Status of the Administration (Discussion)

[Uubucks]

I wrote this up as a way to get a discussion started on these issues, to you it may be restating the obvious, but I believe that the issues should be discussed.


Spoiler tagged for wall of text

Spoiler for Hiden:

Status of the Administration

     

     The current status of the administration is a wreck.  The main problems I have with the current status of the administration will be explained in full detail below.  Subjects to be expected would be issues such as the imbalance of administrators and the promotion of players to administrator status.  This  in no way is aimed at any person of the current administration.     

     I will start off by stating the obvious, the imbalance of administrators  in the servers.  As most of us have noticed their are considerably more administrators on "Half Life 2 Role Play" than their are on Orange Cosmos Role Play.  As a result of there being very little administrators dedicated to OCRP or visiting OCRP, the amount of rule breakers is increased.  Options for this problem in OCRP could be handled three ways; Let the players handle it, Promote more players to administrator, or force administrator activity onto OCRP.     

     One of the reasons I believe is a cause of the imbalance between servers is that HL2RP provides a better role play experience as well as not being called every five minutes to something like OCRP.  Certain administrators have stated that playing OCRP as an admin will quickly make you hate it, hearing "Admin!, admin!" every five minutes giving you no time to role play at all.  As going into HL2RP where the there are more administrators the workload is less, and simply because of the way the gamemode is scripted it decreases the chance of rule breaking.  This would sound appealing to some, if not most administrators, as they would not have to tend to the need of every player on the server leaving no time for them to role play.     

     These options each have their pros and cons.  First off, letting the players handle it would never be the right decision, players are not administrators and do not have the power to stop out of control situations.  The ban request process is slow and only a handful of people do it.  Second off, promoting more administrators, it could seem like the best option, if the community is undermanned for its population you hire more administrators.  Problems with this method being, that hiring more administrators could lead to a higher chance of admin abuse, admin abuse can lead to players not thinking too highly of the community and possibly leaving.  The third option, forcing administrators, could seem harsh and lead to unhappiness among the team, not a very good option, but could work.     

     This brings me to my next topic, promoting administrators.  The position of administrator can easily go to ones head, and I can see why community owners would prefer to handpick rather than take in applications.  But perhaps just having the applications there gives an idea about a persons capabilities and experience.  The applications would also be kind of a pool of players who want admin, sure it may be hell sifting through it to find the "good" candidates, but in the end a community would have an administration team.  It's simple to lye on an application though making this an area for people to "charm" their way to admin.  Overall this method is faster and provides administrators with a list of people to look out for in game so they can observe their actions to make better judgement of the player.     

     Restricting the application process in a way such as stating that users who post an application without a certain time of membership and amount of posts will be warned, or making it so only those with a certain number of administrators/players supporting them can post a thread.  These are purely suggestions, but this article is not about suggestions.  Placing restrictions on the ability to post an application could weed out most of the "bad/new" players from the "good/old" players.  The application itself may need reform, making an application more formal such as; name, age, time played, and references could assist the process.     

     Overall, with some careful reform to balancing administrators between servers and promoting administrators, the issues could be solved, bringing back administrator applications or balancing the servers are both options, but I'm sure they're not the only options we have.  As I have covered Letting players handle the imbalance of administrators is ridiculous and definitely the worst choice.  Hiring more administrators to cover OCRP would work, but would give a higher chance of admin abuse.  Forcing administrators would work at the cost of the administrators "enjoying" their position and possibly stepping down to role play where they want.  Receiving applications is a disaster waiting to happen, but with careful regulation can be an excellent way of promoting more administrators.  In the end, every option has its pros and cons, but they are listed for consideration to pick the ones in which the pros would outweigh the cons. 

Written by Johanan Strangeman

tl;dr

Spoiler for Hiden:

read it

Discuss, don't flame, ARTICLE IS OF MY OPINION, YOU MAY OR MAY NOT AGREE.

[Penguin]

Agreed not enough admins on OCRP. But adding "moderators" that can just ban or kick could be a good addition but they would be handpicked, trusted members.

[Ducky]

Agreed not enough admins on OCRP. But adding "moderators" that can just ban or kick could be a good addition but they would be handpicked, trusted members.

Yeah, it's a great idea. They should have a maximum ban time of maybe 2-6 hours, long enough for them to alert an admin who can get on and deal with the situation, or just keep a bad player out without having to just repeatedly ban them.

[Technical Abbreviations]

Agreed not enough admins on OCRP. But adding "moderators" that can just ban or kick could be a good addition but they would be handpicked, trusted members.

Banning, no. Maybe a 10 minute kick, for an admin to become available, and physgun to move stupid... That might be acceptable...

[Penguin]

At most a 4 hour ban.

[Crap-Head]

We got 2 new OCRP admins. Lets see how it goes now.

Locked.