impact and efficiency of the admins - a hopefully objective assessment

[Jinx]

firstly - that is sadly one of those threads that i tend to make ( concerned generalistic threads ) - so those that are tired of me making such threads - just ignore it.

also that ll be a wall of text...

what i am questioning primarily is the impact and process of which current affairs are dealt with. - so first - here is my FEELING:

- admins are burned out - they do not ENJOY their authority and shy away from their duty
- they do not like to make decisions - but seem to prefer to see if things do not get solved in time
- the slow pace of decisions, the lack of preventative measures ( opposed to sanctions which are a last resort ) - and the lacking transparency kind of hinder the gameplay.
- unclear messages and opinions mix with rules, ppl are punished for things that are highly up to interpretation - a LOT more transparency is needed
- admins and mods should really be honest to themselves - and step down voluntarily from their duty when they feel that they do not do their job satisfactory anymore. there should be no such thing as extended inactivity of especially admins or mods - these ranks are there because they are NEEDED.

the above sounded like a pile of accusations - but they are not meant to be that ... well - not much at least.


how can that be prevented or improved....

i reckon that most of the admins ( and i d include mods ) work is rather dull. - reading a lot, trying to be fair - trying to keep up with things - and generally taking the blame when it does not work.

well at least partly - the blame is justified. - like i said - it seems that "ranking" up is sometimes regarded as an achievement - but it is not. it is a job - and a time consuming for sure - if you want to keep standards. its like becoming president of something - sure the prestige is great - and the perks are awesome, but you also have to do something for it.

now - i do not know how the admin / mod team is organized - i guess there is some form of skype conference similar to the dev chat - which is also highly inefficient. - but maybe there should be various focus functions.

- PR focus admin - someone who keeps in touch with the community, communicates with the members a LOT, gathers opinions, gossip etc. - but mostly ... creates transparency.
transparency is the key against conspiracy theories - and while ppl like to joke about those - they do harm the gameplay. - doesn t matter if they are there or not - but the latent believe that there could be some ( lobby work, inner friend circles, skype friends, favourism etc. ) is highly detrimental especially in a small community like that.
there should be like 2 admins who do that job - who are open and up for PMs from the community - and enjoy it ( the last part is actually quite important - cause if you do not enjoy even silly request and cannot deal with complaints no matter how stupid - you ll burn out )



- a few admins that only do sanctions - best maybe 3 admins that are in daily contact with each other at least 10 minutes to 30 minutes to discuss daily reports.

for that matter - it is also important NOT to pick admins who are all of the same mindset - but admins and mods that are very very different. - the goal is not to achieve a quick unilateral decision - but the goal is to achieve a quick and fair decision based on multiple views on the matter. - especially when our rules are not as precise and many of them are very very vague.

those admins should also keep an eye on updating the rules. - what the players should focus on are the rules that are in the rule section - not some green that is burried deep in the forum somewhere that only the veterans can twist and turn to make up rules.
new features require new rules - and quickly, too. ( eg. pob )




- event admins - who check especially FR2 and storyline, faction lore and make events. - disco NEEDS guidelines for factions in my opinion. - but not guidelines like "you must do or we come down on you like a ton of bricks" - but events to show ppl what its about. - smuggling events, frontline wars that can shift the rep and ownership of stations ( as in pricewinning - not as a punishment ) etc.

in other words - game masters. if we had 2-3 admins that could focus on that - it would be great.


now what do we have now?

at least like 7-12 or so admins who have a requirement on being active pretty much all the time. - sounds like a lot - but if we consider an admin or mod position not as an achievement anymore but as a job opportunity to guide the community - we might get more ppl to do it.

what is also very important is timekeeping.

i do remember that someone ( forgot the name ) had some months ago - submitted a report of a violation. but that report was of an incident 3 months before. - he was told that it had expired - and that he should either report instantly - or not at all.

that is a very fair decision - after all - we do not want ppl to collect violations to use them as leverage when they like. ( blackmail )

however - i feel like the admins should also keep to a timetable. - when a report was made - but the decision is like 3 months later - it really also has expired. - but that one comes with the activity.

whats also important is AGAIN - transparency. ... IF you sanction ppl, put them in bastille or give them a good talking to ... tell them why - prove to them what YOUR decision is based on. - that is a RIGHT they have - and not months later - but instantly.

that means - act when you can make the time to explain yourself - but don t act unless you are really SURE why you act.

also - i consider that a politician or referee thing - you can make mistakes - no one really blames you for it - but man up and admit to wrong decisions - they are sometimes made. the community watches very closely, compares decisions, efficiency and fairness. it is a trait of referees and politicians that they seem to have a VERY hard time admitting to mistakes. ( and for that matter - admins, too - or so i feel )





result:

- make sure that admins who are burned out get replaced - you do not loose prestige for stepping down - if you do it in time - you even gain it

- make the promised activity a pre-requisite for admins

- pick heterogenous admins and mods, the more different the better - thats how you achieve more objectivity

- act in preventation and de-escalation more - and don t wait till you have to do sanctions, many situations are well foreshadowed

- try to enjoy communicating with the community - and don t be annoyed, if you are annoyed, so will be your clients ( community ) - also be bold enough to make decisions, but also have the balls to admit to wrong ones.

- enrich the gameplay, players should think of something "good" when they see an admin in game - and not "oh, dear, someone is getting sanctioned"

- seriously - make it an easier option to kick an admin or mod out of the team for inactivity - and get a replacement pronto.

