[Raider Hanks]

1) We do need more than one admin, and soon. Frankly it is frustrating. Nicol is a great guy, but he has a life like anyone else so can't always be available. Unless this issue is addressed soon, you're going to have very pissed off people and frustration within the staff team.

2) Yeah, we bad B). I'll come back to this point after I think about it.

3)Yes and no. Community points are taken in for consideration. If they mention a major negative, it is definitely hopped onto. Overall though, it doesn't really sway the acceptance. We do need to consider more of community input, while still not holding to majority opinion.



Also I can't wait for someone to make this same exact post in 4 months when nothing has changed.

[Mailbox]

All we need to do is free Laced bruh on god

[lacer]

ok this post draws the line where all the original stuff has been said, everybody after this is a rep farming copycat

[La Flama Blanca]

Point 1: Lack of Admins

Point 1.1: Co-Owner Position
I believe an ideal system would be a co-owner, accompanied by 2-3 admins.

The co-owner position would have additional abilities - the most important of which would include the power to promote and demote on the server. This would solve the issue of delays in the granting or revoking of staff and donor positions that we have seen in this occurring. 

• On one recent donor abuse thread, a donor ended up having to be temp-banned because of delays in having them demoted to supporter. This isn't ideal but it was the only option to prevent them from continuing to abuse their powers against other players. 
  
• On the staffing side, we have seen people like Jammin that have recently been promoted to moderator remain unable to ban players while on the server. Instead, they still have to go to the forums and post ban requests, delaying the ultimate banning of malfeasants. 
  
• Another problem is that staff that have resigned remain in their positions despite just wanting to play as normal players once again. When you maintain a staff rank, there is an expectation that you will actively staff. It’s hard to simply ignore reports that pile up or people voicing concerns in the admin chat. 
  

Other powers might be that the co-owner would also be able to implement new rules or staff guidelines with more ease and authority. 

Point 1.2: Additional Admins
I agree that we should have additional TTT admins as well. With additional admins, there are other people you can go to with concerns or comments as needed. This allows for more responsiveness. 

Additional admins allow for a higher level of connectedness with the player base as well. As Jax noted, when the higher staff are more familiar with the player base of the server it allows for better administrative calls to be made when it comes to staff applications, suggestions, bans, etc. With just one admin, this becomes less feasible. That one admin can get caught up with work, life, or other events that may temporarily limit their ability to stay connected with the server. We have seen this with our current admin, through no fault of their own. But with multiple admins, when one admin becomes unable to stay as connected, the other admins will still be able to maintain that connection between the player base and upper staff. 

Additional admins can also be helpful in other regards. The role of the admin is not simply a server-side position. Admins also deal with rule changes, adjustments to the staff guidelines, staff applications, bans/unbans, responding to suggestion threads, etc. While each admin would still need to be responsive to these threads or concerns in the form of voting, being able to split the responsibilities among multiple admins would help to “lighten the load.” With regard to proposed rule changes, a vote would be held between the admins on deciding whether a change is needed. Then, one admin would be responsible for drafting up that rule change proposal. The next time a rule change is proposed, a different admin would step up. This would speed things up and make the role less burdensome. 

• I posted a thread that sought to gather feedback on an adjustment to the teaming rule in October of last year, receiving two pages of feedback. I then bumped it in January, after which it received additional commentary and the staff team shortly thereafter even took a vote on whether we thought a new teaming rule was needed. The thread was just bumped again today - at the end of February. 
  

Admins also have a role in the greater community, beyond their single server. They also take on a role in moderating the Discord and Forums. At present, there are only two active admins in the community which is less than ideal for these extended roles. 

Having previously served as the sole admin of one of the more-frequented servers in the community (Prophunt), I can attest to the fact that having one admin is less than ideal. It’s unfair both to the admin in that it leads to an unfair and stressful burden, and it’s unfair to the community for the reasons previously stated. 

When asked, the well-respected and long-serving former admin, Gabe, stated that the traits that make for a good admin are “someone who has creativity, can make objective decision making, adaptable, perhaps motivation knows how to properly interact with people and address issues, then all the basic things too.” 

I myself also posted some traits that I believe should be present in evaluating a future admin on another thread. 

We have people in our staff team that meet these criteria points. I have already hinted at who I think in our current staff team would make for good additional admins. My list includes the individuals that Jax stated. 

---

Point 2: Bad Staff

Point 2.1: Continued Training Requirements for Existing Staff
Consistency is a problem and I think it is something that could be addressed by additional training, both for current staff members and new staff members. 

• I can tell you that I personally never received a speck of training in my years of staffing TTT. I even came back from a year-long break last year as a moderator and was able to use my powers immediately to gag, mute, and even ban people. That’s not ideal.
  

Some of our more tenured staff members are a little more stuck in their ways, and this is partly because of their personal experiences in having staffed the server for a long time. But part of this might also be, as Jax aptly wrote, because they are simply “bad staff.” I believe that some of our newest staff members are also some of our best, which is promising. This is in part because they are great people, but also because we have in place more comprehensive training. 

In most states, lawyers are required to take continuing legal education classes (CLE) in order to maintain their licenses to practice law. CLE ensures that practicing lawyers are aware of the current and most advanced thinking relevant to their particular field, which is especially important when there are shifts in common practice or law changes. CLE requirements help ensure that lawyers remain capable to adequately represent their clients. Without such requirements, the clients suffer. 

• I believe my reference to CLE applies to TTT staff. The staff are the lawyers and the players are the clients. 
  

We should have something similar to the CLE requirements for active staff members. There will always be a need for moderator discretion, but it doesn’t need to have as much latitude as it currently does. Some amount of continued training can help close this area of discretion up a little as we bring more and more staff members “on the same page” with regard to current practices and expectations. 

Tying back to point 1, expanding training to include current staff members would be aided by having additional admins. Additional admins to write up the google docs or slides that will be used to present the information, additional admins to discover how different staff members are currently using their staff discretion, and additional admins to take the time and hop into a voice chat to lead a training session with current staff members. 

Point 2.2: Committee System Adjustments
At present, I believe the committee system is a good system of decision-making. If additional admins are added, then perhaps the role of committees can be shrunk to an extent. With additional admins, I believe committees could become less relevant for staff applications. TTT has historically sought the opinion of staff members on staff applications through means other than the forums. The other servers do not follow this system. With regard to bans and unbans, I think committee involvement should remain high. Perhaps I am biased, but I appreciate the fact that I recently joined the ban/unban committee. I think it is useful to have more voices involved on bans since they can have significant impacts, especially when they involve regulars. 

Point 2.3: Increase the Ability to Demote or Remove Staff
Our current system only allows Dink to both promote and demote staff members. As I already noted in point 1.1, this is not ideal. There is a need for someone more active to be able to promote and demote staff members (and donors) in order to avoid harmful delays.

But tying into my idea on continuing training requirements at Point 2.1, there needs to be an increased ability for the admins and potential co-owner to demote or remove staff members. The bar for removing or demoting staff members is currently extremely high, with Dink being very reluctant to do so. And based on past events, there is some explanation for such reluctance. On its face, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can prevent staff members from losing their positions based on personal slights or rash decisions from being made. 

The high bar for demotion, however, is problematic for other reasons. We have an enormous list of inactive staff members. Of the more than 50 people on our inactive staff list, 15 are moderators and retain the ability to ban people. We want our staff members to actually know what is going on with the server - which is why I suggested the continuing training requirements at Point 2.1. There is nothing stopping these inactive staff from just popping up again out of nowhere and staffing essentially however they want. 

If a staff member has been inactive for more than three months (or whatever might be deemed appropriate), they should have their rank removed in-game and elsewhere. If they wish to have it restored, they should retain the ability to petition the admins for such a rank restoral. However, they should be required to go through some form of training once again before having their ranks restored. 

---

Point 3: Ignoring the Community

Point 3.1: Increased Involvement of the Community and Non-Staff
Jax, you are correct. The community should have more involvement than they have been given thus far. Garry’s Mod is a game that is more than 15 years old at this point and many servers have come and gone over that period of time. Our TTT server is quite unique in that it has lasted more than seven years. But its continued presence should be taken for granted. This server exists solely because players choose to spend their time on it. Without our players, we would be saying farewell to Dink’s TTT. But our staff community has far too often marginalized the voices of the non-staff players and made decisions without considering the community consequences.

With regard to the spray thread, I will apologize for not giving a more serious response. My post was joking, but I did intend for it to reflect my concern that sprays would be NSFW. In the future, I will try to remember to add on serious commentary alongside any jokes I might make on such threads.

