Blake/Logicals Forum Moderator Application

[Iron Logic 910]

Thought I would make a new application since my last one is a little dated with the recent events in the staff team. 

1. Desired staff position: Forum Moderator with a little Server Support thrown in.

2. Your name (first name would suffice): Blake.

3. Your age: 21.

4. Your timezone: GMT+11 5.

Average amount of gameplay hours per day: 4-8 depending on my work schedule.

6. Why you should receive the position:
I already have ~1.5 years experience as a staff member on Runex, over the course of that experience I have obtained an immense amount of in-game knowledge, a lot of respect with the community and a lot of incite as to how the players feel and what they want to see. I have a lot of IRL experience with customer service, and just like my previous time as staff, I would like to put that to work in order to keep our community happy, in the loop and to make RuneX a more friendly place in general. I've gained a reputation in the past as the staff member who was never afraid of taking a deep look at issues that others would steer away from and I intend to keep it that way, all be it a little more respectfully.

In the time since my demotion I have learnt a lot, mainly about the way players who aren't great friends with staff are out of the loop and noticed a lot more players than usual becoming upset with staff over a variety of issues. I'd like to fix those issues, making the appeals move a long faster, making sure tickets are done properly in a timely manner, making sure players feel like they have more of a voice when it comes to suggestions. I'd also like to continue hosting events and semi official content polls etc.

To address some things from my last application. I made it out like I didn't really want to be a part of the staff team, which at the time was true. There was always a lot of hostility between myself and Raw which always got in the way of discussion and honestly, I didn't want to jump right back in to that. But with his resignation, and the return of my boy Kong, I'd love to rejoin the team. I think I would be a great fit for the staff team, my in-game knowledge and customer service skills would be a great service to this community. Not to mention how well my 1.5 years staffing experience would do for the current team seeing as in reality, all of them a new to staffing RuneX, even you Kong

I appreciate all feedback, be it positive or constructive criticism. 

[Atis 5]

You would make an excellent forum mod Logical

[Vise 178]

Nah you smell -1.

Nah, all jokes aside you already know my thoughts on you as a staff member, I’d rather you be promoted again over me any day.

Goodluck Blake

Edited February 16, 2019 by Vise

[Dragon Paws 64]

+1 forsure

[Death Fury 20]

You haven't been promoted yet? Shameful. +1 for sure. 

[Kong 213]

Think I need to get to know you first, before I give my opinion on your application. Not quite sure who you are atm.
You seem to be a nice player from what I can see. If you have any questions about how the game works, pm me.

Hopefully see you in game at some point, goodluck :]

[Kong 213]

In all seriousness, Logical is one of the best members to have ever stepped foot in Runex. 

He not only just a very valuable, loyal and dear friend of mine, he is a fantastic player and a top class moderator. Logical have devoted countless amounts of hours to Runex and has always put his full effort to making it a better place.

It was an absolute honor to work along side him in the staff team in the past, and it would still be an honor to have him back on the team.

However, I have been out of the loop for a while and a whole lot of funky business went down. I'm would love you to be back on the team but I just don't know if it's the right decision.

 

(New.... you are still my junior, young padwan)

[RogueMX 123]

Ima have to say no.

Just for the fact that several posts were made bashing current staff team and you have gone back and forth about "I want staff/ i don't want staff". (which yall criticized raw for constantly)

And I wouldn't really feel welcomed on RuneX since you have gone after my friends non stop and even went as far as to abuse your powers to ban me from the Discord.

 

This will be my only post on this thread as I don't wanna start any flame war.

Edited February 16, 2019 by RogueMX

[Klein 24]

I'm sorry but -1. Regardless of your previous staff application or even your previous time as staff you have shown time and time again that you're not able to handle things due to your emotions.
When you were demoted you showed heavy bias towards a current player and even going as far to say Ramzi himself was biased in his decisions. 

You have taken screenshots and information sent to you by members in your discord out of context on a few different occasions, some of which were publicly posted by you on the forums here.
You have blatantly assumed people in a different clan were 'out to get us' in regards to your clan when it comes to punishments. 
You have tried to backseat moderate the server, asking for the evidence on why a friend of yours was punished (several times) acting like a friend to people saying you'll get them out of trouble when you don't know the FULL story of why they were punished. Example - dunte

You say you've learned a lot since you were demoted but I don't think you have. You say players
are out of the loop on things and upset with the staff on a variety of issues but are they really? What are the issues you speak of? 
How are you meant to fix issues that haven't been elaborated on?

in regards to making appeals move faster it's common knowledge that Ramzi saves appeals for when he has absolutely nothing left to do. (You won't have much of an impact on this) If a person is banned they most likely deserved that punishment, they shouldn't have a problem waiting.
tickets are done in a rather timely manner, as fast as Ramzi can get to them due to the irl commitments he also has. (You also won't have an impact on this)
Players already have a voice when it comes to suggestions. A good majority of suggestions are added to the game on an irregular basis however they are added nonetheless.

