The best staff organization system ever.
 

This thread contains the best staff organization system ever. If you're a server manager, implementing this system will greatly reduce corruption on your server. However, you won't actually implement is because you are afraid of losing the power that this system would require you to divest.

The system is based on the following premises:

- Nobody (including, of course, myself) is truly immune from being corrupted by the possession of power. Being corrupted by power is an inevitability for all who possess it. Of course, the server managers reading this believe they are specially immune to this rule (they aren't), and that they will be able to "get tough" with the guy they've been friends with for over a year when it turns out that he's corrupted (they won't).

- There is no reason developers should have the tools of rule enforcement simply because they are developers.

Accepting these premises, corruption can be reduced by reducing the power possessed by players (and in particular, individual players).

1. The enforcement of rules should be outsourced to NPCs as much as possible. There should be as many anti-scamming and auto-hack-detection mechanisms in place. On 2K1, this would mean owner tags on rocks. Whenever any kind of problem arises with any form of bug abuse or related problems with players, the immediate answer must always, always, always, be to try to script your way out.

2. Developers would be entitled only to powers related to developments (pretty much just warpto, FTP and update level). As in, they wouldn't be able to ban and jail.

3. The server manager shouldn't enforce rules on average players (which means the server manager also wouldn't be banning or jailing non-staff players).

4. Log as much as possible. If you can log it, you should log it. The only exception would be if logging something would cause unacceptable stress on your NPCServer.

5. Ultimately, there still needs to be something like GPs. Rather than being appointed, there should be an elected GP council, with members elected until they quit, resign, or are recalled (so there would be no set elections for the entire council* or anything, only individual recall elections.) Any player could be elected, including developers and the server manager. The council would create the rules as well as enforce them (but obviously wouldn't be allowed to change the recall rules). Many people challenge that electing staff is unlikely to result in the best candidate being picked. This is true, but the record of the staff-appointment system is pretty dismal in that regard too. This at least allows the players to get the kind of rules and enforcement they want, and if they mess up then it's their own responsibility.

Individual GPs wouldn't enforce the rules directly, but rather players would report infractions and the GP council would examine the evidence, both that produced by the player(s) and the logs (see proposal 4). Then they would vote on whether a rule infraction has occured and what the punishment should be (obviously they wouldn't all gather together in a room and vote. Voting would probably take place throughout the day, where one GP tells another about it, then that GP checks out the evidence and makes a vote, until a consensus is formed). Because of the increased work in enforcing the rules, it is probably best that punishments tend to be fairly harsh, and the council may even choose to make a rule against ridiculous accusations.

For things like hacking where immediate measures are required, a single GP can temporarily ban the offender, after which evidence would be looked at and a vote would take place among the other GPs.

GPs wouldn't enforce the rules on themselves, rather the server manager would. Alternately, it could also be possible to have an appointee or someone elected to deal with GPs breaking the rules and/or GP corruption.

* If implemented on a server already up and running, then an initial election for the entire council should take place (I prefer a system where each player can vote for a number of candidates equal to the total number of council positions available, but being creative is fine too). If implemented on a new server, the initial council would have to be appointees.

6. FAQ and Events Team (if the server has them) would be hired pretty much like normal. Usually be a chief appointed by the manager. Of course, neither them nor their chiefs would have enforcement powers. (Although events team members would be able to remove disrupters from events, but not jail them. See proposal 1.)

Notable problems:

- The recall mechanism remains undefined (Maybe I'll come up with one tomorrow)

- People can get their friends from other servers to vote for them or the candidate they like. Can be dealt with somewhat by requiring voters to have a certain amount of online time (the second-place candidate could pretty much be relied on to make sure the winning candidate won with legitimate votes.) But even then there's problems like ex-players coming back just to vote, etc.

- Whoever oversees the GPs could try to use their power to manipulate their actions. The threat is lessened by having an elected and recallable overseer. Ultimately, it may really be better to have the other GPs deal with allegations against a GP. The suggestion of an overseer is the suggestion I am the least certain of in this entire document.

Since these proposals will never actually be implemented on a server, this thread isn't really a suggestion but rather a challenge for anyone who disagrees with me to prove that the current system is superior or to create their own system and prove that it's superior to this one.

I disagree with you on that these proposals will never actually be implemented. As I have read them and decided to use these ideas with minor edits/extras to them. Googi you are always a genius. ;D

Just because you call something the best does not make it so. It may be the best in your opinion, but it's quite egotistical of you to go as far as to say that this system is the best ever.

