Add mentors, or similar

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wesoda25
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Add mentors, or similar

Post by wesoda25 » #645150

In my last run as admin, I was on bagil a lot. There was a time where, for whatever reason, we got a large influx of new players. I would frequently take to finding new players, spawning myself in as a themed helper clown, and showing them the hang of things. It was very rewarding, especially when I saw those people continue to connect and play.

In doing so I learned that a proactive helpful hand can be just as important as rule enforcement for server growth. Helping new folks genuinely makes a difference. I think we should give more people that opportunity.

Mentors would do this. I'm sure we'll see lots of arguments against and for them here, but I'll start with my personal proposal.

In my eyes, we simply need to better equip those willing to help. I think this could be done as easily as a simple whitelisted role/quirk/trait which has better visibility of new players (think the Player Playtime panel, which shows ckeys of players connected as well as their hours. It was my #1 for finding people who needed help), and perhaps a barebones, intuitive system of requesting help for said players.

What do you think? Should we add mentors? Something else?
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by san7890 » #645157

I've been writing about my thoughts on this over the last few months whenever the topic was breached, so I'll condense it down into one post. Please correct me if I'm wrong on any point, but I believe all of this to be true by my understanding of internal functions. This is pretty rambley at times too, apologies, but I just wanted to get it all written down right now.

One thing that I love about /tg/ is the fact that we have a very simple power structure. Once you are a Trial Admin, you have all of the permissions granted to you to fulfill the tasks of your role. You get every permission but +PERMISSIONS (allows you to give any player elevated admin status on the server- given to Maintainers and AdminTrainers (also HeadAdmins)), +POLL (allows you to start a Poll on any given topic across all servers, only granted to Maintainers and HeadAdmins, subsequently Game Masters), and +DBRANKS (allows you to access the Admin Database that all servers utilize to give anyone a "permanent" rank, only granted to HeadAdmins and subsequently GameMasters). and none of the fun stuff is locked from you. (I am only referring to on-server roles and permissions).

Discounting these three, any Game Admin (synonymous for Trial Admin for the sakes of this argument) can accomplish a very, very wide variety of functions. They can play any sound they wish, toy with the variables of about 99% of the game, build whatever they want to build, kick+ban (and also unban) people, give antagonist to anyone, note people however they feel fit, restart the server at any moment in time, etc. This is purely only possible due to two things:

A) A high level of trust in the admins we promote to have these permissions. If we did not trust them or consider them worthy of ever potentially gaining our trust, they would not get admin. This is a simple, nonavoidable truth that spans literally every situation where the concept of an "administrator" is needed. This is primarily why we have the whole Admin Candidate to Trial Admin to Game Admin period, to "filter" anyone who violates this trust.

B) Extensive Logging. You don't stop being vetted once you hit the Purple rank. I would say every single action you do that can be considered deadmin-worthy is logged in a place where admins can not alter said logs. A broad margin of these logs are also provided to players as a courtesy- and they are indeed used to uncover Admins who violate the trust of those who put them in that position, as well as those in the players. This is mostly an aside that ties into Point A.

There's no complicated system. Some servers have a chronic distrust of admins, and are VERY reluctant to give them the slightest permission, instead adding more and more levels in a hierarchy. There's no "moderator" that must submit their want to ban someone to an "administrator". The game admin can simply ban/note as they see fit of their own volition without needing to explain it through to someone else. No admin (aside from the Head Admin Term during an appeal process) can "overturn" any ban another admin placed that they may disagree with. It's all very simple.

Where do mentors go here?

Would a mentor just be a second-rate person? Would it just be a mere path to eventually become an admin (eschewing the delicate Admin Candidate process that we've refined for a good number of years)? Is it just someone who sits around waiting to answer questions, none of the fun? Is it someone who has to flag down an admin to actually do stuff? What would the playerbase think of a mere mentor, just a person that sorta nips at the heels of the "big people" with the "big powers", hoping to eventually get a taste of permissions? Do they get access to the "admin" stuff like discussing "real admin tickets" in adminsay? Can they peek into the database? I don't want to subject people through that sort of process, especially those people that you might consider to be "undesirable" to be an admin and locking them permanently into the "mentor" role.

There is no niche to accomplish, Game Admins on /tg/ solicit good-faith adminhelps for anything related to the game. I have been swamped with tickets before, but I can simply ignore the ones asking simple questions until I get the real administrative stuff out of the way. People can wait, they don't need to have their questions answered in the minute, there is some laxness in synchronicity during a ticket. If you look at "Issue Managers" on the /tg/station GitHub, they have a much lesser station in the organization than a Maintainer (yet similar permissions)- but their role is explicitly defined to do the work that the maintainers simply do not have that much time for- managing the huge influx of issues they get on a regular basis. However, they are completely and wholly distinct in their function, with Issue Managers simply helping out with an otherwise extreme load. There is no extreme nor clear burden to admins to try and answer a few questions during a shift, so why go through the effort of uncovering people and gimping them into a second-rate role?

