Convair880/Pistoleer's mentor application
#1
Usual Character Name: Robert Green
BYOND Username: Convair880
IRC Username: Pistoleer
Recommended by: Conor12
Times Available: Varies. My time zone is UTC+1.

Reason for Application + Game Experience: I created my BYOND account in August 2011 and started to frequent the Goonstation servers, so I'm not exactly a new face around here. I've been thinking about applying for mentor since late-2012, but never felt confident enough to do so until now. There's a reason for that. You see, my play style is largely low-key and non-confrontational, plus I'm not the type of person who is known for creative gimmicks. But even if I'm not overly memorable ingame, it's probably fair to say that I am committed to the community. I don't chime in here very often and when I do, I'd like to think that my posts add something worthwhile to the topic/discussion in question - some of my suggestions have it into the game. Over on the wiki, I've been the major contributor for the last eight months, keeping pages like Syndicate Items, Foods & Drinks, Construction and Murder up-to-date, and providing illustrations for many items. In the past, I've also coded a couple of improvements (e.g. syringe gun and stealth storage), all of which AngriestIBM was kind enough to port to the then-current revision. Aside from that, I've been an IRC regular (as Pistoleer) since December 2012.

With Who am I? out of the way, let's talk about the reasons for applying and why I think I'd be suitable for the task. The former is easy to answer: I like to help people, it's as simple as that. If someone is asking for assistance or obviously having trouble, I try to lend them a hand when I can. A typical example would be a roboticist who can't figure out how to replace cyborg limbs, hits the poor guy with a wrench a couple of times and looks confused in general. "Hey Doc, what's the problem? Would you like help?" In my experience, players like this tend to be grateful for a mentor to guide them through less intuitive aspects of the game. Having access to the actual mentor channel would be great for this purpose, especially because I frequently use low-pop rounds for experiments and may be the only mentor online then. Another advantage of this setup would be the ability for other mentors to chime in, correct me in case I make a mistake or contribute their own knowledge from afar, i.e. when otherwise they wouldn't be around to overhear a local conversation.

My desire to be a mostly positive asset to the station is reflected in my job preferences. Currently, I tend to join as a staff assistant and actually try to live up to the name, doing odd jobs here and there (fixing hull breaches, dragging corpses to genetics etc.) or playing paramedic with a few, er, scavenged medkits. It's a pretty nice reward to surprise other players pleasantly by defying the usual greyshirt stereotype. I also try not to antagonize anyone, especially security (they sure have it hard enough already) or the actual antagonists - if they don't try to hunt me down, that is. It's not uncommon for me to end up as the AI or a cyborg either, and I too strive to assist other players instead of being an obstacle in that role. The usual stuff: avoid blackouts without being ordered to, direct humans and their fragile shells to safety in case of an emergency and know when to look the other way when a Bad Guy does Bad Things.

I've used mentorhelp myself on several occasions and each time, the response was friendly and professional. That's the standard I am aiming for. Of course, I'd imagine mentors have to deal with assholes or just plain dumb people from time to time, so their general attitude should probably be level-headed to a reasonable degree. Don't mean to imply that they have to blindly accept every insult, but if a carefully-worded "fuck off" doesn't work, I'd say the proper course of action would be to end the conversation and/or report said individual to the admins instead of escalating the situation. Like I mentioned before, I'm for the most part non-confrontational by nature and confident that I have enough self-control to handle such encounters in a mature manner and not use certain information to metagame. A wizard asking which spells to pick, a RD having trouble with his telegun, or similar questions along these lines.

As far as my experience goes, I've been playing on the Goonstation servers consistently for over two years now and thus are familiar with the majority of the game mechanics. The IRC channel has also been and still is a great opportunity to learn new tricks, gain insight of behind-the-scenes stuff (code and feature discussions for example) the average player is less likely to be aware of, and stay in touch with the community in general. My fields of expertise, if you can call it like that, are anything related to our robot friends, most aspects of the engineering department (not necessarily hellburns though) and how to make good use of traitor items. My knowledge concerning stuff that doesn't interest me very much, namely chemistry/telescience/genetic research/electronics, isn't as extensive, but I'm not completely clueless there. This technically isn't a HoS application, but I might as well mention that I don't neglect my security skills and occasionally join to force to keep my senses sharp. So if I get a mentorhelp question about what to do with the standard-issue gear, appropriate brig sentences or how to handle a situation involving the Bad Guy, I'm likely going to be able to point them in the right direction.

Also, there are nine owls on my avatar! This has to be a plus point for me, right?

Your opinion of Shrek: Can't tell. Believe it or not, I've never actually watched any of the movies.

Previous Bans: None as a disciplinary measure. When I started playing, I did however request a voluntary job ban from enemy roles...before I learned that the old RNG was broken and completely ignored the player's preferences. Has been lifted since.
#2
Convair880 Wrote:Over on the wiki, I've been the major contributor for the last eight months, keeping pages like Syndicate Items, Foods & Drinks, Construction and Murder up-to-date, and providing illustrations for many items.

I was torn between not commenting, or saying "I don't know who you are so no", but I feel this is important; and support you on those grounds. Wiki is where new people go and are told to go; the wiki is this the face of Goonstation, and needs to be maintained. Anyone who agrees with me on that is someone I back.
#3
Yeah, he's a cool dude who can be trusted with this unpaid hotline help job.
#4
Already approved, but this guy is honestly a massive help to the community.


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