My Observations as a Staff Member

Trouble with putting the handbook in a public area means that all the 'What would you do in this situation' questions in the staff application would become meaningless. The reason for these are to see how an applicant uses they common sense and maturity to punish the player accordingly. If they had access to the handbook before applying, they would simply regurgitate all the information from the handbook right into their application - Which is useless.

 

Why? It isn't useless if you show you are really interested in having the staff position. Moreover the questions are useless anyway. It is too obvious and clear what to answer (something like warning by doing /tell, warning in public, kick, ban...). Everyone who thinks a little bit about it can do it. And if you really have no idea, read the accepted apps. Therefore your argument doesn't make sense.

It is a good idea to publish it to make everything clear. Maybe there are some people out there, who don't want to become staff anymore if they would know this handbook.

 

Not quite, I think it would show commitment by the member aplying -they spent the time to study it and do their research-, and also do we value staff aplications more than the comunity as a whole? I mean, should the comunity not be aware of what they are being moderated on, simply to maintain a question in the aplication taken by a fraction of players?

What could be done is to give a vaigue situation instead of a straight forward one, for instance:
Instead of: "What would you do if a player was spaming excesively?"
Mabe it could be: "A player who just joined the server is repeating the same message many times. What would you do?"
And other such situations like:
"Describle the action(s) you would take if a player violated the rule X"

 

We don't have any "secret rules" - all of our rules can be read in the rules section on the forums. The handbook states how you, as a JMod, should handle players that break these rules in an adequate way. The handbook states for how long you should, for example, mute somebody and related. That is nothing of worth for normal players. If one uses common sense, as Eil stated, one can figure out how to handle rule breakers accordingly. It's also not a secret that we may move onto dealing with the player in a private message. Feel free to ask us about it if it would be of interest.

 

Why do staff members wait to voice their opinions until after they resign. We have a Mod+ section of the forums for a reason. Based on many of your points, it looks like you came to these conclusions fairly quickly (interview and reading of the handbook are all things you do within your first day of being a staff member). Why are we just hearing this now?

Message to all current/future staff members: there's no reason to be afraid to voice your opinion about Brawl, as long as it's constructive and helpful. You don't have to wait till resignation.

 

I think many may be afraid that it will hurt their chances of promotion or that they might get demoted if they insult the system.

 

He resigned for different reasons (https://www.brawl.com/threads/57833/), just decided to post this thread after he resigned.

 

I don't think anyone has been demoted just for suggesting a change.

The higher-ups want to do everything they can to improve Brawl including its staff system. Signatured is right.

 

No, I know. But I think that many staff members, especially the newer ones feel this way. Personally if I have a suggestion, I make my suggestion known, and I think that should be how everyone thinks. Providing the suggestion is constructive then it can only make the server better.

 

Because writing an idea thread on the staff forums don't go far. About 99.9% of the time, the Brawl staff members don't use any of the great ideas that the members suggest. Sure, you guys have a reason for that, you always do. Although, most of the reasons aren't even reasonable.

I don't know about the other jmods or mods but when I was a Jmod, I felt scared to speak up my ideas to the higher staff members. Because as a jmod, you're pressured into being that "perfect" staff to get promoted and if you make one little mistake, you don't get it. But on the other hand, mods and up? Now that's a different story. Moderaters are done with the promotion (I'm aware they can get promoted to SMOD but that's another story), yeah they can probably get demoted if they make a mistake but while I was in the staff team I noticed so many who abused and made mistakes yet got absolutely 0 penalty. Now I'm sure one of the higher-ups will probably reply to my comment with something along the line of "If you have a staff complaint, talk to Cuddled". I don't know if you guys are noticing this but nothing gets done even when you complain about the abusive staff members to her or any other higher ups. Most of them either ignore the question or just say that they'll "handle" it but really, nothing gets done. You think talking to that abusive staff member and giving them a thousand warnings to be careful would fix everything. No, it really doesn't do ****.

Well, back on topic, as a junior mod, your voice doesn't get heard as much as moderators+ do. Why? Because you're only a junior mod. Your idea is just invisible, it's like it was never even suggested.

I ranted about the staff system and the staff team in general on my resignation thread. Yes, I'm one of those who spoke up after resigning. The reason for this is because, I actually have hope that my "ideas" or suggestions (that have been suggested a couple thousand times already) will at least get read by the staff team because of the supporters/non-staff members who agree with me and can vouch for me. If I suggested an idea on the staff forums only, just as a jmod, it would get burried and eventually ignored. Other staff members would "disagree" to it even if they secretly may be agreeing because no one wants to get demoted. This meaning, one of the higher ups probably said no to the idea before anyone could give opinions so others are afraid to say yes to the idea because they don't want to stand out. Just like how everyone reacts in the society nowadays. Literally everyone seems to be following the crowd. Why? If you don't, you feel left out and sometimes get "bullied". If you still don't get what I'm saying, it basically just means if the staff member speaks up after resignation, it's most likely they thought the other staff members would've disagreed with them and they know there are way more people in the non-staff community who would support their idea which is why the ideas always come after the resignations.

