Goonhub
10-07-2024, 10:56 AM
Quote:This often takes form in highly +1ed applications being denied
Quote:Applications are often sporadic in their results (Citing a HoS app that got 4 +1s and was accepted, and a HoS app with 5 +1s denied due to lack of community feedback)
Hi there. I'll speak to this specific one, since I'm the admin who has been doing the apps processing comments for the last couple cycles.
TL;DR: Yeah it sucks as currently implemented, and we'll be communicating better in the future.
The current process is a double-edged sword, because people post apps and get comments on them publicly, but the actual decision making process is largely invisible to players, and there's always "surprises" when they get processed. That's not ideal.
Community feedback is very important, but apps are not votes. It is not a popularity contest, despite the appearance. The reason that we want players to apply publicly and for people to comment is that often those players commenting have specific information that we don't have, like "that one round you taught people XYZ" or "you always take time to help people" or even "this person is often really rude in a way that doesn't break the rules, but makes me not want to play with them." That's stuff we can miss and stuff we want to know.
The way apps processing actually happens is that we have a spreadsheet where we link all the apps, list positive/negative/neutral comment counts, and then leave our own comments and thoughts before making a Y/N decision on them. Our own comments are usually based on the observations that we make by observing applicants in rounds, checking their notes, and observing how they conduct themselves on Discord.
Here's what it looks like. I would have shared screenshots of my own but the spreadsheet history doesn't go back that far, so I'll pick on Leah and her mentor app that we totally denied because we made her an admin instead:
When it comes time to actually process them, a lot of the time is spent on the edge cases where we're not super confident leaning one way or another. It's MUCH easier to just deny an app if we're on the edge rather than accept an app and then go through the genuinely painful process of removing Mentor/HoS status later, so we tend to err on the side of caution.
As far as the denial reasons, we have historically tried to be as gentle as possible with these, in large part because a denied app can be taken very hard. We don't want to make that worse. Denying for "not enough comments, please apply again later" lands more gently, because "hey keep playing and interacting with people so they know who you are" is a very fixable problem. And oftentimes it's by far the most accurate reason, because as those people play more and get to know more people and integrate more with the community, they show the signs of being a good Mentor/HoS in ways that make us happy to accept their next app!
The really, really hard part is when there's apps with a lot of +1 (which, as a person processing these: a simple +1 means nothing to me. Give a reason PLEASE. I know they're your friend. Please tell me why they should be the thing they're applying for) that end up getting denied because of things that are not visible to the community, usually a history of notes or warnings that make us lack the confidence that we won't have to turn around and remove the Mentor/HoS status in a few months when the same behaviors crop right back up again, but now it's visibly Shaming and they influenced a bunch of people in the meantime. In the past, we've denied things like this with a vague "due to concerns about your behavior" and encouraged the applicant to reach out to us over Discord reports in order to get the specifics, but this is deeply unsatisfying for all the people who added their confident comments about how great their friend is and are left really frustrated and confused.
So going forward, we as a team are going to be more specific than that with how we deny apps. We'll still avoid outright shaming people, but if someone has a documented history of behavior that means we feel the need to deny a popular app, we'll be more specific then "no for reasons" and leave the community in the dark. We'll also add a note to the application template to let applicants know that we may disclose the reasons that their application could be denied, though our guidelines avoiding the disclosure of specific notes or warnings will still apply.
I will add the caveat that our process already takes a long time and a lot of effort from the admins, so while we'll be doing our best to be up-front with communication, we might still miss things, and it's unrealistic for anyone to expect an essay of detailed personalized feedback about what boxes they need to check in order to get the role they want. That's beyond the scope of the changes we're making.
We still want to avoid shaming people who are applying because they want to help, but we will do our best to be more transparent with the community about our decisions.