[BlackDog]

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

A large portion of the Administrative staff are from a very close timezone area and thus cannot cover a large area of the worlds playtimes.

For North America currently its Me and Soviet, with toxic, thats three people, I have a fulltime job, toxic is in University with a parttime job, and soviet is fighting in the great war. Three people no matter how active are not going to be enough to cover a timezone no matter which timezone it is.

A 10-15 man Moderation team allows us to expand coverage and help us pick up the slack for the life issues that arrise for every single person regardless of the team they belong to

[Nacreas]

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

A large portion of the Administrative staff are from a very close timezone area and thus cannot cover a large area of the worlds playtimes.

For North America currently its Me and Soviet, with toxic, thats three people, I have a fulltime job, toxic is in University with a parttime job, and soviet is fighting in the great war. Three people no matter how active are not going to be enough to cover a timezone no matter which timezone it is.

A 10-15 man Moderation team allows us to expand coverage and help us pick up the slack for the life issues that arrise for every single person regardless of the team they belong to

The North American timezone is typically when the EU timezone go offline. You forget that I'm able to play in both EU and NA timezones so I'm perfectly aware of when the server is requiring supervision and at what times.

[George]

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

A large portion of the Administrative staff are from a very close timezone area and thus cannot cover a large area of the worlds playtimes.

For North America currently its Me and Soviet, with toxic, thats three people, I have a fulltime job, toxic is in University with a parttime job, and soviet is fighting in the great war. Three people no matter how active are not going to be enough to cover a timezone no matter which timezone it is.

A 10-15 man Moderation team allows us to expand coverage and help us pick up the slack for the life issues that arrise for every single person regardless of the team they belong to

Yeah, must be crazy busy with those 5 players during the US peak time.

[The Rock]

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

A large portion of the Administrative staff are from a very close timezone area and thus cannot cover a large area of the worlds playtimes.

For North America currently its Me and Soviet, with toxic, thats three people, I have a fulltime job, toxic is in University with a parttime job, and soviet is fighting in the great war. Three people no matter how active are not going to be enough to cover a timezone no matter which timezone it is.

A 10-15 man Moderation team allows us to expand coverage and help us pick up the slack for the life issues that arrise for every single person regardless of the team they belong to

The North American timezone is typically when the EU timezone go offline. You forget that I'm able to play in both EU and NA timezones so I'm perfectly aware of when the server is requiring supervision and at what times.

Even i can see the two diferent time zones because i catch them , need to listen players , this threat it was create in order to community provide their feedback and clearly they all see lack of staff online , so we should listen them and provide soluction , promote new people , make trial system or test , if they fail simple demote them , simple as it

[Wesley Lawrence]

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

A large portion of the Administrative staff are from a very close timezone area and thus cannot cover a large area of the worlds playtimes.

For North America currently its Me and Soviet, with toxic, thats three people, I have a fulltime job, toxic is in University with a parttime job, and soviet is fighting in the great war. Three people no matter how active are not going to be enough to cover a timezone no matter which timezone it is.

A 10-15 man Moderation team allows us to expand coverage and help us pick up the slack for the life issues that arrise for every single person regardless of the team they belong to

Yeah, must be crazy busy with those 5 players during the US peak time.

Sorry, I haven't seen you around when we reached 40-50 players and had only one or two Administrators or only Toxic running around doing nothing but responding to @-calls.

I understand some of you have your own personal problems to deal with... but there's no need to turn this thread, which is meant to improve the community, into sarcasm.

[George]

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

A large portion of the Administrative staff are from a very close timezone area and thus cannot cover a large area of the worlds playtimes.

For North America currently its Me and Soviet, with toxic, thats three people, I have a fulltime job, toxic is in University with a parttime job, and soviet is fighting in the great war. Three people no matter how active are not going to be enough to cover a timezone no matter which timezone it is.

A 10-15 man Moderation team allows us to expand coverage and help us pick up the slack for the life issues that arrise for every single person regardless of the team they belong to

Yeah, must be crazy busy with those 5 players during the US peak time.

Sorry, I haven't seen you around when we reached 40-50 players and had only one or two Administrators or only Toxic running around doing nothing but responding to @-calls.

I understand some of you have your own personal problems to deal with... but there's no need to turn this thread, which is meant to improve the community, into sarcasm.

Really? It's not like I've put thousands of hours into Garry's Mod administrating two popular roleplay servers and, like Nac, have handled full 60 slot servers by myself. Unless you've done the job, please don't critique others on how to it properly.

Oh, and not once have those you've listed messaged me asking for some backup when they couldn't handle it. Whereas I've had players message me about a rule breaking player and I've come on within minutes to assist.

