Whats with the admin response time?

[pateuvasiliu]

3 hours ago, shotgun_sam said:

/pinv? Give LSPD/LSSD access to just take the items. It's not difficult. If they do something fucked up, their LFM handler can give them a good telling off and void everything. It's not like admins are against voiding situations that legal factions spend hours+ RPing in because someone DC'ed or because they got banned for something stupid. You are creating more work because you don't trust players. Give players more autonomy. 

This is also true. Search warrants and police breakins are so frequent that I don't get why there is a need for an admin. If a firearms dog is inside a property he WILL sniff out every single gun no matter how well hidden, so what's the point of an admin being there? Just have descriptions of where the item is so it can be roleplayed accordingly.

[pateuvasiliu]

3 minutes ago, Peak. said:

Having this discussion yesterday amongst my faction. I'd rather have a lack of players that can actually RP and want to RP instead of every situation being turned into an admin situation because they think its NoPixel or some DM server. 

Absolutely. Every time you have a powergamer ignoring crashes and driving like Superman to escape or a situation where a dude is AFKing/disconnecting/refusing to RP once captured you waste the time of potentially 10 players because of one bad apple.

There should be 0 tolerance for this. Another thing I have recently observed is that Officers will have someone in a pursuit or arrested or on a traffic stop and then suddenly a friend of the person being pursued shows out of nowhere despite the suspect having had no access to a phone to call them. This is quite clearly voice meta over Discord.

Edited June 23, 2022 by pateuvasiliu

[SaintBatemanofWallStreet]

There are three kinds of admins.

 

1. Admins who handle situation after situation, right or wrong, they're there.

2. Admins who are only interested in handling business in whatever special interest group they're in, and nothing else.

3. Admins who handle nothing, because you don't get removed if you don't handle reports and get complained on for punishing someone. So they do nothing.

 

Here's how it usually works.

1. The admin who answers all the reports ends up getting removed because they get complaints from people who are butt mad they were ruled against in a report. Enough of them stack up, and that's it. It's a predatory system, and people have recognized it and gotten good admins removed over it.

2. The admin who is only interested in their special interest group either has a group of people who are in their circle jerk who echo them to implement policies without actually being in touch of the needs of their special interest group and shaping it to a way that they think it should be. Or someone who is in touch with the special interest group and asks questions to make it better. The latter is few and far between while the former seems to be present and accounted for around every corner.

3. How can you be mad at the man who does nothing? He didn't do anything to you. Except made you wait 45 minutes to answer your report.

 

We need more of number 1, less of number 3, and for the people in the echo chamber on number 2 to pop that thing open and realize their ideas aren't always the best and start asking more questions to the people they're supposed to be servicing.

[kuchera]

41 minutes ago, Wuhtah said:

It seems like we were discussing two different things, I thought you were saying "You should deal with the toxicity back to you". I apologize for the miscommunication on my side of this conversation. There IS a certain forced level of responsibility - We are required to handle a certain number of reports in game and forum requests per month. However, the reports have become more increased over the past year or so, which is why the minimum amount may need to be raised perhaps. 

 

You are right with the statement "I have a life, I can do what I want" - 100%. But, I can't get mad at administrators for meeting the minimum requirements because I don't know what's going on with them IRL. I'd like to think that if they can't handle and keep up, they would leave the team instead of being forcefully removed.

Keep in mind, before any of my responses I do not and am not asking you to leak or over-share any confidential admin information, so feel free to just ignore whatever you can't respond to.

 

I appreciate the immediate apologetic response and not just blowing off the response. I get that, and the forced responsibility, and you're right that there is too much gray area of personal lives to directly be upset with an admin. Minimum required report counts is weird to me, I'm not used to that. I can imagine though that it comes with pros and cons. Do you feel as if sometimes admins only go for the minimum amount, just so they can cruise as normal players for the remainder of said month? 

