Forums Staff Applications suck.

Staff Application section is for people to quote Apply to become part of the staff team unquote, but to me staff applications are a thread where you can see how many friends you have. A staff application shows almost nothing about what a player is like. The part which people demand must be the best is the "Why should I become moderator" section. I think this section should not even be needed, for the people giving feedback would already be able to judge them off their actions, not an essay of their most perfect (sometimes fabricated) qualities.

Requiring applicants to own a discord account is a weird requirement. I always see the moderators promoting the discord terms of service, yet now you must be 13 years of age to apply for the server? If I remember correctly there has been many people been promoted under 13 years of age.

Lastly the requirement that an applicant must be active on all platforms for a person giving feedback to be able to rate them perfectly is absurd. Again, having an applicant be active on discord and helping is absurd when it is not even a part of the game they are playing. I thought the reason they had DISCORD MODERATORS was so regular mods didn't have to do moderation work on discord. Being active on forums is absurd as well, if you are only posting the required sections (reports, ban appeals, help sections) people would not judge you as active however participating in discussion and suggestion threads is apparently now required for good feedback, however it should never be. There are three separate servers for a reason. If you play/prefer/are more active on one over the others it should NOT harm your chances to be accepted. If you can do your job on one, you can do it on others. Tl;dr, moderation capability should matter WAY more over community interaction to produce hard working people who can do their work well. (no bashing to the current staff team whatsoever.)

 

I’m gonna be honest here, I agree with you.

Of course I understand why people don’t want to see rushed applications and ask for them to elaborate on the ‘why should you become a moderator part’, but the reality is that if this person is fit to be a moderator then you wouldn’t even need to read long paragraphs. You should choose to support them (or no support them) based on their actions in game and on the other platforms, as well as their overall attitude on the server. One or two more paragraphs on a Staff Application should not change this.

I do see where you’re coming from as well in regards to the friends supporting them argument. However, I’m not too sure about this so I don’t want to speak without knowing what I’m talking about so I’ll just say a small thing. Take Mai’s case, for example. Mai has a lot of supports, many of which are from her friends (myself included). But this makes sense. I don’t look at it as “they are supporting her because they are her friends”, but rather “they are her friends because she’s a wonderful person” and that’s why they believe she’s fit for staff. Each case is different anyway.

I wholeheartedly agree with your last paragraph. A mod is not required to post a funny comment on every discussion thread, a mod is not required to post nonsense in off-topic, and a mod is not required to be besties with everyone. A mod is simply required to be able to help out when somebody needs them. I think there’s a common misconception where activity on Skyblock is sometimes seen as “if your name isn’t on the recent threads list every minute of the day you’re inactive”. And helping on discord is hard, because on the one hand mods aren’t required to be involved in #general (multiple staff members have not had a conversation there in months) but helping out on the help channels is difficult because there are like at least 5 to 10 staff members that can see a ping in less than a minute

 

Very well written points of view, understandable structure to the way that applications are written (and the flaws that come alongside them) and no hostility to anyone directly, THIS is the type of threads that we all need to read and accept if you ask me.

 

The Helper and Moderator ranks shouldn't be purely based on your moderation skills, in fact I'd go as far as to argue communication and maturity are way more important. I understand what you mean, popularity does have a lot to do with how many supports you will get, but getting supports doesn't mean you will get staff. Being liked the community is a bonus, but honestly I think it should be...

 

I have thought about this alot. I agree many staff aplicants are expected to be more active than several actual moderators. Its much more about popularity than qualifications. The whole prosses is currently abstract. It should be more solified like staff should post an optimal pllicant thread with the charterists they are looking for and certin thing to meet to be accepted. Its not clear why some people are accepted at a time and others arnt. it currently seems random

 

I somewhat agree actually.

I feel as if for a long time now though, applications themselves weren't really looked into when a promotion was taking place. Personally I don't even think that player feedback or support is taken into much consideration either & there have been different occasions where this has been proven, but that's a different topic. Players should be judged on their capability to moderate and on their maturity and overall attitude towards the server.

I feel as staff applicants are put under so much pressure to engage & to be active when even staff themselves aren't held to such a high standard.

I also don't know what staff applicants are being judged on overall. Some applicants fit every single criteria but aren't being promoted which makes me wonder what the team is looking for. I feel like it would be nice if some sort of serious feedback was given or there were some sort of guidelines to be met.

For this part I think having a Discord account is important because it's a whole platform on its own and players often go on there when they require immediate help or to directly contact a staff member. In the past yes there have been staff who were under 13 promoted but I don't think that has been the case lately.