You're right, this post is a place to discuss the betterment of the community, and I'm all for those who wish to discuss whichever aspect of it they wish. I will not, however, stand by while bullshit arguments are pushed forward.

[Enzyme]

Addressing a few concerns

First of all, I'd like to start off by thanking everyone for all the feedback on this thread. Threads like this one are excellent for getting feedback directly from our playerbase to see how the public views our community and to air any concerns or issues so we can address them. 

What I'll address here in my post will be staff-related as I'm a Supervising Administrator (With HR role) who's responsible for all staff-matters. I feel concerns on this topic are the ones I'm qualified to address so that's what I'll do to hopefully shine some light on a few things that the public might not know.

---

1. Inactive staff members and promoting more moderators

Having an active staff-team is something that's a priority on any community. A server will quickly deteriorate without the constant supervising of staff (that being administration, development and whatever else). 
Internally, Brynn and I post monthly posts containing activity stats on every administrator. We track ingame activity, amount of forum-posts per month and how many PRs the admin has reviewed. This is to give us an overview on how every staff-member is doing, if anyone are "slacking behind" or if there are any admins who's going above and beyond with their activity on these areas. 


I view your concern as more than valid when you express how there aren't enough staff-members on; especially during peak hours. This is something we're looking to improve and we're in the middle of getting a few other things on track again (such as the Contributor program). 

One suggestion in this thread mentions us having a moderator-team of 10-15 members to ensure that there are enough staff-members to keep the staff-presence at an acceptable level. I understand why this idea is appealing but I also see a few issues by solving our issue this way. We've always tried to have a quality-over-quantity approach when it comes to staff-members. Any current staff-member on our team has been properly reviewed under a microscope as well as been discussed with other staff-members before promoted. We've had to make some adjustments in our past when it comes to Moderators and that's because we've felt that they weren't right for the job. We're very strict when it comes to putting someone in a staff-position because we know how much responsibility and power that comes with that position. While promoting 10-15 moderators would ensure that our servers would be better populated by staffmembers, this would only work short-term and could bring issues in the future as we've seen before. 

Internally, we prefer to not have too many staff-members on our team. This is to make sure that we have the right quality and not only quantity of staff-members. We've had a few staff-members who've resigned recently which have opened a position or three, but I don't view a moderator-swarm as a good solution. Moderators tend to be promoted to Administrators after X amount of time, and we'd prefer to not keep someone in a Moderator position if they're Admin-material, but we can't end up with a team consisting of 40 Administrators after X amount of time either. That's a logistical nightmare and too many chefs in the kitchen leaves a big mess and slow progress. 

We'll always have a quality-over-quantity-approach when it comes to staff-members, so we can't promote people just for the sake of promoting people. While some people might stand out as moderator-material in my head, I don't see enough qualified people that I could justify putting in that position without us being desperate. There are also a few other issues and concerns with promoting a moderator-swarm like suggested, but these are concerns that I will not discuss here. We're trying to sort out the activity-issue on hand and we thank you for your patience during this. We've all been players at one point and we know how frustrating it can be to play on a server that's poorly administrated. 

Another concern here is administration during US timezone, and I understand how this time can be lacking when it comes to staff-presence. The truth of the matter is that the majority of our playerbase is from Europe and that our peak-hours are at EU daytime. We have a few staff-members who are available during US timezones, but I'm often told that the servers are very empty at this time, and that we rarely need more than one staff-member to keep this server in check at this time.  
We're trying to sort out this issue with staff-presence and we thank you once again for your patience during this. 

Another point against having 10-15 extra moderators is that we currently only have one server up. There's a limit to how many staff-members we can expect to be active, and we can't have a server where 30-40% of the server-population are staff-members. We don't need 30 staff-members for one server. We can adjust in the future as we expand but there's no need for this at this time. Promoting moderators just to have moderators is reluctant, especially considering that the old moderators are now administrators, and the number of total staff-members doesn't drop just because a moderator is promoted to administrator. 

2. Staff bias

Staff who are biased in one way or another is to be expected from Staff-members but we're doing our best to prevent this affecting a staff-members judgement and actions. If this were to occur then the Administrator in question would be reviewed and handled by HR. I'll get to this later. If there's anyone who observes a staff-member to be biased then this can only be sorted out if it's reported to us otherwise we won't know of this. The best way of doing this is to post an Admin Report-thread (with sufficient evidence) or by contacting @Brynn or myself, either on Steam or in a Private Forum Message. We ask that you supply as much information, context and evidence as possible so we can handle it properly. As I've said before, if you have any concerns or criticism when it comes to a Staff-member then @Brynn and myself are always available to look into this and act accordingly. 

