Application: Twinny
 

1) Introduce yourself. Who are you? What do you do? Where are you known? Why do you play Graal?

I am known as Twinny. I'm more commonly known for my scripting: be it via expierence from working with me/using my stuff or through my various help resources. I don't know how far my, "popularity", reaches but I seem to be well known. I play Graal mostly for the chance to develop and help others develop.

2) Experience with "online-only" staff teams, including playerworld work here on Graal.

Classic: N-Pulse, Zodiac
Hosted: Graal X, Atrius
UC: Crazy amount.

Most of my jobs centered around scripting but I have had an occasional LAT job and more often and not, I seem to rise up to Administrator role: as noted on Zodiac.

3) Assuming you have piqued our interest with your qualifications, what makes you stand out as an applicant?

I've often acted as a mediator between disputing parties both in and out of Graal as well as been a team leader in many situations, also in/out of Graal. My current job involves solving highly complicated problems (oh the joys of Linux) to non-techy guys so i have the knack for simplifying things.

4) What is your education level? Are you employed? What amount of time can you dedicate to Graal-related duties each day?

I have a Diploma in Network Engineering which includes Windows 2003/general linux server roles as well as Cisco roles. I'm currently studying to take my CCNA exam (possibly this weekend).

I'm employed 5 days a week 9-5 but, as people may have noticed, work is generally relaxed and I'm often on Graal during these times. Weekdays, I could provide up to 3-6 hours a day while providing 4-8 on weekends

5) What do you see that needs changing in Graal's player world policies?

In general, I feel the actual presentation of the player world policies needs to be dramatically improved. Currently, the policies can only be found in the forums, are a patchwork of updates and rather hard to find: especially for a non-forum user. I feel the policies need to be thought out, well constructed and easy to find. When this is planed out, I'd give the policies some more attention.

6) Show us some examples of your good judgment in certain situations.

Since It's quite easy to make up situations for this, I'd prefer to have people vouch for me on this one....which may be hard ^^

For the most part, my ability to deal with player situations was seen on Zodiac numerous times by the PWA.

[Edit]: My Australian time zone is also handy

I think Twinny would do a great job as PWA. He has always helped out when I needed help (scripting mainly), and is a great person. Out of all the other candidates so far, Twinny is definitely my first or second choice.

Why have you left those Administrator positions in the past?

On Zodiac, I noted that Frotter and I rose to the manager position due to the increasingly infrequent appearances of Calani. When Frotter decided to quit, I lost my admin buddy which kinda sucked. Bell/Vulcan stepped in around this time due to issues and took the final say for Zodiac decisions. I decided to quit the administration team to focus more on the development: something Zodiac very much needed. (I got a weeks break than Vulcan demanded my presence again -_-)

As for the UC worlds, they are so dynamic with staff/plan changes as well as dynamic staff members that projects can sometimes dry up around you and you are left administering nothing.

I know you're well aware of some of the issues that had occured during this time. Quite happy to discuss these over pms but not in the forums.

Twinny would do great as PWA, I think. Worked with him mainly on Zodiac, where him and I were in charge of more or less the entire server while calani was on her one week vacation that ended up as two weeks, and eventually she quit instead.

I do however talk to Twinny a whole lot, his personality is a plus. Calm, friendly, hard to annoy etc.

Hard to annoy, yet at times he can be annoying himself. ;)

Still, Twinny for PWA. Would do a great job.

If you say so ^^

Yeah, I support Twinny. He's mature enough and with my experience with him, has good judgement.

Yep, Twinny 4 PWA! :)

Twinny has my support. My opinion mirrors Zero's.

Thought I might just add a new piece to my work. For my playerworld policies, I'd also like to enforce basic playerworld staff structure.

It's foolish to have about 1 manager and 5 co-managers (which doesn't make sense, "co" wise but happens anyways) and a whole pile of staff with unnecessary rights.

I'd like to be able to establish a working staff system that ensures only the manager and perhaps one or two high, trusted and verified admins can change rights whilst everyone else only gets the bare minimum rights.

For example, instead of having all LATs with access to the gmap, each should only have access to their folder where they can upload test levels. Once approved by someone high up (lat admin, manager) the level can then be moved across to the main levels folder. This practice would limit damage made to gmaps through errors and abuse/deletion). Just a small part of the policy i'd like to implement.

Sounds fine, but would never work on UC servers.

May only end up being guidelines but PWAs should help implement them on a server if requested :D

Well, the PWA already tried doing that but it didn't work out very well. It's still somewhat enforced and generally if someone has too many unnecessary rights then they will confront a manager or someone in charge. It would be difficult to establish an actual system for that without completely controlling the staff list of each server. The managers should be responsible enough to know which staff they're able to trust and which staff they aren't able to trust. When you hire someone you're taking a risk of trust, it's the managers job to decide whether or not that risk is worth taking.

