I feel like we need to have a talk about staff activity in a non-spiteful way. I see far too many people bashing on our current staff team. Before I get into this, I'd like to make it known that I respect the Mineverse staff, and am just trying to put forward some ideas.

NOTE: The paragraphs in black will be background information, and the suggestion portion will be written in green. Thanks in advance if you take the time to read through this.

Earlier today, I took a look at each staff member through the /staff command (I have a suggestion here to have the command fixed in all gamemodes). And what I found is that exactly 30% of Mineverse staff haven't logged on in over 10 days. In exact numbers, this equates to 7/20 people. And keep in mind that this is only accounting for the staff who haven't logged on in more than a week. There are several staff as of now that have been offline 5 or 6 days.

The obvious consequence of not having staff online (especially when the anticheat does not ban anyone) is having a substantial increase of hackers. For example, I alone have reported 41 hackers in the last 12 days. As I don't have information regarding other players' reports, I can only assume there have to be reports in the hundreds over the course of a week.

As stated above, 30% of the staff have not logged on in over a week. What we need to do as a community is try to brainstorm ideas on how to fix this. Below are a few of my own.

- Quota: One idea is that we have a system of logging a staff member's hours, and require them to be on a certain amount per week. This relates to how real businesses work, and the same principles would help Mineverse immensely. By requiring our moderators to be on say, a minimum of 7 hours a week (an hour a day), the hacker count would decrease and I feel the staff would be able to interact much more with the community. Obviously there can be exceptions by letting the higher up staff know ahead of time.
*Edit: 6 hours a week is probably better and more realistic. And it's probably better if we allow the staff to log multiple hours a day rather than require an hour everyday. Thanks @amli

- Accpeting more staff: The more moderators we have, the higher chance there is of one of them being online at any given time. There will be downsides to this of course, but let's focus on the positives here. I'm going to use sports teams as an example. They have all the required amount of players, but they also have A LOT of substitute players in case there's a problem and to help let the starters rest. If Mineverse has a lot of moderators, obviously there will be a better chance that staff will be on in the event some are inactive.

- Shift schedule: I remember from years ago that when applying for staff, we had to pick 2 gamemodes to moderate, and couldn't help with other modes. There were also far more minigames and there was a much larger playerbase and I feel those were what made it a bad idea at the time. Currently, we only have 7 gamemodes and never really go above 200 players, so this idea has potential to work I think. If the mods communicated with each other and divided their active time into shifts, it would: decrease the individual workload, maximize the amount of time somebody is on, and adds a degree of professionalism.

- Incentives: This is just an idea, and probably would not be ideal for multiple reasons; it does have its benefits. Noob could give rewards to staff who ban the most hackers and are the most active in-game and on forums. There'd need to be measures to prevent abuse, but if done properly this would encourage staff to do the best job they could possibly do.

That's all I have for now. Let me know your thoughts! If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear those too! My goal is to take as much criticism as possible and help find out which method(s) would work the best for Mineverse!

 

Staff aren't paid

 

well worded suggestion, i'm going to go neutral on this one.

I like your idea of having a quota (with exceptions of course) but maybe lower it to 6 hours so they have a day off? also when you say 7 hours a week, do you mean they have to log an hour a day? or could they perhaps do multiple hours on one day and have other days off?

hiring more staff is the obvious solution however it also depends on the availability of good applicants; what's the point in promoting more staff if they are just going to be inactive too?

would the shift schedule be flexible?

I don't agree with your idea of incentives, the staff team are all there because they want to be there (at least i hope), they all chose this position and should not require any extra motives.

 

I know. "Hiring" is not the right word, but you probably knew what I meant. I changed the original post. Thanks for the support!

It probably is better to allow staff to log multiple hours a day, so they can have days off if they know they can't be on for a day or simply need a break. 6 hours a week would be more convenient for their schedules and would allow more flexibility.

Of course! This mostly comes down to the mods communicating if they can't make it on a certain time/day or something.

Yeah that would be an issue. We of course can't know ahead of time who will be inactive after making the team, so we may just have to wait and see. Like you said it depends on the availability of good applicants, so maybe we could be a little less strict about only accepting the best applicants and include some of the decent ones as well to boost the count. Just a thought, thanks for the feedback!

 

I kind of like this idea, but it doesn't quite work when people go on holiday. Several mods have announced inactivity the past weeks. For example when I went to Italy for 2 weeks. I had an exact duration on how long I was going to be away, some mods don't have or announce that. Should they be demoted for being away for too long? So the question is basically: Do we want 15 inactive and 3 active mods making up the staff team? Or only 5 mods making up the entire staff team, but all being active?

I think the idea is good and should be implemented, but not exactly how it's described here. Maybe 30 hours per month. Maybe 7 hours per week, unless you have an inactivity thread open and there being a limit on how often you can announce inactivity.

I'm also strongly against gamemode-specific mods. It was chaotic and just bad. If I were to choose 2 I'd clearly choose the two I play myself which are Creative and Skyblock. Imagine being told "oh sorry I'm not a mod on kitpvp and oppvp" whenever someone needs help with a hacker.
A time schedule could work if the staff get better at communicating. Idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



But anyway, we are aware staff inactivity is a problem and I'm sure @Janice999 will read and discuss all your suggestions with the other head mods ;)
Has there even been a single staff meeting where Janice hasn't mentioned activity ha :whistle_emoji: