[[Yellow] Travis1421]

I should probably clarify again that the thread at large is for unresigning in a general context

In that case, there probably should be some sort of procedure as well. I don't fully disagree with you on this subject in general but I do believe that there could be a specific set of circumstances(such as this one) where unresigning could be a necessary thing.

[David]

In a general sense that you are addressing, unresigning  and immediately getting their rank back shouldn't be allowed; however, like any other scenario in any aspect of life, there will be exceptions to the norm. 


I think there is only  ONE exception that I can think of in which it is acceptable for someone to unresign and get their rank back immediately: 


1) The staff team collapses (either through mass resignation, mass exodus, etc.) and needs someone they can trust back into the mix to help fix the bullshit going on. (I.E. what happened recently)


This shouldn't be something that happens often, and I believe it needs to be voted on by the entire group of that specific server at the very least, at most the entire staff team.

[matt_st3 (Strongrule)]

Long story short, there are several people dink would have no problem with letting come back into an old or another admin slot. It further extends to other ranks on occasion, but also consider how he lets inactive staff stay. Maybe i don’t fully agree but there is an argument that can be made there. Admin is a weird thing Bc it deals much less with specifics and more with concepts, so if you have someone who has proven they can run the position then it’s likely they can again in the future. Those individuals also are the ones who spend time making sure they get all the information they need to do the job “correctly” so things like knowing the rules etc doesn’t really factor in.

[RussEfarmer]

I don't like the idea of suddenly "unresigning", it's a spit in the face to people that had to work their way back up the hard way, but when our most popular server is left completely without a leader for an extended period, it's a necessary evil.

In the case of Fish, where he was basically doing all of the admin stuff anyway despite not being admin anymore, I don't have a problem. When you're the only admin and step down to moderator with no one to take your place, there's admittedly not much of a difference other than your name being a different color.

[TheUltraFish]

Great post by @TheUltraFish, @Prince Nicky La Flama Blanca, and somewhat of @"Nicol".  Now it is time to move onto the next topic of transparency that was briefly mentioned: what the policies and procedures on for handing in your resignation of your resignation, for the sake of transparency. *As in unresigning in general, for any staff rank*

Previously, the policy was that staff that resigned could not instantly obtain their own rank again and had to start at the bottom of the ladder the way everyone else does. However, this became extremely difficult  because staff would not get their ranks taken away for months despite the person responsible for removing them being told they resigned, on several occasions. 


So what is the official policy now? Is there even an official policy? If not one needs to be clearly established for the sake of transparency! Otherwise, there is much ambiguity and uncertainty surround it. 

Can staff come back as they please after they resign? 
Do ranks still take months to be taken away even after the person responsible for removing them has been notified several times? If so, does this present a challenge to having an official policy? 
Are they not allowed to instantly obtain their old rank back? Do they have to start at the bottom of the ladder?
Can resigned admins hand on their resignation of their resignation?
Do they have to request a formal meeting with Dinkelberg?
Is it like the military where there is active and reserve duty?
Fill out a form?
Admin vote?

As you can see there are many possible answers here, but which is the right one? This topic demands transparency for the sake of old staff, new staff, and the community at large. 

I now suggest we receive an answer as we continue the quest for transparency. If no answer is received we shall take it to the street and stage sit in protests across all gamemodes. Participants would refuse to play the gamemode and just sit in spawn en masse peacefully.

Just as a clarification for my stance: I have always opposed unresigning and will continue to. I tried to enforce it the best I could when I was admin but it was difficult to sustain when people's rank weren't taken away for months. Hopefully the second half of that sentence has changed for the better and it can fairly be enforced properly now. This would include all ranks.
I now yield the floor  

Thank you for your concern and it is something that needs addressed. I believe the term "admin slave" is something that can be placed. Basically it follows the terms of, if Dink trusts you and gets you admin, you can NOT lose it. People in this area, that I know of, are Nuru, Nicky (specifically his PH rank at one point in time), Queef, and me. There are probably others but essentially these people are stuck with the rank of admin. They have made it clear that they want the rank gone at a point in time, they asked for it to be removed, but Dink decided that he would not.

