[Preditor]

Promote me I'll fix everything I've done it before. <3

As someone with experience who I hope would have some form of qualification I'd like to say there are some complications among things, though IRL duties can only be taken so far when inactivity is at a high. If you're inactive for longer than a few weeks i'd consider doing what me and many vets have already done with our positions of power.

[Vauld]

Sad but the solution is obvious. Everyone needs to get out if you can’t commit the time, we have a bunch of oldies on the team with narrow minded views, that refuse to let major change take place. The irony is that the ones who are stubborn and not progressive are also the ones who have no activity. Drain the swamp! Step down! Or they need to be demoted, doesn’t matter - but something needs to change!

Check out my post on page 2 for more detail.

[Faustie]

I thought you were Doc for a minute there, ForceGhost. He normally takes any excuse he can to throw graphs in my face.

Anyway, I'd like to update you with some of the recent developments in the staff team, and my perspective on said activity issues.

Activity

Some numbers are decent there (some more than) and some are pretty awful. There are definitely members of the admin team who need to increase their activity, and the development team have made it known to me that they consider this a serious concern as well. I've prodded HR again to see what they can do. I'm happy to see that we're slowly increasing our number of moderators though, who tend to be fresher and more active. But you are right - the low hours by some people there are a serious concern, particularly in the admin team and above.

I can't speak for Enzyme, but I can at least offer an explanation as to my own activity. Simply, I have very limited time outside of work (if I do have time to game, it's those I can play that relax me now), but I do have time to develop and to manage the team and further responsibilities. Most of the last few weeks I have been busy overseeing changes and an overhaul to the development team (more on this later), sorting and filing company tax returns (this took bloody forever it's horrible), and researching and investigating what the next steps we can take to tackle our optimisation problems.

As promised, more on those..

Development

We've recently had a quite major overhaul in how the development team works. Simply put, it is now separate from the admin team and governs itself, as opposed to being governed by the admin team as it was in the past. This was done on the basis of numerous complaints to me from various developers and multiple issues that we had over time. End result, we had an extremely long meeting with HR and presented our issues, and for the most part I'm pretty happy about the changes we've made there. We have already seen an increase in development and transparency (dev blog) as a result of these changes, and we've approved more money to go towards various areas of development.

I'll go into much more detail on the specific changes in my upcoming dev blog, as well as talk about some of the working groups we've established to tackle certain gamemode issues.


Company stuff

This has taken up most of my time for the past few weeks. I'd like to thank Jono publicly for the hard work he put in to help me close the tax returns on time.

Again, I'll release more info than I say here in a proper thread, which I'm preparing. I'm just making sure that the admins and developers are all up to date on this so that nothing takes any of the staff team by surprise when released. There have been a few changes to the structure of the company, which won't have any major effect on how we run or how the community is managed, but it does make a slight legal difference due to shareholder rights. I need to clear a few more things with people for privacy reasons before I update further on this, so sorry, but please wait a while on this one.

Otherwise, I've spent most of my time working on the accounts and tax returns. I'm very happy to say that we've properly balanced our accounts and that we recently paid our corporation tax - £803.25, to be precise. I'm sure that most of you can guess from that our general profit for that period (2016-2017) but it's in the realm of £4,000. Expenses were around £6,000, perhaps a bit more - again, when I do a proper release of all of this information you'll get the exact numbers as well as a breakdown of what we focus our spending on, and how we intend to improve our spending in the future. We've built up a healthy buffer for the next year, though our expenses show he easily it can be stripped away - a lot of the expense that wasn't development came from security spending to stop DDoS attacks in our early days. Having spare profit does mean, however, that we can put more money into development. We're currently looking at a few ways to increase spending there, using both internal and external contractors (contributors or even further external).


Transparency and community feedback

So, the biggest thing I take away from all this is that we're not transparent enough. A lot of valid points are presented in this thread, and a lot of valid graphs too. However, a lot of assumptions have also been made recently that are either skewed or entirely inaccurate, and the solution to that is more transparency and more opportunity for community feedback.

