Itsmeowdev Staff Application

Staff Applications Admin Applications
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Your CKEY (Including any alts you have):
Itsmeowdev, Itsmeowdev2

Your Discord Name (Including any alts you have):
its_meow#6903

How often are you online to help? (Timezone):
Very erratic, I’m in CST/EST but I have a wacky sleep schedule. Usually the best times for me are between 9PM and 2AM CST/EST

What changes, if any, would you bring?:
Not anything specific but I’d like to keep the server at a high RP standard as is intended.

How old are you?:
18

Why do you want to be a moderator?:
Well, I’ve found myself spending a lot of time observing and watching in asay, and believe me enough admins have probably gotten annoyed by “mini-modding” that I might as well just do it proper. But in reality there is a serious admin shortage that negatively impacts player experience, and I figure I’m up to the job.

How long have you been playing SS13?:
Since April 2022. I have around ~600 hours and maybe like 20 more between other servers.

How long have you been playing BeeStation?:
Same as above, I only really play on BeeStation.

On a scale of 1-10, how skilled are you in SS13?:
I’d say an 8 or 9. I know most things there are to know.

On a scale of 1-10, how skilled are you as an administrator? (this can include past games):
Probably a 6 or so, I’ve run my own Minecraft servers, etc. but nothing nearly this high volume or requiring interaction in bad faith. But I’ve picked up a lot observing admins.

Have you ever been an admin or moderator on another server? This is not limited to SS13:
Only really running my own Minecraft servers.

Do you have any alternate accounts on SS13? If so, could you provide their CKEY?:
Itsmeowdev2, I only use it for local testing.

Your strengths:
I am usually fairly good at identifying issues or spotting rulebreaks, and I can look at situations objectively well. I’m also very good at staying on top of something that has caught my interest.

Your weaknesses:
I can be impulsive, and also blind to my own mistakes until someone points them out. If I think of something that is probably a bad idea, sometimes I notice and don’t do said thing but rarely I get tunnel vision and get caught up in something stupid.

Is there anything that gets you really mad, real fast?:
Any kind of bigotry, really.

What do you think is the most important trait for a staff member to have?:
Someone who is calm even when someone is raging at them, and can work through what went wrong with the player, rather than just throwing punishments. Generally being a good communicator, and not just to other staff members.

What makes a staff team good?:
Consistency, having an active presence, and communication.

What is a staff team’s purpose?:
To make the game as enjoyable as possible for as many people as possible, while staying within the bounds of the server rules.

What kind of player are you?:
I most enjoy doing wacky mechanical stuff with the game as a sort of simulation engine, like construction or supermatter stuff, but I also enjoy deeply engaging in RP when I can, and being antag is always a good time.

How do you think you will change once you become a staff member?:
Probably not much, I already find myself playing a lot less, and I already spend a lot of time observing.

The clown slips the HoS and steals his gun, spacing it right after. What do you do?:
I’d first check if the clown was an antagonist and had any relevant objectives on the HoS, in which case it would be fair game, otherwise I would ask the clown why they spaced the HoS’ gun and inform them that messing with high value items like the HoS’ gun is self antag, and can also mess with actual antagonist’s rounds because they often have such items as objectives. If they have no history of self antag then I would simply apply a note, otherwise I would issue a relevant escalated server ban (1d->3d->etc)

A non-antagonist is sabotaging the Atmospherics loop and pumping plasma into the distro, along with dragging around a canister and releasing it into the atmosphere. Assuming that an admin is cleaning up the after-effects, how do you conduct the ahelp with him?:
I would first ask why they were pumping plasma into the distro, and then let them know that non-antagonists, and antagonists without murderbone objectives are not allowed to do so because it negatively impacts the rounds of others (and breaks our antagonist conduct, in the case of non-murderbone antags). I would remind them to read the Rules, especially Rule 9 and our antagonist conduct.
If they were just your average griefer I would issue a permanent ban (with authorization of course), otherwise I would at minimum a 1 day server ban regardless of history, or more depending on history.

A chemist who is working alone accidentally mixes an explosive mixture inside of his chem dispenser, instantly killing himself and destroying the machine, along with exposing Chemistry to space. Nobody else was injured aside from him as a result of his actions. What do you do?:
I would consider this an IC issue, although this question assumes that I know it’s an accident, in most cases the first thing to do would be to ask why they did this. The most likely explanation (if it were not an accident) is probably suicide in which I would remind them that suicide is generally not allowed by rule 1/rule 15 and that they should enter a cryopod if they wish to leave (as well as leaving a note for this behavior).

