Staff Reform

TotallyNotNotch

Hey, I understand I'm not staff but I do have experience elsewhere. Again, these are just ideas and use them if you will.

This is just a "dump" for ideas that I've come up with. Feel free to use anything :D

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•Community Officers

Right now, we're in a bit of a mess with regard to Staff-Player relations. I do have an idea on how to improve community relations through a "third class" of player on the server.

What Are Community Officers?

Community officers are the "middleground" between staff and players. This means that they can help advocate for certain things people in the community want. They won't have staff privileges like prism, staff chat etc

How will Community Officers Be Selected?

Community officers will be selected upon consensus between players and staff. This could be done through a democratic process like voting, or just between a common consensus.

What will they do?

Community Officers will deal with player suggestions or complaints, and work with staff to achieve them. In addition community officers can also help with the ban appeal process by working between staff and those banned, and can potentially negotiate a positive outcome. This is better than just going through staff, because both parties(the banned and staff members) may not be too comfortable.

In addition, the Community Officers will also form a council. The council can work with staff to determine future projects, recommendations or ideas to be included into the server in the future. In addition the council can also vote for suggestions or ideas they deem relevant to the community. The council could consist of 10 or so meepers(10 at max, prolly like 3 ppl with current player count), which would be the max amount of community officers. Council votes wouldn't be like enforceable but would like give the staff a good idea of community views. I.e. a new rule change, council votes in majority against - staff may not approve it. The community officers may also consult with staff, and work to draft new rules/a roadmap for the server.

Community officers can also offer free counselling services... by that I mean resolving conflicts between meepcrafters instead of staff having to deal with it. Staff can then focus on projects, making meep better and intervening when needed. For instance, if there's a dispute between two meepers community officers can handle it - if it gets to the point where disciplinary action is required, staff can be contacted. Also, CO's will help staff focus more on development rather than kids yelling at each other. CO's working on issues will also make the resolution process fairer, as the outcome will more likely meet community expectations and a mutual agreement.

Variants of Community Officers

[Representative]: Just an in game title with no real significance. May be able to visit a special "Community Officers" area of spawn with a meeting place lol. They are members of the community officer council. They will be able to respond to some /modreqs tho.

[Officer]: An officer is one member of the community council who also has some perms in game. These may include forced tpa's, the ability to kick etc. Kind of a semi-helper I guess.
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•Modreq Reform

If we want Community Officers to deal with some issues between players, and mediate we need to seperate some responsibilities. This may require splitting /modreq.

/modreq: To be used for general questions, and help. Community Officers can respond to these requests, as well as staff. CO's here will reduce staff hassle.

/report: /report will only be covered by staff and will be used to respond to player incidents. /report will open up a book menu when entered, and one of the options may be like "argument with this person" which will instead go to a CO.

/report syntax would be something like: /report with a timestamp.

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Teams/Committees

To make development more streamlined and effective, meep should have teams that focus on specific areas. In this example of development, these teams could be led by a staff member but with community involvement. For example;

"New Gamemode", someone like crueltygaming(example only) could be in charge of the "Skyways"(example) development. This team would most likely be temporary during development and would include that staff member, as well as community members who may volunteer to work on that project.

Example of a Permanent Team/committee

Towny: Led by some staff members, with community members who are continuously involved in decision making/feedback or development.

Ultimately, this would allow some meepers who aren't staff to contribute to a specific area of meepcraft where they may have perms, or an ability to just contribute in general. We could have a committee per area of meep.

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Timelines

Not sure what staff do on this server, but it would probably be good to have a timeline for each project.

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Staff

We have a lot of staff, so maybe we could work on like specialised categories? Again I have no idea how staff runs internally here, so this may be somewhat used? For example, instead of:

[Helper], [Mod], [Supermod] etc. we could rework it like this...

For less involved staff who answer modreq's and help people, [Helper]

[Helper]: Normal Helper, same as now. Deals with modreqs.
[SuperHelper]: Helper but with a nicer title lol. Doesn't deal with disputes, but just helps out.

