Posted by Dread

This can be kind of annoying but I can vouch that it definitely works and our GPs stand out to a higher caliber than they really would be without the picky hiring process which we have. We very much so avoid a lot of conflicts that could potentially happen without a system in place like this. Unfortunately, this usually isn't something that's too noticeable unless you are actually on the team and actively involved with the potential problems that are going on which we tend to try to keep discreet.

K, but the screening process didn't stop Soren from going on a rampage against competing tower guilds and sharing his staff account with a friend, nor did it prevent Raina from sending me a recorded video of my own account information (which is supposed to be private). I know neither happened during your time as GP Admin, but there seems to be reasons to doubt the process. Being that, maybe you guys should consider being a little less strict with your policy of hiring people with past account infractions. Apparently, people with clean records are completely capable of being sneaky or corrupt.

Players who actually participate in gameplay are even more at risk of having an account history. This leads to players who have lesser gameplay experience having cleaner account histories. This leads to hiring players with less gameplay experience. This leads to having GPs who are only capable of properly policing social aspects of the game. This leads to them handling gameplay-specific issues improperly. This leads to players having bruised account histories. This leads to them never getting hired. It seems like a cancerous cycle.  

I do believe you've completely misinterpreted what I've mentioned in that quote. In my previous posts, I mentioned that most staff joined the guild after they were hired. This was a reply of what Bryan had mentioned about having an advantage of being hired if they were in certain guilds. There isn't any preference towards recruiting staff whatsoever. The reason it may seem so is that we all develop friendships with each other and eventually join the same guilds. This is inevitable unless you expect us to avoid being in the same guild which is honestly rather ridiculous.

As of right now, NightOwls is a guild for people I'm closer to/friends. There isn't any preference towards anyone and the reason why it may seem like other players don't get recruited is that i don't know or trust them. There have been several instances in the past when we've just recruited people when they asked and it certainly did not turn out well. Some decided to bombard us with silly questions like "give me hat pls" "am I admin now" and so on. Another instance is when they've decided to proclaim themselves as our good Friend and go around telling people "give me gralats or I report you, Milo is my Best Friend"  

Posted by Bryan*

I would apply but I have a long ban history (7) despite having collegiate/work experiences that qualify to be a GP. If having a ban history defines our "maturity" and/or "in-game knowledge", then it's probably why majority of us don't apply.

I personally dislike it when GP's go inactive for x amount of days because within those days, they could have prevented a hacker or someone being vulgar to other players. It's like the "10 hours per week" doesn't really apply anymore to the position. If the GPA were to have a defined system of accountability for every member on that team, then things would be far different. If you honestly can't be online everyday and do your duties, step down from your position. It doesn't matter if you have a "life", you applied to prevent things from escalating in the game.

Unfortunately this is a volunteer job and people just aren't going to dedicate themselves to be on EVERY day of every week but we do have an hour requirement and people do hit it. If they are unable to hit the hour requirement then they are to tell us beforehand. We're not going to just get rid of a helping hand just because they weren't on at a specific time. If that were the case we'd only have a few GPs and the situation would be even worse than it is.

As per your qualifications for being a GP, If you were to have an extended ban history that is within the past year or two, or you have any major bans in general, we're not going to ignore it. It's a red flag. Also generally an extended ban history is a sign of immaturity, irresponsibility and carelessness and we try to avoid that on our staff team. The thing is though, even with an extended history of bans etc we still look beyond that because we understand people can change and improve. We also investigate things like overall attitude ingame, on the forums and public image. We want people who can react responsibly to the players without emotion getting in the way. You can read more about this in this post.

Spoiler

Posted by Dread

As per hiring, the reason our application is the way it is is because by reading it we can tell how much effort the person put into it, how mentally mature they are, and how literate they are. If a person puts effort into the application then if we asked them "where is snowtown" they'd probably be able to easily answer that one too even if they didn't know in the past, that said every person we've hired recently was at very least familiar with the map and had played the game for enough time to understand how it worked and if not, was totally capable of learning it without much effort. The thing about hiring which is always pretty unrecognized is that we're looking for presentable people that are capable of making the right decisions and aren't too biased to any certain category of the game when it comes to policing. This means that we probably won't hire someone if they specifically want to focus an audience like graal babies or whatever. A lot of people say "I'd love to make the game better just hire me already" but unfortunately it just isn't that easy. There really is a procedure to hiring people which includes evaluating how a player acts in the game, what the player does in the game, personality, maturity, how much they care about getting hired and the game, public image, their past etc. It's a long tedious list. No matter how much you may think we're not hiring, we are and are always trying to. The issue is, we simply cant just hire someone because they tell us they'll do a good job.

