ChiLynn Gamemaster Feedback response

Hi there! I’m going to be tackling some of these issues that are coming up to see if y’all can better understand where we might be coming from and what we are looking at, as well as trying to understand better where y’all are coming from.

First thing before I start the quotes: Originally, a moderator for online communities was not someone who sits around answering questions and vibing with people. The original definition of a moderator (when used for online purposes) is someone who monitors an internet forum or online discussion for inappropriate or offensive content. Moderators with us so far and in the past have created a different image that, while nice, was not necessarily needed. What we need are people who can sit down for a couple hours and handle reports, appeals, bugs, ect. It may feel comforting to have someone with a rank sit in a lobby with you, but was it helpful to the community as a whole to have them there talking to at max 100 players?

Yes, you can bite back with “Ok, get more mods,” but some issues with that are mostly related to time. It takes time for us to look through applications, go through interviews, train the new volunteers, watch over them for the remainder of time they are with us to ensure they are maintaining proper behaviour, and make sure they are at least doing some work to begin with. Additionally, there have historically been incidents that occur within or because of the volunteer team that always required too much time to handle. We would need to hire people specifically to do all that work. Do you see how that might be unhelpful since we could just hire people to do the report work instead?

Finally, the last thing I want to say before I jump into quotes: The volunteer system we have used is not efficient anymore. Whether the volunteers have school, work, or other responsibilities, it is difficult to keep them on top of the moderation work. If we pay them, it at least eliminates the need for them to spend their time at a different job. We are offering them the chance to combine their hobby and job.


Person 1 CookieBilly

"They understand it a lot better than someone who is picked off the street and paid to do the job (whilst I’m not saying they fully understand, they don’t, it’s better than randomly picking people off the street)."
I’m not entirely sure who you are talking about here. We don’t plan on going all out to find people from outside the Hypixel community when we do plan to grow the team. Hypixel knowledge is almost the most important factor in looking for GMs.
"please avoid turning it into overwatch/fornite where we don't see the moderators making these big decisions and can't talk to them at all."
You can still post on the forums and submit support tickets. Some people may complain we don’t read feedback, but we do. We literally have support agents and admins who sit down and read feedback. We may not always respond to it, but it was read. Honestly, using in-game chat to give feedback was not effective nor efficient, if that was something you did. While we could go look for the chat log, it leaves a better paper trail on the forums and support services.
"the people that sit and answer questions on the forums or sit in lobbies aren’t going to have the same motivation to sit and help people, making the server a lot less helpful."
If people were sitting in lobbies answering questions with an ultimate goal of becoming a helper/moderator, then is that not them truly having the spirit of wanting to help others? That clearly shows they have other goals in mind. While yes, paying people to do what mods used to do may make people less motivated to volunteer, it could make them more motivated to work with us here at Hypixel and apply for a role instead.
"Especially in less popular games where staff are more prevalent but players are often lacking in knowledge (for example: classic games)."
To be clear here, staff don’t need to have game knowledge specifically. How could we expect staff to have intricate knowledge of older games like that when the general population of players do not?
"I suggest some type of evidence system: where you can see the exact phrase that got you muted (for example: on Mineplex, we give specific phrases that were said to get someone muted or have a report id: in which moderators can disclose exactly what was said).
"
Mineplex is a smaller community. It is not a feasible request you made here.
"This move (paid team) would also make it so staff members feel far less comfortable expressing frustrations/disagreement with others, under threat of being fired and losing income"
I’ve got to ask here: What image do you have of the admin team for this to be something you write down? We work off of each other in the team, it’s how we have managed to make the games we do. We wouldn’t work well as a company if we just fired anyone who gave out a bad idea. Additionally, you should never be afraid to give feedback at work, here or elsewhere. If you are, you clearly work for the wrong people.
"Making everything more efficient inevitably will make the staff team less fun, people join the staff team to help out the player base: lots of people really don’t want to be paid, personally: I sat for 2+ years helping people out on the forums, with no expectation of being paid for that"
Okay. You did it on your own without being paid or having a rank for two years, who is to say others won’t do the same? Did you only help people on the forums because your overarching goal was to get a volunteer rank? You could change the goal to someday aiming for GM now instead, right?

