Current issues

[djole]

First of all I’d like to clearly state that the intention behind this post is not to provoke or insult anyone - it is just a critique of the current state of things combined with suggestions on how to possibly make it better.

By many of yours standards I haven’t been in this community very long, but I believe that I’ve been here long enough to spot the many, many things that are completely wrong with the current system be they minuscule or critical issues.

I Groups and the Forum
   There seems to be a great number of entirely inactive groups that for some reason still have an IG /group. This makes no sense whatsoever as some of them have banned leaders with no replacement, have had little to no active members for enormous amounts of time or are entierly irrelevant RP-wise. This isn’t a gamebreakinig issue per se but suspending these entities’ /groups until they meet higher standards would certainly be an improvement as they are often wholly dormant or used simply used as a vehicle storage.
   These is also the issue of the forum threads of the aforementioned groups residing in the Groups and Families subforum when they should be moved to the Groups and Families Archive until something changes. I also believe that strict criteria should be introduced stating exactly much and often infant and established normal/recognised/official groups must update the topic with new content (i.e. post activity screenshots). This not only gives the less active members of the community more content to go over, and enjoy the creative ways in which the many groups interact internally and with each other but it also sends a clear message that everyone must be more focused on actually RPing in contrast to the current “RP drought”.
   The forums are currently riddled with posts alike “good luck”, “thanks”, “hey hi hello”, “hey guys just checking in”, “y0 chek out dis sick tune lads <ytvid>” etc. The forum administration could write up a set of rules the users must abide by e.g. no off topic or even any unnecessary OOC content in the Groups and Families board, zero tolerance for provoking or flaming of any sort etc.

II Group Creation & Recognised and Official Status
   The rules for group creation are currently very conflicting. I’m talking about the “Clans, Groups, Teams forum rules and guides” thread and the IG group help panel. These need to be consolidated and then further reworked to make the process more strenuous and challenging and also urge the new groups to RP as much as possible and in turn rule break as least as possible.
   Certain groups have recognised or official status for seemingly no reason, they add little to none to the entire servers RP experience and some are even inactive altogether.  Can’t really go into too much detail here without pointing fingers and as the purpose of this post isn’t to “shit talk” every other group on the server I’ll just leave it at that.

III Punishment Overhaul
   The way /report tickets are handled isn’t really an exact science - it should be. Many a time I’ve witnessed different admins give different rulings to the same interpretation of the same event. There needs to be more uniformity in the way report and support tickets are approached and handled i.e. the way an admin responds to and questions a user and comes to a verdict. Some of the staff may not realise this but they come off a bit prickly or even prejudiced against you simply because of the way they word certain questions and statements - someone involved with public work should take into consideration the way users may interpret what they say, after all the text medium isn’t really the best way of communication since a lot gets "lost in translation” to plaintext and one should be aware of it.
   Perhaps it might be a good idea (for whoever in the chain of command would make sense to do it), to write up a sort of administrative handbook which would help the administrative team make more homogeneous verdicts in common RP scenarios. This would add more professionalism to the team and would eliminate the blame players sometimes direct toward admins who didn’t rule in their favour.

IV Corruption and Abuse
   With every social system there will be corruption and abuse. On servers like this one, sure, an admin might give his good friend a cheeky teleport every now and again. That’s not what I’ll be talking about here though, this appears to be much, much worse. It has recently come to my attention that certain groups have an incorrect status. One of these groups is TheodoreEnterprise. It is a group that is listed as the protector on many of the prime properties throughout the map which hold a great value and even more unused RP potential. This group has  six members only one of which is showing activity in-game. It has official status. Another group is TEResearch, RPly a department of the previously mentioned group. This group doesn’t have it’s own topic but is mentioned in the Theodore Enterprise topic. It is mentioned in the topic 7 times, one of which was to establish its existence, two were job listings, three hiring notices and the last was a progress update. It’s your run of the mill corporate group with little to no activity. This group has official and criminal status which is odd since it doesn’t meet criteria to even be recognised and is nowhere even hinted as being a criminal group. Another interesting thing is that one of the members of the group is Grandpa Corleone who is set as rank 71 (high enough to have drug market access with the highest prices possible). This individual is nowhere mentioned in the forum topic. Clearly there’s been a gross misuse of power here and it needs to be investigated thoroughly to determine who has and in what way made all of this possible and has profited from it.

