Semi Staff Ranks

I think it's fine. Not trying to be biased because this doesn't affect me. It makes sense that you would be left out of staff chat. You are part of the staff but not as a full. Your job is to make sure the wiki is up to date and fill in where ever else you are expected. If you were to be treated like more proper staff members, what's keeping you from just applying for staff?

 

Umm pretty sure the coummunity is pissed at the fact wiki and build can even comment on apps

 

Not seen the community react in a way similair to the one you are describing.

 

Why would this be. I feel like it was a good change. Some players act differently around staff members so in some ways, wiki/build members have a good say on apps

 

Point taken, I was talking about some players in game :/

 

In my opinion the "semi staff members" are treated in the right way. They are supposed to manage one specific aspect, like building, creating media or updating the wiki. Everything else, which includes server managing, is up to the rest of the staff team. Which is senseful, because their job requires even more responsibility. I know, we could higher the requirements of the "semi staff members", but what would be the difference to staff then? If you feel like you want to be involved even more - you can apply for staff.

 

I don't understand why you would need to know what we know. Our jobs are completely different therefore making what needs to be known by each group different.

 

There is no real need for a closer communication between staff and semi staff. Don't call me rude, please, but you're supposed to update the wiki, not more. The Higher staff have allowed semi staff to comment on staff applications, because there has been many wishes about that, not because they'd necessarily need their opinions.

 

The power to comment on staff applications was given to the Team members because on the hand it provides more feedback about applicants and on the other hand it is a privilege to reward the team members for the work they do.

By calling the team members "semi-staff" you already kind of answered the question why they have some staff responsibilites/privileges and some not: Because they are not full staff members.
They have the team specific responsibility (updating the wiki, building maps, making videos) and are expected to follow the rules as many players won't see the difference between staff and team members.
In return for this each team has individual privileges (a forums rank, a premium rank for Media and Build team, the power to comment on staff applications, being allowed to join staff testing sessions for the Build team).

Replying to staff applications is rather a privilege than a responsibility I would say; you can reply to these apps, but you don't have to. The power was also added because team members requested it.

The requirements regarding maturity for team members are lower than for staff members, that's why some information is restricted to staff only. Staff applications and the comments are public to everyone already, so we are not really giving any new information to the teams.

 

No need to access the staff chat - the only job you are supposed to do is to edit the Wiki voluntarily.

 

As a former builder, I would either like the Build Team to be considered as full staff or not as staff at all (preferrably the latter). SMods/Admins expect us to act like mods ingame when we don't get the same privileges as they do. As a former builder, I applied to build for brawl. However, when I was builder I remember consistently being told to be mature (yes I know I could have been more mature) but I don't think the community even cares about what builders say. I remember calling a player "you big noob" as a joke and shortly afterwards I received a message telling me that I was a builder and that the thing I had just said was inappropriate.

I had an idea that there could be 2 ranks for each group, especially build and wiki team members.
Staff Builder/Wiki
Normal Builder/Wiki

Normal Builders:
Treated as a normal player.
Lifetime Elite.
Access to the Build Team server.
More perks on McBuild (Unlimited maps, access to tp to private maps, copying maps, etc.)
Access to the Build Team slack.
Gets the "Builder" tag in-game and on the forums.
The ability to post on Staff Applications.

Staff Builders:
Everything a "Normal Builder" gets.
Treated as a lower JMOD.
Gets the "SBuilder" Tag in-game and on the forums.
The ability to kick and mute people for up to 10 minutes, has a 10 minute cooldown to stop abuse.
Access to the Staff slack.
Ability to view reports.

This would also apply to SWikiTeam members and maybe SMediaTeam members too. All current builders/wikiteam members would start on Normal Builder, however if the Mod/Smod/Admin leading their respective teams feels they are ready, they can ask the player if they would like to be a staff builder etc.. However, the player can just stay as a normal team member.

I don't know though, it just comes from experience and I was always complaining about being treated as a staff member because as a builder, I could never really joke around etc.

