Meta talk about senior admin role and its functionality

jenz

UNLOZE Founder
Leader
Oct 11, 2016
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Greetings.

Intro:

This is a long talk and is meant for people who care about structure and its supposed long term effects on the overall administration experience of ZE and hopefully also will benefit the experience of MG some when in the future.

I expect that some normal players just will add unnecessary noise to this thread or will derail it with irrelevant topics. Some intentionally and some un-intentionally. The intention of the thread is not about input from normal players, in fact its only about normal players in the sense of how they might experience administration ingame in long terms. Instead its just more the fact that they are capable of seeing this topic being discussed and talked about between admins/staff (if that actually happens). Its mostly meant that staff/admins should respond if they care.
Normal players can of course still add their input but some might be deleted if derailing from the actual topic too much.

Maybe most people don't think this is necessary and it might fall on deaf ears being a short discussion dying quickly. Well i hope its not. I hope to create a meaningful discussion out of thin air based on all previous actions/decisions we took so far to reach this point we currently are at. It might lead to change on how some things are meant to work and i normally believe trying new things is a good ideal even if it sometimes turns out to backfire in practice.


I choose a forum thread over discord conversation as discord is meant for short term discussions meanwhile the forum still serves the purpose of long term discussion talks. Doing this over the forum should make it a lot more organized than through discord.


In the last couple of days on the discord we discussed the ancient plaguefest thread that @Vanya started back in 2014: https://plaguefest.com/threads/to-management.19451/
I was there, saw the posts when they were posted and even made two posts myself. And ever since back then i knew that i never would want to act like pF's management/LSA. Maybe i failed in some regards however as i am a flawed person. But i sure hope unloze staff is not making too many of the same mistakes as they did.


One post in particular that i very much noticed was by Joshy. To quote a piece of it:

"I agree that the DDoS was very harmful to the server, but it's definitely not the main reason the server died. Don't forget: ZM was DDoSed no less than ZE, but it was still mostly active. I strongly believe that LSA activity in each server has a huge influence (based on my previously posted numbers).

The person looking into it is very grateful of the team working into the CS:GO project, but we also know that a lot of people on this list are not responsible for the CS:GO revival.

Everyone here totally understands that each individual has "real lives" and things to do, but if you can't uphold the responsibility, shouldn't you pass the torch to someone who can? You are depriving your server. Believe it or not, all of us players have real lives too and we're still very active. We've never asked for anyone to put their entire life into the game or servers (unless you're Management @Secprotocol lolololol jk dude) but you should be at least contributing something. Again, I was extremely proud for each person who did step down and accept the emeritus Veteran status when they realized it was time to go; why did you come back if you weren't going to make contributions?"


The part about passing on the torch seems very relevant to me. For the sake of starting somewhere i therefore want to start with talking about the senior admin role in a meta sense.
In the past we had many different senior admins. Some resigned themselves either because they got tired of unloze, felt unloze was not appreciating them enough or themselves thinking that they did not have enough time left over to contribute to unloze's community. On the other hand other people in the senior admin role also clinged onto the role and its power as long as possible refusing at all to give it up no matter their circumstances.

That kind of goes back to reminding me of plaguefest's LSA team and how some of them despite doing 0 contributions for a very long time were very vocal about themselves being very important and having to stay.


Structural change i consider applying:

I want to introduce a rotation system where senior admins have the role in certain lengths of terms. I thought about what might be beneficial and what might backfire badly. In many cases is hindsight the best there is.
I was thinking about a term limit of 2 years for a senior admin before they should step down so that another admin might try to step in. Nobody from the admin team would of course be forced to be senior admin for the entire 2 years and can just abruptly end their term earlier if they want to go back to being normal admin. Previous Senior Admins should of course also be able to do new terms again if they wish to.

The way new seniors would be picked is either through me handpicking them from admin team or by creating admin only threads were admins would be able to apply for the role for a term period of 2 years. This does not mean we only add new senior admins every 2 years, it might happen much more frequent in case circumstances require such.


Final words:

Most from the admin team should know that i already previously discussed internally adding a rotation system for the senior admins. I still believe such an approach will make sense and even if it fails i think in all regards that it should be worth a try to implement even if it means more work in terms of more often switching out members of the senior admin team.

I believe that even in long established hierarchies like unloze's that there eventually is a pattern noticed about how a system put in place might have flaws. Eventually when everything is put in place and set in stone after many years you discover that it might be very hard for people to climb up an organizations ladder to have a word on it and its functioning. I think that is a danger in the form of stagnation where the core elements continue to work as intended but where side elements have faults that might be dysfunctional.

I think its high on time to invent some way on how "newer" people too should have a chance to contribute as they often much more reflect the current population than the people who already are in charge and have been for a very long time.
 
