All Networks Staff Team Needs an Expansion

[Eli]

• The reality here is that, CubeCraft is understaffed. Understaffed in the sense that it is absurd to think that four or five active staff members can handle the amount of reports, appeals, /reports, and questions of a server with sometimes three thousand players online.

In order to be able to state the fact that CubeCraft was understaffed though, I made my research. I went to a webpage that allowed me to see every Minecraft server sorted by their amount of players. That way, I found servers of a similar size to CubeCraft.

I have two cases of study:

• BlocksMC
• MCCentral

BlocksMC and MCCentral are servers that at peak times can sometimes get to 2,300 players online. Which is considerably smaller than the player base CubeCraft has. And regardless of them having a smaller player base, both servers have moderation teams that are 4 or even 9 times bigger than CubeCraft's.

BlocksMC has 127 people dedicated to moderation. And MCCentral has 54 people dedicated to moderation.

Now you might be thinking these numbers are way too high, and they are too much for a server of the size of CubeCraft. And you're probably right. Maybe their acceptance process isn't as strict as CubeCraft's? Which results on them having more Moderators/Admins/Helpers/Sr.Moderators, which may be many, but not as effective? Well that was my analysis too when I saw these enormous amounts of staff members.

But something truly special caught my eye, in MCCentral's Forums you can see when was someone last online, and to my surprise every single staff member dedicated to moderation had been online not longer than a day ago. Which reflects that the entire staff team is active. So regardless of their possibly less strict acceptance process, they have a team that is always present and very effective in terms of moderation.

What do I propose with this? Not reducing staff requirements, not being less strict when it comes to choosing the right person for the right job, no.

What I propose is as follows:

• Stop waiting for players to come to you and say "I want to be Staff". Instead, come to them and ask them "Would you like to be Staff?".

This is the mindset I consider the staff team should acquire, because not many new people are being accepted in the staff team. The Staff team isn't growing but reducing. And that is truly alarming, considering that the amount of players CubeCraft has, have been relatively stable for the past few months. And logically, the size of a Moderation team should be defined by the size of a server's player base.

How can you reach out to players and invite them to become staff? With propaganda, like the United State's Government did with the "I want you for U.S army" poster in World War I. Of course a world war cannot be compared to the staff team of a MineCraft server, but it is proven to be an effective approach so it is therefore applicable for staff recruitment.

Maybe server-wise messages that are sent every hour would be a good start:

Are you kind, patient and dedicated? Would you like to make CubeCraft a better and more enjoyable place for everyone? Consider applying for our Staff Team! Here: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/how-does-recruitment-work.204189/​

Read this first: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/how-does-recruitment-work.204189/

Of course this prototype of a message isn't the most visually appealing one, but I hope you get my point.

There are many other strategies of course, but for now this the most effective one I could think of.

Another thing I noticed while studying a much bigger and more popular server: Hypixel. Was that they have a team completely dedicated to forums. And I think that is essential for the well functioning of the forums community. Because, if you make sure that every decent and well developed suggestion gets a constructive answer, more players will be motivated to participate in the server's forums. The more suggestions, the more ideas for improvement, the more you can listen to your community, the more you keep your clients happy.

Thank you for taking your time and reading this thread! Any feedback is very much appreciated.

 

[Smoothlyy]

• The reality here is that, CubeCraft is understaffed. Understaffed in the sense that it is absurd to think that four or five active staff members can handle the amount of reports, appeals, /reports, and questions of a server with sometimes three thousand players online.

In order to be able to state the fact that CubeCraft was understaffed though, I made my research. I went to a webpage that allowed me to see every Minecraft server sorted by their amount of players. That way, I found servers of a similar size to CubeCraft.

I have two cases of study:

• BlocksMC
• MCCentral

BlocksMC and MCCentral are servers that at peak times can sometimes get to 2,300 players online. Which is considerably smaller than the player base CubeCraft has. And regardless of them having a smaller player base, both servers have moderation teams that are 4 or even 9 times bigger than CubeCraft's.

BlocksMC has 127 people dedicated to moderation. And MCCentral has 54 people dedicated to moderation.