Point 3.2: New Rank
Jax, I like the idea of the new rank. I think this is something that could, and should, definitely be implemented.

The way I see it working is that we allow for a rotating group of respected and regular players to be granted this new rank. This group would consist of some of our former staff, longtime players, and players that have been known for trying to make the community a better place - the people bringing forth ban requests or pinging on-call staff on the Discord. Hell, it might even be useful to bring in the voice of some of our traditional “troublemakers” for the sake of getting some diversity of opinion. 

We would then invite these individuals to join our staff Discord server, only allowing them to see two or three specified channels which will then be used to gather community involvement. 

I think that this group should be rotating as well, sort of like the UN Security Council which has 5 permanent members and 10 rotating members. That way we aren’t always hearing from the same people. 

Point 3.3: Treatment of Regulars
I have also been disappointed with regard to the treatment of some of our TTT regulars. I believe that when problems do arise on the server, there are generally two types - malicious and non-malicious. Malicious activities are those that are meant to hurt server gameplay or intentionally upset people. Non-malicious activities are just people having fun, though that fun may have unintended consequences that may or may not be harmful. 

I’m not entirely familiar with the circumstances regarding Ernie’s ban, but I do know he was known for “shitposting” in the incorrect channels on the Discord server. I would describe this as a non-malicious activity. A couple of minion gifs aren’t hurting anyone. A simple click and they are deleted if need be. No harm, no foul. I dealt with Ernie by simply placing the “PH Chat Restricted” and “Murder Chat Restricted” roles on him so he wouldn’t be able to disrupt those channels, which are sometimes needed for transmitting important information to the staff. That solved the problem. Now if someone leaves the Discord and returns simply to get out of those roles so they can shitpost in those channels, then there is a problem. Again, I’m not familiar enough with the ban to know if this was the case, or what actually led to the ban.

I have disagreed with all of the recent teaming bans, which is why I posted a thread to gather feedback for a new teaming rule. I disagreed with Stupiddy’s ban and was especially upset because I had bumped the teaming rule thread mere hours before she ended up getting banned. I even sent Stupiddy a filled-out unban request that she could just copy and paste into the forums for a basically guaranteed unban. She chose not to take advantage of that and the ban was justified based on the current staff guidelines on teaming. With regard to Crab, this was not a first-time offense, but a permanent ban is still a ridiculous punishment. If the teaming rules had been adjusted, this wouldn’t have been the result. The situation here was again one that I would describe as non-malicious.

That being said, there are still going to be some expectations for behavior on the server that simply being a regular will not excuse. Some regulars feel that it is appropriate to use slurs in the chat, engage in harassing behavior, or (intentionally) queue earrape. These are malicious activities. They are done to annoy both the staff members or the rest of the server for the amusement of the person doing the activity and, perhaps, some of their friends on the server. There are several regular players that frequently engage in these activities on the server and should be punished accordingly. I would say that we already make a number of exceptions for certain regulars that engage in malicious activities, with some players have 20+ warnings for things like using slurs with no punishments. 

---

Jax, I appreciate you taking these concerns to the forums. I’d also like to thank kneegee for creating a thread on adding additional admins in the suggestions subforum, which I merged into this one for the sake of having a unified conversation in one place.

[RussEfarmer]

I don't really have much to say, but it's very disappointing that one of the most popular TTT/PH communities of the past 5 years runs so inefficiently. We can gripe all day about how to fix certain issues, but the backend process is so tangled up that anything you send through is just going to get lost in the middle.

[Gabe]

