1. Add a typing test to the staff application - typing speed is incredibly important when you're moderating. If someone tells a user to **** off and it takes 20 seconds to warn that person, it's just too slow. I suggest not having a minimum speed, and more so having it as something to consider (Sort of like how age is treated). 2. Check up on the activity of staff members and take action based on it. Is a staff member doing 5 hours a day, constantly paying attention to chat and doing a lot of forum work (Huh, reminds me of someone)? Promote that person, not the one that logs in for 5 minutes a day and doesn't do any forum work (Also reminds me of someone!) - this example may or may not be anecdotal. Before I joined staff, graphs were apparently sent out to all the staff members showing the hours they did and all that, I know that the information needed for this is obtainable. There are just far too many staff members that sit there doing nothing, leeching off of the hard working staff member. It's unfortunately all too often that the hard workers get brushed aside while the lazy ones rise up. 3. Give proper responses to staff feedback forms other than 'Thank you' or 'We will look into this'. No one expects a paragraph but it's be nice to know what actually happened. I've sent in multiple staff feedback forms and the only answers I get are 'It was taken care of' or 'We will discuss this'. I'd greatly appreciate 1 or 2 sentences saying what actually happened. For example I filed a staff complaint because I felt as though I had been /warn'd unfairly, and as far as I know my /warn is still there. That'd be fine if I was told that the /warn was fair, but I have no idea as nothing is clarified. Thank you.
I don't necessarily think that this is needed. I was never slow at typing, but my typing speed dramatically increased the longer I was on staff. I would rather have no reference to typing speed in applications and not potentially put doubt in someone's mind meaning they don't apply because they are a slow typer - Someone who slower at replying but thinks about situations better/handles complaints correctly is much better than someone who can respond in a matter of seconds but gets it wrong. I agree that activity needs to be kept under close observation. I obviously can't talk about what is done now as its been quite a few months since I was staff, although I can explain why we stopped sending out graphs as it was my decision to stop doing it lol. During the summer months (winter for you aussies), Phys used to produce graphs for each level of staff, individually breaking down complaints/lwc/contracts/appeals/apps etc. These took forever to do for 20-30 staff members. We used to send them out, anonymising all other names, so you could compare your own work levels to other staff, but not identify the bars on the graph etc. Whilst this started off being very well received, it also led to the staff team being ridiculously over competitive. What we found was that a handful of staff members were so set on having the highest number of complaints/lwcs etc that they would 'hog' all of the work, and not in a beneficial way that saw all of the work get done quickly and correctly. People were rushing to claim complaints that they weren't necessarily best placed to handle, rushing lwcs and missing locks - you get the idea. It also caused issues within the team with certain staff members doing the vast majority of the work and others being left with no work to do, even when they were available to do it then and when it wouldn't have been left for hours. So we decided to not send out the graphs and just use it internally. We then had a month or two where Phys continued to produce the graphs but just the GA+s had access to them, and we messaged staff members who hadn't their share of the work. This was still taking a long amount of time though for produce activity levels for everyone, so we stopped producing full graphs. In terms of hours online, in the summer nicit used to do activity checks for all staff and work out their daily average. Anyone who has done this in the past will be able to support me here - this was a very slow and painful process to do for everyone. Basically, what I see as the best idea for this sort of activity check is to look into specific people as and when is required - the time it takes to do it for everyone, every month does not justify what you get back from doing it. What I would say is that this is something which is definitely picked up on by the senior staff - messages have always been sent regarding activity and people do get demoted for it. It is worth noting though, that the reasons for lower activity are not always made public knowledge. There often is a good reason why you may not have seen a staff member for a while - exams, personal issues etc - and staff aren't under any obligation to tell everyone about it. Similarly, they may be spending time doing back-scene type work which may not be apparent to everyone. Bit rambly I know - thought I would provide a bit of background info! I agree that a bit more feedback would be nice. I was guilty of this myself and it is very easy to just reply with some sort of holding remark. To know that feedback is at least being thought about is needed, which can be shown by a quick line or 2 response.