Now you might be thinking these numbers are way too high, and they are too much for a server of the size of CubeCraft. And you're probably right. Maybe their acceptance process isn't as strict as CubeCraft's? Which results on them having more Moderators/Admins/Helpers/Sr.Moderators, which may be many, but not as effective? Well that was my analysis too when I saw these enormous amounts of staff members.

But something truly special caught my eye, in MCCentral's Forums you can see when was someone last online, and to my surprise every single staff member dedicated to moderation had been online not longer than a day ago. Which reflects that the entire staff team is active. So regardless of their possibly less strict acceptance process, they have a team that is always present and very effective in terms of moderation.

What do I propose with this? Not reducing staff requirements, not being less strict when it comes to choosing the right person for the right job, no.

What I propose is as follows:

• Stop waiting for players to come to you and say "I want to be Staff". Instead, come to them and ask them "Would you like to be Staff?".

This is the mindset I consider the staff team should acquire, because not many new people are being accepted in the staff team. The Staff team isn't growing but reducing. And that is truly alarming, considering that the amount of players CubeCraft has, have been relatively stable for the past few months. And logically, the size of a Moderation team should be defined by the size of a server's player base.

How can you reach out to players and invite them to become staff? With propaganda, like the United State's Government did with the "I want you for U.S army" poster in World War I. Of course a world war cannot be compared to the staff team of a MineCraft server, but it is proven to be an effective approach so it is therefore applicable for staff recruitment.

Maybe server-wise messages that are sent every hour would be a good start:

Are you kind, patient and dedicated? Would you like to make CubeCraft a better and more enjoyable place for everyone? Consider applying for our Staff Team! Here: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/how-does-recruitment-work.204189/​

Read this first: https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/how-does-recruitment-work.204189/

Of course this prototype of a message isn't the most visually appealing one, but I hope you get my point.

There are many other strategies of course, but for now this the most effective one I could think of.

Another thing I noticed while studying a much bigger and more popular server: Hypixel. Was that they have a team completely dedicated to forums. And I think that is essential for the well functioning of the forums community. Because, if you make sure that every decent and well developed suggestion gets a constructive answer, more players will be motivated to participate in the server's forums. The more suggestions, the more ideas for improvement, the more you can listen to your community, the more you keep your clients happy.

Thank you for taking your time and reading this thread! Any feedback is very much appreciated.

Completely agree with you. Even when CubeCraft was at it's peak with 30k players they were still understaffed. The requirements were recently lower if that help's at all. I bet some people who play on the server don't even use the forums, so they may not know that they can apply for a staff position. Let's do a quick fact check though. I do not agree with your last statement. Hypixel needs a forum team because of the amount of users they have on their forums at any given point, which I think is like 300-500. CubeCraft rarely reaches a peak of 50 concurrent users at this state. I see a forum team as completely unnecessary.

 

[GabrielFoxerd]

I bet some people who play on the server don't even use the forums, so they may not know that they can apply for a staff position.

Anyway, when they knew that they can apply to be helper, they would realize that need at least 3 months of activity on forums, and as you say, a forum that does not reach 50 people ...

 

[Eli]

Anyway, when they knew that they can apply to be helper, they would realize that need at least 3 months of activity on forums, and as you say, a forum that does not reach 50 people ...

Perhaps more people wanting to be helper will increase activity in the forums?

 

[Andyyy]

One part of it is that all helper applications require a certain amount of reports when not all staff members will want to be handling reports in the first place. There are plenty of other roles to be done, punishing rule breakers is an indication but that shouldn't be the only way of getting in. For example, as you said about the forums team, punishing rulebreakers is little do to with this so it shouldn't be a part of the process for getting there really.

 

[Marieke2001]

Cube’s moderation base has been decreasing since like 2017 and it’s kinda their own fault though. Management is stubborn, Tacos could’ve easily hired players that were good for the team but instead he got his discord server friends in. I agree that Cube shouldn’t wait for applies, but should message members they think are right. Also make the Helper rank less useless and hire more people. Nothing can really go wrong with abusing helper ranks, it’s not for nothing a test rank.