You could have hosted events while being non-staff. Nothing stopped you from doing that.

You have said on many different occasions you didn't want to be on the staff team anymore.
Your last staff application you stated you wanted to staff until they got someone for your timezone because you didn't wish to staff the game.
It's rather hard to believe that you not wanting to staff is mainly because of Raw because you were demoted for abusing your powers and disrespecting everyone on the staff team, not just Ramzi. 

The last part of your application is really weird. It looks like you're saying pretty much noone on the staff team knows what they're doing because you have more experience than us.
You shouldn't have said we were "new" to staffing.

I'm sorry but I can't support you on your application. 

[Iron Logic 910]

6 hours ago, RogueMX said:

Ima have to say no.

Just for the fact that several posts were made bashing current staff team and you have gone back and forth about "I want staff/ i don't want staff". (which yall criticized raw for constantly)

And I wouldn't really feel welcomed on RuneX since you have gone after my friends non stop and even went as far as to abuse your powers to ban me from the Discord.

 

This will be my only post on this thread as I don't wanna start any flame war.

Thanks for the feedback,

My posts were never made simply to 'bash staff', they were made to try and address issues that I saw with the staff team. I made many of these, most of them private, but the public ones were only made public because Ramzi only addressed them when they were made public. 

Also, Only once have I gone from not wanting the position to wanting the position. I've never criticised Raw or any of the other returning staff for hopping between wanting/not warning their position, simply the manner in which they regain their position. [Without application, skipping SS etc]. 

I don't believe I have 'gone after your friends non stop', if you can provide some proof of this I'd appreciate it, because all I do is try to avoid conflict with you and your friends. 

With the power abuse thing, I'll address it further in my response to Kleins feedback. 

If you don't want to post again feel free to PM me or edit your original post to include some evidence of the above claim though. 

Thanks again. 

[Raw 688]

No support. based this solely on why you were demoted and the PM in my inbox.

[Iron Logic 910]

I appreciate the in-depth feedback,

I'm not sure where this 'emotions' thing is coming from. Seems like filler for this -1 because not once have I been accused of letting my emotions get in the way of my judgements. Feel free to provide some evidence to the contrary though. 

I'm not and was never biased against RogueMx, or anyone for that matter, I feel like you have a severe misunderstanding of the situation which led to my demotion. So I'll do into a little more depth here since I still need to clear it up for some reason. 

 

The staff team added an 'Arguments' channel to the discord, it was a NSFW channel that we would send player to if they wanted to argue to avoid it in the regular discord channels or in-game. We all said it was pretty much no rules bar racism. 
Welfare and another player went to the channel to argue and Welfare asked Raw if he could go in harsh and Raw said yes, just no racism.
Welfare went in hard and Ramzi banned him from the discord. No backlash for Raw for signing off on Welfares behaviour. 
The next day Batty, Adam and another player were discussing addiction in the arguments section and for some reason Raw banned Batty. 
I told him that was ridiculous and to ban both players if he was going to ban one, so he banned Adam as well.
I though all 3 bans were dumb so I spoke to Ramzi and he said they were all fine and I asked if the players could appeal at the very least and Ramzi told me that discord punishments were not appealable. 
I tried for weeks/months to get the staff team to address this clear mistreatment of our players, but none of them cared, because Ramzi said it was fine and they didn't want to discuss it at all since he was a higher rank. Which is why I called them ballless etc, because that is what they were being at the time. 
When I was sent evidence of RogueMx in the discord chat bringing up another players jail sentence, I brought it up to the staff chat and after a long discussion we all saw that IF Welfare, Batty and Adams bans were justified, than Rogues would be justified as well. 
So to keep in line with my superiors [ramzis] actions, I banned Rogue.
As soon as I did, the entire staff team agreed that all 4 bans [Rogue, Batty, Adam and Welfares] should be overturned and a set of discord rules implemented to protect the players. 
I went to bed.
When I woke up, Roguemx was unbanned and I found out he had a successful appeal.
Since the appeals at the time had not been touched for months and Ramzi said that No discord punishments were appealable, The only logical conclusion was that Rogue was given favourable treatment, I.E bias. 
So I called Ramzi bias, re-banned Rogue, Told Raw what I did and that he should unban Rogue immediately and sent ramzi a message about it.
I said in the staff chat multiple times that I didn't want to Ban Rogue, that I didn't think it was worth a ban, but to line up with Ramzis punishments I had to. 
All this situation was for was to show Ramzi how unfairly he was treating the other 4 players and to show that the staff team only cared when it was their friends in the line of fire. 
If I really wanted to abuse Rogue, I wouldn't have told Raw to immediately unban him. 
I only did what I did for the benefit of other players, fully knowing I was throwing my rank away at the same time.