I think it should be enforced completely on Classic tab servers.

And Twinny, you have my support.

The PWA should do routine playerworld raids where they check everyone's rights!

One PWA could do that continuously and never do anything else. By the time you got to the end of the Playerworlds list it would be time to start over again.

I'd certainly remove my support from any PWA who tries to dictate who gets what rights on Valikorlia.

The problem I believe is many managers/servers tend to be so lax when it comes to rights, and give so many unnecessary rights and then BOOM, their server is deleted/stolen/taken over, and then they're begging for help getting it back.

Meh, I remember LATs on Utopia kept bugging me to be able to use things like staff stick, dragger, kicker, jail, etc.

If I could, I'd give them warp & update level, and that's all.

That's all they need ^^.

I find staff tools just waste both the staff members time as well as potential staff members/players who visit the server only to have the crap abused out of them by stupid tools. Although I doubt PWA's can say, "NO MORE! *slap*", they can help place some guidelines to help influence managers to make better choices.

Most, if not all, of our jurisdiction is influenced by the severity of the situation.

Several infractions on the forums, 3 of which are the same.
I would say that you need to familiarize yourself with rules.
Other than that, I don't know you. :)

How did Twinny get an infraction? He's like the coolest person on the plant ^^

Damn admins, givin' honest men infractions. ;)

There are no playerworlds on the forum to administrate.

Ability to follow rules is relevant to the application. If you're going to ignore authority you shouldn't be given any.
No need to belittle Darlene's comments with sarcastic comments. :\

How can you doubt he's the coolest person on Graal? :C

The need is my own amusement. Sarcasm is deeply ingrained into my psyche.

I ignore authority quite often depending on what I'll get out of it and the risk.

Exactly what I was getting at, thank you.

And I havn't posted a link in ages ^^.

Yes, September of last year, but that's not the point. :)

As I recall, I had a nice discussion with Sam about it and since I can't really remember the discussion now, I'd say it must have been resolved ^^

Atleast I havn't attacked anyone ^^

Im sure that even Houdini or Spark made some infractions of some rules in the past... Posting links isnt that bad, is it?

I figured I'd use this chance to discuss the possibility of a new Global system. I find the current system is highly ineffective through my eyes as a player. I'd love it if Unixmad authorised a joint comittee of players, globals and administration to analyse the current system and suggest ways to improve the system which addresses all current and possible situations efficiently.

Some potential starters:

First off, I'd like to see Global GPs. This team should only be involved with global/local bans, rule enforcement, corruption etc. They should have the rights and procedures to deal with these types of issues without having to worry about the administrative side of the PWA job. This group should have a decent amount of members to cover all timezones effectively. I feel this is the most required addition.

Global Support Team: this team should be readily available to deal with any playerworld issues that can occur including scripting problems, dead NPC/Gservers etc. The global support team should have all the necessary rights and procedures to allow them to analyse and, if possible, resolve the situation efficiently. All members of this team should have scripting skills and be able to adapt to a server and quickly analyse/script for it. The current Global Scripting Team should be merged into this group. This role could/should be done by the current GST team but it seems inefficient. CheeToS (<3) is unable to perform his role due to his lack of subscription but the others....meh.

Finally, the Playerworld Administration team should stay and they should be the overseers. They should organise the underlings as well as perform the major tasks Graal has such as major staff corruption (takeovers, spawn fests), management reviews, playerworld inspections etc. They should be able to also summarise issues for Unixmad/Stefan and ask (and generally) get assistance when needed.

To also save the PWAs some time, I think some Classic/Hosted Global Managers should be assigned. Each manager should become an adviser to 2-3. They should actively observe the current management and any issues arising from staff/players and be able to relay the important information up to PWAs. Should be able to take some stress of the PWAs. They should also be available to temporarily take control of a server for whatever the reason (holidays, leave, corruption: like Bell temp managing Zodiac, Houd for Era etc.)

Just a starter (wrote this during lunch break) and I may expand/add to as the day goes by. Nothing is in concrete but it's just some stuff to get the train movin' :D

These are all things which require for unix/stefan to have people they can trust with the jobs, people willing to stay active with the jobs, and generally cause more confusion because of the large list. I think the original purpose of the small team of Global administration was because they only picked out who they could trust with the position, and so and issues that arise with the Global Staff aren't going to be in double-digits because of a large list.

But even besides that, getting PWA doesn't mean you're getting as close to as much control of as much as people are thinking here...at all.

I think Twinny would be a great canidate, but I also think he will be the Barrack Obama of Graal.. He seems to be willing to change alot of things. Not that it is a bad thing, but is graal really ready for the change?