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
When I was Admin, ban requests were usually done within a day unless it was a super complex ban request. What changed? Does the full ban committee have to vote now? Are Mods inactive? I'd like to know because I have no knowledge about what the issue is here. As far as unban request, at maximum, they usually on average should take a week if it is a controversial or requires extended deliberation. Simple unban requests shouldn't take longer than 3 days. Is this because of the requirement of an Admin posting the final decision that it takes long? I can't address this either because I do not know the issue, but unban requests have usually been fine in my past experience. Obviously things may be different.
- Ranks not given out ie @Jammin (this causes problems, because there were instances where jammin could not ban aimbotters, ddosers, etc)
-This has always been an issue with ranks given out/taken away. This one is really beating a dead horse because it will not change. There is only one person that can do it, and it will likely remain that way. Some people don't receive their promotions for weeks and people who resign don't lose their ranks for sometimes up to several months even tho Dink was notified. This also makes it hard to enforce an "unresign" policy. Again, no offense to Dink because ik he's busy and all that, slow it is for people to even receive promotions or be demoted when they resign, some people have had their ranks for months after they resigned even after Dink was notified. So the solution is to give Admins the ability to promote, right? Unfortunately, Admins will never get the ability to demote/promote, believe me I've tried to go down that dark path with a few other Admins before in regards to doing promotions and demotions with Dink's explicit permission. It's just an unfortunate reality that will never change. At one point, there was talk that Admins would get the ability to promote up to Trusted, but that never happened. Mod is even more impossible and Dink's position has always been skeptical of giving anyone else that ability because of course, T-Mod/Mods can karma ban/ban. That I can understand to an extent. Again, I have tried to push for a change to this -even an active co-owner that can promote- it led nowhere. The only thing we can hope for is that Dink responds faster and does the action. Sometimes it requires multiple times telling him. I'm going to now copy and paste what I have said about this in the past, because as I noted, these issues get brought up often. Feel free to skip the next part of this response.

we don't have access to do somethings that would be essential to the "so called" Admin. One big thing, promotions. We accept the apps, promote on forums and discord, but cannot promote in-game. It would make sense if we could if we are able to do everything else.. right? I think it would be less of a hassle for both us, the player, and Dink if we were able to do it all in one swoop instead of having to wait. We would also be able to get into training right away. I did say I wasn't going to knock at old graves but I'm going to knock at one, sorry for being a hypocrite. Last year, Admins were likely going to gain the ability to promote up to Trusted. That did not happen, it might've been because Dink hasn't been able to figure out how to set it up in a way that we couldn't promote higher than that. Obviously actual demotes with his approval would-be off-limits and should be... I'm actually going to talk about that later. But perhaps being able to do Test Mod or even Mod would be nice if we could promote. 


Ik that may sound like me going on a power trip here, but it really isn't. It's just reality to me of what would make sense and I do believe that Admins should gain that power to promote and possibly demote those that have resigned only and strictly to that. Too many times, staff have come back onto the server still with the ranks even though they have resigned ages ago even after we tell Dink they have resigned and need it taken away. There have been past Admins with their ranks still sitting there for months. We've tried to enforce an "unresign policy" where staff that "resign" cannot come back and get their rank automatically, they' d have to start at the bottom. You can see the issues with enforcing this if people do not lose their ranks due to technical issues. Thankfully, not many if not any have abused and would they would sometimes still help out while they are on until it was taken away although they are technically not staff. So to those that have resigned and did that, thank you. 

- 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.
The Ideal system that I tried with other admins to implement was have the suggestion committee go over these suggestions and complaints, vote on them, if approved the Admins and Dink work to see if they can implement them. Again, systemic issues in the staffing system prevent this from being a functional possibility.
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. 

Again, this is beating a dead horse. No one will EVER get access to the files except Dink. No even Co-Owner. Not Co-Owner ever had file access, just access to restart the server and do promotions, at most. That will never change. Ik I sound like a debby downer, but this is just the reality. As mentioned before, Admins are nothing more than glorified mods. Yes we need more, an odd number. But the people chosen as Admin must be qualified instead of just having more for the sake of numbers. I can list all the traits of what a good Admin takes, but I want to keep this short. But instead, since these issues come up time and time again, I will now copy and paste something I said before what an Admin truly is in this community, in my view.

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 guidance given to us by Dinkleberg 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. So the question is, do we effectively carry out those duties, or are we "so called" Admins. Fun fact, critics would use to call the Monroe Doctrine a "so called" doctrine because it was not effective in carrying out its core duties it was supposed to... nvm I'll go on a long history lesson about that but ik you guys don't like that. Nonetheless,  sometimes we do in fact find ourselves powerless to effectively carry out those supposed responsibilities. We have been called many names because of this. "Useless Elite," "So Called Admins," and "Glorified Mods." 

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.

I'm going to copy and paste what I've said before about this because it was I and someone else who made the committees, but it has since become dysfunctional since we left. Not saying anyone is at fault for that because by design it is a complex thing. But, it was made per request by Dinkleberg to add a more democratic and inclusive decision process to include staff. At the time, people were complaining about "admin tyranny" "admins decide anything, staff do not have any say!" Now, I've always believed "admin tyranny" was perhaps the best thing with how the staff system here is designed.  I will now, again, copy and paste something I have said before about this issue.