 

Ngl to me applying is exhausting as it took me at least a total of 3-4 years total just to get accepted and I thought I wasn't qualified or good enough but when I asked why it took so long to get accepted I was shocked to find out it was cause I'm not active even though I was on A LOT like at least 5 hours a day but cause of me saying like I have exams or something else I wasn't active enough apparently.

So here I am going through the same thing but this time I don't care much about my activity. I try to be active but not too inactive or something as it's my last year of school and I've been busier than ever

Tl;Dr good applicants promotions take so long cause mostly of activity according from my experience too.

I hope everyone who is applying doesn't go through the same thing I've been through cause honestly applying is exhausting.

PS: IF ur a friend of kerahna ull get promoted wayyy sooner if you aren't that active and applying *wink* *wink*
Pancake4mod pls

 

I've talked about stuff like this with other players for a while now. Sometimes it feels as if staff members are promoted based on social status towards other staff/popular players. It's very confusing at times why some applicants are promoted over others when some meet every single criteria to a fuller extent.

This is how I only ever view applicants. Most of the time I don't read every word of their application because making them write 6 different paragraphs on how they are fit to moderate doesn't change how they act in game. I only ever support/no support applicants based on my first hand experience with them and if they really are deserving of a moderating position. Many people don't have english as their first language or are not very good at writing in general. Basing someone on how they act rather than how their application looks is how it should be. Now, you need to at least put a LITTLE bit of effort into writing it, because it at least shows you care enough to think about why you are fit to moderate.

Applicants at time are always feeling the need to one up each other, and who can be the better responder, and who can be more helpful or who can be more active. When it comes to the actual staff team, you don't see them doing that. They play the game when they feel like it, they do their job when they have to, and they participate in the server. It's so much extra stress put on the people applying that doesn't need to be there when the actual staff themselves aren't ever under this much pressure all at once. This stress a lot of the time may cause the applicants to slip up, or feel overwhelmed and lash out which immediately gives them a bad rep, when in reality no one is perfect, we can't all be the EXACT fit to be moderator that everyone is always striving to be

At times there is too much personal/social attachment to applicants even if people say they are unbias, it's impossible to be unbias, everyone will always be bias in some shape or form. A moderator in itself even outside of a server of some sort, is someone who is in control of a group of people and dictates whether what is being said/worked on/discussed/etc. is appropriate to current situations, is relevant and helpful to the environment around them, and ideas are used to help better current conditions. They are meant to be capable individuals who provide a new approach, good ideas and are able to actually help uphold the morals/rules/ideas that something was founded. Someone who moderates isn't supposed to be friends with everyone or even necessarily be liked by everyone. It's great to be able to get along with most people, but I feel the choosing of applications is swayed slightly too much towards activity/community rather than capability and actual understanding of the server

 

In my opinion, just like most servers, application should be reviewed only by staff members.

Yes, this has been discussed before and the main reason for them to be public is the opinion of each player. While certain players may have an unbiased opinion, most ( including myself ) are biased. An applicant shouldn’t be “known” in the community and be active on 3 different platforms ( 4 before, because of teamspeak ) to become a moderator.

 

I strongly agree with Boss.

I am an ex-applicant which had an application with numerous supports run for about 2 years with no response from the Administration. I wasn’t the only one of course.

Suddenly out of nowhere arrives a player from 2012-2014 who makes an application and gets accepted in like a week. It was weird how a person who isn’t known, wasn’t dedicated ( ends up resigning in a month or two ) was promoted.

 

that last paragraph is something everyone should accept lmao

Im surprised everyone is agreeing because it seems almost everyone goes AGAINST what youre saying based off the replies Ive seen in the staff application section lol, probably because nobody had the courage to speak up and just want to go by the common tradition and rate people based off of like 21,937,859,282 things, when it really shouldnt be based off that many things.

One thing that extremely annoys the heck out of me is when people no support/neutral because X is not active or engaging on Y server. Like what lol. A staff members job is to pretty much handle reports, bans, questions, etc, handling that kind of stuff does not require them to know the whole entirety of a community. If Tom were a staff member and Tom needed to handle a report on economy but Tom plays survival mainly, Tom does not need to know the entire community of economy to handle a report, because the community is in no way related to a staff member handling a report. If Tom needs to answer a question a player asked on economy, Tom does not need to know the whole community of economy to answer the question, all they need to know is how economy commands work which takes like a week to get most of the commands memorized, it’s really not rocket science. Nor does Tom need to be active to be able to do most, if not all, of these stuff because 1) staff member commands are pretty much the same 2) the rules are almost the same. (Keep in mind again a staff members job again is to pretty much handle reports, enforce the rules, ban, mute, and keep the server clean)

