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Cynamooo

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Hello there! I would like to talk a bit more about the topics you brought forward a few days ago to provide a bit better insight internally, as well as hopefully address concerns you brought forward as best as possible. Bear with me because this will be a long message.

Recruitment
Two things were pointed out here, requirements and understanding the English language. Requirements are there to filter out applicants who will 100% get denied anyway. As Drew said, it saves the recruitment team from handling dozens of applications and ultimately saves us time to focus on those who do have a decent chance. These requirements are not designed to give the applicant straight-up green light to move on to the interview phase. In the end, not all who even meet the requirements get an instant free ticket to the helper trial. This is just the phase that is a lot more hidden to the public eye and thus is a bit harder to see how lower requirements are not necessarily bad.

In terms of the English language, we do strive to ensure they can speak it well enough to communicate with us in calls and in messaging. Mistakes will always happen, which is why we work to help them during the trial if we notice these issues. Keep in mind staff-help is a lot faster than other media as well and a lot of quick thinking is required. All in all, while we don’t set basic standards like C1 or C2, we do set our own. How someone has written their application and how fluent they are during the interview is our main baseline.

Staff-help
Staff-help is a difficult channel to consistently keep up with, especially with consideration to timezones and helper wave sizes. Keeping up with dozens of questions becomes exhausting after a while, and missing questions can happen in turn. We encourage users to just resend the question if it accidentally got lost. We acknowledge that this is not a foolproof system, but it is what we have at this time, while we look to improve it. That being said, activity within it, and getting helpers to respond, is hard if they worry they will be constantly judged by everyone - not just their mentors who they expect to do so. It can be a lot of pressure and makes it a lot more difficult to remain motivated to do so.

Helper Training
In general, with training, we have always been a bit vague on how all of it works. However, I might have been a bit too vague myself with what I meant with training them for staff-help. They do get conversations about how staff-help works and they have guides ready for them in case they need to double-check something. However, being mistaken about something is a part of the training. They need to learn, and in turn, they are bound to make mistakes. These will always be corrected immediately afterwards, receiving the correct information from their mentors and how they were incorrect. If they repeat the mistake, that is when we have concerns and will handle it differently.
Ultimately, we do not have the tools and space to write every possible answer down, to every potential question, and expect them to find it in the catalogue before they respond based on what it says. In the end, their training deals with the overall workings of staff-help. It does not go into detail about which questions are easy and should always be answered correctly, but rather their mentors help them with better understanding. We encourage them to ask questions when they aren’t sure, but there is the catch to that of saying “when you aren’t sure”. They could be 100% positive they have the right answer when they don’t, so they will not ask and make a mistake. Making these mistakes can be frustrating for a community member, and lead to a misdirect or confusion, but we strive to resolve that as soon as possible. Those helpers do get notified about wrong answers in staff-help, and are reminded about asking when they are unsure. It allows our helpers to learn and grow, and not feel pressured to be perfect to the point that they never learn confidence in their knowledge and ultimately would never pass the helper phase.

Not Helping People
I agree that the helper should have handled this a bit differently, though not in the sense of not warning the user. They definitely should have added a message telling them how to properly execute that command and include a brief thing about spamming not being allowed.
We will definitely make sure we are reminding and encouraging our team to focus on helping first, punishing second, while in lobbies or interacting with the community.
Keep in mind that helpers cannot punish users, they can only give verbal warnings and report them afterwards, as they are in a trial process. However, while they could definitely have handled this better, I do not think it is fair to put a blanket definition over all of the Helpers because of this one instance.

Inconsistency
With a big team comes big communication. All important updates and changes always get shared, though sometimes it may happen that some people are unaware. Whether they went to staff-help first before checking the announcement, or simply missed it, instances like this can happen. We do as much as we can to avoid them, however, if it does happen, it’s best to either seek confirmation with the responsible admin or just double-check with someone else.
We encourage staff to always double-check if they are uncertain about something. This falls into a hard balance between ensuring our team members have the confidence to answer questions and also ensuring they check that the information they are presenting is right.
Double-checking takes more time, but is always necessary, especially if we are wanting to encourage the removal of incorrect responses. I think this staff member handled that well overall, especially when it comes to a rule change and how difficult it can be overall to change your mindset from the muscle memory of the old rules to the new ones.