We made the committees with an intent that those with the with the most relevant experience, skill set, preference, etc. would sit on a specific committee rather than arbitrarily placing people in committees and stacking them with so many members, which is why it was so selective at its inception especially for Mod and Test Mod committees. If a commitee had way too many members that did not have to be there, it would get out of hand. When Dink tasked the Admins with coming up with something like the committee system due to yk admin tyranny. more staff inclusion, blah blah blah etc,  Queef and I made it with the intent that if you don't have 10 hours of consistent in-game time within 2 weeks then you weren't allowed to formally do anything in the committee such as voting, and this was actively monitored when I was around, I hope it still is. This was the standard Admins were held to by Dinkleberg for voting eligibility, which is a good thing. If they were inactive and they had any prior past interactions with say, someone applying for trusted, they were more than welcome to share it with the committee but they had no part in a final decision.


I will now add onto this. We wanted to retain the Admins ability to proactively engaged in the final decision and  have the final final say in very important cases. I do not know how committees operate now, but it seemed to work with a smaller and more selective number of qualified members. So perhaps it should be overhauled to be more selective and smaller member counts of each committee. That seemed to work fine., for the most part. This makes it so people just are not arbitrarily placed on committee just for the sake of them wanting to join a committee. Like you said by design it sounds good on paper, but it has to be managed right for it to work. 

 

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.

The point of the feedback is it being input for the decisionmakers to well, make a decision. Unfortunately in the real world, decisionmakers ultimately have the final say. It is like when you hand a report to a Congressman, give them policy recommendations and feedback on an issue. They will look at it but do they not have to accept the feedback because they are the decisionmaker and ultimately have the final say. Feedback in the context of unban and staff apps play a major factor, but is not the final aspect. Sometimes Admins and staff know things that others giving feedback do not know. Either because people PM with evidence, past interactions, and making an objective decision based on the rules. Or, feedback given is not always insightful on apps and unbans too. That is why we say it has to be meaningful, otherwise it is completely useless. In other words, they are not persuasive enough because they either do not answer the question "so what?" or "Why do we care about what you are saying here?" As in, backing up their feedback with reason, evidence, logic, etc. There are many instances where feedback is seen as a popularity contest and +1ing people because they are cool and seem to know what they are doing on the surface. 

Again, a new rank is beating a dead horse. Will not happen. Regulars and Donors should already to an extent be able to provide meaningful insight on an application or unban request if they are serious enough. A rank won't change that and will only be for show and theatrics. They should also never be able to "vote" on an actual application or unban request. That's just my opinion, though.
Summary
- We need admins.
Yes. but they have to be good and qualified rather than just having more admins for the numbers. I talked about this above.
- There are too many bad staff.
Yea. Demotions are a difficult and rare thing, because of again, systemic issues and a high burden set by Dink for demotion. There is a strike system in place, though. I hope that is still used.
- Stop ignoring regulars.
Inherently bad systemic system, feedback, etc. All talked about above

TLDR: Not much will change if the system remains the way it is and these threads will continue to be made every 6 months with the same cycle occuring: A thread made, discussion, a period of complaining, then another thread on the same exact issues made again a few months later.

I will end this point by embedding a video that sums up how the community is ran: Yes, this video is intended as a joke. 

[Hello Kitty]

(119) u r the man 4 the job - YouTube

[Deer-ly]

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.

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.

Im responding to this part only don't shoot me, 
new member role

im sure there are more but i remember this one.

i love the idea of a testing committee regular players that can apply or ask to participate in testing new maps/models/weapons/ect. and it could give long time committed players a bigger role to help out than applying for staff and staff is stressful so can't blame them for not applying and its a load off staff or whoever else does testing. You could give them a shiny Orange/light purple role ingame but most likely in discord is the only place to have it maybe. But i think it would be a great idea and maybe even a discord sepreat or just a locked channel in the main where they could discuss about new items, currently suggested items, and any fixes and patches that may need hence why i suggested the MapPatcher it is basically hammer for the ulx menu and it is an amazing tool all the servers should utilize and the testing committee could have permission to use such an item so they can quickly fix things for staff/admins/dink in maps while they don't have time for example Murder has maps like, mu_springbreak: roof of hotel, out of map glitch, the wall;ttt_...resort: behind the bush. and like dong said "The first thing I did after being promoted to Admin was reworking committees. Completely wiped all of them and re-added people who were active. Great system up until recent because people got inactive again. My advice is to not wipe them again, just remove people who are inactive and keep adding newbies. For the Training committee Nicol and I had originally planned for that to be application based. I think that you should wipe the committee and make it what we had planned Nicol. The people currently in it are fine, but they're all mostly inactive. If they were all active it would be fine. Training is done by random people at times which is fine, but set people is a more concrete system idk." 

