violations (banned a couple hours for spam is no big deal, contrary to the popular belief that staff have to be perfect and can never break a single rule, shit happens), does the community respect them

    • more detail on that last one: Does the community respect you? I did not necessarily want staff the community liked, I wanted someone they respected. If the person is a people pleaser and sort of a push over, how can I trust them to maintain the servers/rules with integrity if they just want everyone to like them? People typically dont like being banned and they dont like the people who ban them. I wanted people who the community could trust and respect their word, that the community knew that this person knew what he was talking about when it came to the rules, and upkeep of the server.

    [*]Witnesses do matter, and a staff witness does also matter. but there are some issues with that which I have said previously. If the staff are witnessing something, why are they not dealing out the appropriate form of punishment for it? Witnesses come in and they can +1 or -1 all they want for ban req/protest etc. and that matters, they see this person doing x all the time. but unless there is evidence, it is a case of he said she said. again, the "staff witness" should have dealt with the issue at hand as it happened. (exception: staff witness observed x freekill, and appropriately slayed and warned. observed it again, teamswapped. nothing else happens. player again is caught doing this, and a ban request with proof is made by a non-staff player and they throw out their experience, typically this would lead to a more severe form of punishment than a slap on the wrist/1 day ban from that post. but remember this "staff witness" has followed the proper procedure of actually taking action on what they have seen as per their role, and it is documented in our bans)

    [*]Staff shouldn't be jumping over the other to show their e-penis. if someone is clearly handling it, let them handle it and go on and enjoy your time on the server or do some other staff tasks (like watching other things going on in the server). This is also an issue of staff communication, back in the old days, we were all on TS because that was expected that if staff were on server we were to be on a voice channel. (it didnt have to be the TF2 JB1 channel on TS, but some available channel of sorts) and we all talked to eachother, we typed in admin chat all the time (there were some days depending on who was on that you couldn't press Y and not see some form of admin chat). we let each other know "hey I'll take care of X" or "I'm giving X a ban for this" and nobody else jumped over them because they were informed of what was happening. nowadays, I haven't seen really any of the staff on Discord except for the DM/DLs (and this has been a problem for years now, especially in regards to the tf2 division unfortunately. no offense, but you guys dont make active efforts to communicate outside of the forums and your friends)

    [*]As for the +1 0 -1 and it means you dont get promoted, like @Aegean said, there are times where the response is "i'm not for this, but if you are all down with it, then go ahead." having a single negative remark doesn't mean that it immediately is trashed. it just means that the person has concerns for X Y Z and they want them to be known before a final choice is made. There are also times where there are several negative remarks but only 1 positive and that positive is very huge (and the negatives are over petty/misguided reasons) [example: Someone was previously promoted on my final decision as a DL, where my DMs had given reasons not to but after having a chat with them they came to the realization that their reasonings were driven by their own personal issues with something that was said/done previously and were willing to give it a shot, even though they both still did not think person x should be promoted they respected my thoughts, and gave it a chance.]

    [*]Nobody is entitled to a higher position because they have been here longer. There is no clear path to mod/admin/dm/dl other than be active and a positive role model. There will always be less and less positions the higher you go. and whether you have been there for 7 years, or 7 months, both people have equal opportunity at a position based on their skill, integrity, knowledge, and ability to communicate.

Thanks for the sick read friendos. There is never going to be a TL;DR on anything like this. Take the time to read it and let it sink in, there is no short version of it.

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  • A piece of advice I was given was "Keep your supervisors accountable, especially when it comes to potential promotions to a position of leadership. But do not pester them with constant nagging about said promotions" Basically saying every once in a while (2 or more promotion cycles in the case of xg and being on the internet, longer in the case of real life), ask a few questions about it and see what kind of constructive feedback can be garnered. but if you are asking about it every other day or even 1 a week, the thoughts behind your application/request will gradually (or quickly) go from "this person wants to be promoted/do more" to "this person is needy/demanding/needs to get over themself.
    • Don't be discouraged when you are not promoted as quickly as you think you should, there are a lot of factors that come into the minds of those responsible for the promotions, be it an internet community, or a workplace.

Yeah, I definitely agree. It's such a shame though because a lot of people were getting very desperate and at points malicious when they were rooting for @Ms.Spooks to get promoted. I can't imagine how annoying that would have been. It's completely fine to do recommendations but I could see a lot of people going so over the top and to say things like "this clan is fucking stupid" and "are we fucking serious" when promo/demo comes out and said person doesn't get promoted. This isn't a shot at anyone, but it would be nice to see some support that doesn't bother the higherups. It felt like a similar situation to the whole "tatost for admin" thing that lots of people kept being extremely obnoxious about

 

I think you pretty much nailed everything though

Edited by Kypari (see edit history)

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Now while this thread seems to have left the impression on some of you guys that it's not much more than a rant for not being promoted, I strongly disagree for the fact that she actually provided what she thought was wrong within this community in detail, which I genuinely find to be admirable, and while there are certain points I respectfully disagree with, there are some I actually actually agree with as opposed to some people here, which I'll now leave my response to, without getting into too much detail, from not any up-to-date experiences but rather experiences I've had when i was active in the TF2 division.

 

Also, maybe this is a hint for a staff structure reform? Either that or clean up some (potential) grey areas.