 

[Elenahh]

Sorry, but I will have to disagree with everything you suggested. Here is why:

One of the many skills / qualities a person should have in order to be a quality community helper is motivation, or said in other words - a burning desire to be useful to the community they love so much. When a person does not have motivation, they can barely do anything, let alone deal with all the duties that come with being a Helper. That being said, if a person is motivated enough to help out, they will apply and not give up on doing it, so there would not be any need to contact certain members without them applying. There is a reason they have not applied.

Your second suggestion about a message showing up in the in-game chat, is also a thing I really do not support. The wave of applications created by people who do not meet any requirements will flood the google form, creating a lot of work for the Helper recruitment team. Instead of focusing on the applicants who have potential to become part of the staff team, who are being active everywhere on the server and meet the minimum requirements, the recruitment team will have to be wasting time looking through hundreds of bad applications. As I said above, if a player is interested enough in becoming staff, they themselves will come someday to learn some more on how they can become one... There is nowhere to escape :P

I'm also against dividing the team into sections. If you are trusted to be staff on the forums or discord, I see no reason as to why you can't just be staff on every platform. Another very good point was mentioned in the replies above - our forums and discord server are very well moderated. The in-game servers are the actual issue, because the moderation team is small, which means that the staff members are getting easily overwhelmed and need to spend a lot more of their free time doing reports.

In my opinion, there used to be only one thing that should have been changed, and it was already changed not so long ago, so I suggest giving the Helper recruitment team a chance, and some more time. That thing I am speaking of is not putting too much expectation on in coming helpers, making it seem that they have to be mod ready. The point of a helper trial is for the member to improve and develop, learn and change. They cannot do it, if they aren't given the opportunity. Due to that recent change in recruitment, I believe we are gonna have positive results soon.

 

[Eli]

Sorry, but I will have to disagree with everything you suggested. Here is why:

One of the many skills / qualities a person should have in order to be a quality community helper is motivation, or said in other words - a burning desire to be useful to the community they love so much. When a person does not have motivation, they can barely do anything, let alone deal with all the duties that come with being a Helper. That being said, if a person is motivated enough to help out, they will apply and not give up on doing it, so there would not be any need to contact certain members without them applying. There is a reason they have not applied.

Your second suggestion about a message showing up in the in-game chat, is also a thing I really do not support. The wave of applications created by people who do not meet any requirements will flood the google form, creating a lot of work for the Helper recruitment team. Instead of focusing on the applicants who have potential to become part of the staff team, who are being active everywhere on the server and meet the minimum requirements, the recruitment team will have to be wasting time looking through hundreds of bad applications. As I said above, if a player is interested enough in becoming staff, they themselves will come someday to learn some more on how they can become one... There is nowhere to escape :p

I'm also against dividing the team into sections. If you are trusted to be staff on the forums or discord, I see no reason as to why you can't just be staff on every platform. Another very good point was mentioned in the replies above - our forums and discord server are very well moderated. The in-game servers are the actual issue, because the moderation team is small, which means that the staff members are getting easily overwhelmed and need to spend a lot more of their free time doing reports.

In my opinion, there used to be only one thing that should have been changed, and it was already changed not so long ago, so I suggest giving the Helper recruitment team a chance, and some more time. That thing I am speaking of is not putting too much expectation on in coming helpers, making it seem that they have to be mod ready. The point of a helper trial is for the member to improve and develop, learn and change. They cannot do it, if they aren't given the opportunity. Due to that recent change in recruitment, I believe we are gonna have positive results soon.

I never suggested to message players directly? I’m afraid you interpreted my proposal too literally.

• Stop waiting for players to come to you and say "I want to be Staff". Instead, come to them and ask them "Would you like to be Staff?"

It’s only a motto, it isn’t meant to be interpreted literally.

I just meant they should be more open and inviting towards players so they eventually get more applicants. That’s why I propose the server-wise message.

I didn’t mean to literally go and ask “Hey do you want to be staff?” No... I meant they should do small things (like the message) to invite people to become a member of the moderation team.