SS13 is a hard game to get into, there is no disputing that. However, why should we start to get mentors in and start to elevate the word "Game Admin" above something more than it really is? There's an element of snobbery to it, where "I won't help you out, we have someone else do that for you." that I see play out on other servers with mentorhelp systems. People who come off as "allergic" to some type of work as they focus on whatever administrative issues come up. It really creates some level of disconnect to my eyes. Admins are trained to be more cordial to newer players (who attempt the game with good faith), and it feels odd to just offload the work on someone else while you... do something else? Even if it isn't snobbish, I know for a fact that if we were to have mentors, admins would likely not want to "barge in" on helping a newer player because then it's more like just stealing someone else's work.

This is a very, very long list of issues that should not be taken lightly. I didn't come up with all of these on the spot, I have been discussing these points since about February of this year. We have a very high degree of trust and confidence for admins, and we also like to expect them to be people who help newer players: so why would we just throw that away for someone we trust less, tack them to a "lower" role, and really start to get that drift between "admin" and "player".

Anyways, the general sentiment that I've repeatedly discussed in whatever backchannel and frontchannel is that it's just going to be a headache simply due to "trust". Hopefully that helps.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Nabski » #645161

Building off Wesoda but avoiding the pitfalls of Sans post.

The first time a player joins the server they get a p-M-AI, or Pocket Mentor AI. If activated it polls ghosts with something like, "a new player is requesting a mentor" and then they have the option to do it.

Fuck admin-tools. Make it a code solution.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Shadowflame909 » #645163

maybe we should just make PAI's more accessible to new players
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Mothblocks » #645165

From the brief times we've talked about this, I know you don't agree with the idea that anyone trusted with mentor could just be admin instead, since you have experienced players who didn't want to be admins, but did want to be mentors. So I will attack from another point of view.

One concern that I don't think many will be able to bring up is fear of bureaucracy. Because you want to bring in people who don't want to be admins, we (head admins) have to set up a system for extra inflow of new people that need to be trained, observed, promoted, and when they mess up, managed. It depends on the term, but universally I've never seen head admins be "fast" about this sort of thing for admins already, and so I think adding mentors would just slow every process down. Now instead of spending time handling appeals/admins/policy discussions, we also need to slot in time for mentor applications and mentor management.

Alongside the cost of adding and maintaining a mentor system in code, the gain there just isn't worth it. Our servers generally cap out at around 70 people, and there's usually a few admins on at those times. The questions we get are generally very simple, and I've never really seen admins punting off game questions in favor of investigative tickets often enough for it to matter. It can happen sometimes when it's a really overwhelming day, but I usually just see them ask the person to ask in OOC instead, which is reasonable, and plus Supportmin pings are always there.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by sinfulbliss » #645166

I agree with this strongly. It's quite difficult to find and assist new players in-game, because of various reasons:

1) They might not know how/who to ask, since asking about mechanics IC feels a little strange, especially if you're new and don't know there are OOC IC exceptions for this very thing. Adminhelps to a new player are too nuclear of an option to ask how to switch hands, even if we more experienced players know this to be just fine.
2) You don't know someone's new unless you examine them and notice they're an intern.
3) There's a good chance your round simply never crosses over into an intern's round, especially if you have different jobs.

I've played Fulp and Skyrat where there are mentors, and I found them very helpful for mechanical questions, not only because of the reasons above but because sometimes the average player you ask might not know the answer to your question, whereas asking a pool of mentors is much more likely to get an answer.

For lowpop especially this is incredibly helpful. Recently on Discord someone was asking on Bagil things about the SM, which was technically IC OOC and they were warned (although the admin then hopped on and helped them with it, but that's Smithers he's a special fella). Imagine if mentorhelps were redirected through some sort of Discord channel for mentors, so that people could get answers about in-round questions from people not even online.

The downside of course is the potential for metagaming. All implementations of mentor I've seen involve mentors (and admins) playing alongside players while receiving questions that give OOC information about the round. TG would be somewhat unique then if mentors were held to observing while active, like admins are. Nevertheless I think there could still be a use for them even with that restriction, as we have lots of experienced players that observe regularly.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Mothblocks » #645167

1) They might not know how/who to ask, since asking about mechanics IC feels a little strange, especially if you're new and don't know there are OOC IC exceptions for this very thing. Adminhelps to a new player are too nuclear of an option to ask how to switch hands, even if we more experienced players know this to be just fine.
TBH if this is a real problem we can always add a Mentorhelp button that just sends an admin help if psychology is really the reason
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by TheFinalPotato » #645212

Reminder that +debug should only be given to users who have passed some form of trust barrier, because we as a codebase are never going to be able to develop securely enough that a bad actor couldn't privilege escalate into something nasty.
There is no substitute for trust based filters.

