Recently I found out that mod applications at one point were public for the common player to give opinions on. So why was this removed? I mean wouldn't it be a good thing for ex staff and regulars to give opinions on a player's ability to be a mod?
Speaking as someone who was staff before they were made private I can say this. Support from non staff made zero difference on whether an app was accepted. They made it private for that and also to see who would try to publicize their own app. People who flaunt their app around all day usually aren't the people that admins wanna pick up.
Rhazh is correct here. I was just a player back in the day when they were public, but yeah -- public opinion doesn't matter that much when it comes to staff applications.
Yup, was a player back then as well, did not see a whole point to it. All the toxic kids would come to support their toxic friends and so forth.
According to thoughts on this thread: https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads/making-staff-applications-public.31940/ reasons for keeping it private include: - the potential public ridicule from having your application be open for everyone to see and criticize, and for everyone to see if it gets denied; - the fact that such potential could hinder people from applying due to not wanting everyone judging it; - the fact that some applications have some pretty private things about the applicant, like past drama, or real life details they don't want to share with everyone, that might be brought up that the applicant has to talk about to establish that it's over and done with and/or that it won't affect their staffing, personal history about the applicant may also be brought up, be they things noted on the player's adminstat notes or just things individual staff members noticed; - the potential for people to criticize the staff members interacting with these applications and to be overly critical of the admin's decisions; - how a young applicant that applied wanting to help the server would feel if they got a bunch dumb ratings on their application by random people who barely even read the application or thought it over and who aren't held to the higher standard staff members are held to; - the potential of people copying other's applications (plagiarism) to make it look good, instead of just using it to base what their application should contain; - the potential for misleading an applicant that their application will be accepted because the public likes their application, but the staff won't accept them due to other concerns like their attitude on the servers or something not publicly known; ... additionally <this post> on that thread by Machinekiller00 also explains some of what applications were like when it was public on the first paragraph, though most of the post is things that I already mentioned above. -------------------------------- Finally, about ex staff and regulars not being able to give opinions, with the way the staff team works, admins being promoted for both their experience and the trust the leads put on the admins' judgement, and leads being the same, but with Highwon's trust instead, you kind of have to believe that the system is working and that the current staff are up to the job. At the end of the day it's the applicant's future admin that reaches the decision of if they want to give that person a chance or not, if an ex-staff had a big concern about the player and hadn't put it in their adminnotes they still have another opportunity to private message the player's admin when they are a trial mod, though if it's only a small opinion then they probably shouldn't as it wouldn't matter anyways.