 

Absolutely. I am glad the discussion has been civilized so far, let's keep this up. I will try to respond to your arguments as good as possible.

You're placed on the staff list, because there hasn't been a "semi-staff list" so far. As Roke already explained, Brawl partly treats you as full staff members to reward you for your work. The same thing goes for your possibility to answer on staff applications. I know, you don't see it as a privilege/reward, but I will comment on that later on. Moreover the application system for the "semi staff" aren't too slack / too hard - atleast for your tasks: building, creating videos, updating the wiki and (perhaps; that's arguable) answering on staff applications.

That wasn't my point. Feel free to say your own opinion.

It wasn't the staff, who asked the "semi staff" to comment on the applications, it was the other way around. You've already explained it very well why - the Higher staff didn't see a big, necessary need behind this, because there are already many ways to voice somebody's opinion, as explained by yourself, so they didn't add it by themselves. The higher staff had to see it as a privilege you asked for - and which was given because of your hard work. If the majority of the "semi staff" sees it as "an extra responsibility" though - I am sure you can ask to take this power away again.

First of all: You aren't "forever destined" to be "semi-staff" members, you can apply for JMod as everybody else. Moreover Roke as already answerd your second question:

The issue is: Players see you as full staff, even if you aren't. It's simply not possible to "forbid"/"allow" this. If you are thinking about the "staff list" now, where you are also listed - in my opinion you can see it as another privilege. Therefore we have some requirements for the "semi-staff", not as high as for full staff, as you don't have as many information as we have, but still - while online you should act mature. If you think it is too confusing though, as said above, I am sure the Higher staff will rething the fact you're also listed as staff, atleast if the "semi staff" requests something like this.

Wrong. As proven several times, a small team is much more efficient than a team, which is twice as big. To have an efficient server management running, the staff team is not able to involve the "semi staff" in everything, even if we would like to. You (the "semi-staff") know absolutely enough to fulfil your tasks perfectly. And if you personally want to be more involved feel free to apply for JMod. Furthermore I'd like to present my own experience in my (as I have to admit, short) time as a staff member: Many of our "staff" discussions are also discussed in public, you'll find many brainstorming threads if you look closely at every gamemode. Nevertheless some information are too... let's say explosive to discuss them in public, so they aren't.

You might be right. Some people could see this possibility not as a privilege for your hard work, but as a hint Brawl is treating you like full staff members. But as said above - if the majority of the "semi-staff" sees this problem, I doubt the Higher staff won't remove this possibility for you.

 

I've been thinking about this for a while and while I didn't see the point in semi staff members being seen as just that, not being staff now changes that opinion. For me, yes, I'm always going to act like a mod because that's what I've always been here. I've spent more time as a staff member than not, actually. But there are other semi staff members who like to goof around and have fun. They applied for their position purely because they wanted to do that one specific thing. This is most often prevalent in build team, but wiki may also be an option.

The problem is that normal players do not know the difference between staff and builder, builder and wiki, wiki and staff. To them, a person with a tag is a staff member, and they will go to them with questions. Now you're throwing these people who just want to do their job without worrying about helping new players, under the bus. They have to help these people, disrupting their games. And if they don't help or if they joke around excessively, they're warned just like a staff member. Why should semi staff members be expected to only do their one job, yet be treated as though they are staff in terms of punishments? That seems slightly hypocritical.

(And don't get me started on why wiki or media members don't get an ingame tag, yet builders do. I'd like to see other players write wiki sections as well as our wonderful wiki members do right now, or builders create videos as well as our talented editors. It's just as difficult as building maps, but I digress, that comes in a later thread.)

And then you have those semi staff members who do want to be full staff. Thetitaniumtitan, lord_chaos, admiral_munson, etc. All of these people have tried to be staff before and I don't see anything really stopping them besides, in most cases, that the section they're applying for (the section they know best and can contribute the most to) is closed to applicants.

