Server Name:
N/A; Community Suggestion
Suggestion Title:
Staff Manager Team (Now, hold your comments in for a minute; read the thread!)
How would it benefit the server:
What is the Staff Manager Team (SMT)?
Firstly, I must say this idea was prompted when reading a fair number of staff rants (both through DMs and on the forums), and I've found that what I'm about to discuss seems to be a recurring topic for community members on all servers. As such, I believe a team like this could only benefit the community.
All right, so we have all heard mentions of staff abuse and corruption throughout our time playing on ZARP, and I think most of us can agree it's something that's been brought up by members of the community quite frequently. While these reports and complaints don't all have roots in truth - I feel like it's necessary for these things to be investigated more thoroughly.
Regardless of how valid the claims of corruption are at the moment, I think it's only appropriate that instead of dismissing these claims, we dedicate an individual organ to handle these reports and return a verdict and summary of the situation and investigation. These summaries, of course, should be logged somewhere for the public to see, so they're aware of what's happening and can form their own opinion and dispute the verdicts if they deem it necessary. (Upon which it should be brought up again - whether that is briefly or a complete redo of the investigation
[1])
As for the qualities the Staff Manager Team should possess, here's what I think; a member of the SMT should be impartial at all times - this means no bias despite the relationship between one staff member and another.
[2] Other qualities include being able to collect information and evidence to back up the claims of their investigations. The Staff Managers should also be able to extrapolate from the information they have collected and come to a reasonable and viable verdict.
The Staff Manager Team should take all reports seriously, and order their reports by priority.
[3] Upon having collected reports, an investigation of the highest priority case should begin. Information on how these investigations are perpetrated can be read under "How would the SMT operate?"
Investigations and reports should be discussed in a weekly meeting that is separated from both the community- and server meetings. Anyone who is brought up in the meeting is subject to being moved in and interviewed. Additionally, only Community Team Members and Staff Managers have permissions to join this meeting unless Staff Manager- or Community Members themselves are being discussed
[*]
How would the SMT operate?
This section is going to detail the operations & details of how the Staff Manager Team will operate. This will also be summarised in a bullet-point "TL;DR".
Priority
Upon receiving a report, Staff Managers must list the report accompanied by any evidence/information of the report. Then the report will be assigned a priority. The priority determines the order in which reports should be handled, and the number of Staff Manager(s) that are required to handle it. Priorities range from one to four (1-4) where a higher number equals a higher priority. Additional information such as required investigators is to some degree tied to the priority, but the number of investigators may vary even if multiple cases have the same level of priority.
Execution and Process of Investigation[**]
The investigation of staff members should be done carefully. Staff members that hold a higher position within the lead- or community team will naturally be more difficult to investigate so your first priority should always be to stay low. You should refrain from confronting the staff member, and instead, collect information on how they behave both on the forums and in-game.
Phase 1a
Essentially, you want to connect the dots between situations, their verdicts, and the users involved. If you notice a recurring theme, such as a member being favoured over another- or a member perpetually being handled differently just in general, it's worth taking into account. Note down the following; ALL users involved - meaning the staff member, the person being favoured, and all other parties, such as the accused/etc - and also note down the verdicts/reasoning behind the situations, a summary of the situation(s) themselves, and lastly the frequency of the suspected biased or corrupted behaviour. This is simply to begin a case and to look for any
potential corruption or bias.
[4]
If a user or a staff member has made a detailed investigation report with sufficient and valid evidence, Phase 1a may be dismissed and skipped. However, if the evidence is lacking, you should go through Phase 1a to see if the case is valid and should move on to Phase 2.
Phase 2
This is where you start interviewing the parties involved and start digging for details of the entire situation. Write down any significant information throughout your conversation and also log the entire conversation in the scenario where you would want to look back at some parts of the conversations. Based on your conversation with all the parties, try to map out a timeline of what happened, why things happened, and if the actions perpetrated were warranted or necessary.
If there are inconsistencies in the timeline, you need to look into why that is, and what could be the source of them. For instance, if multiple inconsistencies favour the accused staff member, you have a reason to believe they're lying or have tampered with the timeline and you should try your best to acquire the correct information and create a legitimate and exact timeline. If you're unable to improve the timeline further, you may rule out any punishments, but depending on the situation you might want to keep tabs on the staff member in question.
Logging
Virtually all perpetrated actions of a Staff Manager should be logged. This means that even if you pick up a case, go through Phase 1a and determine there's insufficient information to initiate Phase 2/start a full-scale investigation, that you should still log it with the reason you believe there is insufficient information, as well as all the information and details you gathered. That way, if at least one other Staff Manager disagrees with your verdict and dismissal of a situation, it can still be brought up and discussed further.
Additionally, all - and I can't stress this enough - absolutely ALL information; chat-logs, verbal interviews, general details, and summaries should be saved and logged. This ensures that all Staff Managers can object to any situation, as well as being able to form their own opinion on the case, and that requires knowledge of absolutely everything there is to say about a situation.
Systems
W.I.P: More information on this at a later date. This will discuss how/where things would be logged and such stuff that you may be wondering. I'll revise this thread tomorrow and add this section then. I'm tired.
[1] Based on factors such as thread elaboration (Is the thread expansive?), points brought up (Did the SMT miss something; do the disputing individuals bring up any significant points that could potentially have an impact on the outcome?) and other factors that would determine the priority and importance of bringing the concluded investigation up for a potential reinvestigation.
[2] While this might seem like an obvious criterion, it's important to stress that some people - even lead team members at times - fail to stay objective throughout situations investigating their close friends. Therefore, I'd look for people that have proven to show immense impartiality and that display characteristic that would imply they're able to view a situation objectively regardless of the topic or individual(s) being discussed. I'll be honest and say that I haven't stumbled upon a lot of these people and I have no problem in admitting that I believe most of my friends within the lead teams on ZARP don't possess the ability to stay impartial.
[3] See "Priority" under "How would the SMT operate?"
[4] Phase 1a should be done passively if there's any reason to believe a staff member is corrupt, and in some cases, if a report fails to provide enough evidence to support its claims.
[*] This is subject to change! I haven't yet concluded the "how", "where", and "whens" of the SMT meetings.
[**] Subject to change. The Community Team may determine the full process. However, I have thought of how some parts of the process should be executed.
Potential Issues/Exploits:
W.I.P: I'll add these later!
Additional notes:
To clarify, the Staff Manager Team will only focus on Lead Team Members or higher! This means that all demotions and reports involving moderators- or administrators are still left for the Lead Team to handle. The "situations" discussed in this thread include report abuses of staff members or biased behaviour and actions towards staff members in-game.
Please, if you have any questions or feel like you need me to elaborate, contact me PRIVATELY so I can help you understand exactly how this is all built in my head. Leaving non-constructive comments that could've easily be answered faster and better privately is simply unnecessary. Thanks. Also, this thread is obviously Work In Progress at the moment; I've decided to post it so I can revise it tomorrow since I've been working on this for a while already and I can already tell it's going to be difficult to understand if I just finished it today. btw ur mom gay