[PROPOSAL]: GrangerPub Needs An Adjustment

Servers GrangerPub Servers
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I think its important to clarify who I am and my position on this matter so noone is misled. I am Hendrich, I don’t play often on GrangerPub as I should (thanks to demands of my workplace recently) and I am currently applying to GrangerPub to be an admin.

However, I feel that we need to discuss whether or not the current GrangerPub Level 1-9 Administration system really is the best system to fill the roles of GrangerPub moderation in the future months (years?) to come. I feel this way because in my previous Admin experience, this system has only shown to have short-term benefits while disastrous long-term consequences when it comes to unifying the roles of unregistered players, moderators, administrators and server operators.

Here is the current system explained by the administrator Shuffle on IRC who was clarifying to me on how its supposed to function. Anyone is more than welcome to provide a cleaner and more accurate description than the one done on a chat server:

L2 is intended as purely kick protection - nothing else, given to players who deserve/need it, and there’s no need to apply for it

shuffle [2:03 PM]
L3 is a temporary level, intended for a week/2 weeks, just to see if that player is worthy of a higher position

shuffle [2:04 PM]
there aren’t that many commands at L3, but there are enough so that we can see what kind of person they are

shuffle [2:05 PM]
L4 is intended as the first level of moderation - at this point we have people who are willing and able to help moderate behaviour on the server, and with whom we give a certain amount of trust

shuffle [2:05 PM]
they are not intended as administrators of the server, merely moderators of behaviour, and there to ensure that people don’t run rampant with random specvotes/votekicks

shuffle [2:06 PM]
L5 is the first level of administration; it is the first admin level with access to /a and the first level with ban, etc.

shuffle [2:06 PM]
L5s are basically there to step in when there are more serious issues which a L4 cannot address

shuffle [2:07 PM]
L6 is a senior version of L5, and has a longer ban length, as well as a couple of other commands which are useful in the case of real non-compliant tremtards

shuffle [2:07 PM]
when we get to L7 it’s the actual ‘senior admin’ groups

shuffle [2:07 PM]
I think I made a post on the forums somewhere, or it might be elsewhere, where I stated that L7s are the only ones who should !unban or !adjustban anyone else’s ban

shuffle [2:09 PM]2:09
they are basically there to ensure that this e-bitching is kept to a minimum - as of right now there’s only 1 L7, and the entire level is intended as a way of keeping hierarchy and giving a clear indication of who’s above you

shuffle [2:09 PM]
L8s are basically the final level of administration bar L9s

shuffle [2:09 PM]
they have access to every command excluding !setlevel and a couple others I believe

shuffle [2:09 PM]
no L8s as of right now

shuffle [2:09 PM]
If we were to abolish any level, it could be L8, I guess

shuffle [2:10 PM]
but overall, each admin should act and react to each situation as they see fit

shuffle [2:11 PM]
they should try to follow what other higher levels say, but ultimately L7+ are intended to be the ones to deal with any admin drama issues

So what is my problem with such a system? The problem lies in the fact that the roles and powers of administrators and moderators are broken up across Level 3-9, causing overlap. In my experience, this overlap is what causes problems to begin. Examples include:

  • Confusion over people trying to comprehend the system when issues arise:

Lvl5 admins explain to players that they can’t do because only Lvl6 admins have , however a Lvl6 admin corrects him that they can do something similar to because Lvl5 admins have [Y]. People need to memorize the powers and limitations of every single Level for every player that either becomes or promotes to admin while also knowing when to delegate to a higher Level admin. This expectation becomes difficult on people who are basically internet volunteers and will only get worse as the rules change and new admins apply to GrangerPub.

  • Competition over other admins trying to gain promotions:

The Levels are broken up in enough numbers (Mod powers start at Lvl3 and end at Lvl9) which creates 7 entire levels that anyone relevant to administration could fall into. The majority of admins won’t probably see Lvl9, but patient ones will be climbing the “ladder” over time to up to Lvl8.