For staff that work on discipline:

[Moderator]: Deals with /reports. Kick/Ban
[SuperMod]: Makes major decisions, whatever they do now.

OR... we could just change the [x] to represent an area a staff works on... i.e.

[TownsDev] Could encompass all staff working on towny? Archs+techs? idk
[SkyDev]

^may be an issue because staff obv don't just work on one thing.

Again, this may seem needlessly complicated but can kind of help organise people. If someone else can expand on this idea that'd be g.

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Discord Account - Game Chat Link

A bit off topic, but we could develop a way to link general chat to discord to make it simpler for people to dm on meepcraft general by using discord. Would require verification to avoid spam.

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Community Votes

Staff could come out with an idea for a gamemode, but need to choose between like working on a gamemode or refining another one. Community could have input and vote for which one they want in game or on discord, for example. Kind of like those mojang minecon things.

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Replace Tutorial with a Quest World Instead

Replacing the tutorial with a world, with a quest objective where you can talk to NPC's and answer questions about the commands would prolly be cooler than just hopping through warps.

As always, these ideas are just... ideas. Take inspiration/criticise/roast me, at your will.Again credit to Reika for the original "council of players" concept. Decided to incorporate that idea, into Community Officers who would make up this council - as well as having a process for their election etc. They would in addition serve a purpose in moderation, have votes on issues, be a "middleman" for dispute resolution etc.

EllieEllie

I like a lot of these suggestions, thanks for your ideas! I'm not sure how much everyone knows about the way staff is organised right now but we do have separate teams for things, I'm not good with the technical aspects of the server so I'm not much use besides putting an idea forward but I do have loads of parkour experience with the plugin we use and the building aspect which is where I'm most active besides normal mod roles. I think community officers would work great in liaising between these teams and working with what players would like to see and finding middle grounds.

I wonder if it would be useful for players to have a list of who is working on what currently in case they have any ideas and want to approach the staff most involved?

This might actually fit in well with town hall type meetings instead of people being too shy to speak out or the conversation being carried by the loudest voices it would be nice for community officers to put ideas forward on behalf of players.

Yeah I really like these ideas, I hope something can be worked out with HS.

riri30

The duties you described for a “Community Officer” are so alike with those of a Helper that integrating it into the team would essentially duplicate the Helper rank, with a few exceptions, effectively rendering either the Helper rank or the Community Officer rank useless.

From my experience, the staff team is not overwhelmed with modreqs and general questions are usually asked in chat, to which both staff and community members can already answer.

From what I gathered, your general idea was to create a rank that represents the community, more than someone, like a Helper, who was simply voted on by other staff members based on their moderation abilities. I agree. A solution to this would be to elaborate a system in which the community’s vote is taken into account in the decision on any application.

As for the rank name reform, what you suggested is already what happens in the staff team: as you move up the ladder in the team’s current ranks, you get more involved with administrative tasks, like dealing with bigger issues and leading projects, and less involved with in-game moderation.

A list of who works on what could be useful, though.

Katronica

Don't wanna go back in detail but for me and many others here is what we have suggested:

The idea of having community implemented into the staff team has been addressed for quite some time but nothing has been done (aside the fact of google surveys which staff seem to love using). It's a great idea don't get me wrong but, the majority of non-staff members don't even want to involve themselves with the staff team due to past incidences. It'll be hard to even decide who should be selected to begin with because there can just be people who are just memeing and don't want to actually put meep in the right direction but, still have the popular vote. On the other hand, selection via staff can be the same direction as how some of the staff members are in selecting those who are easy to work with and don't challenge high staff direction.

For teams and committees, towny should be focused on first as a collective whole prior to expanding outwards. The server is legit a towny server and still has current issues with the current towny world. Yes, infected and hunger games were a great gamemode but at that time towny was actually good.