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Alrighty, question time:

  1. “Why can’t I move?!”
    (Player is in the Arrivals shuttle.)

  2. “Help! The HoS is putting me in the permabrig for spreading glowshrooms! Vandalism is only a 5-minute sentence!”
    What do you do here?

  3. You see a player with a new account is breaking into Toxins as an Assistant. What do you do in this scenario?

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  1. My first action would be to press mhelp to de-escalate the ticket, but my actual response: Hi! You’re probably strapped to a chair still, there is a button in the top right of your HUD that says “Buckle” which you can press to unbuckle, or you can also press Resist or R if you have hotkeys on. You probably also have hotkeys off, which means you cannot move with WASD but only arrow keys, you can press TAB to switch to hotkeys mode.
  2. First I would ask the HoS why they put the player in permabrig, what crimes they were accused of, etc. If the HoS did not have any other reasoning that would break Space Law and SoP, and as heads are held to a higher standard this would probably at minimum be a ban, as HoS really should be following Space Law. If there were additional accusations I would verify if they were true, if they were true and also warranted a perma I would ask the ahelper what else they had done etc to verify, and ask if security may have spotted them, and then I’d ask HoS what evidence they had of this - if HoS had evidence and the ahelper wasn’t really being honest I would leave a (possibly secret) note about lying in the ahelp. Otherwise if HoS’ evidence was weak I would leave a note for perma with weak or little evidence. If HoS had false accusations then I would ask how they knew this and then likely leave a note for perma with incorrect or weak evidence and remind them that permabrig is reserved for severe crimes and that they require clear evidence that they were committed by the person, such as forensics, items on the person, or multiple eyewitness accounts.
  3. I would first bwoink and ask what they were doing, if they said something along the lines of greytiding I would remind them that this a roleplay server and to read our Rules. If they admit they had not read them I would issue a short 1hr ban to read the rules, otherwise I would inform them that by R1.3 they must do their job, and that assistants must actually be useful, and not greytide around the station and leave a note. If they intended to break into toxins for plasma or something similar, I would additional evidence like BYOND account age, centcom bans, etc if they were likely a griefer - if not I would inform them that it is self-antag to attempt that and they must be an antagonist (and a murderbone one at that) to plasmaflood (and leave a note), otherwise if they were some type of obvious griefer or evader I would issue a permanent ban.
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  1. Good answer.

  2. Tricky!
    So spreading glowshrooms without approval or without dire need (no power and/or a Nightmare running around) is actually not Vandalism. It’s actually:

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    so the HoS would actually be right to issue a permanent sentence for this. However, if the suspect thinks this was Vandalism, then perhaps someone forgot to tell them what they were being charged for so it’s worth looking into that.
    I’d also probably encourage having a trial held for this person. It’ll increase the RP opportunities and since it’s a Capital crime that doesn’t actually really cause harm in this case, maybe having their sentence mitigated to cleaning it up and a fine would lead to a better round for everyone.
    Still not a bad answer, but just make sure you get familiar with Space Law and SoP.

  3. Good answer.

I think I’d like to see how you do. +1

T: +1

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Just as you are getting on, a player opens a ticket claiming the captain, Angelo Paulson, has executed and cremated them for being a changeling

The captain is being played by a (deadminned) Admin who points out the station is at red alert due to changelings that have been wreaking chaos and also claims they received a cryo sting while the other player was the only person adjacent to them.

Logs confirm the captain was the victim of a cryo sting, but no logs can verify or disprove the presence of other players nearby when the sting occurred

How do you handle the situation if:

  1. The player who opened the ahelp is a changeling, and they counterclaim the captain was in the medbay near several other players when the sting occurred. logs confirm the sting occurred in the medbay

  2. The player who opened the ahelp is not a changeling at all

  3. The captain is also a changeling themselves attempting to escape with the captain’s identity

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I wasn’t under the impression former staff could ask questions on this, but sure, seems an interesting scenario.