Ideally, they would be promoted for being good admins at all times for essentially working for free, however no system is ideal and the worst ones fail to compensate when the system is taken advantage of. Lvl9 admins might promote others to compensate for a wrong decision such as accusing the lower-level admin of sabotage, or to reward them for friendship. Perhaps an admin is promoted simply for asking for it, rather than actually deserving it which keeps other admins behind. Or drama happened between admins during a server scuffle and the one who managed to make the other party look retarded gets promoted for seeming like he knows his shit.

Essentially, having multiple Levels with their own powers for each admin to climb will encourage them to try to attain it, even if it isn’t right. It basically “gamifies” the administration system that hurts the purpose of said administration system.

  • Control over how high an admin’s level is over others:

Words shape and control how we view concepts and ideas in real life. I think calling these administration tiers “Levels” was an awful idea since it gives us the impression that the person who is Lv8 is “higher” than the person who is Lv3. What “higher” means to you is subjective, but I wouldn’t be surprised if legitimate arguments start to be shut down because the crowd sees the Lv8 Admin to be more “legitimate” or alteast hold more sway than the Lv3 Admin.

To me, GrangerHub is a place where we can discuss things and concepts like CALLING PEOPLE NIGGERS IN ALL CAPS as long as it’s relevant to the thread and one of the few threats is probably a flagging. Unlike Tremulous.net which had people with +168 turrets (like me) or Reddit which encourages people to vote on what they approve of, GrangerHub tries to promote people on their content and not their status. By extension, I think GrangerPub can only benefit from the same system and not one that creates the perception that others are better admins because of their status.

tl;dr The problems I’ve identified are Confusion, Competition and Control.

What do all of these issues have in common? In my experience, they all get worse by the flow of time where people get confused by new rules, people get more competitive as the server becomes popular and people start taking advantage of the control the “Levels” gives them.

So what is my solution?

Well to be honest, it doesn’t solve the issues at all, but it does addresses them. I say we get rid of the current Level 1-9 system and replace it with the following:

  • Registered Players
  • Pending Moderators
  • Moderators
  • Administrators
  • Server Operators

What is the major difference?

Every role is specific and explicitly named where everyone understands what they can and cannot do. The following isn’t meant to be specific but give you an idea of how it works (since I genuinely have no idea of the QVM features):

  • Registered Players are those who will have their nicks protected.

  • Pending Moderators are those who were successfully applied into GrangerPub as an admin and have access to !mute, !forcespec and !report privileges. After 14 days if they have shown to be responsible, they move into becoming proper mods.

  • Moderators have access to !kick, !freeze, !undo and !allready commands.

  • Administrators can ban players for up to 3 days.

  • Server Operators can adjust the kick/ban length of Mods/Admins and basically do whatever they want, including perma-ban.

Of course the commands I gave above is pulled straight out of my ass, but hopefully you get the general idea. What this system does is simplify the current system and degamify the roles. Most of all if this system is to success, it should be made clear that no matter where you are, you’re opinion holds the same mass. Administration is a job and GrangerPub needs to enforce the responsibilities and accountability for that to succeed.

This idea will create less confusion on who can do what, it creates less competition so people aren’t incentive to rise up the ranks and the control is more flat-lined than having 7 different roles to fill. Its alot harder for Moderators and Administrators to pull rank on each other when the difference is basically ban privileges.

However this issue might be connected to other factors. Another thing that concerns me is the current Administration Application process. People are being given instant Lv3s or Lv6s without atleast going through a pending process, or not forcing promotions only being done through voting. Or clarifying all rules and responsibilities of each Level. There are still factors effecting GrangerPub that should be challenged and this might be the place to do it.

Of course, I’m not even part of GrangerPub (atm) at all so its down to everyone else to decide if this change is necessary. What do you think?

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I disagree with this due to the fact that it’s functioned on AA/AA2, as well as the X group for years. I think most admins are well aware of the basic principles of what we ask them to do, and it is very rare that a situation that falls out of their comfort zone occurs.