 

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There definitely needs to be. I agree with you here, but let's be honest - We received 40-80 support applications. And probably.. 3-4? Look good enough to pass through. It is pretty strict IMO.. People are known to have made a mistake a year, maybe two years ago, and even with a perfect history - that small roleplay that they did might affect them in the application process. I believe I'm speaking a bit too much on this topic, so I will end things there - but I do believe that this might be getting changed or at least looked more into.

This is crazy to me. I've always been a very firm believer of putting people's past to the side if they clearly showed signs of improvement, different understandings, etc. For example, I was originally community banned on one of said servers when I was fifteen (being a toxic child) and came back unbanned a few years later, and quickly worked my way up to admin because they understood I was a much different person, and had showed intentions and proof of development. I really hope there are changes to this, because one to two years in real life is a lot of time for massive personal development. 

 

I also think the concept of Staff Applications is a little weird, but it makes sense on a server like this where the community isn't as whole, and there are more subgroups of communities in here. Where I come from it's mainly handpicks and people working their way up through the Support system, although it was easier to get recognized as someone who wants to help. (For example, one server had an admin department specifically dedicated to finding potential players that would be fit for Support and Administration.)

 

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Did you leave the team because of burn out, or because it shut down? If this is getting too personal, just tell me to shut up. I just like to know how other people handled administration, why they left, etc. If you could give any suggestions from what you learned/seen from these servers, I'd honestly appreciate it. It may help us here. 

 

I don't really care about personal questions like that, I'll answer most things. Multiple different reasons, I'm not saying these SAMP servers were perfect or even better than World, definitely far from it, they just seemed to have a pretty solid support and admin response situation figured out. The majority of the time I just move on. Not necessarily from burn out, but me personally have a tendency to get super invested in things, and then just move on to get super invested in something else. One server however I did "burn out" on you could say. The group of admins that I played and worked with were  very passionate and dedicated members of the community. At some point we realized that we cared more for the server than the server owner and management and our opinions wouldn't be heard in a system that's stuck in its ways. We left, and moved somewhere else.

 

My main thing that I've learned, which you guys seem to be doing decent in is taking feedback and criticism, and the server owner needs to actually be apart of the community (Which Nervous does.) There were multiple times where someone, like me in this very situation, would be talking and speaking out about how they feel the server could improve; and a high level admin sends a link to the post in Admin Skype/Discord/Slack (whatever at the time, many years went by) saying that the player is dumb or ignorant and just laugh at them. On top of that, it was a server where the owner was more of a figurehead than anything else. Basically came and just took the "donations" every few months like the server was a Clash of Clans game, and he just opened the app to collect Elixir. If Admins catch on that management or the owner seems to be caring less and less, everyone else will; eventually leading to the shutdown of a server. These answers aren't necessarily related to the topic of this thread, but I felt like answering your questions. 

 

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I think we miscommunicated here as well. Most of the time - you can roleplay a robbery without administrative supervision, Rule 12 covers this a bit more in-depth, you only need an administrator in certain areas of the map. 

 

For warrants, I believe we should trust the more 'senior' officers within the faction and perhaps 'lead' the search warrant and go to the LFM handler who handles PD or SD with the logs of that search warrant. Then, the LFM handler can look over it (hopefully quickly, or even just a regular administrator since nothing was taken at the time) and then the admin could say "You guys would have found X" if the team looked in the correct spot. I think this might help with wait times in that regard, but I am not LFM and that's up to them ultimately. 

 

I'm an illegal roleplayer, and unfortunately wouldn't even have the luxury of a "Senior Officer" to do something like that. There's a bunch of different ways to "fix" the situation, like the one you just gave. I don't know the answer right this very second either, but I think this should be a big point of discussion in an admin meeting, which the responses in this thread seems like you guys already will. 

 

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I stated this, and I felt like it would be taken the wrong way, to try to let you know there is a LOT more than what happens in SAMP servers. The passive aggressiveness you may have picked up, in which I did apologize for sounding harsh, was because I simply thought you were saying something that I did not agree with: "Admins deserve everything they get/signed up for." - roughly, of course. Which means the abuse. That's why I reacted the way I did. 

