Changing up the mod system

[MisterBoot]

Lately the mod teams seem to be struggeling. The price mods have never been so far behind and the report mods could also use some more assistance. Therefore it might be time to change up the system.

 

First the applications:

 

To become a mod you need to make a public application which is then reviewed for some time and everyone can leave there feedback. The problem with this application process is: Only very well established figures in the community are even considered for mod positions. 

 

That's why I propose junior mod positions. Some people are very well suited to become a mod, however they might be a bit newer. So a junior mod position, where they can follow a 'senior' mod around for a couple months, might be a good solution. They can learn from the mods and slowly gain more privilleges as they continue there learning path. This way we can allow young passionate people to come in and help out. 

This doesnt mean we should lose the public applications, but you might need to be a bit less strict on the application process, since you will have a second review period on their behaviour.

 

Secondly established mods:

 

Right now when you become a mod, you are basically one for life. Just like politics it might be a good thing to make mods reapply after a certain period to review their current standings and see if they are still fit to be a mod.

 

In my opinion these two changes could help change things up and hopefully help this community in the long run. 

 

Feel free to leave other ideas and feedback. Have a good one

[fork]

agree

[Jammos]

ratio, but also i feel like some of the mods dont even care about really doing the job, moreso the rewards that come with it. 

[gege hates anime]

yeah i agree with it.

[Cedarium]

2 hours ago, MisterBoot said:

Lately the mod teams seem to be struggeling. The price mods have never been so far behind and the report mods could also use some more assistance. Therefore it might be time to change up the system.

 

First the applications:

 

To become a mod you need to make a public application which is then reviewed for some time and everyone can leave there feedback. The problem with this application process is: Only very well established figures in the community are even considered for mod positions. 

 

That's why I propose junior mod positions. Some people are very well suited to become a mod, however they might be a bit newer. So a junior mod position, where they can follow a 'senior' mod around for a couple months, might be a good solution. They can learn from the mods and slowly gain more privilleges as they continue there learning path. This way we can allow young passionate people to come in and help out. 

This doesnt mean we should lose the public applications, but you might need to be a bit less strict on the application process, since you will have a second review period on their behaviour.

 

Secondly established mods:

 

Right now when you become a mod, you are basically one for life. Just like politics it might be a good thing to make mods reapply after a certain period to review their current standings and see if they are still fit to be a mod.

 

In my opinion these two changes could help change things up and hopefully help this community in the long run. 

 

Feel free to leave other ideas and feedback. Have a good one

For the non-troll response (repeating what I said in the discord):

 

We basically already have junior mod positions, because when a mod gets hired they aren't just told to go and handle everything themselves. New mods have to learn how to fulfill their role, which involves training and (a lot of) asking the older mods for guidance/help when unsure of what to do, which in my experience, was basically all the time when starting out.

 

Regarding the well established requirement: if by well established you mean active in the community, I think it's pretty reasonable to say that we want to know who someone is if we're considering adding them to the team. If by well established you mean experience, that primarily applies to price mods (as their job requires the specific skillset that you get by suggesting), with report and community positions primarily involving a user having good judgement. Obviously, experience never hurts, but it's not needed (I did not have former experience when applying).

 

Regarding re-applying: when someone gets mod, it isn't mod for life. As far as I can tell, public re-applications would just be places for users lay grievances with mods (which they can already do and do in fact already do). We can already review a mod's performance or standing without one, so I'm not sure what benefit they'd provide.

 

(can respond to follow-up questions so long as they're not specific to other types of mods)

[Slam]

Specifically for price mods, there just isn't interest for the position. Check the application forum: https://forums.backpack.tf/forum/10-moderator-applications/ - There are significantly less price mod applications than community/report. The problem in this case isn't overly strict selections, it's a lack of interest in the position. Nothing you can really do about that.