I think this is what is needed to be accomplished, I've always felt like there is something that just doesnt work with our current system of staff ranking, one major problem imo which creates a lot of bitter feelings (as shown in the quote below) in especially mods and pmods is HOW the pmod/mod/admin system is being used.

 

1. Staff are volunteers not lackeys

This "do more" mentality and backwards logic of having more mods than admins is part of a huge issue that doesn't respect your staff equally. despite all staff volunteering their time and efforts to improve the servers and the community. Treating admin as some mystical, magical, special role that's Juuust out of reach feels really really shitty for all the mods who have to work harder than other staff to prove themselves.

One solution i've always had in mind for this and still support is that pmod and mod should be used as what they were intended initially to be used as, which is where the Mod and in this case Probationary Mod ranks are purely to observe someone's qualifications for being a staff member before making them an admin.

Which would mean that there should be more admins than mods, and while I feel like long-time mods really have no reason to stay as mods, I'm still uncertain as to whether or not this would possibly cause problems, and how so.

 

And another solution which could be deemed a bit too excessive would be to have official sub-divisions as in having a DL for a certain server for example, and while this may sound like it'd be unnecessary, I feel like it could show some real positive outcomes. As people have already mentioned in this thread, one problem with the TF2 division is that there are higher ups who don't get on each and every server and know everyone in those servers, or at least nowhere nearly as well as they do on the servers they actually are regulars on. But of course this is just an idea, and I think it'd be both fun to implement this and it could potentially solve a bunch of core problems some people face within our community.

 

does the community respect them, Does the community respect you? I did not necessarily want staff the community liked, I wanted someone they respected. If the person is a people pleaser and sort of a push over, how can I trust them to maintain the servers/rules with integrity if they just want everyone to like them? People typically dont like being banned and they dont like the people who ban them. I wanted people who the community could trust and respect their word, that the community knew that this person knew what he was talking about when it came to the rules, and upkeep of the server.

Also, this I completely agree with in every aspect, and feel that more people in the staff rankings need to have a better understanding of.

 

2. Stop using probationary for no reason.

This is a punishment role. It's used for staff who don't deserve a full demotion but still want to make things right as staff. Likewise It's used for people who have a dirty history. Stop slinging it around for every person who you don't feel like fits the personality mold even when they've done nothing to deserve it. Stop using it as a compromise because 1 higher up doesn't like the person. It should be used to establish wrong doings not "We just trust you a little less.

I personally don't consider this a punishment role, but rather another rank in the system that is once again imo counter-productive, im talking about the sort of "Staff Class" usage of the ranks pmod, mod and admin, which once again should be replaced with a much more productive way of using the ranks, as I stated in the previous paragraph.

 

3. Majority matters.

It's been a huge problem for a while where higher ups have to make unanimous decisions. What this means for all the other staff is that if 1 higher up disagrees despite everyone else agreeing on said thing. It won't go through. The voice of one is too strong in this community specially for higher ups who don't go on servers enough to see what is going on or that just choose to disregard the intent of the community and more importantly the other staff. To fix this, it should be that majority rules. It should be that the community or staff vote count for 1 higher up in of themselves, because giving the people no say is what's going to kill the community.

This I strongly disagree with, for the simple fact that from all my experience in the TF2 community I've seen again and again how most people don't know what they really want when they demand something, it's just a fact that whenever something that majority wants is implemented, the new majority becomes the people who complain about said implementation.

 

6. Witnesses matter.

I'm all for innocent until proven guilty, but some of you take this as an opportunity to ignore issues all together because no tangible evidence. Staff witnesses have just as much say as a normal witness, none. It doesn't matter how many people say a person did an action because without proof you're never going to confront the issue. You make no effort to gather more information. It doesn't help when you expect people to be recording EVERYTHING that goes on, and to be honest if you are wanting people who record everything just to nail one person it's a pretty sucky, bandwagony mentality.

I mostly agree with this, although along with the point bello brought up, it has become apparent that this issue just isnt that simple as to how it can be resolved, and at the end of the day what it boils down to is the quality of staff members and higher ups. Other than that my personal opinion is that staff should indeed be treated as witnesses themselves, and a staff member should always have more credibility than a witness and shouldnt always require proof when they take action against something.

 

And the rest of the topics seem a bit more subjective and more case-by-case scenarios as to what they apply to and what they imply, and since I havent been in touch with the TF2 Division as of late, I won't touch on those subjects.

 

 

With all of that in mind I want nothing to do with this community anymore. If you're really my friend you'll accept that. I'm not going to keep getting a run around, doing your jobs, and investing time and energy into a clan who doesn't care about me back. I'm not looking for a debate here. I'm not justifying any of my points. I'm not going to bother responding so don't bother baiting for a response. No I'm not changing my mind. I don't know if I'll ever come back to xg after all that it's put me through. I don't want your excuses so don't bother sending them to me. I may still come on the servers once in a while but you're not going to get much out of me here. Goodbye xg.

This last part I will assume you didn't write with a clear piece of mind, I feel a debate about things like this is the most important thing to have. And regardless of what you say here you still will be welcomed back if you do change your mind, either way, take care & peace.

Edited by Egossi (see edit history)

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