My personal response, not on behalf of the Board:
When we talk about admins needing to see something in order to deal with it, the intent behind it is so that they are 100% sure (no less) that the person who broke the rule deserves to be punished. If player experience is being impacted that much, then perhaps there is leeway for us to discuss relaxing that policy or find other ways of being 100% sure besides just seeing the situation. Logs aren't enough though. On our server, there are many more ways to be "justified" in killing someone such as various ways of T baiting or performing traitorous acts. I've conveyed this to the TTT managers and they're looking to address the "grey area". Once this is addressed, we can move forward with determining whether we can be more "lenient" with enforcing the rules (that is, increasing the number of situations we can be 100% certain a rule was broken).
Punishments are entirely up to the admin. We have a strict policy of warn OR kick before a ban. In the worst case, this means a player is given one chance to straighten up before they're permed if they mess up again. It's entirely up to the admin to determine how severe they think punishments are given. Situations are extremely case-by-case so unfortunately I can't speak more about it in this post.
We've tried using karma as a preventative method to prevent RDMers from dealing significant amounts of damage if they're joining just to RDM, but unfortunately there's no good way to prevent people from RDMing if they're regulars besides having admins on. Probably the best preventative method is to have more admins, so if you're interested feel free to apply (: .
Yes, I agree with this. Having events regularly would be helpful. On Jailbreak, we are discussing having 3 events per week minimum to encourage player-to-player and player-to-admin interaction. I imagine TTT would benefit from this as well. @Trazz @Gentoo
You're welcome to suggest other ways of increasing community interaction!
The "lack of motivation" you feel is likely because admins are adhering to the "if you're not 100% sure, don't act" policy. In reality, there's many admins (including myself last year) who challenged this policy, but it's for the best that we punish players for things we're 100% certain they deserved punishment for. We can implement other ways of becoming 100% certain (more logs, demos?) which will increase the likelihood of an admin being able to act. I imagine this will alleviate this concern.
Regarding not knowing how admins really are: at the end of the day, this is a gaming community. It isn't exactly our place to demand extremely thorough background checks, employment history, etc. that a normal company would perform. We have safeguards in place to prevent admin abuse from happening such as a trial admin period (Junior Administrator), logs, and a clear hierarchy of managers who overlook staff they're managing. We also time promotions so that no one can climb the ranks quickly so that there is a better chance we catch any attitude problems. The admins you mentioned that were involved in the Discord riot were given disciplinary action, and Dominic and Zayne's behaviour which led to them being permed largely occurred after they resigned.
The screenshot you provided is out of context, so it's hard to tell whether he was being sarcastic. I imagine you guys were being friendly and that's how he jokingly talks to people he considers his friends. Maybe you should let him know you don't appreciate him acting like that towards you? Of course, I'm not trying to put blame on you, but when an admin adds you on his friends list and goes to another game some banter isn't unexpected.
I've mentioned it to the TTT managers a few times already, and I tasked @Greggy Gjust now with following up with the managers to investigate a fix.
I think your opinions were valid, but we need your (and the community's) help in brainstorming solutions to them. Identifying problems is good, now let's work towards solutions (: . Rest assured, we're aware of many of these problems already and it's refreshing to hear someone genuinely speak up and share their thoughts. Thanks for your constructive criticism! Hope you'll be able to feel significant changes soon with the direction and vision we're moving towards.