With respect to activity, it would be good if you're able to hear more from HR about what is being done to tackle this problem. I'll speak to them about that and hopefully they can prepare a community feedback session or info release about the time I make my dev blog and company statement.

With respect to the development team, I'll definitely work on being more transparent with you. I think that the dev blog is a great start and we'll all be making an effort to use that more, probably with a shift to showing you updates in development rather than keeping them a surprise until they're done. We were always concerned in the past about revealing updates too early and then receiving flak when they're not done in time, but I think so long as we're transparent as to the reasons why updates may be delayed, that won't be a problem.

As always, my door is open for feedback. I'm at work during standard UK working hours, but otherwise please feel free to hit me up on Discord or send me a forum PM. It might take me a while to reply, as I'm trying to do quite a lot here while also juggling a lot of personal responsibilities in my life right now, but I'll do my best to get back to you.

Cheers.

[SourLemon]

I'm sure that most of you can guess from that our general profit for that period (2016-2017) but it's in the realm of £4,000. 

Does Temar have enough money saved up yet to buy a bigger yacht then soulripper?

[ForceGhost]

@Faustie

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I hope HR does give us a update here. They're more than welcome to reply to my above post in a similar manner like yourself.

I'm also glad that someone from the SA team is recognising that the numbers in regards to some staff members activity are concerning. For so long I've felt as though HR has been sticking it's head in the sand pretending that every things okay, but this could be down to a lack of transparency and communication from HR rather than pure avoidance of all reality.

From your post it sounds like a lot of progress is being made and with the recent Dev blog I really hope the transparency continues, as it has fallen short in the past. Actions do indeed speak louder than words.

[Enzyme]

Apologies about the delay for this post.
I've been rather busy but I've come home to set aside some time for this thread. Let's hop in it.

The big topic here is in-game staff inactivity, so this is what I'll focus on here. I'll try to keep it short, tidy and to the point.

Hey Enz, why are you inactive?
I've been a staff member for a total of 5 years now. My inactivity has always gone up and down, but it's been extremely poor for a very long time now. This is due to fatigue after spending almost 3.5k hours on GMOD, a game I never thought I'd spend more than 10 hours in. Many staff members have more hours than me, but that's my situation. I've done my best to remain active in game and being in a clan and leading one myself made it interesting and entertaining for me to be in-game. Good things always come to an end though, and there's not a lot to keep me interested in-game at this time. A lot of time and energy goes into my role as a Supervising Administrator (HR role) and as a director on Limelight, and the time and energy I have available for Limelight is put into the work that these roles require. I'm rather busy in real life such as work and other things but I try to dedicate as much time as I can for Limelight. 
I try to compensate for in-game inactivity by being more active on the forum, as well as in internal meetings and discussions as this is where my role as an SA is mainly based. I put a lot of time, effort and energy into Limelight and I always strive for what I believe is best for Limelight. I don't come without flaws though, but I try to improve where I fall short. 

If you're inactive, how are you supposed to deal with inactivity internally?
This is a tough question that I ask myself all the time. I do not wish to be a hypocritical SA yelling at other staff-members for inactivity while being inactive myself, and this puts me in a difficult position as I'm part of the problem I'm trying to deal with.
I have brought up the idea of resigning from my position as a Supervising Administrator to Faustie, Overlewd and Internet in an internal discussion about these issues, as my inactivity makes it hard for me to tackle this very big issue that we currently have here in Limelight, but the general feedback on this was that it's difficult to replace me. If the staff-team feels that it's best for me to resign from my position so we can better tackle inactivity internally, then I'd voluntarily step down. Staff inactivity is an issue that I claim personal responsibility for due to my inactivity and failure to address this properly in a strict enough manner. I don't have an issue being a strict SA when it comes to internal issues, but I fall short when it comes to inactivity due to me not wishing to be a hypocrite. 

So what are you guys gonna do about inactivity? 
We'll have to attack it head-on. My wish is to gather everyone up for an internal meeting/discussion where we address the issue, the reasons for and consequences of the issue, and what we have to do to try to improve. It's important that everyone are on-board when it comes to addressing inactivity. 

