A letter to Staff/Future Staff.

[XDBFplaysGamesX | Daniel]

Dear Staff member/Future to be staff member,

If you do not know me, then allow me to introduce myself. My name is XDBFplaysGamesX, but you can call me Daniel. I have been driven to write this letter because of the apparent collapse of the Minecraft Gamer Network and as staff, you must rise to the challenge and lead the servers to the right direction.

As staff, you are the leaders of these servers. Your job is to enforce rules and keep the server at a sane level. You must keep apparent that your job is to make the servers a better place with ensuring justice. You are not dictators, you are the staff. Learn where your boundaries, and don’t let the selfishness of your secular thought get in the way of who you’re as a person. There must be a line drawn to how you treat your people. The people in whom you punished were your people. You were once a regular player, and once, you depended on the justice of the leaders to keep sanity in the servers. You’re now that leader. Power can lead to evil, evil leads to corruptness, and that leads to malice, and that leads to the apparent end of our servers, not your servers, our servers. Balance power, justice, and ethics, and know how you treat your people.

And I tell you to not to try your hardest to be of Senior Staff. You strive for it in the most wrong ways. You act clean and polished to your peers but treat your people as garbage. It is not wrong to make it a goal, but you are to be mod to help the people. Your intentions are wrong and selfish, you deserve to be cast out if your intentions are perverted in a sense of it being distorted and unworthy of you having that rank.

When you’re to punish a player, I urge you to never jump to conclusions. Investigate, figure it out, bring the pieces together, and I also urge you to never do punishments without figuring the problem. You are running away from your problems and being lazy by giving a person a punishment undeserved. You’re to actually do your job correctly, and figure out what’s going on to fully cultivate the experience and fix the problem at hand.

I urge the age limit for moderation comes to an end and any age may apply for mod. It is not the age that defines the character of one. That is the way he leads and becomes the follower, not the one who is following. He must demonstrate the true virtue of leadership and justice, patience, self-control, selflessness, kindness, and maturity. As a staff, you must define one heavily by the way they treat others. Justice and leadership begin at home. You must rise to the challenge, and not let an age limit define the wisdom you are potentially capable of.

And I urge you to never be too strict on your people. You’re to enforce rules, but I urge that you may cultivate to experience of being a person that the people can turn to when things go wrong. They should entrust that you do the right choice and that you can be accountable and that they have someone they can talk to. Strictness is key but you must realize that again, these are your people. You must treat them with the respect that you feel is due to you.

I also urge you to never put barriers that could prevent players and users speaking with you. You might say that it allows for no distractions while you’re working, but I strongly disagree! Your job is to serve the people and not to make a wall between you and everyone else. You must let the players have an opportunity to speak with you and make it your priority and responsibility to aide to those problems as much as you can.

When you become a staff member, you must know what you’re getting in to. You’re leading a server, a legion, a nation. You’re the one who’ll one day make all the important decisions, and have a sort of control over this legion, and you’re to make it the most powerful of them all, and have firm and pure justice, treat your comrades like friends with maturity, and to never put barriers across your people. Some will fail and some will be victorious, but the decisions you make shows your character. Much more I can speak of, but for now, I shall leave you here for your wisdom and mind to take you to places where you never imagined, the places where the wise discover and make decisions that always happen for the better. Be that wise one, and be the change.


With all due respect,

Daniel, over and out.

 

[XDBFplaysGamesX | Daniel]

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[Omar]

well thought out in my opinion.

 

[Feryz]

Nice thread. C:

 

[nimi]

If a mod is supposed to be a squeaker and a person with no grammar skills then MCSG is going down

 

[GoontherMC]

Very well put.

 

[XDBFplaysGamesX | Daniel]

If a mod is supposed to be a squeaker and a person with no grammar skills then MCSG is going down

Firstly, enlighten me on how I have no grammar skills, and secondly, I'm not saying mods are suppose to be squeakers, it's just that age should not define character, it's virtue that does that.

 

[nimi]

Firstly, enlighten me on how I have no grammar skills, and secondly, I'm not saying mods are suppose to be squeakers, it's just that age should not define character, it's virtue that does that.

I was saying if there is no age limit on mcsg, there are going to be 9 year old kids that have no grammar skills and are squeakers. Also MCSG has to remain professional

 

[Jusser]

#Daniel4SeniorMod2k15

EDIT: Knowledge of perfect grammar =/= Maturity. Being ready for the job isn't about crossing your t's and dotting your i's. I know lots of players who could out grammar any of you, but they're also some of the meanest people I know. Don't make the end goal to make yourself look like you're 25 .-.

