I'm inclined to agree with you on a lot of the stuff you posted here, you make some really valid points. However, I do have some disagreements with what you said. Staff applications should absolutely not be a popularity contest to see who has the most friends within the community. However, responses to an application from friends of an individual can attest to the character of the individual applying. Further, it shows the support a particular individual has gathered from the community. As for your point on requiring mods to have Discord, I can't say I agree with what you said. Firstly, a "13 year old" should not be applying for staff in the first place. In my opinion, a 13 year old does not have the necessary maturity to become a staff member, regardless of who the individual is. Secondly, discord is a fantastic way for staff members to communicate amongst themselves, it's not all about enforcement of rules and policies. As to your point on requiring activity on the forums to become a staff member, I have to say that I agree with you. One should not be limited on their ability to become a staff member, just because they don't interact as much on the forums as they potentially do in-game or on Discord. However, it can provide an insight as to the activity of an individual. That's just my 2 cents, but you make some extremely valid points. I'm glad to see that after coming back, this community is starting to re-think some of the foundations that may need to be updated. Take care buddy! -Sam
I agree with most of your commentary here, but this snippet here has upset me. Two of the most prolific and responsible moderators I have seen on this server were aged 9-ish at the time of their promotions. I'm speaking of FliipHedebratt (creekz's little brother and an amazing young man) and salamander9o. Both of these young players showed maturity beyond that of even myself and I was in my mid-twenties at the time. They didn't abuse a single feature, including the private staff chatting spaces. I just can't sit here and let you talk down on some of the extremely mature and intelligent young folk whom have and will want to apply for staff either here or anywhere else. Also, the use of the a fore-mentioned staff channels for communication should be limited to official use only. The staff shouldn't have a secret room they can hide out in and talk leisurely. Spaces like that exist for official conversation pertaining to being staff. All other conversations should be handled in public where all other parties can bear witness.
I absolutely 100% agree with your bottom statement, staff members should deal with all official incidents publicly, and use staff channels only for official communication. As to you're original point that a 9 year old is able to be mature enough to moderate a server, I absolutely see where you're coming from with those two cases. However, speaking from personal experience, I have yet to meet a minor <13 years of age who has the maturity, knowledge, and understanding required to do any type of moderation work. I just don't think that the majority of minors have the life experience necessary to do any type of administration, let alone deal with complex issues that members of the community may have. I'm not trying to undermine the personal achievements of those two particular staff members, or any people who may be like them as I've never personally interacted with them. However, from my experience, those types of people are the exception, and sadly not the norm.
Night time mods are desperately needed, but the candidates in the right time zones are never supported because they aren’t seen. This server is losing some potentially fantastic moderators for this reason. Sometimes I think mods shouldn’t comment on applications at all, because they should be able to get along with everyone, anyways...even fellow staff members. But over the years, I have seen instances where the underdog got the spot, despite few supports. And they shone as mods! Were welcoming with everyone, equally, regardless of ranks or positions, and very capable. That’s all I want for here.
I 100% agree with that, I'm a night time player myself as work dictates my schedule during the day. I see some fantastic people that I'd love to see as staff members, but it's difficult for them as very few people can vouch for their activity.
You cannot ever know if you simply remove them from the equation. Chances are required as a way to give people the opportunity to show you what they can do. If you take any action that automatically forbids them then they lose that chance. If that is the direction this server wishes to take then fine, just give a better reason. There are plenty of reasons that are legally justifiable, such as ToS on platforms used to intercommunicate (such as the Discord point). Anything else is simply subjective opinion and not an objective statement that holds any real merit as examples have been given to prove otherwise. This is counterintuitive thought. I'm not saying that these people can or should be active in the game outside of thier timezone, but via the forums you have a method of showing some level of activity. Logs can be pulled that show individual logins of a user and even their disconnect times if the staff really wanna see how active a player is (Something admins should already be doing when considering an application). By remaining active on the platforms outside of the game, you show a desire to be a part of the community (a larger space than just the singular game server as these forums and our discord show), can demonstrate knowledge and capability, and even increase your visibility to audiences that may not actually see you online often. Where there is a will, there is a way.
My reply is not intended to criticize anyone, tell people what they should do or cause any drama, it's simply just me giving my opinion..! Taking a look at the overall view of promotions, and generally how staff applications are, it's clear that there is a negative depiction of it. The reason why being is because a lot of applicants tend to lose hope as time moves on. Now I know that 1-3 months isn't as short because making a decision can take some time however when you start to wait more than half a year, it becomes a bit concerning. I've talked to a few people before, some may be ex-applicants, and a lot of them have/had that concern that they're never going to be promoted. Now, Skyblock is literally a Minecraft game, but people do not see it that way, and these people are applicants. These people see this game as a place where they're able to use their real life skills and help to improve the server. When these applicants wait so long to get promoted but don't, it can build towards a negative mental health. "Why don't they just withdraw?" is what some people might think, but why should they? Instead of having to withdraw, they need opinions, advice & feedback. Not just from the community, but from staff members as well. I think it's important to be able to give advice to these applicants because without receiving any response, they aren't going to know why they're not being promoted. These people without receiving any feedback are going to get confused and wonder why they're not being promoted. They'll start spending more hours on Skyblock, to improve their activity, talk more in chat, to show that they're helping, but even after all this, would they even get promoted? That's the question the community and the applicants are probably asking. I also think it would be important to explain why applicants are/aren't getting promoted. Let's say X gets promoted. It would be nice to know why. Not only would this let the community get another perspective as to what qualifications this person has, but also what the other applicants do not carry, and can build towards. Another concern people have is that these applicants are promoted because of a likeness from all staff. I'm not making any comment towards that by agreeing or disagreeing, but I would say that if you don't want this kind of depiction to be visible, there needs to be some way you're able to explain why someone got promoted which relates to what I said above. Giving in-depth feedback, and in-depth advice would help to show that applicants are cared for and you want to see the best in each of them. Anyways I hope this makes sense lol I'm a bit tired but I just wanted to give my opinion
i don’t think it’s that hard to give someone a chance. give the player who’s getting overwhelming support from the community a chance - I think the helper role needs to be treated as a trial especially since in the description of the helper role it’s said that even if you get helper you don’t need to be promoted further. barely any staff are active currently so it’s not gonna kill to promote the staff applicants who actually care. can I also bring up how the staff system in general sucks? the staff who are promoted never gets reprimanded for anything unless it’s the people they don’t like. staff can go inactive for a month and the players are told to deal with it but if an applicant doesn’t log in for two days in a row? how dare them. if the reason no applicants are getting promoted is because we “have enough staff” I think it’s time to demote the ones who don’t play or care instead of keeping them on the team because you like them. like demote the mod that gets complained about their toxicity daily but nothing gets done
100% agree. if someone is getting a lot of support, it’s because the community wants them to be promoted and they want to see that applicant actually do their best. support statuses should play in key when promoting because they are designed for the community to use to show who they’d like to see as a staff member. if someone’s getting 50+ supports, they definitely should consider that applicant!!!
