Ship of Modtheus

[Josh3738 3137]

Hey all. It’s been a hot minute since you’ve heard from me directly for which I owe you an apology and an explanation. Around June/July, I was promoted to a full-time managerial role for my real job which comes with long, odd hours and a learning curve that would make your head spin. I won’t get into nitty gritty details, but I planned for and warned my team directly at the time that I would have less availability for a while and to talk with a manager if something pressing came up.

 

Suffice it to say, I took much more time settling into that role than I anticipated, and many things were delegated to my management in the interim. While I can assure you that, despite there being no announcements from me, progress has continued on a number of fronts, I regret the lack of a guiding hand in pushing some of these things in the right direction and over the finish line. My absence has been a point of stagnation for the team, allowing for old-head doomer mindsets and unsupported progress in the face of dealing with high level bans and paperwork instead with the hours I did have. How any team thinks, what they do, and what they want to push is ultimately reflected onto the server as a whole for better or worse, and the last couple months have certainly proven that.

 

Having settled in more or less… I’ve been purposefully quiet on the public front and even to mods for the last few weeks while I had full or private meetings with other admins, looked through mod and forum discussions, and considered what needed to be done to drive things back in the right direction. To paraphrase some of @Telanir's usual lines, the purpose of an admin is to plan for the next 10 years. To provide a vision both for the team and the server beyond it with the ultimate goal of improving player interactions and, in the case of moderation, lessening the need for the team to even step in.

 

What needs to change? How do we get from here to there?

Team Restructuring

It’s got to start with the team itself, both in structure and in the mentality that structure supports. The positions of the team as well as the duties that come with each are being reshuffled:

Manager

I had previously attempted a prior admin’s style of approach when it came to my managers being more facilitators of team functions rather than actual managers. This really hasn’t worked and led to a number of issues. They’ll now be taking up a more direct role in coordinating the day to day operations of the team with regard to reports and appeals, project progress, and team management.

Advocate

Somewhat taking on the good parts of the old manager duties, these folks are the experienced trainers.

Moderator

Boots on the ground. These folks help to improve the experience of the players by assisting with server functions, resolving conflicts, and leading by example in being good role models for the community.

Trials

Our brave new folks. The members of the community who want to change things for the better and help those around them.

A New Roster

How we work together as a team going forward and what mentalities and goals we want to promote depend on who we have. Who are the people that want to work for the community? Who are the people that want to push the server in a better direction? Do I want an old guard maintaining what we have or do I want a wave of fresh faces and ideas to drive things forward again? Just keeping the lights on doesn’t cut it, and changing that begins with the current team.

 

Effective immediately, all management has been demoted or removed from the team. Several other mods have also been removed, trials passed, and a number of applicants are being contacted tonight to bring them onto the team.

 

@trinn and @frankdh will be the first of a new wave of management, and we’re going to be looking to bring on a lot more trials than those being accepted now.

Addressing War

Everyone’s favorite. There’s a version of the new rules that’s passed an admin vote already. It needs to get cleaned up a bit and have another review of costs as it’s more expensive than we’d like, but then we should be good to go. Tech team is making sure the war server is ready as well.

 

All of this is ultimately getting pushed through to facilitate the current conflicts, but at the end of the day it’s still just a patch to an old system. War as a whole and how we conduct it has been in dire need of a total rework for years at this point both technically and administratively, so exploring options with that in mind will be the next step as opposed to future patches to the standing system.

What’s Next

There really is a lot to get done, and there’s more being set in motion than just these few things. If the tone and topics previously discussed didn’t give it away, a lot of this is going to be policy, internal operations, etc. work, so I won’t bore you with long explanations of notion rewrites and team culture. Overall, the next couple of months are going to be focused on reorganizing and rebuilding the team, its resources, and how it will continue to interact with the community long term.

 

It’s unrealistic to think things will instantly be better or that there won’t be growing pains as we go through this process, but my hope is that by the end we’ll have a sturdier, more productive, more effective team than has been.

[Sykogenic 1333]

 

admin plot armor ahh moment

[wowj 9747]

22 minutes ago, Josh3738 said:

Effective immediately, all management has been demoted or removed from the team.

Outstanding move

[Gustando 1990]

maybe quit if u can't be admin ? (question mark) ?

[Xarkly 17299]

josh.

 

you're a crook.

[Ardory 2978]

So nothing on the appeals?

[dev_clark 284]

yeah let me just get rid of my entire team without telling them and then make a post acting like im the most professional admin ever

[Dyl 2088]

shooting spoopy and xarkly is wild. what did they even do to warrant a removal? they were the face of moderation and spoopy was the most active manager/member of mod leadership.

[Mayios 542]

I miss Ferdaboy and Spoopy

[thejack 198]

13 minutes ago, Josh3738 said:

Effective immediately, all management has been demoted or removed from the team. Several other mods have also been removed, trials passed, and a number of applicants are being contacted tonight to bring them onto the team.

 

Can an explanation be provided for why those people were removed, and who specifically was removed? There's an extreme lack of transparency here.

Edited January 25 by jackCool

[Two2the 365]

Lotta hate in these comments for mineman, </3

these were updates, even if i think they suck, wishing everyone the best. Uhh free milen

Edit: i do hope it gets better, maybe its a joke post 

 

Spoiler

I copied xmuted and made my own

 

 

[Morigung-oog 5697]

Huge to see progress being made. Looking forward to seeing how these restructures impact the community.

[TaraJess 2848]

this is the equivalent of telling smol to hit the road but ok

[Chuuwys 502]

removing members of the team doing their work is wild shit

[__Stal27 2126]

Need to know what happened in that meeting that made you double-down and make even worse decisions for the server 😭