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Staffing Confessions

pronounsshe/her
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Mizoearned bits
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Mizo
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If you are reading this, I am beautiful.
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i've also been thrown under the bus so many times, to appease other members. 
I hope you don't mind me offering my two cents, but I think you should look at you fellow staffers as well. Do they think that you're too much, or do they agree with you, but simply want to keep members around? As harsh as this might sound, I seriously think that the environment/site you're in sounds toxic. If your fellow staffers think that you're too much and didn't communicate that with you- instead resorting to petty things like painting you as a common villain, then you don't need to be on a site where you're constantly vilified by staff and members alike for attempting to be fair. If it's the latter, then I think the staff should re-evaluate what kind of members they are letting on the site.

I understand that traffic is important- hell, I always fret about not having enough posts per day or members going online. However, here's the deal-- if you can't find mature members that doesn't see you as a villain simply because you don't let them get away with their wrongdoings, you don't need them on the site. If there's a staff/member divide, there is evidently something wrong either a) the way the staff team conduct themselves, or b) the members are absurdly petty and can't understand fairness because their heads are too far up their own asses, or c) a combination of both. If it takes vilifying you to "appease" other members, then their issue will never be whatever flaw you pick out from them, their issue will always be you. That means you need to throw them off the site asap, because having no members is better than having a bunch of problem members.

While you might not mind- being disliked will grate on you. From your post, I don't think you did anything wrong, and it's genuinely concerning just because- well, you said that you don't mind, but it's evidently affecting you badly. As audacious as this sounds, I would highly caution against staying as staff wherever you are, or even staying, because the staff and member's mindsets/actions sound questionable at best.

Good luck Mori, I really hope that this won't be a lasting problem.

pronounshe/him
586written posts
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nox, the HR department
Administrator
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I have definitely tried too hard to befriend people on a site. Aside from that, I have taken the side of my other mods/admins despite them being wrong. I don't like the image it shows uninvolved members when they see Staff bickering and I will usually agree with them in public then clarify in private later.
pronounsshe / her
405written posts
Ven ☆earned bits
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Ven ☆
Summer '19 Bingo Completionist
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got a secret, can you keep it?
before I was unceremoniously shoved off the admin team of a site I helped build from the ground up:

is everything working fine? is the code alright, does the sidebar need updating, how's the cbox premium is it gonna expire?

These days I'm just glad I'm a member. More room to riot and have chaos!
phantom of the black parade
pronounsshe / her pronouns
4,373written posts
Kuroyaearned bits
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Kuroya
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what do you want to know? my height, hobbies, quirks, the color of my underwear?
i find it surprisingly cathartic to run activity checks and do basic maintenance on the claims. it's so nice having a tidy, accurate list, and any time i get to clean out inactive stuff, it feels like i'm getting rid of bad juju and getting a second wind for being active

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i find it surprisingly cathartic to run activity checks and do basic maintenance on the claims. it's so nice having a tidy, accurate list, and any time i get to clean out inactive stuff, it feels like i'm getting rid of bad juju and getting a second wind for being active


There is something truly freeing about seeing a pruned claims list from a staffing view.
phantom of the black parade
pronounsshe / her pronouns
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Kuroyaearned bits
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Kuroya
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what do you want to know? my height, hobbies, quirks, the color of my underwear?
i'm actually kind of surprised how useful google analytics is. tells me where i'm actually getting links from, and honestly, i'm kind of curious to see how it works on sites outside the one i'm testing it out on.

aliasMek, Tak
pronounshe/him
66written posts
kiinearned bits
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kiin
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My own confession: when I chat about my chars on the cbox, I get really self-conscious. I worry that I come off as self-absorbed, attention-hogging, yadda yadda, but the more I worry... the more I do it. orz

I could never talk about my own characters in Cbox/Discord because of this, when running sites. I tend to be my most active member 100% of the time (whodathunkit) and do as much as I can, so especially in growth-based systems, people tend to accuse you of cheating or gaming your system if your character has good plots/stats/gear/whatever. Talking about it openly just invites that kinda garbage.

It's a reason I've veered away from stat-heavy boards and the like, though I still love them so dearly. The toxicity got to me and I stopped wanting to participate. 