So I just read through this entire thread and am going to do my best to express my thoughts in a coherent and organized way. First of all, I wanna state that I currently have no ambitions to become staff. I have applied in the past, but currently am of the belief that the process seems excessively draining and I'd rather help out as a member of the community. So...my view of the process is that there is a frustrating lack of transparency AND an unfortunate amount of (certainly unintentional) favoritism. I'm going to expand on the favoritism part first, since I think it's biggest claim that I'm going to have in this post, and I don't want it to be misinterpreted. When I say favoritism, I do not mean that I suspect any staff members are passing over certain players or choosing other players in an intentional game of picking favorites. Most of the staff who have weight in promoting have been around a long time and are pretty aware of how their actions are perceived. I think for the most part, it unfolds like this: /skyblock has more players on at any given moment and generally attracts more new people New people generally require more staff assistance OR staff intervention (if those new people decide they want to troll or otherwise be unhelpful players) Because of the higher demand for staff, it's easy for staff to just...stay on /skyblock, rather than switching servers all the time This isolates them to mostly fellow /skyblock players, specifically ones that are online at the same times. I think the above influences who is looked at for moderators, even if it's unintentional - it's only natural that you have a higher level of trust for someone that you see regularly. I also don't think this is inherently a bad thing - if someone is able to become friends with moderators, it's probably a sign that they'd make a decent moderator. The problem is that if you don't play on the same server as the mods with the most pull in promotions OR don't play at the same times, it's very easy to get passed over or not get much feedback from staff. The lack of feedback can be very demoralizing, and again, I don't think this is an intentional thing that staff are doing, but I hope there is an attempt to address this and confront the problem, because losing long term players who (for the most part) genuinely want to help the server is obviously not a good thing for the community. My second point is the lack of transparency - and I actually think part of this stems from the (unintentional) biases above. But when you're applying to be staff, it seems to be common that applications will sit there, without much (or any) staff comments for quite a while. And I think, for these players, this raises questions like "does the server even want more staff right now?" or "are there things I can improve on?". These are valid questions, and I think (again) that this stems from the issue raised earlier: the staff involved in promotions have limited time and vision. They simply cannot see every applicant on a day to day basis and get a good picture of how each player operates on the server - so they might not actually have any meaningful feedback to give, and this has the appearance of being "passed over", even if that's not the case or not an intentional action. SOOOOOOOOOOOOO what can be done? Well obviously, I'm only posting theories here, so this might be totally off base. I'm sure there's more that goes on behind the scenes than any of us know, but I also like to think my line of reasoning here isn't too far off. I think a reasonable way to hopefully address some of these problems would be: Dedicate a few members of the current staff team to be liaisons for staff applications OR make it part of the staff duties to make an effort to touch in with applicants on a semi-regular basis. Either option will hopefully result in applicants getting more direct feedback - and even potentially faster application denials (which would still be preferable over applications sitting unanswered for several months)
The only personal conclusion I have come to on why more (very qualified) applicants aren't promoted is that the current Staff team have something to hide. The players obviously aren't happy with how things are going, so why after one year of this thread being open has no conclusion been reached?
The application process can be changed. The issue is simple. The current system works well for the people who would have to edit it. Many of these suggestions require more work on behalf of staff (remember these people are volunteers). As someone who witnessed some changes, I would like to give some feedback. Cyk was put in charge of this. It is not frankly a one-person job. CYK is awesome but everyone has real-life things and cant dedicate loads of time all the time. If anyone else on the staff team would like to join that job eg 2-3 more people it would not be so reliant on one person.
I have read over the entire thread and a majority of the comments and I have to agree with most of the things that were said here. Feedback from at least some of the staff team on current applications would be nice and would promote those applicants to succeed, but what I've noticed is staff members rating applications and not giving feedback which really doesn't provide a clear answer on why you received that rating. A change in the communication I feel like is what is needed the most, and a change on how the applicants are picked. I have to agree on you with seeing applicants with their applications open for months/years, worthy candidates, that really don't receive a clear comment on why they have not received a staff role. At other times, some applications can be created for just a couple of weeks and can be automatically accepted, which demoralizes all of the current applicants that have been trying to their best to help out If an update could be shared on this that would be great
Genuinely curious if anything in regards to the way staff applications are viewed and judged will change or not? Because seriously, this thread has been open for too long and no hate but I feel like something could've & should've been done by now.