I think it's time to start talking about the problems instead of just sweeping them under the rug.

[DevonSeabolt]

The "III Punishment Overhaul" Is on point brother. Ive been on the edge of a perm Ban for something not worthy of such, just for questioning the authority of the Judgement, and warned by other Admins for things more worthy of a Ban when i play the "Ass kisser" role. No disrespect intended, thats the only way i know how to word it. I love the community but also believe it needs work. Some of the other server's way of Admin-ing, I guess if I can call it that, Puts this one to shame. Maybe thats why we do not have many players? Then again I believe there are multiple reasons we do not have many players. But over all I love Argonath very very much. And thanks for featuring me in your signature. I feel famous.

[Justin39]

The "III Punishment Overhaul" Is on point brother. Ive been on the edge of a perm Ban for something not worthy of such, just for questioning the authority of the Judgement, and warned by other Admins for things more worthy of a Ban when i play the "Ass kisser" role.

The punishment a staff member issues is their own decision, if you don't like a decision a staff member has made the best option for you is to send a report in to server management.  I wouldn't go calling out the administration team in this topic based on decisions that you didn't think were justified.  Again if you have problems with administration, you know who to go to.

[DevonSeabolt]

The punishment a staff member issues is their decision, if you don't like the decision a staff member made the best option for you is to send a report in to server management.  I wouldn't go calling out the administration team in this topic based on decisions that you didn't think were justified.  Again if you have problems with administration, you know who to go to.

Just what I would expect.... smh. "Lets just sweep it under the rug and take it to a higher authority" Again, I feel like I am trying to express the concern in the nicest way possible, and you people come at me as if i launched some type of verbal attack campaign against you.

[Devin]

You need to realise with a roleplay server there are so many different circumstances that one can get involved in at any point during the day. For us to go and write up a giant rule book to say what to do when something happens it will just end up being a waste of time at the end of the day. If we were to tell staff what to do every single time a player gets reported we may as well automate the administration script and remove all admins.

There are rules set, staff are aware of those rules and they are provided with reasonable ideas on how to handle most if not all cases however depending on the situation they are allowed to punish as they feel fit. Indeed sometimes punishments are too harsh and those that are reported are dealt with accordingly.

If you want staff to improve and you see issues, it doesn't help if you don't let us know so we can address those issues.

[DevonSeabolt]

You need to realise with a roleplay server there are so many different circumstances that one can get involved in at any point during the day. For us to go and write up a giant rule book to say what to do when something happens it will just end up being a waste of time at the end of the day. If we were to tell staff what to do every single time a player gets reported we may as well automate the administration script and remove all admins.

There are rules set, staff are aware of those rules and they are provided with reasonable ideas on how to handle most if not all cases however depending on the situation they are allowed to punish as they feel fit. Indeed sometimes punishments are too harsh and those that are reported are dealt with accordingly.

If you want staff to improve and you see issues, it doesn't help if you don't let us know so we can address those issues.

Well said bro. I think this made what Justin was trying to say more understandable for me. I agree

[Rei]

This topic is just perfect.

[Rusty]

All staff have access to a scenarios and responses topic which provides logical answers and ways to handle specific situations that happen, it's a mere guideline but we trust staff can issue correct punishment at the correct time.  If you find your punishment is unfair and excessive then file a report, HQ will read it over and decide whether or not that Admin was right or could have done something else.  It is need in dire updating which I'll do once I announce the moderator wave tomorrow.

We have no way of removing groups since HQ don't have override access to close inactive groups with banned leaders, if we did you wouldn't see them existing today.  As for the Fourm Boards that's up to the Forum Staff to sort out any unwanted posts.

Group creation in-game through the group script was you had to wait a minimum of a month with five members minimum and your group topic active, to avoid confusion we'll revert back to what it is in the in-game /grouphelp command which should be two weeks and five members minimum.  Those that have recognized status, the only one being Highway Runners they might be slacking in-game in terms of activity, I'll be sure to check upon them and see if they are going to continue being in-game and roleplaying else strip the aforementioned status.  Grove Street are active in-game and do roleplay, while they may not update their topic with dope screenshots we still feel they can hold onto it.

