Community based helper demotions

[StopTakingUsernames]

This is PROBABLY going to get me in deep shit, but I believe player based demotions should be added.

If a helper is doing nothing in particular, being a nuisance or just being an ass in general, with nothing being report worthy, I feel that a community based vote would help. This would allow the non-staff community to vote to demote a helper, because they aren't, well, helping.

Often I see helpers not doing anything at all while they are active, and an issue arises that is not dealt with. Other issues I often see are some mismanaged mutes and sometimes unjust mutes/kicks/etc.

The vote could be out of say 100 people, and should not be able to be voted on by fellow staff members, making it a community opinion. To give the helper the benefit of the doubt, it could require 60+ votes (Out of 100) for a possible demotion.

This is just a suggestion and my personal opinion, so don't flame me too much.

 

[libxrty]

This is PROBABLY going to get me in deep shit, but I believe player based demotions should be added.

If a helper is doing nothing in particular, being a nuisance or just being an ass in general, with nothing being report worthy, I feel that a community based vote would help. This would allow the non-staff community to vote to demote a helper, because they aren't, well, helping.

Often I see helpers not doing anything at all while they are active, and an issue arises that is not dealt with. Other issues I often see are some mismanaged mutes and sometimes unjust mutes/kicks/etc.

The vote could be out of say 100 people, and should not be able to be voted on by fellow staff members, making it a community opinion. To give the helper the benefit of the doubt, it could require 60+ votes (Out of 100) for a possible demotion.

This is just a suggestion and my personal opinion, so don't flame me too much.

In my opinion, this wouldn't work too well.

1. People have a personal bias toward helpers, people can just vote against them even if they're actually doing something.

2. This whole idea honestly sounds dumb in general, no offense.

 

[Tzunami_]

I don't think a vote makes sense for the reasons Parrot laid out, but there is without a doubt many helpers not doing their primary jobs. From the second line in the helper guidelines: "Answering questions is the main task that helpers are required to partake in".

So many questions go unanswered in chat even when there are several active helpers online. Many questions are not answered at all or answered by other players. There are a couple standout helpers that do a great job, the other ones leave me questioning whether they even have chat turned on.

 

[Zhihu]

I like this but maybe with the owners? Would be very cool and I can see a lot of changes happening with it! Very Cool!

EDIT: @InFamousAge

 

[CorvusCornix]

I agree with this mostly because of all the useless helpers. It would take making a good system tho to prevent abuse and incorrect demotions. Maybe make some sort of quota that helpers need to answer x many questions a week or something

 

[NovaSeepa]

If you see helpers giving out incorrect punishments/mutes or if you have concerns about the way they are behaving in chat then you can always make a player report on the forums, or, if you do not want to make a public report then you can mail higher staff directly.

Regarding the public vote aspect, I don't see something like this ever being successful as it is too subjective and more likely to be based on biased opinions rather than an objective review of a helper's performance.

Your IGN :SnowmanMeltsYou
Player to be reported : ParrotChit
[...]
Why do you feel this is worth a report : Xray is a serious issue among this server. Also I find parrot to be really fucking annoying.

 

[libxrty]

If you see helpers giving out incorrect punishments/mutes or if you have concerns about the way they are behaving in chat then you can always make a player report on the forums, or, if you do not want to make a public report then you can mail higher staff directly.

Regarding the public vote aspect, I don't see something like this ever being successful as it is too subjective and more likely to be based on biased opinions rather than an objective review of a helper's performance.

Good example here.

 

[BeatboxSB]

My first thought when I saw this suggestion was that too. That people would just vote to demote a Helper just because they don't like the person in general even if he/she is actually helping out.

It simply wouldn't work.

 

[Spalw]

Our report system is robust and reliable.

Democracy is garbage.

You can always privately report any player to staff directly through discord to retain anonymity.

 

[Tzunami_]

To be clear, I am not in favor of this suggestion.

However, to respond to this thread by simply asking to report them doesn't make any sense. Sure, if a helper is handing out random and unjustified mutes we can report them, that isn't happening. Most helpers haven't broken any rules, they just aren't doing their primary jobs. Snowman says this in the thesis of his suggestion: "If a helper is doing nothing in particular, being a nuisance or just being an ass in general, with nothing being report worthy, I feel that a community based vote would help". You can't really report helpers for not doing their primary job because they didn't actively do anything report worthy. Having many inactive helpers is bad for the server because:

1.) Reflects badly on MCD that we can have 10+ helpers online yet simple questions by new players go unanswered.

2.) More importantly, many of the questions that go unanswered are important for that players ability to play MCD. For example, off the top of my head, yesterday a player asked why his brothers got banned for being an alt and how he can get them unbanned. Another player was saying he bought a rank the previous map, but /rankreturn wasn't working, how should he go about retrieving it. Both of these questions were not answered by staff (despite several active helpers), and are important for their ability to play. If small trivial questions go unanswered that isn't a big deal, but when fundamental questions such as these go unresponded it is bad for the well-being of the server. I enjoy this server a lot, and want other players to be able to enjoy it as well. If I was a new player playing and my brothers account got falsely banned as an alt, or I can't get the rank I paid for back, it would be very frustrating to ask in chat and have no staff answer my question despite several being active. These are two example out of many.

It may sound like I am just shitting on helpers and the staff team, that really isn't my intention. I want the server to grow and prosper. You need to understand that new players are never going to report staff, they are learning the system and it would be very bold/stupid of them to jump on the forums and report; most of the time they just leave. There are many standout helpers who are answering question professionally and represent this server in good light. The large majority of questions find an answer from either staff/helpers or players. But it is the same group of helpers that are doing all the heavy lifting. The helpers that are never monitoring chat or answering questions result in edge cases such as the ones laid out above. It is very clear by just being online a few hours a day and looking through the mute and warn databases who these people are.

I don't think this suggestion is a good solution to the problem, but the problem identified is a very real one that higher staff should seek to amend.

 

[Spalw]

You can't really report helpers for not doing their primary job because they didn't actively do anything report worthy.

I disagree.

A helper “not doing their job” isn’t necessarily what’s being discussed here - people are throwing around the terms “being an ass” or “being a nuisance”. These are absolutely things you can report to staff regarding helpers.

To be clear - this is an issue we identified. Many weeks ago we had an entire meeting dedicated to discussing a solution to this issue, and unfortunately we have failed to put into practice what we had discussed. This is mostly my fault for going inactive right after we decided to make significant changes.

However - regarding this suggestion my response was appropriate.

I’d like to add - the vast majority of helpers never make it to trial mod, it has almost always been like this. Players will very quickly know whether they want to achieve something in the staff team, or genuinely just wanted extra tools to help new players but remain a casual member of the community. We absolutely support players who want to remain casual as it allows us to focus on players which have great staff potential. This has culminated in a situation in which we do not demote helpers for “not doing their job”. We rarely demote helpers for inactivity or for not answering questions. If it’s intentional, and noticed by a high staff member - the helper will occasionally be spoken to by staff to nudge them in the right direction, if they’re up for it.

We have very significantly changed the way our helper system works over the past few years - and as the servers complexity grows, results from changes to this system are not immediately recognisable.

We have spent a lot of effort stream lining the ease of access for simple information. Jenson is an invaluable tool, which has changed a helpers role from answering absolutely barebones basic questions to - almost only answering complex situational questions. This has also contributed to the issue we see today.

We are confident that we can improve our current helper team in conjunction with other methods.

Thank you for your feedback.