Change the staff system first and maybe that'll change the behaviours of these staff members who want to speak up but are scared to. Admit it, we all know the staff system is really bad and it could really use some tweaks.

I don't know about the Junior Handbook idea, it doesn't seem like the most important thing to be changed in the team. Get rid of the biased staff members, find some players that are actually dedicated into moderating and helping the server out. Don't warn the abusive staff members like a couple million times and think they'll stop abusing. Demote them and find better members. Finally, please consider the ideas the community suggest. I get money is important and this is more like a business or something. Forgive me if I'm wrong but I feel that what the community want is pretty important when it comes to saving and improving Brawl.

I apologize for any grammatical errors if I had any. I wrote this on a phone with absolutely no thought so I basically just wrote whatever flowed out of my mind. Correct me if you feel I'm wrong in any areas although most of what I wrote were opinions of mine. I won't be surprised if I get any hate from more than half the staff team or the community either.

Don't delete this either, I feel like someone probably would. Well, thanks for reading all this criticism(?)-like rant. I guess not really a criticism but still kinda giving ya ideas on what I think. Hope at least one of the staff members look into this issue. Though, that is doubtful.

 

Why would someone delete this? From the way I see it you're 100% against our system, and think staff are the bad guys.

One of your complaints was JMODS not being punished when they make a mistake. Is that really a bad thing? JMOD is a learning rank. That's why they have limited permissions. If we demoted them on the spot, we wouldn't have any staff members.

I would type more but it's late and I lack the motivation. Just know that no thread is ignored, especially by our staff members. You guys have no idea what happens/ what gets discussed behind the scenes.

 

I wouldn't say 100%, maybe like 110%. (No, I don't think the staff are the bad guys, I've been staff before, y'all are great people with lovely personalities. It's more of a hate towards the staff system not the team, if that makes any sense.)

I didn't say jmods don't get punished when they make a mistake. I said mods+ if you did actually read it. As a non-staff member, I would hate to argue with ya since who knows what can happen so sure sure whatever you say. And no no, don't worry about typing more, you made yourself clear enough. How many words you type doesn't matter, it's the quality of the reply that matters.

No thread gets ignored.. Sure, I'll take your word for it. However, I still dislike how almost every suggestions/ideas thread gets shut down and disagreed on because a couple higher ups dislike it even if a hell lot of people think it's a great idea. I may be wrong saying this but tbh I think what's important for Brawl right now is to actually listen to what the community want and look into considering their ideas and suggestions thoroughly. Yeah, we have no idea what happens or gets discussed behind the scenes but I think it's appropriate to discuss these "things" with the community instead of just deciding everything all on your own, tbh. Idk, that's just what I think. You do you, I guess.

These are just all my points of view as to when I was a staff member on Brawl for a little while. I just assumed someone would delete it because some staff members seem to delete/disapprove the weirdest things. I guess that's been improved, I hope. As someone who likes to speak up my mind with all honesty (as long as I get the chance to), I say pretty much everything that just comes out of my mind and yes this isn't the best feature but I hope the staff team got at least one thing to fix from what I'm pointing out instead of just continuously avoiding these things.

Now, I don't want to consume any more of my time into writing these kinds of things on Brawl anymore because once I start I usually go on forever. So hopefully this is my last post? I have too many issues lmao. Well, best of luck, Brawl.

 

Speaking as an old Brawl Mod, these latter, in no instance, get punished for making mistakes (depends on what they do of course) (Jmods and Mods). Before Roke told me that I should stop worrying about getting punished for making a mistake, I had have this point of view. I have made mistakes as a staff member, quite a lot I assume but I didn't get punished and/or demoted. You are here to learn, as Signatured said, if we demoted them on the spot, we wouldn't have any staff members. There is a big difference between Jmods and Mods (permissions/tasks etc.). So that's the same. You are a bit lost when you are first promoted to Mod, but you learn by making mistakes and by being notified by a higher staff member that you've made a mistake.

I have to say that you are wrong. As @Totom3 said on his Twitter. They do not reply to suggestions/ideas, but does that mean that they do not read these latter and do not take into consideration these latter as well?

 

you didnt understand what she said. you should reread what tato said later (or should i say.... latter.)

 

I've to disagree. You are not in the position to be really honest, because you are (obviously) trying to become moderator again. It's a good thing people like Jaet and potato say what they think and it shows that probably many mods aren't that happy about the system.
Ofc totom is a good example. You could say the same thing about other mods like rocktomb or ZombieCat. But sadly it's the minority. And if we speak about Totom... he's the only dev I feel like he's doing a really good job. Just look at Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrawlDevs The last changes have mostly be done by Totom. And let's be honest: He is working on War 2.0, doing more progress than developers in 3 years and is still working more on the other gamemods than the other devs. A shoutout to Totom and an agree on the broken staff-system.

 

This is a good discussion. I like it. We need more staff members with this fire. The only way to make this community better, is to change it.

 

Cool point of view I liked it!