I personally think staff minimum age should be increased to, at the very least, 16, if not 18. Knowing how a lot of the staff already acts, you need an older, more mature staff to handle things appropriately without feeling the need to do things such as banning a player because "the staff doesn't agree with it". While I haven't seen the ban thing occur all too often, mutes are given out like free candy just because some of the immature staff feels like it rather than muting/banning for breaking the rules. I feel like this sort of speaks for itself, however, if any further elaboration is needed, then I'll be happy to oblige. On a side note, I've found that even some of the older staff follow the same criteria stated above when it comes to this sort of thing. I won't name any (for now), but it's something to keep in mind. For this problem, I would suggest (if it's not already in the application process) a series of questions relating to how a staff member should handle certain issues and should be given a test with certain players to see how they do. This would be for the reasons stated above in paragraph 1. I would make a poll regarding this, but I feel the majority of people responding would be biased 14 year old kids wanting to be in some sort of power, so I'm leaving this simply for the admins to have a look at and hopefully make an educated decision based off of it. This would surely make most of the players on the server (myself included) much happier. Thank you. -Real_Obama IGN - Beef_Hamer
I don't really agree with increasing the age limit for staff members, despite me being 19. Younger people should be given a chance and, lets face it, there's lots of children nowadays that are more mature than fully grown adults. It would be unfair to block them from applying just because there's a few megalomaniacs out there. Also, to clarify, the entire point of the interview process after having your application accepted is to ask questions like your example in the second paragraph. If they don't like what you say, then you get denied. Though I have no idea how all these power hungry clowns managed to get past this stage. I feel like they'd do a lot better being more strict on immaturity within the staff team than full out banning a large portion of the playerbase from applying.
I don't agree with increasing the age limit. The majority of our staff are under 18 years old. I have noticed during my 4 years as staff that age doesn't always correspond to your maturity. There have been 14 or 15 year olds who are more mature than 18 year olds, and limiting applicants by their age doesn't sound effective. I think that the current age limit of 14 years is working fine. I'd also like to point out that the majority of our active community players are somewhere between 14-18. This can easily be seen in the age distribution of applicants. If we were to block out people who are under 18 years old (or even 16), we would have a lot less applicants and thus less staff. This wouldn't work well. Also as Ankh said, we have an interview stage where scenario questions are asked. These questions give us some clues on how an applicant would deal with certain situations. They also test if they know the rules. There are also personality questions which allow applicants to show their maturity. Sure, this isn't a bullet-proof system but it's sometimes very difficult to know what a person is like before they get into action. Overall, I think that the current system is fine.
I really don't think it is necessary to have to be 18 years old to remember simple staff guidelines and server rules. Every applicant, as said above is interviewed and we get to know people before trusting them into the team. The limit is fine and I don't see a need to change it.
Welp, you said it the best. 100% agree with what your are saying here. Rasing age limit will just result in a decrease application for staff which would affect the total staff numbers. 1000% Agree! Well said.
The only reason for an age limit to be so high is, if you asked staff so sign an NDA, then from a legal stand point, they would have to be 16 with parental consent or 18+. Also raising the limit will not stop people from lying about their age (As some staff has done in the past), and also it's a good way to point out, that age limit is a Guideline as Application Team/Administrators can overrule that rule and accept someone below the age of limit, showing on the Application Requirements page.
