What would you look for in potential new admins?

[WineAllWine]

This is more of a question for candidates who haven't been a trainer/ headmin before.

What makes a good admin? What qualities would you look for in potential new admins? What would you look for before promoting a Trial Admin to a Game Admin? What would you do if a potential admin weren't reaching your thresholds for that at promotion time?

[Timberpoes]

I think it'll be interesting to compare and contrast to non-trainers/headmins to the trainer/headmins, so as a trainer/headmin here's my approach...

For initial recruits I look for good personality and communication skills. I don't look for game knowledge or knowledge of the rules or the ability to log dive or any of that gubbins. We can teach all that easily. It's much harder to teach someone how to communicate with other people.

After initial training as they're looking to move up to trial, I want to see examples of their ability to communicate with other players (tickets, public community) and other admins (ban reasons, notes, asking for help, internal community) without supervision of a trainer. I also expect to see them asking questions in the admin channels to get used to how the admin team works when we don't know how to handle something.

For promotion to full admin I look for all of the above, but to a 2 month standard instead of a 1 week one. Good ticket conduct, understandable notes and ban reasons, good conduct in the admin channels, good conduct within the community, yadda yadda.

If any of the promotion stages are lacking, first option is give feedback and extend. Last resort is candidacy/trial failed.

[dendydoom]

full disclosure: i'm not a trainer and never had any real intentions of becoming one. i've never trained an admin before.

similar to what timber said i'm just looking for soft skills that would make them good at mediating conflict and creating fun for players. they have to enjoy the game, like the community, not have an axe to grind or a chip on their shoulder. if their motivation for wanting to admin is "no one punishes the shitters" then i'm already hovering over the "no thank you" button.

everything else can be taught, and our process from candidate -> trial -> game admin is long enough that the vast majority of people who make it are fully competent in their skillset. usually. most of the time.

[kinnebian]

I would say something here, but as usual; timber and dendy have combo'd into saying what I wanted to in a very eloquent manner.

[Tegun]

I could go into essay posting mode over evaluating an individual's aptitude for a task, but I'll try to stay brief.

First of all, I do not know for certain what makes a good admin. My anecdotal experience tells me many kinds of people make good admins. One pitfall here would be to think that people who are like admins I like would make good admins. Another thing to look at here would be what makes a bad admin, and again in my anecdotal experience, most issues with admins being bad boil down to breaching trust or burning out and eventually lashing out at everyone and everything. Smaller badmin incidents are usually learning opportunities. So with these things in mind and my impeccable gut feelings, I would look for someone

• Trustworthy
• Has fun when others have fun
• Patient
• Good communication skills
• Resilient, not easily stressed
• Pink cat static

Here's the hard part, how the hell do we measure these things when we get an application? Whether or not they play a pink cat is easy to establish. Trustworthiness? Having fun when others have fun? Patient? To a certain extent I would hazard a guess that there's a factor behind all of these which also has to do with the amount of notes and severity of rule breaches a person has haunting them. Still, I've seen permabanned people being good admins. Communication skills? Resilience? Well we're not going to run a complete psychological evaluation here so it's just going to be a vibe check. Think of your own interactions with them, ask admins who interact with them, just observe how they interact with other players in-game and discord, check their notes, see if they have big bans from other servers, make sure they don't frequent polcon. These apply to the earlier qualities as well. Easy candidate.

TA to GA I'd have tickets to use as observations, and they would paint a much more detailed picture of the person. Odds are they'd also be active in admin channels and I'd have those interactions too. Here I'd look for pretty much the same stuff as earlier, but on top of that I'd of course look into how well they've mastered their new tools and even more importantly how they work with rest of the admins and how they respond to being taught or making mistakes. Might as well ask them how they feel about their own adminning. If the vibe check's good and they improve on any issues or mistakes, congratulations we're going to have promotions.

If an admin did not meet my standards for promotion, it would really depend on how far they are from it. If the trend's positive and the issues aren't glaring, extend trial a bit, give some advice. Something like ticket conduct would be easy to fix if the person's willing to learn and reflect on their own actions. On the other hand, for things you can't fix, breaching trust would be among the chief reasons to say the standards would never be met.

[TheBibleMelts]

vibes, sense of humor, likes to take walks in the forest.

[kieth4]

I would like to see more admins who speak multiple languages primarily for Terry.

[TheRex9001]

First and foremost vibes. You can teach a ton of stuff but you can't teach vibes and personality, that has to come with the person. For candy to trial just a check up to see how they are handling stuff (do they know the tools well?) and then giving them some helpful tips for their trial to come. For trialmin to game admin I think communication is key, how are they talking to players and admins? How are they bwoinking people? And how are they communicating what someone did wrong(in notes and bans)? If they do all that well we are good and they can join the team!