 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

You have taken screenshots and information sent to you by members in your discord out of context on a few different occasions, some of which were publicly posted by you on the forums here.

Can you point out any specific scenarios? I've never intentionally taken anything out of context. 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

You have blatantly assumed people in a different clan were 'out to get us' in regards to your clan when it comes to punishments.

I've heard players say this, but I don't believe I ever have, can you provide some evidence? The only thing along these lines I can recall saying is that having the entire staff team in the same discord is a little bit of a conflict of interest. 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

You have tried to backseat moderate the server, asking for the evidence on why a friend of yours was punished (several times) acting like a friend to people saying you'll get them out of trouble when you don't know the FULL story of why they were punished. Example - dunte

Sure I'm a little bit of a backseat moderator, I don't see how that is a bad thing, to have someone with my experience looking in to things is a good thing. 
I've never ever promised to get anyone out of trouble. I promise to help players who feel abused or mistreated by staff by investigating their punishment and encouraging them to request their P-Log information. 
I always wait and see what the evidence is and speak to the staff members before I start looking in to the situation properly. 
I don't appreciate the way you phrase this by the way, because it is not true. I don't promise to get people unpunished and I always reach out to find out the full story. 
I'm sorry that having someone like me question the staff decisions in some cases is annoying to you. But I will never stop doing it and I always did it when I was staff as well.
The fact of the matter is that most players don't understand the rules as well as I do, so they ask me for help, which I am more than glad to give.

6 hours ago, Klein said:

You say you've learned a lot since you were demoted but I don't think you have. You say players
are out of the loop on things and upset with the staff on a variety of issues but are they really? What are the issues you speak of? 
How are you meant to fix issues that haven't been elaborated on?

Who are you to tell me what I have learnt? Obviously from going to staff to player taught me a lot about how much information players receive and what they hear. 
Players are kept out of the loop when it comes to the staff chat. A lot of stuff discussed in their about rules, upcoming updates, suggestions etc is the kind of stuff that players should know about also updates on tickets and appeals, I've been complaining about lack of transparency for years. 
The lack of transparency as well as a bit of a stigma when it comes to the staff team is what I want to change. 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

in regards to making appeals move faster it's common knowledge that Ramzi saves appeals for when he has absolutely nothing left to do. (You won't have much of an impact on this) If a person is banned they most likely deserved that punishment, they shouldn't have a problem waiting.
tickets are done in a rather timely manner, as fast as Ramzi can get to them due to the irl commitments he also has. (You also won't have an impact on this)

When I was staff, I was the only staff member processing appeals for Ramzi to review. I'm not sure who/if anyone does them now, but I would process them daily, sending priority ones to Ramzi as well as updating a list of appeals ready for his review. 
As far as tickets go, I recently saw the 'help' section over 3 pages long with untouched posts, which in my eyes is a disgrace because it was rare to even hit 2 pages long in my day.  I will be able to make sure that never happens again, I will be an active GMT staff to submit tickets as well as reviewing all tickets for mistakes. 
There has also been a drop in professionalism since the staff evaluations began as staff now rush tickets to get them first. I'd hope to encourage staff members to put a little more time and personality into their help post responses. 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

Players already have a voice when it comes to suggestions. A good majority of suggestions are added to the game on an irregular basis however they are added nonetheless.

Not true. At all. Ryan has said he does not want to officially poll suggestions because he wants control over the direction of RuneX, which isn't a bad thing entirely. But even hugely popular suggestions such as skilling updates, slayer updates, new caves etc are never added. 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

You could have hosted events while being non-staff. Nothing stopped you from doing that.

I don't host events for personal clout. I create events for the Community Manager [Ramzi] to host because it is a great look for the server. As well as events hosted by staff/admins get a lot more community involvement and allow for Ryan to 'sponsor' the prizes. 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

You have said on many different occasions you didn't want to be on the staff team anymore.
Your last staff application you stated you wanted to staff until they got someone for your timezone because you didn't wish to staff the game.
It's rather hard to believe that you not wanting to staff is mainly because of Raw because you were demoted for abusing your powers and disrespecting everyone on the staff team, not just Ramzi. 