I get that with such advertisement there would be lots of bad applications from people that do not meet any requirements whatsoever. But, there are many dedicated people out there that spend a big portion of their day playing in cubecraft and will most probably fall in love with the idea of becoming helper as soon as they see it is a possibility.

Not many people understand how staff recruitment works, and changes like these would help to familiarize and introduce people to the system.

Now again, yes many applications, many bad and cringy ones, yes. But sometimes an effort must be taken to manage some positive changes in the server. Expanding the staff team is always an ambitious plan of action, but it is worth the effort.

 

[Anton_b_g]

Well you did your research really good and i think it's a reason behind that it is what it is. I mean sure BlocksMc and MCCentral has a huge staff team but the thing is that it's a another server which has another priorities.

Cubecraft is a server which includes everything you ever can think of. They release new gamemodes very often and maybe one of them will be really
appreciated and added to the official gamemodes, who knows? You might think what has this to do with Cubecraft Staff Team? The Management/Administrator/Developers have to think and make new gamemodes so a lot of their time goes to not only that but things on the forum, the website even new rules or kits. Just to mention they might need a small break here and there. But what do i know?

It would be great if someone from the staff team recruites people/ask them to be staffs to grow the team of staffs. But as i told you earlier they have to think about other things and maybe can't be on the server that much to actully spot a suitable person for the job. Sure the Forum can tell if someone has good thoughts but for real time dosen't grow on trees not staff members either. It's hard to find a person that can handle being a staff and not abusing it's meaning. As they say on the application, the staffs is the face out of Cubecraft.

Thanks for listening on my thoughts, sorry if it was hard to read my english is worse then i thought it would be. xD. Any other thoughts to my Post? Let me know!

 

[Luukieee]

I understand what you mean, but CubeCraft does not have those strict rules for nothing. It is not necessarily best to come to a player as a staff member, but not everyone is waiting for that. You do not know exactly how old this person is and this person is suitable. By looking up what you should have and registering yourself, you only get players who want to do it, and most of whom are old enough to read the minimum requirements. Cubecraft may have a relatively small staff team, but that certainly does not mean that it is less good. When I report to a player, it is usually handled within an hour. And on cubecraft, everyone has their own task and nobody really gets in each other's way. If you have more than 100 employees who also only do moderately, the chance of chaos is greater. This is my opinion of what I think there will probably be people who agree with you. And I must say that you have thought about it carefully.

 

[Anton_b_g]

CubeCraft have strict rules and it's not for nothing like you said and in my opinion it's a good thing. They need to get good staff members that actully know what they are dealing with and want to grow the server in all kind of ways. I didn't said that their staff team is bad but it takes some time to get things done. A report takes like a hour but if u play Skywars, FFA or Eggwars then a hour is a long time. The problem is that it takes time to get the report through to a ban. Then theres the next problem, the Report system. For Iron rank it's 3 reports and that's pretty low even for the lowest rank. Sure you can make 3 reports if you do play Eggwars or Lucky Island but when there's more hackers in other gamemodes there will be problem. Take me for a example, i do play a lot of Skywars, Eggwars and 1.8.9 FFA. I know what you'r thinking, 1.8.9 that's why so many hackers appear. I'm not gonna lie, yes it does get in some extra hackers but then we have a problem with reports. I can play FFA for hours and when i do there are at least 15 per hour. I do my thing as a ranked player to report the hacker to get rid of unfair advantage. When i'm done there will appear another one, then another one, it just goes on. Suddenly your reports have disappear in matter of minutes. A lot ranked players play FFA and often they all use their reports but when it's all gone the hackers come back again and this time no way to stop them for being banned. Still a ban from a report takes around a hour to go through. Is there any way to improve Sentinel? I have to be honest i don't know how it's working or how it can be improved but a change is what not only me but a lot other players to want.

 

[Ronzo]

essay after essay

 

[Marieke2001]

A report takes like a hour

Err what? Reporting takes seriously like 10 minutes max included recording if it’s a blatant cheater.

For Iron rank it's 3 reports and that's pretty low even for the lowest rank. Sure you can make 3 reports if you do play Eggwars or Lucky Island but when there's more hackers in other gamemodes there will be problem.