Not sure if mentors would really need debug or not, but like, just so you know and all.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by SkeletalElite » #645307

I wouldn't want to be an admin, but I'd be a mentor. I'm probably not the only one.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Pandarsenic » #645375

Nabski wrote: Thu Jun 23, 2022 10:49 pm Building off Wesoda but avoiding the pitfalls of Sans post.

The first time a player joins the server they get a p-M-AI, or Pocket Mentor AI. If activated it polls ghosts with something like, "a new player is requesting a mentor" and then they have the option to do it.

Fuck admin-tools. Make it a code solution.
if we're doing a code solution it should be LOOC
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by zxaber » #645407

SkeletalElite wrote: Sat Jun 25, 2022 1:22 am I wouldn't want to be an admin, but I'd be a mentor. I'm probably not the only one.
I only became an admin because we didn't have a mentor role.

I think the best way to add mentors would be making an option in ahelp to let the user specify whether their ahelp is just a mechanics/gameplay question, and then allowing observing mentors (who would have no special tools) to answer said list of questions. These query ahelps would also be available to admins in the ticket list.

We'll probably never get to a point where we can trust non-admins with unrestricted access to admin tools, except possibly read-only access to VV. So instead of worrying about that, we could take the easy route of just not elevating mentors with permissions at all, save to view the mentor ticket list while observing. Most questions of "how do I X" don't really need admin tools anyway.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Drag » #645445

I wouldn't mind easing a bit of workload to some people that can answer some basic questions while I'm actively investigating an actual situation. Perhaps it could be structured where mentors don't have any power save for answering mentor questions that admins can also view. I could see adding a mentor say verb that admins can also use and filter out of their chat tabs if they don't want to bother
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645446

Mentors are a must have, there is absolutely zero negative for them.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Mothblocks » #645572

kieth by posting something like that you're just admitting to not reading anything in the thread.
Shaps-cloud wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 7:59 am May eventually become one of the illusive maintainer-headmins if they choose to pursue that path, having a coder in the senior admin leadership has usually been positive for both sides in the past.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Domitius » #645583

I want to say I don't want mentors because introducing a formalized role adds more hierarchy to the admin team which I don't want at all.

I don't want to die on this hill either so a solution I believe is to not have it be a formalized role if pushed! Any player with all jobs unlocked and like, 250 hours of in game playtime(No ghost hours) can give themselves the mentor role while observing to answer questions sent by mentor help. This would give deadchat something to do as well as providing for those who wish to help mentor.

We would need another ban option to take that privilege away from those that abuse or mislead with the mentor system. I have to acknowledge that yes it is ripe for abuse but with such a steep investment of playtime that would hopefully discourage it. No formalized roles and no admin-lite positions.

Anyways that's my two-cents. Cheers!

Edit: Big agree with Nabskis idea as it did inspire this thought.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645615

Mothblocks wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:36 am kieth by posting something like that you're just admitting to not reading anything in the thread.
You're wrong, instead I've found none of the complaints personally valid. I've actually discussed this on the discord with Sans , I don't paticularly enjoy using the forums especially for long winded debates. The accusation that I didn't read it is completely baseless.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Mothblocks » #645621

If you're going to enter policy discussion, you should actually engage with the discussion because for the sake of head admins evaluating mentors, your post is completely useless as you do not provide a counter argument to anything said and might as well be noise.
Shaps-cloud wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 7:59 am May eventually become one of the illusive maintainer-headmins if they choose to pursue that path, having a coder in the senior admin leadership has usually been positive for both sides in the past.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645631

Mothblocks wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 6:04 pm If you're going to enter policy discussion, you should actually engage with the discussion because for the sake of head admins evaluating mentors, your post is completely useless as you do not provide a counter argument to anything said and might as well be noise.
I am adding another thumbs up for mentors. The goal is for it to be a form of noise, yes.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by san7890 » #645632

kieth4 wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 5:39 pm
Mothblocks wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:36 am kieth by posting something like that you're just admitting to not reading anything in the thread.
You're wrong, instead I've found none of the complaints personally valid. I've actually discussed this on the discord with Sans , I don't paticularly enjoy using the forums especially for long winded debates. The accusation that I didn't read it is completely baseless.
You discussed it with me in an ephemeral format (one washed quickly away by the flow and time of tgstation-general) and your arguments were based on your experience with mentors on other servers and how you chose to visualize this issue.

It would have been much more productive had you simply spoken about what you had spoken with me about here, because then I could dispute it here rather than allude to "some other discussion that was had on this" in a public channel. In fact, in order to ensure that some discussion regarding to the topic at-hand is honored, I'll take this time to dispute the point that "Mentors are good on other servers". If that was not the point you were intending to make to me those days ago, I apologize.

