Introduction:
We live in troubled times. Covid-19 is undoubtedly changing the way we go about our daily business. Many of us are forced to quarantine in our homes, being forced in front of our computers; Minecraft. Troubled times, indeed.
With a little bit more time on hands than usual, a perfect time has presented itself for a fact based research in the environment of Meepcraft's moderation team - past, present and future.
Abstract:
The following work is based on a limited sample size (n=42) of various staff members of Meepcraft. The goal is to find a well defined correlation between one's politeness in regards to the stage they find themselves in the process of moderation. The samples span a significant portion of the server's life, various genders (there's a specific number of those outside of the scope of this paper) and also include those weak of thought, possibly robots, even (please, refer to the discussion at the end).
Diagram:
The following diagram shows the accumulated, mean results of the samples.
The y-axis represents the politeness of a subject, on the x-axis well defined points in time have been plotted.
A person usually starts on the bottom of the politeness scale following the linear, green line. This time period can be identified by the person rebelling against most of the current moderation staff, occasionally throwing in the snarky comment in all chat, posting passive aggressive forum posts about the downfall of Meepcraft and being a general nuisance to anyone who's not the subject's friend.
At time = t1, a thought of applying crosses the subject's mind and they start moving up the lime line. The person starts welcoming new people in chat, saying 'welcome back' to people saying 'back'. One can notice the appearance of punctuation marks in their sentences, frequent pleasantries, giveaways and competitions. At this point, the subject starts working on their application form asking most of their friends and their moms for approval. They go to great lengths of describing how they would 'love' to help the server, but more often than not are forced into this position unconsciously with the promise of instant gratification of seeing the green 'helper' tag next to their name and a sense of power over their friends - and enemies.
Time = t2, also known as the breaking point (also a significant point in the progress of a pandemic), represents the stagnation of the subject's resolve. By this time, the application has been submitted and the waiting starts. The time span between t2 and t3 is crucial as it defines the burnout rate and the following rate of politeness recession. On average, a person peaks on the yellow line as they await the sweet 'Approved for interview' response.
The last point on the time axis, t3 - the inversion point - marks the start of the post application process behavior. If the subject has been accepted, they slowly start regressing to their previous behavior on the orange line, but end up higher than they started (green line) thanks to the journey and the friends they made on the way. If the subject has been denied, however, after sliding down the red line, one of two things occur. Either the subject goes through a horrific process (for the server) of struggling to get back to at least the green line and restart the cycle. Or they get banned. And unbanned. Restarting the cycle.
A notable case of cycle repetition would have to be GummiBirr (MisterBacon, Sqreix). I will leave the comment of my honored colleague to speak for itself.
Outliers:
Even thought the above diagram represents an overwhelming majority of people, there are some interesting outliers that need to be discussed.
Case 1: VKL
Even an untrained eye can immediately see, that there is something horribly wrong with the politeness-time function, which seems to be ambiguous at various points of time. You, my dear reader, are not incorrect to note that. This subject defines what is possible as he finds himself at the lime line part of the diagram, growing to be a better person and surprise us all (Good luck, Frank.).
Case 2: CluelessKlutz
If the first thing you thought of when seeing this progression is; "That looks suspiciously linear", you are, again, very much correct! This 'person' only shows slight dips in the diagram and provokes the thought of rethinking his participation in this research as a human sample.
Case 3: PseudoGod
At first glance, it is obvious that this subject was not given the same cards as the average subject. Started at the negative side of the politeness scale, barely worked their way up to be considered acceptable, then dropped and burned.
Discussion:
Thank you for reading and apologies to anyone (especially VKL, CK, Sqreix and Pseudo) if you feel personally attacked by the facts. No harm was meant. I honestly have way too much time on my hands and needed to produce something. Hope some of you had a giggle and wish you all a blessed quarantine time, still.
Sources:
Damn, ran out of characters.