What Should Happen?
In the end, I think we should remember two things: being a helper is a trial period and recruitment keeps fluctuating no matter what.
As the name suggests, this is a helper trial. A trial is meant to learn, make mistakes, and most importantly for people to prove their knowledge and abilities. They are trained through an internal process and tested on their knowledge. It is the only way to slowly adjust to all the information and learn how to effectively handle situations. Helper used to not be as much of a trial process, so requirements were a lot higher, but we have changed the process of training a lot (and are constantly still adjusting it as we work with the new changes), allowing us to make it a trial. Some helpers will not make it, which is perfectly fine. We desire to be training users and help them see a hands-on experience with more behind-the-scenes knowledge, rather than letting them spend years learning on their own in the community. It allows us to truly teach people how to be a mod, rather than expect them to be mod-ready right when they get out of the interview.

I must admit, months ago I was in the same tunnel vision of only focussing on those who have made their presence known within the community. Yet, those who stayed a little bit in the background and didn’t make a huge community impression are currently doing an outstanding job. I’m proud of every single one who worked hard for their position. They all deserved it for a reason, some might move on, some might fall, that’s the charm of being a trial.

Since recruitment is an important part of the team, it’s hard to constantly make big changes to it. We will never be able to predict what might happen in the next wave. It could be a quiet month with very few applicants, or it could be a busy month leading to a bigger wave. Consequently, it could be a month with a lot of bedrock players or a month with a lot of java. No matter how you twist or turn it, we can’t predict nor control the amount and types of people that apply.

Finally, I do want to emphasize that even with all I have said, it does not mean we’ll never change recruitment or that I’m not open to feedback. There will always be mini changes or improvements made where needed. Especially with feedback given, or even just noticing trends that are occurring. It allows us to continue to strengthen recruiting while working towards the best way to train and prepare the helpers. Sometimes when you can't see something, it does not mean it's not there. Recruitment is constantly being worked on. In fact, some points that were brought up here were either already being discussed or will be in the near future. Ultimately, recruitment has not reached its full potential yet, and over the upcoming months/years we will continue to strive towards what’s best. Thank you for understanding! 😄
 

xHappyMood

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Well first of all, thank you for your response :D
These requirements are not designed to give the applicant straight-up green light to move on to the interview phase. In the end, not all who even meet the requirements get an instant free ticket to the helper trial.
They are indeed not, but the way you’re talking about this ‘trial’ sounds like you’re basically giving everyone who ever joined the forums discord and server and hasn’t been overly toxic a chance, since who knows they might turn out to be a great helper. I don’t think it’s supposed to be that either right xD
In terms of the English language, we do strive to ensure they can speak it well enough to communicate with us in calls and in messaging. Mistakes will always happen, which is why we work to help them during the trial if we notice these issues. Keep in mind staff-help is a lot faster than other media as well and a lot of quick thinking is required.
I know not everyone can have perfect English, especially not when they’re required to think quickly, but I do think that it should still be possible to keep it at least somewhat understandable and correct. I mean the screenshots I gave here are only examples, there’s way more of it, and I don’t think it looks very professional either… And in this case you can’t say “it’s only a trial” because it’s not like their English is suddenly gonna improve massively by being helper
Also i’m still sad for that poor guy who thought he’d get staff 😭
Staff-help is a difficult channel to consistently keep up with, especially with consideration to timezones and helper wave sizes. Keeping up with dozens of questions becomes exhausting after a while, and missing questions can happen in turn. We encourage users to just resend the question if it accidentally got lost. We acknowledge that this is not a foolproof system, but it is what we have at this time, while we look to improve it. That being said, activity within it, and getting helpers to respond, is hard if they worry they will be constantly judged by everyone - not just their mentors who they expect to do so. It can be a lot of pressure and makes it a lot more difficult to remain motivated to do so.
I get it’s hard to have someone in staff-help ALL the time, and I don’t expect that. But having to wait for sometimes up to 1,5 day before a question finally gets answered on the 6th attempt, seems like a little too much. Another very annoying thing is when there’s let’s say 10 questions after each other, yours is somewhere in the middle, and all of them get answered except yours. There’s no reason for that either right? Then I also get that being judged because you gave a wrong answer once isn’t very pleasant, but I think staff members have worse things said to them than that xD so idk isn’t that (i know it shouldn’t be, but it is) part of being a staff member? Dealing with (undeserved) hate?
Another thing in staff-help, for example a couple days ago the server was down, and everyone started flipping in staff-help like OMG NO SERVER IS DEAD AAAAAAH and there was a pinned msg saying it was known, but well no one looks at those, but for the longest part of the server being down there was just no staff member there, everyone was just left to panic on their own. I get that sometimes there can’t be a staff member (even though 40+ mods spread over multiple timezones is a lot) but it’s not like it was in the middle of the night or anything. Wouldn’t it be better to make sure there’s someone to help at times like these? I know it would be annoying for the person who helps, but you didn’t become a staff member to get a shiny rank and skip all the annoying parts of it.
I agree that the helper should have handled this a bit differently, though not in the sense of not warning the user.
Would you still think the warning was correct if it had been a mod giving an actual warning?
With a big team comes big communication. All important updates and changes always get shared, though sometimes it may happen that some people are unaware. Whether they went to staff-help first before checking the announcement, or simply missed it, instances like this can happen.
They can happen, but staff members saying different things for days/weeks? And about 50% saying one thing and 50% the other thing, that’s not just a couple ppl having missed the announcement, that’s something bigger…

