[jax]

At the recommendation of @Prince Nicky La Flama Blanca, bringing the recent discussion from the discord to the forums. This post is, at its core a giant lists of complaints, frustrations, recommendations, and hopefully can be used for a discussion between staff members and players. I'll jump right into it. I'll label anything that's my own opinion.

1.) Lack of Admins
For starters, I think many people are frustrated with the current status of the staff team. There seems to be a significant disconnect between normal players and staff members. Specifically, TTT has not had a strong "leader" in months. @"Nicol" is an admin for TTT, and for the most part acts as a 'head' figure for all of Dinkleberg's, yet I do not believe he is active enough (especially on TTT). [Let me make note, this is not his fault necessarily. He has work, real life priorities, etc. On top of that, he is the sole admin currently] On top of that, @"Dinkleberg >:(" is rarely active. [Once again I assume Dink is in the same position as nicol, so the same 'excuse' can be used for him] However, that leaves the TTT community, and really the whole community without leaders. This can lead to the following problems:

- It takes weeks for ban requests / unban requests to go through
- Ranks not given out ie @Jammin (this causes problems, because there were instances where jammin could not ban aimbotters, ddosers, etc)
- Community stagnation

• I'll get into this later, but without strong leadership no changes can be implemented. @RussEfarmer brought to my attention in my spray thread, that even there was an agreement to make changes, no one but Dink has access to server files. This is a goodpoint, and just lends itself to possibly giving admins some control of the server / appointing a co-owner (through Dink's personal vetting process). I won't go into more on this because it's Dink's server and if he wants sole control of the files that's on him.
  

- No real environment for discussion. Without admins to talk to, or recommend things to, suggestions/complaints are lost to the wind.

One of the other problems that arises from only having one admin is the fact, and no offense to Nicol, that the admin is disconnected from the player base. It's my belief that an admin should know their player base as it's more conducive to making proper administrative calls (staff applications, suggestions, bans, etc)

Give @Jammin and @bryanbrr admin. We need the admins. They deserve it. They care. They're good staff. We've been without good admins for more than 3 months now. 

2.) Bad Staff
This is going to get into, what I imagine, the more controversial territory. I'll try to be objective, but my own bias will be embedded in this. Other's feel free to give your input or disagree. There are members of the staff that, frankly put, are shit. They are just terrible at their jobs. I will not post names, because I want this post to be a discussion, not an attack on individuals. That being said, some of the staff are incredibly: immature, inactive, and inconsistent. The way they treat some players is totally different than how they treat others. It is often joked about, but in all seriousness, there is no reason for some staff members to worship @"Burb" . It comes off as creepy, cringy, and pathetic. It could probably even be considered harassment by the standards of the server. There have been multiple occurrences where rules are not consistent. For example, the situation with @thunderwalrusinnthebar and his approach to the word "tranny". While I personally think Thunder was wrong in this instance, I think it highlights a bigger problem that is not his fault. (Also, I should mention that while this is under the "Bad Staff" section, I don't necessarily think Thunder is a bad staff despite a personal disagreement with him) Consistency. There are far too many instances where the staff are inconsistent with their ruling. Other staff dismissed this as "at the moderator's own discretion" but I believe that this is a just an easy cop out. Some other quick notes:
- The staff team uses a committee system, which @Ethan described on discord to me. On paper, it looks like a pretty good system. However, in practice as it currently stands, I believe it is inefficient because of the aforementioned problem of bad staff. Bad Staff = Bad Decisions
- Former admins like @dong have mentioned that he could not do anything progressive with the community because of the current committee system. He also mentioned a problem with poor staff.

3.) Ignoring The Community
What the hell is the point of +1s and community feedback if it doesn't mean anything? I can already guess that there will be a response that says something along the lines of "We do listen to community feedback!" but that's demonstrably false. An example being @"aethy" s unban request. He can give more input on this more in the replies if he wants. Another example, would be the spray thread. As @JesseTheUndeadCowboy mentioned in the discord, the only person giving legitimate criticism was Russ. Russ was able to pretty much pinpoint why it was a bad idea, but the other staff, as Jesse mentioned, kinda just jerked themselves off with non-answers in a dismissive way. (He said it a lot nicer than that.)