I did not come out of retirement because I wanted to. I still had admin access on forums, was still admin on server, still admin in the PH staff discord, access to the admin banning panel and could still send messages to Dink about the server and still get responses as long as I kept it simple. The staff leak with only 2 admins just irked me so I basically demanded Nicol to give me the rank back. The only other person who could give me the rank back was Dink himself and he does not really do that. Before just jumping in however, I asked several members from the PH staff team of all ranks (Trusted, Tmod, and Mod) if they were fine with me returning. They all were fine with it as long as I did not exhaust myself mentally again. I did this before asking Nicol for my rank back on discord. I am going to make this clear, I did not want to be here but someone had to step up. If I have to be mentally tired from this again from time to time, and not have people like me, so be it.

Now to get to your questions that you asked. My answers are in RED


So what is the official policy now? Is there even an official policy? If not one needs to be clearly established for the sake of transparency! Otherwise, there is much ambiguity and uncertainty surround it. 
I think the overall "policy" of starting over still works. If someone resigns for a week and then changes their mind, I believe it would be fine to return to their former rank. I never lost my rank anywhere except where I had the power to basically remove it myself. There has never really been an official policy, more of general agreement that if you resign, you should start over. This is especially true the longer said individual is away. I never fully resigned from PH in the first place, more of just fell back to moderator so I could still be useful on server if need be. Admins and upper staff of each server should discuss how they want to approach this for transparency. For example, if TTT goes under some major rule changes and someone from 6 months or a year+ ago comes back, it'd probably be wise to do.

Can staff come back as they please after they resign? 
Probably not a good idea. If I have staff who get tired and think about resigning, I tell them to leave and take a break and not resign. Random people that no one knows coming back after having their rank removed would be chaotic. 

Do ranks still take months to be taken away even after the person responsible for removing them has been notified several times? If so, does this present a challenge to having an official policy? 
Varies on when Dink pays attention to it. I have learned to just copy and paste the message of removing/adding ranks to him daily until he responds. It has been fairly successful in having individual's rank removed. I would think not much of a challenge unless they asked to stay then that would fall on the upper staff and/or server admins to discuss and vote on for that individual.

Are they not allowed to instantly obtain their old rank back? Do they have to start at the bottom of the ladder?
Case by case basis. The individual themselves, how much time has passed. I generally want to say no, they don't get their old rank back after "X" amount of time and should start from the bottom because the servers are always changing community and handling wise. Someone coming in when things were completely different could cause many headaches for themselves and others.

Can resigned admins hand on their resignation of their resignation?
I would say no, as I previously stated, I asked staff of every rank before coming back. Resigning from my resignation and handling it myself was more of a joke than actual reality that should be used in the future. There were nearly 10 plus staff members I asked in a VC before asking for the rank back.

Do they have to request a formal meeting with Dinkelberg?
They can if they want and communication is key. Something that obviously at times has been lacking in the community. Dink knew I still had admin or admin privilege's in more than one place and did not remove them in any way himself. Despite me asking at least once for him to remove them. If you have been away for a LONG time you should at the very least talk with the current staff team and Dinkleberg.

Is it like the military where there is active and reserve duty?
Sadly in a way, yes. Some other previous admins and I will always be an "admin slave" to Dinks unless we do something drastic to have it gone. If not getting on our knees and begging him to remove them. Nuru did ask several times and instead was giving murder admin as well. It depends on the individual and their history in Dinks it seems.

Fill out a form?
Admins fill out forms? If you are talking about old staff returning to their roles they should at least speak to the staff community and the admin(s)

Admin vote?
As I have answered in a couple times, I checked with the staff team and the only concern was that I did not overwork myself. Nicol and Nicky were also fine with it. Technically, yes? If you are talking about an individual other than admin, they should at least have to speak with the upper staff of said server before proceeding. If the admins say no, then it is what it is.


I hope this covers a majority of concerns. If you have any follow up questions I will answer them when I can. What has happened in the past week is not normal and should not become the normal. I saw the staff leak and got angry with what was happening with all staff being blamed by the community and such. I figured out who the individual was leaking staff was within an hour of getting the rank back and let the other admins know. I only came back to help, I have made this clear to staff team on PH the very least if not the entire staff team and am now making that clear to the community.

[La Flama Blanca]

Apparently, I'm in the minority here.

I don't see what the big deal is about unresigning, provided that certain criteria are met.
--They were a competent and capable staff member
--They resigned peacefully
--They remained active in the community
--The temporal distance between date of resignation and request to unresign is relatively short

I don't see why we should go out of our way to make it more difficult for good staff members to return. Besides, it's really not all that different from an inactive staff member returning to staff actively again. They both might be a little rusty, but they have their past experience to go off of and are always welcome to ask the other staff questions. 