/tg/ is not other servers. If you see my dispute to the matter at hand above (can't seem to quote it in an edit), you'll see why we don't need mentors because the power structure is so simple. I also do not recall what your dispute was to permanently crippling someone's upward mobility by making them a second-rate person in the power structure of a large serverbase, so it would be nice if you could bring it up here.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Imitates-The-Lizards » #645635

Although I'm generally in favor of mentors (or at least a funny reskinned ahelp that just redirects questions to admins) I'd like to voice a concern I have that this might potentially steal opportunities for players to teach cute newbies. One of my favorite things to do on Sybil is teach cute newbies the more complex systems like chemistry or the supermatter engine, but they might just jump to the mentor help system rather than ask their fellow crew to help them with this implemented. And that would be really sad.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645637

san7890 wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 8:08 pm
kieth4 wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 5:39 pm
Mothblocks wrote: Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:36 am kieth by posting something like that you're just admitting to not reading anything in the thread.
You're wrong, instead I've found none of the complaints personally valid. I've actually discussed this on the discord with Sans , I don't paticularly enjoy using the forums especially for long winded debates. The accusation that I didn't read it is completely baseless.
You discussed it with me in an ephemeral format (one washed quickly away by the flow and time of tgstation-general) and your arguments were based on your experience with mentors on other servers and how you chose to visualize this issue.

It would have been much more productive had you simply spoken about what you had spoken with me about here, because then I could dispute it here rather than allude to "some other discussion that was had on this" in a public channel. In fact, in order to ensure that some discussion regarding to the topic at-hand is honored, I'll take this time to dispute the point that "Mentors are good on other servers". If that was not the point you were intending to make to me those days ago, I apologize.

/tg/ is not other servers. If you see my dispute to the matter at hand above (can't seem to quote it in an edit), you'll see why we don't need mentors because the power structure is so simple. I also do not recall what your dispute was to permanently crippling someone's upward mobility by making them a second-rate person in the power structure of a large serverbase, so it would be nice if you could bring it up here.
I don't view it as crippling someone's upwards mobility, in fact it can act like a steppingstone towards elevated mobility. As a mentor you're able to develop clear skills in answering mhelps that directly correlate to skills within tickets themselves. As I'm sure you know being an admin comes with a lot of elevated responsibility. I don't paticularly think it would leave anyone gunning for admin in a position of mentor forever in that regard as they're able to take esentially babysteps. It's also important to note that many people want to be mentors as opposed to admins. I wouldn't consider it a second rate position but instead an alternate position that purely puts focus on helping players learn without having to deal with trouble and rulebreaking.

I see your point on the powerstructure. I don't however view mentors as much of a complexity, they don't need any forms of powers and the amount of trust placed in them is relatively low, at most they're answering questions about the game as a dedicated role. Perhaps they'll be given the ability to spawn themselves in as a crab or something too, relatively inconsequential things that are quite hard to abuse and if abused will be removed.

I think the simplicity would remain but please feel to refute me if you view me as wrong.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Capsandi » #645663

I find the arguments put forth in support of mentors to be at best, contrived, or in other words: mentor-gymnastics
At least on LRP(and definitely for MRP unless something went terribly wrong over there), asking for help from the people around you in calm situations with a line approximating "Hi I'm new" or "How do I play this game"(this variant is most effective because LRP players love NRP jargon) will turn most heads. New players also seem to possess the intuition to seek other people out on the off chance the first group they run into is busy.
Now lets say there's an epic nukeops round/revolution going on and nobody on the radio or near them will give a noob the time of day. The new saybox will lead them to OOC and they can ask there. May they ick ock a little? Sure, but they'll get an answer and learn about the true meaning of Christmas ICK OCK!
What's that? Everyone playing is too busy to answer a OOC question and there are no admins online? Well then what would blue text and a fancy name do about that? The players already told you they're busy by not responding to OOC!
Even if there was a mentor help verb bound to F2 and next to adminhelp in the panel, the new saybox turns player's attention to local IC chat, common radio and OOC. Since most players already know how to ask about niche mechanics IC, tacking mentorhelp into the saybox would only serve to drag down the usability of the new streamlined UI.

As for the bureaucracy, mentors would do the most damage by giving people who would become admin bragging rights and an inflated ego, both of which are the driving force behind most trialmin applications. This KILLS the administration
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by BeeSting12 » #645703

Mentors are unneeded. I was never too overwhelmed as an admin to answer simple mechanical questions, or even more advanced ones. Worst case scenario I would link the appropriate wikipedia page. I did occasionally find myself too busy to answer mechanical based questions that require debug to figure out such as "i seem to be taking damage for no reason, why am i taking damage" from an experienced player. A mentor type role would be useful in that situation in the rare situation where the online admins are too busy to respond, but if we trust someone enough with +DEBUG unsupervised then they could be made a full admin. Mentors would add to the bureaucracy without added value for the server, and they would add a maintenance burden to the codebase as well.