Another big example of this lies with how staff currently treat regulars like Rylo, Ernie, Stuppidy, and Crab. Crab got permabanned for, possibly one of the most BS examples of teaming. Staff will ban people who have been with the community for years, and then pikachu face when the playerbase spams "ASAB" or complains about the staff being trash. #FreeCrab

A possible solution to this would be to introduce a new rank (no in-game powers at all) that members get when they reach a certain time limit, activity, etc (whatever is deemed as a good qualification) that allows them to vote within the committee. Regulars, and people who have dedicated a lot of their time (take Jesse for an example) should have more input than they already do.

Summary
- We need admins.
- There are too many bad staff.
- Stop ignoring regulars.

I will end this with this; I understand that regular players (myself included) can be shitheads. We complain, we troll, etc. I write this post with this self awareness.

[JesseTheUndeadCowboy]

I will say this also. I don’t think all of the staff members are bad. They make mistakes and I know this, but the problem is without a real leader they will continue to make mistakes without knowing it sometimes. Dong himself also stated in a post that whenever he tried to make decision it was always overturned by the committee system. I will see if I can find it becuase im pretty sure he said something like that. Anyway dong also got ignored and people didn’t seem to want to listen to him. I could probably try to find a thread that shows this since I did notice it before at times I’m also sure. Anyway, I might comment more later once I think some more.

[Mana]

At the recommendation of @Prince Nicky La Flama Blanca, bringing the recent discussion from the discord to the forums. This post is, at its core a giant lists of complaints, frustrations, recommendations, and hopefully can be used for a discussion between staff members and players. I'll jump right into it. I'll label anything that's my own opinion.

1.) Lack of Admins
For starters, I think many people are frustrated with the current status of the staff team. There seems to be a significant disconnect between normal players and staff members. Specifically, TTT has not had a strong "leader" in months. @"Nicol" is an admin for TTT, and for the most part acts as a 'head' figure for all of Dinkleberg's, yet I do not believe he is active enough (especially on TTT). [Let me make note, this is not his fault necessarily. He has work, real life priorities, etc. On top of that, he is the sole admin currently] On top of that, @"Dinkleberg >:(" is rarely active. [Once again I assume Dink is in the same position as nicol, so the same 'excuse' can be used for him] However, that leaves the TTT community, and really the whole community without leaders. This can lead to the following problems:

- It takes weeks for ban requests / unban requests to go through
Hey i've seen this before!
- Ranks not given out ie @Jammin (this causes problems, because there were instances where jammin could not ban aimbotters, ddosers, etc)
- Community stagnation

• I'll get into this later, but without strong leadership no changes can be implemented. @RussEfarmer brought to my attention in my spray thread, that even there was an agreement to make changes, no one but Dink has access to server files. This is a goodpoint, and just lends itself to possibly giving admins some control of the server / appointing a co-owner (through Dink's personal vetting process). I won't go into more on this because it's Dink's server and if he wants sole control of the files that's on him.
  

- No real environment for discussion. Without admins to talk to, or recommend things to, suggestions/complaints are lost to the wind.

One of the other problems that arises from only having one admin is the fact, and no offense to Nicol, that the admin is disconnected from the player base. It's my belief that an admin should know their player base as it's more conducive to making proper administrative calls (staff applications, suggestions, bans, etc)

Give @Jammin and @bryanbrr admin. We need the admins. They deserve it. They care. They're good staff. We've been without good admins for more than 3 months now. 

Jammin JUST got mod, so as much as a good staff member he is, he still needs time regardless, As for bryanbrr and anyone else that would be interested in the admin role, they'd have to go up to dink himself and talk with him about it. Admins may make the decisions on staff roles but they don't have privileges' that grant the role itself, which is why they need to relay to dink to apply the role to them. And as for admin candidates, they can't just rely on nicol to go "oh hey this guy wants admin, give it to him". Even then, dink does his own thing and there's nothing wrong with that.

