In-game Username: Sparlight
Discord username: Sparlight
Characters you play: Quindarious Dean, Eats-Many-Hamsters
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 40
Days you are available to admin on: Sun-Sat
How old are you? 30
Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? I have done some time on Frontier, but not much else beyond that.
I also had an extremely brief stint on SS13 back in around 2009, since it was pretty large on the BYOND hub and I was a game creator at the time wanting to investigate why some games were attracting far more people than others.
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? None on SS13/SS14. I’ve been an administrator on various other servers in my past, including:
Moderator on Megaman Wars (BYOND) in 2009 for several months.
Game administrator on Final Fantasy Legacy (BYOND) in August 2010-May 2011
Lead admin / dev on the aforementioned game’s revival project in January 2012-May 2012
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Steam group Minecraft server from August 7, 2012 to May 14, 2013
Lead admin of Linos Pony TTT (Garry’s Mod) server and Discord community group from May 13, 2017 to around July 2020.
Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? I have not, and I do hope to keep it that way.
What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? Honestly, I’d like to help shore up the administrative debt that seems to be encroaching.
I see many posts about how the admins are burdened by ban appeals, or untimely responses to raids in-game. My biggest interest is in helping identify troublesome players early and mitigate their risk to games to preserve the integrity of players’ experiences. I’m finding that lately raiders have become a large issue on Grasshopper, for instance. Oftentimes, these players can be identified by certain naming and player creation patterns that should be scrutinized more often, and earlier.
I would also not mind working on things like whitelist applications - as the requirements seem to be well-defined and the pace seems manageable.
Working ban appeals would also be fine - I have done such work in the past especially on the Minecraft server I have mentioned. There’s foggy but often clear difference between players that need a second chance and people that have clear malintent.
What are you least interested in doing as an admin? While many players in the servers like ‘admemes’, I find that it’s hit-or-miss on whether it actually tangibly improves the player experience. I do not want to join the admin team purely for ‘admemes’, but I would not mind doing fun or interesting events that leave a lasting impression on players.
I’m also not interested in a common admin pattern in communities I’ve become part of - and that is an unhealthy amount of venomous talk about certain people. Engaging in venomous ‘backroom’ talks tends to spiral into a poor admin culture that I would like to avoid.
Detail Questions
What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?
They help maintain a positive playing environment for all the game’s players. This encompasses a lot. One of the more obvious roles is the warning, kicking, or banning troublemakers in a round. Another highly-visible activity is running admin events periodically to help players have enjoyable and memorable experiences. They also seem to be in charge of helping write and dictate the particulars of rules that players must follow. They process the bureaucracy that all larger communities collect - ban appeals and whitelist applications being some of them. And, of course, they’re also involved in things like addressing the admin applications like the one I’m writing now.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
Honestly, the biggest reason I’m writing an application here is that I can see the servers are understaffed.
I spend too much of my time playing on Grasshopper to help teach new folks and give people a good time, and many rounds the past few days have had several raiders mucking up the experience for people. I also see that the ban appeals forum is backlogged by a full month in many cases. Players are feeling the strain of the admin team being stretched thin, and I would like to help ease that burden.
I also think it’s important for anyone that spends a significant amount of time integrating and being a part of a community to take the initiative to help make it a better place. Being an administrator is a significant way someone can help enact positive change for a community.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?
It’s an interesting thing coming from my side of things. I joined in the PCTide, and as such, I spent an extreme amount of time on the Grass Hopper server. I’ve also spent some time on non-Wizden servers like goobstation and Frontier, and they’ve given me insight as to SS14’s LRP and MRP cultures, respectively.
From my point of view, I think LRP could stand to have slightly shored-up roleplay rules. For the most part, they are fine, but events such as shuttlebombing evac or EORG could stand another glance. In many cases, shuttlebombing and EORG lead to negative player experiences far more than positive ones on LRP servers. Roleplay rules exist to help preserve the integrity and enjoyment of player experience, and I feel like players are being failed most particularly at the end of round in LRP.
