Feedback Goonstation Admin Team
#16
Copying announcement from discord for the forum people and because this change was partially motivated by the feedback expressed in this post:

Quote:We've had a vote and updated our internal admin guidelines (https://wiki.ss13.co/Admin_Guidelines) based on recent feedback from the community. The section on sharing information related to player-admin interactions (bans, warnings, notes etc.) has been changed to this:

"Staff are discouraged from revealing or discussing information relating to any player's punishments, notes or official admin communications UNLESS it is to correct misconceptions around why a certain admin action was taken."

Previously we have had a policy of almost never speaking publicly about why someone was banned in order to avoid shaming them. This unfortunately relies entirely on community trust which can be too easily undermined by the banned player or others lying or misrepresenting what happened. This can, in turn, lead to widespread misconceptions and misunderstandings around how the rules are enforced and what things might get you banned or warned for.
This policy change allows us to share some of this information when we find it necessary and relevant to do so. We will not share any personal private information or information that could otherwise compromise player safety. By default, bans, warnings, and notes will still be private.
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#17
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.
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#18
(10-05-2024, 10:21 AM)LeahTheTech Wrote:
Quote:What I see strongly suggests that there is some sort of internal disagreement among the admin team, one that has been going on for a very long time and which has gotten very heated.  We, the players - we don't really see any of it.

I can say that this is 100% not the case at the moment. I wasn't around for any of the Pope stuff so I can't really comment on it, but Zamujasa's removal was an exceptional case that was a long time coming and is not (as far as I can see) emblematic of any deeper issues among us (ඞ) as a team.

We do of course disagree and argue but frankly we're the most united we've been in a while at the moment. There is no hidden war or conspiracy, there's just us doing our best.

Hi I'd like to comment on this myself since I *was* around for all of the examples in this reply post and I do feel like I have some insights. My post isn't Admin Team talking it's just Me and My Words as Flaborized etc etc

I think in the future if somebody leaves on very unamiable terms we're going to be much more likely to publicly share about it like how we've been with the zamu stuff, though I'm doubtful we have much to gain going into the weeds on the past old happenings at this point. I appreciate the prose about bandages and wounds and stuff but I would generally say that each person walking out/being removed has felt like a decently isolated incident with its own unique circumstances, though maybe with a few things in common. The most notable thing IMO would be that there was *obviously* unresolved tension between the person who left/was removed and other admins. Like, you could feel people lashing out at each other and there being a background of hostility. Fortunately that feeling is basically entirely absent at the moment, everyone seems to get along pretty well which is maybe the first time I've been able to say that without having some exceptions in mind.

To sort of corroborate Leah, I'd agree fully that we feel pretty dang unified now. I think at a certain point in the last few years you probably could (if you were being reductive) say that there was a "big schism" in the admin team, but at this point everyone has either chilled out with each other or left. We're not a monolith that all have the same views on everything, but I think everyone who is an admin right now is very respectful in admin spaces, and we'd all be on pretty high alert for developing problems akin to what we've had before.

Having been an admin for a little over five years, I've watched the admin team get less and less willing to fight with each other. Because it's exhausting and nobody who's still on it *wants* to fight. We're all here to contribute in some way to a game we love and admin drama is very far from that. So uh, I wouldn't say the festering wound metaphor thing feels very accurate at all from the perspective of someone who has a pretty complete understanding of the events of the last few years. I won't promise rainbows and sunshine or anything because I can't really see the future but I think you can rest assured that we won't explode into nothingness randomly.
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