i mean of course you look for ‘above and beyond’ but what exactly does that constitute – it makes sense this year, since these people put work into making a trailer that impressed you guys, but from here on out is it just gonna be ‘handled the most modreqs’ or ‘talked to the most new players’ because i dont see how variation will really occur within the staff teams. and as far as my knowledge of how the structure and attitude is in the staff body right now, things like individual creative projects are pretty unreasonably hard to pull off so eventually it’s just going to be a numbers contest
also, i think you should try to look for more qualities in a player than ‘they were really good this month!’ because that’ll just be the same kinda thing every week. you should look to see if there’s old veteran players, returning to play, and see what they think of the server compared to their ‘favourite’ time on the server. interview people who historically have been antagonist/villainous character players and see what they think of the current systems in place. ask magic/creature roleplayers what they think of the current lore changes and how things are being handled. select a new player that joined within the last two weeks and ask them for their first impressions on the server. suggest a topic and ask players to put their name forwards to discuss it even. with that you can not only create something that people might be excited to read (”oh man i wonder what cool_player_62 said!”) but you can use it as a feedback opportunity, allowing some kinda discussion to bloom from it and get realistic opinions from people who might not be too vocal, and really explore what the community thinks. people will discuss it with you, in their chats after reading it and on the forums.
i mean sorry that was my dog lol