Change in Rank Structure

[Malcovent]

So in short, one of the suggestions that floated up is that we're running too many ranks, and that ideally we'd want to narrow it down to what the average community runs. Current suggestions centre around the following

Community Administrator ~ Basically HA as you know them.
Server Administrator ~ Basically Director as you know them, increased powers.
Moderator ~ Operator, Veteran Operator, Controller. ~ Power to moderate respective server forums. Non-hosted games will also have 2-3 moderators to moderate their respective subforum.

Thoughts/Opinions?

 

[Prizyms]

I've been wanting this for a while now, full support for the idea.

 

[JtTorso]

If I am interpreting this correctly, we'd just be bumping up the responsibilities of each respective ranks and limiting the amount of individuals per roles?

 

[Malcovent]

If I am interpreting this correctly, we'd just be bumping up the responsibilities of each respective ranks and limiting the amount of individuals per roles?

Bingo.

 

[tnm]

It might be best to have some sort of trial period / rank before giving new staff members full moderator permissions.

 

[Malcovent]

It might be best to have some sort of trial period / rank before giving new staff members full moderator permissions.

Trial moderator as a concept is fine but, If its implemented I don't want to create a separate rank for it. Quite frankly if they're on trial - they should have access to all powers, otherwise it's impossible to judge how they'll handle full moderation powers until they're full moderators, which rather defeats the entire purpose. If that makes sense?

 

[superstein]

On the topic of forum moderating, a few questions for you all (and my answers at least)

Should Controller+ still be global forum moderators?
I say yes, though we should crack down on random posts being deleted without reason - perhaps it'd give people a reason to not delete as often if they aren't comfortable PMing that person.
Should staff of servers be moderators of their specific subforum? If so, what permissions should they have? (Can we even set permissions to forum moderators?)
A bit hesitant here, I can see some Operators being trigger-happy with the delete button, though I think there are certain permissions they should have - the editing of titles, stickying posts, useful things. We couldddd give delete button to Ops in their own forum, but their Controllers/Directors need to be on top of them using it effectively.
Give Ops power in Ban Appeals subforum?
Give them ability to move posts, lock threads, set prefixes I say.
What forums should have moderators? What forums need moderators?
Off-Topic is probably most in need of a few moderators. Discussion and related forums could use a few, and Gaming related forums as well.

 

[JtTorso]

We do delete a lot of posts, I think if we made a post clarifying the reason for deletion and how to prevent it might benefit a lot of people. I feel like a lot of the off topic stuff has sort of descended as of late and as much as I don't want to be babying and holding hands I think it's important to remind people that we do have rules.

As for controllers+ retaining global moderator status, I think that should remain. If anything, I think guidelines should be put for controllers that details what kinds of things should be changed/merged/deleted/moved, what might be common sense to someone might not be so obvious to everyone else.

 

[RyanDodd]

I'd honestly rather not give Operators the ability to delete things, move threads, and stuff. I'm fine with the others, and do agree that Controllers should stay global moderators.

 

[Malcovent]

[BCOLOR=#fff4e5]I'd honestly rather not give Operators the ability to delete things, move threads, and stuff. I'm fine with the others, and do agree that Controllers should stay global moderators.[/BCOLOR]

I'd personally rather not move controllers to 'Global moderators' just for the sake of keeping controllers. Ideally they either take the helm and become a server administrator, or get moved down to local moderator for the gaming section they staff. Unless we need the role it's best if we keep the rank structure as simple as possible, and expand it at a later date if we find its inadequate (that's my personal stance anyway) .

Also I think the idea is that if we do this, Moderators only have powers to delete/move/etc. in their respective game section. I don't know if this changes your viewpoint on moderators having those forum powers.

Regarding giving a reason for deleting a post - 100% agree with it being a requirement to PM the poster explaining the reasons for removal and offering to take it up with an administrator if they disagree.

 

[superstein]

I'd honestly rather not give Operators the ability to delete things, move threads, and stuff. I'm fine with the others, and do agree that Controllers should stay global moderators.

I'd personally rather not move controllers to 'Global moderators' just for the sake of keeping controllers. Ideally they either take the helm and become a server administrator, or get moved down to local moderator for the gaming section they staff. Unless we need the role it's best if we keep the rank structure as simple as possible, and expand it at a later date if we find its inadequate (that's my personal stance anyway) .

Also I think the idea is that if we do this, Moderators only have powers to delete/move/etc. in their respective game section. I don't know if this changes your viewpoint on moderators having those forum powers.

Regarding giving a reason for deleting a post - 100% agree with it being a requirement to PM the poster explaining the reasons for removal and offering to take it up with an administrator if they disagree.

Ah shit... I forgot Controllers are no more. :D

 

[SparklyMuffinz]

Moderator ~ Operator, Veteran Operator, Controller. ~ Power to moderate respective server forums. Non-hosted games will also have 2-3 moderators to moderate their respective subforum.

I fully understand where you are coming from with this but when I think about our Minecraft servers (since I think it will work well with other incorporated games), I feel like it's a lot being shoved into one rank.

I understand how the permissions will work but the way I am seeing it is a lot more responsibility is falling on the Server Administrator. I know I relied on Controllers a lot for assistance when it came to maintaining or taking care of things that I could've done but it just made it easier having that extra person helping - what I mean is, there were more responsibilities. Controllers are like those just peaking authoritative figures that made things look official. Will it still have the effect if everyone is a moderator? Does this make sense? I guess just equally rely on everyone so it doesn't look like favoritism. Other than this concern, I also fully support this idea!

Moving on though, I like the idea of giving the moderators a chance with these permissions for their respective section. Not that it makes a huge difference but we are removing a rank that helped with these things (moving, deleting, closing, editing). Considering things changed for all Controller+ recently regarding how we handle deleting posts, I don't think it'd be that big of an issue and of course if it is, we change something.

