[Rejected] CA Changes

[Gentoo]

Recently. the CA role has been changed to focus primarily on forums side moderation, and seems less focused on the server side of things, being removed from the servers page. The role seems slightly out of place in the traditional SA-CA-AT foodchain.

 

I think it would be useful to push CA out of this flow, making them closer to the IA role. CA could replaced by Server Managers or whatever. This would allow for people who wish to contribute to the community, including past staff and upstanding members, to apply to this role without putting in effort they don't want to on the servers to achieve SA first. It may seem weird to suggest this for a gaming community, but there are plenty of members passionate and willing to help the community that just aren't terribly interested in playing the servers or contributing to server related discussions; additionally, plenty of higher staff members spend less time on the servers already, focusing more of their time on forum issues and discussions.

 

This would also open the door of a server manager role further to those who aren't yet fully ready to handle player complaints or don't want to put in the effort to menial tasks unrelated to their server. This role would be more focused on contributing to server specific discussions and decisions, as well as helping to run server events as done previously by CAs.

 

I feel narrowing the tasks of CA into two separate, defined roles would be the most efficient way to allow members to contribute to the community in the ways they can/want to.

[delirium]

Recently. the CA role has been changed to focus primarily on forums side moderation, and seems less focused on the server side of things, being removed from the servers page. The role seems slightly out of place in the traditional SA-CA-AT foodchain.

 

I think it would be useful to push CA out of this flow, making them closer to the IA role. CA could replaced by Server Managers or whatever. This would allow for people who wish to contribute to the community, including past staff and upstanding members, to apply to this role without putting in effort they don't want to on the servers to achieve SA first. It may seem weird to suggest this for a gaming community, but there are plenty of members passionate and willing to help the community that just aren't terribly interested in playing the servers or contributing to server related discussions; additionally, plenty of higher staff members spend less time on the servers already, focusing more of their time on forum issues and discussions.

 

This would also open the door of a server manager role further to those who aren't yet fully ready to handle player complaints or don't want to put in the effort to menial tasks unrelated to their server. This role would be more focused on contributing to server specific discussions and decisions, as well as helping to run server events as done previously by CAs.

 

I feel narrowing the tasks of CA into two separate, defined roles would be the most efficient way to allow members to contribute to the community in the ways they can/want to.

 

A huge part of bringing the Server Representative around to replace the way CA was working before was to give the SR more access and environments where they could work with their AT's and learn their process for everything related to server management. Relaxing this rank back into its traditional role was not ideal in my opinion and I kind of regret not doing more to try and push that particular culture for those two particular ranks. I think it's paramount that we have active mid level admins who know their shit when it comes to what they're supposed to do as an admin for their servers, are active enough to understand the concerns of the regular population to relay that information to the AT's so that they can assess the feedback and proceed from there, and are willing to learn more of the 'technical' side of game server management in order to continue to provide a consistent or improving product. Having a bunch of forum fairies is great but the servers are what drives any chance to capture new audience members and for those to run smoothly I believe a mid level server focused role is needed. I think that it would be great to explore this option in detail and could work by maybe giving read only access to the ftp site and possibly access to restart servers. Obviously that would be a fair amount of trust to extend to someone but I think in general you can usually tell who your potential candidates for a rank are after the A -> SA transition period which is a decent enough evaluation period.

[Manny]

Recently. the CA role has been changed to focus primarily on forums side moderation, and seems less focused on the server side of things, being removed from the servers page. The role seems slightly out of place in the traditional SA-CA-AT foodchain. While they have been sort of "pushed away" from being server focused it's definitely not like that at all in actuality. I suppose a large reason to push them off the servers page was to make them feel more "community centered", which would encompass the forums and servers.

 

I think it would be useful to push CA out of this flow, making them closer to the IA role. CA could replaced by Server Managers or whatever. This would allow for people who wish to contribute to the community, including past staff and upstanding members, to apply to this role without putting in effort they don't want to on the servers to achieve SA first. It may seem weird to suggest this for a gaming community, but there are plenty of members passionate and willing to help the community that just aren't terribly interested in playing the servers or contributing to server related discussions; additionally, plenty of higher staff members spend less time on the servers already, focusing more of their time on forum issues and discussions. So you want to merge CA into AT? I don't see how making it SA-AT could help in anyway. I think CA is a fine prerequisite to have for AT since there they work the closest with the server managers, often being the ones we can go to for many if not all of our server changes. I also don't see how moving them closer to IA could help anyone. What exactly would they be doing? Just simply forum moderation?

 

This would also open the door of a server manager role further to those who aren't yet fully ready to handle player complaints or don't want to put in the effort to menial tasks unrelated to their server. This role would be more focused on contributing to server specific discussions and decisions, as well as helping to run server events as done previously by CAs. If you are not "fully ready to handle player complaints" then you are not ready to be shown the door of a server manager door. To also imply that people who don't want to put in effort on "menial tasks unrelated to their server" won't get promoted to a server manager role, is in my opinion, wrong. To make it clear, I have no real say in who gets promoted when/where/why, but I feel that as long as someone is putting in the effort and time to help the ATs for "their server" then it shows that they are someone to be looked at for a promotion. I think it's more about the effort and detail you put into your work than it is about how much work you do.

 

I feel narrowing the tasks of CA into two separate, defined roles would be the most efficient way to allow members to contribute to the community in the ways they can/want to.

 

In general I feel like this sort of change proposal is an awful idea, to make a whole new rank might be a different argument, but there is no legitimate reason for this change to happen. The CAs can be still typically used as the old "SR" without some of them, who might not be so server-centered, can also be helpful in other areas that still portray the community.

