TOPIC: Coming back to the staff team, and why i cant.

Hi everyone

So some of you may know this, some of you may not, but i was actually staff on Zarp for almost a year in the past, the majority of it being in 2015. I really enjoyed my time back then, and I would like to return to it, but sadly a few things have changed, and they are making this very hard for me, that is why I wanted to make this post to state my own - but also a lot of other ex-staff members case I’m sure.

Professionalism
You may be wondering why i would ever see professionalism as a bad thing when it comes to something like the staff team, and to some extend i would agree that the staff team has to create the visual appearance of being professional at least, but from what I’ve seen it seems as if being on the staff team nowadays is way too close to having an actual job, with the lead team being your supervisor.

This is a problem because it simply isnt - being staff on any zarp server is a voluntary service that you offer because you like it, and in my opinion you should be threated with respect and dignity for doing this, you should be a trusted individual, and mostly of all, you should not have someone over your head, telling you what to do and how much of it you should be doing.

The Lead Team
Here we go again... Is what you may be thinking, but i am not trying to bash the lead team in any way, I’m simply questioning the amount of responsibility the lead team seems to be holding nowadays, it seems as if admins and mods are simply pawns to do the work the lead team dictates, this is not a proper way to motivate your staff members, admins should be allowed to think themselves, and make independent decisions, this will let them feel empowered, and as if they are part of something.

The Ethos
There’s no worse feeling than catching a genuine rule breaker, that simply doesn’t care, and having to let him go with a warning because that is what the Ethos say, or to mute someone shouting blatantly offensive comments, because that’s what the Ethos say. The Ethos is the worst thing that has ever been done to the staff team, it takes all individual judgement out of the equation, and threats everyone the same, this could work if the ethos was the perfect system, but there is no such thing as a perfect ruleset, you always need individual judgement of every situation, no case is the same.

This also goes back to giving powers to the staff member, nothing makes you feel as if you’ve been employed more than when you get accepted and the first thing you receive is a book telling you exactly what to do.I could give you plenty of examples that needs to be banned off SSRP asap, but they’re not being banned, because sadly, they have learned how to loophole their way around the flawed ethos.

Dignity
Maybe it was just me being a noob and all, but i feel as if that back in 2014 when i first joined zarp, a staff member was someone you would fear and respect, and because you knew that if you got on their bad side it wouldn't go in your favour. Sadly, this is no longer the case, every day I see staff members receiving crazy amounts of abuse from users that should be getting punished, but they're not allowed to do anything, all they can do is sit there and be polite as the user rages at them.

I find this really sad, and i feel as if respecting staff member, at least when he is in service should be mandatory, and failing to do so should be very punishable, it is the least we can do.

Conclusion
I believe that if you improve the working environment and you use the carrot instead of the stick when it comes to voluntary staff members, if you make them feel as if they have responsibility for zarp, and appreciate them, then they will work harder than they will having to reach some f1 count trying to make it to the other side with that super admin rank. I say remove the ethos, ease up, if you feel as if some of the staff team couldn’t handle this responsibility, then maybe those staff members are the problem, but what do i know.

Its all open to discussion, so let me know what you think, also feel free to correct my typos.

dang

stop giving the job to 12 year olds

there is not enough control on staff, they need to all be on the same page and have a lot of coordination with the lead team. people are allowed to be as subjective as they want and there are no discussions before precedents are set

TL:DR

Lewis_is_java wrote:
The Leadteam and ethos is a bit shit.

Lewis_is_java wrote:
TL:DR

exrobite wrote: you used a lot of big words and i dont know what you said but since its you i will agree with this post to make myself seem 200iq

Xeronise wrote: we already knew this why another godamn post on this stale topic lol

Blocked wrote:
boosterpacks

god dammit Gems, i miss you, but you just started third world war

Pariz wrote: with a correct point

#KapiJam4LeadTeam
#KapiJam4Change

this

And also why are the super admins not obligied to do F1's and help out aswell? It's like they're free to do whatever they want as soon as they reach that rank. Just take Captain (no offensive) for example, i didn't even know he was Head-Admin still


Edit: I however want to point out that about 90% of the people that actively plays and the rulebreaks they have broken would have for sure a permaban on most other servers on their first day. However on Zarp 5 years later some of us still play due to the fact you don't get actually permamently banned for breaking NLR two times. Zarp would simply have been alot smaller community if everyone was banned more than they are now.

damn, never looked at it like this before

The worst thing is, on the one hand you can't ban rulebreakers that are obviously trolling.

On the other hand (not only on SSRP) people get banned for an "offensive joke" because it may "hurt someones feelings".