Posted by Thallen

K, but the screening process didn't stop Soren from going on a rampage against competing tower guilds and sharing his staff account with a friend, nor did it prevent Raina from sending me a recorded video of my own account information (which is supposed to be private). I know neither happened during your time as GP Admin, but there seems to be reasons to doubt the process. Being that, maybe you guys should consider being a little less strict with your policy of hiring people with past account infractions. Apparently, people with clean records are completely capable of being sneaky or corrupt.

Players who actually participate in gameplay are even more at risk of having an account history. This leads to players who have lesser gameplay experience having cleaner account histories. This leads to hiring players with less gameplay experience. This leads to having GPs who are only capable of properly policing social aspects of the game. This leads to them handling gameplay-specific issues improperly. This leads to players having bruised account histories. This leads to them never getting hired. It seems like a cancerous cycle.

You're right and since then we have put much more effort into preventing that. The thing is, we cant prevent all bad things from happening especially if said individual has shown no evidence of planning to cause harm. By this idea I could technically decide to just go rogue right now and no one could really prevent that. The most we can do is put effort into screening people and really looking into how they act and what they would do in various situations. Bans are just a part of this. We're not going to deny someone JUST because of bans unless they are pretty bad. We're going to look to see if they show evidence of improving since they've gotten those bans. How recent they are is also a factor. As mentioned above overall attitude, public image, situations in the past, overall care and respect for players/the game are also things that we need to consider. All that being said there has been very noticeable improvement since the Soren situation which leads us to believe that the systems and methods we've put in place are working but no system will ever be completely perfect.  

Posted by Thallen

Players who actually participate in gameplay are even more at risk of having an account history. This leads to players who have lesser gameplay experience having cleaner account histories. This leads to hiring players with less gameplay experience. This leads to having GPs who are only capable of properly policing social aspects of the game. This leads to them handling gameplay-specific issues improperly. This leads to players having bruised account histories. This leads to them never getting hired. It seems like a cancerous cycle.

I don't see how "participating in actual gameplay" (as you call it) should result in a higher risk of having account history. Any player who lets something like sparring or towering affect their own account history or their behavior is at fault.  

Posted by Thallen

I also think iClassic lacks staff who actually care about what they're doing, and instead just do it for the benefits offered with the position. Not many people seem enthusiastic with actually helping people or trying to improve the game.

I care very much about the art I make and the community that receives it. In fact the two goals I made when I joined the GAT were to improve myself artistically and to make stuff that the masses would want to see in the game. o: <3  

Posted by Slacky

I care very much about the art I make and the community that receives it. In fact the two goals I made when I joined the GAT were to improve myself artistically and to make stuff that the masses would want to see in the game. o: <3

Make a cool helicopter that hovers up and down k.

Also, I think it's ridiculous to say "Can't reply outside the 15 minutes I'm doing an event"  

Posted by CM

I don't see how "participating in actual gameplay" (as you call it) should result in a higher risk of having account history. Any player who lets something like sparring or towering affect their own account history or their behavior is at fault.

When you tower or spar you're at a much higher risk of being reported in the first place... The tower community is well known for reporting people who they even have an inkling are speed hacking, or lag blocking(an example would be thallen's situation earlier where he was just blinking). I can't be 100% sure, but it's likely that i will have more reports filed against me than someone who mostly AFK's in Graal city or BA. Behavior has little to do with it. If you are a jerk you'll have a longer account history regardless.

When you are doing something where people are emotionally invested in their reputation(and abilities) they're more likely to get upset(and file a rage report. for example; look what people did to Sarah last year).

Whether or not the times you've been reported factors into account history; I thought I recalled it being so, but I could be wrong. But if it does the mechanism for combat players having longer histories is there and makes logical sense.

I'm not trying to discredit or act like any GP's wouldn't be GP's if they had towered or sparred. Dread has said very clearly it goes far beyond your report and account history.  

Posted by Perseus

Also, I think it's ridiculous to say "Can't reply outside the 15 minutes I'm doing an event"

Well after an event an admin usually has to make sure the players got their rewards and have to clear their PMs, but I agree 15 min is quite excessive.  