3. Bad attitude from Staff

As I mentioned regarding Staff Bias, if you observe any bad attitude from a staff-member then we ask you to contact us so we can handle it. We can't handle issues or incidents that we aren't informed of and we always strive to have the best when it comes to our staff and how we act. Getting criticism from you is how we can improve ourselves. 

4. Staff punishment

A concern that was brought forward in this thread was that players get punished for breaking the rules while staff do not. 
As HR, it's our task to make sure that staff-members are acting as they should, and we're there to step in when a staff-member hasn't. Punishments are internal and won't be visible to the public, but admins won't get away with breaking the rules. As @Soviethooves mentioned, HR starts an investigation and we go from there. We talk to the administrator in question when there's an issue and we have multiple ways of punishing a staff-members (luckily something we rarely have to do). A staff-member can either be given a warning, a suspension, have powers revoked or be demoted. HR keeps track of these incidents and if a staff-member keeps messing up then they are dealt with accordingly. The internal punishment depends on the situation, severity and if this has been a problem before. I won't get into details but HR talks to the staff-member in question as soon as an issue comes to our table. As Soviet mentioned, warnings go a long way with staff-members and we rarely have to escalate it from there. 

We're quite strict when it comes to staff-members following the rules and not abusing their powers, so you can rest assured that HR is there to "smack some booty" when we need to. 

5. Bans and blacklists not being consistent 

As @George  mentioned, there isn't a preset when it comes to a rulebreakage because there are so many factors that come into play. A few of these factors can be how severe the rulebreakage was, if it was done with intent or if the player in question was unaware of the actions he or she committed was against our rules. The players track-record and attitude also comes into play when punished. Has this player broken this rule before? Has this player broken a lot of rules in a short period of time? Has this player been warned already? Is he honest about his actions or is he attempting to lie to get himself out of trouble?

There are a lot of factors that come into play when a player is punished, and we try to keep this as fair as possible. We can't always get it right and this is why players have a right to appeal a punishment they feel is wrong or excessive. 

---

If you read through my entire post then I salute you. I wish that I've helped to shed some light on these topics, and that you have a better understanding on how we handle things. All concerns mentioned in this thread will be reviewed and we'll take the appropriate steps to ensure that we can offer the best and most fair service we're able to give you. 

I'll mention it again, if you feel a staff-member is not acting how he should then feel free to contact @Brynn or myself and we'll look into it. 

Thank you once again for your feedback on this thread.

[Wesley Lawrence]

Really? It's not like I've put thousands of hours into Garry's Mod administrating two popular roleplay servers and, like Nac, have handled full 60 slot servers by myself. Unless you've done the job, please don't critique others on how to it properly.

Oh, and not once have those you've listed messaged me asking for some backup when they couldn't handle it. Whereas I've had players message me about a rule breaking player and I've come on within minutes to assist.

You're right, this post is a place to discuss the betterment of the community, and I'm all for those who wish to discuss whichever aspect of it they wish. I will not, however, stand by while bullshit arguments are pushed forward.

George, as much as it seemed like a direct insult to you, bear in mind that I did not try to attack you in any way.
I guess in the spur of the moment, alongside your sarcasm, I got dragged in and might have made it seem like you were part of the problem. Which, in my opinion, you are not.

I definitely know you've made thousands of hours, and some of us no less, George. I bet you could understand I've got my experience seeing I've been going around roleplaying communities on Grand Theft Auto and Garry's Mod for about 11 years now. I (and I am pretty sure enough of other players) was just hoping to have some understanding from those who have made 'thousands of hours' that at peak times (yes, even at US times, it can reach peaks) it could be overwhelming for some staff members to deal with all the @-calls and not be able to roleplay anymore themselves. A few Moderators would solve that.

I actually have been 'on the job' myself, and that's why I figured some of my input regarding the case might have been of any value, eventhough sadly enough, this is a problem for the staff team to solve. So I don't think the two cents that have now changed over to a whole dollar that I've put in now would contribute much anymore.

On a different note, Enzyme made a big, but confirming post above me, which I agree to for sure. So I hope we can put this discussion, which in my opinion went a bit too far, behind us. I (as many others) still have a lot of respect for the staff team here and will continue to do so as long as they keep administrating the server (and beyond).

Thanks for the clarifying reply, Enzyme.

[Dig]

No DarkRP admin experience is going to prepare you for controlling CityRP.

I don't see why we glorify the administration process on CityRP as being
that overly complex. It's a simple by the book procedure that a lot of people
who you generalize as having "dark RP experience" might just be able
to do a better job than we expect, we just have to give them the chance.

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

Because this always works 100% as we've seen in the past. I think it's natural for a garrysmod staff team to change hands and evolve with the addition of new blood, why suppress it? I think that some new mods would be totally refreshing to see and would also cut down on many of the problems that might just stick around if you try convincing admins who have, like george rightfully said "put thousands of hours into Garry's Mod administrating two popular roleplay servers".

