[Honey]

Hello Guys,

This is a guide I wrote for a server that I was administrating, I had written it for them but the general rules are followed by all game servers and these can be applied to other game servers as well so I thought I'd share it with you guys, It has some mentions of 'GC' but meh I didn't bother removing hehe

Recently many people have started to complain against staff members mostly because they were wrongfully muted or they think the staff member have issues with them or he / she ignores them, I can't say that I'm the best staff member GC ever had but I'm staff for quite a bit of time now so I'd like to share my experiences with every other staff member who's reading this. ( Note : I'd be pointing out paragraphs I took from an article before posting this topic in my points ). The rules I'd be telling you in this topic are very obvious but many staff members forget them resulting into reports against them, personally I've never been reported for anything but that doesn't mean I do not make mistakes, infact I must've made more mistakes than any other GC Staff member. This topic is not based on anyone in particular but meant to be a reminder to EVERY staff member as well as the players so sometimes when staff forgets these rules, the players can remind them 

1. Neutralism

GC receives many applications over the year but most of the people think a mod's job is to just take care of the chat. Well that's NOT true. When you become a mod, you've to kinda stop playing like before ( This doesn't mean you stop playing ), From now on you play in a different way which doesn't mean being rude to other people or acting like other people are peasants, It means from now on you're neutral to everyone, You're enemies, you're friends and other players, they're all neutral to you. Even if your brother breaks any rules, warn him or insta mute them depending on the level of the rule breaking.Perhaps this would convey my message to you in a better way :

as a moderator you are not supposed to participate in the
discussion or share your own views, but to be an objective, impartial voice. If you have a lot
of things to say, then you should be part of the panel, and not the moderator. You have every
right to have an opinion. If you put it on the table, however, you would be taking sides. In the
role of the moderator, your personal opinions and feelings should remain unspoken.
Imagine yourself being slightly distanced (physically) from what’s going on; sitting just
outside the group so you can observe the dynamic of what’s going on. You may still be sitting
right in the middle, but part of you is outside looking in.

Often when people come together with widely differing points of view, it’s very hard to hear
the other side’s arguments. What you are demonstrating by being objective and keeping an
open mind is that you hear both sides. By keeping an open mind yourself, you actually model
effective behaviour from your audience. In my experience, when this happens, it does calm
people down and helps them see that there is more than one way to do things.

Being objective and neutral also entails having the ability to craft how a meeting goes, rather
than imposing your will and your point of view.

2. Listen to both sides of the story

This is once again a form of neutralism, When a player reports something to you don't ask him to go report it at the forums unless there's nothing you can do about it, Ask him thoroughly what happened and before taking any action, ask the reported person why he had done something which had angered the reporter. If you think the reported person had done something fine then tell the reporter that it's something allowed or fine, For e.g.  I get msgs many times that they've been scammed but usually I just tell them that Sorry but scamming is allowed and there's nothing I can do.

3. Be kind to people

Like I said before, Do not think other players are peasants or something below you in ranking, They're just the same as you, just with less provided powers.If they ask anything from you, instead of a direct 'no' which is sometimes harsh on the other person, kindly tell them that it's not allowed to ask items from staff ( only for prison, idk if this rule applies for other servers ) or tell them that you cannot give because you want them to stand on their own two feet.  Usually I prefer not to give people items because sometimes other people feel unfair that someone has been treated better by the staff member while you were declined by him. Perhaps this would convey a better message :

As a staff member it is normal, and positive to have a good communication with other staff members. It's not so smart to have great communication (facebook, skype, teamspeak) with one or more of your players. I'm not saying it's bad to have a good friendship with them, but it will make the muting a lot harder for a staff member if he sees a friend breaking the rules, instead of a player. That's why I suggest not adding players on skype or on facebook. Although you could make a group on skype with every single player in it. Then you don't get too comfortable with them and muting stays the same. It also comes in handy when an advertiser or spammer is on the server. This way the players can tell that there is someone spamming on the server, if there isn't a staff member on the server

Having good communication with staff members is completely necessary. You can warn other staff members of players who have been breaking rules, you can tell other staff members about bugs or any other mistake in the server that needs fixing. This gives a fast solution to problems that the lower ranked staff members can not solve.

4. Punishment

It is very important to know what kind of punishment you have to give your players, in order to be fair to them. When a player for example, uses bigotry by saying a discriminating word to another player, without realising he said something wrong (This happens often), then the best way to react on this is a warning. Actually, almost everything ALWAYS start with a warning, except for the following rules:

• Server or outside link advertise
  
  
• Swearing
  
  
• Sexual or offensive material
  

A person can make a joke about someones mom. A person can type something, not realizing that what he typed was wrong. And a staff member can give a too high punishment to something the player didn't deserve. When the warning didn't help, you can do a temporary mute of a hour or maybe a longer mute, depending on how he reacted on the warning on what the rules say. And after the temporary mute, if he acts like this again or breaks any other kind of rule, you can report him to a head staff member. BUT, never, never ever mute him instantly it's misuse of your power as a staff member and the reason why he said something wrong can always have an explanation about it.

5. Always help people

I've noticed that many mods ignore people seeking their help because they think It's a Helper's job to help and not their's. I know that they've clearly written that Mod's job is to only keep the chat clean but helping player is also a hidden job of you's along with many others. Infact when I was a mod, I used to help people more than keeping the chat clean because mostly there were other staff members online who were faster in muting then I was, however this doesn't mean I was ignoring the chat, I tried to warn / mute everyone I was able to but most of the time other staff members were faster than me in doing that so I mostly tried to help other people, Another example of this : Like I said, Scamming is allowed in almost every GC server except for Survival and maybe Semi Vanilla ( Not sure ) but when new people Usually around [a] - [f] in Prison told me that they were scammed, I usually used to pay them back and tell them that scamming is allowed and to keep watch when you trade something next time.

6. Don't get worked up if you're still not promoted

Promotion is one of the toughest decisions of a H-Admin. Before he promotes you, he needs to test you many times so that he's sure that you're capable of the next rank.Even if you think that you deserve a promotion don't say it directly to the H-Admin or the chances of you getting promoted would fall down in an instant. Try to fulfill your job as much as you can and show your activity as much as you can and even if the
H-Admin doesn't consider you getting promoted, Other P-Admins will try to recommend you for the promotion, In my case, I was recommended to [USER=2]@ItsAmethyst[/USER]  by @eagles12345   I told you this so you'd know that I'm not lieing, just keep faith in yourselves and you'll surely be promoted,

7. Keep up a good personality

Having a good personality is an important factor for becoming a successful staff member, Why is it important? Well because many people have staff members as their role models, they are inspired by them and later on when they think they are ready they also apply for staff, Now If you've a bad personality they'll be still considering you their model but if they will be insired by you they'll be becoming like you and developing a bad personality which would be bad for the server as well as the player himself. This point is not for becoming a successful staff member but instead it will help you get better friends and will help us and after all every successful king had a heir for him too 


I think I've conveyed all the points that I wanted to, This has not ended though, I expect contributions by other staff members so new mods can follow this when they're learning how to climb the ropes. If you liked my post, don't forget to share it with other people / players