I assume you were waiting for a staff's response to this so here it goes.
First I'd like to start out by saying The parts about the age exception are reasonable and understandable. This doesn't mean it's right. There are things that have been over looked and not noticed as an issue. The thread is aiming at a boarder part of the whole situation. If you want something to change, you have to analyse it from many different perspectives and understand the reasons behind it. I'd also like to say that the parts about the inactive staff are very ignorant, assumptive, disrespectful and insulting. I'm sure that's not what it was meant to be but the way the sections were delivered is very enraging not only to the mods(especially the mods specifically pointed out) but to the Sr. Staff since we hired them.
The reasons we have an age limit is the same reason actual real life jobs have age limits. Although this isn't a real life job where staff are paid, we still want to keep a sense of professionalism. Real jobs have an age limit to ensure stress is less of an issue, have a more similar and compatibly staff and keep a good appearance.
Believe it or not, even though this is a volunteer job, it is still very, very stressful. I've seen many mods become overwhelmed by the stress and fall behind in their real life as well as their moderator life. We want moderators to have fun while still doing their job. If the stress becomes too much, it is not fun and it could ruin many things. This is not at all what we want, and not something we want to risk. Older people have a tendency to be able to deal with more stress and can manage it more. This might not be true with everyone but it is good enough. Younger people tend to have a bad management of stress and cannot maintain the many different obstacles. as I've said before, this could lead to many bad things. Being a youngster myself, I can say with experience that the stress has come to the point where things are beyond my control and everything just goes bad. If that were to happen to someone else, I would feel bad. I would feel as if I've failed my job to keep the other staff happy. Having an age limit will prevent this from happening more frequently. There will be some who do break under the pressure but it's easier to try and fix that than have to deal with multiple breaking down.
It is no lie that the more similar people are to each other, they are more likely to work well together. Having an age range will help make our staff more similar and unified. This will mean the staff will be more efficient, which is a very good thing. Having a compatibly staff will overall ensure the productivity, motivation and reduce stress, which had been talked about previously. Sure people of younger age can be similar to those older than them but it wouldn't always mean this way. When it comes to staff, we don't want to take risks. We want to be sure that the staff will work together and not argue. Having an age limit will make this less of a risk
Overall, having a stable staff that works well together and are stress-free makes good appearance, which attracts more players. With many people showing they can be these things whilst being 14, we have made a decision to lower the age.
Next moving on to the issue about inactive staff. I'm going to begin by saying that just because you cannot see it doesn't mean it's not their. Just because you don't see specific moderators being on or doing their job does not mean they don't. Assuming so is very disrespectful and insulting. Saying that 35 mods out of 80 mods are inactive is very rage educing considering you're pretty much saying they are dead weight. And the people who hired them, wasted time... on dead weight. Unless you know from multiple perspectives and know the reasons behind them not appearing more active, you should not jump to conclusions and say they aren't doing anything. Pointing out specific people is uncalled for and unneeded. As of late, the Sr. Staff have had some extra time available for cleaning the staff list and checking up on the mods. We messaged people who have been seen inactive(reason why you've seen some people look back on the forums) and to my surprise, there was a huge reason for it. Issues from the past had unknowingly effected certain people and in result of that, causing an issue here today. As for mods only being active in game and not on the forums, let me just point out there that a lot of the things we do as a moderator, are not seen by the public. When we lock a thread or deal with a spam bot, it does not show to everyone who did it. For me, when I lock a thread, I make sure to state why I'm locking it to set aside confusion. This is seen publicly and makes me appear as more active. Others might be working more of "behind the scenes" work and may be classified as inactive, when they're not.
To sum up, The age limit is there for a reason and chances are, it will stay that way. Assuming people are inactive without know the stories behind it is insulting and shouldn't be done, non the less pointing specific people out.
I'm going to keep this open in case anyone has questions or opinions regarding this.