It's not really that they feel that they are "immune" to corruptivity, but moreso that they are just too lazy to go the extra measure to prevent it, or they have done as much as they could.

Quite a broad statement, which doesn't really apply to all developmental positions. Coders have the ability to develop their own tools of rule enforcement. You could tell them not to, but could you really get mad at them for banning a trainer user/jailing a trouble maker that is currently on the server, not listening to you at all, and no one else is around to handle the situation?

This seems more like server security advice, and not advice on a staff organization system.

As I stated above, this is another broad statement that doesn't apply to all development positions, since you don't need to have the RC right to ban players as a coder to actually ban a player, since you can code yourself a police system.

The server manager shouldn't enforce the rules? Does anyone else see something wrong with this statement?

Once again, more security advice instead of advice on a staff organization system.

First off, you say that the server manager shouldn't enforce the rules, then in this section you state that the GP wouldn't enforce the rules, but the server manager would? Your statements are quite vague and contradictory, or atleast were worded in such a way.

Secondly, this council of players that basically decide the fate of rule breakers is by far the worst idea a server could ever implement. Graal is based on popularity and how many butts you can kiss to become popular. If your best friend broke a rule and you were to decide his fate, I'm pretty sure you would let him go. And, even if you wouldn't, over 50% of the Graal population certainly would, thus making the system useless.

GP's are around to enforce rules and keep servers as friendly as possible. If you log on a server and everyone is cursing off the top of their lungs and have profanity in their nicknames, then obviously something is wrong with the staff team on that server.

A server should never have to rely on its players to do all the work for them.

Why would Events Team members have rights to jail anyways?

I've seen events jails before on a few servers, which I found quite ridiculous to be honest with you, but besides that, an Events Team member shouldn't have rights to jail anyways.

Wait, I thought you said this was the best staff organization system? How can anything be deemed the best when the creator sees problem with his/her own system? :rolleyes:

Yes, this supports my popularity statement, and my friendship statement.

Ultimately, it would be better to use the standard GP system with a Chief in charge.

Oh, you considered it a challenge to prove your system wasn't as perfect as you claimed it to be? :rolleyes:


Your proposals are quite preposterous. Why would any manager have random players decide the outcome of rule breakers? If you can't trust the people in your police force, then they shouldn't be staff in the first place.

You can't stop corruptivity, no matter how hard you try, and this system won't lessen corruptivity at all.


You can even limit everyones rights so much that they have to be dependant on the server manager for specific rights to things when they may need it, and even that won't stop corruptivity, because all it takes is a coder to have rights to one wNPC of their own to be able to reek havoc on the server.

So are you now going to suggest limiting the NPC rights of coders to absolutely nothing? And to limit the FTP rights of level makers to nothing?

Because the only ultimate way of stopping corruption is by giving nobody rights on your server and doing all of the work yourself. Inconvenient? Very. Free from corruption? Of course, unless you turn corrupt and ruin your own server.


You need to understand that a staff team is more than a team, but a family. Each staff member should have the will to help each other out, to make the server run more smoothly. You can't just limit all of your staff members rights to the point where it becomes uncomfortable to work on that server and thus have them leave because they can't develop at all without having you around all the time.

You can't make entire assumptions just because a few people go corrupt. Many of the current staff systems work perfectly, but you are just never 100% immune to corruptivity. There will always be that one staff member that you hire that will end up turning corrupt, and you can't do anything about it.


You want to know the best way to not have to worry about staff going corrupt? Keep weekly backups of all files in your FTP folder (which should include the scripts and levels and graphics and so forth). So, if a staff member were to corruptively delete anything, you could easily back it up and notify globals to punish this person for doing so, thus, they get in trouble, and the server is not harmed in any way. Of course, you could have the staff that corruptively reset players and so forth, but you could design systems to backup player attributes after X amount of time and so forth. If that's not efficient to you, then you can always award the players that were unfortunate enough to be in the middle of that corrupt staff member's wrath with some free items to help them back on track and so forth.

There are tons of other methods of lessening corruptivity than to go as far as change your entire organization system. If your a responsible manager, then you shouldn't have any worries. It's the manager's responsibility to make sure that if any staff went corrupt and messed with the players items or messed with the servers files that they would be able to backup those items/files and thus nothing would have been harmed.

It all depends on the type of manager that is managing the server.

I've been working with some servers to redefine the role of GPs.

In my happy system GPs have no RC, and use a well-developed staff tool for jailings (time jail, goal jail [rocks, maze, etc], and emergency [trainer users])

They also have a tool available to them to jail a person for <reason> they feel is bannable, and that person will remain jailed until a GP Captain (gets RC) evaluates and either bans or releases (or jails for some time) the offender.

