Staff & Guild Changes

I haven't been here for long, but I can already see many flaws within this site. Like with all my suggestions, I'll keep this brief.

Moderation & Administration:

I've been in both administrative and moderation positions on small communities like this before, and I must say the over-complexity of how this site is run is baffling with all due respect. This is my biggest issue as I cannot process just how flawed this is.

Let us begin with the tiers. Classifications are fine and in fact appreciated, it does help the community to better understand their staff team and who to lean towards for what issues. However, what does bother me is that they are classified not just on seniority, but skill and purpose.

Moderation Statements:

This all seems so very unnecessary to me. Instead of providing moderators with certain amounts of training for particular things at a single time, give them all that they need to make them all-purpose staff members, and this is clearly not the case. If they were all-purpose, there would be no need for classifications nor categories. The staff team has an average amount of members in it and it doesn't make sense how we further divide and categorize them besides what they are. I believe the only distinctions that need to be made within the moderation of this site is Chatbox Moderator, Trial Moderator, Dev. Moderator, and Head Moderator. There should be no tiers, just those classifications.

Next thing is the behavior of the staff. With previous conflicts, the nature of how staff is run has been brought to light. It has been made clear, and with several witnesses, that staff with high ranking positions do tend to cherry pick when and where to apply rules. The following rules have been broken by Tier 3 Moderators and up:

1. Harassment to other players in the form of verbal or textual abuse or any other form of abuse will not be tolerated.

2. Excessive trolling will not be tolerated. This is a mature site, so there may be some foul language, but abusing it and insulting other players is unacceptable.

3. Admins and Moderators will abide by all of the rules of the site or they run the risk of losing their position from the site. If the person continues to break the rules, a possible ban may be held in order.

4. Attempting to exploit or abuse a system will not be tolerated. (In relation with the previous rules)

All four of these rules have been broken several times by fewer high ranking staff members than three. This only makes me worry, especially when no punishment is given and are instead slapped on the wrist and let free to do whatever they please. Please take into consideration the personalities of your staff members. If they have broken any of these, basic,
important rules, they are not fit to be a staff member nor one of high ranking. (Reports are in the process of being made, so hopefully we see results)

That's about it for staff.

Guilds:

Stop making them (lol). I can count more guilds than can fit on one hand and I can conclude that less than half of them are active enough. Members are too thinly spread out and there are large amounts of guilds. That sums that up.

And, there is my suggestion.

I agree with most of what has been said here and I do believe that organization activity checks are also a good suggestion however, with most org heads pouring A TON of IC currency to form their orgs, its unfair to "disband" their organization if they don't have x-amount of members. As Bruce stated that they're too many guilds on site and members are spread out. What I suggest is possibly cutting off org creation until more of the lesser guilds gain more members so they can be more active. Then once the organizations are filled up to say like at least 5 members each, then re-open the org creation. And maybe, put in place a fee for leaving your org. I realize I'm biased being an organization leader myself but still I don't find disbanding orgs left and right for inactivity is really fair, especially for the ones founded by members who took time to save up and get their dream org.

I was hoping a staff member would reply to this, but seeing as they haven’t, I’ll be doing the honors. You’ve mentioned great points and I’ll do my best to address them all. I’m ging to color code as well so each section won’t get lost in the wall of texts:

MODERATORS/ADMINISTRATION:
1. THE TIERS:

I believe the only distinctions that need to be made within the moderation of this site is Chatbox Moderator, Trial Moderator, Dev. Moderator, and Head Moderator. There should be no tiers, just those classifications.

Although I must agree that the above makes the most sense, I can assure you that the process in which the staff are classified here works to the fullest of its intent. For starters, whether you are a newcomer to a staff team or even a veteran, everyone has to undergo some thorough training before being able to tackle certain applications. As such, tiers were created in order to see who has completed one certain type of training as well as who has not. This is also used to make it easier on the community as they are able to see who can grade what and be able to go to that appropriate moderator in order to get the job done.

..they are classified not just on seniority, but skill and purpose.

Prior to belief, the tiers are, in fact, not based on seniority at all. There are indeed some moderators who have been here for a long time, but not everyone has completed the necessary training in order to achieve another tier. Each tier is a representation of what the moderator’s specialized job is as well as makes it easier on staff to see who has training, needs training, and/or is undergoing training. Therefore, seniority has nothing to do with each moderator skills, but the training they have received and the type of applications they are focused on.

Instead of providing moderators with certain amounts of training for particular things at a single time, give them all that they need to make them all-purpose staff members

Although this is a pretty good idea, seeing as I have both staffed, created, and owned several sites of my own, I also have to say that it is not always the best way to approach things. Especially on a site that incorporates not just one specific type of anime.genre, but multiple in one single site. As such, as much as we would enjoy having every staff member be able to grade everything, it’s just not that simple. As previously mentioned, tiers are formed to give each of the moderators time to obtain a new tier (think of them as points) in order to fully become full-fledged moderators. This is also because, in order to understand and be able to grade anything on the site, you need a thorough training which would result in a whole lot more time than if we were to go one by one. Each grading is also uniform in order to avoid anyone from neglecting to catch something and so it is very hands on (you can see several training posts in both “WIP” sections and “Approved”). So, in order to achieve uniformity, comprehension, and unity within the grading sphere, things were done this way to ensure that everyone would be in the same page and be able to grade anything that heads their way (especially in a multi-world site). This idea is great for one particular genre, yes, but not entirely suitable for here. [i]I hope this answers @Kurusu ‘s comments as well.