ALL that is based on MY point of view. - it is NOT meant as a rant! - it really is meant as a motivation to buck up and get more done. those admins who try their best - kudos to you, those admins and mods who are inactive - well... you won t read that anyway, cause you are inactive.

* * * *

just to make it clear - i could write the similar things about the normal members, or the dev team. - do picking on the admins is not meant to mean too much harm - but to push into a direction that i ( subjectively ) think is a better direction.

if we cut the inefficiency of the dev team - we could probably cut 80% of the update time, too. and if the community itself was made up of angels - well we would not need admins.



if you made it that far reading - congratulations - too much time reading the forum.




postscript:

why have i made that post now?

- it feels like the admins are pretty unhappy atm - at least thats what i hear or get told
- it seems that the game is in dire need to adjust to the new situations ( pobs, jumps etc. ) - but updating its rules and guidelines takes waaay too long
- the situation in bastille - where ppl either pretend not to know why they are there - or they really don t know. - transparency is needed
- also i hear that SRPs take way longer than they ought to - or decision making in general
- also i feels like ppl are exploring a bit too much how far they can go these days untill the admin team acts.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Lythrilux]

Well, I believe they need to consider who they pick a bit more.
Don't pick a guy who lives virtually 5 lives outside of Discovery a week, pick someone with a lot of time on their hands.

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[Haste]

Administrator duties tend to not actually be enjoyable*. People join (and spend time with) gaming communities for their enjoyment.

Just a random statement that somehow seemed relevant. I wanted to add another step of logic, but couldn't come up with anything.

*) Unless you enjoy being everyone's punching bag despite the fact that you're spending your free time on things that often resemble work way too much.

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[Druen78]

That was a bit painful to read because of erratic syntax and grammar, and completely random punctuation; besides that, signed and approved.

[Scumbag]

Well i agree with everything except the PR focus admin thing. Because you can't allways know what you will be doing 3 months from now, and getting involved in Discovery is a long term decision. Sure, anyone has periods of free time, when in school, out of a job or relationship and when those periods of time end the first thing to give up is gaming. That means choosing just one person for PR is a risky decision, and it already happened twice now hasn't it?

[ProwlerPC]

Almost spot on but you make the same underestimation each of us admins have made before becoming admin and all the other hopefulls make. The volume of reports is higher then you might think and 3 admins dedicated full time to it wouldn't be enough, they would crash and burn. Due to the rules and sanction system it would require more dedicated PR admins as well just for sanctions let alone other adminny things. You also missed out on what we really are here to do. Server maintenance, forum maintenance, lost accounts (server and forums), technical glitches (server and forums), corrupted files, anticheat causing banned accounts. I don't doubt I'm missing some things. The sheer volume of reports is so massive it really is capable of eclipsing our duties of being able to simply keep the server running for people to play, but of course we can't sacrifice that part of our duties. SRPs and Player Requests that aren't related to being kept from playing the game tends to be the first things put on hold when staff runs low, reports follows not too far afterwards because if we put running the server on hold then everything else becomes redundant.

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[Tunicle]

Sounds like a root and branch analysis of the reasons behind the sanction reports would be a first step.

If a problem is not clearly identifies it is hard to rectify.

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[Oorn]

I don't believe separating Admins into PR/sanction is going to work. It's like 3 people do something arguable, and 3 other people have to defend their decission. Admins would be the first who are tired of it.
On the contrary, special group for RP events will be very good. Events require very different qualities from administration work, after all.

The main problem 'I' see in current admin team is lack of leadership. IMO, what is needed is person who decides general direction rule development heads, makes a decission when there is controversal situation, makes a move when situation is begining to get bad, kicks other people around for inactivity: explains to everyone what rule 0 acually means, basicly. In recent crisises admin team took very passive position, they waited waaaaay to long for situation to reselve itself. PoB problems should have been burried a long time ago, for example.

And about transperancy... Really improtant thing is how fast are problems identified/dealed with. While transperancy wouldn't help it directly, it would make doing nothing alot harder; being watched WILL push people to do things better. So Yay for publicity

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When "roleplay" around you seems to be diminishing... all you can do is be a new beacon of roleplay to light up everyone else's interactions.

[Miaou]

The current staff works well enough. They also do it for free. We don't pay them and they have to deal with trolls constantly.

Truthfully, I don't think there is anyone worth putting into these positions that's not already an admin. I've had my own discussions about Game Masters as well, and those types of rolls require someone to give up too much time and energy to do it correctly. The person(s) will become tired quickly, along with the requirement of understanding a lot of Disco's lore, which hardly any member knows.

I'd agree that the admin team should split their duties, but an overhaul like this is too late to happen. We cycle through admins and mods regularly enough to keep a somewhat active staff. It may be hard to contact them sometimes, but that's life.

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Characters & Stories

[Narcotic]

Most people who apply for an admin position, have no clue how it is like, and they just seek the power, respect and popularity which some people can't achieve in reality.

I've been an admin in a few other communities and games (as large or larger than Discovery). And I've learnt that the time being spent on it, wasn't really worth it (not the game/community itself, but the tasks as admin). In the end, one should have more time (than three days) to think about applying for an admin position. And one should quit the job, once it's no more fun for her/him.

I bet, 90% of those who put their name into the hat, don't really want to become admin, but just want to test their popularity and eligibility. Though, I hope there'll be some decent people amongst them.

(Sorry, didn't read the first post yet. Just wanted to give my opinion in short.)

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