Jenz, my concern is that would you be able to find willing SAs every 2 years? and how would you ensure that the new SAs get along with the old ones?

As we know, SA is a position most people don't want or aren't suited for. It brings on additional responsibility, forces you to become non-neutral, making you enemies with at least some players on the server even if it wasn't your fault or you made the right decision. Can't really avoid that since you have to make harsh decisions.

Coming to the second point, a new SA is chosen after rigorous observation and analysis, and then they are usually put in a trial period to analyze them further. Regular changes to the SA team is bound to bring in people who have grievances against each other (either from past incidents or new ones). Don't get me wrong, having SAs with opposing views is beneficial for decision making, but that is different from having a grudge. Also, this problem isn't as visible or present right now because the SA team doesn't change drastically, we bring in a member sometimes in 1-2 year durations and the previous ones don't change. So, the new SA gels to the existing ones pretty well which leads to all of them having a good understanding and picking up each other's weight.

Just thought I would share these two points that came up in my mind, I don't want to sound greedy or like a boomer who doesn't want change but these are genuine reasons that need to be considered before going ahead with this plan IMO.
 
Jenz, my concern is that would you be able to find willing SAs every 2 years? and how would you ensure that the new SAs get along with the old ones?

As we know, SA is a position most people don't want or aren't suited for. It brings on additional responsibility, forces you to become non-neutral, making you enemies with at least some players on the server even if it wasn't your fault or you made the right decision. Can't really avoid that since you have to make harsh decisions.

Coming to the second point, a new SA is chosen after rigorous observation and analysis, and then they are usually put in a trial period to analyze them further. Regular changes to the SA team is bound to bring in people who have grievances against each other (either from past incidents or new ones). Don't get me wrong, having SAs with opposing views is beneficial for decision making, but that is different from having a grudge. Also, this problem isn't as visible or present right now because the SA team doesn't change drastically, we bring in a member sometimes in 1-2 year durations and the previous ones don't change. So, the new SA gels to the existing ones pretty well which leads to all of them having a good understanding and picking up each other's weight.

Just thought I would share these two points that came up in my mind, I don't want to sound greedy or like a boomer who doesn't want change but these are genuine reasons that need to be considered before going ahead with this plan IMO.
*tells his opinion*
gets demoted
 
Well we will try a new system for now. Maybe we will re-introduce senior admins again but for now we will do without the role.

A majority of their responsibility that normal admins can act on will now be dealt with by normal admins just. For things where normal admins cant deal with it people just have to ping me instead (on the forum, not on discord or steam).

Regarding getting new admins on board the admin team: Some will still be handpicked but in some instances i wish to add a form of voting. Either public voting or admin voting or a combination of both for the question if a player should have the chance to become a junior admin. As well as votes on evaluating their performance when their period as junior admins come to an end.

If you are a regular player or admin and you see somebody who you believe is a good candidate or that you know is interested in a chance to become an admin then please reach out to the admins to tell them about it or me directly.

I hope we will be able to to select several admins from this point on through more direct input from regulars and admins directly.
 
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Updated the following threads to reflect on the changes when applying for admin on our servers:

https://unloze.com/threads/admin-application-template-rules.803/ (thread by d3j4de where the relevant information of the other two threads got merged into so you just have to view one single thread instead of 3)

https://unloze.com/threads/open-ze-mg-zr-admin-application-state.1685/ (thread by zegawa which i removed now). Admin applications are just always open. You can always write an application.

https://unloze.com/threads/step-by-step-guide-for-applying.2936/ (thread by KIP where the relevant information got merged into d3j4de's thread instead and therefore is removed now)

Instead of reading 3 different threads you now only have to read 1 before applying for admin.
 
To late my man current global admins destroyed the fckiin server i am playing in UNLOZE since 2016 i can say that this is legit worst era of the server all good players left or stopped to play in Unloze cuz those admins i hope this new system bring that glorious days back.
 
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To late my man current global admins destroyed the fckiin server i am playing in UNLOZE since 2016 i can say that this is legit worst era of the server all good players left or stopped to play in Unloze cuz those admins i hope this new system bring that glorious days back.
Care to elaborate, or is this just a shitpost among others?
 
Круто! это первый форум, на котором я увидел такую красивую и главное полезную тему! спасибо его автору! тема помогла осознать многое на этом форуме) всем доброго дня
 
Today revo joined us as a junior admin on ze. I plan around the end of his trial period to have a public thread for feedback about him fullfilling his admin duties on ze. We will of course filter input based on if its people we know that are regulars on ze.
 
@Bane has returned as admin. Due to his relative short absence will he skip junior and just directly be back as admin. He will also be event manager again. If he were gone for a longer period of time we would first discuss it either with the public or with admins. But Due to it being not that long ago that he was last admin here we give him a greenlight right away.