3 Ways to Improve the Staff Team

[Beardy]

Hello, this was inspired by Mooclan's thread "5 reasons the staff team is better than you think" which can be found here.

I'd like to state, that as a long time member of this community, I have to say, the staff team (on the forums where I reside) is not at its worse. However, I've been through times where it is much better. However, there is definitely room for improvement, and I like to think that I'm good at finding people's flaws (that can be taken as good or bad). So I thought of some things that the staff team can do better in general that may or may not make them improve.

I find a lot of the staff "lack personality." Everyone's still human, we have personality, but some people are too caught up with acting professional to express themselves. As I've said previously, being a moderator has become a popularity contest with the addition of Mod of the Month and MCGamer Awards. Since the awards have been added, everyone wants the honor of receiving one, understandably so. However, to prove they deserve it, I feel as though the want to impress the Sr. staff and earn Mod of the Month to show off to the community. Now you have to do your job well and possibly not express your ill opinions about the servers, so you guys stick to robotic phrases to lock threads or act overly cheery to welcome new players. Now understand this is all speculation, but at least think about it. If mods could act more like a typical community member ie. not worrying about any sort of demotion for speaking out, I think we'd all be a lot more accepting. Shoutout to Gecko, Ceroria and @jeffrey for being really good at this.

Another issue is how little the staff attempts to interact with the community. I can understand if you have friends who are staff, but how can you not even want to make and attempt to meet any newer, nonstaff members. If there's a new moderator who just got their rank, why are you suddenly willing to open up and become friends with them then? Please, respond to this, I'd like to hear what you have to say, then I'll support my case some more. Back to the rant. The gap between staff and nonstaff has gotten to the point that you try to make community events so we can meet them. It shouldn't take an event where people often get excluded from participating, to meet fellow members of the community. Moderators aren't that high up that they make decisions that highly influence the server. There just other members of the community, only they have the power to deal with the people we find and report. Moderators may be more welcomed if they didn't always stay up in their private channels. If people do come into your public channel and are obnoxious, people will probably listen, you have authority over them. If you do that, you'll also run into some cool people who just stop by as I did with Deelan.

Finally, mods are too caught up with pleasing everyone. As I said earlier, everyone wants to be known as the "best moderator" (something I think we already know is going to Ceroria or it's rigged). However, it should be a behind the scenes job. There's an easy way to tell who's the one who cares about the servers vs their "social status." Those that come on the forums, trying really hard and acting like "a very good mod" when they've never really been active before often are people who want to be known as that great moderator and care what people think about them too much. Meanwhile, those who spend lots of time in the community first then go for mods typically care about benefiting the servers. This is more of my speculation, but I don't think there should be any reward for being a good mod, ie Mod of the Month. I think it should be whittled down to those who legitimately care about the servers. Despite there being less, they will be the ones who truly do the best job.

Sorry for a long post, I had the urge to write and get this off my chest. Staff, please don't get upset about this, I'm trying to help. I'm open to a discussion and debate, so if that gets offensive, can we be mature here and deal with it? That means everyone (staff especially because you guys could mess with this) don't get upset with what people might say about you and your opinion, and let us please not break into pointless insults.

Edit: So is this the best thread with well thought out and written responses or what?

 

[Mooclan]

#bringbacktheforums

Haven't actually read the thread because I have to leave in about 2 minutes, but I got the tag alert, saw the wall of text, and I approve already.

I know you're a forumer worth your salt, so I'll put in the effort to return to this thread and read it over when I come back home.

 

[RiskIt]

I think the reason most moderators are so concerned about being robotic and alost reading by a script is the wish to impress and meet the expectations of the staff team and more precisely, the Sr. Staff team. I'm a mod so I can understand that when I first started out almost 2 months ago, I basically would act like I was much older than I was and act much more professional. What much of the staff team has taught me is that being a mod doesn't mean you have to become a different person. I think though that the expectation or stereotype of a staff member has been set and everyone has their own idea what a mod is. When I first joined the forums I saw mods as people who acted more professional than my parents and all read off a script. I think that each staff, while still being respectful and professional, needs to keep their own individuality. Great points though, also it's a great idea to get more involved in the community. I myself have been trying to make more friends outside of the team because Mister Ceroria and his memes aren't always dank.

