Discord ID: tigercat2000
How old are you?: 24
When you are most active? (including timezone): 3pm - 3am (UTC-7, America/Los_Angeles, PDT)
Roughly how much time do you dedicate to the server each week?: Maybe 12-18 hours on-station (3 or 4 rounds a week), ~20-30 hours off-station coding?
Names of notable characters you play in Vorestation: Shadow Larkens, Rachel Larkens, Sapphire Larkens
How long have you been playing Space Station 13?: My 12 year anniversary is on September 13th!
How long have you been playing Vorestation?: Since ~2017? I took a pretty long break from ~June 2021 to ~August 2024.
Explain what most interests you about being staff: I'd like to help out with the code, especially reviewing stuff on the GitHub and debugging problems on live.
Explain what you think you will least enjoy about being staff: I tend to feel obligated to work and a little stressed out in staff positions. This is something I've always had to deal with and I'm pretty good at knowing my limits and taking a step back when I need to.
Describe what role-playing means to you: Immersing yourself in a different world for a little while, to escape this universe and play around with the rules of a similar-but-different universe. Trying out things you can't/won't do in our world, and writing out your thoughts and expressions through a different lens.
Define what a "Problem Player" is in your own words: As opposed to a toxic player, a problem player is someone who tends to cause problems not out of malice, but by their behavior being non-ideal for the environment they are in. This tends to look like players who get stuck in a pattern of thinking that isn't conducive to the server environment, like being an overly harsh security officer. They're not beyond reproach, but have to be dealt with when their behavior causes problems for other people.
Define a "Toxic Player" in your own words: Toxic players are players who, whether intentionally or not, start acting maliciously and lashing out at others with an unhealthy regularity. These players tend to be very confident about their behavior and won't see anything wrong no matter how you point it out to them. Because of this, they also tend to make other players uncomfortable just by proximity, even if they aren't actively doing anything hostile, because they feel like a bad person to be around knowing they could lash out at any moment.
Define "Admin Abuse" in your own words: Admin Abuse is sometimes used to describe playfully messing around, but in a serious context it describes misusing the powers and responsibilities given to you for personal gain or otherwise malicious-to-undesired behavior, such as leaking server logs to settle a petty grudge with your friend, or gibbing someone you don't like.
In your opinion, what the biggest problem with the server right now?: The whole development flow feels pretty janky; maintainers don't seem to talk to each other very much (at least in public), the release system for maps requires a hard dme edit, and from what I understand the server backend is pretty fickle, and missing modern features that something like TGS provides.
How would you have it resolved?: Well, maintainers talking to each other is a pretty easy one; I'll talk to other maintainers and be the change I want to see. The technical problems are things I intend to work on making better and slowly solving; like, I'm currently working out a way to make the tgui bundle not be in the master branch but automatically compile in the release branch. Maybe one day I can help improve or migrate away from the server backend (I really want test merges, so bad.)
Go through the following scenarios and state how you would deal with it...
- An adminhelp comes in claiming an individual is griefing.
How I'd handle it: My first reaction to most problems like this is to defer to the administration team and ask for their help. If they're not available, I'm comfortable digging through logs and watching the reported player, and, if needed, PMing them to talk about what they're doing wrong, up to and including banning them if they won't quit. - A player is upset about a scenario, but they are clearly in the wrong.
How I'd handle it: As above, ask other admins first- if no one is available, I'd sit down with them and let them vent in admin PMs, and work on de-escalating the situation as best I can. Typically, people will understand what they did was wrong once they've calmed down a little and been given time away from the situation; often, they just need to be heard, even if they're clearly wrong. - When interviewing several individuals, one is lying but you cannot tell who it is.
How I'd handle it: Looking up server logs is the go-to for figuring out what actually happened, but there's always edge-cases of things that don't get logged or unclear cases, and the only way to really resolve that is just to talk to everyone involved, look over note histories to see if any of them have been historically a problem, and reaching out to other admins for their input on the situation to see if there's something you missed. - After interviewing several individuals, you have a pretty good idea of who is lying, but still lack concrete, infallible proof. Despite your best efforts, some details remain ambiguous. What now?
How I'd handle it: It depends on how serious the event was. If it's something like he-said-she-said about who left a bar of soap in a doorway, I'm probably just going to tell everyone involved to separate themselves and go on with their day. If it's something more serious, like someone released the tesla but I can't tell who, I'm probably going to add notes to everyone I think is lying and keep an eye on them for the rest of the shift. And, of course, ask other admins for their input. - An individual is playing a character who has sparked several adminhelps regarding said individual, but they are not in any clear violation of the rules.
How I'd handle it: This really depends on specifics that aren't given in the prompt - do they upset other people because of doing something actually harmful, or are they just playing a character that's naturally going to inspire controversy in their wake? This is something that could lead to a QC ban, but it's incredibly specific and needs a long history of looking at what they're doing. Admittedly, this is also something that I feel any maintainer should exclusively not handle, beyond letting others know that a problem exists - a maintainer doing a QC ban seems like bad optics, to me. - Multiple character deaths have occurred and you are attempting to investigate. One player exhibits poor role-playing skills combined with insulting all those involved, another rushed after trouble started and only used lethal force, and a third went on and attacked several other individuals after the first fight was finished.
How I'd handle it: I feel like I'm repeating this point a lot, but absolutely my first step with a situation like this is to ask for help from other admins. When a big event like this happens, it's always going to be a mess, and one person handling it alone isn't going to be able to effectively deal with it. Beyond that, it generally goes like this: the first step is to separate the players and make sure the fight doesn't start back up while you're investigating - whether this means telling each of them to walk in separate directions or freeze them in place depends on how cooperative they are. Having a few people dead actually helps in this respect, as messed up as that sounds - dead people can't keep insulting and fighting, they're out of the round until medical cleans up. Once the fighting has assuredly stopped, you can start interviewing people to determine what actually happened, who instigated the fight, what they were fighting about, how multiple people got involved, etc. After that, you can start dealing with the problems accordingly - the player who started it needs to be told to knock it off and straighten up- maybe even banned if they have a history. The player that went in blasting with lethals needs to be sternly told to never do that again, and the player that attacked several others needs to be questioned on why in the world they decided to do that.
What prior admin/moderator/management experience do you possess, if any?:
1. I was previously a staff developer here around ~2015, through... somewhere around 2017, I think? It was a long time ago, before there was even Discord - can't believe we used to use Skype...
2. I was a maintainer at Paradise from December of 2016 to July of 2018.
3. I was a server developer at Paradise from July 2018 through somewhere in 2019~2020, tasked with maintaining the backend infrastructure of the server, developing a web panel to control the bespoke server management software, managing multiple pfSense routers, and handling multiple discord bots.
4. The entire time I was at Paradise from 2015-~2020, I was also expected to handle administrative action and resolve situations, though their policies and rules are dramatically different than Virgo's - for instance, permabans are the default, because if you get in trouble you're expected to appeal on the forums to explain yourself and apologize.
Finally, what unique aspects of yourself can you bring to the staff? What can you bring to the team that is, in your opinion, needed?: I have a drive to make things streamlined and nice, and I have an interest in continuing to help improve the player experience with UIs, the new preference system. I'm very experienced and knowledgeable about TGUI, something that only one other maintainer is really familiar with. I care about this server and I've been really enjoying my time back here.