  1. In this case, since there is no way of directly confirming who was nearby (the thing I’d do after this is add logging of who was nearby when a sting occurs, lol), I would simply go in the direction that the captain should have more conclusive evidence that someone is a changeling than a simple cryo sting, if the player in question did not attempt to kill them, have an armblade, run away, etc then at weakens things a lot. With two opposing accounts there is no way to decide from the cryo sting specifically but you can take into account other actions the changeling may have done.
  2. I would do the same thing, the captain needs more conclusive evidence, however since they were completely in the wrong in this case it would be more severe.
  3. This would be an IC issue. Changelings do not have to help other changelings. However, if they were a changeling I would question why they didn’t choose to absorb the other changeling but rather cremate? Seems a bit odd.
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They are infact allowed to do so if the questions/input is of value. As is described in the Staff Applications Guide (READ ME).

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You are already a staff member and have a lot of experience both as a player and as a coder, so I won’t ask questions I’d ask other players, that would be pointless.

This app is a complex one to process for me, For each strong points in this, I find an equally strong negative point that makes me constantly reconsider my previous positions. I’ll try to summarize my issues here so that it may not shine lights on what I believe are the issues in the app, while at the same laying the foundations for your training and subsequent growth as an admin if this app is to go through.

About your involvement in the community (mostly the position of codermin)

The elephant in the room is how you’ve quickly gained roles and responsibility within the community. In the span of three months you’ve become maintainer, mentor, and now are trying to become admin. I know some people will disagree with me on this, or think I’m being too dramatic, but this needs to be pointed out.
Each of these roles bring some degree of overhead with them, maintainers have to assist the headdev and manage the repo as well as bring guidance to coders, mentors have to actively answer mhelps ingame while having a perfect conduct ooc, admins deal with rules issues, ahelps, player reports, community management and events/bussing.

Notice the length of that previous sentence, despite this being volunteer work, these responsibilities add up, and you do not adress this in your app. If this app is accepted, you would become codermin, cumulating the prerogatives and responsibilities of both maintainer and admin. If you lay things bare, only the host on this server can casually swap caps between admin and maint (at a leadership level ofc), admins don’t have a say in how the maints manages the repo, and the maints don’t have power over admins decisions.

My point is, I am convinced you will burn out on at least one of these two aspects, I don’t believe it is possible to consistently work on both these aspects of server maintenance without dedicating an unhealthy amount of time to Beestation.

I can’t hide that I don’t like the codermin position, not only for what I outlined above, but also because in my experience having worked with one, the role can inspire confusion as you don’t really know which cap the codermin is wearing while they are online. In my opinion, cumulating both maint and admin should only be possible through direct appointing by the host of headmins/headdev, after it’s been assessed that the volunteer can handle the workload.

I’ve heard some say that you mostly want to cumulate roles and permissions for the fun of it, because “you are bored”, and that you will grow disilusioned pretty quickly. A part of me fueled by past experiences before being involved with Beestation, screams at me that you only want to grab open positions in order to better root yourself in the community and do whatever you want. I’ve witnessed people come in NGOs I worked in join to grab every open positions before burning out like a bright comet or worse. The truth regarding your app is that, ultimately, I do not know.

However, had you adressed this in your app or straight up stepped down for maintainer, stating that you wanted to fully dedicated your leisure time on bee to adminning, I would have probably already voted +1 as that would have been the display of commitment I need here.

Most of this is outside of your control and frankly, mostly my own opinion that I know isn’t shared by all staff members. This has a weight on how I would vote, but I’m restraining myself from basing it solely on that, hence why I’m not stopping my response here.

About your previous conduct as a player, we talked about this privately but I didn’t believe you were properly abiding by the roleplay standards we are currently enforcing, as shown by some of your notes. We however discussed this at length privately and you’ve shown that you were willing to improve, as demonstrated in your mentor app.
Still, I would have preferred for some more time to pass, to show that this was really a change of character and not you momentarily changing your attitude before realising that this wasn’t actually what you enjoyed doing in SS13 before reverting back to not really roleplaying.

About your overall mindset, I’ve had one issue while bussing you where I gave you something to play with and you took it way too far to the point I had to step in and stop you. I would have considered this incident to be my fault given that I was the admin initiating the bus. I would have dismissed it for this app.
However, I heard from other admins that they had to deal with instances of you sitting in asay, urging and pushing them to take their own busses further, to fuck with players and throw more chaos into the round in a manner that didn’t feel very constructed or thought-through.

As such, given the current state of things, I am afraid that you would “mess up” often while adminning, potentially making players’ rounds worse due to you only relying on your own personnal compass to build your admin busses. For instance, spawning a bunch of antags to “spice up the round”, not realizing that you are just making the round a chaotic, incomprehensible mess where players that didn’t roll a combat role are just getting stomped. Despite what others might say, I don’t believe training can prevent that as this is really an issue with having an inappropriate mindset. Again, I don’t have the definite answer to this, I can only ask a question.