As far as MRP, I haven’t spent much time on Salamander, so it’s hard for me to say - but from my experience on Frontier and my mingling with Salamander players in Hopper, I can say that MRP seems to be fine by me. Things like NLR and the lack of EORG on MRP are perfect for an elevated roleplay experience that some players seek. I think a potentially larger issue is the shared whitelist for Grasshopper and Salamander.
Grasshopper is LRP, though many in the community might call it LRP+ due to both the influence of MRP-playing Salamander players teaching there and eager newcomers that want to roleplay.
Salamander is strictly an MRP server. It’s a whitelist-only server specifically so it can help filter out the most common denominator of LRP players that don’t really have the patience or effort to put into proper roleplay.
Having both of these servers share a whitelist seems like it may be perilous for Salamander’s integrity, as many players are whitelisting to play on Grasshopper not necessarily as teachers, but extended learners. At the same time, these players may join Salamander at-will without really internalizing the need to play a better game in that server. I think making separate whitelists for these servers should be strongly considered.
The lack of HRP servers makes sense - at present, there’s enough administrative burden that having a ruleset for HRP and a team able to enforce it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It would be nice to see it eventually, but it’s not really feasible at this time.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
I think the biggest positive impact is the ‘soft-touch’ actions. Making positive statements toward players, and replying kindly to ahelp reports helps players feel both heard and appreciated.
Admin events help, too, but they’re kind of an expected periodic flavor. Good to have, but also a mild expectation from time to time. When it comes to events, I think the most positive ones are the ones that give players something to remember, like a Rimworld event. Spawning a few dozen Glockroaches at CentComm in a LRP server before the evac shuttle arrives is… well, something, but I wouldn’t consider it a deeply positive experience to do more than once a couple weeks for the comedy factor. For some people, having their character survive and chat with people up until the round restarts properly is important to their gameplay experience, and I would try to avoid actions that have the potential to sour that.
I think it’s also nice to have an admin be down-to-earth and engage in positive conversation with the players to help them feel more personally connected with the game’s leadership. A playerbase that feels like they can’t talk to their leadership isn’t a healthy one. Talking with people and uplifting them especially from such a visible role as a game admin is important to maintaining that community health.
Have you ever had a negative experience in the game or with a game admin? If so what, if anything, would you do to prevent other players from experiencing this?
I suppose I can’t say I have had any directly negative experiences. I have had lousy admin events that slightly soured my rounds, but nothing that would make me complain. I think it’s important that admins maintain a spirit around events and player contact that emphasizes the intended rarity of both experiences.
While contact with the administration team is often positive, it can be intimidating for a player to be the sole focus of an admin’s attention, such as with an outgoing ahelp. I’d like to ensure that anytime an admin message is sent from me, it is done emphasizing a tone of positivity and open language that does not imply wrongdoing from a player. At the same time, I would try to dial-in those contacts to situations that I cannot find any reason not to send them a message. For many players, the bwoink sound and message box imply trouble is coming their way, and I would like to assume most players have good intentions - because they do. Ensuring my contacts are limited to genuine discourse about potential rulebreaks or careful course correction can help prevent players from coming away with a negative experience.
In the same fashion, admin events should be both uncommon and interesting when they happen. If I were to do any of these, I would ensure I have a well thought-out scenario in mind before enacting it, and that such an event would either be rather minimally-impactful on the natural course of a round (but fun!) or stated ahead of a round so that players know what to expect from a potentially larger event.
In the unfortunate event a raid happens, I would do my best to first mitigate any further impacts to the round - disconnecting, investigating, and if needed banning raiders - and then tidying up any mess they may have caused. I would seek out any player deaths or round removals that I might be able to reverse, and seek to repair any significant station damage within reason that the raiding event caused. After this, I’d consider sending a communication to the players indicating the problem was dealt with and potentially following it up with a minor event to help players orient toward a positive outcome, such as converting the raider into a super synth or sending a care package to the station in some fashion.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
I’ve had plenty of good experiences with the game and its admins! I’ve sent several ahelps in my time and it’s nice to get a ping back saying the problem has been handled. It helps me to know that I’m being heard and grants me a peace of mind.
