Whats the point of Community Manager

I always assumed a Community Manager was supposed to actually manage the community interact with players, organize things, encourage community activity, gather feedback, create events, work with Helpers, and generally make the server feel alive.

But what do we actually get?

The occasional giveaway (not really), announcement, or administrative task, while some of the best and most memorable events on the server are organized by the players themselves.

And before someone says “they do stuff behind the scenes” sure, I'm not denying that. But if the majority of the actual community engagement is being done by players, Helpers, or other staff, then what exactly distinguishes a Community Manager from an Admin with extra responsibilities? The original role was apparently meant to involve basic chat moderation, yet we have somehow reached the point where people are defending the role by saying “well, they can ban people too.”

I'm not saying the current CMs are useless or that they haven't done good work. I'm questioning the direction of the role itself. Because if “Community Management” just means handling administrative shit and occasionally interacting with the community, then why not just call it Administration? And if the answer is “they manage the community behind the scenes,” then why does the community itself seem to be doing so much of the actual community-building?

At what point does Community Manager become just a fancy title for Admin+?

I'm not sure what Tyla does however, I can speak on Scoot's behalf from having worked alongside him. Community Managers have significantly more responsibilities than people in the community realise.

Firstly, one of their main responsibilities is safeguarding. They're responsible for ensuring the community remains a safe environment for everyone to enjoy. This is usually handled via safeguarding referrals, which Community Managers are often the only members of the Senior Management Team who can handle these referrals. Some of the investigations can be extremely time consuming and can pull them away from their other responsibilities.

They're also responsible for writing the Community Spotlight which is published monthly and recognises members who make positive contributions to the community. This also provides an opportunity for them to communicate changes to the server and keep people informed on the upcoming developments.

Another responsibility is managing all of the guides on help.perpheads.com. They have to ensure existing guides remain accurate and up to date to keep in line with the constant server changes. They also are required to create new guides from scratch when necessary. This can be an extremely demanding task especially when dealing with complex guides such as the Construction Handbook which requires a lot of discussion and debates.

Community Managers are also responsible for recruiting and training Helpers. As you're aware, this is a large team with only two people to manage. They're also responsible for investigating complaints made against Helpers and addressing any issues that are discovered.

Although you may not see them on the server all the time, they do still engage with the community in other ways. They regularly host server events which are requested by players and assist members of the community by providing builder permissions. This allows for members of the community to build custom experiences which the community management usually contribute to as well. Not only do they facilitate this, but I have also seen them build custom experiences in the past.

Not to mention the work they do with the Development team to constantly discuss the future of the server and assist in facilitating the upcoming updates which most the community is constantly begging for.

Lastly, they constantly assist in working with the rest of the administration team to assist with our duties as well. This includes but is not limited to, attending staff meetings, discussing applicants, and working with us to constantly improve on the work we do.

Ultimately, Community Managers do a fair amount of community engagement but their other responsibilities can pull them away at times and prevent direct interactions. If there are any specific examples of things you would like to see them please discuss here so they can be noted down. I have only noted down some basic work they do but they do a lot more. The role has changed significantly from what it was first meant to be and if people think it would be beneficial for a document to be published with everything they do, then I'm sure this can be facilitated.

basically blaa blaa blaa just glorified admins blaa blaa blaa