I really appreciate you coming on here to discuss this with everyone.

I just want to ask, what about players who are not suggested, but are actually fit to be part of the staff team (in the opinions of the rest of the playerbase) for example. When only suggestions are taken into consideration from certain staff, you can't help but think there is some bias involved.

I don't want to come off as if I know better because I don't, however the way some things are done do seem off to me and I'm sure to many others too. I know promotions are not as simple as some of us may think they are however I think that in some cases it seems that people who are well deserving of it, people who do so much for the community and have proven themselves in every way do not get a chance.

Applicants are never really given much feedback, and we don't know what we're supposed to be doing in order for a promotion. Why does one person get promoted over another? These are questions a lot of us wonder about because like I've mentioned before it seems a little off.

I also thought that not all staff get a say. When I was in staff meetings, I was told that applicants are never discussed at meetings and that it was a meeting rule.

Overall I agree that the process is not as easy as it seems however we are left in the dark with any and all information related to them. It would be extremely nice to know what we may be lacking or what the staff is looking for. It's not easy consistently trying to prove ourselves while having to wait months for a promotion, and that's if we're even being considered. I personally think there should be some changes and a little more transparency and communcation regarding these sorts of things but maybe that's just me.

Thank you Kerahna.

 

can you tell us about ibalisticbunny promotion? on June 2020 with 5-8 supports and 2 pages on comments on her mod app? after she quit for 2 years and joined in a week and applied located here Skyblock Official Site | Skyblock

 

not me deleting everything because Mai said everything I was going to but Mai basically nailed it.

I personally think Staff Selection should be more public especially after someone is put on Staff so the public knows how the process works and isn't left in the dark. Yes there are some things that should be kept private but I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate a summary of some sort that explains why you came to the conclusion on why someone became apart of Staff. A lot of people assume the majority of new Staff members made it only because they befriended a couple of people already on the Staff team and it would beat neato if we were given a direct summary of why someone landed the spot so current and new applicants can know exactly what is needed from them and what they need to keep doing so they can better their chances of becoming apart of Staff.

 

preach ur so smart and gud flameng fetus

 

hey there just wanna put my two cents in here since you want to drag my name from the grave. tbh, yeah I was bored in quarantine and wanted to get back on skyblock, but I’m just kinda naturally drawn towards leadership positions since I saw a lot of chaos. also, I had been a mod on the server previously, so in comparison to the other applicants at the time (I believe) I was more qualified. in the end, it didn’t work out and I left and I don’t plan to return again, but don’t single out simple specific examples just because it might slightly support your radical viewpoint in order to cause more chaos. (ps I don’t stalk the forums, someone messaged me this)

 

It's 3am at the time of writing this, so I apologise if not everything is up to your par.

I'm also writing this a lot more cautiously than my usual style as I do not want anybody to feel offended or shut down by my words - I'm always open to conversation, feel free to reply or give an opinion as you wish.

All your points are bloody brilliant, except the one point about how

The Discord is Skyblock's most active platform apart from the server itself, so having a moderator readily available on Discord is almost a necessity.

Now that I've got that out of the way, I'm going to gloss over a few points that you and others have stated that I agree or disagree with. I'll give my take on what I think at the end of this, but there have been a very large amount of good points stated as well as some slightly misguided points.

This is going to be a long reply from me, so sit back, relax and get your .

I feel this too. If you're going to judge someone off of their own words, at least make sure you have some of your own to back it up - judging an applicant off of the past or old experiences shouldn't happen as people can change for the better - or just get to know them better and experience a few of their personalities.

Knowing a person is a lot better than judging a person. If you know a person, you can tell what they will or won't do and gives you a clearer picture on the type of person they are, but also can potentially create a bit of bias. So always be rational with your opinions.