We have a good Moderator-team that's doing a good job administrating the server, and the big inactivity-issue ultimately lies within the Administrator team. The stance we've had on in-game inactivity is that Administrators have to compensate for a lack of in-game activity with a bigger forum/discussion presence. @Overlewd and I will talk to the Administrators in question who are lacking here. 

We'll continue to strengthen our Moderator team with active and capable people who are fit for the job.

Why don't you just demote everyone who's inactive and promote people who are active? 
You'll get the same excuse that you've heard countless times before. Staff-members have real lives, and people need a break to charge their batteries. The issue is that experienced staff-members grow inactive, and active staff-members are generally the inexperienced ones. Experienced staff-members are a great resource internally for discussions, and it would be disrespectful kicking out anyone who's "taking a breather" from Limelight. Everyone can get tired of Limelight and forcing oneself to be active will only cause more issues long-term. What @Overlewd and I try to do is to talk to inactive staff-members and we try to gauge how likely it is for a staff-member to make a return. We'll talk with the staff-member in question and we often land on the fact that a resignation might be best for both the staff-member in question as well for the community; freeing up a staff-member spot. Having a staff-member resinging makes a return a lot more likely to take place than if the staff-member in question was demoted from his or her position.
Preferably, we want the staff-member in question to realize themselves that they are inactive and that resigning might be the best course of action. Many staff-members are reluctant when it comes to resigning for the fear that it'll be hard to make a return if they wish to do so, and our return policy was made more lenient to address this concern. This change was made at the end of January and the new return policy is as follows: 

Return policy:
Cooldown Time: 1 month.

A returning staff member will either be allowed to resume in their previous rank or a lower rank, and will largely depend on the circumstances of their leave, how long they’ve been gone, and how active they were in the community before their request to return. This will be decided by HR.
Returning Developer-Admins/Mods will need to pass through separate developer and mod/admin promotion threads as per the new procedure. These threads are not dependent on each other and the person is not guaranteed both their positions as a moderator/admin and as a developer back at the same time, if at all.

As for promoting people, you guys know that we're strict. Very strict. We've burned ourselves before and we're very reluctant to promoting people we're not confident is fit for the job. We want people with the right attitude and record to ensure that everyone are treated as good and fairly as possible; avoiding those who want the job just for the powers and authority that follows, and who want to use it for self-gain. We'll continue having a strict screening process for potential staff-members as a bad staff-member can have a lot of negative consequences on the community. 


Hopefully, this answers a few questions that you might have. I apologize if this appears as a messy rambly post, but I hope I was able to shine some light on the subject. If you have any questions then I'll try to answer them in the future. I can't promise that I'll be able to answer every question however as I tend to keep internal subjects internal (for better or worse). I try to improve on transparency here though. 

Fun fact: I used the word "staff-member" 16 times in my post (excluding the use in this sentence). It annoys me as much as it might annoy you. 

[Faustie]

I'd just like to expand on a couple of the points Enzyme has made, as I feel that there is not enough visibility of some of the actions taken and dedication displayed by the HR team in doing their best for both the staff team and community.

First off, I very strongly feel that Enzyme is absolutely irreplaceable at this current stage. Other admins would perhaps be able to take up the mantle of HR, but there is really no-one who matches his level of experience in the position and who has demonstrated such an ability to handle disputes and conflict without bias or prior judgement. I know that a couple of staff members and community members may feel differently on this point, but I've seen a lot of the effort Enzyme puts into making fair decisions and it really is commendable - there have been numerous occasions, even recently, where he caught me on making a poorly thought out or unintentionally biased decision and was there to add some balance.

