Note 1: To everything bad (and good) I will be saying there are, of course, exceptions. I won't, however, be naming all those exceptions as that would cost me way too much time, I will just be giving the general idea.
Note 2: I am not in the staff team, nor have I ever been so everything I'm saying is from an outside (community) perspective.
Note 3: I won't be naming any staff members, as this is a public thread, I may, however, give examples for certain points, but I'll make sure to blur out any names.
Recruitment
Recruitment is a very important part of the process in becoming/being a staff member. It filters out any candidates who won't be good staff members. If this goes wrong then it's way easier to mess up the rest, with bad staff members the staff team won't be in a good condition either. To ensure every applicant has at least some basic qualities, there are a few standard requirements.
You are at least 14 years old.
You can speak/understand English (verbally and written).
You are active on the network.
You can communicate on Discord (text and voice).
You are familiar with all of our rules.
You can record your screen.
You either meet the Java or Bedrock requirements.
There are also Java-specific requirements
200 discord messages
25 forums messages
50 successful website reports
3 months of server activity
And Bedrock-specific requirements.
80 messages on Discord or 15 Forums messages
5 successful website or /sr reports
2 months of server activity
In my opinion there are some problems with these requirements. First, the Java requirements are low already, but the Bedrock requirements really are a joke. I get there aren’t a lot of Bedrock mods, and you want more Bedrock mods, but 5 successful website reports or 5 /sr reports? That can’t be serious right? You can get that in like 3,5 nanoseconds. Also, if you really want more Bedrock Helpers, how come most Helpers are still Java? Why do you even need that many Java Helpers anymore?
Another thing is the requirement saying: “You can speak/understand English (verbally and written).” As it is unclear what level of English this requires, I asked in staff-help. The answer was that you need to be “fluent at English” to be allowed to apply.
According to the CEFRL (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), B2 level is defined like this.
Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialisation.
Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party.
Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.
One of the descriptions is “Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party”. This means that the level has to be higher than this, as “interaction with native speakers” being “quite possible” implies that it isn’t perfect, even with native speakers, let alone if you are trying to explain something to a non-native speaker. This means that someone would at least need C1 level
Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer clauses and recognise implicit meaning.
Can express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions.
Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic, and professional purposes.
Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors, and cohesive devices.
Or C2 level
Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read.
Can summarise information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation.
Can express themselves spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations.
To be allowed to apply for helper. However, we have been getting helpers with a level FAR below this.
Staff-help is a channel in which you can ask questions so staff members can give you an answer. In theory this is good, there needs to be in which you can get helped by staff. But in the actual channel it just doesn’t really work. It happens way too often that a question just completely gets skipped, or that it takes hours and hours to finally get an answer. Sometimes every question around yours gets an answer instantly but yours is just completely ignored, as if it wasn’t there. If you finally manage to get someone to answer (usually after like 3 times of asking again), and the question is harder than “How do I report?”, the staff member will have to ‘ask around’, which basically means forgetting all about it and never giving you your answer. Of course, sometimes you do get your answer, but things like this happen way too often.
A while ago, staff-help would be dead most of the time, but when a new wave of Helpers got their rank, it would suddenly get all active because the helpers felt like they had to prove that they could help you. In the past few waves, however, the new Helpers haven’t really made any difference at all, the channel stays dead, even though the new Helpers still have to prove themselves.
I get that being a moderation staff member is a voluntary job, and mods don’t have to constantly answer staff-help questions, but every once in a while would be nice. If someone answers another member in staff-help, a mod is there to punish them within 0,00000000000001 nanoseconds, but if someone has had a question for hours, no one is willing to answer them. There are 40+ helpers and mods, and I really don’t see how it is possible that none of those can take 5 minutes to help some people.
Helper Training
Giving Helpers some sort of training has been suggested before. In that thread, Cynamooo said the next Helper wave would get some form of training, so they’d be more prepared for answering questions in staff-help. Since that post we have had one new Helper wave, and stupid mistakes are still made. A while ago, for example, a Helper claimed you are only allowed to speak English in staff-help, which really is a very basic mistake.
A helper also told someone not to appeal if they actually cheated, because their appeal wouldn’t get accepted anyway, which makes no sense at all, because why wouldn’t you be allowed to appeal?
These are only examples of the huge amount of mistakes that are made on a daily base. Things like this still happen way too often, and if you want people to get accurate information, you really have to give Helpers more training than this, if a Helper still makes these basic mistakes, that is just stupid.
Not Helping People
Sometimes it seems like staff members feel it is their duty to punish people, and not to help them. Giving a (even only verbal) warning for something like this
is just stupid. It’s not as if they’re an experienced member, doing it to troll (looks at a certain person), they just accidentally used the wrong slash, and were probably wondering why it didn’t work, and trying again. Once again this is only an example from a much bigger problem. In my opinion, staff members’ main duty shouldn’t be punishing as many people as possible, so they seem like a ‘good mod’, but instead helping people if they have problems. From what I can see, from the outside, helpers aren’t meant to help people, which is literally in their name, but to get as many reports as possible, so they can get mod. Of course, knowing the rules is important, but in my opinion the focus shouldn’t be on knowing the rules by heart, but instead on being able to help people. Punishing rulebreakers is important but helping ordinary community members is at least as important.
Inconsistency
CubeCraft can be very inconsistent in enforcing their rules/decisions. A while back, for example, they decided to not share people’s current punishment durations with others anymore. For days (or maybe even weeks), however, it seemed like half of the mods weren’t aware of this, and one half of the mods would tell you they couldn’t share it, while the other half would happily share it with you.
Another thing which isn’t really an inconsistency, but I’ll still put here is for example after the rule against spawnkilling was added it seemed like no one knew how they’d enforce the rule, and what exactly would be punishable under it. How do you want to enforce a rule if you don’t even tell your own mods what exactly it means?
View attachment 206827
(Once again this is only one screenshot, when there was a lot of confusion about the rule, no one knew how it’d be enforced/what exactly it meant)
What Should Happen?
In my opinion the standards for recruitment should definitely be raised. You have extremely low standards, especially for bedrock helpers, and if you aren’t even following your own language rules, then the standards become even lower. You should also focus on consistency, accuracy and helping people. When an answer is given, staff members should be absolutely (as far as that's possible) certain they're correct. Punishing people isn’t the most important thing in the world, you’re there to help them, not discourage them from joining the server. Helpers should also definitely receive a training because they make way too many mistakes, causing people to get wrong information, which obviously isn’t what you should be aiming for.
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