Cheshify - The Headmin Arc

[Cheshify]

An Introduction

Nice to see you all, TGstation. I’m Cheshify and I’ve been an admin since September of 2021, as well as a player for more than a year before that. Starting on Basil and Sybil, I eventually transitioned to enjoying Manuel’s slower paced rounds, though I still greatly enjoy adminning and playing on all of the servers we offer for their unique and funny experiences.



What do I want to do?

Aside from the continued success of TGstation, I have a number of reasonable goals that I would like to see met during my future headminship.

More Events

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Everyone loves events, whether it’s the fantastic Toolbox Tournament, Seasonal Balls, Coding Events, or otherwise; I think we need to further empower the events team to be running more stuff for people to look forward to. I’d like to expand the team and encourage event runner roles to be given out to trusted players for planned event rounds. One plan is to implement an “event calendar”, giving the community and events team a broad idea of when seasonal events will be hosted and providing some soft guidelines for setting each event up.

Talking about Events Again

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Some expanded thoughts on events - They are the lifeblood of our community and the best player/admin interaction possible. Admins love running them and not being emotionless ban machines watching over a round, and more often than not players love getting to experience funny things to shake up the gameplay loops presented. I want to encourage admins to run full and mini events without fear of doing them "too often", as well as making our Events Workshop subforum easier to find by moving it out of the town hall, so people will actually use it. Game Admins should be dungeon masters as often as they are administrators, if not more.

Polls Aplenty

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I think too many discussions are had without taking the players as a whole into question. Sometimes in admin circles and on the forums there’s a sense of “I know best”. We have plenty of tools to poll players and get opinions on how they feel about the game, and they’re all underutilized. I want to encourage maintainers, admins, and especially my headmin team to be using polls to gather information for bettering the game. The thought is to open myself to monthly poll suggestions from the maintainers, admins, and playerbase so something is always being run, essentially running community-suggested polls.

Kurt Sector

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TGstation is the best ss13 server. I don’t think there’s a good reason we can’t also be the best ss14 server as well. A lot of the preparation for Kurt is already done, what it needs is an interested playerbase, admins, and coders. In my head admin term, I want to encourage an expansion (not a migration!) into the new engine. I’ll be personally adminning the server when it’s up as well as ensuring development resources are easily available.

Why should you vote for me?

Well, I have a history of taking leadership roles on projects and have been a steadfast admin for multiple terms. I suppose the best reason to vote for me would be that I’m not ever going to embellish my capabilities, make promises I can’t attempt to deliver on, or overestimate the workload ahead. I can only promise an earnest and well intentioned head admin that will do the best he can to keep the game fun.



Accomplishments

Proving that I can actually coordinate a team, here are a list of some projects I've been a part of...

• Acting as a project lead and unofficial maptainer for the North Star map.

• Assisting Riggle in the 2022-2023 Toolbox Tournament as a map lead and event runner.

• Hosting the Winter 2023 Headmin Debates alongside Citrus.

• Coordinating with talented spriters Kinnebian and RedSentry in adding Laser Muskets to the game.

• Assisting Armhulen with 2023’s March into Mapness event.

• Working with Dragomagol and Imaginos on a Cerestation update.

Thank you so much for reading my thread! Show some catmin support with the badge below :3

[Timberpoes]

You're one of the few headmin candidates running that has genuine evidence of being able to accomplish projects.

So if anyone reading this likes Chesh's platform, they're one of the few candidates that can evidence any ability to see their platform through from start to finish.

I'm not sure how you'll be in an upper leadership position where others are relying on you to keep a cool head and solve problems though. A lot of headmin work is just dealing with frustrating things and I never saw handling frustration as one of your fortés. I'm open to being pleasantly surprised though, so good luck out there on the battlefield.

[Cheshify]

You're one of the few headmin candidates running that has genuine evidence of being able to accomplish projects.

So if anyone reading this likes Chesh's platform, they're one of the few candidates that can evidence any ability to see their platform through from start to finish.

I'm not sure how you'll be in an upper leadership position where others are relying on you to keep a cool head and solve problems though. A lot of headmin work is just dealing with frustrating things and I never saw handling frustration as one of your fortés. I'm open to being pleasantly surprised though, so good luck out there on the battlefield.

Thank you for the extremely honest endorsement. If there's anything I've proven to be adept at it's self betterment. I have experience with many of the trials that head admins go through and I fully believe myself prepared for the position.

[Striders13]

I do believe chesh has gotten some experience in dealing with frustrating things after working on norfstar. Did it make them stronger? Unstoppable? If they're up for more stress and frustration that comes with being a headmin, then I believe they can handle it.
Chesh is one of our (few) supportmins that hop around servers handling urgent tickets, which I always respect.