Recently, there was a major meeting between the development team and HR to discuss perceived faults with the current team structure and to find possible solutions. I backed up the dev side very strongly, as it's the team I generally interact with most, but despite possible concerns we were able to reach good compromises between both the dev and admins teams that seem to have been appreciated by both so far. This would not have been possible without both Enzyme and Overlewd there to listen to the development team's concerns and take them seriously, while also weighing up the dynamic between the dev and admins teams and making major efforts to reach a fair compromise, even when some in the dev team (including myself) were occasionally making irrational or biased points. Making these team changes would not have been possible without those two. They were willing to sit in an extremely long meeting (8 hours? 9? 10?) in order to find good solutions with us.

Likewise, they have been putting in very solid work in dealing with team or clan disputes, in assisting myself and Jono in dealing with the legal side (particularly Enzyme, in his role as director. I can always rely on solid work from him there), and despite public appearances I can say that, through numerous meetings with them, they are taking the inactivity problem very seriously. However, they're also taking a reasoned approach that works well for both the community and the staff team. It may take some time, but they've been willing to take steps and compromises in order to increase mod uptake, improve the possibility for admins to leave and return when refreshed, and give the mod team more powers so as to effectively administrate, all the while taking into consideration and maintaining a high administrative standard to prevent issues in the team as were seen in the past. The have been a few issues, of course, but on their whole their work has been extremely effective and there is no-one else that I would rather trust to run the admin team.

Are there issues? Of course. Do I feel that they should be more transparent? At times, yes. I'm really pleased to see Enzyme's post here and I hope that information regarding the admin team will be more easily forthcoming in the future. However, it's worth noting that until very recently the development team was also fairly opaque. We've been making efforts to improve transparency recently and will continue to do so, but it is worth remembering that it is not only the admin team that has had problems - the development team has also had it's fair share of issues to work through. Generally, both sides of the team tend to work together on most major issues despite being separate, and so long as no-one is stepping to hard on anyone else's toes this is generally encouraged. For example, the development team are able to have their say and share opinions on admin inactivity, and the admin team are able to give their input on proposed development plans.

I don't think it would be a good idea for Enzyme to resign, or for anyone to push him to resign. He's a very experienced and valuable member to the team, and he brings more than most of the public knows, more than most of the admin team knows, and to be honest, more than even he himself may know at times. Were it not for him serving as a counterbalance to myself and Temar as a director and SA, then it is very likely that we would have much more serious issues now due to a heavy bias towards the development team with no-one to counteract that. I do the best I can to be fair to both teams and work with both (as I technically am in both), but as I currently lead the development team I tend to interact with them on a personal basis far more often, which naturally shapes opinions and potential solutions I may think of. Enzyme recognises that and is willing to work with that, all the while being highly aware of his own potential bias, which is rarely seen anywhere.

Furthermore, I don't think that Enzyme has to display strong in-game activity in order for him to tackle admin inactivity. Enzyme, you've pulled 3.5k hours on gmod, and have spent several years as part of this community. You have the experience, knowledge, and demeanour required for the role, and I don't think it's at all reasonable to expect you to maintain strong levels of activity for several years in a row. You continue to demonstrate strong forum and staff team activity, and are always willing to sacrifice large amounts of your time in order to resolve team and community conflicts. That, to me, is enough, and you are no hypocrite.

Sorry for the multiple long posts - next time I'll post a tl;dr, I promise - but I think it's important that many of you here understand the level of dedication that both Enzyme and Overlewd have put into this community and into supporting the staff team. They are absolutely the best candidates for remaining HR in my view, and their own activity problems are easily excused so long as they continue to put in the same level of effort into the team and community as they have been doing. Yes, there are transparency problems, but both main halves of the staff team are working to address this. You won't always get all of the latest info, but that's OK - sometimes the teams need a quiet place to discuss things, whether it be technical issues or planning of an update before release, or a sensitive staff team issue that could compromise an admin's effectiveness on server if hastily disclosed. I hope that you all understand that, and I hope that you all understand just how important HR have been to Limelight.

[The Captain]

Would like to add a prime example and hypocrisy from Nightmare regarding Octagon's punishment.

One of the reasons his punishment was so severe was because he was a teacher? So why are teacher's punishments more severe but staff's so much more lenient?

