Y'all need some more mods

So essentially they'd be a regular user with a shiny title? I'm pretty skeptical as to how effective this would be. I believe altering the modscore (I addressed this in post #181) to be a better idea.

 

Was just giving my 2 cents, that's all, and giving examples like you asked of other's earlier

As for your proposal, I think it's stupid that you don't already expect that of your current moderators but if it works then it works. Give it a try

 

no.. they'd have an activity based quota rather than a score based one.. and would be part of the staff team.

 

Peep the edit on my post.

What can they do for activity? Post? Stickies don't really need to be addressed and boosting individual forum activity is a difficult one to manage.

 

Sorry Ruairidh, but I personally think this is a bad idea, and will outline why. You know I generally always agree with your decisions and how you go about them, aside this one xd.

Having more subsects within staff is never a good thing. Speaking from personal experience here. Acquiring new moderators for innovative and community purposes is great, but treating them as 'disposable' and 'lower' down the food chain only acts as a demoralising factor. If they know they are disposable, what gives them the motivation to work and innovate. Community orientation is more of a personal ideology. It requires a more positive and committed inertia. Honestly speaking, having people tend to disputes, RASC, RASP etc is more of an easier and monotone task; where as creativity, commitment, innovation and being community orientated actually requires prowess and persistence; and thus, should actually be higher up the food chain per se.

I agree with your statement of having more committed and community vested mods. But, don't devalue that by having it hold a weaker position. You don't need a new name or anything, just promote people at current in whom you see potential to carry out said tasks, as new sectionals like it's always been done. Just make sure that both current and future staff know that there is more to being a good moderator than quantifiable facts. There is no need to make it overly-complicated.

I strongly believe you should simply promote new sectionals as and when they are needed. Just enforce the fact that quantifiable facts aren't what is only required - i.e modlogs. Try slowly introduce community involvement as a requirement; and soon enough it will come naturally.

You're really the perfect example of a staff member Roary. You're community involved, you're site involved (disputes, rasc etc), and you understand that all aspects are important.

Promote people who know with certainty, that simply being modlog king isn't going to fly.

 

Again, easy to say. What do we do if they dont? Demote the whole lot of staff? That doesn't work. We/I have tried to get staff to be more active on the activity side of things.

But most of the community active people have been polled and people are skeptical of how they'll behave, their past, the time they have online and the list goes on. This would allow us to bring up people like that who ca focus their energy on their favourite section.

All mods are teens/twenties. They can't all do everything when they have IRL too. You need the activity types (which we do currently lack) and we need the score types (that we dont currently lack). So leaving the score side be, this is where the proposal helps get people who will continue being active in their chosen section because they enjoy it.



@Seller, by disposable I only mean it doesn't hurt to change then more often as activity dies down because there isn't as much to learn.

 

I edited a bit, have a read xd.

I strongly believe you should simply promote new sectionals as and when they are needed. Just enforce the fact that quantifiable facts aren't what is only required - i.e modlogs. Try slowly introduce community involvement as a requirement; and soon enough it will come naturally.

You're really the perfect example of a staff member Roary. You're community involved, you're site involved (disputes, rasc etc), and you understand that all aspects are important.

Promote people who know with certainty, that simply being modlog king isn't going to fly.

 

These people dont pass polls for mod because of whatever reason.

 

You passed the poll, and you're the perfect example of a staff member who values everything, and does his level best in all areas.

 

Its hard to name an active name these days who hasn't already been poll'd and no'd. So we need a system that works for them, works for the community and works for current staff.

 

Is it because they can't be trusted or because the staff feel they would disagree with some of their opinions? I know a lot of names who have probably been poll'd and I'm surprised they still aren't mod even though they've stuck around for a while. I'm pretty sure it's the one sided thinking but having people with differing opinions can help the site as well. I don't know what goes on in staff lounge though so I'm just guessing here.

 

I've never seen anyone say "no because i dont get on with them" there are usually good reasons like their behaviour, their past, their commitment/activity and things like that.

There are plenty of disagreements and different mindsets within staff currently, we're not all like minded

 

There needs to be some sort of way of seeing whether or not they are active. Part of that can be subjective but part also needs to be objective to be fair.

I agree but posts are only a part of it. Just hanging out and chatting to people in Sythe Chat would be extremely beneficial and I think that sort of thing should count as well.

I think that there are plenty of people that are / would be community involved if given the chance. I would say that finding them should be a continuous process. In addition things like the UE really helped find a lot of those great members. I really do think it is a shame the staff has been so against it's return.

I say meh. I recall when Finn did it and I don't remember it being a very large success.

All moderators on Sythe are staff. Not all staff members are moderators. Admins are the classic example (look at Richard / Matthew). It's not a hard concept to understand.

I removed the quote since it is massive but that is exactly what we need to be doing. Get this man a fun rank or something.

Finn did it back in the day.