 

[vladthegreat100]

I do agree to a point.
When speaking that mods should have the leadership and act/respect everyone with the same amount and that we are not dictators I agree on.
"I also urge you to never put barriers that could prevent players and users speaking with you."
Us mods would actually encourage in full honesty the speaking of players, there are many ways that players can speak to us, over PM's from the forums, in game or even on teamspeak which is where we communicate the most. Usually you can easily poke a moderator in a mod chat that does not say "Mod Only" and ask to join, we would then ask everyone in that chat if we allow he/she and most of the time the answer is yes, as simple as that.
About the "Having no age limit to apply" would be a no. Even though it devastates many of our players and forces them to wait before applying the age limit is not only to make sure that we know that most players who would be applying is mature enough but to (upcoming is in my opinion) also assure us that they have the proper education to answer the questions in the application stage properly with as little to no mistake since there are so many people who apply why not have the most people who apply actually send in the proper application to be as efficient as possible.

 

[LilBub]

I really enjoyed reading this thread purely because it was made with no intent of hurting anyone or causing flame or issues in the community. I appreciate your honesty.

Now I'm going to just answer to each section as I see fit.

Dear Staff member/Future to be staff member,

If you do not know me, then allow me to introduce myself. My name is XDBFplaysGamesX, but you can call me Daniel. I have been driven to write this letter because of the apparent collapse of the Minecraft Gamer Network and as staff, you must rise to the challenge and lead the servers to the right direction.

As staff, you are the leaders of these servers. Your job is to enforce rules and keep the server at a sane level. You must keep apparent that your job is to make the servers a better place with ensuring justice. You are not dictators, you are the staff. Learn where your boundaries, and don’t let the selfishness of your secular thought get in the way of who you’re as a person. There must be a line drawn to how you treat your people. The people in whom you punished were your people. You were once a regular player, and once, you depended on the justice of the leaders to keep sanity in the servers. You’re now that leader. Power can lead to evil, evil leads to corruptness, and that leads to malice, and that leads to the apparent end of our servers, not your servers, our servers. Balance power, justice, and ethics, and know how you treat your people.

And I tell you to not to try your hardest to be of Senior Staff. You strive for it in the most wrong ways. You act clean and polished to your peers but treat your people as garbage. It is not wrong to make it a goal, but you are to be mod to help the people. Your intentions are wrong and selfish, you deserve to be cast out if your intentions are perverted in a sense of it being distorted and unworthy of you having that rank.

When you’re to punish a player, I urge you to never jump to conclusions. Investigate, figure it out, bring the pieces together, and I also urge you to never do punishments without figuring the problem. You are running away from your problems and being lazy by giving a person a punishment undeserved. You’re to actually do your job correctly, and figure out what’s going on to fully cultivate the experience and fix the problem at hand.

Now I will start by saying as you may already know Moderators follow a strict ban guide that gives us instructions on what punishments to give and what procedure to follow, we all understand that we were once regular players like the people that we're punishing but I also know I was a regular player that didn't get myself into trouble with staff, most players will view our punishments as harsh regardless of what it is because they don't want to be punished for their mistake.
As staff we have to show respect for the community members, yes; and we do. When it comes to rule breakers we have to show a level of authority otherwise our attempts to defuse a situation will go unnoticed, I know for myself in the AU region asserting authority doesn't always work which leads to an underlying loss of respect for the community. A lot of you don't always realize or remember that staff members like myself dedicate hours and hours of our days to helping the community, we don't HAVE to do this, we choose to do this because we care about the community. You say we "act" clean and polished, this may be because as a staff member just as you would in any irl job, you're required to be professional with the way you handle things, speaking to players in a serious tone, using correct grammar when talking to players in game about serious topics, they are just part of what we're expected to do as staff members, this doesn't always mean we're looking down on anyone or treating anyone like garbage. For example my IRL job is Nursing. You wouldn't see a nurse who is giving a patient information using slang and not being professional about the way they are speaking.

Now in regards to "jumping to conclusions" when punishing a player, we do attempt to defuse situations before punishing them, when any form of disrespect/abuse anything along those lines happens in the games/hubs, we as staff still have to follow the correct procedure given to us by the Sr Staff/Admins, we give a warning and attempt to help the players sort out their situation calmly, but when the situation gets out of hand and they refuse to calm down we are required to just go with the appropriate punishment as players should know the rules when they join our servers and if they don't it isn't up to us to educate them when they have already broken the rules, it is their responsibility to learn the rules of the server.