Which I also have a problem with just because there may be some great staff applicants who are from timezones that don't have a lot of staff members *cough* EU *cough*, yet aren't given the chance because we have "too many staff members for that one gamemode". (Looking at ctf here.) So anyone's argument about "why don't the semi staff members just apply for full staff if they want to be treated like one" is completely thrown out of the atmosphere here. It's somewhere off in space and no one can use it from now on.

That's asking those that want to contribute more, but have their main gamemode closed off, to either wait for it to open again, or learn a new gamemode. Not fair to them, don't you think? But anyway, off topic again. The point is that semi staff members are being treated like staff members when it suits the staff members, but any other time, it's back to normal semi staff for them. I've seen more people demoted from builder and wiki than from staff. And that's saying a lot, because we've had some preeeeeetty inactive staff before.

Basically, to wrap it up, I see no problems with letting semi staff members see staff slack, and making a private channel for all confidential discussion, like smod channel, admin channel, higher staff channel, or even mod channel. This could help builders know what gamemodes to start making maps for, wiki members could have a better understanding of what is about to drastically change the wiki so they can start working on it, and media team members could know which gamemodes to promote.

Have I made you proud @yinscape and @Proterozoic? I waited and thought this out completely logically. ^-^ I'm proud of myself.

 

Disagree with CTF having too many mods, half of them are inactive and most gamemodes should have atleast 5 unless they are dead.

 

I completely agree. I also see no reason why staff applications should be closed to some people. Mods don't stick to one gamemode anyway. That's the old process and it seems like we're going back to that, which is a problem because it failed last time too.

 

Various wiki team members requested this ability, so it seems that they are considering it to be a privilege. If you don't, that's also fine - you can reply if you want, you don't have to.

We can't control what players think, so we are in now way allowing them to think that team members are full staff members. But the team members sometimes need forum and in-game ranks to perform their duties, making it hard for a new player to distinguish between staff and team members. I don't really see how we could prevent this and as a result there are behaviour expectations for team members.

These inconsistencies are a result of the "semi-staff" status. I don't see how they are an issue or why they would need to be changed.
Even when we only inform JMod+ about updates and plans they often get leaked at some point, so we definitely do not want to give that information to a even larger group of people. And before you argue that the information shouldn't be kept secret anyways for transparency - from our experience in the past we can tell that almost all plans are changed, delayed or abolished, so we do not want to create false hopes and disappoint the players with unfinished plans.
Members of all 3 teams are informed about these plans when they need to know them - for example for creating a wiki section, a trailer or a map.

Every privilege and responsibility distinguishing you from the average player makes you look more like staff, yet they are needed to allow you to do your job and reward/motivate you. If doing the work for the community is enough movitation for you, that is great, but some others will surely appreciate these privileges.

None of the team members are expected to help players with all questions they have. We appreciate when they answer questions about their specific field whenever possible, but unlike normal staff members they don't need to help players with everything.
I do not recall any situation where a team member was warned for not helping someone. "joking around excessively" is not an issue at all, as long as it doesn't violate the rules.
So as you can see we are not treating them like "staff in terms of punishments", we are far more lenient regarding team members.

Media team members have an in-game tag - YT. Wiki team members don't need a tag in-game as their field of activity is purely on the forums.
Nothing holds the team members back from applying for other teams as well - we actually have and had some players who did exactly that. The fields of activity of the teams are however far too different to just let members of one team work in another without any application process.

TheTitaniumTitan applied for Wild West, the applications for the server are and were not cloed. Admiral_Munson applied for HG (probably because CTF was closed), but his denial had nothing to do with his activity and would not have changed if he could have applied for CTF. LordCh4os / Proterozoic did apply for CTF (not sure if the applications were closed when he applied, but likely), but again was not denied because of that.

I'm tied regarding the question if staff applications should be closed when there are many staff members for that gamemode already; on the one hand a large group is more complicated to handle and less efficient (as @SkullcrusherLD pointed out above), on the other hand more staff members are always helpful to moderate the servers.

You are right, CTF players in specific can't just apply for staff. However, as I said above, the fact that the staff applications for that specific server are currently not open isn't the only issue.