This right here. People judging applicants off of activity irrationally hurts to watch and will continue to be a pain.
I couldn't log on one night due to my internet faulting, oh well! Guess I'm inactive!
I don't talk enough in discord chats! Oh well, guess I don't help out enough!
I can't log on during the day from school! Oh well, guess I have bad time management!

It's this type of "feedback" that needs to stop on mod apps, as people who do this usually don't understand the fact that other people have lives that they need to live, and that all applicants aren't genetically modified superhumans that can perform 17 tasks at once.

Wifi, your point was A-f*ing-plus, just because I do not know Bill, Janet, Darcy and Dylan and their entire family and their extended family and the neighbor's wonky cat, it does not give a player a reason to no support. Just because I don't know everyone, doesn't mean I'm not active in the community.

For once Ursus, I actually agree with you.

The process of how an applicant is accepted SHOULD be clearer than it is now. I could compare its vagueness to that of the woodchuck tounge twister - its honestly a lot more complicated and confusing than it needs to be.

This doesn't happen too often anymore as pretty much all staff members and applicants fall under that "very active" category, but it can be the killer to the motivation. To find that out after applying for years, in my eyes, is stupid - nobody should be able to tell an applicant when they should and shouldn't come on, as they can do that themself. Skyblock isn't your dad, who is he to tell you when you can be online?

You cannot expect every player to dedicate every minute of their precious life to the server. They have lives too.

THANK YOU CALIDRE FOR STATING THIS.

This is one point I've noticed for a long while now, especially with a few of the current applicants - if you see someone else helping another player, (I may be slightly hypocritical here but), you shouldn't take over while they're explaining something or barge in while they're talking about how something works. In my eyes I find it distracting and annoying, it can be different in other people's eyes but that's how I find it.

HOW FAST YOU HELP OUT DOES NOT MATTER. If you're helping out, you're doing your job. That's what matters. It isn't a race, the community exists to help each other, not to beat each other to death trying to fight to get the flag across the line.

Lets not forget to mention that the more dedicated people (me included) usually have the Help pages/chats open at all times to reply quicker. If you're not first, that's ok - there's always going to be another person in need of help.

Now it's not as simple as this, but I 100% agree. Having friends on the staff team really does help a lot, a lot more than some people would like to admit. It's this bias that I somewhat dislike about the staff and who gets promoted, but then again, friends first.

I will reply to this with a quote of Flaming's.

I won't mention names here as I don't want to get picked out for flaming staff members. But what your stating is a direct contrast of a certain staff member who hasn't come online for 3 months on any platform, who has not yet even been questioned by most regardless of the fact that this certain staff member also still finds time to stream 3 times every week (bless him, he enjoys what he does and I hope he keeps doing it).

This is a brilliant idea, and I'm clueless as to why this doesn't already happen. It gives applicants something to work towards and sets an achievement goal, as well as indicator of what they can do more of (ie I should be doing more reports instead of giving evidence directly to staff members over discord). It can also raise morale of current applicants instead of the current coldshouldering that's currently happening.

As an applicant myself, I don't want to talk too much about this to not reduce my chances more than they already have been, but here goes.
I unfortunately feel like I relate to your reply way too much. To me, seeing other people getting promoted is more of a demotivator especially when these people were promoted in a little more than a 10th of the time that my application has been open, which a lot of the time, hurts a little.

The third paragraph hits home. No applicant is perfect, and most either have their flaws drilled into them until its concrete or have it almost completely glossed over. There's no in between and it's always made to feel like the flaws are the reason why a promotion hasn't happened.

 

(Doublepost due to 15,000 Character limit)
I would like to make this one point by Mai very clear, and I take very close.

A RANK SHOULD NOT DEFINE WHO YOU ARE ON THE SERVER. If you see the moderator position as something that either gives you more power over others, or the ability to make decisions that other people should have a say in, please reconsider. Experiencing misuse of power to some can be the thing that puts them off of what they want to achieve, and I will give an example of that (true story but with likewise terms being replaced).