[JDC]

III Punishment Overhaul

1.) Admins are not robots, they are different individuals with different characteristics. The common ground between all of them is that they stick to simple-but-essential regulations and help others. Otherwise they have no business being on the team.

2.) This is a global community, filled with many players from different cultures and backgrounds, possessing different characteristics. The Admin Team is no different. Just because an admin sounds like a cactus (within reason) or doesn't sweet talk everyone they meet, it doesn't mean they are incompetent or undeserving.

3.) There have been proposals and attempts in the past, from both inside and outside the team, to make a huge-ass rulebook governing every admin's actions. But as Gandalf and Devin said, making a bible of rules for every little shit would only unnecessarily restrict things.

4.) Of course, the uniqueness of admins has the downside of some players going to "less strict" admins for what they want when a "more strict" admin says no. But do this, and good luck being found out. Boromir was very strict on this.

5.) Corruption within the admin team is not tolerated. Having all those commands at your disposal isn't like being given a bag of candy and making merry, they come with responsibilities. There's a reason the selection process is strict.

6.) Reports being "private" isn't "sweeping it under the rug", it's making sure that the people who see the complaints are the ones who actually need to see them. One reason for this, truth be told, is that we have a lot of immature idiots who can't handle being punished, and would jump at the first opportunity to discredit certain admins in public.

[djole]

{post}

1.) 2.) 3.) 4.)

I do realise that. However I do believe that there is a set of extremely common circumstances which could be further abstracted to form a rule of the aforementioned rulebook. Maybe this isn't the greatest idea, it just often seems so to me. It's equally counterproductive to have three different administrators give a rulebreaker a pass, warn and ban.

All staff have access to a scenarios and responses topic which provides logical answers and ways to handle specific situations that happen, it's a mere guideline but we trust staff can issue correct punishment at the correct time.  If you find your punishment is unfair and excessive then file a report, HQ will read it over and decide whether or not that Admin was right or could have done something else.  It is need in dire updating which I'll do once I announce the moderator wave tomorrow.

(y)

We have no way of removing groups since HQ don't have override access to close inactive groups with banned leaders, if we did you wouldn't see them existing today.

Perhaps we might see something like this added in the near future?

Group creation in-game through the group script was you had to wait a minimum of a month with five members minimum and your group topic active, to avoid confusion we'll revert back to what it is in the in-game /grouphelp command which should be two weeks and five members minimum.

Wouldn't that just create more /group clutter? 

6.) Reports being "private" isn't "sweeping it under the rug", it's making sure that the people who see the complaints are the ones who actually need to see them. One reason for this, truth be told, is that we have a lot of immature idiots who can't handle being punished, and would jump at the first opportunity to discredit certain admins in public.

I wasn't in any way referring to the way reports are being handled with that remark. It was aimed at the general mindset of the community. A good example of this is everyone fearfully avoiding the 4th paragraph.

[Julio.]

Fearfully avoiding the fourth paragraph? No... it's because nobody who had answered can answer that question yet.

In regards to the group topics, we have NEVER restricted a forum board to strictly IC, because, you know what, it kinda sucks to be honest with you. I never personally liked the idea of using an out of game medium to carry on IC.

[Ben.]

Haha, I'm going to focus on Para 4, and only Para 4.
Don't worry yourself about it, and enjoy your own gameplay. There's things in life you should worry about...but this isn't one of them.

I find it funny!

[Dangerous]

I believe this can be added to the list

[TiMoN]

You don't need a jungle of rules or a 600 page book to list them all.

Most servers survive with 10 listed rules with outlined punishments, if it ever comes to an skin's decision, it's probably a special scenario.

[Mark]

Haha, I'm going to focus on Para 4, and only Para 4.
Don't worry yourself about it, and enjoy your own gameplay. There's things in life you should worry about...but this isn't one of them.

I find it funny!

I find it funny when majority of players are called abusing cunts for cmd or group abuse while the rest isn't doing or showing a good example. This sure is a small thing that tbh most of people won't even care about, too bad , someone should remember it the next time he will be called cunt or abuser.