iain0 - I made a candidate posting!

[iain0]

Greetings forum-goer, if you're familiar with my previous platforms or my adminning on Terry there's probably not a lot in here thats going to be a surprise, for everyone else, here's a little bit about why I'm here.

Who am I?

All the usual play time graphs at the end.

As a character, I'm Bob Stange, playing since mid 2019, initially a lot of engineering eventually moving to medical a couple of years ago and moving up into the CMO slot most of the time, I enjoy helping the department help people, or more directly acting as MD if there's people stuck waiting, as well as trying to keep the department chaos level down a bit. I co-ordinate a bit with command, though most of the round and threats are their problem, I keep an eye on the crew monitor and try feed in to, or if necessary take charge of, key events like the inevitable shuttle calling.

As an admin, I go by my username iain0, been a full admin for about 2 years now, a consistent presence on terry and handled a large number of tickets, big things for me in many tickets are really asking 'why' someone did something, having a good IC reason for actions is pretty key a lot of the time, and where I end up delivering a note or ban to a player I like to take the time to try discuss the events such that the other player understands what went wrong, and to give them some guidance as to what they maybe should be doing to deal with situations. I've been an Admin Trainer for a while and brought a couple of admins into the process, and helped out with a couple of other trainer's candidates. I'd like to think I've played a part in helping Terry-minning expand from rarely having more than one admin around to regularly having a group online together, and the experience is a lot more pleasant when you have others there to share the load and discuss the round, or just chat generally with.

Why am I running?

I don't have any great headline of changes or intent in my platform, never have, but I'm still running for two reasons really.

Firstly because I believe I have a good skill set, approach, and can probably do the job well, I see this process as more of an 'offer of my time' and largely stand on my merits and history. I'll likely continue posting these fairly neutral platforms unless TG changes in a direction I dislike and see myself as a "fairly safe option". If there's someone with some idea you're really into, vote for them higher (though do read on), but if you're fine with where things are and just like them to continue roughly as-is, that's about where I'm at.

Secondly, the more personal side is that I'd like to broaden my horizons, experience and learn the rest of the TG admin experience and then can take what I learn from that going forward into my post-headmin admin duties.

Finally, I'm not hugely sold on having "notable changes" as a platform, the job encompasses so much more than that day to day, and you still have to sell two headmins on your idea to get it rolling. If its a good enough idea then you can sell three headmins on it without actually needing to be a headmin yourself. Policy forums are one such route. It could help get more controversial changes through like 'mentors', but you're still very dependant on the luck of the other two headmins, and thus the best way to increase the odds is to find a way to make it sound appealing to most admins, in which case you'll probably be able to get the ball rolling regardless.

Smaller changes that interest me would be cleaning up the AI upload access part of silicon policy, I don't think its well phrased in its current form, and I've been curious recently about dynamic and what options we can tweak there ; I feel high pop is a mix of very high impact rounds, or rounds that struggle to get rolling (no round start threat / low overall threat), but the process here is to collect data, evidence thoughts, collect opinions internally and externally and propose changes to trial. And as per the previous paragraph I can probably make attempts at that headmin or not.

Summary and Graphs

This isn't the most flashy or exciting campaign, and I try to look past campaigns to the basic princples of those behind them when voting (applying this to political votes IRL as much as here). While I appreciate this sort of platform isn't the best way to "min/max" my odds I guess I'm just "doing my thing" here, and if elected I will do my thing in the Headmin capacity, try keep and strive for the good standards we've established and take us all through the next six months. I feel there's a place for a few neutral candidates in all elections that stand mostly on their history and demonstrated abilities, there doesn't always need to be flux (or perhaps you're against some of the flux), in which case a simple stability platform fits into a slot somewhere.

Scrubby last 6 months (the gap is a gap in log processing I believe)

Played time (Unassigned crewmember is probably mostly admin spawned in at thunderdome)

[WineAllWine]

Iain0 is an incredibly strong candidate

[kinnebian]

Iain0 is an incredibly strong candidate

Physically or mentally?

That said, I have a few questions (Stolen from redbaron, mostly.)