Opinions change? 
I really didn't want to come back to the team for 2 reasons;
1. Raw: He was always shutting down conversations and never had any meaningful input in most cases. He frustrated me immeasurably. 
2. Isolation: I spent months as the only GMT staff member, I was always staffing alone, I never had anyone to discuss issues with and had almost no access to Ryan and Ramzi when I needed it. I'd stay up until 1 AM most nights just because I didn't want to leave the server without a staff member online. It was unhealthy, depressing and stupid that I was so loyal to not complain or leave. 
But now Raw has resigned and Kong, my boy, has returned. 
So yeah, my opinion has changed. 

As I said above, I abused my powers for a just cause, not trying to justify it, but I'm not the evil villain you guys make me out to be and I was disrespectful because I was stretched to my limit because I put so much time and effort into RuneX and I never got any recognition for it. 

6 hours ago, Klein said:

The last part of your application is really weird. It looks like you're saying pretty much noone on the staff team knows what they're doing because you have more experience than us.
You shouldn't have said we were "new" to staffing.

It was more of a tongue and cheek joke used to put my 1.5 years experience up to the current teams couple months each, except for Kong. 
Never said you guys don't know what you are doing, sorry if it came off wrong. 

 

Thanks for the feedback, but I do think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the reason I was demoted, a lack of evidence to back up some of the more interesting claims as well as the fact you put things like how I help players with their punishments as some sort of negative thing as if helping the community is a big no no. 

But either way, thanks, I'll try and take in on board. 

[Iron Logic 910]

16 minutes ago, Raw said:

No support. based this solely on why you were demoted and the PM in my inbox.

As someone who should know all the details of my demotion, I'm surprised that you would say this. Not to mention that at the time when the entire situation was hours old, you told me yourself that you dont think I should have been demoted. But I guess opinions change, just seems a little far fetched is all. 

I really don't appreciate the way you keep phrasing thing as well, insinuating that there is something so horrible in a PM I sent you. 

That is our PMs, the only bad thing in there is a thinly veiled threat that I'm not going to be taking your insinuating swings at me to try and turn my friends against me anymore. I'm going to call you out on it.

Thanks for the feedback though.

[Raw 688]

1 minute ago, Logical said:

As someone who should know all the details of my demotion, I'm surprised that you would say this. Not to mention that at the time when the entire situation was hours old, you told me yourself that you dont think I should have been demoted. But I guess opinions change, just seems a little far fetched is all. 

I really don't appreciate the way you keep phrasing thing as well, insinuating that there is something so horrible in a PM I sent you. 

That is our PMs, the only bad thing in there is a thinly veiled threat that I'm not going to be taking your insinuating swings at me to try and turn my friends against me anymore. I'm going to call you out on it.

Thanks for the feedback though.

I didn't try to insinuate anything. I've been rather blunt when I post things. My apologies for not going 'in-depth'. I just don't feel the need to do so.

I could care less about you, your friends or anything else for that matter. I'm providing feedback on applications. You can choose to take it how you wish. They're your feelings and you're entitled to them.

Also, yes. I said you shouldn't have been demoted but my opinion changed on this as opinions do tend to change. 

[Wayne 289]

It's a No from me;

• I'm convinced Ryan & Ramzi no longer want you on their staff team. 
• I feel like you're completely miserable nowadays without having some sort of "power".. 
• Considering the low traffic on Runex's forum, there isn't a need for a Forum Moderator. 

I honestly don't understand why you (of all people) still apply. Find another hobby Blake.. Seriously

[Abowarlord7 5]

big support, you fill a gap, i think you and kong could turn the staff team around to what it use to be.

[Vintage 41]

+1, hopefully Ryan/Ramzi can see that you still actively help the community even though happythots try to spin it another way just because you're making them accountable

[UIM Btw 3]

Even though you killed me in wilderness of all places, I like you and think you would be a great re-addition to the staff team. +1

[Nickoo 15]

Very Strong +1, Logical has always been very "logical" (heh heh) And always has done what was best for the server in my opinion. I feel like Logical would play a valuable staff member and would benefit the server. I would absolutely love to see Logical added back to the staff team. good luck!

[Bar 57]

+5

[Dartagnan 7]

+1 Logical is the only staff member that has taken the time to genuinely talk to me.  I feel he doesn't take this job/promotion as a power trip.  He is a very down to earth and trusting moderator that the people need.  I see that staff or ex-staff do not get along with him, but I can't say any of these people are enjoyable people from my experiences with them.  So I don't value their negative feelings towards him very highly. 

I feel the -1 are more of a personal issue than an actual server issue. 

Very childish from the outside looking in.  

[Roger 174]

+10

[Abowarlord7 5]

promote this man

[twitch 92]

+1 hands down no doubt one of the best staff members to ever be on Runex

[52xp 308]

Making your thread a giant defense mechanism to the excessive negative responses speaks plenty, in my eyes.