And what happened to the helper training part?
 

Ge1ster

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Apr 16, 2020
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A very insightful reply, I'm incredibly happy and satisfied with it.
We will definitely make sure we are reminding and encouraging our team to focus on helping first, punishing second, while in lobbies or interacting with the community.
This alone makes me believe in the recruitment team going down a better path, thank you :)

Just one thing I want to point out is that I never meant that community presence was important because it's a popularity contest, but because I genuinely believe it improves a person's character. It makes them more mature, makes them learn how to interact with the community the correct way as staff, and even more humble. Talking from experience here, really.
 

pieterpeer

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Once again this is only an example from a much bigger problem. In my opinion, staff members’ main duty shouldn’t be punishing as many people as possible, so they seem like a ‘good mod’, but instead helping people if they have problems.
The only problem I have with the current staff team is this. Imo they are too soft and too strict. People get punished for the smallest mistakes they make and it almost looks like a match on who gets the most punishes.
 

Cynamooo

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Heya! Seems like Helper Training got lost somewhere so I quickly added it
They are indeed not, but the way you’re talking about this ‘trial’ sounds like you’re basically giving everyone who ever joined the forums discord and server and hasn’t been overly toxic a chance, since who knows they might turn out to be a great helper. I don’t think it’s supposed to be that either right xD
I understand it may seem like that, but it is not the case. We cover a lot of different aspects when reviewing applicants that go a bit more in-depth compared to just surface checks like activity, etc. Those applicants that do have a decent change go through a lot of discussion and review stages to end up where they are now. I can understand that with some recent demotes it may seem we picked the wrong applicants and are focussing on quantity over quality. I can guarantee you that all of those who got promoted to Helper were thoroughly evaluated and discussed. Even if they did not complete the trial, they still were a good fit for the position and all they can do is learn from it and come back stronger.

I know not everyone can have perfect English, especially not when they’re required to think quickly, but I do think that it should still be possible to keep it at least somewhat understandable and correct. I mean the screenshots I gave here are only examples, there’s way more of it, and I don’t think it looks very professional either… And in this case you can’t say “it’s only a trial” because it’s not like their English is suddenly gonna improve massively by being helper
I can agree with that, but then again it is part of the discussion stage. We are aware of those different skill levels when it comes to writing or speaking English. Yet again, it is a small part of the big picture. If someone has trouble forming good sentences, yet we approved them, it's because we saw lots of potential in them. We know they are wanting to improve and we know they have great perseverance when it comes to improving it. It's just a matter of giving it a shot and doing our utmost best to guide our helper/mod all the way through. In the end, do not get me wrong, if their English doesn't improve one bit we might speak to them about it and find some alternatives or other solutions. It's just a matter of giving it some time because as you said they do not improve their English in a week. We will, and always have been closely monitoring that.