2.) Bad Staff
This is going to get into, what I imagine, the more controversial territory. I'll try to be objective, but my own bias will be embedded in this. Other's feel free to give your input or disagree. There are members of the staff that, frankly put, are shit. They are just terrible at their jobs. I will not post names, because I want this post to be a discussion, not an attack on individuals. That being said, some of the staff are incredibly: immature, inactive, and inconsistent. The way they treat some players is totally different than how they treat others. It is often joked about, but in all seriousness, there is no reason for some staff members to worship @"Burb" . It comes off as creepy, cringy, and pathetic. It could probably even be considered harassment by the standards of the server. There have been multiple occurrences where rules are not consistent. For example, the situation with @thunderwalrusinnthebar and his approach to the word "tranny". While I personally think Thunder was wrong in this instance, I think it highlights a bigger problem that is not his fault. (Also, I should mention that while this is under the "Bad Staff" section, I don't necessarily think Thunder is a bad staff despite a personal disagreement with him) Consistency. There are far too many instances where the staff are inconsistent with their ruling. Other staff dismissed this as "at the moderator's own discretion" but I believe that this is a just an easy cop out. Some other quick notes:
- The staff team uses a committee system, which @Ethan described on discord to me. On paper, it looks like a pretty good system. However, in practice as it currently stands, I believe it is inefficient because of the aforementioned problem of bad staff. Bad Staff = Bad Decisions
- Former admins like @dong have mentioned that he could not do anything progressive with the community because of the current committee system. He also mentioned a problem with poor staff.
Consistency and Moderator Discretions don't align despite how it seems, but as someone who was formerly staff, hearing anyone start whining about it gets real annoying, considering its the "cop out" for complaining about staff decisions as every single time a thread like this is made, i hear that word every single time. As for committee decisions, there is a pin for each and every committee section that literally states Admins make the final decision (excluding community bans), so hearing dong complain about not being able to do anything makes me think he's just falling towards community and staff pressure.  

3.) Ignoring The Community
What the hell is the point of +1s and community feedback if it doesn't mean anything? I can already guess that there will be a response that says something along the lines of "We do listen to community feedback!" but that's demonstrably false. An example being @"aethy" s unban request. He can give more input on this more in the replies if he wants. Another example, would be the spray thread. As @JesseTheUndeadCowboy mentioned in the discord, the only person giving legitimate criticism was Russ. Russ was able to pretty much pinpoint why it was a bad idea, but the other staff, as Jesse mentioned, kinda just jerked themselves off with non-answers in a dismissive way. (He said it a lot nicer than that.)
Again, boils down to admins discretion, there are also things in the staff's discord that are brought into question that should not just be thrown out like a piece of candy to the community to prevent shitstorms. Anyone remember ginger? Got community banned for stuff that was violating discord guidelines and would've had dinks fully caught up in it. Stuff got leaked and a staff member in her clique went off and temporarily nuked the murder server.


Another big example of this lies with how staff currently treat regulars like Rylo, Ernie, Stuppidy, and Crab. Crab got permabanned for, possibly one of the most BS examples of teaming. Staff will ban people who have been with the community for years, and then pikachu face when the playerbase spams "ASAB" or complains about the staff being trash. #FreeCrab
As much as you like them for messing around too much, almost all of them were shitheads that made staffing harder than it had to be. (quote on quote almost) 

A possible solution to this would be to introduce a new rank (no in-game powers at all) that members get when they reach a certain time limit, activity, etc (whatever is deemed as a good qualification) that allows them to vote within the committee. Regulars, and people who have dedicated a lot of their time (take Jesse for an example) should have more input than they already do.
Oh boy the "helper role" discussion again.

Summary
- We need admins.
- There are too many bad staff.
- Stop ignoring regulars.

I will end this with this; I understand that regular players (myself included) can be shitheads. We complain, we troll, etc. I write this post with this self awareness.

Responses in red, yes there are biases, no I don't care.
may edit it.
Also, as much as i hate the consistency card and like the people in staff, can you guys deal with the stupid grapple exploiting on the server? (no we're not going into the HURR DURR REMOVE JUMPPACK, REMOVE GRAPPLE debate)

[Burb]

~snip

2.) Bad Staff
The way they treat some players is totally different than how they treat others. It is often joked about, but in all seriousness, there is no reason for some staff members to worship @"Burb" . It comes off as creepy, cringy, and pathetic. 

There are far too many instances where the staff are inconsistent with their ruling. Other staff dismissed this as "at the moderator's own discretion" but I believe that this is a just an easy cop out. 

