05-08-2021, 02:08 AM
I have a few thoughts as a semi-active Deathrun player (~17 hours) and as someone that has known Voss for several years now, having approved two of his past applications in the Prophunt setting.
Nicky - Voss has very little active gameplay in recent days on the server, and his actual in-game time is rather low. Tell me why we might consider looking past that.
First of all, I don't think it's entirely fair to judge activity and gameplay using the same standards as you might for TTT/PH for our less active servers, Murder and DR. While TTT and PH are usually alive for around 12-18 hours a day, the Deathrun and Murder servers might be alive for 2 hours a day if you are lucky. That creates a serious challenge towards maintaining activity on the servers as a staff member, or player. That 2 hour period of the server being alive could be at 4 AM in the morning, 8 PM in the evening, or 2 in the afternoon. There rarely is a rhyme or rhythm to when the servers might be active. As a consequence, the times in which a staff member can get on and actively staff are quite limited. If the staff member in question has to get up at 7 AM for work, I don't think any of us would expect them to be on the server hustling anytime past midnight.
But Nicky, if the servers are dead, shouldn't it be the role of the staff, especially someone applying for the admin rank to try and revive the servers?
-No. This is a volunteer position. A staff member should not be expected to sit on an empty server for hours on end in an attempt to get people to join. They should be able to use their computer RAM for other things, rather than leaving Garry's Mod open when not actively playing or staffing. Besides, if a staff member tried doing that, they would probably be accused of time farming with their score in GameTracker reflecting this.
So Nicky, you are saying that the staff member has no responsibility to do anything to try and support their less active server?
No. I am not saying that. Just because a server doesn't get much activity doesn't mean that a staff member has no responsibilities. Prior to becoming Murder admin, I tried drumming up excitement by creating a Murder vs. Deathrun challenge where we would compare our servers at the beginning and after a few weeks to see which had moved up the most in Gametracker rankings. It seemed to drum up some excitement for a little while, introducing some new players to the servers which they may not have known even existed. Murder won ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Now Voss has not done a similar competition, but that's not a problem. When people raise an issue in the #dr chat in the Discord, Voss is often there offering to assist. He's taken care of all the ban requests in the past 7 months as well. That seems to show that he is out there still trying to do what he can to keep Deathrun alive. That stands out to me.
What else makes Voss special, Nicky?
Besides serving our nation's military, Voss has been in this community for more than three years. Of that time, he has served both the Prophunt and the Deathrun community as a moderator. His time in Prophunt has not been generic either. I counted over 70 ban requests from him, alongside multiple guides to help players and staff. I saw a guide on recording programs, how to download CSS textures, and how to bind your keypad. I call that going above and beyond.
With regard to Deathrun, I saw that Voss has submitted five ban requests, as well as two others to document bans he had made in the interest of transparency. He has also been active in the DR section of the forums, making his own suggestion threads and commenting on those of others with his insights. I'm not entirely certain when he became DR Mod, but it has been at least several months now.
The admin rank goes beyond just the individual server. Voss has been active throughout the community. His posts in the forums and Discord make this clear. He has even made some suggestions regarding the Discord, which used to be the domain of all the admins to help govern (now it's Jammin's problem).
Nicky, you were made the admin of two servers in the past. What were your qualifications in comparison to Voss?
It is, of course, impossible to compare someone like the Prince to anyone else. He is truly a one-of-a-kind individual. Regardless, I will try.
When I became the admin of Murder, I had around ~65 hours and had been with the server since it started. Like the situation with Deathrun at present, nearly all the other staff were inactive, including the admin at the time. So I had been serving as the "acting admin" for some time - dealing with any problems that arose on the forums, Discord, and server. Voss has been basically doing the same things for the past few months now.
When I became the admin of PH, I was one of just two people remaining on the server that could ban. I had maybe ~25 hours on the server at the time, but had stepped up in the aftermath of the staff exodus. There was a need to be able to IP ban baddies and I had been in the community for years at that point, so I was promoted to admin. Voss has been in the community for years, and there is always a need to have someone that can access the tools that only admins have - IP bans, fixing times, etc.
Nicky has one final point.
Voss - you put that you have 30+ hours. Several people have now commented on that number. From my calculations checking Gametracker, I saw around ~60 hours of gameplay.
