In-game Username: TheUltimateJester
Discord username: ultimatejesters
Characters you play: Is-The-Joke, Hush Pallister
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 27
Days you are available to admin on: Mostly on weekends however I am consistently free on Fridays and Mondays as well
How old are you? 18
Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? I have played a fair share of Cosmatic Drift and Umbra and a small amount of frontier, however outside this I have been playing on Wizard’s Den servers for the most part.
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? I do not have prior experience unfortunately however I am willing to learn and adapt to the system at any point.
Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? I was banned from Wizards Den Servers very early on around February-March of last year, after appealing that ban I was placed with a role-ban for command instead, I later had that appealed during march but had that first appeal rejected. After proving myself further and working to be a better player I successfully appealed my role-ban from command during April of 2023.
What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? After getting banned the 1st time around last year I had begun to pick up on the rules more and have started ahelping more, this has led me to wish to take a more administrative approach to adminning. Alongside this is a few events but I am more focused on maintaining a safe environment for our players and ensuring that players are respecting one another and their boundaries., as a player myself I have seen more than my fair share of players “malding” at one another over the game in OOC alongside metagrudging, this is a problem I wish to focus on and quell.
What are you least interested in doing as an admin? There is no particular part of adminning that I entirely dislike but I suppose running events a lot is something I’d rather not do? It is hard to say because events are entirely optional and I would rather focus on keeping the round safe for others and removing raiders. I still plan on doing events of course but events as a whole does not entirely interest me or is not what I seek to do as an admin.
Detail Questions
What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?
Game admins serve as a group of volunteers that wish to ensure that the game that they care for stays safe and inclusive for all those involved, admins are here to ban rulebreakers and those that are infringing on other players boundaries. Without admins, SS14 would be entirely too chaotic and would not be inclusive for people that wish to RP or enjoy the game. Admins are definitely just as important as our contributors and maintainers and they help to build up SS14 to be a very fun game and a very inclusive game. I personally believe that the admins are the glue that holds the community together, they are incredibly important.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
I wish to be an admin for Wizden because I have been playing this game for well over a year, I care for this game and where it will go in the future and I wish to be one of those people that can help the game feel more fun while helping it grow and while maintaining the same sense of inclusivity that I experienced when I started playing, I want to help others who are starting out and still playing SS14 to experience that same joy that I felt while playing this game. I believe it to be incredibly important to create a more stable and less toxic environment for players to adapt and grow in, how players turn out is highly dependent on the quality of the admin team and the current status of the game itself.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?
Unfortunately I have seen servers such as Salamander falter slightly in the RP areas, Mander has recently gotten more toxic and has not been as friendly to players as it should be. I myself have experienced the toxicity of Salamanders current community and feel that it could be far better than it is, the LRP servers have not changed much and I have had a blast meeting new people on those servers who are interested in my characters while also making their own intriguing characters. The same can be said for Salamander however it just needs a bit of improvement, I understand that high population has quite a lot to do with the current behavior on Salamander but I still think it’s possible to improve.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
While banning problematic players is incredibly important in having a positive impact, from my own personal experiences I’ve actually had far more positive experiences when admins positively interact with the community. It is incredibly important for admins not to be seen as “scary” or “cruel” to players because when that happens players are less likely to Ahelp, if you treat players kindly and make them feel welcome while letting them know you are there to help if issues arise, people are more likely to Ahelp and coordinate with the admin team on issues ongoing within the round or if something in the round has gone wrong. This is something I have had positive experiences with which is why I see the admin team so well.
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 have not had personal experiences with bad admins as of yet, I have heard others having their own negative experiences with admins but since I have no seen context on these or have experienced it or witnessed it myself, I am unsure if I can account those reports into my own thoughts and experiences. With that I will say that I have yet to have a negative experience with the admins, even my past ban was entirely fair and handled wonderfully.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
I have had many good experiences with admins such as Luckyshotpictures, Lunarcomets, Turbotracker, Lord Eclipse. All of these admins are people that I would consider very good admins and delightful people to speak too, they have been very kind and are quite patient with me and others which makes most experiences with them a good one. They have also messed with me in rounds before and have improved those rounds with their intervention, messing with me left a very positive mark on me as a player alongside their overall positive attitudes and them going out of their way assist me with issues when I needed help.
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”.
I feel as an admin, I would usually have made up my mind before the round started and ran a vote for if people wanted “something funny.” Once the round starts I will not intervene in the round unless it is necessary, I would explain to the players that I have to do admin duties and cannot currently run an event or interfere with the round, I would also explain that had I chosen to do either things I would have ran a vote for players to choose before the round started. I would of course hope that the players would understand my choices as I have the oversee the round and ensure that rulebreaks aren’t occurring, of course if they continue asking I would eventually have to ignore them and continue on overseeing the round until it is finished. I am willing to run an event after that round if no other has beaten me to the chase, this is all of course very dependent on the circumstances and depending on player/admin choice, I may not be able to run an event at all.
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.
Okay so this is all heavily dependent on context and what I can dig out of the logs, why is the Head of Security running a coup? Is it for a good reason? If the coup is being done correctly and the HoS is in the right, I would focus on investigating what the captain has done, why the quartermaster is assisting, and why the clown even has the saber to begin with.
If the clown is not really using the saber and just has it I will inquire them on why they have it, if they just have it I’ll just tell them not to do it again and let them off with a warning. It is a very different story if they are abusing the saber and using it to self-antag against the crew and the HoS, they are most likely to be temporarily banned for self-antag alongside the captain if the captain gave it to them on purpose. Alongside this is both players receiving a role-ban from command and clown following this incident, they are of course able to appeal their bans and rectify this issue and show that they are willing to improve.
The Quartermaster is another issue as an additional party to this problem, if the captain has been completely incompetent and the command team has deemed the captain unfit, the QM must abide, if he is actively helping the captain self-antag he will recieve an ahelp and warning and I will request he stop assisting the captain to avoid further issues. If the QM is unable to do that, he will, alongside the clown and captain, recieve a role-ban and or full ban depending on how severe this issue is.
There is the additional issue if security is unfairly running a coupe on the captain, everything that I have described previously could very well be put on the HoS and HoP instead while still questioning the clown for having the saber or outright banning them if they are self-antagging with it. This situation has two sides of the same coin and can be handled in quite the same way for both sides depending on context and who is actively breaking the rules or being incredibly incompetent.
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.
The first notable piece of info for me is them having no prior issues, this already helps them with their case and I will keep it in mind going forward. I will trust this admin on their point of view since I am considering the players lack of issues so far and believe a temporary ban is suitable for this offense.
As for dealing with the other admin I am going to calmly explain to them that I believe that their point of view on this issue is wrong and the player has no prior issues following this, this offense is befitting a temporary ban and I would rather not permaban for their first infraction that is only worth a temp-ban, I would of course also inquire them on their reasons for issuing an indefinite ban and why they believe this course of action is right. If the admin can provide me with the proper evidence as to why this should be an indefinite ban I will go with that, but that is of course of it outdoes the info that I held prior from the admin explaining to me why it should be a temp-ban.
This usually is easily handled with civil communication and actually overviewing the info you have at the time while also accounting for the player’s record, I see admins as expected to communicate properly and civilly on matters such as this one.