2. STAFF BEHAVIOR

...behavior of the staff.

-sighs- I have to, regrettably, agree with this portion of the post. I have come to an understanding that this all involves both personal and “out of site” conflicts and so, hopefully, things will be done to ensure that the rules are upheld and staff kept responsible about their behavior. I, myself, have spoken to some individually and, if all goes well, they will take proper actions to ensure that their behavior becomes true staff behavior. If I miss anything, reports should go to Kaseki (not made publically) and it’ll help him know what is up.

GUILDS

I can count more guilds than can fit on one hand and I can conclude that less than half of them are active enough.

I suggest a Guild Activity Check every month or two

I do support the above. I do believe that those who go inactive should have guilds closed, making Guild Activity checks a great thing to come in handy. I am not too sure, though, but I believe that three of the ones in the legend (top three) are not guilds, but an alliance for the event as of now. If anything, @Kaseki should be able to provide more information regarding it.

What I suggest is possibly cutting off org creation until more of the lesser guilds gain more members so they can be more active

@Rin does bring up a good point regarding this. The guilds are not easy to come by and there are currently no regulations which, again, could make activity checks all the more helpful. This, though:

put in place a fee for leaving your org

Is a definite no in my book. Problems can occur both IC and OOC which may cause a member to want to leave a group to ensure that plot development grows and/or avoid any conflict from an OOC point of view. Why punish people for that if they simply just want to leave? Leaving shouldn’t be something to charge for as it can also lead to more conflict and is unfair to all those within the organization from both an in-character point of view as well as an out-of-character standpoint.

I woke up like 30 min ago and will only provide reasoning to the Organizations at this time. LAter I will provide a fll explanation when I have woke slightly more.


Anywho...

Yes,. there's a lot of orgs, it's crazy right?

Yes, we should do an activity check, and I have.

The thing is.... I don't make the orgs, hte user's do. If a user leaves, the organization fails and rots. Can I stop that? Sure. I can fix this by removing the org, deleting the group, reverting everything ever bought for that org, and perhaps refunding or not. Is this a lot of work? Yes. Am I lazy? No, but I have better things than to spend 30 min removing a guild/org from existance.

There's many ways to clean up the organizations and remove ones that aren't used, except... Members aren't required to  have any amount of memebrs in their org, nor be as active more than they please. If this was the case, I would take over user-run organizations, take rare items away from players who left and so forth.

I can be a tyrnical admin, and some people would prefer me to.

The site is made by users, for the users. The tier'd staff, the orgs, the mission, the lineages. 90% of this site was made by users in events and long converstions with the community. Perhaps it's outdated. It's also why I always read susggetions.

However I will not remove orgs. If an organization fails and no one likes it, then that's the failure of the owner, not me. If the leader is deemed dead IC, as well as the following, it is only then that I scrap the org. If the leader logs in, posts, then it counts towards activity.

I hope this provides some insight and isn;t jsut my rambling.

EDIT : No member is required to join an org, and thus no org is required to have members, I will never force someone to fill a slot because a roster tells them too. This is not what ULRP has been about.

(I'm probably going to post like 3-4 times on this post breaking it part by part. I only get like 5 min moments of silence. at work.)

About the Mod Tiers.

Based on what I read in the short time I have to post this, It appears you are mostly wrong (However bring up a good point.)

Tier 0 - The power of Tier 1, the power to overrule any app, yet no power of approval. Nothing more than a supervisor, NOT a manager.

Tier 1 - The equivalent of a Trial mod elsewhere. Proof your worth, get trained to take care of another aspect of the site

Tier 2 - Items, pets, weapons, magic - All it means is that you are a "full mod" and grade more than just characters. Not all mods are trained to grade all of these things, but a few.

Tier 3 - Jobs and Missions. You watch the forum and keep out spam. It's not a tier of superiority, but responsibility.

News Mod - "Secret Tier" This is just people who update rosters. Literally no power outside of making announcements and the FC list.

You can be a T1 and T3 mod, but have no power to grade apps. @Shane
You can be T0 like @Neo Stigma and have no site power, but just authority. Sure he can overturn, but he has no power to approve.
You can be T2 and T3 like @Randous.

The point of this all, is that I don't blanket everything into one group. It was like that before. Staff made a suggestion, members all agreed to section it off. Reason?

Staff are trained to only take care of certain aspects. As a result, they take on only what they are willing. If they don't want to grade a magic app, they never have to. With the visable tiers, you know exactly who your possible graders are.

Does it look stupid and crazy? Sure as fuck it does. lol.
But it's worked since it started, and will remain at such.