Lira13 - Trial Admin Application

[lira]

I have flip-flopped between simply abstaining, or remaining neutral. The reason for such is that as previously stated - unfortunately there had been minimal chance to interact with you in an out of character context to adequately assess your views, beliefs and goals. Now, although we had interacted before on the server on both Cherry Malaise and Maria Houser - and my interactions had been highly positive with Cherry - neither provides me with the necessary insight.

One thing I believe could alleviate this is to expand the list of characters you play you have shared with us. You have mentioned engaging in command roles before and dealing with griefers - but none on your list have I recognized within the past 2 years as fulfilling such roles and we did have overlap in play times.

The other one is what is actually key for me: As a GM, I would be directly affected by policies you have mentioned. From the bits you have already written I do not think there would be chafing - but I prefer to make informed decisions rather than ones on a hunch and thus would like you to elaborate on the following:

• When running events, what manner of events would you like to run?
  
  • Of your fellow staff, what expectations would you have of them?
    
  • What manner of events would you prefer fellow staff to run?
    
  • Is there an event or type of event you'd very much prefer we do not run, or if we already do: stop running?
    
  • This is a presumption - but if you have any policies you had in mind - no matter how minor, no matter how unlikely you believe them to be able to enact - that you'd like to enact upon either staff or server: what would they be?

I am abstaining from making a decision for now, and will re-evaluate based on your responses.

Thanks for the questions and the comments. I've certainly enjoyed our interactions on the server as well. To address your first question, I have gone back through my logs and organized a more complete list of my characters, when I was active with them, and their primary roles. To be honest, this probably fails the two year test, as I have gravitated toward more laid-back positions over the last few years, but I hope it demonstrates a long track record on the server across departments and jobs, with various levels of responsibility.

Character (Peak activity time): Primary roles
Lilly (mid-2013 – Oct 2015, with sporadic appearances since): 40% science, 40% security, 20% bartender w/ experience as HoS and RD
Engineer [lost character with old server purge so details are sparse] (2013): Engineer
Vivi Velera (Sep 2015 – Oct 2015): Therapist
Jess Le’Remissa (Dec 2015 – May 2017): Security Officer / Warden, occasional HoS
Masuma Essa (May 2016 – Jan 2017): Nurse
Sasha Pendra (Oct 2016 – May 2017): Assistant
Mary/Maria Thamas/Houser (Nov 2016 – Present): Primarily chef in early years, primarily visitor in later years, occasional other jobs, including security cadet, exploration, command assistant, HoP, and Captain
Cherry Mallaise (Dec 2016 – Present): Originally chemist, mostly visitor these days
Sica (May 2017): Visitor
Jenny Miles (Oct 2017 – April 2019): Bartender
Lira (Oct 2021 – Current): Very sporadic visitor
Yellow Eyes (Dec 2021): Assisted explorers on space whale
Tula Morsa (Jan 2022): Xenobot

Question Responses

• When running events, what manner of events would you like to run? I typically gravitate toward running smaller, spontaneous events that are easy to avoid/opt out of. Examples would be: 1) A portal opening to somewhere strange, 2) A mysterious statue appearing in the chapel, 3) A tradeship docking with the tether. Broadly speaking, little things that spice up the shift and can help facilitate RP between players, without interfering with the shifts of those that don’t want to participate.
• Of your fellow staff, what expectations would you have of them? The most important things to me are strong communication and mutual respect. I would expect staff to be comfortable being open with one another, and able to have respectful conversations when there are different opinions.
• What manner of events would you prefer fellow staff to run? For me it is less about the manner of events and more about empowering everyone to run the types of events they’d like to see. This includes both staff-driven events along with more spontaneous, player driven events.
• Is there an event or type of event you'd very much prefer we do not run, or if we already do: stop running? Nothing comes to mind. As an admin, I would view my role as working with the player base to facilitate events, and less dictating what events should be run. The only thing I’d add is that, while the occasional event that involves the broader server can be fun, I would want to make sure we are managing the number of these to avoid being overly disruptive to those not wanting to participate, while at the same time providing ways for them to still play without engaging with the event.
• This is a presumption - but if you have any policies you had in mind - no matter how minor, no matter how unlikely you believe them to be able to enact - that you'd like to enact upon either staff or server: what would they be? There are two things I’ll mention here. The first is better analytics. I mentioned this is my initial response, but I don’t think we currently have great analytics to inform our views on events. I would like to see more use of post-event surveys to gather feedback in a more objective fashion. I think even holding a 1-5 scale, ‘How much did you enjoy the round?’ in-game vote question periodically would be helpful for gathering data on what types of things raise or lower player engagement.
  