I don't think we need to attack specific members in this thread. I think it is counter productive.

 

History lesson:

In ye olde days, sectionals were not allowed to do scam reports and the works. Globals "did" them (ie they rarely got done). So the sectionals concentrated on their sections.

Now we have sectionals doing pretty much everything and globals doing essentially the exact same thing except that they can moderate everywhere. I know that while I was global last year there was very little happening in the upper lounge. Nearly everything happened in the lower lounge.

And more and more sectionals have been given two or three large sections to work on. This used to be extremely rare (ie nearly never) and further shows the blurring between sectional and global. I also think it is fair to say that we had more shitty sectionals back in the days but that comes with the territory of promoting more people.

I think there should be a much more clear distinction between upper staff and lower staff and much more flexibility in how moderators are allowed to work and I think there should always be a promotion track for them. I'm not sure exactly how thing would work but I am thinking that I would not be opposed to non-globals being allowed in the upper lounge. I like the idea of sectionals because it limits people and gives them structure to work within so they can easily focus. But then again I'm starting to sound like the team lead system and no one liked that.

I think that the big takeaway is flexibility. I keep coming back to the thought of removing not the permissions, but the rank of global moderator. Instead, replace it with something like senior staff. This would be for people like FireZ who have experience and wisdom and should be consulted for the most important things. The permissions for global could then just be given to people who need or want them, even if they are not senior staff. If someone wants to just be an off topic mod even though they are senior, let them. I don't care. If the staff wants to keep Sin666 around for advice or whatnot, she doesn't even need moderator permissions. Roary could have gotten global permissions for being a powerhouse without becoming senior staff. Separate permissions from experience and shit like that. Promote people to global based on experience and qualification and not on "well he does a lot and needs global to do more".

 

Very interesting idea. How would one attain 'Senior Staff' if perms can be given/requested once at a certain threshold? How would they progress to senior staff?

 

People generally pass polls because sure why not. People don't pass polls because of "he did this" or "Fuck no" or "he's sketchy". It really does not take much to not promote someone which is why lots of older or more active people can have a harder time since there is more reasons to not like them. But sometimes expectations or worries are completely misguided. I won't name names but there was one mod who kept coming up and kept getting shot down. We finally were like fuck it and ignored all the negatives that came up and that person became one of the best mods Sythe has had. So the moral is, the staff know jack shit and it's really a crap shoot when promoting people.

 

At the moment global is essentially just an activity game. It's been that way forever, essentially. At one point there was a rule that was something like sectionals came have another section after three months of being good. Same sort of thing could apply here. Sectionals can have global permissions or another section or what not after 3 or 6 months, granted they have been meeting expectations and want it. The senior staff would have to monitor that and adjust the permissions accordingly based on performance and shit.

Senior staff would be promoted just like globals are now but with emphasis on experience and value added to the staff team that is not simply power housing. FireZ would have gotten global perms long before he got senior staff. He was a powerhouse and really needed global perms to do that but he was inexperienced. But once it was clear that he could handle his own and not gloriously fuck up and was not a power hungry fuck head, he would be promoted to senior staff. I like this system because it separates what people are allowed to do with their rank in the staff structure. Obviously admins would be above senior staff and they get certain permissions with that job and that can not change.

The admins could also delegate some non-permission based shit to the senior staff like managing the staff or what not. If someone wants to do the performance reviews for lower staff, let them. They got promoted for being experienced not just to get global perms so we should be able to trust them more. It gives greater flexibility and stuff. It would also let long term sectionals (like me back in the days) have access to senior staff without ever doing the global stuff. That way we could have a more diverse selection of senior staff and likely a lot more of them. Now promoting globals reduces the number of sectionals and that's not always good but who cares if 75% of the staff is senior. Half of them may just have sectional permissions and be perfectly happy doing that.

 

So if I may attempt to distill the last couple of pages down to a tl;dr:

- Promotions are always a crap-shoot, and as such it is more likely that befriended people will get mod because they're more visible than some other peon who goes about his own business. (My inference, not SuF)

- Some sections have essentially become Globals without the recognition of that fact. Due in part to a shrinking staff pool and the need to cover more sections with fewer people.

- Senior Staff would be something like a consultant for the new-faces, because let's be fair, working Sythe staff is like McDonalds in the way that it has a fairly high turn-over rate.

- Sectionals can get global like powers if they have proven themselves able to handle more work.

- Senior staff would be promoted the same way as Globals but instead of being like 'Well he carries a lot of the load' it'd be like 'Well he knows his shit and can guide'.

Is that a fair summary?

 

In my opinion this wouldn't have much effect on activity. It really boils down to the community. You want activity post worthwhile threads, start discussions, we could use more mods for the sake of community involvement but some of us already try our best to stay community involved.

 

It's not really about activity for everyone. It's more to allow flexibility in the staff so people can concentrate more on community if they choose to.