It's a much more hands-in-the-game system where players police themselves. Even hiring a very corrupt person can lead to a WORST case scenario of a server having all players jailed until somebody with RC sorts it out. This lets people hire GPs without trusting them with the world.

I still think the average aged player on Graal responds more to "answering to the boss" than "keep myself in line" by a large margin.

My system allows a lot of people a first chance as staff due to the lower risk of trusting them, and even a server with 50 GPs, although far too many, doesn't really experience any downside.

Not to mention the old "make a trouble maker a deputy and see the wonders" scenario.

Enough mild derailing of Googi's thread though, if anybody has questions or would like to think about trying this out, forum PM me.

I'm immune! Test me. :)

Ill do it testing status Mentally Ill! jking what we ned now is to have houdinimans googis and the current all mled into one that would be the system to use!

I can't necessarily agree with that. I've personally banned my best friend of 16 years, when I discovered they had been using a trainer (and yes, we are still friends).

Some of your points are pretty obvious, some of them are just... odd, and point 5 isn't feasible as it would take up too much time in all the beurocratic pointless stuff. In reality, if someone feels they were jailed unfairly, it would be handled by the higher GP's, which in effect is what your council idea is, except it's only called on when there is a dispute.

The idea that players should decide the rules is just plain flawed. If we tried that in real life, 5 year old kids would be buying 18 certificate films and games; smoking, drinking and driving would all be legal at a much lower age; and we'd have public hangings again. It's not hard to see why you need sensible and level headed people to determine the rules instead.

On a side note, what HoudiniMan said makes a lot of sense. ^^

It's "the best" in the same way that your Graal review was "official".

I don't see many corrupt staff admit that they are corrupt.

Creating their own tools of enforcement would be power abuse.

It's based on the premise that humans are inherently corruptable whereas NPCs are not, so it's always better to have an NPC script be in a position of enforcement rather than an actual human.

See above, doing so would be power abuse. This is technically another flaw in the system but scripters can already do this under the current system anyways.

Want to give some reasons?

It's there because it's relevant to proposal 5.

The server manager would deal with rule infractions by GPs and only by GPs. Like I said though, this is the most contentious suggestion in the document.

Even in the worst case scenario, you'd have to kiss a lot more butts to get rule immunity than you have to in the current system. And players can always recall a GP if they think he's been corrupted.

This would only be relevant if appointed GPs didn't have friends. This problem is largely dealt with by the fact that a player's fate is in the hands of multiple GPs rather than just one. Of course, it's still possible that a player might be good friends with most or all the GPs, but it's less likely than the player being friends with just one GP.

See proposal 1. The way to deal with profanity is to script yourself out.

Unless you're counting the staff as players (in which case players are already doing all the work on almost all servers), I don't see how players are doing all the work in this system.

They shouldn't, but it seems to happen sometimes anyways (as you said).

Which is why you need countermeasures.

Except that it has more room for abuse.

They would (hypothetically) implement it out of recognition of the observation that players have statistically been better at detecting staff corruption than server managers.

Except that it will lessen it.

I'm not talking about developer power abuse in this thread, but rather enforcement corruption. For developer power abuse a seperate system pertaining to developers would have to be created.

See above about developer power abuse.

No, they're a team. Feel-good statements are meaningless.

Yes, obviously this system doesn't do anything about developers abusing FTP access, etc. because it's only designed to deal with enforcement corruption.

And the problem is...?

Ideas duly noted.

Silly mongooses. This was all a ruse just so Googi could get rock ownership tags.

DOWN WITH THE TAGS!

With Konidias running 2k1, chances are slim.

In no way are the two the same. You claim your method to be the best, while I just used the title in my review because I didn't want to think too much about a catchy title. In no way was mine egotistical, nor did it claim to be superior to any and all other reviews.


You can tell if a staff member is corrupt by their actions.


Which would also fall into the category of corruptivity, what's your point? If the staff member is corrupt, do you think they'd care?

I must disagree with you. NPC's only do what you tell it to given a certain situation, but not all situations have the same scenario, and there are always different cases where a player didn't actually break any rules. NPC's can't think for themselves, thus where the problem would occur. Not many NPC's, if any at all, are 100% full-proof and work exactly as they were designed to, with no bugs, no flaws, and no room for improvement. Not to mention the fact that it takes a human to script the NPC in the first place.

Yes, they can, making your system no better than the current one.