 

Perhaps it's becoming time to look into a totally brand new method of price suggestions / price analysis on backpack.tf that's able to be automated / community controlled in some way, and price moderators can be moved from investigating every suggestion to investigating automated changes that conflict with evidence?

[🔥Master Throne Crimson🔥]

2 hours ago, MisterBoot said:

Just like politics it might be a good thing to make mods reapply after a certain period to review their current standings and see if they are still fit to be a mod.

Well this is a bit unnecessary, cause unless you retire, mods are always active enough to not become rusty. And if there's a mod not doing any work whatsoever for a lengthy enough period of time, as far as i know, they'll get contacted by upper staff anyway, whether or not they wanna remain a mod, alternatively, usually mods themselves contact upper staff to retire officially if they've reached the decision to do so

[🔥Master Throne Crimson🔥]

2 hours ago, MisterBoot said:

Feel free to leave other ideas

For sure at the very least something to take away from this post is to get creative and give other possible ways to help improve the situation

[🔥Master Throne Crimson🔥]

43 minutes ago, Cedarium said:

We basically already have junior mod positions, because when a mod gets hired they aren't just told to go and handle everything themselves. New mods have to learn how to fulfill their role, which involves training and (a lot of) asking the older mods for guidance/help when unsure of what to do, which in my experience, was basically all the time when starting out.

Agreed, once your application gets accepted, props to any mod that has been a natural at mod work right away, but i can imagine that when id get accepted id be soooo paranoid for the first month or two to do any final decision completely of my own accord lol, id literally be a jr., a fresh coworker who only in time will become a senior myself

[🔥Master Throne Crimson🔥]

29 minutes ago, Slam said:

The problem in this case isn't overly strict selections, it's a lack of interest in the position.

100%, i love suggesting far too much to ever consider applying

[LSO]

4 hours ago, Master Throne Crimson said:

100%, i love suggesting far too much to ever consider applying

b-but you can market manipulate and be a billionaire!

 

On srs note: if there was to be some form of reapplication or revoking method built into a new system, it would be best for a (arbitrary values incoming): >=75% threshold to be accepted, but require <=25% to not be reaccepted or revoked. This hopefully results in people voting in people good for the community, and requiring actually terrible mod ability or abuse to be voted out instead of a clique of players who had their prices dropped  trying to remove responsible mods.

[LaughingLollipop]

if your system is so complex or so short on participants that you cannot accomplish a reasonable response time on suggestions/reports/etc. it could be either

 

1) the fault of the system

 

2) the fault of the entire community

 

I'm personally thinking it isn't 2)

[eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

7 minutes ago, citrus1990 said:

Who would want to be a mod anyways?

people that want to help mods

[eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee]

idk if i should open a new thread for this but i was thinking of a new system for the pricing system that allows selected non-mods to close discussions that have an obvious outcome like troll suggestions or one that has one option obviously winning with mods only being called for either suggestions that can be controversial,suggestions that have both of the options being close to each other vote-wise or for very niche items like strangifiers

[rndmchrs]

16 hours ago, MisterBoot said:

review their current standings and see if they are still fit to be a mod.

yes please

[rndmchrs]

 

2 hours ago, fFlashh said:

 

[MisterBoot]

22 hours ago, Master Throne Crimson said:

Well this is a bit unnecessary, cause unless you retire, mods are always active enough to not become rusty. And if there's a mod not doing any work whatsoever for a lengthy enough period of time, as far as i know, they'll get contacted by upper staff anyway, whether or not they wanna remain a mod, alternatively, usually mods themselves contact upper staff to retire officially if they've reached the decision to do so

Right now it's up to the mods themselfs to retire. That why I propose a more public review. Just to keep everything more transparent and a more public voice can help choose if a mod should be kept on

[MisterBoot]

@Cedarium

 

If there already is a junior mod position, why are applications so difficult? There hasn't been a new mod since August 2020, while there have been some serious applications. I feel like there are plenty of people passioned for this community, however when applications are so difficult, people will not even try to apply, cause it seems useless. Secondly, I feel like only community mod should be well established within the community, but price mod and report mod can be judged during their learning period aswell. It just seems like there is some elitist flair surrounding the current mod team and some new influences and change ups might be usefull, since there are some clear problems. 