Bit late, but I agree. Why was Octagon's punishment so harsh. Cole recently got banned for the same offense. As a teacher, yet he is allowed to keep his position and was only given a one 24 hour suspension. The punishments seemingly make 0 logical sense. The staff hand out very short bans to players that show no intention to RP on the server, which means they return and repeat the same actions. Yet a player who clearly cares about the server can be issued with a ban of the same length or even longer for much more minor offenses.

Another example would be Vadar, a contributor. Which in my eyes holds the same kind of status as a teacher, with its custom icon but lack of any actual powers. He was recently banned for FearRP, his 9th ban. This was only a 7 day ban, the same length as Octagon's first offense. But yet the staff also give the same length of ban to people like Filip[PL] who has a large history and clearly shows no intention to RP on this server. The punishments, or lack there of have flooded Limelight with people who don't actually RP or do so to the smallest extent but do break rules often. This isn't even mentioning the players that break rules when staff aren't on (Which is very often)


ps - no hate to anyone in this post, just using ya as examples.

[Cole]

@The Captain, Lord Octagon's demotion had many more reasons behind it than just his breakage of FearRP in the player report posted on him, those reasons I cannot say as that is not for me to do but they were quite major. Whereas my incident, whilst yes it was a breakage of FearRP, it was only a minor slip-up of the rules and hence was dealt with accordingly by the staff team. I hope your question was answered in this response.

[ForceGhost]

It's recap time!

So, what is going on ya'll?

It' been roughly 4 months since I last posted some statistics and I think it's time to do it again, although with more compact graphs this time.

This month

4 Months Ago

As you can see from the above graph the overall activity of the team has decline, some staff members continue to have really low Garrys Mod hours. Last time the average was 29 hours yet this time we're sitting at 19 hours, a 41.6% decrease despite no difference in staff count. Enzyme did state that he would:

talk to the Administrators in question who are lacking here.

So would it be possible to get an update on the staff members that continue to have 0 or less than 10 hours on the server? and also why staff activity continues to decline? I've also taken the time to calculate the players 2 weekly average from the sample set I have of 70 players, this put the difference between the two groups at 95.8% or 35 hours between the two averages.

Now I must state, just like last time:

Statistics

These statistics are Steam statistics and are not server based, only Gmod.

The actual time spent on the LL servers maybe be considerably less but never more.

Mr.Marsh has been eliminated from the graph because of being unable to obtain his data.

[Bambo]

For me, I'm going through some in real life stuff right now. Switching or going through the procedure of switching a university as well as other personal stuff.

I'll make up for it once it's all behind me, but right now the stress is the main reason I can't go on.

[The Captain]

As we can see from the statistics, doctor Internet still has no life.

[Nudel]

There are currently ~30 players online and not a single staff member *Edit* Stell came online right now.
Yesterday we had ~45 players online and not a single staff member most of the time before Nacreas and Termin played for some time. After them leaving there was no staff again.

There are tons of minges around and no staff. People prop-blocking, rdm'ing and all this beautiful stuff.
How can the server have over 40 players online and not a SINGLE staff member? I am not requesting staff to be permanently online but it would be great to have just ONE staff member online in like 30-45 minutes which is already long. There are periods of more than 4 hours without any staff member online (during peak times too!).

[Taylor]

Lack of staff numbers is an ongoing problem and it will last forever as the team for some reason will not lower their standards even slightly, I can think of over a dozen people that are staff material but not one of them is being given a shot. 

I’ve brought this up in the past countless times but if the team made Mod S1 and actual TRIAL position they could be much more lenient with who they promote, as those that fail the trial would simply return to their prior position, Be it member, teacher or veteran

[Taylor]

Given lack of staff is a major I decided to work it out:
On the 1st January 2016, when L² was 7 months old, there were 25 people with moderation powers.
On the 31st May 2018, when L² is 34 months old (2years, 10 months) there are 18 people with moderation powers.

Over the nearly 3 years Limelight has existed the staff count has dropped by over 25% of what it used to be, despite this the playerbase has been consistently rising.