Do I want you to give me reasons on why a manager should not enforce any rules? Did you even read this statement at all?

So unixmad, being the manager of Graal and all, shouldn't enforce any of the Graal Online rules to its consumers?

I don't care what reasons you may have, just the idea is ridiculous.

And proposal five was also ridiculous to begin with.


Server managers should deal with rule infractions by any staff, not just GPs.


I believe I'm not the only one in this thread to disagree with your proposal 5 *points @ Master Storm*.


What do you think the GPs are for? If one GP jails someone, the person in jail can have their case reviewed by other GPs, and even the Chief if it gets to that point. There is no need for any help from the regular players.

The current word filters filter words that are not profane, but rather, have letters of profanity in them, but the meaning of the word is far from profane, thus making the word filter systems poorly done. As I stated above, NPCs only do what you tell them to do, they can't think for themselves.

No, the staff are not regular players.

And your system does not supply them very effectively.

A lot of things have room for abuse. You can't always prevent it.

Does that make it right? Certainly not. That just means that the server manager shouldn't be server manager.

No, it wouldn't. This would take too much work for very little outcome.

No, you're talking about a staff organization system. A staff organization system would require the organization of developemental staffs' rights.

I didn't say they weren't a team. And feel-good statements are far from meaningless. It's not a feel-good statement, but more of the truth. If you don't function as a family, which is ultimately a team itself, then you won't get much done without problems. Each person should look out for one another, as would a family. All of the weight on a specific subject should never be held by one person alone.

Enforcement corruption?

But I thought the title of the thread was about a staff organization system? I must have been mistaken :rolleyes:

Quite humorous how you tend to change the topic of your thread when you see me disproving your points. As I stated before, your system is far from perfect, and definitely not "the best".

The elected GP Council sounds like it would be good for roleplaying, but I don't see much of it for anything else. As for the "script your way out" thing. I do that -a lot- and don't get much recognition for it (particularly from the GP Admin). I scripted it so people can't block a 2-tile wide path. I scripted it so people have to wait a certain amount of time after login before movement and HD go into effect (lag-throughs), despitethat I absolutely hate the fact that I even have to do that. There should be something in gscript that could move an NPCW to the end of the loading queue. I recently scripted a way to detect when people are laming stats, however, I leave it to the GPs to enforce it because who knows why a player's doing what these days.

Isn't that what Googi did too? Perhaps I am missing out on something here.
It's not a matter of whether they care or not. Point is that scripters being allowed to script their own tools shouldn't be allowed. Otherwise, you have Maloria.
Tha'ts why you add onto them and improve their conditional actions.
Googi never made any mention of Unixmad enforcing rules. That much happening should be a given.
Because they don't coincide with yours?
Sounded pretty good to me.
Agreed.
I take it you didn't follow that sentence well. Googi wasn't proposing that players have a hand in getting someone unbanned. Just that there should be multiple GPs for handling situations.
The system is not poorly done. Aggrivating, maybe, but not poorly done.
That's usually how they start out.
Ever tried it?
But you can still take precautions against it.
I can think of a few servers where corruption wasn't recognized, and it drove the server into the ground.
I can't imagine the outcome being negligible.
No, Googi's talking more about preventing staff corruption. That's why 2/3 of the idea proposal was aimed at non-developers.
Unless you're dying of leukemia, yeah, they are.
Contradictory words, coming from one who certainly seemed to do just that not too long ago on Kingdoms.
You were.
Quite humorous how you're picking at Googi for changing the subject when you're the one bringing up all the stuff about FTP abuse in the first place. Googi has no choice in that situation but to change the subject in order to meet your words with a proper rebuttal. Quit laying traps you can't properly arm.
Just like your review wasn't "official."

"The best" is a joke. A parody of Maddox's "best page in the universe", you're probably even aware of this, and if not, are at least aware that it isn't a serious claim, but are playing dumb so you can try to attack me on technicalities.

Oh wow, what an astute observation.

Didn't I already tell you that the post doesn't deal with developer corruption?

I fail to see how this makes human enforcement superior to NPC enforcement except in cases where NPC enforcement is not possible.

If enforcement corruption is reduced and developer corruption remains constant in my system, my system is still superior.

Whether or not the server manager enforces the rules on the playerbase isn't really ultra-relevant, seeing as server managers already generally hardly ever deal with matters of enforcement. Having them not do so merely results in a marginal decrease in corruption potential. It's part of the document because a marginal decrease is still a decrease.

Yeah, he shouldn't. Is this some kind of trap to get me to say something bad about Unixmad?