One of the things that is often invisible and underappreciated is the work administrators do behind the scenes. If there is an admin present, their presence can sometimes be felt in the swift and diligent dispatching of rulebreakers while avoiding unnecessary individual ahelp contacts to players so they can continue to enjoy the natural flow of their game experience.
Scenario Questions
Scenario 1
It is the start of the round. There are 60 players on the server. The game mode is traitors, traitors have not been selected yet. There are three players who decided to observe the round instead of join it orbiting you. Two of them are encouraging you to “do something funny”.
Given the round has just started, players are going to be engaged in planning out the next twenty or so minutes of their shift and engaging in the roleplay that involves. The worst thing I could do is ‘do something funny’ so early into a shift. If I were asked the same in the pre-round, I’d consider it; but once the round starts, the players are expecting to have a fairly normal gameplay experience. I would ignore these ghost players. Acknowledging them with a response may incentivize them to escalate their requests into stronger demands that might lead to them being disruptive to the round in a ghost role.
I would keep a note of these players’ identities, privately. Should they outwardly express antagonistic behavior toward me or the round state (i.e. taking a non-antagonist role such as Pun Pun and attacking players) as a consequence of my ignoring them, I would address them privately in an ahelp and open a dialogue about it. I can understand how they might feel about being ignored when asking me to ‘do something funny’, and would seek to inform them if the behavior leads down this path about why I chose to ignore them. If they cease their requests at this time or desist from antagonistic behavior, I would do nothing further with these players. Should their antagonism continue, I would consider moving toward a punishment or warning for such an action, in line with the punishment guidelines for rulebreak infractions committed, if any.
Scenario 2
This scenario takes place on LRP. The Head of Security has decided to coup the Captain. The Head of Personnel agrees with the Head of Security and has taken up arms in case it is necessary to aid in effecting the arrest of the Captain. The Captain is hiding with the Quartermaster in the cargo shuttle to avoid the Clown who has stolen the captains saber as a non-antag. There are five people named in this scenario. Please describe what actions, if any, you would take in relation to each, and why.
There are many moving parts in this situation. The actions I take would depend on if the situation is currently in-flight, or being reviewed in post-round replay footage. My actions on an in-flight scenario would gravitate toward de-escalating the situation to avoid losing the integrity of the round; and if this were post-round replay, it would move toward scrutiny of how the situation resolved.
The first question is why the Captain is considered for a coup. At present, both the Head of Personnel and Head of Security are in agreement to arrest the captain. This scenario is legal in a very narrow scope. Are there other heads? If so - are the heads in agreement about the demotion? If so, then the demotion may be legal. If the Captain was acting in such a way that they were endangering the station, such as killing people for no good reason or enacting policies that were clearly self-destructive in the situation, then the Captain is at fault and should be considered for a warning or a roleban.
If however the demotion is not legal by these terms and there is no clear reason why the Head of Security has initiated this coup, they may receive a warn or roleban. If possible I would like to engage in a dialog with them to understand their reasoning for the coup. Sometimes the reasoning may not be immediately obvious.
The Head of Personnel isn’t really a responsible party in this case for the demotion of a Captain if all they are doing is providing agreement to demote the Captain. If they did nothing more than be a bystander and agreeing party to the demotion, I would not take action against them. If they acted antagonistically to usurp power - especially if the reasoning for the coup falls flat - then they may receive a warning.
Similarly, the Quartermaster sheltering the Captain alone may not really be a factor here. The Quartermaster has control over their department and the shuttle, and it really depends on how the situation is unfolding to see if the Quartermaster is guilty of any wrongdoing. In the scenario described, I find it hard to find any way the Quartermaster would be a guilty party for helping their boss avoid being harmed by the clown. Punishments, if any, to the Quartermaster would come down to reasons likely unrelated to the overall situation, unless the situation evolved because the Quartermaster and Captain were in cahoots to unduly harm the station. They answer to the Captain, and this should continue to be the case until such a time as the Captain is demoted or a new person is promoted to head.
