My name is james. Im 35 today. And I work in a prison.
Theres rules in my workplace and there's mottos. The most important one is.. my safety is your safety. Caging humans as animals in an attempt to reform them is an old experiment with predictable problems and solutions.
...Dude you saying disco is a pris--
Lol huggie might. Anywho.
I may have brushed up against this idea before long time ago. but given a lot of aches and pains "seem" to be occurring here i can tell you any sort of change in how things are done that are catastrophically bad happens a little at a time. Which is why its hard to track down where and what was done that pushed from acceptable to not.
Anger, victimization, all these things in common. The community Ill wager right now is toxic. But only towards the subjects of procedure. The bans? there's mixed emotions on who's on that list. One of my most active members was on it. beyond that I have no clues. none were shared with me.
But I had to think when i posted that quip in flood about a culling was i sensing something? Was i getting a drift that there's an idea that certain types of attitudes aren't wanted by the admins and maybe a secretly agreeing group of people out there?
The only evidence of a conspiracy is that the bans happened with seemingly no warning and little merit.
From my perspective i could see where the rules weren't enough... being a jerk isn't against the rules but there is a type of person that if he doesn't see it listed as taboo will push all the boundaries.
They'll push here and there get slapped or forgiven.. but the one attitude doesn't change and that's the ever forceful nudging into indecent behaviour kind of like the bank robber i know that offers to shake your hand just because inmate contact with employees is a no no.. unless approved. he isn't shaking your hand to greet you he's doing it to roll over a rule.
Same mentality comes from using a system that's flawed and does not work till it breaks to make a point. These are destructive mentalities.
What we need is perspective and constructive mentalities.
Not.. more admins to do more work or like the really old team shut down requests and srps indefinitely because they don't want to do them and the system doesn't work anyway.. We need a middle of the road approach something more management tiered and a greater delegation of responsibilities.
Here is what I propose.
Right now its Admin moderator and Dev.
How many jobs are there right now that the mods needs? and the forum needs?
I can't rightly recall all of them.. but i do think we need to rotate all staff through as many of them as possible.
Admins being the judges and juries alone is over inflated. If the admin system were to continue in its capacity cause this shift share system doesn't work for the community (and i propose the community think about it) then it can no longer persist as a self appointed body and needs to be elected by those who work for the community and contribute.. Faction members leads donators moderators admins and devs. Someone who puts their time into pushing the game forward in some way needs a vote because if we don't we'll never know if we are heard.
All of the administrative jobs should have finite slots.
1 Sanctions and rule breakings should not require a huge committee. If it's enough to be a sanctionable offence three should be enough.
2 Same for player requests and srps. These should not take forever to investigate and delegate merit. three people should suffice.
3 Faction issues bases in game issues errors strangeness on high would require the most seasoned admins and most trusted the game needs events to run and events monitored sometimes so that the server doesn't IMPLODE from overflood or indied piling into what was a staged and pre planned event.
This makes Nine total admins to decide on rules and procedure in total. Do more rules need to be made? Do they need to be simplified?
These things have happened recently and really i would have the oldest admins with jobs families and lives working on this smallest job. but i figure if 9 can't agree about how clear a rule is then its probably a bad rule.
Mod development.
Not everyone has technical skills. but here is where i'm going to piss off everyone.
There isn't a reason everyone who's interested cant be taught.
The first priority of the new dev team will be training. Without empowered and knowledgeable modders in our community we are actively courting our death in the terms of progress and cohesion.
But huggie i don't have time to.. train people in modeling or texturing or..
I dare you to find the time. Cause if you're sick life takes you down a road the rest of us are holding the bag. Farm out your tastes.. give volunteers a bigger workload. between modelers balance teams and what have you. I would challenge teerin to court the savvy members of the community to learn other skills besides making ships. Rotating the jobs according to load should not be hard.
I know there are materials out there we can make a developer's bible for the most crucial skills out there. I know im asking alot here but it shouldn't be hard to give to a receptive audience.. make your needs known. make what the mod needs known to everyone so that if they don't have the time willpower or ability to do it that they could possibly know someone who can help and who can assist the community..