3.) Ignoring The Community
What the hell is the point of +1s and community feedback if it doesn't mean anything? I can already guess that there will be a response that says something along the lines of "We do listen to community feedback!" but that's demonstrably false. 

Another big example of this lies with how staff currently treat regulars like Rylo, Ernie, Stuppidy, and Crab. Crab got permabanned for, possibly one of the most BS examples of teaming. Staff will ban people who have been with the community for years, and then pikachu face when the playerbase spams "ASAB" or complains about the staff being trash. #FreeCrab

A possible solution to this would be to introduce a new rank (no in-game powers at all) that members get when they reach a certain time limit, activity, etc (whatever is deemed as a good qualification) that allows them to vote within the committee. Regulars, and people who have dedicated a lot of their time (take Jesse for an example) should have more input than they already do.

1. I agree that there should be additional admins, but I have nothing to add to that discussion. Just acknowledging that point.

2. There is so much staff inconsistency. On top of that there are way too many inactive staff members who for whatever reason maintain their rank? I recognize that Dink does not want to demote inactive people, but there's no reason for people to come back and have their powers. We've had 2 recent staff abuse threads made on tmods that have recently "become active again" and I don't understand why staff randomly come back and immediately post applications to move up in rank. I genuinely believe that Dink needs to become more involved on the server again, decide on additional admins and begin to remove inactive people. Bringing the point back to inconsistency, the "t word" is not enforced by any staff other than thunder, therefore jax and anyone else's warns for it should be removed. Slurs are something that should be enforced across the board, so maybe TTT staff should make a list and stick to it rather than have wishy washy "this person enforces it and this person doesn't care". That's a flaw of the system though, for not having a clear list of what we do and don't allow. Let's also talk about how making jokes with telling guests to use !dinksttt to claim free points became a warnable thing out of the blue? Discuss changes in the rules and make sure it's known within the community before you just decide to impose them on people. 

Also, yeah I don't really have anything about the ppl simping for Burb thing, I ask for help when I recognize people legitimately harassing me and I try to give staff proof for stuff like that, but I actively tell people not to "simp" for me and try to make sure people aren't just warned for making jokes/little comments at me. I dunno man, there's nothing I can really do about the simp thing, I know the thunder "t word" warn situation had people after me, but I was laughing about the situation and thought the warns should be taken off. Even when I was called a skank in the discord today, I didn't get offended or asked for the guy to be warned...I don't know what people want me to do about it tho, if you've got suggestions on what I can change (other than telling me to leave the community) then I'm all ears.

Since I'm not apart of TTT staff, I don't know how the committee system really works :/ I don't wanna comment on whether or not it's good based on what others say. 

3. I've said it before things that are TTT related do feel like a popularity contest for people to brownnose staff. However, since I'm not ttt staff maybe there are "other issues" that aethy needed to stay banned for. It just feels like regulars come to the forums to shout into the void as nothing ever gets done. I'm frustrated beyond belief that staff get upset at people saying ASAB (hello? it's a joke.) especially considering how they act towards some of our regulars. We have longterm community members who get banned for the most mundane reasons. Crab got perma'd for looking in a corner. I genuinely don't understand how we have staff that seem to cling to their ability to ban people rather than change rules that actively hurt the community. Staffing should be about keeping the game fun for people, building the community up and implementing change in areas that desperately need it. Regulars have literally no power in this place. But I just used this section to rant, I have nothing constructive to add because I feel like most of this relates to staff attitudes.

Also fuck adding another role, no offense. Regulars should already have some form of input, it's on staff to take us seriously. Adding roles doesn't mean adding power. Look at Nicol, he's admin and can't do much. It's why I can't blame him for these problems lmao.

//zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz//

[lacer]

staff inconsistency????

me when unresign

[GAMER]

Before i say anything else i want this to be a judgment free zone. I hope no one takes any offense to what i'm about to say.
With that being said....
Some take this game to seriously, Garry's Mod is just a game. We should all just relax and game together, happily and have fun. That is one of the main reasons to game after all (for fun).  I feel some people are treating this like real life politics, the forums are like the court room and the staff are the police offers and judges. When at the end of the day that is not reality. No one is a judge and no one is a police officer (to my knowledge. If you are that's good for you i guess don't really care.) none of use are being paid to play here. So why treat it like we are professional gamers on the ProDinks team. Us gamers need to just relax and take things a little less seriously. Out of all the non professional scene games i feel gmod has the most drama (at least my experience with this server). And i believe that is because so many gamers take this game so seriously.
So let's all as a community just Maxo-Relaxo and focus on what truly makes gaming not fun.