If people want to help, they will help. If you don’t want to anymore, then you don’t have to anymore.
"p.s. please add a real community manager, change staff manager back"
If we are getting rid of the volunteer team, why do we need a staff manager? The overall goal since the beginning of “staff management” was “community management.” This is just a title change.

Just to mention this: Even if you say “not to be rude,” it does not cancel the fact you are being rude. Lol.


Person 2 S2eforme

"Staff never really had an incentive to interact with people in the first place."
Correct. We realized after these 8 years that we could never really get them to interact with people. It may seem to you that we are becoming more detached, but the attachment was already difficult to maintain and enforce.
"The staff team will be mere people who strike down lightning from the sky to deliver justice against rule breakers rather than people you can casually interact with in games and lobbies."
See first paragraph for us changing the definition of moderator and moderation back to what it originally means.


Person 3 HoggyWizard

"Moderators would handle basic moderation activities such as cheating reports, chat reports, forum reports, etc. On the other side, Game Masters could handle abusive alternate account reports, appeals, reports regarding influential members (e.g. YouTubers), and moderator applications."
I don’t think it was clear enough: We are paying the GMs for what they used to do as mods AND giving them extra responsibilities. So far, they have been doing great with handling everything we gave them.

"Once a moderator comes of a legal age (I believe 18?) they could join the Game Master team if both the managers and the moderator in question would like that to happen, or any time after they've reached the legal age in general."
You mean to be saying that we have a large volunteer team and that we contract them when they become 18? It seems unreasonable to suggest this as the limited amount of GMs we have already are doing a ton of work and doing it well and timely, as mentioned before. We just wouldn’t have enough work for all those people, if we were to contract them all. It’s a nice idea, but we have to think about the balance.
"Why not fix that issue and make the moderator position that role?"
I like the idea to be honest, but I would rather have people trained while being paid, instead of hovering the idea of potentially becoming a paid GM over unpaid moderators. I, as someone who went through university while holding part time jobs, HATE unpaid internships. While some of you may be thinking “I would still do it!” Please think higher about yourself and your time.


Person 4 CaptainSonic

"As for feedback, I'm curious as to what exactly Game Masters do for the network."
I answered it a bit above, but they are essentially paid moderators with extra responsibilities.

"I feel like the complete removal of any volunteer positions will put strain on Game Masters and limit opportunities for those who previously sought Helper"
I’ve mentioned it already, but would they not change their goal to being a GM?

As for the strain on GMs, so far, they have been doing well. If we need more, more will be contracted.


"Like now and before, volunteer staff can handle some of the Game Masters' work that may be less intricate or important"
This is what we don’t want though. We want to pay people for handling the duties of moderation.

"If volunteers can't be trusted with ban / mute tools, they could just submit priority reports / atlas verdicts that would have a much larger weight than those from regular players"
Neat idea. Will take something similar to this into consideration.

Person 5 Sykese
"2: My worry is how the staff managers are going to treat the moderators who maybe don’t make the cut. A specific example I want to bring up is TGPenguin. TG was a forum team moderator, and he was a fine one at that. TG recently came into the hypixel spotlight for his tweets expressing concern at this new GM role, and his opinions regarding potential bias in selection of them. The fact that TG felt like the right thing to do was to tweet this out is concerning. This tells me that he did not feel like it was productive or worthwhile to message his concerns to a staff manager. Backstage troubles aren’t a good sign, and these changes seem like a lazy way to try and reduce that without actually changing the behavior of the staff managers. It almost feels like hush money in a way to me. Fr0z3n, you're not really that much of a public dude, so I have no clue how you are when it comes to staff management, and how you interact with your staff, same with GodJudge. As I mentioned earlier though, the TG tweets kind of show more than you might expect, and these staff changes, along with just how curiously Umbridge you were being in your replies, also reflect that it’s not rainbows and sunshine in those staff VCs."

