/tg/Station 13

A normal part of the process of managing the admin team is checking in with inactive admins to determine if they're likely to make a near-future comeback or if they should retire (whether briefly or permanently being up to them), this process ranges from really smooth (six months of doing nothing purplemins where all three headmins agree) to divisive (what do lilacmins do anyway??).

In the spirit of figuring out where you all stand in relation to each other, where (roughly) would you draw the line on a standard administrative deadmining, a few weeks? months? No activity at all, or just really intermittent activity you don't trust? Should the server take all the lilacmins behind the shedbus and put us out of our misery?

No wrong answers here, removing admins for inactivity is a normal part of most terms, but the line where you'd draw it is in your court.

normal admins: talk to them if they haven't posted in the leave of absence thread and have been gone for several months (3+ ?) or if they have only joined like 5 times during the term
game masters: i think we should cut out people who have been completely inactive since our admin security policies about passwords and such (this is pretty much just One Guy i think?)

For normal admins, I would draw the line at 3 months of zero contact and playing *or*, 6 months of extremely limited playing and contact.

GMs are different, cause theyll often have valuable advice for newer admins. Should definitely give them more leeway, but if theres a GM sitting on the cord who hasn't sent a message in a year and people are wondering if they died, maybe its best to retire them.

As long as normal admins connect at least a few dozen times a month and aren't completely radio silent I'd probably offer fairly significant leniency, as at the very least they're there and contributing something. I'd most definitely speak to them to voice our concerns, to try to either get an ETA on when they'll resume activity.

If they're dead to the world (no connections, haven't been on at all in 6+ months) and don't respond (ever) when we're looking to check if you have a pulse I'd cut our losses and retire them.

For both admins and gamemasters, if their connections are sparse but they're active in other places tied to the admin team (moderate the discord, train admins, frequently help trialmins / candidates, insightful in policy discussions in discord / forums), I'd keep them around, too. As stated above, they're contributing still.

For normal admins some inactivity is fine, eventually it does seem worth checking in if they're just kinda "silently done", there's some operational security around removing permissions where they're really not needed any more.

Probably each term should at one point in its sitting do a check on everyone who has been inactive for 6 months (and maybe do the check 6 months after whenever the previous term did, if they did), do an activity check on discord on TG, reach out to them in DMs, give em a month to get back to you just incase you DMed them as they went on holiday, and if silent, deadmin for inactivity.

GMs are a whole other thing, they're the people who have done it all and seen it all, they're the history of what happened and what changed and why, I think they will generally have a very useful perspective having sat at the top in the past, as well as useful history or insights into things. That said if they're completely inactive for year(s) and dont respond to any attempts (DM or channel) to contact them then it's perhaps best practise to cut them loose. Not like they can't get someone's attention and rejoin if they decide they want to. I'm not sure what the best threshold for inactivity here is, would be a good idea to check with existing GMs about what sort of inactivity patterns are present that people do return from and set the bar a good measure beyond that.

Kill all GMs, leave normal admins.
And being serious, probably 6 months of inactivity for admins, GMs probably years. Its always worth checking in with people who suddenly disappear, but other than that I don't think culling inactive admins would change anything.

I was very open in my platform that I will strike down admins of any role-color if they don't play the game or interact.

Getting admin for admin chatter so you're hip with the kids is silly. Turn retirement home into your space.


GMs and Admins will be treated the same under the sun of my empire. You're inactive and not up to date with the game, and it's not changing, you should retire. Compromising the security of our admin tools so that people can stay with the friend group is weird to me. Especially when people who don't play wanna give their takes to admins who do.

I'm going to break from the pack a bit here, I don't think inactive admins are a problem. I would block any attempt to deadmin anyone who has played in the last 3 months. I wouldn't block other attempts, but I myself will not actively check on admin activity levels.

If their activity isn't great over a few months I'll check in with them and let them know that if after a few months things haven't improved they're on the block for retirement. I'd say it's pretty generous. If another headmin wants to be more aggressive about it I wouldn't have any problems giving my thumbs up.

Game Masters should be immune to this so that when I become one I can sit on my ass and shitpost in chatter while watching the discussion in bus before finally doing myself in to go play TGMC for 6 months.