What I was trying to get across, albeit badly, was that each admin has every right to question (hopefully not publicly) the action of any other admin, but they should not take steps to change what has been done (unless it’s blatant abuse of power). Each group of the admin chain has someone who is senior to them, and they should try to follow the instructions of their seniors.

What I’m not sure I made clear is exactly how the structure should function at the higher admin levels. Levels 3-4 are regarded, by myself, as moderator levels. They are merely there to make sure that a proper atmosphere is maintained in the server for as long as they’re connected. Levels 5-9 are the administrators of the server. Ideally, no L5 or L6 should touch the bans of any other L5 or L6, and it should be the responsibility of L7+ to deal with issues that they may have with each other. Although L6 shouldn’t alter the punishments dished out by L5s, they can give them instructions and advice, which the L5s should listen to.

Admins should try and deal with any situation as best as they can, at the time. Ideally, the most senior admin online should be dealing with any situations, and thus this kind of problem would not occur, but if this isn’t the case, a lower admin can still use the powers that they have, until a higher-up comes online to help out. I certainly have no expectation that admins should memorise every command that every level has; I only ask that they try and deal with any situation as best they see fit, unless instructed not to by someone who is senior.

This would happen irrespective of how many admin levels we had in the admin structure. Having more levels allows more room for people to move up, and it also gives us more room for them to grow into, all the while we can see whether or not they are suited to move up.

People will move up based on whether or not they are deemed to be suitable to move up. If there is a server scuffle between admins, the person who handled it most appropriately is more likely to move up a level than the one who didn’t, but there are no guarantees either way. An admin’s behaviour at any time is a good indicator of whether or not they’re worthy of a promotion, and this includes server scuffles, whether it’s between a fellow admin or a regular player.

Essentially this is true. Level 8 admins are deemed to be more responsible than a level 3 admin, as they have between bestowed with the extra trust from head admins. The whole concept of the application process at the moment is experience and maturity. The more mature and experienced a person is, the higher their admin level is likely to be. It makes perfect sense for these higher-ups to have more sway or ‘legitimacy’, as they have the greater level of understanding.

It’s not about status, it’s about having people in positions for which they are suitable. The point of having lots of different admin levels and a complex structure as we do allows people to be placed at levels where they are suitable. We should always strive to accept different people’s views, regardless of their level, and I fully agree that a community benefits if it has an open mind to listen to what other people have to say, regardless of their ‘status’. In-game, however, the people with higher levels should hold more sway than the people at lower levels; they’ve been given these levels for a reason.

A move towards having an open and accepting admin strucutre, whereby people are welcomed to give their opinions, and aren’t punished for making mistakes solves many of these issues. Any confusion with the admin structure/commands should be tackled as best as possible and as soon as possible. Any competition over admin levels is infantile and not regarded in a positive light whatsoever; this hinders any chance of promotion, and thus people should be less likely to squabble over the shiny new level. As people move up the admin levels they get more commands, but not too many commands. Having so many levels allows us to place people at a position which is suitable for them; any issues with abuse of power will be dealt with very simply with a demotion to a lower level.

In principle this structure could work but I disagree with it on the basis that everyone is different. This is a very simplistic structure which doesn’t account for the human factor. Having so few levels means that you might have 2 different L3s, but they will have a completely different level of ‘skill’ at being an admin. Their level of ‘skill’ might not be good enough to warrant a promotion to L4, and so they’re stuck at the same level as the other L3. Having lots of levels for people to move into, solves this issue as we can place people exactly where they’re suitable, and not roughly where they should be.

The current application process is reliant upon knowledge of the people in-game, and our knowledge of them as a person. The reason that the question ‘Do you have anyone to vouch for you’ is there is to show whether or not any current admins would be willing to say that they’re worthy of a particular level. As trem is an old game, and this is the 3rd vanilla pub server to be popular in the past few years, many of the same people will be administrating it as administrated the past 2. We shouldn’t be putting an ex L7 from many other servers down at L3 and having them work their way up because it’s useless and impractical for the server itself.

I agree that we need to outline the specific duties and rules of admins at each level, which is why an admin ‘Code of Conduct’ type-thing is being drawn up (which lists some admin rules and advice, as well as the basic ‘be nice’ stuff).