TGPenguin is not a good example for you to bring up. I see you are referring to the tweets he made, so I’m glad you take one side without even thinking about the other. As the one in the middle of the hiring process for all roles here at Hypixel, I can assure you that we left personal bias out of choosing the first GMs. While yes, we took experiences with the GMs into account, we were really looking for the dedication and ability.

But I didn’t see the need to reply to TGPenguin about the issue, since he was mainly removed for his behaviour. The tweets he posted were an example of behaviour we don’t approve of. He had said he felt he couldn’t reach out to us, but Donpireso, Frozen, and myself have always encouraged people DM’ing us if they need to give us feedback. While Don and myself are not staff or community managers, we are the team managers in general who handle things like hiring. If it’s scary to talk to us, then it is more a reflection on him. Again, we encouraged the volunteers to DM if they needed.

Frozen recently came back to the team almost a year ago. With the lead management changing, of course the vibe change will change. Frozen has been professional with the volunteers, not personable. He may come across as cold in comparison to previous management, but he has done his job well and gets straight to the point when needed, which is often. I don’t think a single screenshot of a message from him should determine his entire personality. I appreciate the Harry Potter reference, I suppose.

"3: The staff/player bridge will be nonexistent."
Right. My problem here is that as the server grows, we would need more volunteers to fill the role in this bridge. This is an issue I’ve already addressed above.

"Well, say goodbye to all of that, because the only people you’re gonna be seeing apply for staff on Hypixel now are former managers, bankers, and salesmen who have never played a minute on the server."
What? Why would any managers, bankers, or salesmen apply to do moderation work on a Minecraft server? Do you really think our hiring process will accept people with no relation to Minecraft whatsoever to do a job completely encroached with Minecraft? Weird statement here, ngl.

"I fear the expectations of them will be so drastic and unfair as time goes on, that they will drift themselves further and further away from their own community, not even remembering they were once a player themselves."
The GMs signed up to be paid for what they are already doing. I’ve already approached the idea of us changing “moderation” back to what it should be, and not as something people should be personable with. Again, look above.

"One thing is for sure, it’s extremely clear that volunteering/working for the hypixel staff team is a living nightmare, and it’s not just the toxic players that make it so."
Ok.

"TLDR: I don't want the staff members to be treated like garbage by their own staff managers, and these changes feel more like a "let's get rid of them, they're the problem, not us" solution more then anything."

The volunteer team isn’t a problem. They were a solution to a problem that we have found a better solution for. With the GMs, we are able to handle more reports as well as properly appreciate them for the work they do.

Person 6 SweatyCris

"The fact that you will be kicking out people that have been working on the server as staff for years and have gotten to the position where they are sitting today is very unfair, all those hard working years of doing work and making sure that the Network is a safe and fun place to be on, will have to go just because you want to make the team paid and want to make sure that everyone has a pay is very unfair to most team members."

I appreciate you looking out for the volunteers that have not made it to GM, but we feel we are making progress as a team and some changes need to be made. We obviously still appreciate our volunteers for all the work they’ve done, from the ones who left the team ages ago to the ones we still have today.

I don’t think it’s unfair we want to pay the GMs for their work. Honestly, I think this is a weird statement you made. I know you are probably thinking about how we’ve done things until now, but please understand that we are trying to change that. We want to pay people for the work they are doing in the name of moderation. Leaving some people unpaid for the same work is unfair and unjust. It just doesn’t make sense.

Person 1 Part 2 CookieBilly

"Could you elaborate on why you cannot share these plans? If you have them, shouldn't you be asking the community thoughts on this method? It'd avoid another situation where the community disagrees with your move and is given no say in the decision."



The plans don’t need to be shared for the time being, but you can take heart that they will be very similar to the way we bring people onto the team already. The community has not and will not be taking a part in the private hiring process. You can see what we publicize about hiring here: https://hypixel.net/jobs


From here, I will stop quoting people’s responses. I think I’ve addressed most of the concerns mentioned in people’s later replies. If not, my B, tag me on them.

Edit just for the last sentences: I don't mean I won't respond to anyone else when I say I'm done quoting, I mean I think I got the general concerns on lock already for now. Lol.