 

 

This a very human and genuine response and apology. If I was in your position, and read my post the same way as you, I probably would have been even meaner. I appreciate the apology, and again you have every right to be a dickhead back if someone's being a dickhead to you. Just a miscommunication here, no need to go any further into it since we both realize. Appreciate this.

 

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Again, you did take this the wrong way. It was just to alert you of how much is behind the scenes, and most of it is truly needed. You are correct that newer player's opinions are always welcomed, especially with those who have come from other big servers and can offer reasonable suggestions instead of others who just want to complain. I am not saying that this topic was created to complain (even though it harbors quite a few), it was made to understand why in the world is this going downhill. 

 

handshake emoiji and a smiley face.

 

I appreciate you Wuhtah and in no way meant to antagonize or be a dickhead in my original post, but I get where you could have gotten that from. I appreciate the work you do and the time you allot for yourself to do it, and your willingness to be one of the faces of this conversation despite the potential toxicity around it. Admins aren't PR agents, you shouldn't necessarily have to be in the position in the first place, but conversations like this need to be had. 

 

Edited June 23, 2022 by Kucheras

[Wuhtah]

19 minutes ago, Kucheras said:

I appreciate the immediate apologetic response and not just blowing off the response. I get that, and the forced responsibility, and you're right that there is too much gray area of personal lives to directly be upset with an admin. Minimum required report counts is weird to me, I'm not used to that. I can imagine though that it comes with pros and cons. Do you feel as if sometimes admins only go for the minimum amount, just so they can cruise as normal players for the remainder of said month? 

 

I think it was introduced because we had some issues of previous staff (before my time) of taking up slots and not doing anything. Not that there are 'slots' - but perhaps the community reached out to management/Nervous about this and that's how they fixed it. I truly don't know what I can, and cannot state, but there was probably... last year sometime that a new minimum quota was introduced and was immediately backlashed upon, so it was removed. I'm not going to go into specifics about that, but just know that it IS trying to be worked on.

 

As for your question.. I don't want to talk badly about the staff team. I love these guys even when a few of them drive me up a wall, and I would defend them if it needed to be. I know of a huge group of them who do so much hard work, and then, eventually - they burn out. I believe probably because they took too many bites from how much they are able to chew. So, I will refrain from speaking my opinion, but I will answer for myself!

 

I only go for the minimum amount because of the time restraints I have. I try to 'make this up' by taking on more stuff that is outside the scope of the game, which I believe makes up for it. It may not in the eyes of players, and I completely understand it. If I have time, then hell yeah, I jump on and get on reports. I don't necessarily go: "Oh, I have x amount of reports, I just need to do 2 more then I'm done." I don't keep track of it like that, I check back to make sure I meet that minimum - and then I KEEP going. I don't just call it quits there and stop altogether. If I have time, I'll pop on and do the best I can. If the discord channel (called #admin-pager) goes off, and I'm available to hop on, I'll do that as well. 

 

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This is crazy to me. I've always been a very firm believer of putting people's past to the side if they clearly showed signs of improvement, different understandings, etc. For example, I was originally community banned on one of said servers when I was fifteen (being a toxic child) and came back unbanned a few years later, and quickly worked my way up to admin because they understood I was a much different person, and had showed intentions and proof of development. I really hope there are changes to this, because one to two years in real life is a lot of time for massive personal development. 

 

I also think the concept of Staff Applications is a little weird, but it makes sense on a server like this where the community isn't as whole, and there are more subgroups of communities in here. Where I come from it's mainly handpicks and people working their way up through the Support system, although it was easier to get recognized as someone who wants to help. (For example, one server had an admin department specifically dedicated to finding potential players that would be fit for Support and Administration.)

 

I am 100% with you, I am the exact same way. I'm a firm believer of second chances as a lot of people know and probably hate in some areas if I'm being honest, lol. So, the manager, Pillsbury who is on LOA is considered the "Head of Staff" - we then have two branches of Support and Admin, the head of support commented earlier on. He and a few others who were accepted into the staff management subteam are in charge of going through the applications to see who gets approved, denied, and put on 'reserved'. On these applications, the majority of the staff votes - we can vote yes/no, or no for reserved, etc. We can either put this publicly so the entire staff team can see it, or we can put it privately so only staff management sees it. 

