A Proposal to Greatly Improve Our Subspatial Dystopia

[Epinephrine]

The next thing you talked about is the division of power within staff.

Again I disagree with you. Creating more levels of power, and more hierachy is completely unnecessary. Staff really isn't that big of an organization, you really don't need middle management. In fact it's a horrible idea.

Here's why. You've created a bunch of new levels of staff. Actually you've just created a whole bunch more smods (and sysops with limited power as you put it): division heads, go to guys, and executive council. I'm really unsure why this is necessary. Project pointed out that people can fill multiple roles, and you agreed that this would be how it would work. So are you telling me that you'd have say:

"Cpt.Guano! - smod in charge of TWL, executive council, and go-to-guy" for instance? I fail to see how this would be different from current staff.

Perhaps you say that you'd have a division head per division: a head ZH within the ZHs, or head ER within the ERs, or a head ZH recruited from the ranks of ERs. First of all, having a head within the level is probably a bad idea. Some of the lower ranks switch up a lot, and thus you'd need a new person in charge all the time. It would be counterproductive to train up someone for that job, as you'd want to promote your best guys, and getting that job meant they weren't the best guys or you're holding them back unnecessarily.

The other option of having someone of a higher rank look over them faces the same problems. If someone higher than a mod looks over mods we call that person smod. Someone over ER looks over ERs, they are likely a senior mod, and next in line for smod (look at previous paragraph for why that's a bad idea). This goes on.

I personally think that a different option of having perhaps an executive committee of trusted mods/ERs look over ZHs, and then smods for the rest would be the best bet. In fact I think TW is already moving toward that system with staff trainers for ZHs and so on.

How about other problems with your system? Your system implies that we'd need specialized appointed people for a number of positions. It implies that for these postions to be effective, there'd be say 3-4 go to guys at least and so on. In fact, there already are such people in Trench Wars. We call them smods. Defining someone as a 'bot go-to-guy' isn't going to make him a good programmer. In fact that's the reason why 2dragons is in charge right now. Having a 'TWL-go-to-guy' leads us to TWL ops. Having a 'bans-go-to-guy' means we have a BanG Op which we already do in Overstrand.

Your positions don't really change things much, it just means you're giving them a different name. The same problems with staff inactivity and difficulty in hiring good people would still exist. Additionally, if the go-to-guys or executive council or division heads or whatever are TOO specialized, we run the danger of other upper staff not wanting to take on smaller easy to do jobs of another person if that person is away or inactive because they risk screwing up something they aren't supposed to be tampering with.

Overall I think you are just adding a larger level of complexity which is completely unnecessary, and adding TOO MANY checks and balances and specialized jobs (which will require constant refilling as staff turnover is quite high) for an organization of around 60 people, most of which probably don't want management jobs or aren't really up to the task.

[Epinephrine]

The last part of your post deals with checks and balances.

I want to address this by asking you... what positions do you think need more checks and balances, and how do you properly do this? Let's run through the smod positions which really do reflect the most important parts of TW:

1) Bans - okay most BanG things are very technical. The BanG Op makes sure the proper length of bans are handed out for repeat offenders, makes sure no one was wrongly banned by abuse, and makes sure that all the bans have suitable reasons. The only real thing up for discussion are appeals for bans. This can usually be dealt with by one person, as most are technical. 'I was caught under someone else's ban' can be verified. 'I was wrongfully banned' is usually just discussed with the person who banned them.

Certainly some cases might ask for a lengthy appeals process, but let's get real here. If you really are a 'good' person and don't get yourself banned, then one ban lasts for just 1 day. The second ban is 3 days. By the time an appeals committee can hear you, your ban is up. If you're a multiple repeat offender who has a 90 day ban, then likely you deserved it. People who always get banned, get banned for a reason. And while some cases the final ban might not have been correct to the letter under a court of law, I'd argue for the easyness of things that we really shouldn't be wasting our time with people who constantly abuse and skirt the rules anyway. If you really think so and want to waste staff time on it, create a special bans appeal committee but don't add more 'checks and balances' by adding more people in powerful positions.

2) TWL - I've stated why I think 2 people is a good maximum in the other thread. Perhaps at max 3 if one person is designated as HEAD op and the others equally powerful vice-ops who need to follow the head's orders.

3) Bots - Does 2dragons who updates bots and runs twdev really need a check and balance? It's a really technical job, and I don't really think it requires someone to 'check and balance'.

4) Events - Does this really need checks and balances?

5) Dean of Staff - Okay this is a really contraversial point. But in every organization, there is always a leader. The Dean of Staff is the president of Trench Wars (the sysops would be akin to the board of directors, with chairman of the board PriitK and CEO Dock). I know that Cpt. Guano is now helping out P_L with dean, and hopefully that will relieve some pressure from P_L, what with running TWL with Dean and all. Much like TWL, I don't think you need more than 2 deans (which we've done successfully MANY times in TW past).


So basically what you're proposing is really just add more people in powerful positions in case they are inactive. And if that's the case sure, but for the purpose of limiting power? Hell no.


The last thing you talk about that I haven't discussed is the idea of having advisors and policy advisors.

I see this in two ways. Currently, policy is developed by those in charge (priitk and dock basically made TW into a zone that didn't tolerate racism for instance) in the highest of levels, while more specific things are hammered out by the upper staff (the smods do more specific policy implementation in the area of their portfolios). What we have now is good, except it leaves very little room for review and other ideas unless you personally know someone in charge and ask them to change something.

Ideally, I'd like to see some sort of inter-staff organization where staff members can suggest improvements where those in power are somewhat obligated to acknowledge if enough other staff agree it's a good idea. Sort of like a committee of people within staff to improve staff. I guess highly trusted non-staff can also suggest, but the list of those people is very tenuous, so they could just suggest their 'good' idea to a staff member they know to sponsor it.


Finally there's an idea which I think can solve a lot of the problems you presented by only having one or two new positions. The idea I'm thinking of is to have a staff ombudsperson.

Basically have someone (or two people or a very very small committee of trusted people, probably staff) which deals with complains and corruption. This group would be an impartial group that would oversee things to make sure nothing bad was happening, and recommend a course of action to the sysops to take if someone was acting inappropriately. Either way this would only be for official things (i.e. of smod was being secretly racist or mod being harassed by smod wrongly or something).

I can't ever see anyone being in charge of rooting out people who 'aren't doing as good a job as the ideal candidate' at any level in a volunteer organization such as TW staff.

[Epinephrine]

Finally now that I've shown how I disagree with all your ideas, here's my solutions for systemic changes which I think are realistic:

1) Create intra-staff organization that deals with shaping policy, in which affected upper staff would be obligated to listen to and perhaps apply.

2) Create an ombudsperson for complains within staff or about staff, and empower this person to actually have power to enforce any infractions.

3) Most importantly, create a 'mission statement' as Ephemral suggested in the other thread about what exactly TW is about, what exactly different positions do, and create plans as to how this would be achieved and actually set targets and goals.

Anything else would be smaller problems which I've discussed in my other thread.

[Richard Creager]

Finally now that I've finished jacking off to watching myself type, here's my solutions for systemic changes which I think are realistic:

Fixed.

[Epinephrine]

Hey look I'm Richard Creager I'm cool because I can make fun of people over the internet!

[Richard Creager]

At least I'm to the fucking point about it, darling.