I get it’s hard to have someone in staff-help ALL the time, and I don’t expect that. But having to wait for sometimes up to 1,5 day before a question finally gets answered on the 6th attempt, seems like a little too much. Another very annoying thing is when there’s let’s say 10 questions after each other, yours is somewhere in the middle, and all of them get answered except yours. There’s no reason for that either right? Then I also get that being judged because you gave a wrong answer once isn’t very pleasant, but I think staff members have worse things said to them than that xD so idk isn’t that (i know it shouldn’t be, but it is) part of being a staff member? Dealing with (undeserved) hate?
Another thing in staff-help, for example a couple days ago the server was down, and everyone started flipping in staff-help like OMG NO SERVER IS DEAD AAAAAAH and there was a pinned msg saying it was known, but well no one looks at those, but for the longest part of the server being down there was just no staff member there, everyone was just left to panic on their own. I get that sometimes there can’t be a staff member (even though 40+ mods spread over multiple timezones is a lot) but it’s not like it was in the middle of the night or anything. Wouldn’t it be better to make sure there’s someone to help at times like these? I know it would be annoying for the person who helps, but you didn’t become a staff member to get a shiny rank and skip all the annoying parts of it.
Even if getting hate is part of the job, it does not mean they should get it daily from people who abuse it. They'll mainly get it from people they punished with unstructured arguments out of rage and anger. Breaking someone constantly down for not handling staff-help correctly might be structured, but it's not the community's responsibility to tell them. If you do notice issues arising, the best solution would be to create a staff-feedback if it is something big or contact me personally for something small. If it's necessary I'll contact mentors and they can speak to their Helpers, but as I said in my initial reply, nine out of ten times when something like this happens we're already aware.
Lastly, I can understand that if the server is down it will be causing big chaos in staff-help. Staff not replying is not a good sign and could cause more panic. Not sure when it happened and if time zones had an effect on the amount of staff online, but overall it seems like an issue in general. I might have an idea on that and will forward that soon.

Would you still think the warning was correct if it had been a mod giving an actual warning?
Unfortunately, I'd say yes. Of course, I understand the user needed help and our main priority is helping them, but they were breaking the rules. I feel like it would have been different if they tried multiple commands, but here the user executed the first command, clearly, it does not work, but instead of trying something else, they repeated it over and over again as if it would suddenly work. In my opinion, it would be the same if we'd punish a user for "can someone help me I can't get out of this <insert swearword> menu". Does the user need help and is it our main priority, yes! However, how unfortunate it may seem within the moment itself, the user was breaking our rules.

They can happen, but staff members saying different things for days/weeks? And about 50% saying one thing and 50% the other thing, that’s not just a couple ppl having missed the announcement, that’s something bigger…
If it does occur quite often, feel free to gather examples and send it over to Cap or me depending on if it is Helpers or Mods giving out different information. If it occurs frequently we'll definitely send the team a reminder again with the correct information!

Hope I was able to clear some things up! 😄
 

xHappyMood

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If someone has trouble forming good sentences, yet we approved them, it's because we saw lots of potential in them.
If they have trouble forming sentences, you shouldn't accept them, no matter how much potential they have. If they are willing to improve then fine, let them improve, but make them improve before accepting them. Being able to communicate in an understandable way should be one of the most basic requirements imo
Unfortunately, I'd say yes. Of course, I understand the user needed help and our main priority is helping them, but they were breaking the rules. I feel like it would have been different if they tried multiple commands, but here the user executed the first command, clearly, it does not work, but instead of trying something else, they repeated it over and over again as if it would suddenly work.
I mean let's say you're a (probably not very old) person who doesn't really understand what is happening, and you want to play with your friend. You try to invite them to your party, and it doesn't work, wouldn't you try again?
However, how unfortunate it may seem within the moment itself, the user was breaking our rules.
They were breaking the rules if you follow them word for word, but context matters. They obviously did not to it to intentionally annoy anyone, and no one's gonna get hurt or sad or whatever by them trying 3 times...
 
