(1) "Be nice to players"As Eukelade has said somewhere: "be nice to players." No exceptions. Even when we're needy or aggressive or cheating.
Staff need to once and for all put a stake in all adversarial handling of players, both in public (rudeness, condescension, one-sided joking in requests and wishes) and in private (complaining about or belittling players in staff-side communications). It's been going on for years and years, it's self-perpetuating, it's a root of every kind of evil.
I applaud the efforts y'all have made in recent years towards improving staff/player relations. But it has not been taken seriously across the board. Multiple staff are still being rude to players in requests, and avoiding that should just be table-stakes.
Edit: (1b) "Punishments"20 years ago
I had an account on everything2.com. I did some stupid bullshit and the dread administrator
dannye "cursed" me (removed some XP points). As I hope you would expect of 22-year-old Brytta, I edited the text out of all my posts ("nodes") and ragequit. They even had a term for doing this: "asamothing," after the first well-known user to do it.
A couple years later (I had a new account, heh heh) they switched to a carrot-only approach to user management.
I think Arm should move in that direction as well: granting and removing privileges based on trust (no way around this), but eschewing punishments per se. The distinction is that a punishment goes beyond the natural consequences of rulebreaking (reduced trust) for the purpose of making people afraid to break the rules. Unfortunately punishment just doesn't work very well (no one ever plans to get caught) and it creates an adversarial environment.
(Heh, I just imagined a world in which every historic Arm griefer and multiplayer is allowed to play--but only geofenced wildlife.)
(2) "Staff can't investigate staff"My expectation is that most staff complaints are unfounded: a player got suspicious because they couldn't see everything that went on, right? I also believe that the staff organization is too self-protective to catch the real problems. This is not because staff suck; it's typical human behavior. It's why it is normal everywhere for whistleblowers to get screwed over.
I believe that we have had people staffing in the last year who _very clearly_ should not have been, and we have had players leave who _very clearly_ would have stayed if we weren't fucking up really bad.
I don't know how best to fix this but I think some kind of third-party involvement (a "player ombudsman," mansa's "player council," etc.) is important.
Edit:(2b) "Acknowledge bad actors"I can't recall ever hearing of a staff member being demoted or removed due to a player complaint.
Has this ever happened? I think it's really important that it be publicly acknowledged when staff are disciplined. How else can we have any confidence that staff complaints don't fall on deaf ears?
There should not be a privacy issue with acknowledging that a staff member broke game rules. We all hate doxing, this isn't a doxing issue; it's simple accountability.
This also gives staff the opportunity to hear complaints from people who may have felt that something was wrong but didn't want to rock the boat.
(3) "Review how we use secrecy"I think we've come to confuse IC and OOC secrecy. Letting IC events be discovered IC is a vital part of the game. Keeping secret who plays what...actually isn't. I think that relaxing how we handle this will strengthen the community and provide a lot of trust benefits over time.
I think resource PCs should be clearly identified - no, not in game, but e.g. when anyone references them in a character report. If this is at odds with how resource PCs are being used, please take a serious look at why.
I think it should be okay any player to voluntarily identify their current character, with some caveats about not revealing PC deaths. Players who post on clan boards or post event announcements are already doing this. It's a change that will cause problems but not unmanagable ones.
I agree strongly with Lindsey's suggestion that you publically post decisions and reasons on bans, player complaints, and similar (I'd add staff complaints). I think we have veered too far in the direction of staff and player privacy when we actually needed more transparency.
(4) "ERP and consent checkup"Hypothetical situation: 16-year-old PC stripped naked and scourged. No consent asked for. Is problem? IDK, I think a disinterested observer might say yes.
We're running a game in 2023 with, in some cases, 1990s levels of hornt. I have ERPed in my lifetime and I don't care what y'all do but I think we may need to rein in anything that smacks of nonconsent one more notch.
NPCs, resource PCs, and PC-PCs of current staff need to operate at the highest level of scrutiny here. This means that at a minimum you guys have to leave the young woman's shirt on. And tbh you should probably put a hold on the ERP while you are actively staffing.
(5) "Mix up the player/staff dynamic"Normalize staff taking a break.
Normalize players staffing under their player name, if they want to.
Make 2+ karma players review character applications (no magick, no sponsored roles). (Yes, this leaks some background information. It's okay.)
Require staff members to go on hiatus for 6 months every 2-3 years. Don't let them use immchat during that time.
The church I grew up attending elected lay (non-clergy) leaders like this:
- A nominating committee (separate from the board) met to make a list of people who might be good leaders.
- People on the list who agreed were presented to the whole congregation for a yes/no vote. Typically a rubber stamp, but it gave a place to object or to propose other candidates.
- Elected leaders went through some training and then served on the board for 3 years, with a mandatory year off after.
That's just one example of a not-exactly-democratic way of selecting volunteer staff that provides just a little space between "current staff" and "new staff" and includes a level of direct accountability to the community.
mansa suggested expanding GDB/Discord moderation to players. Consider not only expanding moderation, but spinning it off entirely to players who aren't currently staffing. (This doesn't imply any change in the poasting rules.)
misc so it doesn't get lostWhiskey Balboa (Today at 11:32 AM):
"staff names being attached to the notes they made pretty much puts account notes on the right level of transparency imo."