It never was the plan to have a /report, you should be happy that players can actually do that now, even though Staff said it would never happen and Plus got it, which now devalues plus. The report site is still the main goal of staff to report on.

Is there any way to improve Sentinel? I have to be honest i don't know how it's working or how it can be improved but a change is what not only me but a lot other players to want.

Sentinel works with logs and if some logs get triggered (multiple times) the player gets banned. To improve sentinel Loony has to make new detections. Once Loony added these, another client developer will make a bypass and Loony will have to make a new detection and on and on. Fly, Killaura, Autobridge, Bhop everything has to get coded apart from eachother and Wurst is different to code against than some other client. It’s a cat and mouse game which takes loads of time and patience

 

[Eli]

CubeCraft have strict rules and it's not for nothing like you said and in my opinion it's a good thing. They need to get good staff members that actully know what they are dealing with and want to grow the server in all kind of ways. I didn't said that their staff team is bad but it takes some time to get things done. A report takes like a hour but if u play Skywars, FFA or Eggwars then a hour is a long time. The problem is that it takes time to get the report through to a ban. Then theres the next problem, the Report system. For Iron rank it's 3 reports and that's pretty low even for the lowest rank. Sure you can make 3 reports if you do play Eggwars or Lucky Island but when there's more hackers in other gamemodes there will be problem. Take me for a example, i do play a lot of Skywars, Eggwars and 1.8.9 FFA. I know what you'r thinking, 1.8.9 that's why so many hackers appear. I'm not gonna lie, yes it does get in some extra hackers but then we have a problem with reports. I can play FFA for hours and when i do there are at least 15 per hour. I do my thing as a ranked player to report the hacker to get rid of unfair advantage. When i'm done there will appear another one, then another one, it just goes on. Suddenly your reports have disappear in matter of minutes. A lot ranked players play FFA and often they all use their reports but when it's all gone the hackers come back again and this time no way to stop them for being banned. Still a ban from a report takes around a hour to go through. Is there any way to improve Sentinel? I have to be honest i don't know how it's working or how it can be improved but a change is what not only me but a lot other players to want.

I understand what you mean, but CubeCraft does not have those strict rules for nothing. It is not necessarily best to come to a player as a staff member, but not everyone is waiting for that. You do not know exactly how old this person is and this person is suitable. By looking up what you should have and registering yourself, you only get players who want to do it, and most of whom are old enough to read the minimum requirements. Cubecraft may have a relatively small staff team, but that certainly does not mean that it is less good. When I report to a player, it is usually handled within an hour. And on cubecraft, everyone has their own task and nobody really gets in each other's way. If you have more than 100 employees who also only do moderately, the chance of chaos is greater. This is my opinion of what I think there will probably be people who agree with you. And I must say that you have thought about it carefully.

Well you did your research really good and i think it's a reason behind that it is what it is. I mean sure BlocksMc and MCCentral has a huge staff team but the thing is that it's a another server which has another priorities.

Cubecraft is a server which includes everything you ever can think of. They release new gamemodes very often and maybe one of them will be really
appreciated and added to the official gamemodes, who knows? You might think what has this to do with Cubecraft Staff Team? The Management/Administrator/Developers have to think and make new gamemodes so a lot of their time goes to not only that but things on the forum, the website even new rules or kits. Just to mention they might need a small break here and there. But what do i know?

It would be great if someone from the staff team recruites people/ask them to be staffs to grow the team of staffs. But as i told you earlier they have to think about other things and maybe can't be on the server that much to actully spot a suitable person for the job. Sure the Forum can tell if someone has good thoughts but for real time dosen't grow on trees not staff members either. It's hard to find a person that can handle being a staff and not abusing it's meaning. As they say on the application, the staffs is the face out of Cubecraft.

Thanks for listening on my thoughts, sorry if it was hard to read my english is worse then i thought it would be. xD. Any other thoughts to my Post? Let me know!

What do I propose with this? Not reducing staff requirements, not being less strict when it comes to choosing the right person for the right job, no.

 

[BringMeTheHorizon ♠]

BlocksMC and MCCentral are servers that at peak times can sometimes get to 2,300 players online. Which is considerably smaller than the player base CubeCraft has.