Don't wipe them like he said here just pick and remove.

The only issue "i see" is some on purpose picking addons that are borked but people want them (COUGH COUGH PIDGEON BOMBS COUGH COUGH) but in all i love this idea and i think it should be implemented.

[dong]

The committee system is active since I completely revamped it. The only thing that I felt like was wrong with it was that my admin vote didn’t really matter. Committees shouldn’t make an executive decision, more like a private input and put their votes in, but to me it felt like lower staff were making promotional decisions. Admin votes used to override any other vote and now it just didn’t really feel like that to me.

[matt_st3 (Strongrule)]

I’ll write this throughout the day since I don’t feel like adding a wall of text in one go.
The community lacks strong leadership. Be it for whatever reasons and point fingers at whatever group you want to blame, you no longer have people in positions that are both willing and able to make the changes. Able being the most obvious issue, tied to the “in positions” problems, while willing is mostly a problem in that the community runs on people who make it that far. This isn’t admins, owner, or committees since those are just titles but rather actual leaders. Willing and able needs both the want and energy to pursue goals while able needs the critical thinking and ability to actually deliver on community goals. The servers have seen many of those people come through, and they did not all carry the title admin or committee member. Hell some that have held that title should never have even made it there because they did not meet those qualities but rather knew the right people and/or brownosed to get there. Everyone has their opinions and their favorite picks for who was the best this or that, but the successful ones made a lasting impact.
In an opinion that I previously expressed the committee system failed out the gate based on why it was implemented. In an attempt to fill this void committees were created to boost the raw number of people who could directly affect server and community decisions. While some members now had more access and could actually make the system *work* you still lump in a number that could not. Even with this, you still actually change nothing because no one gained any real access only a title slapped on. The same mods that joined committees were only able to express their opinions in other channels, a good admin/owner/person in charge would still be taking in the opinions right off the applications. But let’s get away from that and say that committees changed the framework and that slapping a title on helped mods feel like they have more of an objective say. Even then they have no more access to actually implement what they vote on. Ban, and boy do I have opinions on why bans shouldn’t be a voted on item except in 1% cases, and unban committees have more of a direct use as the mods have the command access. Unless I’m forgetting a committee the others all still rely on someone to pull the trigger.
Give up on co-owner, I and others have written full models on how to make that work and it won’t happen given past examples of this being abused. Slapping a title on regulars and saying they have more of a say than others based on a random or hand picked selection defeats its own purpose. Instead, have leadership that values a well written argument over a time played in a game. *But Matt, you just said that leadership doesnt exist - well maybe if people would stop acting like shit heads to people trying to prevent a guy from moaning in his mic or taking a break-up and stringing it all over the forums those people that do exist would stay and make it to the needed ranks.*
And I’m not going to sit and wear on dink Bc it’s a beaten horse, but man you know there’s a direct line between your activity to people staying and community happiness. It’s a necessity yet at the same time we already know that the server/community will putter on so long as important issues get *just* enough attention. But until the minimum bar is raised people will continue to be upset - and some of them even give solutions that are viable.
As to the admin number, yes an ideal number rests in 3 or 5. Any more and you bog down the position by too many votes needed and you can polarize the admin team who then need someone to manage them. Any even number will reach a point where they need a tie breaking votes, same polarized issue. One admin requires a 24/7 activity that you cannot maintain due to life and burnout. 3 or 5 provides a small revolving door of activity and a massive boost to the simple tasks of approving unbans and the like. With each sever having this number the community becomes a daily well oiled machine. The very few times were a massive issue comes up you now have a large group of experienced leadership to draw from shot then *draws from their own groups*. What a wild concept. ‘18 didn’t needs half of the hoops to jump through simply because you had more people around that were both willing and able to moderate and implement needed changes. Hell dink was faster and yes, the co-owner having access sped things up. Still it won’t be back.
I’ll add later