Plus, as you already mentioned, sometimes these "resigned" staff members maintain their rank in the server for months afterward. This means that it remains a bit of an open question regarding whether someone can really be considered "resigned" or not when there isn't much to reflect that status. 

An official policy "for the sake of transparency." I already know that Gabe is satirizing matters here, but I'll go ahead and bite. 

Is there even an official policy?
--Admins would not be able to establish an official policy. The admins do not own this server and Dink retains the ability to decide who he wants to allow unresign as he deems fit. That being said, admins may retain a limited ability to permit unresignations. Whether they choose to exercise this ability is a server-dependent question. As the Murder admin, I would potentially allow for an unresignation provided the criteria I provided above were met. 

Can staff come back as they please after they resign?
--No

Do ranks still take months to be taken away even after the person responsible for removing them has been notified several times? If so, does this present a challenge to having an official policy?
--Sometimes. There is not an official policy across all servers, nor would one likely be feasible. 

Are they not allowed to instantly obtain their old rank back? Do they have to start at the bottom of the ladder?
--From what I have witnessed thus far, staff members that unresign within a short period of time are permitted to retain the rank they had prior to resignation. If the temporal distance was significant, you would need to start from Trusted once again. 

Can resigned admins hand on their resignation of their resignation?
--This sentence doesn't make sense and I will not answer it. 

Do they have to request a formal meeting with Dinkelberg?
--I don't believe so.

Is it like the military where there is active and reserve duty?
--Inactive staff and active staff

Fill out a form?
--I really don't think that's necessary. 

Admin vote?
--There is currently no more than one admin per server. It doesn't make sense for a Murder admin to be directly voting on who can be a part of the PH staff, whether that be for applications or unresignations. 

As you can see there are many possible answers here, but which is the right one? This topic demands transparency for the sake of old staff, new staff, and the community at large.
--The answer is "it depends."

---

I retired from the position of TTT Moderator at the end of 2015. When I decided to return and wanted to rejoin the TTT staff team in August 2017, I posted an application for Trusted. I think anything over 3 months is too long to decide to unresign, unless there are especially compelling reasons. 

I technically stepped down from PH Admin ~2 years ago. I still retain the rank in the server. I have been able to use the rank to help the current staff team moderate the server - gagging and muting the racists, weird noise-makers, and screamers. More significantly, I was able to use the rank to institute a couple of bans that only admins are normally able to do. 

In December this past year, I made a misplaced resignation thread on the forums, with the resignation to take effect on Dec 31st. My rank in-game was changed to Donor+ at some point later on. I decided I didn't like Donor+ and wanted to return to Moderator on TTT. I asked Dink if I could unresign on Jan 28th - he said yes. 

I believe I met the criteria I provided earlier:
--I was, and remain an excellent TTT Moderator
--I resigned peacefully, though my thread was a bit negative it did not "call anyone out" or anything foolish like that
--I remained active in the community. In fact, I never even left the staff discord server after "resignation" as I continued to help out with Murder. 
--The amount of time between my "resignation" and my request to unresign was less than a month.

[Nicol Bolas]

I know this is specifically more of a general thread about unresigning, but in Fish's case I will mention it was fairly unique. He didn't fully resign from staffing, in fact he just stepped down.

---

I asked Dink if I could unresign on Jan 28th - he said yes. 

This is also another unique case that is recent in terms of resignation. There really are no policies required if Dink directly approves it.

[Tedgp908]

We need to not allow unresignations so you all discover life outside of Dinkleberg's.

[Mana]

We need to not allow unresignations so you all discover life outside of Dinkleberg's.

I walked outside my house, experienced life for 3 seconds, then went back inside because it was too hot.
Life sucks.

[dong]

Depending on the individual and what rank they held I wouldn't mind letting them come back under certain stipulations. People resigning and coming back multiple times to their same rank should not be allowed. After the first time just let them work up the ladder again, so you're guaranteed at least some sort of activity from them. An example of my first statement would've been Christian applying for Mod a few months back, realistically for the betterment of TTT he should've gotten the rank, but people were against him coming back for whatever reason.

Ultimately though, if Dink himself approves it then that's how it'll be.

Imo it should come down to how influential the person in question was, how they performed their duties, and what rank they had prior.