I play on MCC. It peakes more players than CubeCraft. They have very opposite peak times, tho.

Maybe their acceptance process isn't as strict as CubeCraft's?

On this I do have a few opinions. A MCCentral Mod said that if he didn't play Prison, he'd get demoted. I'm assuming all staff must play all games, else they'll get demoted.
Also, CC for some reason "hides" who the Staff-recruitment team is. I have never understood why. MCC is very open about it.
Also, there's a PUBLIC Staff Interview on their Discord servers, where community members are able to listen, and multiple people are required to answer, because they were picked to become helper. It involves the community more and it's just less stress. If you don't want that or can't attend it, then a private interview will be done right after.
Meanwhile, if you were to tell anyone on CC that you're getting interviewed or you got interviewed, you will be instantly denied. But why...


Another thing I'd like to mention is that MCC has relatively small requirements in order to be accepted. 20 forum posts, 50 accepted reports, and have been a part of their website for 45 day.

And also the fact they advertise the Helper application in-game every amount of time. I could give an example when I'm back online on there. This is a thing I thought Cube should've implemented ages ago. Advertising Helper applications in game, also advertising the forums, in hopes new people join in.

Was that they have a team completely dedicated to forums.

So does MCC. You can find it in their Sub-teams, called "Forums Team."

This idea was suggested a while ago and got completely denied by a LOT of users and Staff. Snodia once said, 'Dividing the Staff team is not the best idea.' Which is wrong. You're not dividing the Staff team, you are just assigning each member a job to do.

This is an important economical lesson. When one person gets told to do everything at once, they will not be able to do it much effectively at all. If you were to give each person one specific job, a job that they feel more comfortable doing, then they will be able to master it and therefore do it with ease and effectively.

The more suggestions, the more ideas for improvement, the more you can listen to your community, the more you keep your clients happy.

I do love it when a Management actually listens to my point of view. Which has yet to happen, once. We need better communication. That's what we need. If Management actually tried to get involved in the community more, and understand our point of view, instead of going at it with their baseless arguments, then we'd have far better communication. Jesus christ, I spent MONTHS to convince Management to clear the ghost ping in #announcements (due to an @ everyone). What did it take? Sending a SIMPLE message! That's just so absurd in my opinion.

Err what? Reporting takes seriously like 10 minutes max included recording if it’s a blatant cheater.

My reports take about 30 minutes due to slow internet.

 

[Marieke2001]

Also, CC for some reason "hides" who the Staff-recruitment team is.

Probably for when someone tries to buy their vote.

Can’t quote your reply to me Horizon but I more meant that I doesn’t take an hour, and if it does, for most people it don’t. There are some rare cases where reporting takes more than 45 minutes

 

[BringMeTheHorizon ♠]

Probably for when someone tries to buy their vote.

If you had a good recruitment team, you would not include friendship in the decision. And you would not be biased. If that's what it is, then the recruitment team is not good, and is biased.

 

[Marieke2001]

If you had a good recruitment team, you would not include friendship in the decision. And you would not be biased. If that's what it is, then the recruitment team is not good, and is biased.

Got even more biased when Tacos told us we could vote equally for helpers (^: @Nikoshka

due to mismanagement I think staffers are quick to change toxic or untrustworthy and management/admins knows that. They never take any risks, that’s why leaking one single small thing is also forbidden and that’s why they keep everything secret

 

[Nikoshka]

I don't think equal voting is biased per-se but it's just that everyone is going to have disagreements or squabbles with certain people.

I remember discussing promotion to helper of a certain helper (who I won't give the name of) and I found that nobody could agree with what to do because everyone had different opinions of him. It got to a point where we were discussing infractions which happened years ago, which to me is a bit ridiculous if it happened so long ago.

Upon reflection, I do now believe that helper promotions should stay within the discretion of helper recruitment rather than the entire staff team.

 

[Nikoshka]

Oh and an additional thing, I know that Tacos did reach out to a few members when he was a staff manager. He reached out to a friend of mine (who denied the position due to lack of interest in Cube). Idk if Animal does the same.