Cheaters/Hackers, Racist and overly offensive for no reason people that think they are funny but its really not and just kinda sad and honestly cringy and makes me wonder how they get by in real life.
  AND
These people that like to ddos and crash our games.


Love what i had to say or hate it, im lowkey right and u cant change my mind. 

[jax]

Before i say anything else i want this to be a judgment free zone. I hope no one takes any offense to what i'm about to say.
With that being said....
Some take this game to seriously, Garry's Mod is just a game. We should all just relax and game together, happily and have fun. That is one of the main reasons to game after all (for fun).  I feel some people are treating this like real life politics, the forums are like the court room and the staff are the police offers and judges. When at the end of the day that is not reality. No one is a judge and no one is a police officer (to my knowledge. If you are that's good for you i guess don't really care.) none of use are being paid to play here. So why treat it like we are professional gamers on the ProDinks team. Us gamers need to just relax and take things a little less seriously. Out of all the non professional scene games i feel gmod has the most drama (at least my experience with this server). And i believe that is because so many gamers take this game so seriously.
So let's all as a community just Maxo-Relaxo and focus on what truly makes gaming not fun.

Cheaters/Hackers, Racist and overly offensive for no reason people that think they are funny but its really not and just kinda sad and honestly cringy and makes me wonder how they get by in real life.
  AND
These people that like to ddos and crash our games.


Love what i had to say or hate it, im lowkey right and u cant change my mind. 

incredibly based

[Battons]

Both Bryan and I have tried to take up better communications with everybody on the server, while we might not make crucial decisions we try to make sure things get handled efficiently. I agree that inconsistency is present and unfortanutely its been one of those problems that's hard to take a stab at. When we tried months ago it led to draconian staffing methods which I think nobody liked. As for regulars being treated differently we tried to give rylo so many chances and every time he kept doing the same things. If anything we let regulars get away with alot more than we do guests, which just boils down to trust. I can speak personally aswell the backlash when a regular gets punished is extreme. Joke or not you can only take so much verbal abuse before it starts to wear you down. Occasionally we will offer to ban regulars for others just so that way they don't have to be branded as "that staff" just for doing their job. Anyways, I do agree we could use more admins and dink definitely knows and is waiting for one. We just have to wait and see.

[Mailbox]

I have made suggestions to Nicol about making Rule 6 more specific, and people seemed okay with it until they saw "No need for it." When I was discussing purely the need.
In my view, from my experiences, things like tranny have been a slur for quite some time. At one point I needed to become aware of it myself and I changed based off how it effected others I cared about.

The staff is treated like a joke here and when you make a decision be it a completely good one or not, you get backlash that honestly makes you question why you really cared in the first place. We all try to make the right decision based off the information at hand and experience. Some experiences and information might defer from others and that is okay, what is not okay is making someone feel bad for doing something you consider to be wrong or not within your views.

As for the committees, it seems like there is a blatant issue with that. There are work arounds and changes you can make, but everyone that is staff should have the opportunity to take part in making decisions in some way not just selected or volunteered people. I have ideas about this, as I have been a part of communities that make votes or decisions as a whole not as a minority but I do not care to suggest unless asked.

Regulars in my opinion should be held to a standard higher than those of guests. You shouldn't give anyone special treatment based off time or personality, especially if they get away with things when you are not there. Make decisions and stick to them, you only have so much you have a choice and control over in life.

Anyway, good luck. Hope to see some progress here eventually.

[⋆ Fx ⋆]

It seems like these threads are completely pointless. Every time a thread like this pops up nothing changes. Its beating a dead horse.

If you want an opinion everyone should be treated equally with punishments regardless of rank and punishments shouldn't be dependent on staff tolerance.

ALSO this server throws out perma bans like its nothing. Teaming/ghosting/exploiting shouldn't be a perma ban along with mass rdm depending on how severe it is. Hacking honestly should be the only thing that is a perma ban. Everything else should either be a week or a month.