[conrad]

I have some questions.

- How is the event encouragement going to happen? You mention this a lot, do you have a plan? I'm not talking about the seasonal events, I mean more spontaneous stuff.
- Could you give a couple of examples of polls you'd like to see?

Other stuff on your thread I was curious have already been responded somewhere else or it's not something of interest to me atm. Thank you

[Cheshify]

- How is the event encouragement going to happen? You mention this a lot, do you have a plan? I'm not talking about the seasonal events, I mean more spontaneous stuff.

Well, I'm going to move the Events Workshop out of being a sub-subforum so people will actually see it. I want people to feel like it's significantly easier to post an event idea, have everything prepped, then get an admin online at the right time to monitor them while they play the Events Runner for a round. Maybe a discord channel as well? I discuss this all in my thread!

- Could you give a couple of examples of polls you'd like to see?

Broadly, I want to be asking people how they feel about the servers, roleplay quality, their thoughts on controversial topics like the allowance of greytiding, how they've been enjoying the game recently, and doing PLENTY of polls targeting how dynamic is going.

[conrad]

Cool, thanks for clarifying. Apologies if I asked something you already covered, I've been inhaling fumes from a nearby fire all day.

[Cheshify]

Cool, thanks for clarifying. Apologies if I asked something you already covered, I've been inhaling fumes from a nearby fire all day.

Don't worry about it. Go get some fresh air!

[WineAllWine]

If you don't vote for me first, vote ches first

[The Wrench]

I have a question for you. Timbre brought it up first, but how do you plan on dealing with controversy? You can’t expect your previous contributions to earn you the kid gloves when you get into this position and even though you are an outstanding and kind person, do you have the fortitude to be able to withstand arguing with the playerbase, admins, coders, and whomever else may get in your way?


(Edit- I really really like your poll proposal! Good shit dude.)

[NecromancerAnne]

On the points of you proposals:

For the poll questioning; Say we had some mildly controversial game or rule change that you wanted to get the opinions of the playerbase at large about. How would you go about making this poll?

Where and how exactly are the polls meant to be utilized? Is it always meant to be respected, or simply a gauge of opinion? Do you think these polls will be completed by a representative enough sample of our playerbase to be effective, or do you believe it is good enough to simply take any sampling of an interested party? Do you believe bias may influence these polls in some way?

On ss14; How ready do you think our admin team would be to transition towards overseeing a ss14 server? What about our development team? Is it really something you could accomplish in a single term?

[Cheshify]

I have a question for you. Timbre brought it up first, but how do you plan on dealing with controversy? You can’t expect your previous contributions to earn you the kid gloves when you get into this position and even though you are an outstanding and kind person, do you have the fortitude to be able to withstand arguing with the playerbase, admins, coders, and whomever else may get in your way?


(Edit- I really really like your poll proposal! Good shit dude.)

I'm not going to lie and say I'll never be frustrated or need to take a moment to step back and evaluate a situation, but that's what I'm going to do, step back and evaluate something. Life and people can certainly be an annoyance, and I'm just going to grow and adapt to things. Besides, I have the support of a good community, strong admin team, and two other head admins.

[The Wrench]

Just make sure you take care of yourself. This job is the admin killer. A burn out factory. If you genuinely believe that you were up to the task, go for it boss.

[Cheshify]

On the points of you proposals:

For the poll questioning; Say we had some mildly controversial game or rule change that you wanted to get the opinions of the playerbase at large about. How would you go about making this poll?

There's a few avenues for this. Depending on the urgency it could be done on discord using google forms with a linked excel sheet (something I have experience with since I did it with the last head admin debates). However, for player transparency since not everyone is on the discord, I would more than likely use the server's built-in polling system that headmins/maintainers already have access to using!

Where and how exactly are the polls meant to be utilized? Is it always meant to be respected, or simply a gauge of opinion? Do you think these polls will be completed by a representative enough sample of our playerbase to be effective, or do you believe it is good enough to simply take any sampling of an interested party? Do you believe bias may influence these polls in some way?

In my perfect ideal, all polls would be proactive rather than reactive. They would be discussing future changes based on current opinion, like asking the community how they currently feel about Dynamic, Roleplay Quality, or a specific game feature. From then on, I can't force anyone to do anything outside of my own direct control (config), but I can encourage the use of gathered information to make opinionated changes.

On ss14; How ready do you think our admin team would be to transition towards overseeing a ss14 server? What about our development team? Is it really something you could accomplish in a single term?