What are your current views on escalation policy?

A couple other candidates have voiced their opinions regarding MRP and LRP. Where do you view them currently?

Are there any ideas or campaign promises that other candidates have that you support or might support?

Thanks 4 ur time, fellow candidate.

[iain0]

Hi both, thanks for your postings! Regarding the questions posed:

I guess I'm pretty fond of current escalation policy, it makes sense and gives chance for conflict and moving on as a player, and as an admin has typically been quite easy to explain and draw lines with, and tends to play out how I feel like is reasonable for the game while still allowing the inevitable conflicts. I always had some concerns about what if in the conflict one party lost something more persistent that transcended the 'get crit and everyone moves on' style, but in practise this rarely happens, is probably covered by the final section on 'loss of belongings' and stuff and would probably be worthy of a rule 1 bwoink to ask why they made such a significant move (whatever that would be, trashing someone's project might be a good example)

I'm not big on separating out LRP and MRP, I think they share a lot and the differences are more down to how constrained you should be ; LRP is like a more fast paced tv show where everyone can do everything in a pinch because it suits the plot, and the rules tend to be more about what people shouldn't do, while I feel MRP has the same core game and just expects a more "non tv show" space station where things make some sense IC, such as staying in lane, and there's more guidance overall about what should and cant be done. That said I'm not super experienced in MRP but I think it has an important place and hopefully provides a different way stories unfold and resolve. I always meant to pop by once in a while but never did, but I have no plans to change the current "infrastructure"/setup without some very compelling reasons, tweaks to rules seem a intermittent background noise so should be expected on both LRP and MRP.

There's some general "probably always a reasonable goal" platform points such as RP good, happy admins good, admins having the same takes on things good, dungeon mastering good, fast appeals good (open to charter ideas, but thats a long topic and also depends on the team). It's all in the details of how you achieve any of those. More specific areas include:

• Silicon policy is currently in flux, see how that goes, I'm not expecting too much change in typical rounds and it'll perhaps take time to permeate the player base fully too.
• Doing something more interesting around command roles and what's expected always seemed interesting, if someone had some good ideas that didn't overly impair the players freedoms or impair them if antag then I'm up for discussions.
• I'm already vocally onboard for played-time being largely more important than calendar-time for many types of player records.
• I don't really remember how the 'restricted maints' phase went, I'd collect opinions and be open to discussion, but my default position is probably the status quo unless I can be convinced changing again could be good (what were the lessons learned last time?)
• Updating trainer/trainee resources and whatever Fikou has in mind could be good (not sure the details but there's certainly room here). I've also tried to make some kind of "admin toolbox" of tricks and tips (SDQL, proc calls, VV tricks) but I struggled and spent more time trying to work out a robust way to categorise or index the information I'd collected. Perhaps raising such things as part of this might bring some new ideas to light (maybe I could just post this on the admin forums in general to get feedback)
• Less OOC IC is good, but I think that topic is all in the details, and I'd love to spend less of my life explaining the IC meaning of ERP (hint: go shift click a no erp poster, its not what most people think)

[Arianya]

As a question from a former headmin - you're clearly someone who is on the server a lot, and I'm never going to claim its impossible to be a headmin and still play, but the headminship is a time commitment and even the most active of headmins do drop their activity at least a bit on the server wrt adminning/playing.

Are you okay with that, or is your focus still on in-game adminning/playing?

[iain0]

Are you okay with that, or is your focus still on in-game adminning/playing?

Hiya, thanks for the question.

My priority will be the headmin work and role, I expect to reallocate time towards this from the other 'types' of time I spend, primarily the low pop "do something else / DM" shifts which don't really consume the time they record in the same way as a high pop shift (also best time range for overlapping with Americans), secondarily the earlier evening high pop shift admin slot I usually do I can reallocate, and arguably doesn't need my coverage so much any more, terry-mins are thriving, and finally if necessary I'll give up the shifts I play, however, I'd hope this is only irregularly necessary (I would expect the workload varies quite a bit, but that the 'baseline' wouldn't consistently consume all of the time I could allocate, but we'll see).