I am interested to see what other people have to say about this, and welcome any opinions.

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i like what we have now, but i also like hendrich’s proposal.

what we have now seems to mostly be experience based, and and people are usually set in through questions such as,

  • are you trustworthy
  • how you’ve dealt with pass situations
  • how you interact with the community
  • are you not a complete fucking mongoloid asshat who can be trusted with a bit of power over ppl in a game

etc. i feel this way is pretty safe, though there are definitely problems with being clear onto who can do what.

as a level 6 admin currently, i pretty much have all the commands i need to admin, short of !setlevel and permabanning, which i don’t really need anyways. i don’t really see a reason for me to be moved up, as i already have all the tools i need to do my job, the only reason i can see for it is to show that i’m even higher power, which really all i got was just a slightly higher number next to my name when i do !admintest, so it’s really just an indicator of admin seniority. also, about the topic of inducing unhealthy competition, in the servers i’ve adminned in the past, promotions came randomly to people, provided they did there job correctly and somewhat cared about being a good admin. i wasn’t really ever stressed to seek a promotion as it was just a given it’ll come at some point with time.

hednrich’s proposal seems to wish to simplify everything and give a clear-cut explanation to both admins and players who can do what and what their main repsective job is. which i agree, this would probably help, especially if our goal is growth of the community, however, lack of admin levels doesn’t provide as much room to show who has experience, as as shuffle said, may not provide enough room for people to be put at where they should be based off their experience and skill with admin.

also, going through more “levels” can be considered trials to keep major shitstorms from occuring, because fewer levels gives more opportunity to rise through the ranks, and if we get the equivalent of an high ranking administrator who decides one day to be a douchebag and start banning random ppl, then that’ll cause distrust in the admin system by the community. the opposite is also bad, as i believe this may have been intended, people who sit in the same place for too long may grow frustrated. our current system provides a better balance of this.

so my proposal would be something like what we have currently provided with more clarification on what they do and they power they hold, as per shuffle’s explanation, and basically group them:

  • level 1: registered players

  • level 2: protected players
    ~~ this would mark the end of the regular player level ~~

  • level 3: 2 week trial admins

  • level 4: probationary admins

  • level 5: junior admin

  • level 6: senior admin
    ~~ this would mark the end of the admin levels ~~

  • level 7: server leader
    can be considered a middleman between a operator and regular admin, they’d be the one most responsible for assisting admins and making sure jobs are being carried out correctly, actively involved in community problems, and relaying information and news from operators and head admins.
    ~~ this would mark the end of the leader levels ~~

  • level 8: <font color=cyan"> server operators:
    basically just a senior server leader, however they could be considered more the “law” and have even greater experience.

  • level 9: head admins:
    top dogs, etc, etc, dudes responsible for major upkeep of the server n rules.

    this is a bit similar to how the admin system in uBP worked when we merged communities and restructured in an attempt to create clearer communication, except for the names and the fact that the highest level was responsible for communicating with those across other game servers.

anyways this is just my suggestion, we definitely want to feel like everyone has a say in everything, but i think higher levels should correlate to more experience, and more experience usually correlates to more sway in topics and discussions, which can be considered a reputation based system.

p.s: do we have a !report function in the works? i feel like this may be useful

1 Like
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Wow shit that’s some serious walls of text. Honestly, all I have to say is already explained by kreative and shuffle.

Just to try to clarify a little more, the level separations right now are:

[quote=Normal players group]
[color=#00FF00]0-1-2[/color] (Where 2 is vote protection, obv.)[/quote]

[quote=Trial admins group]
[color=#00FF00]3[/color]: The true trial level, that has only the most basic admin commands. Good behavior and use of the commands leads to the following trial level.

[color=#00FF00]4[/color]: They gain access to more serious commands; most notably they can see the aliases of players and can boot people from the server. This is the main reason the trial levels are split in 2.[/quote]

[quote=Regular admins group]
[color=#00FF00]5[/color]: First level to get admin chat as previously explained, they are also the first level that are able to see the player’s IPs and manage shit deeper.