 

There are some criteria that the players have to meet, I do not know 100% of every single piece as I am not staff management. However, when I was support - a big thing was discord presence (helping in the newbie channels), forum presence (offering feedback on suggestions) and clean admin record. Usually, staff members want to know the new supports coming in, want to get a firm grasp on them, etc. 

 

I'll share MY personal experience with one of the applications (I don't think I'm spoiling anything, but sorry if I am guys!). The applicant, to me, had a very strong application. However, they did seem 'new' to me, but they seemed eager. I checked their discord to see if I have any personal messages with them - and if I do, I add on if it was a pleasant, neutral, or bad experience. I don't outright say "This player was toxic, don't let him/her in." I tend to TRY to give constructive criticism "I had this scenario with this player, they were frustrated and did show some signs of venting/toxicity towards me, so I believe they might not be ready right now." If it was extreme - I would say probably not added into the staff team anytime soon, etc. If I haven't had any experience with the player, I check the public discords to see if they have a community presence, try to understand their actions/who they are/how they interact that way, etc. Then forums. If I see the player is involved in a faction or a group that I know an admin is in, I tend to toss the admin's name, so maybe staff management can hit them up and ask about character portrayal/roleplay. Again, I am not saying this is how you get into the staff team, this is how <I> review staff apps (which I don't accept/deny people who come in). This is not the 'universal' way - this is the 'Wuhtah' way, lol.

 

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I don't really care about personal questions like that, I'll answer most things. Multiple different reasons, I'm not saying these SAMP servers were perfect or even better than World, definitely far from it, they just seemed to have a pretty solid support and admin response situation figured out. The majority of the time I just move on. Not necessarily from burn out, but me personally have a tendency to get super invested in things, and then just move on to get super invested in something else. One server however I did "burn out" on you could say. The group of admins that I played and worked with were  very passionate and dedicated members of the community. At some point we realized that we cared more for the server than the server owner and management and our opinions wouldn't be heard in a system that's stuck in its ways. We left, and moved somewhere else.

 

My main thing that I've learned, which you guys seem to be doing decent in is taking feedback and criticism, and the server owner needs to actually be apart of the community (Which Nervous does.) There were multiple times where someone, like me in this very situation, would be talking and speaking out about how they feel the server could improve; and a high level admin sends a link to the post in Admin Skype/Discord/Slack (whatever at the time, many years went by) saying that the player is dumb or ignorant and just laugh at them. On top of that, it was a server where the owner was more of a figurehead than anything else. Basically came and just took the "donations" every few months like the server was a Clash of Clans game, and he just opened the app to collect Elixir. If Admins catch on that management or the owner seems to be caring less and less, everyone else will; eventually leading to the shutdown of a server. These answers aren't necessarily related to the topic of this thread, but I felt like answering your questions. 

 

I appreciate the information here. Management is VERY open (from my experiences, I know others can say different and will say different) and receptive of criticism and change. Will the change come immediately? Nope. Will they AGREE with the change? Not always, and that's okay - that's where compromising comes in and suggestions from you guys help. Forum reports are a great example. Yes, there is still a backlog, but not nearly as bad as it used to have been. Management heard from staff and heard from players, and implemented something that would 'ease' the tension off of both sides. 

 

I do realize that not many people want to be in the heat of discussion because it can lead into miscommunication, like what happened with us. It can also lead into players venting their frustrating and somewhat taking it out on you, the person trying to listen/get feedback. I'm not ever going to go to ANYONE in the staff team: "well why don't you respond, it's YOUR subteam they are complaining about." That's not how it works in my mind. If I see PM, LFM, IFM, etc getting bashed - I'll bring it up to the respective subteam leader or even just anyone within the subteam: "hey this is going on, if you want to respond and give them some info, I'm sure they would appreciate it" and I also put my own little comment trying to speak from MY perspective to what I see. Almost all of the time they respond and it helps ease the situation, and they get good insight from it. 

