Leadership Handbook
This handbook is an overview of the leadership tasks required of Sr. Mods, Sr. Devs, and Administrators. If you are currently in or intend to join one of these roles, please read all the way through.
Leadership Roles: Senior Moderator
Senior Moderators are selected through special application. Only those encouraged to apply for Senior Moderator by an Administrator can join this role. This generally includes people who are very experienced in the role of Moderator here, or who have proven themselves to be excellent Moderators in other communities.
If you want to become a Senior Moderator, start with the Helper role. Pass your trial period and become a Moderator. Be an active and exemplary member of the team. Participate in some of the optional duties of the Community Management team, like hosting events or handling support tickets. Then, you may receive a promotion offer.
The duties of a Senior Moderator are as follows:
- Lead and mentor the team of Moderators and Helpers.
- Assist in the selection of new staff, especially in checking their background history and application responses to make sure they are a trustworthy individual.
- Assist in the promotion of Helpers to Moderators.
- Perform disciplinary measures for misbehaving staff.
The skills we’re looking for in a Senior Moderator are as follows:
- Strong, uncompromising moral values that align with Gamer Dorks’ own values.
- Extensive experience moderating online communities or leading staff teams, especially our own.
- The ability to remain calm in stressful situations or when dealing with an offensive individual.
- Extensive experience with the Gamer Dorks community and projects.
- Conflict resolution skills.
- Familiarity with our Community Management Handbook.
Leadership Roles: Senior Developer
Senior Developers are selected through special application. Only those encouraged to apply for Senior Developer by an Administrator can join this role. This generally includes people who intend to lead a game or game server project here at Gamer Dorks and wish to be able to lead a team within staff.
If you want to become a Senior Developer, show willingness to lead a project. When your project is ready to have its own staff team, you have the opportunity to be promoted to Senior Developer and lead your team.
The duties of a Senior Developer are as follows:
- Lead and mentor all the development and creative staff working on your project.
- Assist in the selection of new staff, especially in checking that people applying to work on your projects are qualified to do so.
- Assist in the promotion of Testers to Developers.
The skills we’re looking for in a Senior Developer are as follows:
- Strong, uncompromising moral values that align with Gamer Dorks’ own values.
- Experience in developing a project similar to the one you intend to lead.
- Delegation and mentorship skills.
- Basic Linux Command Line Interface (CLI) skills.
- Minecraft Project Leads: Familiarity with Pterodactyl panel navigation.
- Minecraft Project Leads: YAML and JSON skills, as well as skills in either ExecutableEvents, Skript, or Java.
- Familiarity with our Community Management Handbook.
Leadership Roles: Administrator
Administrators are selected by promoting Senior Developers or Senior Moderators. This is an executive role for the most dedicated and most skilled of our team.
If you want to become an Administrator, land yourself a role as either a Senior Developer, or Senior Moderator, or preferably both.
The duties of an Administrator are as follows:
- Make executive decisions in accordance to our policies and values.
- Be a resource to all staff members to resolve disputes, give mentorship and advice, and change policy when necessary.
- Select, promote, and discipline any member of staff.
- Ensure the effective growth of our projects.
- Keep track of our budget and make budgeting decisions.
The skills we’re looking for in an Administrator are as follows:
- Strong, uncompromising moral values that align with Gamer Dorks’ own values.
- Extensive experience managing online communities and leading staff teams.
- The ability to remain calm in stressful situations or when dealing with an offensive individual.
- Extensive experience with the Gamer Dorks community and projects.
- Experience in developing some or all projects Gamer Dorks is working on.
- Conflict resolution skills.
- Delegation and mentorship skills.
- Basic Linux Command Line Interface (CLI) skills.
- Minecraft Administrators: Familiarity with Pterodactyl panel navigation and setup.
- Minecraft Administrators: YAML and JSON skills, as well as skills in either ExecutableEvents, Skript, or Java.
- Basic accountancy and budgeting skills.
- Familiarity with the Google Office Suite, including Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
- Familiarity with all Staff Handbooks.
Handling Staff Applications
Everyone in a Leadership role is required to be able to read and respond to support tickets in order to handle Staff Applications. In order to do this, you will need an @gamerdorks.net email as well as WordPress account on the gamerdorks.net website.
Staff applications show up as tickets and can be viewed through the Support Portal. When one comes in, the staff team will discuss it together. We can request further information through replying to the ticket.
Senior Moderators are expected to give input on an applicants behavior history and trustworthiness. They are also expected to give input on an applicant’s qualification for a Helper or Moderator role.
Senior Developers are expected to give input on an applicant’s qualifications for a Tester, Developer, Artist, Builder, Musician, Translator, or Writer role. They are also expected to approve or veto an applicant applying to work on their project.
Administrators are expected to make final decisions on all applications.
Support agents who have no leadership roles are not expected to give any advice on applications unless explicitly asked to do so.
Promoting Helpers to Moderators
When a Helper has been actively moderating the community for a month (or so), we may bring up their promotion in the #management channel in Discord.
We want to ensure that the candidate has met the following minimum expectations:
- Had no major behavioral incidents or false punishments to date.
- All minor behavioral incidents or false punishments were corrected, and the candidate had the opportunity to resolve future situations in the correct manner themselves.
- Has submitted at least three exemplary modlogs, and at least half of their modlogs meet expectations.
- Is well liked by the staff team and community.
Promoting Testers to Developers
When a Tester feels that they are ready to begin taking on development work in the server, we may bring up their promotion in the #management channel in Discord.