Could you explain what being treated like "normal semi staff" means? Because as far as I can tell it simply means having some of the responsibilites and privileges of full staff members, so they are basically always "treated like staff members when it suits the staff members" (or more accurarely, where it suits their needs to do their job and be rewarded for it).

 

Hi my name is Admiral and I'm on the wiki team.

Who are these 'normal players'? The difference between 'staff', 'builder' and 'wiki' always seemed pretty clear cut to me. Build team does build team sh*t, the wiki team edits the wiki, and the staff team moderates and does staff sh*t. The differences are spelled out in @Canoodle's thread on staff ranks, the wiki (all six of them) and build team application threads, and in the rank tags. Even the teamspeak page of the wiki lays out the different privilages the wiki/build/media team and J-mods+ have.

I can understand confusion about whether or not wiki/build/media team members are staff or not (since it's not really specified anywhere except on the staff tab of the members page) but if someone isn't aware of the difference between what (for example) someone with the wiki team rank versus someone with a moderator rank does then that's a whole other thing. I don't know how the differences, responsibility wise, could be made much clearer than they already are. A wiki team member edits the wiki, a moderator moderates. It's so obvious I've turned into LeafyIsHere I'm already repeating myself after two paragraphs.

Not true. I have been a wiki team member twice, a year ago and for the last month. I have not received a single question about anything that a staff member like @Gehenna_Beam or @randomcitizen1 might be asked on a daily to weekly basis. This might not be the case for you since you were a moderator for almost a year and people tend to see you in that light (versus "another community member" or "a dank memer") thus they ask you questions. However, it has not been the case for me or (to my knowledge) virtually anyone else on the wiki team.

I think there are two reasons for that: 1) people are not promoted to the wiki team because of their knowledge of spotting hacks, of how to get a bounty on Wild West, or whatever else. You get the wiki team rank if you can write something that's readable, can type faster than the sloth from that DMV scene in Zootopia, and don't have the emotional maturity of a five year old. I know this because that's how I got accepted to the wiki team, the first and second time around. I remember putting on my application (paraphrasing here) "I know nothing about any Brawl server except CTF and HG but I can type 70+ WPM, format sh*t, and have a ton of time on my hands". 1 week later I was accepted and was not remotely surprised by it.

That said, I can see people asking a build or media team member questions since they deal with things that more directly impact the community (build team) or things that people are more likely to ask questions about (media team). However it is still made very clear that neither build or media team members are not moderators, as it is with the wiki team. I would be suprised if build/media team members, who are not former j-mods/mods, are getting questions outside the scope of their current responsibilities.

That is exactly what Brawl is not doing.

No they don't. If someone were to ask me a question about relogging or hacking and I didn't have the answer I would refer them to someone who did (i.e. other staff who actually deal with this sh*t). Even if I did have the answer it's not my responsibility to answer those questions. I'm not a moderator, I'm not the Q&A desk, I'm edit the freaking wiki.

What's wrong with that?

It's not hypocritical. If you have a tag then you're staff are expected to act like it. You know this better than I do feather. I see nothing wrong with having to follow Roke's Rules of Order as long as I'm on the staff team as an Editor of the Wiki (fancy title right?) or in any other capacity. I've found the standards to be pretty relaxed anyway. Don't act like an idiot and it's all good. If I can follow that guideline anyone can.

There is no reason why wiki/media team members should get an ingame tag. Why would anyone care if I can edit the wiki or not in-game? Or if @MattM1PVP can make some dank vids for Brawl's YouTube channel? If there's an issue with the wiki or the media someone can shoot me or matt or @Daniellll or anyone else on the team a PM and we'll fix it. There's no need for in game tags, permissions, special name colors or anything else because it's not relevant to the job description.

CTF (the only server section that's closed) has nine moderators. Sure some of them are "inactive" as @GoToBed says but it's not like CTF is scrambling for staff atm (unlike HG, Party, and WarZ which are). The only reason why any new staff would be accepted, with regards to CTF, is because Canoodle feels they have gone above and beyond the requirements necessary and that pending them now (@gamren, @randomcitizen1) would be more beneficial than later. That seems reasonable to me.

