Consensual you say? Still banning you. Uh Oh. Paragraph indent... This gon be a long one fo sho.
For real though.
I'm in favour of the change but do agree that it will need some tweaks & improvements in the future for this to run efficiently and as you guys planned it to.
There has been a noticeable quality drop in the lower ranks of our staff and I hope this change will better vet our ranks.
Not going to be naming individuals but there has been staff members including myself that believe that there needs to be a better system of granting administrator to individuals and the quality of our administrators.
I am in no way saying that our administrators are bad or are unable to perform but there have been some questionable applicants that I and others have seen.
When it comes to "shitposting", yes that is a reason why I support the change to higher ranks.
When I'm looking for someone that I would support for being a quality administrator, I don't want to see 20 hidden posts of "SUPPORT! GREAT GUY", "REAPPLY, HE TRIED TO ABDUCT ME. jk support." or someone putting images of random stuff.
We're there to look for a quality person that could help our servers, not childish antics that make the applicant look like they hang out with children and only want powers because "it's cool".
Now applications are judged by the applicant and not "always" the people voting but association is still looked at. If I were in charge of applications and I had the choice between someone who had 10 responses from individuals that took the time to write quality response's and gave legitimate reasons to promote them vs someone who got 30 responses like the examples I listed above, I would promote the first guy because I have a higher level of trust in their capabilities and maturity level. (Solely based of the responses given/association)
Now.
Regulars are vital in keeping the servers running and are key in bringing in new players by interacting with them and making them want to come back but Regulars don't have the same amount of commitment or investment in SG as people holding higher staff ranks. (Yes there are some that are invested by playing everyday but this is a different level of commitment)
If 20 Regulars just all at once drop SG as their go to server, yes it takes a large hit by removing parts of our playerbase but if 10 SM's drop SG all at once, everything goes into chaos. (Who's going to run the server? Who's going to provide updates to it? Who's going to make sure that any bugs are fixed for the players? Nobody)
So while Regulars, JA's & SA's may have more personal experience to give for an applicant, CA's SM's etc... have a higher level of standards for who they want to administrate on their servers and their community.
If something is "Need to Know" for an applicant then PMing is a useful feature to have your voice heard, if you PM giving a truly terrible experience with an applicant then giving that information to a "Voter" will most likely cause them to reevaluate their stance if they had a positive opinion prior.
I would support a change to make SA's able to vote on applications but would leave JA's out of the discussion.
JA's more often then not are still Regulars with minimal powers to keep the servers clean, they haven't been around (on a staff level) long enough to provide true insight on changes that would improve the community as a whole. ie. Picking out new staff members.
People (of all ages) tend to admire others higher than them and will tend to befriend or communicate with them in order to raise their own social standing.
I see quite a lot of people doing it whenever someone is promoted to JA and a lot of the time I see JA's and sometimes SA's fall to it and end up supporting them when said person applies for administrator even though they would not be a good fit.
Staff at higher ranks are often older, don't fall for it and will keep their personal opinions of people aside while making decisions that affect the community. (I've reapplied/rejected people who I have not one issue with personally but on a staff standpoint I know their either not a good fit or simply not ready yet)
Overall, I'm hopeful for this new change and hope it fixes existing issue's that SG has been having.