Recent Admin Survey

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GrayRachnid
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Recent Admin Survey

Post by GrayRachnid »

There was an admin survery sometime last week-and a half. I was recently made aware that my answers to the question wouldn't be made public and only the statistics would be. I am posting my answers publicly because they were made with the impression that the admin team would be able to read them.

I put a lot of time and effort into this, especially into 7.1, please give the whole thing a read.

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Oh boy, this is going to be a long one. For starters, this so called admin /team/ is non-existent. The Headadmins and Hosts lack a direction for the community, administration, and for the server as a hole. Cries of MRP go out every time someone questions the community's play style, but these same cries do nothing to suppress the actual elements of LRP that still exist on the server. Some of these elements even among Admin Staff.

There's more reasons that I refuse to call the admin team a team, first of all your staff are split between two servers and yet they continue to administrate the same community. This is coming from a headmin that administrates a community that is also split by two servers. Except, each admin team there is separate. While there is a language barrier on Eris which makes each admin team able to stay to just their community easier, I don't even see attempts of trying to keep each team to their own community on citadel.

Opinions of RP staff are valued just as highly as opinions of Main staff due to this. This isn't an issue, but the RP staff make it an issue by informing players to obey rules and standards applied only to the RP server. Case-in-Point: Today Vincent came into #staff-forum and informed players that Assistants with tools and insulated gloves should be arrested and have tools with gloves confiscated. He also said that Security players who grab tools and gloves are breaking the powergaming rule and should be ahelped. Any veteran main player or admin would laugh at you for even considering the notion. This inconsistency in ruling is an issue, and while it is a long rooted issue and occurs in most admin teams, the split of community but not of the admin team makes it a bigger issue(as in the community is split appropriately to their servers, but the admin team is still a mesh). RP Staff should know that they shouldn't throw their weight around in regards to things that happen on Main unless they too are an active player on Cit-Main. I know bringing this up now right after what happened yesterday sounds insensitive but if there is any better time, then it is now.

Second of all, the inconsistency. I know I touched up on this in my rant about RP staff, but this isn't an issue caused by just them talking either. Main staff too suffer from inconsistencies between them. I have no examples that come to mind, but I'm sure many other players and even admins would agree with this notion. There's too many inconsistencies and the headmins give the impression that even they don't talk amongst themselves to settle any inconsistencies. Whenever an inconsistency is resolved, everyone agrees to move on and that's it. Nobody cares to add precautions so that a misunderstanding of the rules doesn't happen again. The headmins refuse to edit the current iteration of the rules for any new context and continue to cite the rules that are in progress. I've only been back to citadel for 2-3 months and the same words have been parroted over and over again with no indication of when these new rules would be arriving. There also appears to be no ways to input feedback on these new rules. They're an enigma that has been 'in the works' with no show for the work being done and no show of what they're even going to look like. The only reason I'm going strongly at this is because it makes no sense to me that you're planning to impose a completely /new/ set of rules that will apparently solve the majority of the inconsistencies that exist in the current rules but these new rules aren't even getting feedback from the same community they are going to be enforced upon. Show the community the draft of the rules and let the community help write it up. The admins too are part of the community. Stop holing up and alienating yourself from the community.

Third, carrying on from my last point. Admins and Players. It is not visible, but there is a clear divide in-between the two. This is inevitable as one side is meant to police the other. The average player is intimidated by admins, especially new players and players who haven't had friends become admins or admin friends. Don't get me wrong, I have no personal problems with admins. A lot of them are also friendly to new players. I'm just going to throw a name shout-out if you've read this far that Drewfus and Glitchy are by far the most friendly and likeable admin staff and I encourage them to keep it up. But that's besides the point, there is still a disconnect between players and the admin team and the Player Representative role has done nothing to rectify this. My criticism on that role is not one that should be done here, so i'll save my comments. In short, the Admins are there to essentially police the server and community. This should be done in good faith and intentions while also attempting to keep to relations with the player professional and civil. To add, players should also be able to criticize admins without fear of being chastised back or getting a 'shape up' talk. I have only my experiences to speak.