[kabLe]

As a CA myself, id say this rank is perfect for showing who is ready/getting ready to have the door to AT opened to them. Playing on the server everyday is not what an AT does and should not be a prereq to it as a prereq to CA is being active on the servers as an SA. From sitting in this rank I can tell you that it gives you a good idea of how things are run in the upper tiers of the community as AT+ will openly discuss many topics with us and ask for our opinions. From their stand point it shows who's mentally ready to handle stepping further up the ladder by the responses we give and from our stand point it gives us a small taste of what we can expect if we move up. Just my opinion.

[Gentoo]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]20207[/ATTACH]

 

I made a diagram in paint to help visualize this a bit better. My thinking behind organizing the traditional flow into a branch-style system, is to separate good judgement and passion about the community from server knowledge and passion about the servers in a way. From my perspective, it isn't ideal to have someone with one and not the other in the current role, but because of how wide the range of responsibilities is, it seems that this is an option that has to be taken sometimes. Separating these would lessen this issue, and open the roles up to more people. There are people in this community who have been SA for YEARS, and while I can't say for sure, it's possible that many of them have passed up on promotions or never bothered applying because they have no interest in some of the responsibilities or feel they wouldn't be able to fulfill them. They are instead replaced some who are often less knowledgeable or sometimes even less interested in the servers at all, but have great Teamspeak and Forums activity. Additionally, this would allow those who are passionate and willing to proceed into a mid-level server role, but have no interest in certain responsibilities (or the higher ups feel they aren't ready for some), to move into a role that would allow them to further help their server and use their knowledge of said server to benefit discussions and decisions.

 

If you are not "fully ready to handle player complaints" then you are not ready to be shown the door of a server manager door

As stated earlier, there is a decent chance that people who are not ready for these roles in terms of judgement are being moved into them because they are doing good server related work or a spot needs to be filled. Alternatively, there may be people suited or in these roles that just don't have the same passion for the servers that they used to, but have great interpersonal skills and judgement for the moderation side of the role. These people may be weighing in on discussions on servers they rarely play on or have no interest in at all.

 

The main purpose behind this would be to better conform the promotion of players to these roles towards their strengths. weaknesses, and interests. It would be very reasonable for them to be able to be held simultaneously, in the same way IA/AT can be right now.

[Manny]

I see what you're getting at. Although it's not explicitly stated anywhere the diagram is pretty much a good representation of what goes on. I think @Dominic can explain what I'm trying to get at perfectly. There might be CAs who aren't exactly super active on the servers, but can fit greatly when it comes to the more general "Community Advisor" part where they can give input on the direction of the community and provide some ideas on non-server specific topics. However, there might be CAs who might be more interested in discussing server-specific topics and those are the people who I would go to in our Staff Discord and bring up certain topics to them.

[TheZZL]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]20207[/ATTACH]

 

I made a diagram in paint to help visualize this a bit better. My thinking behind organizing the traditional flow into a branch-style system, is to separate good judgement and passion about the community from server knowledge and passion about the servers in a way. From my perspective, it isn't ideal to have someone with one and not the other in the current role, but because of how wide the range of responsibilities is, it seems that this is an option that has to be taken sometimes. Separating these would lessen this issue, and open the roles up to more people. There are people in this community who have been SA for YEARS, and while I can't say for sure, it's possible that many of them have passed up on promotions or never bothered applying because they have no interest in some of the responsibilities or feel they wouldn't be able to fulfill them. They are instead replaced some who are often less knowledgeable or sometimes even less interested in the servers at all, but have great Teamspeak and Forums activity. Additionally, this would allow those who are passionate and willing to proceed into a mid-level server role, but have no interest in certain responsibilities (or the higher ups feel they aren't ready for some), to move into a role that would allow them to further help their server and use their knowledge of said server to benefit discussions and decisions.

 

I agree. However, I think the dotted line connecting "Regular Player" to community advisor should be removed. I believe it's important for someone to experience the work it takes to be a server admin and actually be active on our servers. From there then they can make the decision to either continue to be invested in the server, or become more attached to the forums.

Yes I've never been an admin, but regardless those experiences are important.

[duffy]

I agree. However, I think the dotted line connecting "Regular Player" to community advisor should be removed. I believe it's important for someone to experience the work it takes to be a server admin and actually be active on our servers. From there then they can make the decision to either continue to be invested in the server, or become more attached to the forums.

Yes I've never been an admin, but regardless those experiences are important.

 

Gonna agree with ZZL here, you would have to switch SR and CA with each other because as a CA you need some game time and experience because you can't handle player complaints with proper knowledge and give proper punishments. I guess forum and teamspeak moderation you don't game need activity but I would still recommend having it as just straight background knowledge. As an SR, you don't really need game time to know what you're doing. All of your activity is based out of forums and you help ATs in maintaining the servers.

[Kieran]

Only concern for me is that if there was a forum focused rank that those in this rank would more aggressively moderate the forums to prove themselves, something I think is already a problem and would just get worse. Wouldn't necessarily be opposed to such a change though.

[Prez]

it's possible that many of them have passed up on promotions or never bothered applying because they have no interest in some of the responsibilities or feel they wouldn't be able to fulfill them.

 

Why do you think we made the division system originally?

 

As for the topic at hand, eh we've done this before with a forum moderation rank but it didn't really end up working out. I have my own opinions on how I think/thought the CA rank should work, and there are ultimately merits for both systems. But I don't know if splitting another rank out like you have is the most effective idea; there isn't really any harm in trying though if you get the right talent, but I don't know how much of a value add it'll be.