[color=#00FF00]6[/color]: As shuffle explained again, the most important/visible change is that they gain access to perm ban.
I realize it is not a HUGE difference from L5 on the paper, but keep in mind it is still a superior ‘‘trust’’ level, and as such those admins are able and allowed to correct “faulty” behavior of their amin comrades§§§ when there is the necessity. (Correct might sound a bit rude here. Teaching them or giving them advice is encouraged. Correcting would be as a last resort. Even if it isn’t fancy, it can be required.) [color=#00BBFF][1][/color].[/quote]

[quote=‘Middleman’ as krea explained]
[color=#00FF00]7[/color]: Really don’t have anything to add to what was said earlier in the thread.[/quote]

[quote=Head admins group:]
[color=#00FF00]8-9[/color]: Really, you should understand the difference between them pretty easily. Only level 9 is able to setlevel aswell. Those two levels are the only ones hidden/able to subnet/etc. (Explains why level 7 isn’t fit into this group.)
I don’t think this needs further explanation.[/quote]

As you can see, there are 5 major groups of admins as you proposed, only broken down into multiple sub-levels for hierarchy, trust, admin experience, promotion purposes and more. (& etc blahblah kreative as I already said).

I agree that we should probably make it more explicit to the players about the admin groups, and probably throw a few changes in there. I disagree with having less levels, but in my opinion making a few changes to some flags (moving them down some levels etc.) would probably make it better overall. The role of each major group will be better defined in the future, as grangerhub progresses.

I don’t think there should/will be any dick measuring between our admins. The goal is to work together as a team, regardless of the differences. If they don’t understand that, their competences as an admin are probably doubtful to begin with. Having groups split into a few subgroups is a good way to keep each subgroup focused on to something different aswell.

I agree that it should be made clear that even if an admin is lower than another, his say on the matter can and is probably just as good as their higher ups, and should/will be encouraged from the latter.

[color=#00BBFF][1][/color]: Trust would be better explained as ‘‘admin experience’’ to be honest. One of the main reasons someone is level 7 and not 6, is probably because they went through it before, and can relate and teach their experience to the L6s. It doesn’t mean we should trust lowers less than highers. Also, introducing the commands gradually to them if they aren’t fully experienced admins can’t be a bad thing. (IF done right, and I agree that the current flags could possibly need some rethinking in regards to that.)

Remember that admins can and will still eventually rank up from their trial levels, and that is a very good way of handling the eventual problems we can run into in my opinion.

ALSO, some people just don’t want to be higher than level 5 for example. It can be because they don’t want to have more responsibilities than they want, or than the time they have available, and/or various other reasons. (Which is the case for some of our admins. Doesn’t mean they aren’t able to fulfill their roles, get it right.)

I apologize if I didn’t detail enough, wasn’t understandable or didn’t bring much to the thread. It’s getting pretty late in here, and I am like pretty far from being sober. I will answer your questions better another time, if you have any more.

(Edited for readability and shit I thought about but forgot in attempt to make it atleast have some fkn sense. My mind is a mashed potato.)
(Re-rererere-edited to make cents)

TL;DR: A ton of shit that shuffle probably explained better than I and that I suck at explaining wording, but oh well.

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Also worth noting, as an example or not, that currently close to all of the admins on the server I have known ‘‘personally’’ for a rather long time, and know most of the issues you are worried about will certainly not be a problem with them.
If we keep recruiting people as ‘‘competent’’ as they are, we should barely ever have inner conflicts in our team.

Competent? Could that even be used in the case of admins on a video game? I think what I meant is that they are fully capable of behaving responsibly and maturely, and be totally unbiased, even with people they dislike (heavily - even though rarely seen with most of them. It’s just the fucking internet yakno.).

It should be understood that eventual occasional mistakes, or having a bad day can happen to anyone. Part of being human.

Shit I think I’m really going offtopic now. Idfk. Too fukd. will c after slepsing.