Quick side question: with new ranks... can this bring new colours!?

 

[RyanDodd]

Now that I have a chance to actually think about things, I do agree with Sparkly that too many ranks are being combined into Moderator. There are certain people that I can't imagine giving what is essentially Operator, VetOp, and Controller. That's too many permissions for some people.

I think we need to keep something like Operator, Controller, Director, and Global Admin. Four ranks is certainly not too many.

 

[tnm]

Thinking this through, I have to agree with Ryan / Sparkly- it may be a little much combining Operator/Vet/Controller into one global rank. I can see why removing ranks like vetop and developer makes sense, but it seems logical to me to keep the 3 tear server rank structure. Operator for day to day moderation of the server, Controller for essentially what we have now and Server Administrator for all the backend / server development work. We could give operators the ability to moderate posts in their own subforums, obviously not full permissions like IP and Spam cleaner but the ability to move, sticky and prefix threads would work. That being said, I don't really know how it would turn out as it's not something we'd had before (at least while I've been around) so it could turn out better that keeping our current system.

 

[superstein]

Let me pose a question to Directors as this is most applicable to them:

Are Controllers and/or VetOps vital to you? Are the elevated positions something that benefits the server, or could you do without them?

I agree with Malc in keeping our rank structure simple, but there's no point in taking out ranks if it's going to be harmful.

 

[RyanDodd]

Let me pose a question to Directors as this is most applicable to them:

Are Controllers and/or VetOps vital to you? Are the elevated positions something that benefits the server, or could you do without them?

Yes. Controllers on AoD oversee that maps are balanced and that map settings are set to be the most enjoyable for the player. They have permissions that I would not be comfortable with an Operator having. For example, when someone gets accepted after a trial, I would certainly not want to immediately give them access to input-file-modifying commands.

On the other hand, VetOp is just a reward for Operators who have stood out among the rest so it isn't vital to the management of the server.

 

[Ogarci]

Completely agree with Ryan. VetOps are absolutely not vital to the server, but they server as a reward.

 

[Oak Milk]

I work pretty darn closely with my controllers as well, vetop I could pretty easily do without though.

 

[tnm]

To me personally at A&T controllers are not vital, although I've tried to think about other servers too and from what I've seen they're vital for them.

 

[Prizyms]

BuildBox only has one Controller - you may say we can do without given we are 'just a build server', but rawrmynameisrex is an extremely vital member of staff who's proven his worth and thus can be trusted to take on a more leadership-oriented role on the server - I'd say keep Controller (in a renamed form most likely). VetOp is absolutely useless on BuildBox and as such we haven't had the rank for nearly 2 years, scrap it.

 

[Malcovent]

I don't think e should keep vetop as a 'reward' rank personally.

As for controller - Can i ask people advocating for it to stay to give me a concrete universal list of controller duties, because i'm tempted to bet that there isn't one. I'd personally rather Controllers were either trained to run the server and made director, or if they aren't "up to the cut", moved down to Moderator and fast-tracked for Future Server Admin.

 

[RyanDodd]

1. Help the Director(s) in seeing if the staff are performing their best.
2. Decide on map submissions.
3. Help a Director make major server decisions.
4. Provide higher-level feedback to the Director regarding a staff applicant.

Basically, they take strain off of a Director. They could be promoted to Director instead of keeping the Controller rank, but then they have even more responsibilities. It's nice to have someone with a more limited range of power who can focus on their specific jobs instead of stressing out about being a Director and having to do everything. Again, I don't think that there's an issue with adding an additional rank instead of keeping an oversimplified list of roles that could be counterproductive to the operation of the servers.

 

[SparklyMuffinz]

Just wondering what the negative is to having 4 ranks instead of 3?

Much like Ryan said, I also treated my Controllers like mini Directors. Most of the things I did or fixed, I taught them how to do it in case they'd need it in the future - something that doesn't necessarily need to be done for all moderators.

As someone who jumped from VetOp to Director, it was a huge change in every way. I'm perfectly fine with no VetOp but Controller was that stepping stone between minimum necessary commands to server changing ones (for example, editing naps, changing settings, etc.)

 

[Malcovent]

Seeing as there's some support for controller, what would the consensus be on meeting half way and keeping the rank (albeit possibly renamed) for only remaining Minecraft servers?

The reason I'm somewhat against Controller is that It just seems to have varying levels of quality/responsibility depending where you look, the role was never defined in concrete - to the extent where if I ask players at random what a controllers responsibilities are, I'm not sure they'd be able to answer me.

Even in more recent history, we've had issues of Directors offloading almost all of their responsibilities to controllers and staff expecting that a controller must be the person to become director. I can understand that some staff feel an intermediate role between Director/Operator is good, I just personally feel that it creates more problems than it solves it most cases.

The reason that I suggest only keeping it for Minecraft servers is that, I'm not infallible by any means and there's strong support for Controller staying, so I'll just put it down to me not being a Director for a while - But if I'm right about their role in our Minecraft servers, I feel its a role that specifically evolved from the requirements of our Minecraft servers ,and won't really translate well to other games.

Is that an agreeable solution or, do people feel that it'll become confusing if there's one rank that only pops up in our Minecraft servers/that an intermediate rank should be global?

 

[SparklyMuffinz]

My vote is completely okay with that, that's sort of how I was picturing it anyways. I do think - keeping with the theme - a rename would be nice as well!

Good points though, I agree with everything you said though. Perhaps, if we all can agree on this, servers can provide concrete responsiilities or a set definition of what Controllers are and their expectations? This way we don't have 1 rank that is "up in the air".

And finally, although I only have my expectations of the overhaul to base this off of, I don't think it will be necessary for other games to hold the rank either.