Gems wrote: Could you give an example? Lead Team are supposed to spectate staff so they can tell them what they're doing wrong. Would you rather have a staff team that doesn't have a clue what they're doing?

I believe you might mean it in the sense that the moment you say something disrespectful to the user you, as a staff member, get spoken to? Once again, an example would be appreciated - I'm merely guessing here and I'm unsure whether I am correct to say what I just did.

Gems wrote: I fully agree on this aspect - it is a voluntary service. Nobody gets paid for what they do as a staff member and I fully agree that at no point it should feel like you're being forced to do something you'd rather not do.

However, you need to also understand that the moment you apply for staff, you have a duty on the servers that people expect you to uphold. The moment you become a staff member and are fully refusing to do your job there's a serious issue.

You also state that you should be treated with respect and dignity, something which I fully agree you deserve as a staff member. Once again, could you give an example where this is not the case? I do not know what it was like in the past, but I have not heard of any situations where a Lead Team member was allowed to bash on their staff members and get away with it (I actually got spoken to about this myself when I did something similar on TTT, although that situation got thankfully resolved and I apologised for my rude behaviour).

You state that you should be a trusted individual. Now, please excuse me when I say this, but that's simply impossible. This is the internet. A lot of people here feel like they can do and say many things and get away with it as there are no reprecussions on their actual life.

Mass abuse and unacceptable behaviour of staff is simply impossible to avoid. There will always be one or two staff members that will abuse in some way, shape or form - sometimes even without knowing it.

And then you might say "Then accept less staff members" or "Only accept staff members you trust." There are two issues with this:
- If we accept less staff, there would be less people to handle F1s. The servers would become a mess. Currently, there's the Lead Team to ensure that the staff members are doing their job properly and if they don't then they'll be spoken to. Sorry to say, but that's simply how it is - without this system the servers would become a chaos.

- Accepting staff members we only trust is, once again, impossible. How many lead team members, server owners and heck, even community team members have abused their powers? There have been countless of people who we would believe to be 100% trustworthy yet who stabbed us in the back eventually anyways.

Once again, the Lead Team is needed to solve that issue.

Gems wrote: I strongly appreciate you criticising the Lead Team. Criticising those in power should always be considered a good thing, regardless of your own opinions.

In the Lead Team's defense I could state that they do a lot of work that does not involve forcing the staff members to do their biddings, however that's not what this conversation is about. You full well know, and I do believe respect, what the Lead Team is doing - you simply do not support some of the things they do.

And you know what? I agree, to some extent, once again.

Recently there was an issue with a user that was blatantly scamming other users. I got told by several Lead Team members that it was not a scam and that I could not punish the user in question. To that Blocked said that they should reinstate the common sense rule, where a staff member can punish users if they believe the users are blatantly breaking rules.

However, although I would agree with that, it also immediately goes against the staff ethos. A balance between the two should be managable, although a whole policy would have to be changed. I'll go into further detail on that matter in response to your next point.

It is a fact, though, that the Lead Team is simply trying to ensure that the staff team follows the policies of the community. You can have a long and hard discussion about how the Lead Team are dictators and the staff team their slaves, but the moment a policy is broken a Lead Team member would have to approach the staff member about it.

I believe your issue lies more with the current policies than the Lead Team itself.

Gems wrote: Unkown to a lot of staff members, you can push the Ethos relatively far. A lot of the time when a Lead Team member claims the Ethos has been broken, it's actually not been. If you, as a staff member, have a valid reason for punishing someone harsher, then you're allowed to do so.

However, the "They simply don't care" excuse is not considered valid. If someone is being racist, though, and mass rdmed, you are allowed to punish them just that little bit harsher than you usually would.

I agree the Staff Ethos is not the best system around, but it is without a doubt better than the times when people were permanently banned for disrespect.

Gems wrote: I disagree. The servers have rules and policies that need to be enforced - I'd much rather have a relatively good managed servers with rules for staff members than other communities where the staff members can punish users as they like and you get permanently banned for hardly any reason.

Perhaps a change to the ethos is needed, or useful, but it is without a doubt not as big a negative as you make it out to be.

Gems wrote: I obviously was not around at the time, but I'd like to think I hardly make them verbally abuse me when some 10-year old kid screams abuse down his microphone. Perhaps some staff members do wait too long, or try to resolve matters peacefully before going to the offensive a bit too much. I honestly wouldn't know, but I do agree that some staff deserve some amount of respect from users. And if they can't force themselves to actually put up a friendly front to someone that's simply trying to help them then they could just as well fuck off.

Gems wrote: Perhaps there is some truth in your words. Keeping our staff members on a leash keeps them more in control, but limits the work enviroment. I will definitely think more on your words and think of possible solutions or agreements. I might not fully agree with what you're saying, but there's most certainly something in your opinions that could help improve the community.