D250s were one day minding their own business when all of a sudden big Moderator comes out. This moderator ends up muting every D250 that was online due to the fact that one player stated that he was misusing his power and caused half of these D250s to quit playing.

People certainly do not enjoy being bossed around like they're children. As a staff member, the player's experience matters more than your own. As a staff member, you're the one that needs to get dirty. Not the other way around.


Now that we have the long part out of the way, I'll give my experience and what I think can change.

I've been talking with staff, former staff, staff applicants and former applicants about their thoughts and what they thought should change, and they've all said similar things.

- The bias between picking applicants was a big one, but one that I somewhat do and somewhat don't think is true.
I won't expand on this point due to it being slightly very controversial, I don't want to start an argument here. Continuing.

- The distinct staff heirarchy that is, to say the least, very lopsided and very biased to some while others get little/no say at all. Of course, Kerahna's post has addressed this here:

Thank you for the clarification. It means a lot to me to see that the higher ups of the server genuinely care what their players want, which is something that's been needed for a while now.

- As Mai stated, the amount of time that it takes.
Other servers of which I won't mention here usually have their applications judged and feedbacked within not even 2 weeks, and Skyblock is just... unique. It has a unique approach of doing things and many of these things are a lot more tedious and lengthy than they are in other places - which is why people enjoy playing here, and others don't.

- Loss of Motivation, as again, Mai has stated.
I won't go too into detail here because it's fairly self explanatory and ties into the above points. People are usually very motivated and energetic when they apply, and then further as they go on lose more and more of that motivation to the point where they just don't want to apply anymore as it's too much of a burden.

This concludes my 2000 word essay, I hope you have read and understood what I am trying to say. If you're unclear about anything hit my discord up - phr33z#8881. I'll be more than willing to explain anything there.

Thanks for reading

 

well put, sadly my popcorn ran out mid way reading this ;/

 

There's alot of excellent points made on this thread, and I really appreciate a lot of peoples responses, but I don't really want to input my thoughts here, as I might say something wrong

 

With this you've proven peoples points

 

It always amazes me on how much bias is on staff apps. I can't be the only one who sees that the people who get on the staff team are the ones who are befriended by the staff. The ones who are actually qualified don't get in. We had a few players that were well known within the community and they applied for staff. Most of them never got in despite the great potential they had.

Pretty much everyone has stated all my points I wanted to say. I thought I would leave this point here.

Also want to add the mods who got promoted recently no hate to yall but I'm gonna be real. Y'all got promoted because the senior staff liked you and your potential. Having potential is one thing, but having that leverage from the staff team gives you an easy way. That's what I've been seeing ever since I joined skyblock.

 

Personally I think the dedication is the biggest deciding factor in an application. Many people who were promoted have never or almost never closed their application from losing interest. Being a staff applicant in the past really showed me how much effort and commitment you need to pursue something such as this. I believe that the process should at least leave a little hint towards the applicant whether or not they would be promoted (maybe even applications being denied with a minimum date to make another). I had a lot of enthusiasm for this server when creating my application and a few months into it- even my second time opening it but I think it was just the silence and nonexistence of a response that dried up my passion to continue and in the end was the deciding factor to close it for good. I know I am not the only player who this has happened to unfortunately.

 

give me staff

 

Helper = trial mod

 

Bunny, you used to be my friend and I supported you always but it doesn’t sound fair that you got Mod, because you were bored in quarantine. Some people spend years on their application and I believe that they could be a better fit, even if they don’t have any past experience

 

You’re not unfortunately. This happened to me many times, where I never got anymore responses on my application, despite bumping it, so my passion started to dry out.

 

After I closed my application, I had some people message me on discord saying why I removed it. Others were sad to see it being taken down. I've had that app open for 2 years and I am on everyday (that has gotta be true dedication right there). I got the background, I got the popularity. Yet still never managed to get in. I think no matter what the higher staff will say to try and deflect it, its pretty clear for anyone who has been here for a while you get in with mod support otherwise its an uphill battle.