 

[Kellyys]

Inspring

 

[Ceroria]

Too much nowadays has the staff position turned into something of status. Considering we have all of these ranks like mod of the month, people will do all they can to impress the Sr. Staff in order to be considered for these positions. While things like mod of the month do inspire people to help out and do work, sometimes it's taken the wrong way and moderators try too hard to stand out, which can be observed rather obviously in certain situations.

On a certain note, not every default response is given because we're uncreative robots, sometimes it's because these things are the most suitable responses to best answer the question or situation at hand (however the thing that some people don't realize is that there is always a way to spice it up and make yourself be a more respectable individual.

Either way you slice it, being a staff member is more than just hosting as many community events as you can and getting tons of bans, which is something I believe a good lot of our staff members could do a job of fine-tuning because there are platforms such as the forums that are either neglected by a lot of us, or handled inexperiencedly (yes, that's a word now. I made it up)

The forums are a platform too. All moderators must be able to handle forum situations. I see moderators a lot saying "Well, the forums were never really my strongsuit." or "I'm shy."

Well, what if I said. "Nah, I don't want to go and ban hackers ingame because I don't like Minecraft." Either way it's unacceptable because moderators are supposed to have experience and knowledge on all three platforms, something that seems to be extremely neglected as of late.

Mister Ceroria and his memes aren't always dank.

My memes are always dank what are you on about mate?

 

[jerffy]

I don't know if you've been in other communities such as Mineplex's, but the staff here are way more open to giving feedback than the staff teams elsewhere. Of course in every staff team there will be people who fake their personality in fear of being warranted a demotion, but that doesn't mean the entire staff team does it. Rather it's only the minority.

As well, during the short period I was staff, I've observed the actions of some staff members and have noticed that those who usually try very very hard to impress aren't usually successful. The moderators who were offered trial senior moderators are those that act natural and show their true personality, whereas the moderators who do every report abuse and basically fitting into the definition of a "perfect moderator" are those that do not get the position.

Regarding your point on moderators only being willing to open up to new moderators and not other community members, I would have to agree with you on that. I find it quite hard to get to know a moderator for the basic reason that most of them do not use Skype. Apart from that, since the staff team is a way smaller group of people as compared to the forum community, it is easier to make friends within the staff team than outside the staff team. On teamspeak I often see moderators in staff only channels, and I found myself doing just that as well when I was a staff. That's mostly because the teamspeak users often cause a lot of trouble, yet they are smart enough not to break rules, making moderation extremely difficult.

You raise very good points. This staff team is better than the Mineplex's staff team, but there is definitely room for improvement regardless.

 

[Jusser]

I think you're right about the mods trying to be professional. MCSG is successful because of famous people who play here (why else do people squeal at the name Huahwi). Thus, everybody who plays here looks up to those role models and tries to be like them. This is why every player has an OG name with Its or HD or YT or _q in their names (or worse, all at once). All of your points really revolve around one key thought: Seperation between staff members and players.

I've seen it first hand: Mods telling spamming players to "settle down, children! My goodness", or the like. Yes, there is a point of professionalism in which you can't say words like "ok im gona rek dis haker gg ban!!!1!", but there's a balance that needs to be found. Your argument states that the staff team is a little too far at the professional side, which is right in some ways.

Part of the problem is simply that you're on an online game. When you see text only, it's very difficult to show emotion through text. This is why things such as memes and facecams are popular; when we see a visual reference to what we hear, we can resonate and connect with those pictures which makes them popular. So not all of the issue is the staff members fault.

There are some mods who are good at this, some who aren't. We've all got room to improve ^.^

 

[crits]

personality does matter and if the mod is chill as well

most importantly if they can pvp

 

[King]

I find a lot of the staff "lack personality." Everyone's still human, we have personality, but some people are too caught up with acting professional to express themselves. As I've said previously, being a moderator has become a popularity contest with the addition of Mod of the Month and MCGamer Awards. Since the awards have been added, everyone wants the honor of receiving one, understandably so. However, to prove they deserve it, I feel as though the want to impress the Sr. staff and earn Mod of the Month to show off to the community. Now you have to do your job well and possibly not express your ill opinions about the servers, so you guys stick to robotic phrases to lock threads or act overly cheery to welcome new players. Now understand this is all speculation, but at least think about it. If mods could act more like a typical community member ie. not worrying about any sort of demotion for speaking out, I think we'd all be a lot more accepting. Shoutout to Gecko, Ceroria and @jeffrey for being really good at this.