And to follow with your last paragraph, discord and forums activity, is completely irrelevant IMO. As you said they literally have discord moderators which takes up most of the duties on the discord server. There’s only so little an applicant can do to “help out”. First of all since there’s always a good amount of people who tells every applicant the exact same thing, (to help out in discord and whatever), it’s almost impossible to help in the discord. Let’s not forget the current staff and discord mods. That means there’s probably multiple people constantly trying to do the exact same thing you’re doing, which practically means you probably won’t be the first one to do so, which in the end will lead to people thinking you’re not helping or taking feedback.

then there’s forums activity, and honestly it’s the exact same thing as what I said about discord. Since almost every post tells applicant “try to be more active and help out on forums” or whatever, helping out on the forums is a lot harder than said. And being active can be many things. Someone can always be online on the forums seeing the latest threads but don’t reply to threads because they don’t want to, or just don’t have anything to add that hasn’t been said, or simply don’t have anything to say. They can be always online but nobody is going to point that out because that’s not what being active on the forums means to most people here.

After all of that, you’re basically telling an applicant to dedicate their WHOLE life to the server when it really shouldnt be like that. You want them to be active on ALL servers, active on the DISCORD, active on the FORUMS, and with that, “being active” pretty much means to almost most people constantly messaging and helping players out. That’s so much for a simple (I say simple because when you compare the replies/feedback/expectations on most applications to the ACTUAL position, it’s so much more simpler) AND voluntary position.

And the truth is, this is mainly the community’s fault as far as Im aware of because Im pretty sure nowhere in the application process is Noobcrew asking this much out of the person applying. I can be wrong though because I havent looked at the application process in a few months.

I feel bad for current and future applicants because when I applied for mod, it was so relaxing and calming, and I was accepted with NOT this much DEDICATION and EXPECTATIONS. And I was able to do the job simply as well

 

yeah, they are very unfair. I don't think these should be public they should be looked at by mods and admins. Lets be honest the community is too biased because friendship controls if you get in or not. Also trading can get you more upvotes (I know this from being a staff applicant in the past.)

 

The reason I feel this becomes the case on most applications (I've done this myself) is because we that's what most players feel is a factor in promotion. It would be super helpful if some sort of idea was given on the actual things that staff look for when promoting new applicants to the team because it really seems kind of unknown to most players.

I wanted to talk about this section. It is really impossible to help in most situations. The discord server has over 7000 members (not all are active I understand that) but dozens of players are there every day all of which are responding to new players, help questions, value questions, etc whether they are even applying or not. Basically being more "helpful" on discord, is a game of who can be faster to respond to a help question, it end's up being a simple question and you get 4 people repeating the same answer anyways.

Same thing applies to the server. Dozens of questions every day and so many people are willing to answer and so applicants are always just another person who happens to respond to a question quicker than anyone else. Telling someone to be more helpful I feel is like telling them to respond quicker even if you don't know the answer. Being helpful to me, is going out of your way to help a new player with a build they can't quite figure out, or privately messaging them about a question that can't be answered in a single reply. There's so much pressure put on players to be able to know all the answers and be the first. If I'm answering let's say 3 questions a day in chat, whereas someone else answers 25, that doesn't mean I'm not helpful, that just means I spend my time actually enjoying the server and playing the game. After all, in all seriousness, it is just a game

 

Your point is stupid and I disagree. You seem upset that if you were to make an application, no one would rush to your thread and start spewing falsities about how nice of a person you are. This is understandable, but not worth changing the way that staff applications work and have worked over the years.

 

In my 5 years of playing sb, i agree to death

 

You're doing the very thing he's trying to avoid, judging someone based on one thread of paragraphs rather than their knowledge or capability. When multiple staff members agree with his statement and other players additions to the topic, it seems as though something like this should be addressed rather than shut down immediately

 

Please be respectful. Saying someone’s point is “stupid” is rude. If you disagree, you’re more than welcome to give your opinion but keep in mind you should be respectful to the thread owner and any other discussion participants.

 

You seem to be mistaken as the point of the thread in no way relates to me or any of my actions I wish to take in the future. I have also never suggested for a change in how staff applications work. But yeah! must be a stupid point.

 

I came into this thread preparing to take apart your points, but you have made solid arguments that really changed my mind. Well done.

I would argue that the community has changed what staff applications were. Nowhere in the requirements for staff does it say that you have to be extremely active or many other things that we have pressured applicants into doing even though they were never necessary in the first place.