I urge the age limit for moderation comes to an end and any age may apply for mod. It is not the age that defines the character of one. That is the way he leads and becomes the follower, not the one who is following. He must demonstrate the true virtue of leadership and justice, patience, self-control, selflessness, kindness, and maturity. As a staff, you must define one heavily by the way they treat others. Justice and leadership begin at home. You must rise to the challenge, and not let an age limit define the wisdom you are potentially capable of.

And I urge you to never be too strict on your people. You’re to enforce rules, but I urge that you may cultivate to experience of being a person that the people can turn to when things go wrong. They should entrust that you do the right choice and that you can be accountable and that they have someone they can talk to. Strictness is key but you must realize that again, these are your people. You must treat them with the respect that you feel is due to you.

As was stated before by Vlad, the age limit for moderators will always stand, we're not judging them based on age because of maturity or anything like that, regardless of age people can still be extremely immature. For example my brother is 15 and probably one of the most immature people I've ever met, but I do know a lot of 15 year old's and younger that are extremely mature for their age but they still are not educated enough to be put in a working position. Just as any IRL job has age limits, in Australia the working age is 14 years and 9 months. As a network we are required to hold a level of professionalism and that is why we will always have an age limit. Despite age not defining someone we are never going to be 100% aware of someones maturity and reducing the age limit or removing it completely would open up a door to, yes, the less mature age group, and by having our age limit we reduce the possibility of hiring someone that could abuse their powers or treat players poorly, after all your entire thread is based around staff members being respectful and having maturity and not being power hungry.

I also urge you to never put barriers that could prevent players and users speaking with you. You might say that it allows for no distractions while you’re working, but I strongly disagree! Your job is to serve the people and not to make a wall between you and everyone else. You must let the players have an opportunity to speak with you and make it your priority and responsibility to aide to those problems as much as you can.

When you become a staff member, you must know what you’re getting in to. You’re leading a server, a legion, a nation. You’re the one who’ll one day make all the important decisions, and have a sort of control over this legion, and you’re to make it the most powerful of them all, and have firm and pure justice, treat your comrades like friends with maturity, and to never put barriers across your people. Some will fail and some will be victorious, but the decisions you make shows your character. Much more I can speak of, but for now, I shall leave you here for your wisdom and mind to take you to places where you never imagined, the places where the wise discover and make decisions that always happen for the better. Be that wise one, and be the change.


With all due respect,

Daniel, over and out.

I understand where you are coming from when you state that we shouldn't put barriers between ourselves and the community when we're working, but sometimes it is required, if we are working and are talking to other moderators about the situations we're dealing with we can't have regular players in the channel listening to us because that would count towards us possibly disclosing information a regular player shouldn't be hearing. Our job as staff is to serve the community yes, but that doesn't mean we have to be speaking to players 24/7, as was also stated by Vlad, if you see moderators in the mod chats we encourage you guys to poke us and ask to come hang with us or for us to come talk with you guys in the regular chats, if we're not busy we're more than happy to do that, but I know when I'm working on something or if I'm doing report abuses I like to be on my own so I can focus on what I'm doing, if players were in the channel with me there would really be no point for them to be there because I don't speak when im focused on things and I know that stands for a lot of the staff team.
But I will also make a point of saying if moderators are on teamspeak we are required to help anyone that asks us for help, we are always open for pokes when there are rule breakers on the teamspeak that you need us to deal with, if you come across a moderator who refuses to help you they are not doing their job correctly and you can report them to Sr Staff.

I respect all your points stated in this thread and I hope that you will see my counterpoints and respect our point of view.
Community members will never understand the work load/requirements/expectations of staff members until they are in our position, I know when I was a regular player I rarely saw moderators doing anything and I judged them for it, but now being in this position and looking back at those times I now know there is a lot of things to be done behind the scenes that not everyone sees or notices and I strongly encourage any player who believes they are qualified and could do better in this position to apply because maybe then you will see the process of what we actually have to do and it will be acknowledges and respected.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Have a fantastic day and if you have any further questions/statements I will happily have you pm me here on the forums

 

[Giggums]

I'd just like to ask where this stemmed from? It didn't give any specific examples. Are these issues that you've actually been seeing yourself? Or was this just a general warning/advisement for the future.

-snip-

Well of course a staff member would defend the staff team. He/She is part of it. I, myself, would fight tooth and nail to defend the staff team if I did not believe myself that any accusations were legitimate. As a staff member, one should defend the team. I don't understand why this even needs to be stated, as it seems quite obvious. Would you defend your sport team? Your family? Would you defend a classmate or a teacher?