Otherwise indie db and moddb has actually wanted ads for people who have skills to hear the call of projects that need help.
the community should hear all its needs and wants put up for all to see so nothing's forgotten. Be it a ship station or system. overhauling things to make them fresh.. should not be the burden of one man or woman.
Some of us play a lot some of us very little. a community member's job is to try and get the good players interested in rp and using the forums. they could be the next admin member the next moderator or the next dev member. this from the roots up also provides for newer factions and older factions vital life blood to keep moving.
Faction leaders put in a lot of time and effort to keep people engaged and sometimes as i see it the very lowest slot on the pole. because we influence so many. We can drop an idea that the admins suck into a pool of new recruits who will believe it and be proven correct by their perspective vary easily if the leadership is bad or good.
All the problems and our solutions are here on the root level. which is why i'm proposing that only moderators and people who have put time into the community servicing it be able to lead a faction.
Moderators do the dirty work.. but their ability to become an admin when the pool is low is disjointed.. i don't think the top needs more authority or more power the bottom needs reinforcing because too often has the mere idea of running a faction by itself and for itself taken great hold here and this is why we wonder why 6 people being banned sounds like the end of the world.
Some of them had great cults of personality, punishing them punished too many other players that didn't deserve it and THAT i what has to stop. We need to look at the fiber of all of our leaders. top to bottom. and see if the merit matches the motive.
Admins will rotate on an duty / off duty rotation whenever there are more than nine that are able to be active.
The nine must rotate between rules , requests, server groups evenly and perhaps on a monthly basis. This gives in game players a chance to meet new admins. Lighten and specialise their load.
Offduty admins will be stuck moderating and training moderators and also going through large issues like votes on rules and such to be called every two months that need to be called. as these seemingly big issues require much thought. the dynamic of an active duty segment and passive duty segment will create a better workflow (trust me it's magical)
In development the most important job is knowing that status of the mod. Bugs, broken things, errors. on top of new content and features and roleplay. These all need to be tracked and kept public within reason. Bugs and exploits obviously are a domain for moderators to keep off the forums admins to know about and devs to fix.
Devs may need TEAMS for each section.. Content between systems and playspaces and balancing need TEAMS that can work and educate each other and work together. In the best case farming out ships and content to knowledgeable community members should not make them devs unless their considered willing to TRAIN.
Giving experienced players chances to balance and bug test ships in progress under that teams supervision on a test server would go light years as opposed to playing DOTA2
Trainee will be tomorrow's leads.. leads will be tomorrow's trainers.. the larger the pool of talent the better off discovery will become.
Faction leaders.
You whom are grandfathered into this system... will likely wish to petition to be a moderator, because i can guarantee if you're a member of the staff you'll be better informed for your requests and you'll be better trusted by those who've given their time to this mod in an official capacity. You will be outpaced by these new faction leaders otherwise... if only because... they will be seen as more official than you..
better trusted..
More vetted.
Yes better then you. Then me.
"Huggie or James or whoever the eff you are that's the worst idea you've ever posted."
Says the tyrant.. says the one whos responsible for the most important factor of the whole community.. the players. who deserve more then you just sitting there.
Sitting there idle.
Being in charge.
This is an old idea guys. Service to others is service to the self. I can guarantee that as long as you put time into them they will put time into you and this community will thrive as it never has.
It wont be a huge industrial machine overnight oh hell no.. But the responsibility for each job that is important will have a name. and that label with be on a number of chests over the coming months so you'll know who's deciding what. which means more transparency.. the call for MORE volunteers moderators and those willing to learn will bring the investment into this place to a level beyond what it is now.
Because right now.. its just a toilet with some janitors. we come we "go" some of us clean up.. and the rest are tired of their crap lol..
Lets raise ourselves up.
Not necessarily as i've laid out hell i don't care if any of this is used. I know we all have ideas that can get us invested in the community and into each other. lets do it.