  The other Policy I’d like to explore is activity requirements on staff. I don’t think this needs to be overly burdensome, but I think it’s important that active staff play periodically to keep a pulse on station culture. Along with this, I would also make it easier for retired admins to rejoin, so that if someone wants to take a break for a few months, they can step down then come back without needing to go through the regular application process.

[lira]

After my discussion with Lira, I am changing my response to support. I have asked Lira to speak on some of the things we clarified privately, so I will not step on her toes there.

Overall, I find Lira to be a person who matches my expectations for what an admin should be. I think she will be a valuable member of our team. Several have already identified her as a good person, and she has been extremely cooperative with our requests. I think most reasonable people would have taken our discussion, decided this was not worth it, and withdrawn their application. Lira's persistence shows me she is not here to ask for power. She wants to help, and she wants to help shoulder the responsibilities that staff on our team carry. I have found her to be empathetic, understanding, and cautious. At the same time, she understands the necessity of prompt action when it matters, the nuances of the complex world of being an admin, and the need to cooperate when on a team. I think she would be willing to make the hard choices that we all are expected to make as admins, including the unpleasant ones. She lacks the experience of being an admin in a large community in the past, but I find her logic to be sound and her intents good. I think she will be a good admin, and a trial admin position is certainly reasonable.

I think the community may be hesitant at first to interact with someone they do not know well. But since the critique was given, she has immediately implemented corrective action and promised renewed activity in the community. Ultimately, my concerns have been adequately addressed and I look forward to working with her should she be accepted onto our team.

Thanks; I really appreciate the support, along with the time you spent talking with me tonight. As discussed, I think you made a good point calling out I really didn't do a great job of explaining why I thought admin was a better fit then GM in my initial post. With your permission and for the benefit of the broader group, the clarification I shared with you is included below:

I think that’s a fair question. Rereading my original response, I think my answer was more around why I think I am qualified, and less around why I actually want to be an admin. I talk about events a lot, because I think having dynamic things interesting is a core part of the server, but I think encouraging healthy engagement with users is just as critical and intimately tied to the number and quality of events.

When I think about how the server has evolved over the last ten years, I think it has improved for the most part. I have, however, seen the number of events decline dramatically. When it comes to larger, GM-driven events, we actually have a healthy pipeline, in my opinion. What’s missing is the spontaneous events driven by users when more formal events aren’t planned. The player base seems to be less interested in making spontaneous things happen, and when spontaneous things do happen, there seems to be a lot more grumbling. As an admin, I would watch for players that seem to be overly harsh on people running spontaneous events, and I would provide guidance to those trying to make things happen to help them be more successful. If someone tries to make something spontaneous happen and it doesn’t go well, I don’t want them to leave the server or never try anything like that again. I want to help them learn from what went wrong and give them the confidence to try again in a way that is more successful. Similarly, if someone is often complaining about events disrupting their engagement with the server, I would like to work with them to look for solutions that allow their play style to coexist with those planning events.

So in summary, for me, I want to be an admin more than a GM because I am more interested in fostering an environment where everyone feels empowered to make fun happen. Whatever staff role I’m in, I’d still love to be able to do more fun little spontaneous things. I think I can have a much more impactful relationship with the server as an admin, though, one focused on managing the player base’s engagement with events.