Feel free to respond to my response - I would love to hear what you have to say about my opinion.

Blocked wrote:
I totally agree with this, i remember you doing f1's as a headadmin... These days SA+ will just say that the mods and admins need to clean the f1s... While they're literally doing nothing.

First off all Reaker, thank you for hearing my concerns and actually coming out with a decent response, i really do appriciate it, and i can definitly agree with some of the points you are making, but i will try to defend my case the best way i can.


Ofcourse not, this is not what i meant, what i was trying to say is that being a part of the staff team seems like too much of a job nowadays, there is way too much focus on meeting certain demands, i dont want to be the guy that says "back in my day" but i feel as if we used to have more room for fun and different methods from different staff members, as you should have on a thing as silly as a gaming server.

I guess its the whole idea that you feel as if there is a "right" way to be a staff member, which only the lead team knows. in my opinion aslong as you can argue for the way youre staffing, you should be allowed to. A staff members personality should show in the way he does his duties.

I do realise that there are things that need to be done, but i believe that allowing the staff member to staff in a way that he feels make sense is the best way to encourage him to actually do it, it will also greatly prevent resignations.

To give you an example; about 1,5 years ago i had the idea of coming back to the staff team, i applied and got accepted , after a few days i found a guy mass rdming in spawn, when i brought him to a roof and asked him what he was doing he said some words that i would rather not put here on the forums, so i did what i had always done, i judged the situation, quickly put 2 and 2 together and realised that this man was a clear "troll" case, a thing that roleplaying servers are very exposed to, therefore i banned him for a week i believe, hoping that he would one day return with better intentions.

I thought that was the end of it, but about an hour later i was contacted by Paramontana, he had looked at the ban history, and noticed that according to the Ethos; i should not have banned this player, i was supposed to give him a warning for Mass RDM and then keep an eye on him to make sure he wouldn't do it again, if he did then i could ban him for a total of 3 days.

So in order for me to suspend this player from the server, about 6 spawn kills would have to happen, which would surely lead to multiple new players finding our server unplayable, it would also take atleast 20 minutes of my time, which surely you will know, is valuable time for a staff member, were you could easily catch even more rulebreakers.


I think you and i define a "Thrusted individual" in different ways, ofcourse the average staff member shouldnt be given power that is actually able to hurt the server, i simply mean that if i as a staff member were to make the decision to ban a player for 3 days because he broke nlr twice, not because he broke nlr twice, but because of the context around the rulebreaks, then it would be nice if there wasnt a lead team member simply looking at the text "NLR x2" and then reducing the ban to 3 hours.

I believe i state example of this later in the text, but i see alot of staff members recieveing alot of abuse, mostly from users but also from the fellow staff members.

I would say the second of them is more correct, but yes, believe it or not, it doesn't actually take alot of staff members to run a server, if they do their job well, when you look back in zarp history, some of the best staff teams have actually been with a very low amount of staff members, a single staff member can easily control up to 50 players if he is harsh enough, again going back to the ethos preventing this.

This is a problem to me i suppose, zarp is such a target for trolls because of the nature of our gamemodes, sadly when you leave out the context of any rulebreaks by inventing something like the ethos, you leave alot of room for rulebreakers to slip through the cracks, even if it is clear to any staff member that this is what they are doing, staff members arent machines, and we shouldn't try to make them machines, i believe that any staff member that isnt able to conduct common sense, is not a suited staff member, ethos or not.

A great example of this is the recent "Suit RDM", where experienced players will kill someone who is holding an expensive item with the sole intention of making the person loose that item, and simply accept the warning they recieve for it, any staff member knows that they did it on purpose, and that they only did it because the punishment isn't harsh enough, but theres nothing they can do.

Yes, i believe that is what the current Ethos do, i believe that it may be great to have as a "Guideline" for new staff members, but it greatly limits experienced staff members, personally i can pretty much recognise a rulebreaker even before he has broken a rule, simply by the way he conducts himself, and im sure you can too if you really think about it.

Perhaps a rank between admin and Super admin could solve this issue, for example "Senior Admin".

You might make the case that being harsher on our playersbase will cause it to reduce, but when you look at other servers this simply isn't the case, there are alot of players that will quit a server if they find that rulebreaking is tolerated. So if we increase the harshness of our ethos we will simply attract a more mature audience, i could start mentioning other servers that make a great example of this, but then my post would get removed, im sure you know them anyways.

All these words on just a garry's mod server lmao

Lewis_is_java wrote: A garry's mod server that i care about, judging from your almost 2500 posts im sure you do aswell