Somewhat, I don't think a full transition to SS14 where we have a perfect codebase, a thriving community, and an entirely active admin team is going to be the immediate result. I do think I can certainly begin to set the ball in motion by opening the concept to the community as a whole. A lot of the prepwork in actually getting the server up, all it needs is the shove to get the start of a community formed and framework to be set up.

[Cheshify]

Just make sure you take care of yourself. This job is the admin killer. A burn out factory. If you genuinely believe that you were up to the task, go for it boss.

I take burnout very seriously. I WILL be taking care of my mental health, and encouraging others in the admin team to be doing the same, this is a threat.

[The Wrench]

Based

[Cheshify]

New: an alternate (better!) campaign badge by the very kind Kinnebian:

[Somepan]

On polls, how do you intend to fight what i would call the "what there's a poll where, oh it's there i never go there or check there", because depending on how your polls are implemented you're going to have bias. People who play aren't necessarly on discord, people who are on discord don't necessarly play, have you thought of that ? Any solutions ?

[Cheshify]

On polls, how do you intend to fight what i would call the "what there's a poll where, oh it's there i never go there or check there", because depending on how your polls are implemented you're going to have bias. People who play aren't necessarly on discord, people who are on discord don't necessarly play, have you thought of that ? Any solutions ?

I don't think it's possible to have every player ever vote on every poll that I'll be putting up. The best I can do is put them up on the servers themselves when a player opinion is more important, and put them up on the discord when a community opinion is the goal.

[Lacran]

Regarding keeping an even temperament as headmin do you feel you have a support network with admins/community that could help you manage burnout/general drama?

I've played with you for a while and I'm honestly incredibly impressed with you especially considering how much we used to butt heads when you were a player. I think as long as you have people to bounce ideas off and be a sounding board you would be an excellent headmin.

[Vekter]

As the vote comes up in a few days, given that I'm not running, I'll throw my official endorsement in with Chesh. He's been a joy to work with for quite some time and I expect nothing but great things from him out of a headmin term.

If you'd vote for me for headmin, vote for Chesh instead.

[nukularpower]

Wow, just made a big dumb post in the debate forum, wish I had read your platform first. Love the bit about admins being dungeon masters - that is exactly how I feel about it, so guess I found my candidate Also +1 for Kurt

[Cheshify]

Regarding keeping an even temperament as headmin do you feel you have a support network with admins/community that could help you manage burnout/general drama?

I've played with you for a while and I'm honestly incredibly impressed with you especially considering how much we used to butt heads when you were a player. I think as long as you have people to bounce ideas off and be a sounding board you would be an excellent headmin.

Thank you for the endorsement, I am all about personal improvement and furthering one's own social skills. I think the onus of success in my possible future term is one that is rested on my own ability to use the competent headmin + admin team as a support while supporting them in turn. We all need to look out for eachother, and ensure that we have the goal of keeping the game fun for players and admins alike.

[Cheshify]

As the vote comes up in a few days, given that I'm not running, I'll throw my official endorsement in with Chesh. He's been a joy to work with for quite some time and I expect nothing but great things from him out of a headmin term.

If you'd vote for me for headmin, vote for Chesh instead.

This is greatly appreciated Vekter. You're a mainstay in the admin team and an absolute workhorse when it comes to helping people out with nasty issues, so having your support fills me with confidence.

[Shaps-cloud]

Very steady admin with a good history and lots of contributions to the team and community under his belt. It's very easy for someone to claim that they want to become headmin to encourage more events (big and small), but having been the Code Lead for the gameshow event and seeing first hand what a massive undertaking it was, I can say that Chesh actually stepping up and running/helping lead major projects like Northstar and the Toolbox Tourney is a giant credit to him. Very good choice.

[Cheshify]

Wow, just made a big dumb post in the debate forum, wish I had read your platform first. Love the bit about admins being dungeon masters - that is exactly how I feel about it, so guess I found my candidate Also +1 for Kurt

Not a big dumb post, put a few of my thoughts on it. Thanks for the endorsement!

[Cheshify]

Very steady admin with a good history and lots of contributions to the team and community under his belt. It's very easy for someone to claim that they want to become headmin to encourage more events (big and small), but having been the Code Lead for the gameshow event and seeing first hand what a massive undertaking it was, I can say that Chesh actually stepping up and running/helping lead major projects like Northstar and the Toolbox Tourney is a giant credit to him. Very good choice.

I want to keep stepping up to run more stuff and keep things enjoyable! I enjoy managing teams in getting projects done, and while it can be severely difficult, it always feels like it pays off in the end to see people happy. Thank you for the post, Shaps!

[Cheshify]

Holy SHIT let's thank Riggle for a wonderful job on the NEWLY UPDATED campaign sticker!