Fourth, accountability. I would especially be very glad and pleased if Admins are held accountable for their actions the same way players are. I can completely understand that there are different ways and procedures that admins get punished with and I am not against that in any way or form. My true issue is the lack of transparency, up until 3 days ago I was not even aware that admins were punished based on a strike system. Though that can be attributed as my fault because I never went indepth in reading all the subsections of the rules, I feel like the lack of mention of them is also a part of it. I have never heard an admin mention strikes at all in the past year i've been around On-Off. The admin staff lacks some serious transparency for the players to be able to understand what is going on behind the scenes. Don't get me wrong, the players don't /need/ to know everything happening behind the scenes. But. Some things need to be made more transparent so that the players can feel as part of the community that the admins are administrating. It is no joke that some people feel as if a lot of admins prefer to sit in their Ivory tower and rules from it without actually relating to the player experience. I personally know that this isn't true and I also personally know admins that make effort to participate and play with the players. I also know that a few admins secretly play and keep track of the community's wants, needs, and play style as well as atmosphere. However, this brings me back to my starter point. Where is the team in this?

The admin team doesn't exist, the admin team is a name given to a collective of Admins that would rather keep the status-quo in order to not endanger their position or rank. Some do it because they've grown used to the power that comes with being an admin, and cannot see themselves as players anymore. Others do it as a sense of responsibility, but that same sense of responsibility stops them from attempting to start change. I'm not putting all admins in one of these two groups, but this is how I see it. Change needs to happen. The only way for change to happen in the right direction is for someone to take the lead. I can only do so much criticizing and arguing but that won't get me anywhere. I wanted to try and change things for the better from the inside, but i'm afraid that my Admin app might not get accepted. The reason I've typed so much is because these are all my heartfelt feelings for the server and the community, and I mean them. I'm sorry if i've come off as abrasive and rude, I do it because I genuinely care.

Afterthought: I came back to this after filling out the rest of the form just to point out another pet peeve of mine. Lack of inactivity administration. I understand that being an admin is a volunteer job. However, when you sign up for a volunteer job you accept the responsibilities of this volunteer job. If you cannot be active for an extended period of time, admins should be asked to step down or step down themselves. Yogstation, where I originally came from, had a Retired Admin staff role that would ease re-entering the staff team once admins come back from an extended break. I am not sure if Citadel should implement the same, but a way to ease admins back into the staff team after an extended break should definitely be added in order to encourage admins to lose their badge once they go on an extended break.
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GrayRachnid
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Re: Recent Admin Survey

Post by GrayRachnid »

I encourage others to do the same if they happen to have saved their survey answers or can request them from a head admin.
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Putnam
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Re: Recent Admin Survey

Post by Putnam »

the admin team is a name given to a collective of Admins that would rather keep the status-quo in order to not endanger their position or rank. Some do it because they've grown used to the power that comes with being an admin, and cannot see themselves as players anymore. Others do it as a sense of responsibility, but that same sense of responsibility stops them from attempting to start change. I'm not putting all admins in one of these two groups, but this is how I see it.
yo armchair psychology is very rarely constructive, often outright destructive

i do find maintainers not being able to modify testmerges a bit baffling when we can do fullmerges, which is doubtlessly more destructive, but then i don't know exactly how testmerges work (something with TGS??) so there might be some security issue i'm just not aware of

GrayRachnid
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Posts: 94
Joined: Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:18 am
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Re: Recent Admin Survey

Post by GrayRachnid »

Putnam wrote:
Sun Nov 24, 2019 4:18 pm
the admin team is a name given to a collective of Admins that would rather keep the status-quo in order to not endanger their position or rank. Some do it because they've grown used to the power that comes with being an admin, and cannot see themselves as players anymore. Others do it as a sense of responsibility, but that same sense of responsibility stops them from attempting to start change. I'm not putting all admins in one of these two groups, but this is how I see it.
yo armchair psychology is very rarely constructive, often outright destructive
That's a fair point and this is probably one of the least convincing points in my wall of text and I admit it may have been done with an element of anger in it. I just find it baffling at times and it is why I mentioned it near the end.
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bluefishtuna
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Re: Recent Admin Survey

Post by bluefishtuna »

ok boomer
(kinda good tho)

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