What would be actually useful is if mechanical related adminhelps sent when no admins are online intelligently pulled a wiki link and messaged the player with it. The wiki search function is already in the game if you click wiki at the top of the screen. All that would need to be added is something scanning incoming ahelps for phrases such as "how do i..." and "what is the...", etc and then plug the rest into a wiki search. The benefits are twofold as it firstly gives the player help and secondly makes the player aware of our wiki.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by blackdav123 » #645706

mentors wouldnt need magic admin powers to be helpful for answering questions, not sure why this thread has so much focus on why we cant trust mentors with x y and z

the "bureaucracy" added could be as simple as 1. apply on forums if you have a good record and sufficient playtime and 2. dont answer mentorhelps as a way to shitpost
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645716

Capsandi wrote: Wed Jun 29, 2022 3:36 am I find the arguments put forth in support of mentors to be at best, contrived, or in other words: mentor-gymnastics
At least on LRP(and definitely for MRP unless something went terribly wrong over there), asking for help from the people around you in calm situations with a line approximating "Hi I'm new" or "How do I play this game"(this variant is most effective because LRP players love NRP jargon) will turn most heads. New players also seem to possess the intuition to seek other people out on the off chance the first group they run into is busy.
Now lets say there's an epic nukeops round/revolution going on and nobody on the radio or near them will give a noob the time of day. The new saybox will lead them to OOC and they can ask there. May they ick ock a little? Sure, but they'll get an answer and learn about the true meaning of Christmas ICK OCK!
What's that? Everyone playing is too busy to answer a OOC question and there are no admins online? Well then what would blue text and a fancy name do about that? The players already told you they're busy by not responding to OOC!
Even if there was a mentor help verb bound to F2 and next to adminhelp in the panel, the new saybox turns player's attention to local IC chat, common radio and OOC. Since most players already know how to ask about niche mechanics IC, tacking mentorhelp into the saybox would only serve to drag down the usability of the new streamlined UI.

As for the bureaucracy, mentors would do the most damage by giving people who would become admin bragging rights and an inflated ego, both of which are the driving force behind most trialmin applications. This KILLS the administration
I'm going to break down why I disagree with your argument.
At least on LRP(and definitely for MRP unless something went terribly wrong over there), asking for help from the people around you in calm situations with a line approximating "Hi I'm new" or "How do I play this game"(this variant is most effective because LRP players love NRP jargon) will turn most heads. New players also seem to possess the intuition to seek other people out on the off chance the first group they run into is busy.
I've taught a lot of people a lot of mechanics and this simplifies how easy it is, on a revolution/ team antags such as cult people don't know what's going on. It's very hard to teach them due to the fast paced nature of the game mode and the complexities of things such as cult. I've had most success helping players learn as a spawned admin helper crab, as this allowed me to simply run them through the spells ect which I wouldn't have been able to really do otherwise. A lot of time when teaching these mechanics you need to fully devote yourself to that player to teach them and admins won't have the time as they're slamming tickets. People take a while to learn these things and simply don't enjoy the modes until they do but they can't learn unless they're helped in many cases for which there is no opportunity to. Mentors would help fill this niche and teach them.
The new saybox will lead them to OOC and they can ask there. May they ick ock a little? Sure, but they'll get an answer and learn about the true meaning of Christmas ICK OCK!
Yesterday we had a revolution, people were asking things like "why is the shuttle not leaving" and other newer players were replying saying things like "I think there's a revolution". I don't think ick ocking is ever the solution If I'm going to be completely honest. It creates and promotes bad habits that will get them bonked later on down the line or right hten if admins are online, we shouldn't EVER rely on breaking rules as an option for people to learn.
What's that? Everyone playing is too busy to answer a OOC question and there are no admins online? Well then what would blue text and a fancy name do about that? The players already told you they're busy by not responding to OOC!
Some of my friends with high hours will have OOC off or in a different chat tab because it's a genuine shitfest. These are some of the more experienced players too. People can't always answer questions because they don't know and/or it's too complex to fully explain in OOC. Mentorship would tackle this by giving a new medium to explain, with perhaps (If we're being wistful) the ability to spawn themselves in as a crab or something to guide the other person.
Even if there was a mentor help verb bound to F2 and next to adminhelp in the panel, the new saybox turns player's attention to local IC chat, common radio and OOC. Since most players already know how to ask about niche mechanics IC, tacking mentorhelp into the saybox would only serve to drag down the usability of the new streamlined UI.
This is where I'm going to disagree with you the most. It's not easy to find people who know these mechanics a lot of the time, you need to know who knows what and how willing they are to teach. This is simply outside of the scope of many new players. However, many experienced players have already stated that they would be interested in mentorship so by concentrating them within this system they will hopefully be easily reached.
As for the bureaucracy, mentors would do the most damage by giving people who would become admin bragging rights and an inflated ego, both of which are the driving force behind most trialmin applications. This KILLS the administration
I have no idea what this means, if you get time could you possible further expand on what you mean? Thanks :)
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Shellton(Mario) » #645717