My own confession: I tend to get ranty when a member attacks a member of my staff team(s). I could just give them the boot, but I feel the need to let them know how wrong they are and the degree of "screw you" from 1-10 I'm feeling for them at the time. Something I need to work on.
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wolfe
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something i've been thinking about for a few years, as it always seems to happen to me:

i am tired of being the "bad cop" of admin teams. like, somehow, i always end up falling into the role where i have to be the one to point out problems, or say when something is not okay. i also end up something like a guard dog, being the one to defend against rude people/annoyances. and like... that's fine. but it's not easy on me. if someone needs to step up and do it, i will. but i don't want to be seen as some heartless/nitpicky bitch. i am actually... ridiculously sensitive. and i end up crying over site related shit a lot more often than a person should. this is all online and shouldn't bother me irl, but... fuck, does it.

i've also been thrown under the bus so many times, to appease other members. like, oh i don't really have an issue with it myself, but.... and guess what? i'm the but, because i saw a very serious issue with a certain thing. it really eats away at me. i know there is usually a staff/member sort of divide, but this just makes it grow wider and wider.

i try my hardest to remain fair and impartial, and i work in the background to make sure everything comes off as kindly but as firmly as necessary... but i'm still the bad guy at the end of the day. the one who gives out all the bad news and the one who no one wants to interact with.

maybe i care too much about these things. but... staffing has become painful for me. so much so, that i'm hesitant to help out even when a friend asks me to.

i just want to have a good time and write, just like everyone else. i'm tired of ending up the bad guy.



I feel this so hard.

For years I've gotten staffing positions largely because I'm not afraid of confrontation and am able to approach situations where I know I'm going to get verbally abused/etc. I end up doing a lot of the 'uncomfortable talks' with members across a bunch of sites and it just kind of falls into a loop of expecting me to do it after a while.

This is actually honestly the reason why in my own site I'm pushing transparency so hard. The rules don't change, and the logic behind them is plainly out there for everyone to see. There are no surprises, and all major site decisions will be public with reasoning/logic alongside it too. In the past, I was actively discouraged from various admins from giving context/reasoning because they felt that the members didn't have a right to know... but all that did was make members dislike me because they saw the decisions that weren't even mine sometimes as arbitrary and y'know what?

After a long time, I began to see it. I don't think that there should be a wall between members and staff, at least one that's so large and impenetrable anymore. It removes the need for the 'guard dog', because it's no longer thought of as 'staff vs. member' but 'member working with member' if that makes sense. This could blow up in my face very hard, but I'm going to roll with it at least initially to see what happens.

I'm all for opposing points of view and removing points of pain, and if I could no longer be the guard dog that would remove a huge point of pain for my RPing life.
stultifera navis
aliasnines
pronounsshe/her
579written posts
ninelieearned bits
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ninelie
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VOLITION [Medium: Success]
Sometimes when I see complaints made like "the staff team are too (passive) aggressive" I can't but to think like... there's a tone we need to set sometimes to others, that doesn't necessarily extend to our personal opinion or treatment to you or other members. Like if someone's asking about if x & y is okay and it's not, well the staff has to put their foot down and say no. Like, there really isn't a better way around it.

Also, what's with members privately complaining about staff and other members? Can we all grow up and address these issues explicitly to one another? Sometimes it could be a misunderstanding? Attributing someone as being "too passive aggressive" or some other negative connotation without talking it out with them is unfair. Sometimes certain people need to be told what they're doing is making you uncomfortable. Or, ignore and move on.
last edit on Jan 17, 2019 22:35:08 GMT by ninelie
pronounshe, him
561written posts
Sharpearned bits
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Sharp
Part of the Furniture
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I have archived applications and old threads without responding with the word "archived" to each single post. Seems to be the trend these days but if I ran another site I still wouldn't do it. A simple heading on the app section that tells people to look in the archive board if they don't see their unfinished app is sufficient in my eyes. A general notice in the rules about thread archiving is all I feel that really needs to be given.

Idk why I am particular about it but I don't like those generic "your thread was archived" posts to be all over the recent posts page. When I am a guest I usually look at that page pretty early on to get a sampling of the players on a forums and it just creates more clicking around.

last edit on Jan 18, 2019 19:33:38 GMT by Sharp
the endless hunt
aliasleto, blobert, crow
pronounshe / they
1,571written posts
ullaearned bits
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ulla
Administrator
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in turning divine, we tangle endlessly

i was just reminded of a time back in like... 2014 back when i still ran sites on proboards. plugin updates, if i remember correctly, weren't as streamlined for v5 as they are today - like it still wasn't difficult but required a few more clicks than just like, one to update.

or i was just very dumb, which is also possible.

either way, in going to update the monetary plugin i accidentally went and, uh... deleted the entire goddamn thing instead of replacing the version for the current one on site so literally MONTHS worth of gained site currency for something like 200 accounts was gone and it was the biggest nightmare of an admin fuck up i have ever had to deal with. i don't even remember how we ended up fixing it. i think i went through and like, individually calc'd earnings based on post counts for like all of the active characters at the time dfafjdksla

never again LOL
Elemental Enthusiast
aliasMari
pronounsthey/she
983written posts
Mariearned bits
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Mari
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eternally tired
I often make sites on my own because I'm too shy to try to find other staff people, which usually results in my sites dying really fast (this has gotten worse ever since I don't really have contact with people from my old sites anymore)