As far as the Clown goes, there is no reason for them to have the captain’s saber outside of a narrow range of obvious circumstances, like returning it to the captain or using it briefly if the situation is dire and the captain is unable to otherwise use the saber. As the situation is described, it sounds like the Clown stole the saber purely to steal it. Should this situation be the case - which is likely - I would issue a warning to the clown for stealing a high-value item as a non-antagonist. Of course, what the Clown DID with the sword would also come into play; if they managed to harm other people with it, this goes into the territory of self-antagging and would be punished as such. I would also consider the Clown’s previous infractions, if any, in determining the severity of the punishment.
As I blended both the Captain and Head of Security together in my scenario description above, I would like to take a moment to address both parties specifically.
If the Captain is found to have engaged in actions that threaten the station’s safety, that goes against the high standard the role is held to, and I would issue a warning. However, it’s important that any law-breaking according to Space Law is allowed to be processed as an in-character conflict, too. If they acted in a manner unbefitting their role and the demotion is justified, I would take no action against the Head of Security for the matter and would adjust my actions toward the Captain accordingly with how the in-character conflict was resolved.
If the Captain however was found to have been wrongfully pushed for a demotion, I would take no action against the Captain. Sheltering with the Quartermaster in this scenario to avoid the Clown - and potentially HoS - is appropriate, but I would still investigate how the Clown came to be in possession of the saber. If the Captain allowed the Clown to simply have the saber, and this led to the Captain retreating from their own mistake, I would consider warning the Captain for giving out Command items.
The Head of Security is definitely in the hottest water, in my opinion. Demoting the Captain is a significant action that is not to be taken lightly. However - it is still a valid action in a narrow scope, so I would have to view it in that lens.
If the Head of Security got agreement from the rest of Command to demote the captain, and the reasoning makes sense, I would issue no punishment to the Head of Security. This issue can be handled IC for HoS and HoP. However, the Captain should not ordinarily be demoted in this manner - if the situation is dire enough that this coup is necessary, there is a significant chance I will have to take administrative action against the Captain.
If, however, the Head of Security is alone in their coup aside from an agreement from the HoP and arming them, I would have to warn or roleban the Head of Security in the event that any action was taken by the Head of Security to demote the captain. Agreement from command should be generally unanimous before such a demotion should take place. I would also have to consider punishment for more of the Command staff if the agreement was generally universal but the reasoning for demoting the Captain was inadequate.
Scenario 3
You are ahelping a player about an issue. The player has no prior noted issues. A few days earlier, an admin had told you that this type of situation should result in a temporary ban for a first offense, and you are confident that this situation is not substantially different from the type that admin was describing. During the ahelp, another admin pings you on Discord with a link to the ongoing ahelp and tells you to just indefinitely ban them and make them appeal. Excluding trialmins and headmins, all admins are equally “ranked”. A headmin is not currently available.
I would first consult the Banning Policy guidelines that are already written for such a situation. For me, anything written is a primary source of truth. In this situation, I have a clear verbal conflict of information between two staff members. Therefore, the information from both should be in question, but oftentimes a lighter-touch method leads to better results. I would check the player’s prior offenses or notes to see if the issue is part of a repeating pattern of ill behavior.
In most cases, siding with the lighter of two punishments helps correct player behavior far more effectively than a heavy-handed approach. Should this truly be a first-time offense, and the initial admin’s advice agrees with the Banning Policy, I would issue a temp ban and process it normally. If I am in doubt about my ruling here, I would bring it up to other admins to be sure it meets a general consensus - the wisdom of many is not to be underestimated. A temporary ban, if necessary, can be escalated to a permanent appeal ban if a headmin later determines that this is appropriate.