 

Thank you for the chuckle with the Clash of Clans game. 

 

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I'm an illegal roleplayer, and unfortunately wouldn't even have the luxury of a "Senior Officer" to do something like that. There's a bunch of different ways to "fix" the situation, like the one you just gave. I don't know the answer right this very second either, but I think this should be a big point of discussion in an admin meeting, which the responses in this thread seems like you guys already will. 

 

Hm, yeah. With this, it's a little tricky. If we make it so someone can lockpick apartments, and they can roleplay taking/grabbing things then 'upload' their roleplay to the forums, that might reduce the wait time altogether in game, but it will add forum work. Then, that player could miss out on opportunities in case the owner of the apartment comes in 2 hours later and takes a gun, unknowingly it could have been yoinked 2 hours earlier, and we'd have to do some extensive log searching. 

 

I do believe maybe an appointment forum can be made - that might help? I did tell players to reach out if needed, no one has - but the opportunity is still there. 

 

 

Thank you for accepting my apology and not holding it against me as well. I think getting insight from each other is a small step along a good path / hopeful future as corny as that may sound. I'll definitely look forward, if I haven't stated this yet, of seeing your input on a lot of different discussion threads or suggestions moving forward!

[Xaleya]

@Wuhtah What do you mean with "Reserved"? What does that mean? In terms of staff application if you can explain it.

[Wuhtah]

9 minutes ago, Xaleya said:

@Wuhtah What do you mean with "Reserved"? What does that mean? In terms of staff application if you can explain it.

 

Of course! So, when people are given the 'reserved' role, it's not really a role - they are not denied nor accepted to become a staff member (support). They are simply put on the sides and their application forwarded within the next cycle. During this, they are 'noticed' by the staff team as it goes on a list and we just simply keep our eyes on them. We don't watch them like a hawk, lol. But if we see their name pop up or happen to be roleplaying with their character, we definitely SHOULD take notes, but sometimes we forget. But I believe they get feedback too on how they can become accepted by doing XYZ, but don't quote me on that. 

 

We can always check back in our own player logs as well! I remember Adv and I used to do this when we just made the staff team and could vote. We had search the Chatlog Assistant (anyone can download) and checked who we RP'd with and such if we kinda' knew a name! 

 

I don't do this anymore since I don't have time to roleplay. But I hope that answers your question! 

[AlphaBatal]

heres an easy solution. give basic commands to support team members (/vflip, /vfix, vwhatever. teleportation to-fro, /revive)

make support mini-admins that can help with the 5-second tasks that require nothing more than checking if a player requiring a teleport is dead under an interior, if their missing vehicle is desynced or on it's roof and if its fucked up due to somebody spawning their own car inside of it. theres already all the framework around admin commands, might as well help shift the less judgement-based workload onto the junior staff so they actually have something to do ingame that isnt answering the rare /helpme or locking stuff on the forums

[Wuhtah]

28 minutes ago, AlphaBatal said:

heres an easy solution. give basic commands to support team members (/vflip, /vfix, vwhatever. teleportation to-fro, /revive)

make support mini-admins that can help with the 5-second tasks that require nothing more than checking if a player requiring a teleport is dead under an interior, if their missing vehicle is desynced or on it's roof and if its fucked up due to somebody spawning their own car inside of it. theres already all the framework around admin commands, might as well help shift the less judgement-based workload onto the junior staff so they actually have something to do ingame that isnt answering the rare /helpme or locking stuff on the forums

 

This was stated by the head of supports that something like this is in it's infancy stage 🙂 things like this do require some time though!

[Narco]

Can we take a moment to appreciate @Wuhtahand her efforts?

 

thank you for being one of the fastest responding staff team members on this server, like I understand people have stuff going on in real life so can't always contribute all of their time to threads like this but you definitely allow members of the community to have their voices heard. Thank you!