It's a never ending cycle where by the time a member is promoted to a position of staff, they have maybe a year or two before they grow tired of the routine (atleast usually the server aspect) and become for the most part inactive. And I don't think any sort of encouragement can alter sheer boredom unless the encouragement you're referring to is money. 

Yeah, must be crazy busy with those 5 players during the US peak time.

We did have a pretty solid american playerbase some time back, wonder where that went.

[Project]

To what @Enzyme said,

CityRP and basically most adminstrative teams anywere have the same cycle of:

Admin team promotes mods >> mods become admins >> old admins leave and newer ones get their responsibilities >> once promoted mods (now admins) are preparing the new mods.

It seems that that cycle has been broken by old adminstrators not resigning, not a bad thing as that provides a "stability".
The issue with this is, admins will come online when called to ban a minge, but they don't take action to adminstrate the servers themselfs as often as they used to. It is rather annoying having to call an admin when you expect at certain times for one to be there anyways. That aside, admins tend to lose "quality" as time goes by, maybe we shoudn't only try to retain player attention but staff attention too somehow.

People are asking for more mods as they tend to be more eager to moderate the server, I am pretty sure you got a list of players that should already tick the list of qualities you opt for, it wouldn't hurt having mods if you show them the ways and they dont have to always be promoted so soon to mod.

tl;dr it seems admins have broken the old circle of how staff teams worked, it has proven both good and bad, in the long run it discourages them from actively adminstrating the server and the feel burned out, maybe we should give them an innitiative that will make them play. promoting people to mods have both its ups and downs, its up to you, the staff team to find what you believe is right.

[Jono]

I think a lot of it from our POV seems unfair, as a lot of work gets done behind the scenes, and the majority of work on the server isn't seen. It's also not really appreciated.

We do our role because we care about the community, and I think sometimes the community does forget that. But y'all also raise good concerns too.

[Dig]

I think a lot of it from our POV seems unfair, as a lot of work gets done behind the scenes, and the majority of work on the server isn't seen. It's also not really appreciated.

We do our role because we care about the community, and I think sometimes the community does forget that. But y'all also raise good concerns too.

But the problem here isn't what you're doing behind the scenes, I think a large amount of people accept the fact that the staff do alot of work people don't get to see, the problem is that we need people on the servers and not in the background and new mods could easily fill that role whilst other staff do work on the forums.

[Jono]

Thank you for all your input. Wave 1 feedback has no been completed, and the process of compiling said feedback, so we can act upon it will be handled internally.

When the next feedback wave occurs, the core points of this thread will be initially addressed, and what we have done to improve it shall be put out along with it. We're accountable to the community.

Once again would like you thank you for your considerate thoughts, and the time taken.

any feedback given from here on out will not be included in core internal discussions post.

[Nacreas]

No DarkRP admin experience is going to prepare you for controlling CityRP.

I don't see why we glorify the administration process on CityRP as being
that overly complex. It's a simple by the book procedure that a lot of people
who you generalize as having "dark RP experience" might just be able
to do a better job than we expect, we just have to give them the chance.

If there is a current operational demand for more staff, our quickest option to resolve that problem is to encourage our current staff to play.

Because this always works 100% as we've seen in the past. I think it's natural for a garrysmod staff team to change hands and evolve with the addition of new blood, why suppress it? I think that some new mods would be totally refreshing to see and would also cut down on many of the problems that might just stick around if you try convincing admins who have, like george rightfully said "put thousands of hours into Garry's Mod administrating two popular roleplay servers".

It's a never ending cycle where by the time a member is promoted to a position of staff, they have maybe a year or two before they grow tired of the routine (atleast usually the server aspect) and become for the most part inactive. And I don't think any sort of encouragement can alter sheer boredom unless the encouragement you're referring to is money. 

Yeah, must be crazy busy with those 5 players during the US peak time.

We did have a pretty solid american playerbase some time back, wonder where that went.

CityRP administration is more complex than most staff positions out there. This probably stems from how accountable staff are for their decision making which is frankly one of the reasons our team works as hard as they do. In fact, it is probably one of the reasons I have faith in our system.

As for your response about an operational need for more staff, I feel you have misunderstood my point. If there is an immediate need for more staff, our best option is to encourage our current staff to play. Training up a couple of moderators over the course of several months isn't going to fix the immediate problem of lacking staff with administrative access. I stand by the quality versus quantity argument here. Sure we could just promote a couple of mods, give them the commands and then tell them to get on with it. Or we could utilise the thousands of hours of experience that our current admins have so that we can solve this problem quickly and effectively.