Finally, just to touch on briefly on the thing that makes you really mad, real fast:

There is nothing inherently wrong with this naturally, I however witnessed you involving yourself in an incident once where you believed you saw a word that was offensive to you and projected a meaning on it, despite it being somewhat remote from the definition of that word and far from the intent of the player in the current context.
My point here is that we manage a multicultural community involving players who all have radically different upbrining and tendencies, we ask of everyone to behave and act respectable. But in my opinion, we cannot change the way others might think, and stepping into that territory is fruitless for us.

Moreover, sometimes doing less is more, others may disagree with me on this but in my opinion, the less noise and posturing there is when enforcing these standards, the stronger they become.
Again, this ties back into your issue with “tunnel visioning” that you yourself outlines, and what I described as you previously relying too much on your own system of reference to make decisions.

You have to be patient when adminning to make sure you aren’t striking the wrong people. Activism and moralism are dead ends in that regard.

With that Ted talk out of the way, here are some questions that I hope will help me and others, reach a decision:

A lot of people are up to the job, but few last. Could you develop on this? What kind of admin do you think you will be? What exactly would drive you to log on weekly to deal with players in tickets?

  1. How do you think becoming an admin will affect your role of maintainer?

  2. When should a player be permabanned?

  3. Assume you have admin permissions for this question. You hop on sage, the round (traitor gamemode) has been going on for an hour. Most traitors except for one are dead, and the last one doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Some players in dchat notice you and beg you to “do something”. What’s your next course of action?

  4. Someone ahelps saying that another player’s name is a reference to a war criminal in their country. You look up the name on wikipedia and find that the last name matches, but not the first name. What’s your next course of action?

  5. Bonus one: Can a round be too chaotic? And if so, what’s the limit?

These are the most open ended questions I’ve ever asked in an app. Again, I believe asking you game knowledge questions or policy questions to be pointless. You know way more than the average applicant about how the team works and have more game knowledge than most of us frankly.

I apologize for delaying my response to this app. I didn’t know how to proceed frankly and have been tempted more than once to just let apathy win and hope others would vote for me.

I also apologize for its length, I’ve thought about this answer for the better part of this week, and frankly I’ve failed to find a way to shorten it in a way that wouldn’t leave critical informations out of the way.

I chose to expose all of my thoughts in details, as you’ve contributed a lot to this project and this community, everyone is thankful for it. No matter what, I believe we have to take your application seriously. Leaving out key details before voting would feel disrespectful, it wouldn’t sit right with me.

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Oh boy, here we go. I really appreciate your thoroughness and the feedback you’ve given me as staff in general. I can’t improve if I don’t know what I’m missing, so it’s super important you put that out there.

Not to undermine how important I think taking this role seriously is, but should this not work out, I will always be a coder first. That’s not to say I don’t want to admin or will put adminning second, but in the case where I must choose between the two, it will likely be coder.

I mean honestly, the only reasons I’m in these roles is because I was already doing them in the first place. Before I was a maintainer I was reviewing PRs, before I was a mentor I was mentoring, and I’ve already done a fair share of adminning, albeit through player reports, ahelps, and asay.

It’s funny to me to think anyone even thinks that way, having power over funny spessman game so you can do… what? I could go back to being a regular player right now and very little would change. I’d keep playing and keep coding.

I can say at least a few of these are “funni haha” asays and not serious suggestions, but there probably as at least one or two cases where my suggestion might’ve been serious and out of line. That’s just something you learn with adminning though.

I definitely have the same concerns as you, although I would not have made this application if I did not think I was able to face this.

I have always been one to be excessively careful starting out with positions of power, because I do not want to let people down. When I first started as a maintainer, I was asking questions like “how many approvals do I need to merge a PR”? (the answer is only one, myself, for most PRs at least) and reading the Non-Admin Staff Conduct 20 times over.

I do worry with time I may become less resilient, but I also expect to have a firmer grasp of what is a good or bad bus over time.

Absolutely understood. I’ve had a fair few fun moments playing as a new character, even ones that were fulfilling for the character itself, such as the animal hospital I built with Ava, a huge animal-loving character.

That was one of the most fun things I’ve done during my recent playtime, and it’s put a lot more opportunities in sight, so I do fully intend to continue working on more complete characters.