I think mentors would be a neat idea. I think at most they should be able to spawn themselves in as a harmless animal like le crab or a pai or something a long with being able to answer a helps or the version of a help you want them to use a long with being able to send messages to people like a an admin responding to a pray. The last 2 are because I think the main difference between a mentor and an admin should be mentors should seek out new players rather than new players needing to find the right key bind or open the right window to find the help they need. To help mentors with this we could rework the blacklist player notify system admins have to instead ping all mentors online when a player that has intern status (15 hours or lower I Think?). It would require some code work but I think if we want to go through with mentors as an idea this would help them greatly and I imagine you might be able to use the blacklist code as a base rather than needing to remake a whole new system from the ground up. But I am just putting my ideas out there if mentors do go through and someone wants to take a crack at this.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645718

BeeSting12 wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 2:23 am Mentors are unneeded. I was never too overwhelmed as an admin to answer simple mechanical questions, or even more advanced ones. Worst case scenario I would link the appropriate wikipedia page. I did occasionally find myself too busy to answer mechanical based questions that require debug to figure out such as "i seem to be taking damage for no reason, why am i taking damage" from an experienced player. A mentor type role would be useful in that situation in the rare situation where the online admins are too busy to respond, but if we trust someone enough with +DEBUG unsupervised then they could be made a full admin. Mentors would add to the bureaucracy without added value for the server, and they would add a maintenance burden to the codebase as well.

What would be actually useful is if mechanical related adminhelps sent when no admins are online intelligently pulled a wiki link and messaged the player with it. The wiki search function is already in the game if you click wiki at the top of the screen. All that would need to be added is something scanning incoming ahelps for phrases such as "how do i..." and "what is the...", etc and then plug the rest into a wiki search. The benefits are twofold as it firstly gives the player help and secondly makes the player aware of our wiki.
Linking the Wikipedia page is unhelpful 99% of the time. Linking the wiki page to cult for example is absolutely useless as experienced players who have played this game for many hours have no clue what half the cult stuff does despite the wiki page...

Mentors also wouldn't have +debug so I have no idea where that comes from.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Mothblocks » #645719

the "bureaucracy" added could be as simple as 1. apply on forums if you have a good record and sufficient playtime and 2. dont answer mentorhelps as a way to shitpost
This is a huge oversimplification when you factor in the behind the scenes stuff.

Applying on the forums means needing a set of people to look through applications, vet people, and approve them. We already have a very hard time getting admin trainers to do this for admins, and for reasons that would essentially map the same to mentors (it's not usually about trust!).

Then, you need head admins to go through the process of doing the exact same thing, and go through all the promotion work. This would also be mostly identical to admins, even if the actual skill set/trust needed is different.

Then, we need to also keep a regular eye on them like we do admins, since our expectations would still relatively be the same, and especially if our requirements for entry are lower than admins due to their scope.

We would also likely need to either put them in our current admin channels to talk between each other and other admins, as they will be working closely with each other, meaning we need the exact same level of trust. Or we need to open a second channel just for mentors/admins+mentors, in which case there's more for us to have to keep watch on (admin channel moderation is under the purview of head admins, and is not a zero cost endeavor). Moderation in these channels is more necessary if our requirements for entry are lower than admins due to their scope.

We would also need to make sure the mentors are trained, because even though their scope is much smaller, admin tools are never particularly intuitive, and we need to make sure they properly understand the conduct we would expect from them.

Basically, even though I agree that mentors don't necessarily need the same level of trust as admins, the process is still essentially identical to admins. Head admins, and even just normal trainers/admins (if you are thinking that head admins can just defer it off), have a lot of responsibilities and adding mentors is definitely an extra cost. All the time spent on the mentor process could be spent on admins, policy discussions, ban appeals, etc--all of which have historically been slow at one point or another no matter the term (as the work piles up and up, it's more discouraging to clean it up, meaning the problem gets worse and worse).

Even "have a good record" as a requirement is nowhere near as straight forward as you think it should be. Admin applications are slow to go through for a reason, this partially being one of them. Trainers disagree with trainers on this. Head admins disagree with trainers on this. And even recently, head admins have disagreed with head admins on this.

That isn't to say anything that adds extra cost is a bad thing. It's not, but it's to say that the reward for that cost needs to be worth it.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645732

Mothblocks wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:54 am
the "bureaucracy" added could be as simple as 1. apply on forums if you have a good record and sufficient playtime and 2. dont answer mentorhelps as a way to shitpost
This is a huge oversimplification when you factor in the behind the scenes stuff.

