[lacer]

My biggest issue with this is it starts off like its an address to the ENTIRE community, and then turns into a TTT post.
Neither fish nor myself were contacted regarding this post tbh. This adds to the admin-admin communication that we need.
Yes I dont physically get on server but I am on discord quite often now, daily honestly. I am able to respond to messages. You cannot preach it if you're not going to take the first steps yourselves. If we have something that happens on ph that is crossing into discord or an issue, I am sure to share with you guys, and the discord committee, today being an example, those of you in the committee/admins will know.

Despite it turning into a TTT post, there's still things here that can be learned from both PH and TTT. But you're absolutely right. My apologies for bringing up the past again, but I've seen a little of the behind-the-scenes stuff, and a lot of things could've either happened earlier or been prevented altogether had the admins communicated clearly to each other. That's not to say adminchat has been leaked to me, because it hasn't, but I'm making a point.

Now to pitch in from PH side, during my time here things I've noticed that help. If you teach the staff properly, they teach the community properly, and there fore the community teaches the newcomers. When I >was< extremely active, I made sure to teach people how to talk to others, how not to, etc. (I'm no longer a good role model for this, keep that in mind, I admit now I am a shit role model.) I did this heavily onto my mod team, and they in turn taught tmod, and so on and so forth. It was to the point that we had donors that helped us constantly, and it RARELY felt like donors were overstepping etc. We had newcomers that were able to grasp onto things easily in game due to this and help other newcomers.

This is something that is a big problem in TTT. It is assumed that the staff members are trained on how to use their commands, when to mess around and when to be serious, etc. As far as I can see, that is either completely false, or isn't done good enough. Like it was said in the OP, this year, we've had far too many false bans for hacking/scripting, and joke bans/abuse has become excessive. What do I think the problem is? Simple, TTT staff aren't trained to be serious. Granted, it's not fun to be serious all the time, and I get that. But there's a fine line between having a little fun while still doing your job, and letting fun get in the way of your staff duties. Exhibit A: THREAD 

Also, please, for the love of all that is good and holy, teach the TTT staff what hacks look like. If it means people who are clearly not hacking aren't banned, I'd gladly be willing to volunteer my knowledge.

As for the drama/discord issues/etc, we have to put a cap on that, and fast. We have become far to lenient and been giving 4-5 warnings to one person, when for example, they've been here for years or months. Long enough to learn the rules, but instead of dishing actual punishments, we do more warnings. Therefore they think they can get by with more than someone should, and push limits, and people.

Being on the receiving end of a Discord punishment yesterday, this is a valid point. Of course, I'm likely a special guest in the punishment department because of my community ban, but I don't think it's fair to be muted for a day and a half for calling Fozzy the n word once and deleting it. (which, by the way, is the first time in my almost two years here that I've ever done that in the Discord) Avi is working on some guidelines for the Discord mods, though, so this will likely not be a problem for much longer.

As for the point about being too lenient, I've personally witnessed people who should've been punished sooner get away with a lot more than the average Dinkle person. I've nothing else to say.

As for the issues between community/staff. Matt is correct. Staff no longer is held to the high standards that they used to be, which is something ive been trying to break the ph staff back into. They're not fans of it but it has to be done. When you have a group of people that are allowed to do things however they want, because there is no "admin" or head in charge, etc, for so long, and you bring in rules and restrictions, people do tend to go haywire and sideways. It's not as bad as it used to be and for the >most< part I'd like to say it's better than it was. I know some of my staff will disagree here and that's fine.

This goes back to my point about training the staff. Yes, they are probably trained on how to slay somebody, bring somebody, gag/mute somebody, etc. The problem is they are not trained to know when is a good time to be serious, and when it is okay to mess around a little. I've been on the giving and receiving end of joke slays, bans, kicks, whatever. I've never had a problem with it, but again, there's a point where the joking becomes excessive and interferes with staffing. It gets so bad at times that even the players don't know what's going on. For instance, this thread. This is a ridiculous display, but Gabe's final post sums it up pretty well.

For me personally, my communication issues with Dink are none. Fish has some here and there with responses, but it's not as bad as with TTT I assume. So I want you guys to look and see if maybe it's in the way you guys are contacting him, or something on his end, and discuss between you guys, as a group, how to improve that. Otherwise it'll stay stagnant. Talking with dink about lack of communication usually helps me. I'm not saying it will fix it for you, but it doesn't hurt to try. And as a group. But don't do it in a way where you gang up either. Nobody likes being intimitated. :d

This is something that I am guilty of, blaming Dink for all of the server's problems and insulting him constantly. While yes, a lot of TTT's problems could be solved if Dink was active, there's no reason to talk to him like he is below you. Remember, he might be the owner, but he's also human. Show the man some respect. It's not enough to say it's his fault and call it a day, without making an attempt to talk to him like a friend rather than a boss.

Also I will say Gabe, while I overall agree with the point you're making, the way you have said it here is very much how modern Nuru talks, and it's wrong. The way you address people here is kind of toxic. The one thing we're trying not to be. (I'm guilty, I don't get a lot of room here to preach) If you want people to have better communication between staff/players (admins being included in staff) we have to start by not talking to them as such. Yes I know how frustrating this job is, and sometimes we let ourselves go. But we have to work harder than the rest in keeping it under control.
I mean this with the best intent and I hope you don't take it the wrong way.

Yeah, I don't know what you were thinking with that one, Gabe. I don't get a lot of room to preach here either, in fact I have less room to talk about this than Nuru does, but for an Admin, especially THE Admin that's seen as the bridge between the upper staff and the community, that's not how you talk to people. The community may be all that you've said, but they're also human. Nobody will be perfect, including you. The least you can do is talk to the community. that you're supposed to be the role model of, like they're other humans, because they are. Not okay.

Also I'm against admins getting promotional power. I will never be for this. Leave that for co owners/dink. Yes I know this is problematic, but i see it being FAR more problematic in the hands of admins, specially people who are first timers like myself.
We break shit :))))))) LMAO

Dunno about this one, maybe if we bring in active co-owners (or at least co-owners that are willing to get on and do promotions/demotions when they're needed) and Dink is a little more active, we can at least give the Admins the ability to promote to Trusted. 

Or maybe we give it to the committee members, since the TTT Admins are all but glorified Moderators at this point.

One last thing to the story I swear.
"Admins:

Let's start with one question, what are we? What are we supposed to be? Oh wait, that was two questions, my bad. The answer to the first one is that we are the community leaders along with Dink. We act on Dink's behalf and overseen directly by him while we oversee Trusted-Mod. For the second one, we are supposed to be part of the central authority of the server. We are supposed to make the minor executive decisions within our power in Dink's absence. "

What are we? We are the community leaders UNDER Dink, PICKED by the community, and Dink. Keep this in mind. We don't act on his behalf. We act on the guidelines he gives us, and it's free reign from there. You know as well as I do, and any other current or past admins. Admins here have pretty much free reign to change rules/etc, they just have to be ran by him first.
What are we supposed to be? We are supposed to be the group of people that players and staff can go to when there are issues, when something is broken and in our power to fix (We're ignoring that many don't know what we do and don't have access to), and we are the faces of dinklebergs to put it plainly. How we carry ourselves as admins, is how everyone out there, sees dinklebergs.
Now stop and think, how does dinklebergs look to an outsider?
Thats something we need to work on, myself included.

See the section regarding Admin conduct.

My responses are in red.