Absolutely, we are not 1984 thought police, it is not our job to be thought police. You can think things, but it becomes an issue when you are voicing them IC or OOC.

I’m not really sure I have much more to say about this. I really enjoy this community, and in my time playing I run into a fair few rulebreaks. I’d like to be able to help directly rather than hope an admin is available or throw more reports on the forums. I think I would find adminning enjoyable, or rewarding, that is, at some level as I have in the past with Minecraft servers, although I’ll admit that has far less toxicity.

Not much, honestly. The adminning would mostly be part of my playtime rather than my coding time. I’ve already got a lot of free time, much of which I dedicate to SS13. Should adminning majorly interfere with being a maintainer, I would be inclined to step down.

When they show no willingness to improve, reject the rules altogether, or have an extensive history of consistent rulebreaking, especially of the same rule, after having several chances and bans escalated. Or if they are an obvious griefer.

I would probably trigger something like Sentient Pets to give observers something to do or watch, or perhaps a random minor antagonist that doesn’t kill - like revenant or abductors - as long as I do not think it would interfere with the round majorly.

The round has already been going on for an hour, and there are no currently “effective” traitors, so it would be permissible to bus something.

Another option might be to encourage the current traitor to do some type of gimmick or pursue their objectives, or ask if they have any type of plan as an antagonist should really be trying to complete their objectives rather than do nothing.

I would probably not do anything. I would let the ahelping player know that while the name somewhat matches I don’t believe that it’s directly intended to match and to let me know if something else implying further comes up.

Absolutely, I think the best player to look at for a round being too chaotic is the Captain or Head of Security, especially if there’s not many command staff. If it seems like they barely have time running between responsibilities, the round is too chaotic. Generally if you are forced to sideline RP in favor of everything else going on, it makes the round worse quality. “Can’t talk right now, busy” is probably the worst line you could have. Of course, with infinite possibilities you will have the occasional chaotic round, and it can certainly be fun, but most rounds should be a healthy balance where there are moments where all you can do is run, and others where you can sit down and have a chat between characters.

Your average revs round is about the limit, if not over it.

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You’re a knowledgeable player and you contribute a lot to the server, which is why I’m not going to ask anything and instead give my vote directly, seeing as Haliris said everything on my - and rather confident on this - on other staff’s minds as well.

I feel like you’re getting too ahead of yourself. You became a maintainer, then (rather) shortly after applied for mentor and now you’re applying for admin? I’ll be blunt, I’m questioning a bit your motives for doing so, but nevertheless.
These are my thoughts. I am not entirely confident you would be a good fit, not right now, in my personal opinion.

If I’m getting this correctly, no, I don’t believe making reports and ahelps is a valid form of admining? Unless I’m getting it wrong. I also wouldn’t consider the backseating you often gave many of us adminning, which I don’t believe Haliris mentioned here outside of the bus related things.

Finally, the ‘codermin’ position. This is a slow (or fast) but sure way of burning out in possibly more than one aspect. This doesn’t have as much weight as the rest of my response, because ultimately it’s your choice if you want to use an emergency burn and burnout your engines way earlier.
But I don’t believe this would be a benefit in the long run, in the short run sure - extra hands to deal with tickets are always welcome, but if this results in that person burning out on one or possibly both positions, then we’re losing more than we gain from you being a mentor and coder currently.

I have not personally seen if you’ve bettered yourself in regards to your recent notes, so I have nothing to say about that, other than it’s a bit worrying and too early to tell if any improvement has been made.

I will unfortunately give a -1 on this. We still really appreciate the work you put in as a coder and maintainer, not just us, but the whole community as a whole.

T: 0

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Absolutely fair, if everyone thinks I would be more useful as a maintainer than I am absolutely willing to stick with that.

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Upon further thinking, while I’m still confident that I would be up to adminning, I think I would be better suited continuing as a maintainer. I still enjoy coding the most out of anything and I’d like to think I’m pretty good at it, and while I’d probably be a fine admin, I think it’s likely I could make more mistakes and do more damage than I would as a maintainer. I would enjoy maintaining more and generally be more useful as a maintainer. Plus possible burnout yadda yadda. I withdraw my application.

Thank you for all the thought and effort you’ve put in so far to anyone who asked questions, I really appreciate it. If at some point I do re-apply, I will have a lot to consider.

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Closing application per request of applicant. You are free to reapply at any point in time!