How Do We Pick New Staff Members?

Hi all!

I have had this question come up quite a few times, so let me explain to you what goes into our new staff member decisions! It’s also an awesome time to bring it up, because we are less than 100 away from 750, when we agreed to start looking into whether we need new staff members or not. Exciting! :smiley:

The Heads come together after the applications close on a Heads VC on Discord. There, we discuss all the things that the new staff member has done for the Forums, their time availability and their activity levels. This is where people who are prone to long bouts of inactivity might be at a disadvantage, unless they can assure us that this will change if they join the staff team.

We look at the following things:

  • If you have any approved flags and what you got them for.

  • How active you have been in the community recently.

  • If you have any issues with the heads who would basically be your “boss” for the time you’re working with us. This doesn’t mean that you have to be our best friends or even like us. It just means that you have to be able to talk to us without getting rude or snarky. If you have done that in the past when we have tried to do our jobs, this is a point against you.

  • If you’re friendly and helpful to others.

  • If you contribute to discussions in a helpful manner.

  • If you make sure to get threads back on topic before they derail too far, or make a new thread or take things to a DM.

  • If you make a conscious effort not to swear on the Main Forum.

  • If you have had long bouts of inactivity and if you’re willing to change that in the future.

  • If you have applied before and you went inactive when you weren’t chosen, this will work against you. Then, we will think that you were only active to try to get the power and you aren’t likely to get it the next time an application rolls around. If you applied and weren’t picked, but you keep being an active and lovely member of the community with no hard feelings, we will definitely be more likely to choose you next time!

  • If you have made sure to brush up on the rules and have a good working knowledge of how the Forums work.

  • If you have done anything of note for the Forums: creating threads to help others, giving people help and advice, helping to explain the rules to someone else, becoming User of the Month or RPer of the Month. Introducing new people to the Forums.

  • If you have made an effort to help us to grow our community. This can be as simple as welcoming people and making sure you are open to questions they may have, or as intricate as writing blog posts for us or promoting us regularly on Instagram. Make sure that you use your invite link so we can see just how many people you recruited :wink: Promoting Shani’s Tutoring by sharing pictures I create helps with this, too!

  • Making art for the merch, reviewing stories, promoting other people’s stories helps massively.

  • If you are in charge of a very active and well-organised RP, this can be a point in your favour for the RP staff! It shows that you are dedicated and organised and want to help us to grow the RP community. However, if you are in charge of loads of things and you neglect some (or all) of them because you’ve given yourself too much to do, we won’t want to add staff duties on top of that!

  • Where in the world you are. We consider this because we need staff members from all over the world who can be up to answer question when we’re asleep!

  • How many hours you can give. We don’t want to overload someone who has loads of commitments, but we do require a minimum number of hours and tasks in a week.

  • A can-do attitude and a willingness to help in any way you can. We love people who still want to help the Forums even if they aren’t on the staff team. This shows us that the thing that matters to you is the community and not just getting power.

  • If you’re a drama-starter. We understand that sometimes we all get sucked into drama. However, if you have a habit of starting drama or continuing it when you could remove yourself, this might be an issue.

  • If you have had discipline-based issues in the past, we will still consider you if you have shown us that you’ve changed! There needs to be enough time between the issues and now, though.

  • We don’t like suck-ups. Be genuine and honest with us! Don’t suck up to us to get the position!

  • If you have said bad things about the Forums in the past, this will be a few points against you. There is nothing wrong with pointing out flaws, making threads asking for change or speaking to us about things you have an issue with. We love that and we want to know how we can improve to make your time on the Forums more enjoyable! The problem is when you’re back-biting or being catty about he Forums in a way that isn’t fair or productive to us. If any reasonable person would conclude that your words are intended to make the Forums look bad or ruin the reputation, we will most likely decide against taking you on. If we find out that you have been doing this behind our backs when you become a staff member, this is an issue that Deluge will deal with personally.

  • If you contribute to other people’s events! We love a person who really gets involved in the community! Vote on polls! Share your opinions! Join us!

