Staff training needs to be implemented. Over the course of 30 minutes I've seen: - People not being warned for saying things like suck my d*** and f*** your self - People falsely banned for pointing out to staff rulebreakers - Staff handing out warns for all the wrong reasons - Ignoring the community that are screaming at them to punish the rule breakers. - Staff members telling users not to break a specific rule but that staff member broke that rule a couple minutes ago. Pretty bad things, right? So, staff training should be implemented. Advantages of staff training: - Staff are even more familiar with the rules, as most of them have thrown the rule book out of the window as far as I know - Staff members can easily know and identify the right punishment for certain rulebreakers. - Staff can be quicker to react to the rulebreaker - Decreases huge mistakes made by staff members. So, why not give it a shot? It will definitely improve the quality of the staff team and all I can see in this is good. Thanks for reading!
This thread will not be taken kindly by staff. You cannot expect staff members to instantly respond to every minor issue. They are humans too, they can miss things. They are also players, meaning they could be active ingame by playing, building, answering PM's, etc. They cannot help everyone at once, but they will always get around to it. I do feel the server is minorly understaffed currently, but from what I understand, they are accepting applications. Also, I would be surprised if there isn't atleast some sort of mentoring system or atleast a document where people can read and learn about their position. Speaking from experience, it's hard to adjust to a servers specific staff rules with no help. As I originally said; staff most likely won't take kindly to this thread. I'd expect a few potato ratings from a few people.
Ah but sir you did not mention that this was in shoutbox, and I feel it was safe to assume you meant ingame. Sorry for the confusion.
Please consider the fact that we're not automated moderating machines We're players just like you, and like you, we're human, we can't see everything. I didn't even know smd was an acronym before this thread . For those that we miss, the complaint section exactly for this, file a complaint with evidence and, if justified, action will be taken. If this is occurring, then discuss with the staff member (with evidence) in a civil and constructive manner (I'd suggest through the forum pm), or, file a staff complaint. As for the suggestion itself, you advocate for staff training, which is all good and well. But /how/ are we going to train staff? A new trial mod rank? Video tutorials reacting to situations? a detailed guidebook? If you're proposing training, let the discussion be about initiatives, not just 'Make staff great again!.' Regardless, while i don't necessarily agree with the basis of which this suggestion was formed. I'd love for more support for newer staff when it comes to understanding both the rules, and their proper enforcement .
You should use the staff feedback form for specific concerns. As for staff training, I'm not really sure that will help anything, especially when you haven't included any details on what that might be. Are mistakes going to happen with staff? Of course there are going to be mistakes, that's inevitable, training or not. I'm not going to flat out be against this because of course I'm for something that will improve staff's effectiveness.
If you're looking for suggestions, I think a mentoring system would be great. A SMod+ would be assigned to the newly promoted staff member, and they will teach them how to deal with certain situations. They teach them everything they need to know basically. I have staffed on many servers, and trust me when I say, that the servers with a system like this is nearly always better. It helps the new staff become more comfortable with the current staff, and aids them in becoming a more successful staff member. As I said previously, I would be surprised if ECC has not already got something like this in place, but I do feel it's worth a shout.
Well, staff can be tested on their judgement by being put in a wide range of scenarios, from just talking to the user in game to a permaban scenario. This will test their decision making and help them make the right decisions. Staff could also be told another list of scenarios and staff could try to identify the rule the user violated. This would help with finding the appropriate punishment after and will refresh staff members on the rules. Another thing you can do Is to say a bunch of abbreviations and staff will decide if that abbreviation is breaking the rules by answering "yes" or "no". This helps with my first thing I mentioned when staff didn't warn when people were saying 'fys' or 'smd' and this also helps with the first paragraph I mentioned about picking the appropriate punishment.
I'll just go through this part one by one. Nicit and Harry have pretty much summed up my feelings on the first points. 1. "Most staff have thrown the rulebook out the window" - how so? Whenever I forget a rule and ask staff, most of them can recall it better than I could remember. The staff know the rules, trust me. 2. "Staff members can quickly and easily know the punishment" - there's already multiple threads and such for us staff on how to deal with punishments. And to be honest, unless you're on alone, staff of all ranks are willing to review a punishment to make sure it's fair. 3. "Staff can be quicker to react" - I see 3-4 mods on top of most rulesbreakers in global and at least 1 handling other channels. It's pretty well covered in our general moderation patterns. 4. "Decreases huge mistakes" - Not sure what "huge mistakes" you're referring to, but all I can say is you can expect a little of that from new staff. They are like rookies in a sports league, there will be jitters and errors until they settle into their new role and environment. So to be quite honest, I don't think this is really necessary and would be more work and stress on rookie staff than is needed. Staff are human too.
Our staff do a great job as it is. I'm proud of all of them. Spoiler If anyone needs training it's me lol. I take my rants to next levels sometimes.