Thank you for the reply, I appreciate getting a response like this. I definitely agree regarding the graphs and that specific people should be looked into. Although one issue I have is that some staff members have just never really done their fair share, it's very unlikely for someone to have to have exams for about 3 months straight (Correct me if I'm wrong), and if there are personal issues that are affecting them that much then they should resign and focus on solving those issues in my opinion. It's more so about the ones that don't really have an excuse - I know the staff team is just volunteers, but if someone isn't going to do their job then they should stop volunteering
I definitely agree on #2 - if you can't meet the activity standards, you shouldn't be on the staff team. I like #3 too, as it would satisfy those who file complaints. I'd like to add a #4 and a #5- If you are a SuperMod or higher, do not stay AFK for more than 10 minutes at a time (and use /v if you do) - and if you are no higher than a GameAdmin, respond to all PMs in said timeframe.
Can confirm, graphs are a painful process. I wrote the application that parses the online time data and chat data from the server logs. Due to the sizes of the logs it would take 20 minutes per person (probably smaller now, 3 times less people online). After spending most of the day getting everyone's daily activity I had to add it all to a spreadsheet, this took another day. All in all I spent 2 whole days per month on it. I'm sure I could've automated more of this, but that would be weeks of work and didn't seem worth it to me. It took a considerable amount of time and work.. But, if it helps maintain activity of staff then it was well worth it. (Sadly this wasn't the case back in 2014) I believe it's worth it to maintain staff activity. As it is now there are a good 10 staff members who don't bother to keep up with staff standards, and it lowers staff's credibility as a whole. A well maintained staff team is a well maintained community. I'll respond to the other 2 points and other posts when I'm at my computer
1. -1, I am a very slow typer, but didnt feel I was a terrible staff member and shouldnt have not been given the chance to be staff because of this. 2. I agree to a point. I had some bad experiences when i was on staff with graphs as Dewsy has already explained. Doing a lot of the work when you are a team of 3 to keep the team afloat is ok, but when people are taking all the work just to get ahead is another thing which happened too much of. Learning to share the work is also as big a problem as people getting away with not doing any work. 3. +1 Although i tend not to file complaints on staff unless its really bad, afterall, I do know what kinda crap they do take on a regular basis. Everyone goes through a bad patch or too. Dont be like Football Clubs and get rid of them the first time they do something wrong. Getting things wrong and learning from the mistake makes people better in most cases.
Point 1: There are more variables that come into play when it comes to speed in chat. Sometimes you see it a bit later and then respond. Sometimes you get stuck on how to formulate something and it takes a bit longer. The point is that type speed isn't the only variable in late response, in fact, it's not even a major variable. I've only seen 1 person who had problems with that, and he got demoted because it took him a good minute to respond to people, consistently. He couldn't handle all the typing. And most importantly, typing speed changes over time. When I first got staff back in 2011 I couldn't type very fast. Sure, it wasn't terrible, and I could manage because chat was slow. But it wasn't fast, it was just average. Fast forward 2 years later, from which 90% of the time was on staff, and I could type at 120WPM without errors. It took time for me to learn how to type quicker. And even without fast typing I could manage. You only need to type a few words. Even at 40 words per minute it would takes you less than a few seconds to formulate a warning. To add on to this. Any of the results from staff activity should be kept private by the Admins. It shows their activity and means people need to be spoken to. You can use it to to start a conversation about the staffmember about their activity. Asking them why they're so inactive, and if they expect it to last. And if next month the activity hasn't changed you can warn them. (unless they're literally offline for weeks at a time (totally not like me *shifts eyes*)) People aren't getting demoted for not bothering to log on. And that's a problem that needs fixing. Point 3: Although I agree there should be more feedback, you can't give too much. A good "We're looking into this, and you'll hear back if action is taken" and after action has been taken or no action has been taken a simple "Staffmember has been spoken to, and understands what he did wrong. If this continues to happen, feel free to fill in another feedback form." or "We've come to the conclusion that the staffmember didn't behave out of line, and thus we're denying this complaint." Just like how any other complaints are handled.