Applying on the forums means needing a set of people to look through applications, vet people, and approve them. We already have a very hard time getting admin trainers to do this for admins, and for reasons that would essentially map the same to mentors (it's not usually about trust!).

Then, you need head admins to go through the process of doing the exact same thing, and go through all the promotion work. This would also be mostly identical to admins, even if the actual skill set/trust needed is different.

Then, we need to also keep a regular eye on them like we do admins, since our expectations would still relatively be the same, and especially if our requirements for entry are lower than admins due to their scope.

We would also likely need to either put them in our current admin channels to talk between each other and other admins, as they will be working closely with each other, meaning we need the exact same level of trust. Or we need to open a second channel just for mentors/admins+mentors, in which case there's more for us to have to keep watch on (admin channel moderation is under the purview of head admins, and is not a zero cost endeavor). Moderation in these channels is more necessary if our requirements for entry are lower than admins due to their scope.

We would also need to make sure the mentors are trained, because even though their scope is much smaller, admin tools are never particularly intuitive, and we need to make sure they properly understand the conduct we would expect from them.

Basically, even though I agree that mentors don't necessarily need the same level of trust as admins, the process is still essentially identical to admins. Head admins, and even just normal trainers/admins (if you are thinking that head admins can just defer it off), have a lot of responsibilities and adding mentors is definitely an extra cost. All the time spent on the mentor process could be spent on admins, policy discussions, ban appeals, etc--all of which have historically been slow at one point or another no matter the term (as the work piles up and up, it's more discouraging to clean it up, meaning the problem gets worse and worse).

Even "have a good record" as a requirement is nowhere near as straight forward as you think it should be. Admin applications are slow to go through for a reason, this partially being one of them. Trainers disagree with trainers on this. Head admins disagree with trainers on this. And even recently, head admins have disagreed with head admins on this.

That isn't to say anything that adds extra cost is a bad thing. It's not, but it's to say that the reward for that cost needs to be worth it.
Surely there are ways to simplify this? For further clarification, couldn't admin trainers vet and approve mentors without the need for headmins to step in. Mentors will in no way ever have access to the same amount of information or power as admins so surely the process should be simplified to reflect this. I don't see why they'd need to be put into the admin talk channels either or work that closely with them, their goal will be to help the newer players learn which is quite a step away from the majority of admin work.

You're talking about admin tools and training for admin things but from my understanding of mentors, this is out of their scope. At most they'll be answering tickets without much actual need for any other admin tools.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but It feels like from the points you've provided that your understanding of mentors is different to a lot of people's. Most people view them to have little power and no admin tools. Could you expand and please say what you view mentors so I could get a better understanding, many thanks.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Vekter » #645740

We've had interest in the past, but most of the time this idea has been struck down, generally in that we don't really need them when admins can be doing their job perfectly fine. Whether or not that's true is an argument I don't really feel like getting into right now.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Mothblocks » #645744

kieth4 wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:03 pm couldn't admin trainers vet and approve mentors without the need for headmins to step in.
Only to some extent. I alluded to it here:
Mothblocks wrote: Head admins, and even just normal trainers/admins (if you are thinking that head admins can just defer it off), have a lot of responsibilities and adding mentors is definitely an extra cost.
That being said, mentors would still be an authoritative voice in the community (especially to new players, who don't understand our structure), and so head admins would definitely want to keep them to a higher standards point than you might want. Admins, admin trainers, and head admins often disagree with each other very much about if someone is up to the right standards, which I also mentioned in my post WRT what "having a clean record" means.

Trainers currently do not even have the ability to change roles permanently, though to be fair config is set up in a way where we can allow that per role.
kieth4 wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:03 pm You're talking about admin tools and training for admin things but from my understanding of mentors, this is out of their scope. At most they'll be answering tickets without much actual need for any other admin tools.
Yes, they're not going to have access to bans and VV and such, but they are still going to have access to a tooling suite that they otherwise would never have seen--we usually spend a good bit on the ticket panel itself during trainings, even ignoring checking notes/making bans. It would be a quicker training than admins, but a larger than zero training. None of this even mentions the maintenance cost of this--our permissions system is really janky and we don't really have a strong motivation to fix it because it's really ingrained.
kieth4 wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 4:03 pm I don't see why they'd need to be put into the admin talk channels either or work that closely with them, their goal will be to help the newer players learn which is quite a step away from the majority of admin work.
Because even admins very frequently ask amongst themselves complex questions, there likely should be some avenue where mentors can do the same without OOC-ICing.

Again, there is a non zero cost to all this that we seriously need to consider. Are admins failing right now in a way that mentors would not that is worth the cost?
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Tearling » #645746

Mothblocks wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:04 pm Are admins failing right now in a way that mentors would not that is worth the cost?
I love the admins on /tg/station, but I think so, yes.