To add onto community votes, we (as non-staff members) should be play testing new things about to release. I get the idea of "keeping it a suprise" or "giving unfair advantages" but come on, there truly must be a reason why players complain about such events like the Summer event and it's mob arenas. Staff say things like, "Oh we've been playtesting for weeks" but, we find numerous bugs (including one game breaking one) within the first couple of days.

Finally, with the the numerous staff working on different projects, I personally feel there is way too many moderation staff. The ratio between current players to staff members, outweighs to the current playerbase heavily. In MODERATION terms only, I am sure one or two staff members can handle at least 10 players. Also, I get that different staff members cover different timezones but there's times where there is like 5-7 on in one hour with other hours, of just 1 to 2 staff members. For the project thing itself, it's great that numerous players are hands on different project and if anything those players currently working on there is perfect and should have the inclusion of non-staff members to volunteer to help specifically with a project.

IFartOnChilren

I understand your intentions with these suggestions... And on paper they all seem nice. But the more I think about this actually being implemented I think it will just turn into another thing for people to fight over. How long before the staff and community can't agree on who should be chosen to be a community officer? How long before a dumbass becomes community officer and ruins it for everyone? How long before we add in positions for the middlemen between the community and the officers, etc? If you feel that staff members aren't going to listen to your opinions, then trying to implement something that forces them to do so won't be this simple, and it sure as hell won't work the way it is intended to work. For too long there has been a sense of tug of war between the current staff team and the group of players that feel like they're not being treated fairly, or are being over monitored. All of these rules and procedures can be replaced with common sense and being decent and kind to one another. (There is literally none of this right now.) What is the current goal of the server? Instead of focusing on beef between eachother, we should all be trying to work together on trying to achieve one goal. For staff, you should be motivated by making your community happy, and the players should be motivated by seeing their community grow and their server become more interactive and fun.

Once a "goal" of the server is decided, thats when we figure out how to proceed. If the goal of the server is to cater to those who play on it daily, don't make any changes. It is fine the way it is. The ones who staff feel are being toxic will never stop, and they should honestly just wipe them and get rid of them completely and not deal with all this shit in the first place. If the goal of the server is to grow and work with those willing to make better content, then we all need to work together to come up with good content, not just a smaller group of people. There really only needs to be like 5 staff members to accomplish moderation, and there should be a huge amount of transparency in regards to whats going on in the staff team. There shouldn't have to be any barriers between staff and players when it comes to content creation at this point. They should be taking all the input they can get, and updates should honestly just be straight up polled. Why not? I do like the Towny, Timeline, Staff, and Community votes suggestions though, but I don't see why we can't just make the staff team smaller and fill it with those who will focus on these issues...

I guess what I am trying to say is that making more rules and procedures won't cure what is going on in Meep right now. I've witnessed a ton of bullying, mean, and disgusting behavior from a large portion of those who are still active on discord. This comes from people who I respect, people who I've been good friends with, and also people who I don't know very well..Staff and nonstaff.. And I'll admit that I have overstepped in a lot of ways and I am sorry for that. I think a lot of times we're forgetting that the people we are demonizing and calling names are still people, and the people who we are banning, muting, and ignoring are not just a name on the screen. We're all old enough to get along and play minecraft without the shade. No matter what titles and rules and steps we make, we are not going to get anywhere without treating eachother with respect and being kind. Then working together to make the server better won't require all these pointless steps! We're playing a game after all.

Natsu

What is the current goal of the server? Instead of focusing on beef between eachother, we should all be trying to work together on trying to achieve one goal.
~ @IFartOnChilren

This is exactly what we have been asking - I'm not sure if the staff team is choosing to ignore this question, concealing their answer to this question, or is divided on this question. The lack of a goal reflects the lack of leadership in this community, which is what many people are concerned about. A new Skyblock or spawn is pointless without a goal.

SpongeyStar

A great thought Adra, but we are going to deny the idea of Community Officers. We will definitely be following through with more staff-community interaction though!

Also, we will accept your suggestion of the discord link to general chat.

Thank you for your suggestions! :)