[runadacino]

After reviewing both the responses you have given me, and my dialogue with Tank - I believe I can settle on a light Support. Light, as it is mostly gleaned from your responses rather than a proper impression, and I am a fairly anxious person who sees doom and gloom hiding in the horizon. However, I feel there will be neither a threat to what I feel makes the server great, nor to ability to be open and honest as staff given you stress your desire to maintain such a tone while working with fellow staff. I hope that if you are accepted, during your triaminship - a proper impression will get to form to reinforce my current feelings.

For sake of transparency - I will mention why I was anxious to see your policies and whether there were certain events you wished to stop.

As a GM, I'd like to emphasize non-kink events as a way to make the world feel like things happen outside of our little bubble and I recognize these events are nowhere as generally popular as kink events or even straight up action. I was worried that in pursuit of broader playerbase engagement and metrics, we might end up having to drop such as a "waste of energy" since they only really involve 4-8 players at a time (ideally, a rotating and constantly fresh group of players so we can reach out to everyone in our respective time zones). Your responses do not make me feel this to be a concern.

As a general policy thing, I admit I am often afraid of the server culture changing significantly, either to older forms or to mimic other servers that at times may have higher population numbers than us. Although I can definitely see and agree we need to strive for improvements - particularly on mention of spontaneous, dynamic things happening - I wanted to make sure that our pursuit of better metrics will not alienate those who are here for things that no other server can offer. Your responses did not mention anything that would cause me concern here either.

Beyond alleviating my anxiety, there are some things I would actively welcome that you have identified, and promise to work with.

This being your desire to help smooth things over between event runners - be they staff or just a player trying to make things happen - and the general populace. I will admit that my own activity ended up diminishing somewhat as a consequence of such friction over player-side attempts at making things happen. While I did reach out to people I felt I could approach and trust on the staff over my frustrations and concerns regarding such - having a dedicated person to help manage such fears would probably ease other players into taking initiative as well: after all, knowing explicitly who you can reach out to without previous rapport is a significant boon.

[biggs]

I've spoken with Lira and gotten a bit more of an understanding of who they were as well as had some of my own smaller concerns cleared up. Ultimately the majority of my neutral conclusion was still founded upon community based concerns of exposure, and the role that plays overall, as well as the initial application. Though further clarifying answers has at least confirmed for me their heart is in the right place with things and the desire to be an Admin has a basis to it beyond perceived structural misunderstandings.

I maintain my neutrality, but with a lean towards support now. GM I still would feel more absolute in supporting, but I see the merit in it and think there's certainly plenty of potential for a very helpful member of the team to provide me support on things despite my gaps of exposure.

[DrYeehaw]

Honestly the amount of drama to playtime ratio is far more miniscule than we're acting like at the moment. We need consistently active players and I think you could be a good staff member. We've all had hiccups over our long tenures on virgo, myself included and nothing about your character strikes me as concerning. Frankly I don't see how an amount of incidents that can be counted on my fingers over a 10+ year playtime is a huge deal. Usually the times I am voting no are when a player is causing a scene on a pretty much monthly basis. I remember being the guy who got in a fight with a player in LOOC to the point Ace had to issue that infamous "Do not threaten to cut open preds" announcement in an @everyone. If THAT didn't get me a single no vote on my app, I don't know if anything here would. If it is an issue, there's a reason why it's TRIAL admin anyways.


You've got an idea of how virgo should be that I agree think is the best course of action, so I'm fully willing to support this app.

[JoanRisu]

I do agree that the issues laid out are few and far between. Not to mention Lira is very much open to criticism and discussion, which is always a good thing to have. And for any one still on the fence, the probationary period of being a trial admin is meant to figure out if things will work out or not.

That said, I see no reason to not give Lira here a chance. Application approved. Please contact me on Discord for some housecleaning regarding age verification.