Right now becoming an admin requires an admin trainer to be available, and want to train you.
If becoming a mentor simply required a quick application period where the headmins checked your history, yay/nay'd it, then allowed you some basic privileges to mentor new players, it would be much easier for someone to get into that mentoring position.

In this regard it would become much easier for someone who values the community to help improve it without hitting a roadblock because they aren't friends with an admin trainer, or because they chose to apply at a bad time.
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Timberpoes wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:41 am From my perspective, players just want to genuinely be listened to. And I don't mean it condescendingly, but to genuinely have their say and for admins to listen, process it and reply. Even if you don't give two shits about what the player is saying, even if you disagree with every part of what they say, players are less likely to leave an ahelp pissed off if you've listened to them and given a reply that directly addresses what they've told you.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by sinfulbliss » #645750

I've revised my point here. I think a "mentorhelp" button that gets redirected to admins instead, would work very well too, and I'm sure this sort of thing could be tested to see how many mentorhelps go unanswered to see if it'd require mentors being added in addition.

I would think mentors would be given almost 0 permissions, much less admin tools, except for the ability to see and answer mentorhelp tickets in-game. I don't think players asking whether or not they can do certain things (i.e., whether it is up to standard) is something mentors would be in the wheelhouse of. That would be ahelps - I reckon most players know to ahelp if their question is something that needs admin clarification or involves rules and standard of play. Mentorhelps would, in theory, be strictly about mechanics and "how do I X, Y, and Z." That would probably cut down a lot on the vetting, training, and the tedious process that's been mentioned.

I also think a mentor channel in the Discord would be overkill. If a mentor doesn't know the answer to a question they could just not reply to the ticket (no worse than if mentors didn't exist). I don't think inter-mentor discussions would need to happen, especially if mentors aren't going to be answering complex questions about rules and whether someone is allowed to do X Y and Z.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by kieth4 » #645780

That being said, mentors would still be an authoritative voice in the community (especially to new players, who don't understand our structure), and so head admins would definitely want to keep them to a higher standards point than you might want. Admins, admin trainers, and head admins often disagree with each other very much about if someone is up to the right standards, which I also mentioned in my post WRT what "having a clean record" means.
Here's where we'd disagree, I don't view mentors as an authoritative voice in the community. In my ideal world they'd exist to answer questions about gameplay. In no way, at least in my eyes, does this provide them with authority over anyone. Maybe newer players would mistake them for having some, sure. But these misconceptions could be squashed with relative ease.
Yes, they're not going to have access to bans and VV and such, but they are still going to have access to a tooling suite that they otherwise would never have seen--we usually spend a good bit on the ticket panel itself during trainings, even ignoring checking notes/making bans. It would be a quicker training than admins, but a larger than zero training. None of this even mentions the maintenance cost of this--our permissions system is really janky and we don't really have a strong motivation to fix it because it's really ingrained.
Once again here, I'm in some disagreement. There will be no notes nor will there be the ability to make or even check bans. Ideally they can answer tickets. I'm fully sure that most people could comprehend a simple text guide. Answering tickets/dealing with the ticket panel really isn't all that hard.

The permission thing I can say nothing about as it's fully on your end. I'm sure, however, that at some point or another there will be motivation to fix it so it might be better to get it done sooner rather than later.
Because even admins very frequently ask amongst themselves complex questions, there likely should be some avenue where mentors can do the same without OOC-ICing.
Mentors exist to answer questions about gameplay. I don't believe that they'd need a place to discuss these things as if you don't know something you simply don't answer, let me give you an example: "Hi how do I cool my gas enough so it turns into a different gas" If you don't know you won't reply. You don't need a channel to discuss this as the answer is somewhat binary: "Hey you can do this or maybe this to cool your gas."
Again, there is a non zero cost to all this that we seriously need to consider. Are admins failing right now in a way that mentors would not that is worth the cost?


I'd argue yes, we can't always have admins around and not everyone wants to be an admin. Terry often frequents very high pop with 1 or more often, 0 admins online. Having a group of people that will be able to answer questions (and some very high hr players/ex admins have expressed interest) will only benefit newer players and players trying to learn.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by toemas » #645806

i think mentor would be best if it was implemented as some sort of ingame role that doesnt require too much administrative vetting or hassle. kind of like those guys in colonial marines, i forget what their called but its just a whitelist job and their whole point is to just like help newer marine players learn the game. something like that would be neat and probably the best way to implement them.
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Re: Add mentors, or similar

Post by Timberpoes » #646092

The Headmin team supports the concept of players mentoring eachother. We have a ton of admins on the team who were selected in part because they took the time, as players, to teach others. We fully recognise the value that brings.

But we are either against or otherwise indifferent to formal/selected mentors.

We would support the codebase in developing better ways to highlight new players and better ways to connect new players with experienced players interested in passing on their knowledge.

We believe this is a better and more sustainable approach that would work well alongside the existing setup of admins handling mentoring responsibilities.

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