I don't think I can list one admin that has an extensive amount of playing time in one key facet of the game (pk, tower or spar.)  

Posted by Darkk

I don't think I can list one admin that has an extensive amount of playing time in one key facet of the game (pk, tower or spar.)

You may think we have a large excess of applicants and we're just picking who we like but that just isn't the case. We're taking what we're given and hiring who's fitting our qualifications. We just don't have enough fitting applicants to get that specific with it. If you want people like that, you should ask said people to apply. That being said, don't go around harassing individuals, they'll do what they want.  

Posted by Dread

You may think we have a large excess of applicants and we're just picking who we like but that just isn't the case. We're taking what we're given and hiring who's fitting our qualifications. We just don't have enough fitting applicants to get that specific with it. If you want people like that, you should ask said people to apply. That being said, don't go around harassing individuals, they'll do what they want.

I think that probably stems from the idea that everyone here had in their head that if you have ever been banned you won't be considered at all. I'm sure since Jarace has cleared that up you'll probably get a more qualified pool of applicants with gameplay experience.  

Posted by Areo

When you tower or spar you're at a much higher risk of being reported in the first place... The tower community is well known for reporting people who they even have an inkling are speed hacking, or lag blocking(an example would be thallen's situation earlier where he was just blinking). I can't be 100% sure, but it's likely that i will have more reports filed against me than someone who mostly AFK's in Graal city or BA. Behavior has little to do with it. If you are a jerk you'll have a longer account history regardless.

When you are doing something where people are emotionally invested in their reputation(and abilities) they're more likely to get upset(and file a rage report. for example; look what people did to Sarah last year).

Whether or not the times you've been reported factors into account history; I thought I recalled it being so, but I could be wrong. But if it does the mechanism for combat players having longer histories is there and makes logical sense.

I'm not trying to discredit or act like any GP's wouldn't be GP's if they had towered or sparred. Dread has said very clearly it goes far beyond your report and account history.

Reports do not end up in your account history. As much as people like to spread the idea that admins will ban anyone based off of a single ban, that simply isn't the case. Is it true that players that participate in those activities may receive more false reports because people get mad/hurt/etc.? Yes, that is true. But if you aren't doing anything wrong then you're fine and nothing will hurt your history.  

Posted by Dread

You may think we have a large excess of applicants and we're just picking who we like but that just isn't the case. We're taking what we're given and hiring who's fitting our qualifications. We just don't have enough fitting applicants to get that specific with it. If you want people like that, you should ask said people to apply. That being said, don't go around harassing individuals, they'll do what they want.

Trying to say the people hired don't really have any gameplay experience, some might, just not to my knowledge. I know a handful of friends who have experience in areas of the game that have applied and were denied/ignored. I also know admins have have told me their application was 90% bs.

Should hire off experience, not "why do you want this job and what aspects of it attract you the most?" Duh I want 1000 gralats per hour  

Posted by CM

But if you aren't doing anything wrong then you're fine and nothing will hurt your history.

This is just incorrect. Sarah got banned last year (?) for "game manipulation" or something because a group of upset players were mass reporting her over and over again because she was beating them. Stuff like that happens, especially if the GP who bans them doesn't actually know what her delay (or delay in general) looks like because they sparred a total of 60 times in their life.  

Posted by Dread

You may think we have a large excess of applicants and we're just picking who we like but that just isn't the case. We're taking what we're given and hiring who's fitting our qualifications. We just don't have enough fitting applicants to get that specific with it. If you want people like that, you should ask said people to apply. That being said, don't go around harassing individuals, they'll do what they want.

As someone who often leads guilds and stuff, if I was in your position I feel like it'd be on my own shoulders to go out and seek the most qualified GPs and not depend entirely on applications.

This is a major assumption here, but maybe part of it is that you don't enjoy iClassic as much as you once did? I have you added (because you've been helpful) and I see you on now and then, but I'm not sure how much of the game you actually experience anymore and that probably limits your ability to know the active playerbase and who's qualified. I could probably get four or five extremely qualified people to apply, but uh… it's been made painfully clear that you guys have no interest in hiring me, so it's kind of mutual from my end that if you're not going to let me help out then I'm not going to. It's not even "we work with what we get," it's like "we work with what we accept."