The role of helper is outdated and no longer relevant for a number of reasons.
First of all, the title of “helper” hasn’t been in place officially for 16 weeks, as outlined in this announcement by @RhysRaptor. Instead, those who have the role should be referred to as “trial staff”. If that was the only fix needed then it wouldn’t be an issue, but of course there are a number of other issues that cause this particular role/title to cause problems.
| Issue | Detailed Analysis |
|---|---|
| Separate roles enable players to question the legitimacy of any action by a helper/trial staff member | It goes without saying that whenever a role that holds a level of authority within any given gaming community is found to be “lesser” than the base rank of administration, players who have broken rules and been sanctioned by those in that particular group will immediately target that fact, which often leads to banal, often routine actions (1 slay for RDM etc) being drawn out and exaggerated for no other reason than a little bit of one-upsmanship from players. Alas, if you are going to have trial staff members, they should still be in the same in-game group as that of regular staff. There is no reason for non-staff members to know that a trial staff member is on “trial” or “probation”. It doesn’t benefit that trial staff member in any way beyond putting public pressure on them as well as the internal pressure of being assessed by Community Managers. |
| Inability to conduct same duties as normal staff members | I touched on this in my previous point, but it is still an important aspect that merits it’s own little section. Trial staff in the “helper” role do not have the ability to fulfill all of the duties that normal staff members can do on account of the fact that the role permissions are different. This in turn means that they cannot practice certain tasks, which by extension means they aren’t being fully assessed before being thrown into the deep end. This also applies to an inability to conduct basic forum moderation, which isn’t granted to someone until they have passed their trial stage. Given that sometimes the forum can get out of hand, I would argue this is a crucial aspect of being a trial member. Alas, A trial staff member should have full access to all in-game commands and all forum moderation powers. If they are abused at the trial stage, then that member can be removed. To suggest that the risk is greater is a non-argument because anybody who truly wishes to abuse powers only available to “full staff” will simply wait until they reach that milestone and do it anyway. |
| Gmod servers really don’t need a rank hierarchy of authority lol | I think that this is a self-explanitory point. This is a TTT community. The gamemode is round based, typically not overly-serious gameplay and the notion that a rank hierarchy is in place for a game of this style is unnecessary. If you look at DM servers or most other Gmod gamemodes (or even other TTT communities that have any level of merit to them) the concept of a police-style rank system isn’t present and for good reason. It becomes cluttered, overly convoluted and altogether farcical not only for players within the particular community but also those who find themselves caught up in that very hierarchy. Community managers are different because there are much fewer of them and they make community-changing decisions. Basic moderators? No. It’s not something that is needed. |
Alas, all current trial mods should be given full access and not a silly helper role, allowing for proper assessment and topics like this one don’t even come up.
@CCX9010 @ManeGunner6 Mwcha