I don't feel like the Staff Team necessarily "lacks personality" but more as if they're being too robotic or just acting too professional with members of the community. I would love it if they were more lenient and relaxing when dealing with situations so that the regular member can feel relaxed as well because it's always nerve-racking talking to someone that's higher up than you whether in real life or in-game. (Sorry if I mistook what you said, the wording was a bit weird)

Regarding moderators only talking to other mod buddies, I agree that they should occasionally come down and interact with other community members, the only downfall about it is that there could be way too many people joining attempting to piss of the moderator so they have to moderate more rather than chatting with regular users. One thing I can see that might fix it is going on their teamspeak alt and chatting with normal users that way, if they encounter a rule-breaker, they can switch back to their main and/or get another moderator to deal with it.

Rather than that, I agree with everything else you said. Nice job Beardy.

 

[ArgaJones]

I thought this was going to be another thread suggesting that we change the punishment times, or unban a youtuber who was breaking the rules, but I was happily mistaken.
I agree with all the points you mentioned, especially the one about the staff - nonstaff gap. We need to work together (staff members and community members) to bridge that gap. It happens far too often, that the staff team are very cold towards nonstaff members.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

 

[Mamiamato24]

I believe the staff team needs to find a balance between maintaining their authoritative status without being too stark or too laid back. The former would result in an intensified polarization between player and staff, and the latter would lead to an out-pour of divulged information and would also reduce the authority of such figures. In reality, yes there is an obvious segregation between player and staff, but this makes sense. The weak attempts to bridge this gap are the wrong way to approach the situation.

I would love if the staff team brought up the minimum age requirement to something more reasonable, as a lot of the things wrong with the staff team have to do with the maturity level of some people.

 

[Girls]

I find a lot of the staff "lack personality." Everyone's still human, we have personality, but some people are too caught up with acting professional to express themselves. As I've said previously, being a moderator has become a popularity contest with the addition of Mod of the Month and MCGamer Awards. Since the awards have been added, everyone wants the honor of receiving one, understandably so. However, to prove they deserve it, I feel as though the want to impress the Sr. staff and earn Mod of the Month to show off to the community. Now you have to do your job well and possibly not express your ill opinions about the servers, so you guys stick to robotic phrases to lock threads or act overly cheery to welcome new players. Now understand this is all speculation, but at least think about it. If mods could act more like a typical community member ie. not worrying about any sort of demotion for speaking out, I think we'd all be a lot more accepting. Shoutout to Gecko, Ceroria and @jeffrey for being really good at this.

I agree with almost all of your points brought up in OP, but this one kind of caught me off guard. Seeing as the staff team is responsible for making sure players follow the rules, responding to reports for players who aren't following the rules, organizing community events, and so on and so forth, I thought it would be expected of the staff team to act professionally. I understand what you mean by the lack of personality, but I've always figured that there's a certain way you should act around certain people (probably worded that really awkwardly but whatever) For instance, when someone is interviewing for a job, they should come dressed nicely and be polite to the interviewer, etc etc. If you came to an interview wearing sweatpants and a tank top and talked unprofessionally, you'd most likely not get the job. This goes along with staff members acting too "robotic". When we're doing our "jobs" we should try and be as concise, helpful, and professional as possible. Which in some (or most) cases, can end up sounding robotic, but that's just how it is. I'm sure that when members of the staff aren't doing staff related jobs, they act much differently than when they are pertaining to staff ordeals. I mean, I don't tell my irl friends to stop flooding chat if they talk too much xD.

But all in all, I definitely think you bought up some strong points here, and I'm personally going to try and improve on these aspects of my staff position

Thus, everybody who plays here looks up to those role models and tries to be like them. This is why every player has an OG name with Its or HD or YT or _q in their names (or worse, all at once).

Ok I'm sorry but having Its / HD / YT / q's / in your name is the complete opposite of an OG name :/