We want to ensure the candidate has met the following minimum expectations:
- Had no major behavioral incidents or created any malicious code to date.
- Has contributed to the development of one of our projects in a positive way at least once.
- Shows interest in and has the necessary experience for developing one of our projects in a greater capacity than they can with the Tester role.
Disciplinary Action
Disciplinary action may be taken against a member of staff in one of the following scenarios:
- A member of Community Management staff makes an egregious false punishment and does not correct it in a timely manner.
- Example: Falsely banning an individual for an infraction they did not commit, without immediately correcting it.
- A member of Community Management staff who is currently able to do so does not make a punishment in a timely manner when one is desperately needed.
- Example: Failing to ban an individual who is being racist while the moderator is actively talking in chat.
- A member of Development staff creates malicious code.
- Example: Creating code which gives a particular individual special advanced privileges.
- Any staff member who is assigned a task does not make contact with the team for at least 30 days without prior notice.
- Example: A builder who is expected to build a structure disappears for 30 days, not completing any assigned task or replying to any messages, without posting in #break first.
- Any staff member breaks a rule that would result in a punishment greater than a warning.
- Example: Making a sexist comment.
- Any staff member abuses their role or any exclusive knowledge to gain an advantage in a game or game server.
- Example: Building a structure with a secret loot stash that only the builder knows about.
- Example: Using knowledge of an item being nerfed in a future update, a developer sells their entire stock of that item prior to the update.
- Any staff member undermines another staff member’s efforts.
- Example: Deleting code written by another staff member to replace it with their own, without prior discussion.
- Example: Reverting a punishment another staff member made, without prior discussion.
- Example: Publicly expresses disagreement with a moderator decision made by another staff member.
- Any staff member is discovered to fail to meet the Application Prerequisites.
- Example: A staff member lied about their age in their application, and is actually under the age of 16.
- Any staff member shares misinformation about Gamer Dorks or its products.
- Example: Telling a new player that Enhanced SMP requires a payment to access, when it does not.
- Example: Telling a member that an action is against the rules, when it is not.
- Any staff member has improper account security.
- Example: Disabling multifactor authentication.
When one of these scenarios is met and a staff member needs to be disciplined, one of the following actions can be taken, based on the severity and history of past mistakes:
- Correction: Request that the staff member correct their mistake. Show them how this will be done, if necessary.
- Warning: Inform the staff member that future mistakes may result in a suspension or demotion.
- Suspension: Temporarily remove a member from the staff team and allow them to reapply when their time is up.
- Demotion: Permanently remove a staff member from the team. If they are a Moderator, demoting them to Helper may be the best course of action in some situations.
Any of these actions can be taken in addition to or instead of a standard moderator punishment (mute, ban, etc.)
Delegation
Delegate any task that another staff member can do with their level of skill, availability, permission, and interest.
In general, the following roles can be delegated the following tasks:
- Helper
- Watching chat for rulebreakers.
- Helping newcomers with their questions.
- Moderator
- Investigating an individual’s chat or gameplay history.
- Completing a plot patrol on the Creative Pro server.
- Handling a support ticket (other than Application or Contact Management).
- Lead a community event.
- Tester
- Thoroughly test a feature for bugs or balancing issues.
- Brainstorm new or revamped features for a game or game server, such as new items or reworking existing ones in Enhanced SMP.
- Developer
- Code a new gameplay feature, or rework or debug an existing one.
- Artist
- Develop textures for the resource pack of a Minecraft server.
- Develop model files for the resource pack of a Minecraft server.
- Create some promotional artwork or logos for Gamer Dorks.
- Create in-game artwork for one of our games or game servers.
- Builder
- Build a structure for a Minecraft server.
- Musician
- Make a soundtrack for a game.
- Translator
- Localize a game into another language.
- Writer
- Write dialogue for a specific character that Writer knows.
- Write lore for a place, person, or thing.
- Brainstorm ideas for future characters or places.
As you get to know your team and their skills, delegating tasks to them will become easier and more comfortable. Everyone’s skills, availability, and interests are different and they take time to learn.
Mentorship
If a volunteer needs help with a task you know how to do, take that opportunity to teach them that task so that they can do it on their own in the future.
For example, if you are a Senior Moderator and a Helper needs help with a difficult situation, in which two individuals are arguing and won’t stop whatever the Helper does or says; take this situation as a learning opportunity. Give the Helper some tips to point them in the right direction and allow them to handle it themself, answering any questions they have. But make sure they are the one to handle it if at all possible. Don’t just handle it for them.
Likewise, if you are a Senior Developer and a Developer for a project under your lead doesn’t understand how to use a specific code language (e.g. Skript), and you know that language well, point them in the right direction so they can learn it themself. Show them how to understand some code you already have made. Show them where they can find relevant documentation. Answer questions they have, but don’t handle it for them unless absolutely necessary.
We hire capable volunteers and if they’re ever insecure about a task, that just means they need a little bit of direction. It is your job to get rid of any barriers and point them in the right direction to get their job done.
Conflict Resolution
If there is a disagreement between staff about how to handle a situation, it is time to intervene and make a decision. When making your decision, keep the following in mind:
- Which decision will result in the best outcome for the project and community?
- Which decision aligns best with our values?
- Which decision is consistent with past decisions?
Sometimes, conflict resolution will require discussion with the rest of Leadership to make a decision that works best for everyone.