But in the end, I think I made the right choice to take it down and my explanation to which I've told is both valid and understandable.

 

Let me just pull a PC here real quick and start writing endlessly. I love this thread, it's nice to see a controversial topic like this ACTUALLY being discussed by staff and players with agreement from all sides and arguments from multiple angles, really helps people see every perspective on here.

This is a topic I think many current applicants are wondering as well as many players. Why this person? Why that person? A lot of the time people are suspicious about reasons behind certain promotions especially due to the lack of transparency between staff and players on certain things like these promotions. Most of the time, accepted applicants are promoted out of the blue, and no one was given any reason as to why. So many people have talked about this but I'm just going to reiterate it as it really is a main focus point as to what we as the players want to know.

What makes someone staff worthy? What do they accepted applicants have that the ones still open do not? Why this person and not that person? What kinds of things make that person set apart from other applicants that would make them a better staff member? What qualities were factored into account when deciding X player would make a good staff member?

There's little to no communication about what kinds of things current staff members were promoted for and it ends up making other applicants feel discouraged and let down, because now the rest of us are wondering why wasn't I good enough? What do I need to improve on? It gives us the sense that we just have to be the lucky winner when it comes to being accepted. A lot of the time it feels like the lottery when trying to "win" that position because we don't know the rules to the game of acceptation, we just play and hope we get lucky. The only thing we get to see is a "Welcome to the team" message with no reasoning behind it and leads many players to assume bias is always involved. I think when promoting a new applicant, maybe a message could be added as to why they were chosen, like maybe a list of good qualities that applicant had and one that stood out that made them worthy of being promoted. Transparency is important when it comes to something like this because there's no guidelines for us, no list of rules, no reason why someone with 10 supports could be promoted instead of someone with over 100 supports. We all just want to know how we are doing, and maybe even just a message from staff once in a while to current applicants letting them know what they're doing great at or what they need to work on.

As of right now, it's hard to stay dedicated to being an applicant because all we really know is that we have to try our hardest to be "helpful" or "active" and it almost always gives people the sense of burn out at one point in time. As every new applicant gets accepted and someone else's application gets ignored, the sense of love and dedication to the server starts to diminish and keep decreasing until they join the team, or they give up and move on. Applicants are willingly volunteering their time to dedicate themselves to the server, and it seems some of their efforts are pointless. Not everyone is going to be promoted, we all know that. But some of us just want to know why we aren't a good fit to be on the team

The fact that people feel they are going to be doing the wrong thing my saying their opinion tells me that there's too much stress put on applicants to be this "idol" of an applicant. I'm sure other applicants can agree that sometimes it feels like most of the pressure of applying doesn't even come from the application itself, but rather the idea that you have to be the perfect role model and you need to show the staff that you can be friendly with them and everyone else, rather than being who you are and actually showing them your capability to be a staff member.

So many applicants feel the only way to be apart of the team is to be friends with these people. A lot of people feel player feedback isn't considered enough because a lot of the time, the players are the ones seeing the applicants in action and can actually tell you how capable some of the people really are. I'm just going to mention PCcoolguy100 here. IMO, he is by far one of the most intellectual applicants I've ever seen. To me, he is a great fit for a place on the staff team. He is by far one of the most knowledgeable about the server and the game in general, and actually cares about the people around him. I just couldn't tell you why he hasn't been promoted. It's because we DON'T know why and that's the problem. We have no way of judging how someone is doing in the eyes of the team because there's nothing to judge it based off of.

The whole basis of the application system on this server just seems to be unknown now to most players and we don't know what to do. We just want to know what we're doing wrong, what we need to do more of, what we're great at, and it would be nice to be given clear reasons as to why this person was promoted over this person.

Ok I can't write anymore my fingers hurt so I'll end it there

 

This makes alot of sense. Having applicants contact cyk sounds great thanks