  • How you have used the flagging system in the past. As you may be aware, leaders can get a post hidden with one flag. So, if you have a history of abusing the flagging system, this could hurt your chances of being selected.

It does not matter if you are new or if you have been here for ages. We do not care if you are an adult or a teenager. The only time we would care if you are an adult or teenager is if we are specifically looking for Restricted Section staff members!

Of course, when it comes to General Staff, El’s opinions and suggestions will carry the most weight. When it comes to the RP section, Cali’s the person we rely on.

You don’t need to do all of these things. Some are compulsory. Others are suggestions. The more you do, the better.

@AdminTeam can you think of any other factors you judge on?


Since I have announced this now, we will start to judge your actions from now. I can’t tell you when the next application will be. We could open it next week, next month or next year! But since I have been transparent now, this is a good time to start looking into how you choose to behave now you know what we look for.

Good luck!

@Announcements

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Oh! Your behaviour on the Discord! The discord is an extension of the Forums, so don’t mess up on there!

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Rad vibes :eyes:

Nah pretty much all the things you already listed :sunglasses:

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Ooh! We love a bit of creativity, too! @LHT created the Forums Newsletter last year. @fcukforcookies introduced the adult games! @Duckling is our poll master. @Eleanor_W-15 single-handedly made our playlists on YouTube boom. @fraud sorted out affiliate links for us. @WritingWithStars suggested Patreon story reading. @WolfGamerGirl37 fronts our gaming section. @Secretz sorted out the colours of our categories. @Rainbow is our reader extraordinaire who does so much back-end and just takes the initiative to help in any way she can! Including proofreading blog posts!

Just to name a few!

All of those people are people we trust to give Trust Level 4, whether now or in the past! If you think you know something that will boost the Forums, either use your initiative and do it, or DM the @AdminTeam to see if it’s ok if you’re unsure first! Either way, we love people who think of a great idea and get it done!

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Man, that’s a lot

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In fact, I guarantee that every single member of the @ForumStaff who is currently on the team, along with most of the people who left, have contributed excellent ideas that have made the Forums what they are today!

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I’d rather be normal member :joy:

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You’re missing out :nerd_face:

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I can only think of one or two people who have done all of those things. It’s not necessary! But we do use those things to paint a picture of whether you’d be a good staff member or not! For example, if you’re someone who promotes the Forums loads, engages with us on social media, reads blog posts, does merch and is active, we might ask you to join and focus on advertising the Forums to grow the community! If you’re an artist who is very familiar with the content guidelines and the rules and helps other artists on their threads, we may choose you if we think we need to boost the art community!

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TL;DR: We play to your strengths

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Oh I’ve got some other ones, actually!

  • If you’re a well-liked member of the community. You don’t need to be popular, but people might not respond to you well if everyone dislikes you! Some of our staff members, past and present, have had one or two people who hate them with a passion and that’s not their fault! but if you’re someone who actively antagonises most people on the Forums, that’s a real issue for us, as we have learnt recently.

  • If you are part of a different friends group. What we don’t want is the Staff Team to be made up of 2 or 3 cliques. We love watching people from different friendship groups come together and work as friends! It ties the groups of our community together!

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I think you covered everything. (wink)

Though just to add to it… you don’t have to be super sociable on the forums either. Some of our staff now are super shy and we still love them. They do interact on forums and do loads of tasks, but they’re just generally quite quiet too and that’s fine.

Also, your interests can be really niche. We’re not asking you to be contributing to every single part of forums. Only a couple of parts is cool if that’s what you enjoy doing. We love that ‘cause you can help to build that section up.

(wink)

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Completely true! Also, all decisions are unanimous. If one of the Heads says an outright “no”, we can try to convince them, but they have vetoed the decision. That means the person cannot be chosen until they are ok with it

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Hate speech on the Forums is an automatic NO

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Interesting. cough

Nah. Try being a irresponsible unsocial rude careless teen

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Does sound like me ngl

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More like me lol

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Mood

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Sounds great! I’m glad you don’t take age into account :sweat_smile:

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Right.

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