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Shotgun

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If they have trouble forming sentences, you shouldn't accept them, no matter how much potential they have. If they are willing to improve then fine, let them improve, but make them improve before accepting them. B
I have been reading along with the entire thread but I feel like responding to this part as I highly disagree with it:

Personally, I would accept someone not being able to form sentences in English properly. In the past I accepted people to a staff team that were not quite ready to be a moderator. They still had lots to learn and they would not be promoted to moderator until they were fully ready. However, I still voted to accept them as they showed dedication and were eager to learn.

If someone lacks a skill or ability required to join a team but shows great promise and is eager to improve the things they don't yet fully master, then a trial position such as helper is, in my opinion, the perfect way to give such person the opportunity and help needed to improve.
Sometimes, the help of a tutor/mentor can open up opportunities that were not there before or greatly increase the speed of the learning process. This is also why tutoring outside regular lessons exist at schools. Although you lack a certain skill to complete your education, there's an opportunity to get help and improve needed skill.

People are there to help each other, not to watch others struggle and after hard work succeed or fail...
 

xHappyMood

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In the past I accepted people to the staff team
???? Shotgun the Sr Mod???
If someone lacks a skill or ability required to join a team but shows great promise and is eager to improve the things they don't yet fully master, then a trial position such as helper is, in my opinion, the perfect way to give such person the opportunity and help needed to improve.
Sometimes, the help of a tutor/mentor can open up opportunities that were not there before or greatly increase the speed of the learning process. This is also why tutoring outside regular lessons exist at schools. Although you lack a certain skill to complete your education, there's an opportunity to get help and improve needed skill.
I think you're forgetting that helper mentors aren't English teachers...
 

Katsia Stray

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and i thought the 15 reports for bedrock was low, BUT 5 REPORTS WAT

For the language part, I'd say it's good if their English skill was somewhere higher than conversational. It's not just understanding what a person is saying, it's also knowing all the terms that get thrown around the server to get a better understanding of the community, like "passport", "appeals", "clients", words that you wouldnt see day to day outside of cubecraft.

I just joined back on the discord last night, and within 1-2 hours i got like 400 messages, so hypothetically if I sent 3 messages into the server daily for 2 months am I qualified for helper? It's not very specific. If discord activity is put into the question, I'd say it's more about time spent that messages sent, since you have those people who sent 5 messages seperately every time. My suggestion though might take a lot of effort to do so maybe there's a better way of dealing with this.

On the topic of staff help: I have very mixed feelings on this. Of course some questions are easier to answer than others, and asking other staff isnt a surprise considering you brought up their consistency, or if your question wasn't very common then they might look for the answer, and the channel will be especially inactive at night. That's fair, though the newer staff have a bad habit of answering all questions they can and not telling the person with the question that they'll ask around. At least give some sign that the question was read and not skipped.

My suggestion? Put a question mark (or some other emoji indication) as a reaction on the question or tell the person that you dont know the answer or will ask around.



cant wait to get bombed with disagrees lmfao
 

Dudu

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I just joined back on the discord last night, and within 1-2 hours i got like 400 messages, so hypothetically if I sent 3 messages into the server daily for 2 months am I qualified for helper? It's not very specific. If discord activity is put into the question, I'd say it's more about time spent that messages sent, since you have those people who sent 5 messages seperately every time. My suggestion though might take a lot of effort to do so maybe there's a better way of dealing with this.
It's really hard to quantify "time spent" on discord, so we like going for a simpler message requirement, which we can easily check. Obviously we check if the messages were recent though, if someone has 2000 messages but they are all from 2019 they do not meet the requirements and get denied, as the activity is not recent. As for your example, they would probably make it through, as we value consistent, but not extreme activity, more than extreme activity that is really inconsistent. So in this case we would prefer a couple messages each day (staff-help usually does not count) for a few months than one day of crazy activity and then nothing for a week. This is because we want staff members we can rely on. We do not want mods who tryhard initally but resign a month in because they burnt out. We prefer if they take it easy and can stay for a long time, as that's where they can provide more value for cubecraft.
Put a question mark (or some other emoji indication) as a reaction on the question or tell the person that you dont know the answer or will ask around.
I'd say telling the users would be the best idea. I think we already tell helpers to communicate, even if they don't know, and in most instances that i witnessed they already say they will ask arround, but there might be some gaps in the guidelines Cynamoo mentioned that we give at the start of the trial
 
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