What exactly would be the negatives of too many staff? Like all I can see are positives. Obviously more staff = greater margin or error But like there's no real "negatives" It's not harder to manage if you just add another admin to manage another 4 mods, and if needed another lead to manage that. And plus leads don't tend to screw up as much, so they don't need to be managed as much. same with admins tbh. Obviously you aren't gonna rush picking a lead admin, or another mod. But why exactly should the applications be closed? Sure we don't have a high population right now, but if we have more staff, we have less staffless servers, and eventually if we have enough staff for there to be staff on 24/7, we have no staffless servers. Sure its a fantasy, but I don't see a reason to "cut down" on staff members. I would totally understand if you were paying these people, and it would be normal as you would be functioning as a normal business. But that's not what this is. People donate their time to be dedicated to helping SGM for FREE. It makes ZERO sense to close applications. TL;DR; wtf, why no applications opened, no real negatives to more staff, and the more the staff, the more likely all servers will BE staffed.
While their motive might differ from the public's assumed perspective, there's a lot to be gained from decreasing the total size of any work-force when the opportunity arises. Before, I comment on that, I just want to note that sometimes you that you gotta be realistic with the situation at hand and evolve constantly when you're managing anything. Decreasing a work force can increase long-term productivity and growth. We all know that when there are less people to work with the educators are able to embed a stronger foundation into their students. By taking the opportunity to realize that such a large work force isn't as needed at the present moment- I believe they are able to capitalize on this opportunity to turn a lot of things around. Miscommunications about certain rulings, build a stronger core of leaders that feel like they can be heard, and overall decreasing over saturation and management requirements. Having 100% staffed servers around the clock would be perfect and ideal, but it is not realistic. The best approach is to ensure there is an effective presence of staff that can enforce rules and promote fair game-play conssitently. Instead of always trying to fill as many time-slots as possible, and as often as possible, they are most likely taking this opportunity to ensure that when staff are on the servers they are able excel in both game-knowledge and execution of that knowledge. Quality > Quantity when they can. They'll most likely open up applications soon after they reach their desired slot count, and furthermore they will most likely increase total slots again after a thorough quality baptism and an increased player-base count.
Have you ever heard of diminishing marginal returns? It's just basic economics. Same principle. More workers = less efficiency over time. We've reached the point where we have too many. We want less mods, so we shut it down and let them burn out naturally. When we need them, we will call out to the community again. How long? who knows. Pop Star said it best
Heya @Mr. Disco, POP STAR pretty much has the major premise of it. There's many indicators to a good staff team, and having the servers staffed 24/7 is only one of many metrics of this. With the current activity of the community, we had an over saturation of staff members compared to the number of active members- and in return, this begins to favor quantity over quality. We're switching this around now and resolving some of the issues we have both externally and internally within the staff team. Upper administration decided to shift the focus a bit and are more concerned about building a stronger, better staff team after we noticed a diminish of quality in other areas. We do monitor server activity vs the population of the servers and we are currently have the servers staffed at most of the prime times. There's gaps- sure, but they're not usually long. We also have the forum report section which typically resolves issue pretty quickly as well. Applications will be opened up once we're no longer meeting this.