Yeah, you're sure proving a lot there.

A technical error on my part, what I mean is that they wouldn't deal with non-staff players.

Want me to set him up the pwn too? I'll do it at the end of this post.

Except that in practice corrupt actions are rarely overruled.

This sounds like something that can be fixed scriptually. Really, NPCs are the only realistic way of dealing with profanity. Surely you don't deny that the overwhelming majority of profanity infractions go unpunished.

So make better ones?

You can lessen it.

But they are.

Nobody's forcing anyone to be a GP.

It does mention the rights they should have, it just doesn't deal with how to reduce developer corruption because I haven't come up with a way to do so yet.

If anything, the best analogy would be to say that a playerworld's administration should function as a business or government.

Corruption pertaining to the enforcement of rules.

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. I really meant for this system to deal with things like FTP abuse even though I didn't mention them at all.

It's still less work than development.

Except that as I said above, corrupt actions hardly ever get overruled.

Players aren't deciding the rules. People they elect are deciding the rules. Kind of like, you know, in real life.

^-- I clearly win as this wasn't argued. Therefor one of your premises = false.

Thats what you said before you got RC on -insert servername here- and banned everyone on account of that they attempted to flame your pluffy.

I FINE SIR, BEG TO DIFFER.

LIES I SAY!

:P

I would have defeated you, but sadly Sam deleted the evidence I was going to use.

What about Tom Bombadil?

This isn't about attacking you, it's about disproving your points since you seemed to have openly "challenged" everyone to do so. I wouldn't have even bothered with this thread if you weren't so egotistical about it.

Indeed it was.

Then stop making such broad statements and be more specific on what you claim will lessen corruptivity under.

One can argue this back and forth for hours. It's best if we don't.

I'm not supporting your system nor the current system, because there is no current system that every server uses. Each server has its own ways of controlling things.



No, just an example.

Nice to know that you believe business managers shouldn't enforce any rules. Very interesting, indeed.

Server managers still have to deal with the players when problems arise in which only they will be able to handle the situation.

Here we go again with your ego. This isn't about setting anyone up with the "pwn" or whatever you want to call it. As egotistical as your post was, you made an open challenge, and I've taken the liberty of accepting it by disproving your system from being as perfect as you claim it to be.

Once again, that doesn't make it right.

No, they are not the only way, they are just a very efficient way of doing so.

That's because you can't come up with a way to remove developer corruption. All you ultimately need is rights to one wNPC and you have quite a lot of power if you have the proper scripting abilities.

And that still doesn't make it right.


Not even close. You can't compare the amount of people that vote during elections "in real life" to the players that vote for elections on a server on Graal. What I mean by this is that "in real life", you most likely don't know over 60% of the voters, whereas with Graal voting on servers, since the playercount on each server is so low, you would most likely know over 60% of the voters, thus turning it to a huge popularity contest.

You can't compare politics to voting on a Graal server.

Yeah, pretending to not realize that the title isn't serious really disproves a lot.

What's that? The sky is blue!?

Yeah, okay. Sorry if anybody got the impression that this system was mystically going to somehow decrease development corruption even though it gives no instructions for how to do so.

But arguing everything else back and forth is fine? Quite the painfully obvious retreat.

Every server uses an appointment system. In rare cases I've seen elections held where players could choose from a list of appointed candidates. As far as I know, the most important part of proposal 5 (a recall system) has never been implemented on any server.

Nice to know that you think that when I say "playerworld administration," I mean "the entire playerworld."

I tried really hard to think of an example of such a situation. I couldn't do it.

You're acting like I'm criticizing you for taking the challenge, which I'm not.

Which is what makes it a failure in the current system.

Not only did you miss my use of the word "administration", but now you've missed my use of the word "realistic".

If I thought I could come up with a good way of significantly reducing developer corruption, I would have waited until I came up with one before making this thread.

Which still makes it a flaw in the current system.

The dynamics are completely different, no doubt about that. But he seemed to be under the impression players would write the rules directly, which is false.

this thread is a waste of space

Yeah, do this one, it'd make it even harder for me to get jailed or banned.

Are you kidding me? Now all I have to do to add to my "ban evasion" counter is have "some people on the council." The fear of running into a GP who truly dislikes me is negated because all the other GPs are on my payroll.

So uh, Houdini, where did you come up with this genius idea of an NPC that GPs can use to control jailing and whatnot? :rolleyes:

The BEST staff organization system ever is not giving anyone rights at all and make them send you the work that needed to be uploaded.. the best - non-corrupt no-staff tool way :)