 

This goes the same for reapplying. From the top of my head there is a report on zeus for ignoring sell orders and there was the callout on erik recently, however we havent heard anything from the mods about consequences or just any awnsers in general. I think a reapplication process could help with transparency into some decissions.

 

Im not saying these are the awsners, however I feel like some changes need to be made to deal with the clear problems

 

[Slam]

13 hours ago, citrus1990 said:

Who would want to be a mod anyways?

 

I've modded for dozens of MC/TF2 communities, I enjoy it in game servers because all I'm doing is getting rid of people that are ruining the game for others whilst being more engaged with the community. It's not very fun for discord/forums because at no point is it the center of your focus since nobody wants to just stare at their Discord/browser all day doing nothing else of value.

[shadyfan]

I had an idea these months that there needs to be a position of reporting mod with limitted privelleges that will handle the "zillion" reports from the "Flag" button on the classifieds, like linecutters or trolls. I'd gladly apply for such position as I deal with such listings every day. Sure, I'm not a popular community member, but I don't think I really need that, to be able to provide all the evidence with screenshots and snapshots, and warn or temp ban someone for linecutting for example. The limitted privelleges would mean such mods cannot permaban users and won't handle the serious scammers or sharkers reports in the issue tracker.

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

On 11/6/2021 at 7:53 PM, MisterBoot said:

Right now when you become a mod, you are basically one for life. Just like politics it might be a good thing to make mods reapply after a certain period to review their current standings and see if they are still fit to be a mod.

 

For me this is the most important point that was made. Thanks Boot.

 

I see this as a huge flaw to the current powers in position since we see mod burnout more and more often in recent years.

For example, suggestions reaching as far as 100 pages of unusual suggestions open at one time in the past half year and that only being cut down when a new mod was added. If that isn't correlation, then sure. we can call it a lucky coincidence.

Clearly, fresh blood is a great way of motivating and promoting more activity amongst mods.

 

Reports are always a thankless job and there are a lots of classifieds/listings reports that are dealt with on a day to day basis which are invisible to typical users making us focus more on the visible user reports.

Derpy was originally a report mod and then later asked to step back down to community mod. Not quite sure why it happened after a couple weeks nor is it my place to know but if report mods are struggling with making time to deal with more reports, surely it wouldn't hurt to have kept Derpy on and looking at those invisible reports.

 

People change a lot, lots of personalities have changed over the years and in my honest opinion, there's an air of elitism amongst mods right now that I disapprove highly of. Sure everyone has their own irl problems to deal with, balancing work/life/family.

 

Are we asking too much for mods who volunteer their time for the site? Perhaps, but given mod payouts happen pretty much monthly/every 40 days now due to the pandemic, despite the increase in financial motivation to work harder, I've only seen the current mods become more reclusive over the course of the past year.

 

[Sniper Noob]

On 11/6/2021 at 6:29 PM, Slam said:

Specifically for price mods, there just isn't interest for the position. Check the application forum: https://forums.backpack.tf/forum/10-moderator-applications/ - There are significantly less price mod applications than community/report. The problem in this case isn't overly strict selections, it's a lack of interest in the position. Nothing you can really do about that.

 

Perhaps it's becoming time to look into a totally brand new method of price suggestions / price analysis on backpack.tf that's able to be automated / community controlled in some way, and price moderators can be moved from investigating every suggestion to investigating automated changes that conflict with evidence?

 

I do think this is good idea, and may just become a necessity at some point (if that point hasn't already come). A system designed around repetitive, manual, user input can't scale at a size like this. When the community was smaller it was probably ok, but obviously at this point there's just no way for a small team to keep up with hundreds or thousands of suggestions.