Just to clear things up, from the Community Meeting yesterday, it was stated by SA that Helpers are indeed staff members due to the permissions we have been given. This means that:
- If you think that a Helper is breaking the rule or abusing -> Make a staff complaint
The Problems:
Now, with that said. I do agree that Helper has been given out quite generously to a few people including myself. Like I voiced yesterday, I do believe the fact that there is no 'quota' or 'activity requirement' will lead to a numerous amount of people to stay hibernating with the rank Helper. And once they're bored and remember they can physgun people and cars etc, they can easily come on and abuse it. Who wouldn't? Especially if in a years time, you got the rank a while ago and no longer play PERP or want to.
Another thing I've seen floating around, is what can Helpers actually do? You can see from what Daymon mentioned we have the ability to physgun, issue OOC timeouts/bans, unlimited Help and OOC chat and some forum permissions. From different perspectives, and to different staff members, this rank can do a lot. If I see a member blatantly breaking rules, I can pick them up, speak to a staff member and essentially get them banned (the same way enforcers used to do it). Yes, sure it isn't something under a Helper's job descriptions, but with such powers, what else can you expect? In the same way, if people believe OOC timeouts are given for no reason, what is there to moderate this? Yes it's very minor and it's just an OOC chat, but some people will be annoyed and upset if they feel they have been wrongfully timed out from the OOC.
Proposed Solutions:
To combat this, I suggest that there should be some sort of
activity requirement, but not as harsh as enforcers/moderators. Active helpers should be Enforcers/Proper staff ranks. Inactive staff should be Helper. However, if there is a helper who hasn't been active at all with his helper duties, there should be no '3 stage notice' before removing them. Due to it being a rank many can obtain, it should be more like if someone is very unactive, maybe if they haven't done anything in 3 months. You send a PM, wait a day or 2, then remove the rank. This will stop us from having a number of
totally inactive helpers in the community.
A proper set out
description of what a Helper should do, and what they should avoid. Should we have a say in handing out bans, or do we make reports when we see a rule break? What if there are no staff members on, should helpers be pro-actively trying to assist players with rule break associated situations?
To touch on the actual topic of this thread, should helper roles be separate to staff? Personally, with the permissions we have.
It wouldn't make any sense at all to make it separate to staff, unless the permissions were changed to the point that the only thing we can do is use the help chat. I actually feel that Helper is not the rank that will help PERP (pun not intended). It's a rank that was added alongside Senior-Moderator and Community Manager on a whim that it may help the server. There was no thorough thought process, a proper meeting. Just an idea they thought would bring structure into the staff team and actually get things done. Community Manager, is a rank that should be added. Someone to relay the messages from the community to the staff team and get things done. Helper is a glorified rank, and so is Senior Mod. They claim they don't want to demote admins until they have people to replace them? What about the mods that became Senior? Surely they could replace Admins if they could fit the senior-mod role?
What we really need is the SA team to clear this up, hopefully you guys can schedule a meeting alongside the Community Manager, maybe a few helpers and a few people from PERP who show genuine concern and can actually provide something constructive.
Below I will @ a couple of people that I think should be at the meeting alongside
@Ayjay @Bolli @Madda @Collier
@Code Monkey,
@John Daymon @Daigestive @Inchs @Dom_ @LEWIS 088 and maybe even myself.
If you guys could organise this, as you please and get back to us. That would be great, as I believe all this really needs is just clarification and thorough thought.