You make some fair points, but left out the part where I mentioned the actual testing of such things. I can get past the age limit thing as you are right, some younger members are indeed more mature, however, despite being asked these questions, that won't stop someone from giving a different answer just to appease whoever checks the applications. Upon being accepted after the application, I personally think they should have a 1 day through 1 week period (depending on the will of the applications team/admin) where this staff member should be monitored to see how they deal with players. This should be done in secrecy as to prevent the staff member from knowing it is happening. Whatever kind of decision is made, it is very clear to everyone that something needs to change, because we all know that the staff, for a large majority, is kind of a joke. I can give a few names/examples of senior mods, normal mods, and helpers muting/banning someone for a dumb reason. A lot of it has to do with the staff member's personal opinions of the player rather than any rules the player might have broken. All of my points have been stated, but if you wish to continue reading, I will give a few examples (excluding names unless required by admin) of such things happening to me. 1. This punishment was made by a senior mod. I was talking in chat about something (I don't quite remember as it was some time ago) and then this senior mod came on and told people to talk nice. Something of the sort. Anyways, I wasn't involved in the argument at the moment so I knew he couldn't have been talking about me. However, in a small argument (not even insults or anything, it was more civilized) the senior mod (without warning, which is a big no no) muted me for "arguing". Appeal was denied, and they claimed to have given me a warning (the warning earlier was for something different relating to people insulting each other). 2. This punishment was made by a helper. Some player was harassing one of my muted friends in PMs and the chat report for it was denied. I got a staff to come onto the server to deal with the offender. I wasn't speaking in the nicest way, but I didn't do anything quite against the rules, and I received no warning (player disrespect does require a warning if they were to interpret it as such). This player still kept harassing my friend through PMs and I got muted for trying to get the useless staff to do something about it. Appeal was denied, they claim to have given me a warning (which they didn't). The offending player received no punishment. 3. This punishment was made by a mod. Do note that the issue was fixed and the punishment removed from my history, but for example purposes, I will still explain. At some random point while playing skyblock, I was muted for chat flood. I had said maybe 3-5 things in total (not consecutively) and therefor was confused as to how I could've chat flooded. I did manage to get a hold of the mod who made the punishment and clear the error made as they intended to mute another player, but I do know mods that would've left me muted regardless (and have done so before for such occasions) just because the don't want to admit they're wrong. Several times I have asked for whoever muted me to give me screenshots of my offences to prove what I did wrong and only a small handful of them obliged. I understand when I deserve a mute, but when you refuse to give me screenshots of something you are accusing me of, I will remember and make note of it. These are just examples of my own experiences. I've had many of my friends receive similar punishments for no good reason and usually on the basis of false accusations. That is all I have to say.
There's not really much they can do about people lying in their applications and interviews, granted they uphold these claims as a bare minimum. Anyone can put on an act and, while it is the interviewer's job to see past this, they will never be 100% accurate. People can always pretend just to get their way, like a child apologizing after doing something they knew full well was wrong. This is the entire reason the Helper rank even exists. Though I can't say I fully agree with how they currently test the "competence" of these staff. No arguments here. Not even a week ago I messaged a mod, who prematurely locked a thread with a simple question that I knew the answer to, when they just told the OP to PM them on discord. I asked them politely to unlock the thread or fix their answer, and maybe not be so quick to lock in the future. My response to that was the mod literally blowing up in my face and demanding I stop telling them how to do their job lmao. Also while we're listing false punishments, I have a few of my own tales to tell: 1. Happened over a year ago; was banned for hacking because of a well known visual glitch with a bow that makes it permanently drawn (so looks like you're running with a bow). Anywho, I appealed it and got into a screenshare, and was than banned for an ADDITIONAL 30 days (now a 60 day ban). I had to wait the full length until the ban expired. Then, after those 2 months passed, the person who reported me finally decided to come forward and admit that the evidence was fake, so I got the ban removed from my history. Of course, they weren't punished in the slightest, and I got absolutely no compensation for those 2 months lost lmao. 2. More recent, happened around 2 months ago. Was banned for spamming /party invite (which is literally impossible, since it has a 60 second cooldown). I messaged the srmod (yes, srmod) that banned me and explained that what I did wasn't punishable. Of course, they refused to remove it and I had to get ANOTHER srmod to remove it. As far as I know, the one who originally punished me never faced any disciplinary action, which is even more annoying. You'd think a literal srmod would know the rules of the server. 3. Happened on forums, recent as well. So I made a post about the anticheat, and it was pretty popular. It was topping the recent threads for about a week, until a mod "ghost locked" it (locked without making any reply or heads up). So I made a thread in support asking why it was locked, which I ended up getting warned for. He LOCKED my thread and gave absolutely no reason as to why, then WARNED me when I asked about it. Had to get a senior mod to remove it AGAIN, and again the punisher faced no repercussions. And even more insulting, he then PMd me telling me not to do make posts like that again, as if he was in the right. Needless to say it took so long to resolve that even when the thread was unlocked, it was already dead in the water. So the mod who locked it still won in the end. tldr; The staff team is a complete clown show now. They're free to do pretty much whatever the hell they please. Granted they follow the server rules, or try to use these rules to justify their actions.
Alright, as the main ideas which were presented in the first post of this thread have been rejected due to being bad ideas, I will lock this thread. As for the comments about staff abusing, you should remember that you can create Staff Reports with evidence if you see some staff member abuse. I think that most of those examples weren't even sent in as staff reports, so next time it's worth it to do so. :) - Thread Locked