If a someone really wants to be staff for a particular game-mode where applications are closed (i.e. CTF) and is serious about making it better in whatever way they can then they should prove it. No one gets pended because they're Canoodle's nephew. They get pended because they've made it obvious that, as staff, they would be a real asset to the team. That doesn't imply perfection. It implies activity, dedication, knowledge, and maturity. You know that better than anyone else feather, seeing as you check all the boxes anyway.

I think it's completely fair. Brawl is a business and doesn't need what it doesn't need.

I'll admit, I wasn't the happiest person ever when my HG staff application got denied but my saltiness, or anyone else's doesn't mean Canoodle is corrupt or that upper level staff want to make things hard on the wiki/build/media team members. I'm on the wiki team because @Lord_Roke and whoever else reads those applications felt that I could be trusted to edit a wiki that no one reads on the Brawl forums. I am not a j-mod on Brawl, right now, because I have 24 forum warnings (mostly for memes smh) an inconsistent history of maturity/immaturity, and a recent ban on discord. That is all my fault, not Canoodle's. If I want that to change then it is my responsibility to prove to whoever reads my future application that I can do the job and do it better than anyone else who might apply for [insert game-mode here] j-mod.

It is 100% possible for build/media/wiki team members to become moderators. Take @MattM1PVP as an example of this. His HG mod application was one of the biggest no brainer's of all time because he's active, mature, knows his sh*t about HG, and is funny as hell. Now he's a full moderator.

Wiki team members are expected to edit and update the wiki. Build team members are expected to build sandcastles and sh*t. Media team members are expected to make pretty YouTube videos. They are not expected to moderate anyone's behavior, discuss possible updates in staff slack, or ban people.

If they are being expected to do anything outside their rank description (EDIT: I may have used the word 'job' a few times here. Was not intentional) then that is wrong. Since that is not the case I don't see what the problem is.

A lot of the people who were demoted from the wiki team (@furtles for one) hadn't logged into the forums for months to years. They weren't even pretending to be active so they were demoted. As for the build team, some members have been demoted because they couldn't manage their in-game behavior rather than inactivity.

There's a lot here but I'd first like to dispense with this notion of "semi-staff". Wiki, build, and media team members are not "semi-staff". They are, or we are (since I'm one of the wiki dudes), staff members. Why? Because we have a tag and do sh*t for Brawl that normal players can't. Therefore we are staff.

We are not "semi staff" because we cannot ban players, un-approve threads, delete posts, or kick lionafp from CTF match servers. All staff are not created equal. Staff need the tools/perms necessary to do the thing their tag says they do, nothing more.

No, we don't have access to the staff slack (aside from the wiki team channel) or most confidential discussions either. I can't say that's a thing I'm happy about because I've been b*tching about lack of transparency between staff -> community for a while now. But it makes sense. Why should wiki, media, or build team members have access to all this information that has no relevance or bearing to their duties/responsibilities? Sure it'd be nice if I knew what changes were being discussed amongst the CTF committee or whatever but none of that knowledge is going to help me edit the wiki. Nor is it going to help the build team make better builds or the media team add more 360 no-scopes to their videos (because quality, y'know).

Again, it would be nice to be "in the know" about what changes are coming and what they'll look like but it's not necessary. It's not necessary for two reasons: 1) we have more than enough people to edit the wiki (about a dozen wiki team members + other people who have editing perms) to accommodate any sudden changes and 2) no one has or ever will freak out if a few minor details aren't immediately added to the wiki. For example, I recently updated the TS wiki page. My changes were the first time that page had been updated since 2015. No one said a word.

That's not a justification for irresponsibility. It's only to say that wiki page updates are not particularly urgent and it'd be a stretch to say "well we need to know of changes AHEAD of time so we can keep the wiki up to date" since it's possible to do that without pre-emptive knowledge (just add in the updates when they've been announced) and even if it isn't done in a day or two no one gets freaky.