Best Posts in Thread: BooBear1227's Helper -> Moderator Application

Accepted for interview!!

 

In Game Name: BooBear1227
Skype Username: boo1499
Teamspeak Username: BooBear1227
Mic use: Absolutely available
Age: 17
Timezone: MST (GMT -7.00)
Hours online per weekday: 1 hour – 5 hours (per day)
Hours online per weekend: 2 hours – 7 hours (per day)
Position Changes: Helper to Moderator

Note: You may want to be ready to sit down to read this application as it is an in-depth one that I took several days to complete. If you feel you did not get enough information from one area, please let me know in your comments below and I would love to expand and comment back to you.

Introduction:
Hello there! I would like to assume that many of you know me by now, but it is a bad thing to assume, so for those who still don’t know me, I will take this time to introduce myself again.

My name is Shannon, Boo, BooBear, or BooBear1227. It is absolutely up to you what you want to call me as I have no preference.
I am seventeen years old, and I take pleasure in a surplus of activities. Such activities include, but are not limited to, competing with a high school cheerleading team, recreational gymnastics, recreational dance, and computer games/programming (Future Business Leaders of America). (I currently understand Java, JavaScript, and C++. I am looking to learn Python in the near future.)

Of all of my crazy extra-curricular events, my favorite is volunteering; for example, working as a Special Olympics Rhythmic Gymnastics Coach, and as a Camp Counselor at a Girl Scout camp in the mountains. Between the three of these opportunities, I have logged over 1,669 hours. If you think about it, it is not really all that much, but in the long run, it shows my passions between them. Several other opportunities have been to animal shelters or the Ronald McDonald House Foundation; however, I do not want to go into depth for all of these as they are not the reason for this post.

A secondary reason of why I love my extra time is that I have the privilege of playing MineCraft, more specifically MeepCraft. I got interested in MineCraft about a year ago, playing single-player worlds. Yet, I had not found an adequate amount of joy in playing by myself, or the occasional LAN with my brother; needless to say, I needed a change. Thus, I started looking around different websites, and came upon MeepCraft – a towny server. (I was never really interested in PvP, or Factions, or any of the other hoopla.) My /res date before the restart, if I can remember correctly, was Tuesday, April 6th, 2013. This would mean that I have been on MeepCraft for roughly nine months.

A little more than two months ago, I applied for, and received, the “Helper” position. During these past weeks, I have thrown myself wholeheartedly into the work of assisting players when they encounter a troubling situation while I am in-game. It has been my goal to help make MeepCraft a fun place to play while still keeping it a safe haven for the community. I would like to move a step further in that direction.

Why should you become a Moderator?
Involvement
Over the past few months on MeepCraft, I have become more comfortable and involved with the community in several different aspects. These aspects mainly include, but are not limited to: forums, in-game, and TeamSpeak.

Forums:
Due to my increased activity on the forums, I have achieved Well-Known Member. I have learned a lot about the forums and how to navigate myself around them. I recently learned where the “Watch Forum” button is at the top of the page, and this has really helped me out so that I can get to certain threads and posts on the forums as fast as possible.

In example, I have Q&A watched so that I can get to the community’s questions faster so that they are not sitting around, waiting for someone to answer them. I also have several other forums/sub-forums watched so that I can be on the lookout to help people.

In-Game:
I really like to be involved in the community as much as possible. My involvement comes from participating in activities, playing mini-games with players, being active in /shout, and doing modreqs.
When I see an activity that looks like it will be a good way to connect the community, I try to participate in it, even if I only participate a little. I try to get the newer players interested in our mini-games and play with them as much as possible. I even try to do some one on one time and see how their day is going, and making sure everything is alright in the world of <insert name here>.

While doing modreqs, I make it a requirement of me to ask if they need any more help before I finish that one and move onto the next one. It is something that should be done at all times so players do not have to keep on making modreqs.

TeamSpeak:
I have been more involved in TeamSpeak, and I am still trying to not hide out in Staff Chat all the time. (Look down in weaknesses)

Experience
Helper:
With my time as being a Helper, I have learned so much and expanded my horizons with what I can do. I know all the commands that come with /modreq and answering them. Several modreqs are just questions about commands or certain things that are right/wrong to do. I enjoy these modreqs, however, they don’t let me show off what I know how to do and how to accomplish it. Many cases involve more work and are about griefing, theft, and/or scamming. These cases involve the staff’s HawkEye tool/command to get to the bottom of the case. I have learned exactly how these should be done and how these cases are resolved. I know what I need to look up when I do a griefing case using the /he tool and what I need to use when handling a theft/scamming incident.

I handled several major cases recently that involved a lot of effort and time out of my day to make sure the reporter was happy with the outcome.

Other:
I have accumulated a cornucopia of knowledge regarding the server’s commands and how the server works within the last nine months. I have an immense amount of knowledge of Towny commands and how they work, as well as a solid understanding of the many commands of Meepcraft’s mini-games, including Skyblock, Capture the Flag, Boomo, TnTRun, and our newest addition, Halo.

Work Ethic
Outside of the gaming world, I have reached the top one percentile in my graduating class with taking AP and honor classes. I have achieved an un-weighted GPA of 4.0 and a weighted GPA of 4.765. I try and do my upmost to go above and beyond what I am asked to do.

Helper:
Even though my modreq count is low compared to other Helpers, quality surpasses quantity. I make it my job to make sure I help as much as I can, making sure that the player does not have any other concerns or questions before I move on. I also like to go back to previous cases that I helped with and make sure the player is okay, and they don’t need anything. This is something that makes me feel happy whenever I check in on people from the past.