The Triangle - 50.93 hrs
▲ - Triangle - 3.47 hours
Old Man Voss - 4.15 hours
Don't sell yourself short.
Nicky - Voss has very little active gameplay in recent days on the server, and his actual in-game time is rather low. Tell me why we might consider looking past that.
First of all, I don't think it's entirely fair to judge activity and gameplay using the same standards as you might for TTT/PH for our less active servers, Murder and DR. While TTT and PH are usually alive for around 12-18 hours a day, the Deathrun and Murder servers might be alive for 2 hours a day if you are lucky. That creates a serious challenge towards maintaining activity on the servers as a staff member, or player. That 2 hour period of the server being alive could be at 4 AM in the morning, 8 PM in the evening, or 2 in the afternoon. There rarely is a rhyme or rhythm to when the servers might be active. As a consequence, the times in which a staff member can get on and actively staff are quite limited. If the staff member in question has to get up at 7 AM for work, I don't think any of us would expect them to be on the server hustling anytime past midnight.
But Nicky, if the servers are dead, shouldn't it be the role of the staff, especially someone applying for the admin rank to try and revive the servers?
-No. This is a volunteer position. A staff member should not be expected to sit on an empty server for hours on end in an attempt to get people to join. They should be able to use their computer RAM for other things, rather than leaving Garry's Mod open when not actively playing or staffing. Besides, if a staff member tried doing that, they would probably be accused of time farming with their score in GameTracker reflecting this.
So Nicky, you are saying that the staff member has no responsibility to do anything to try and support their less active server?
No. I am not saying that. Just because a server doesn't get much activity doesn't mean that a staff member has no responsibilities. Prior to becoming Murder admin, I tried drumming up excitement by creating a Murder vs. Deathrun challenge where we would compare our servers at the beginning and after a few weeks to see which had moved up the most in Gametracker rankings. It seemed to drum up some excitement for a little while, introducing some new players to the servers which they may not have known even existed. Murder won ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). Now Voss has not done a similar competition, but that's not a problem. When people raise an issue in the #dr chat in the Discord, Voss is often there offering to assist. He's taken care of all the ban requests in the past 7 months as well. That seems to show that he is out there still trying to do what he can to keep Deathrun alive. That stands out to me.
What else makes Voss special, Nicky?
Besides serving our nation's military, Voss has been in this community for more than three years. Of that time, he has served both the Prophunt and the Deathrun community as a moderator. His time in Prophunt has not been generic either. I counted over 70 ban requests from him, alongside multiple guides to help players and staff. I saw a guide on recording programs, how to download CSS textures, and how to bind your keypad. I call that going above and beyond.
With regard to Deathrun, I saw that Voss has submitted five ban requests, as well as two others to document bans he had made in the interest of transparency. He has also been active in the DR section of the forums, making his own suggestion threads and commenting on those of others with his insights. I'm not entirely certain when he became DR Mod, but it has been at least several months now.
The admin rank goes beyond just the individual server. Voss has been active throughout the community. His posts in the forums and Discord make this clear. He has even made some suggestions regarding the Discord, which used to be the domain of all the admins to help govern (now it's Jammin's problem).
Nicky, you were made the admin of two servers in the past. What were your qualifications in comparison to Voss?
It is, of course, impossible to compare someone like the Prince to anyone else. He is truly a one-of-a-kind individual. Regardless, I will try.
When I became the admin of Murder, I had around ~65 hours and had been with the server since it started. Like the situation with Deathrun at present, nearly all the other staff were inactive, including the admin at the time. So I had been serving as the "acting admin" for some time - dealing with any problems that arose on the forums, Discord, and server. Voss has been basically doing the same things for the past few months now.
When I became the admin of PH, I was one of just two people remaining on the server that could ban. I had maybe ~25 hours on the server at the time, but had stepped up in the aftermath of the staff exodus. There was a need to be able to IP ban baddies and I had been in the community for years at that point, so I was promoted to admin. Voss has been in the community for years, and there is always a need to have someone that can access the tools that only admins have - IP bans, fixing times, etc.
Nicky has one final point.
Voss - you put that you have 30+ hours. Several people have now commented on that number. From my calculations checking Gametracker, I saw around ~60 hours of gameplay.
The Triangle - 50.93 hrs
▲ - Triangle - 3.47 hours
Old Man Voss - 4.15 hours
Don't sell yourself short.