Dedication
Dedication to MeepCraft can be seen in many forms, and can be understood as several different things to different people. In my opinion, dedication is defined as being devoted to a task or purpose, or having single-minded loyalty or integrity. I have demonstrated dedication in a multitude of ways, but I would like to discuss two of them at this time.

Assistant: Over the last nine months, since joining Towny, I have only been in two, technically three towns. The first town was run by a friend of my brother. Even though I was immediately moved to assistant because of the relationship, I understood the powers and rules that had come with such a high ranking position in a town. As I had grown to show more promise in being assistant, I moved up from having menial tasks, to having more of a major role in the town. I was allowed to start adding people to the town, as well as being allowed to expand the town on a needed basis to fit more and more “homeless” people in. The second town was on old Meep, known as Ezri back then, ran by two people who have helped me expand today. I became assistant in a matter of days of joining that town because I had previous experience with the mayor and helping them build the town so it could open. The third town, again named Ezri, was under the same staff with a few additions who have made me grow even more. I have loved being assistant in Ezri since May, and will continue to love being assistant.

Helper:
Every time I log on, my first reaction is to check modreqs, and to go about those before anything else I do. The most important thing for me is to get any questions the community has done before I leisurely go about the day.
I have always been dedicated to this staff team and will stay dedicated for a long time to come. I plan on being here and serving the community for as long as they will have me.

Weaknesses:
I was able to identify several weaknesses at this point. Let me know below if you have seen another weakness that I may have missed and need to work on. I want to improve these weaknesses the best that I can, to the ability that I can handle without going on full overdrive.

Mic/Teamspeak Activity:
My TeamSpeak is not the best in the world, and it is probably not as much as the community would like, but I promise I am working on it as much as I can. I have been trying to become more active on TeamSpeak over the last month or so, listening in and typing what I want to say, instead of talking. The keyword in the previous statement is talking. I am not a huge fan of talking to people I do not know in person. One part is that a lot of people judge by the other part of this being that I am very insecure about how my voice sounds. The insecurity about my voice comes from several different areas. Because I often am ‘yelling’ at cheer practices and competitions, the following days are recovery for my voice. It often sounds very hoarse and unlike my normal voice. However, my normal voice leads people to believe that I am younger than I say I am. It sounds more ‘little-kidish’ because I have short stature, coming in at a whopping five feet at the age of seventeen. I always feel that people will judge me inaccurately if I have a voice of a younger teenager, instead of the voice of an older teenager.

This insecurity about the sound of my voice leads me to hiding out in staff chat almost ALL the time. I don’t like hiding in there all the time, but I also like getting to talk to people who have common interests as me.

I am still trying to get better at this with the “Public Speaking” classes I am taking,. I am also trying to come out and say more when I think I have something important to add to the discussion. If anyone has anything that might be able to help me out with this weakness/insecurity, please let me know. I would love to improve on this!

The Reoccurring ‘Illness:’
Over the last eight years of my life, I have had an undiagnosed illness that has defined my life in both a positive and negative way. Every other week, I get severely sick with a fever ranging from 90 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius to 42 degrees Celsius) with severe headaches and backaches. During this time, I sleep. That is all I do. My recorded highest duration of sleeping is 104 hours (4.33 days). This means no waking up, no eating, nothing that a normal human being would do. Unfortunately, this places a heavy restriction on any and all activity on any electronic device.
I have seen the best of the best in the Rocky Mountain region and the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. The next step is to travel to the World Health Organization in Israel, but that has not been an option for us recently.

During my time as a Helper, I had disappeared for a good chunk of time. I was out for almost a week and a half with trying to get better, and catching up on my school work. With this, I was unable to get on and fulfill my duties at that time. This leads me into not having as many modreqs as I would like to have completed, but I am back into the swing of things and getting that count up as much as I can, while still completing them efficiently and effectively.

AP Classes:
I decided to take 4 Advanced Placement classes and 3 honors classes this year. This can sometimes affect my activity in game due to the amount of homework I get from each class.

Something that does help with this insane amount of work is that my classes are split into A-Days and B-Days. This translates into having only half my classes on A-Days and the other half on B-Days, with them switching off every other day. Of course, this homework load only affects my in-game activity, for I can still be on the forums and on TeamSpeak and still be as successful as I can be.

I have learned how to adjust my time accordingly (time-management) and how to supply enough time for each subject. I still have time for studying while being able to live up to my responsibilities as a Helper and I will certainly know how to continue my time management with the position of Moderator.

Conclusion:
I would like to thank you, and applaud your determination in reading the entirety of my moderator application. Regardless the rank, I love helping out this fantastic community every way possible. I hope that I can continue serving/helping all of you in any way possible for several more weeks/months to come.

I am sorry for any grammatical mistakes. I am still especially terrible with my affects and effects. I am also sorry for the formatting of this application, I tried my best to reformat it so it was not hard to read.

I wanted to let you all know that I have been thinking about this application since week five, but felt that I was not quite ready yet and needed a bit more time. A month later, I think I am ready to step up to this position and take on an even bigger role.

I apologize for my over-excessive use of the action to help or any other form that goes along with it. It is my passion in life to help. I define my life as to help. I really found no other way to say it.

I found myself sot of “selling myself” in this application, and that is really what an application is supposed to feel like. I put myself into this and I hope you all did too.

Again, thanks for reading!